In a way, I suppose it's only fair to admit that I'm posting this story as a bit of a celebration. Not just of the change of season where I live (though I would prefer less rain, thank you very much), but because as soon as I post this story, I head off to my college graduation ceremony, to get my Bachelor's in Creative Writing. Finally!
*cough*… Ahem. Anyway. I'm mostly posting this because it's just a fun, light-hearted story as the winter holidays roll in. You can expect a few other stories throughout the rest of December. I'm actually quite relieved I got this thing up at all: for a while I wasn't sure if I was going to keep going with my fanfiction. Ah, writer's discouragement … thou art my greatest foe.
The winter of 1996 in Japan saw about 123cm (~48in) of snow. The average high was literally freezing. And while some of you may wonder if I'm European from how I always use the metric system in these stories, I'm actually from the States. I use the metric system because Japan uses the metric system, and most of my stories are based on the Japanese anime. The metric system is actually virtual gibberish to me (curse America for insisting on sticking with inches and feet).
For the record, Yami never called Yuugi "Aibou" until after Duelist Kingdom. He usually referred to him as "mou hitori no ore" or sometimes "ore no mou hitotsu no kokoro" ("my other heart"). I only remember him calling him Yuugi once (and that was in the anime - Episode 50, for curious readers). My choice of nickname in this story is probably a little different than most, sort of a "happy medium" while still trying to keep Yami in character given the point just before the anime when this would take place (early December, when I suspect the anime began around late December or early January); hope it worked. In fact, as some of those who frequent the Japanese anime know, "Yami," in the original anime, is simply a fan name. He was never called Yami, except in fanfiction and the dub (and in the original Japanese intro, where the announcer voice referred to he and Yuugi as "yami to hikari," or "dark and light"). Yuugi called him "mou hitori no boku" from the beginning until the end.
Also for the record, early on the series, there was very little distinction (for the characters in the show) between Yuugi and Yami. Quite honestly, Yami introduced himself as Yuugi, and for a while believed he simply was another part of him. Yuugi seemed to believe the same. It wasn't until Duelist Kingdom that everyone (including Yuugi) really noticed that they were two separate entities, and it wasn't until the incident with the fire, where Yuugi nearly got himself killed trying to save Yami, that it hit everyone smack in the face that Yuugi wasn't just trying to save a hunk of gold, and that the weird behavior he exhibits during duels was actually another person. However, despite this deep connection, Yami and Yuugi were unable to straight-out communicate until the end of Duelist Kingdom (meaning I rather doubt Yuugi could see Yami's spirit, if he ever came out in that transparent form). They could feel each other's emotions, and it appears that Yami was aware of what happened when he wasn't in the body. It also appears Yuugi could call Yami out if he wanted, though most of the time it seems that Yami came out on his own.
Well, that's about it. A long author's note for a relatively short story (yes, for me, this is short). Don't expect more than a little, baby plot: this is basically just a very long, somewhat organized drabble, with a bit of humor and vague fluff. I mean, there wasn't all that much that could happen here, so I made it a "slice of life." Think of it as something cheerful for the holiday season.
… and something lighthearted as I prepare to post some heavier stuff in the near future.
Hope you all enjoy! Please leave a review! (Also, I deeply apologize to the ones who left all the reviews I have yet to reply to. My November and half of December has been... packed. Ridiculously. With writing and tests. Will reply ASAP! Thanks for all the reviews!)
Yuki Yuki
Quite honestly, Yami's first thought was that Other's mother had put too much detergent in the washing machine and the strange metal contraption had exploded all over the city.
He probably should have laughed at such an assumption, but then again, that woman did use a lot of detergent.
The darkness of night had left but Other had yet to wake when Yami got the sense that something was different. It was a vague sense, as Other rarely sent feelings when he slept like he did when he was awake. But odd physical sensations apparently made it through just fine. Because sometime after the sun had risen but before Other had decided to open his eyes, Yami pushed his essence out of the Puzzle and noticed all in an instant that it was cold.
Well, colder.
It had been warm when Other solved the Puzzle earlier that year. It had been warm for a long time, and Yami had grown used to the heat in the summer, and even the humidity that made it feel as if he was breathing water, thick and choking each time he took control of the body. Now it was dry again. Dry, and colder by the day.
But there had been no white powder sitting on the windowsill and on the edges of the skylight.
None before today.
Yami peered out the window as much as he could with Other still in bed, breathing in and out, quiet, peaceful, as if he had no perception of anything different at all. No confusion. No pain. No fear.
