1.
Yuugi's grandfather was vast and portly; he wore faded green overalls and smelled of smoke and wood polish and dust. He sat Yuugi on his lap that night, his silver beard tickling the top of her head, and she looked out past The Turtle Game Shop's front counter and cash register and into the shop beyond.
Gleaming glass cases held chess games, video games, packs of cards, puzzles and puzzle boxes, secondhand RPG sets next to old stained dice. Colorful toys, teddy bears and action figures and dolls and everything in between, occupied the top shelves, glass eyes staring at each other across the distance. Craft sets and build-your-own-model kits occupied the bottom shelves. The whole place, despite her grandfather's best dusting and polishing efforts, felt a bit like an antiques store: faded, shabby, disarrayed, and crowded, attracting the sort of people who enjoyed discovering interesting gems amid piles of junk. The unforgivable ones for Mutou Sugoroku were the ones who called the crowded old place "creepy." Yuugi's grandfather swept twice a day and went out back for cigarette breaks because he didn't want people to see him mar the air of his precious store.
Yuugi and her parents and grandparents all lived on the floor above the game shop. It was a bright, garishly colored, two story building. The tiny bottom floor was the legs while the top floor was a swollen pregnant belly extending from below the roof like the very building itself was bloated.
Yuugi's Mom was usually at work, away at her job sweeping as a janitor, while her father was a bit player in an international tourist business who was always away on some new trip. In between trips, he would bring her back fascinating things from foreign lands: gold coins from Morocco, recipes from Bengal, porcelain dolls from China, miniatures of the Eiffel Tower. He would show her pictures of places she had never been to and things she had never imagined. Then Yuugi's mother would tell her to go play and she and Yuugi's father would start yet another argument.
But for the most part, neither of them were ever around. Yuugi's father was usually absent, a thin mousy sort of man who was easy to walk all over, her mother a hard woman who a difficult life had made bitter. She snapped and shouted, demanded a clean room and good grades and firm, on the ground thinking - when she was around.
But mainly, Yuugi was raised by her grandmother and grandfather. Her grandfather had made a living, first as a professional gambler, then as an archaeologist. His idea of retirement was opening up a games & hobby shop. He was the only person Yuugi knew who had stories even cooler than her father's, and the injuries to prove them. Yuugi's grandmother was a stiff, upright sort of person, tall and thin with a neat chiffon of hair despite her humble clothing, even the creases in her face speaking of a sort of understated grace and dignity.
"Your grandfather was always unconventional," she told Yuugi once. "He asked me for a first date by making me solve a puzzle gift with the message written on its pieces. He needed a strong woman just to keep up with all of his interesting, off the ground ideas."
"Without her, I'd fly away," Grandpa had joked.
But Grandma was pretty good with unconventionality, despite all of her claims and outward appearances. Yuugi's parents didn't know what to do with their daughter, it was patently obvious. They always looked puzzled when they talked to her, as if they were not sure how she had come from them. But Grandma and Grandpa, they understood Yuugi - understood her in a way her parents didn't. They felt more like her parents to her.
They had even named her. In every way, Mutou Yuugi was Mutou Sugoroku and Mutou Hanetsuki's child. Yuugi's grandparents had changed their names many times, but their current incarnations were as games themselves - Hanetsuki and Sugoroku were both Japanese games. The naming of their grandchild had been blunter, a relic of their last incarnation as game shop owners. "Yuugi" was a unisex name meaning simply "game."
Yuugi had no doubt, however, that if her grandparents had gone off to do something else, she would go with them. She would change her own name and follow them anywhere they went. They were the ones who cooked her dinner, tucked her in at night, counseled her and comforted her. They were the ones she could talk about games, play, and imagination with, the people who dealt with her odd questions and even odder curiosities.
She looked at her meek little father sometimes and thought perhaps strangeness had skipped a generation. This was not a very nice thing to say about one's father, but Yuugi never said it - she simply thought it.
"Now pay attention, Yuugi." Yuugi looked back down at the chess game in concentration. She was six years old with black pigtails. There she was, on her grandfather's lap, his beard tickling the top of her head.