It had always been hard to determine whether he loved or hated when Other slept.
He shook his head and felt its own weightlessness, then leaned forward again.
The glass of the window had grown whiter around the edges, as if the glass itself had soaked up the cold. He could not touch it, but through Other he could breathe the air, and even in the room it was chilled. Chilled to the throat, chilled to the lungs. Yami wondered how Other could sleep with the stinging deep in his chest.
He wondered if he should try to wake Other, just in case this white powder was dangerous.
Or at least so he could find out if it really was just the detergent.
But Yami did not wake Other, even if it seemed like a good idea. Instead he let ideas of how he might wake him flow through his head, ideas of how he might slip around the edges of the bed and make loud noises he knew Other could not quite hear, in the hope that he might speed up the process of bringing the boy out from his dreams. The dreams Yami could always feel.
Other did not dream now. He only slept.
Slept in his own dark.
Sometimes Yami envied that Other could disappear into the dark every night, and sometimes he wondered if the dark was anything like the nothing he had known for all the time before time began.
A yawn broke the deafening silence. Yami jolted forward, and even though his legs were not really there he tripped over each of his feet in turn and nearly stumbled into the wall.
He didn't know if he would go through the wall. He didn't particularly want to find out. And he was more than a little relieved when he caught his balance just in time to steady his feet and turn to see the boy on the bed push back the covers with one hand and rub his eyes with the other.
Other yawned again. Yami blinked out of old reflex from being in the body so much.
Other looked to the skylight on the ceiling, and drooping violet eyes stretched.
The mattress squeaked as he sat up, covers shifting away from his legs when he kicked them under him and stared above his head. Sitting next to him on the bed, the Puzzle rocked with each squeak of the mattress, and Yami could almost feel it tilting back and forth.
Other's eyes only widened more, Puzzle and covers ignored, his hair and pajamas still messy and wrinkled. He swung his legs off the bed and scampered to the center of the floor. His neck stretched up and his head tilted back at the opaque white skylight, and his eyes glowed like the Puzzle in the light of the moon or the shine of the sun. His lips turned up and tugged from ear to ear, and even the chill in Yami's core warmed the smallest bit at the sight.
Even from his spot a few steps away, watching the boy with uncertainty and confusion, it was particularly difficult for Yami not to smile, too.
There had been few other times when Yami had wanted more to speak to Other, to ask him what was going on, to ask him why there was strange white powder sitting on the glass of the skylight, why it was colder, why it was that Other seemed so impossibly happy at something Yami couldn't even define.
But Yami could not speak. He could only watch.
And he did.
Other scrambled to his closet, smile still beaming, so wide and eager it made Yami just as confused as he was oddly warmed by Other's joy. He pulled out a long-sleeved shirt—Yami didn't think he had ever seen Other wear one—and jeans, and something that looked like an oversized jacket with a zipper in front. Blue fabric, puffy as if it had been stuffed, thick socks, and what Yami recognized as a scarf and gloves.
He couldn't remember if he had seen them before. He didn't know if anyone had ever spoken their names in front of him.
He never understood how he knew some things and not others, why some things were clear even when everything else was left in the dark.
Darkness. Dark …
Other scurried past him, pajamas replaced in only a minute's time by his thicker, new clothes, the coat unzipped and the scarf and gloves clutched in his hands, and Yami jolted out of the way, only just avoiding Other running right through him yet again, as he hadn't done in quite a while, though whether that was Other's sharpening senses or Yami's growing ability to leap away just in time, he was not sure. Both their eyes stayed wide, Other's in excitement, Yami's in bafflement when Other scampered back to the still-unmade bed.
But Yami merged his transparent image with Other once again as Other slipped the thick rope that held the Puzzle around his neck. The gold pressed against the thick blue coat—yes, that was what it was called, a coat—heavy, but familiar, and Yami would have sighed if he had had breath with which to sigh.
Other still smiled, and now Yami could feel it, closer than before, easier, better.
He stayed with Other, watching, following, being, as Other ran out his bedroom door and down the stairs.
His socked feet nearly slid on the smooth tile floor of the shop. The whole house felt colder than usual, even though the glass door was still shut. Yami could almost feel the gold of the Puzzle chill, though Other did not notice, and barely even noticed when the Puzzle bounced against his stomach again with each step he took.
He walked to the door and stared outside with wide and eager eyes, and if Yami had had eyes of his own, he would have stared as well.
White.
White, just like the white on the windowsill and the skylight upstairs.
White on the street, white on the buildings, white falling in tiny flakes from the sky. Thick white powder that seemed to hold the same chill as the air, almost burning, stinging, even through the thickness of Other's clothes.
And all at once, memories that were not his own—memories of things that weren't quite there, things that had once been—flooded into him. And he knew.
Snow.
The white powder covering everything in sight was thick, wet snow.
Snowmen, snow angels, snowball fights, laughing, playing, cold, thick chocolate drinks afterward sitting by the fire. Happiness.
Real.
Real like the smile that stretched on Other's face, ear to ear, in what was far more beautiful than even Yami would have imagined.
Other turned his head over his shoulder, his smile and eyes just the same.
"Mama, I'm going outside!"
The floor nearly shook from the sound of slippered footsteps scampering toward the shop. Other's mother's head poked in, her dark red hair perfectly in place as if she had used an entire can of hairspray—which Yami had never confirmed, but had a good feeling she did.
She looked the boy up and down, and though Yami had long learned no one could see him, he still flinched back in Other's mind as if she was looking at him. She lowered her brow and raised a hand.
"You be careful out there, Yuugi! And put a thicker coat on, it's freezing! Haven't you seen the snow?"
"That's why I'm going out, Mama!"
Other laughed out loud, for once ignoring the silent threat of being whacked over the head with a soup ladle—something Yami had never liked, but had a feeling Other would prefer he left unchanged. He kept on laughing as he pulled the zipper of his blue coat to his chin. Yami could almost feel the softness of the scarf, of the gloves he pulled onto his hands, the thickness of the black boots sitting by the door he tugged onto his feet.
Part of Yami wanted to say something, to do something, to make sure the biting air outside was safe before he allowed Other to go.
But he did nothing, and Other pushed open the glass door of the game shop and let the air colder than the air that rushed out of the freezer when he opened it in the middle of the night, swirl into his face.
Other grinned ear to ear, and Yami had never been so amazed that the boy did not instantly begin to shiver.
Even with the feelings dulled from his place within Other's mind, Yami could feel the cold. He could feel the air bite his cheeks, the gentle wind blow back the spikes of his hair, each of the tiny flakes of white fall from the sky and sting bare skin like needles, then disappear an instant later without Other flinching or even noticing at all.
Every instinct told Yami to hold him back, to keep him inside, to make sure it was safe. But he couldn't. Other couldn't hear him. Other could never hear him.
And as if to laugh at his own helplessness, the Puzzle simply would not allow Yami to take control.
Other took his first step outside, and his boots crunched into the white powder as if it had turned into paper or leaves instead of just those white flakes falling from the sky. Boot pressed down one by one and imprinted their grooves in the snow as he stepped forward and crunched again, and Other didn't do so much as flinch at the sound while Yami felt about ready to force himself into the body and challenge the snow to a shadow game for the sake of making sure it truly meant no harm.
Now he wasn't quite sure if it was the Puzzle or just his own mind that stopped him.
Other stepped again, and again, until he stood some length away from the house, and with each step the snow crunched, and Yami could almost feel it shift under the weight. He could almost feel the cold biting through the boots and the thick socks, the same cold that bit at his skin.
And never once did Other stop smiling.
Which made it more and more difficult for Yami to feel quite as apprehensive as he might have otherwise.
"Wow …"
"It's like this every year, Yuugi."
Other turned his head over his shoulder to face his mother standing just inside the game shop, one hand holding open the glass door while the other clutched close to her middle as if she hoped it might keep her warm.
Yami couldn't tell if her face was disapproving or quietly pleased, partially because of what he supposed was her own intent to hide it and partially because the shadows of her hooded purple jacket shaded her face just enough to keep it unsure.
Other grinned from ear to ear and threw his arms out to his sides.
"But it's so cool!"
Other spun in circles, boots crunching in the snow, odd and marvelous warmth spreading through him so Yami could almost forget the cold and feel warm nonetheless. His mother put a hand to her head.
"Just be careful!" she shouted without the usual echo in the air, and her voice stretched out a bit in something that might have sounded like a whine if it hadn't been she who said it. "And make sure you're back to help Jii-chan in the shop, he might still have some customers."
"Right!"
Other waved, his grin still there, still big, and though Yami hadn't entirely let go of his own caution, he always liked it when Other smiled. If nothing else, if Other was happy, there was a much smaller chance that something had gone quite so wrong.