The chess pieces set on the counter before her were gigantic glass affairs, carefully blown by hand, delicately made. They needed color, Yuugi decided. "Grandpa," she piped up, "can I paint these?"
"I don't see why not," said Grandpa without pause. "Paint them any color you'd like. But Yuugi, the game. This is very important. I've made my move… What's your next move? Calculate. Think carefully."
"I know," said Yuugi absently, still staring down at the chess board, running through different movements and strategies and scenarios in her head. If she moved like this… and he moved like that… she could move like this… and she'd have him.
It was all about whether or not he fell for her trap.
She made her move, sliding the chess piece across the board. "Hmm. Very interesting," said her grandfather thoughtfully. And he moved the way she'd thought he would.
"Checkmate," said Yuugi easily, skipping her player across the board. "Grandpa." She looked up at him quite seriously. "You really must stop letting me win." The statement was so matter of fact that Sugoroku chuckled as Yuugi got down from his lap with the same kind of quiet concentration she did everything.
Grandma opened the game shop door. "We need to clean the kitchen up from dinner," she told Grandpa meaningfully, "and Yuugi needs to go to bed."
"Quite right. Up we go!" Grandpa hoisted Yuugi up into the air, and she squealed and laughed as he made airplane noises, weaving her through the air as they stomped up the stairs and into Yuugi's bedroom. The walls were blue, but painted all across the walls and all across the ceiling borders were fantastical creatures with wings, dancing with each other in a great cross-bedroom collage. Yuugi, a consummate daydreamer, had come up with the artistic ideas herself and given firm orders to the bemused painter her grandparents had hired to decorate her room. She would have drawn her own art on the walls, but Grandpa said he wanted all her masterpieces for himself.
He set her down in her big, fluffy bed and tucked her in; Grandma came in, her apron lifted, to say goodnight. "Big day at school tomorrow," said Grandpa, kneeling by Yuugi's bedside almost as if in a kind of prayer.
"Yeah," said Yuugi unenthusiastically, fading, looking downward. "You always say that."
"You never look happy for school," Grandma sighed. "What's wrong?"
"The other kids at school don't like me," said Yuugi in a small voice, looking down at the threads on the blanket before her. "They think I'm weird and they say I look so pale I must really be a corpse. They tell me I'm always talking to people who aren't really there." Beyond Grandma and Grandpa, Yuugi's troupe of imaginary friends, mostly friendly monsters and happy-faced dinosaurs, watched her sadly.
"Do all the kids say that?" asked Grandpa, his brow wrinkling in concern.
"No," Yuugi admitted. "Not everybody."
"So why don't you go talk to the people who don't say that?" Grandma asked.
Yuugi looked down shyly, twisting her hands in the covers uncomfortably. "I don't wanna," she muttered. "Makes me nervous."
Grandpa kissed her head. "... Now," said Grandma at last, "enough of this. A bedtime book?" she added expectantly. "Yes?"
Yuugi brightened. "The one I had the bookmaker make for me! The one about the princess who slays the dragon and runs out of the castle herself away from the mean old prince!" she cried.
Grandpa and Grandma shared a wry smile. "Of course," said Grandma, going to get the book. It had been the same book every night for a solid month. They could probably read it aloud with their eyes closed by now.
"What's wrong?" Yuugi asked, giving a pouty little indignant frown. She didn't like strange looks between adults that she couldn't understand.
"Oh, nothing," said Grandpa in amusement. "I was just feeling sympathetic, tender emotions toward the man who falls in love with you." He chuckled when Yuugi looked horrified.
The elementary school playground the next day was lit by clear sunlight. The light shone over the green grass surrounding the wood chips and the jungle gym. Colorful children's playground equipment filled the main space, but a group of girls could be seen sitting cross legged underneath the jungle gym, sharing the makeup that one girl's Mommy had let her bring to school. They giggled and laughed as Yuugi watched them, covered in messy face paint like ancient warriors.