His mother sighed, but said nothing else. The bell jingled as the shop door closed, and Other went back to staring at the snow that stretched out down the street, over anything and everything, like it had taken over all of the city and no one had bothered to fight back.
If he listened somewhere in the distance, Yami even thought he could hear laughter from the other houses on other streets. Laughter, joy, peace.
Safety.
Everything was … safe.
"Yuugi!"
Other jolted, and Yami tensed, readying himself to take over, to force through the Puzzle if need be and get out to defend against the enemy, whoever that enemy may have been.
And Yami's mind barely had time to recognize how familiar that voice was before Other turned, and came eye to eye with a much taller boy with a mess of blonde hair and thick blue and green clothes, grinning from ear to ear and waving a hand high in the air just down the street.
If he had had shoulders, Yami would have dropped them. Other beamed.
"Jounouchi-kun!"
Jounouchi-kun ran through the snow under his feet—or, rather, he stumbled through the snow that had been under his feet for the first few seconds, before his boots sunk down into the white powder and he quite nearly tripped twice in five seconds.
But he still smiled, and he still waved, only lowering his hand when he stood a few steps away from Other, and he looked down at the boy with that grin that had once made Yami the slightest bit nervous, as if from some memory he couldn't really remember, of something that had happened a long time ago before the beginning.
So many times he had wanted to ask Other if Jounouchi-kun had really always been a friend as he was now.
So many times he had reminded himself that there was no way for him to speak.
Jounouchi-kun panted and smiled and laughed in the midst.
"Hey, I figured you'd be out here, too … awesome, huh!"
Other grinned from ear to ear, and the warmth from that smile calmed Yami just enough. He nodded so hard the mess of hair on his head shook. "Yeah!"
Jounouchi-kun leaned back, popping his spine though the sound was muffled through the thickness of his coat. He stepped from side to side on the snow and put his hands on his hips.
"You ever build a snowman before?"
Other shook his head so Yami could feel the weight of his hair.
"Just with Jii-chan when I was little …"
Jounouchi-kun patted him hard on the shoulder with a black-gloved hand. Yami flinched, tensing, feeling the Puzzle pulse, then calmed when Jounouchi-kun and Other both continued to grin.
"Well, come on, then!" Jounouchi-kun nearly shouted. No echo outside in the white powder, but his voice still rang in the air. He nodded toward the door. "You start rolling up some big balls of snow, I'm gonna run inside."
Other's smile vanished, and he blinked.
"Uh … okay …"
But despite his confusion, Jounouchi-kun just stumbled through the thick mess of snow on the ground toward the door to the game shop, which, for some reason Yami couldn't figure out, seemed more blocked with the strange white powder than it had been just a few minutes before—or perhaps Yami had just lost track of time again, and it had been longer, and Jounouchi-kun hadn't managed the seemingly-impossible timing of showing up right after Other came out.
Some part of him still wanted to take over and determine if this stuff was at all dangerous, but another part of him—some part that almost certainly had something to do with Other—decided it wasn't worth going through the trouble of getting out of the Puzzle.
Besides, if it was dangerous, he could just punish the snow all the worse when this was done.
It had been a while since he had gotten to punish a decent opponent.
Other knelt to the ground, his clothes so thick that even bending over was a task worth commending, and patted a ball of the cold white powder in between his gloves. The stray specks of whiteness on his fingertips disappeared to transparency, then was gone altogether in the knitted blue, and Yami reminded himself to do some investigation later into what those gloves were made of, and why it was that the snow was so easily destroyed.
Though, to be fair, if it was easily destroyed, there was probably much less chance that it could do Other any real harm.
Other patted more and more snow into the ball between his hands until it nearly fell apart. He grinned, nodded, and set it down on the ground, letting it sink the slightest bit into the snow, and walked with crunching steps to the closest spot with fresh powder. The stuff had not ceased to fall from the sky. Slow, peaceful, yet Yami still could not for all his existence understand it.
He did not like it that he couldn't understand it.
He also didn't much like the fact that, when he peered out from his projected spirit, he noticed that Other's cheeks had gone bright red, along with much of his face, and the lobes of his ears that poked out from beneath his hair had gone the same color as the tomatoes he put on his sandwich last week.
Though it was difficult to tell, he could almost feel the numbness biting at ears, at cheeks, at face, and he wondered if he had always been able to feel physical sensations quite as clearly as now.