Yuugi never had anything to offer the other girls. She was never allowed in her Mom's bedroom, and anyway, her family didn't have all that much money in the first place. Even at that age, she was aware that there was some vital difference between her and the rich girls. Perhaps because of this, she got picked on a lot.
She sighed and sat down in the grassy corner of the playground, turning back to her friends. The fluffy square one-eyed orange monster - or, well, she didn't want to hurt their feelings, so instead she called them "special persons" - asked for an invisible cup of tea, which were much better than visible cups of tea, and not just because they were easier to make.
"Darjeeling," she commented knowledgeably, handing him his cup. "Very fancy." She giggled.
"Why don't you go talk to that girl you keep looking at?" said the purple brontosaurus, crunching away at the rainbow dumplings that went with the invisible tea.
Yuugi frowned and looked over again at the girl - not the one who had brought makeup, but the one next to her, the pretty girl with the long legs and the short chocolate brown hair. The loveliest and brightest one, the one Yuugi always looked at. "She's too pretty to wanna talk to me," Yuugi muttered, frowning. She turned back to the tea party. "And in any case, I've got my own circle of friends sitting around me. I don't need no stupid girl."
Matter of fact and all purpose, she sipped at her invisible tea.
The blue octopus reached out a tendril and cradled her face affectionately in comfort. Yuugi managed a smile. She looked back at the brown-haired girl - saw the brown-haired girl catch her eye. Looked down again. Ripped at little pieces of grass beside her feet.
"Anyways," she said. "I wanna make a new drawing, so I need you all to pose for me, okay? I want -"
"Hey. Why are you always looking at me?" Yuugi looked up in alarm. The girl with the short brown hair was gone from her group of face-painted comrades and was instead standing in front of Yuugi, hands on her hips. "And who are you talking to?" she demanded.
Yuugi stared at the girl and pointed slowly in a different direction. "... My friends," she said.
The girl looked at the space where nothing was, and then looked at Yuugi, so tiny with her big, alarmed violet eyes. At last, she laughed. "There's nothing there," she teased. Yuugi opened her mouth heatedly, flushing… and then looked down. "Now come on. Why are you always looking at me?"
"... Cause you're so pretty," Yuugi muttered at last, still ripping at grass beside her feet. "And everyone makes fun o' me and calls me ugly."
"What?!" the girl yelled, and Yuugi looked up in alarm again. "But there's no bullying allowed on the playground! Come with me!"
She grabbed Yuugi's arm and began yanking her in the direction of the other girls.
"No! Please! Wait -!" Yuugi began in alarm, but she was already standing, blushing furiously, in front of the brown-haired girl's friends.
"This girl needs a makeover," said the brown-haired girl fiercely. "And we're gonna give her one!" She glared around at the other girls as if to say 'or else.'
Eyebrows rose and eyes blinked in surprise all around the group. "... Mutou Yuugi?" said one girl finally.
Yuugi crossed her hands before herself and bowed nervously. "... H-hi," she whispered, looking downward.
The girls looked at each other for a moment and made a silent decision. Anzu would only have let another girl over to meet her group of friends, and only a girl would have been allowed to be a shy, feminine shrinking violet. But as it was…
"Sure," said the girl who'd brought the makeup at last. "She can be with us."
Yuugi looked up in delight and disbelief. These girls were popular. If she were friends with them… She could meet all kinds of people!
The brown-haired girl giggled at her expression and sat down, patting the spot next to herself on the wood chips. "Nice to meet you," she said. "My name's Mazaki Anzu."
Author's Notes: The first few chapters of this story will cover fem Yuugi's childhood pre-canon.
I plan on having this story cover both anime and manga. I have very specific ideas on how I want to handle the Puzzle and the Pharaoh (who will remain male).
The reason why this Yuugi didn't meet Anzu in the same way male Yuugi did in manga canon, is because male Yuugi tried to approach Anzu as his crush. Female Yuugi feels more awe and envy toward a female Anzu, so while she'd still have noticed her, I had to have them meet some other way.