Memory taunted him, dangling in front of his eyes like a piece of meat in front of a starving dog, and he knew that no matter how he jumped he would not get it. But that did not stop him from jumping.
The little bell in the shop jingled, door pushing through the growing, crunching pile of snow in front of the door, and Jounouchi-kun trudged outside again with a grunt and his gloved hands reaching up to rub his arms.
He smiled, and Other smiled back.
"So what'd you want to do?"
Jounouchi-kun's smile fell. He blinked. "Eh?"
"What'd you go inside for?" Other repeated with a small laugh pressing out. His smile had slipped a bit. Jounouchi-kun rubbed the back of his head, some of the new snow on his gloves rubbing off into his mess of blonde hair.
He grinned again, far too big for his face.
"Oh, uh … bathroom break!"
Other blinked, once, then again, and Jounouchi-kun's unnatural grin stayed. Yami might have lowered his eyebrows, and he tried, even though he had long learned that there was no way to do so when he wasn't in control of the body. Other just blinked again, then smiled.
"… Right! Okay!"
Jounouchi-kun chuckled, one thumb up, and went back to the snow surrounding them and the balls of white powder Other had already rolled up.
Other said nothing more about it, even though Yami wasn't sure he liked the strangeness in Jounouchi-kun's tone. Other patted the snow, his gloves already wet inside as well as outside from the prolonged contact with the powder. And Yami said nothing, half because he knew he couldn't, and half because, even if he could, it no longer seemed like such a good idea.
Jounouchi-kun rolled a third ball of snow, this one bigger than the other two, so much that it looked like one of those "exercise balls" that had once been shipped by mistake to the game shop, and Jii-chan had kept for a week before sending them back until he was absolutely sure he couldn't sell them.
Other followed Jounouchi-kun, and they set the medium ball of snow on top of the large ball, and the smaller on top of that. Yami listened to Other ask about getting a "carrot for a nose," and something about eyes and a hat, but there was no spare hat and Yami was fairly certain they were out of the crunchy orange vegetables ever since that carrot-filled dinner Other's mother had made several days before.
So Jounouchi-kun just stuck two twigs on either side of the middle ball, so the whole structure looked, in Jounouchi-kun's and Other's eyes, something like a person.
Yami thought it looked more like a deformed toy, but he didn't think it worth taking control just to point that out.
And he was starting to suspect that the Puzzle was so cold it wouldn't have worked if he tried.
He snapped into attention when something cold and wet hit Other smack in the center of his back and shattered, so hard Other nearly went stumbling into the "snowman" and right onto his face. He caught his balance, and the sound of Jounouchi-kun's laughter was minuscule compared to the stunned breathing from Other's lips.
"Hey!" he sputtered, feet still steadying. "Who threw—"
He spun around, and before Yami even had the chance to tense as he had before, the sight of two people walking closer and closer, one tall and one short, each with brown hair but of very different styles and both wearing thick clothes like Other, shook the tension from Yami's head, just as the shock filled Other's and the beginnings of a smile turned up on his face.
"Anzu! Honda-kun!"
Honda-kun waved his still snow-covered hand even higher in the air than Jounouchi-kun had not half an hour before.
"Hey, there, Yuugi, how's it going?"
Anzu rolled her eyes so obviously Yami could see it despite the distance. "That's some way to say hello, Honda, hit him with a snowball!"
Honda-kun shrugged, lips twisted into a particularly amused smirk.
"Well, at least it's interesting—Ow!"
He jerked back as Anzu's hand whacked his arm, and even though the thick fabric of his dark green coat, Yami still imagined it hurt.
Anzu twisted her own lips into a smirk that reminded Yami far too much of his own.
"What?" she asked with her voice drawled out."I'm just saying hello."
Honda-kun rubbed his arm and grimaced. "Alright, alright …"
Other just continued to stare, with wide eyes and a smile he couldn't keep off his face. Yami had never been sure why he felt warmer whenever Other smiled like that, stretched from ear to ear, and more genuine than most.
But he liked it.
Other shook his head, back and forth, eyes still wide and smile still stretched.
"How'd you guys know we were … Jounouchi-kun?"
Yami blinked—or imagined he would have blinked if he could—and felt Other's head perk up as realization struck. But he hardly got a chance to let it sink in before a boisterous laugh sounded from behind Other, familiar, as warm as the grin.
"Hey, it's not a real snow day without the whole gang!"
Other looked to Jounouchi-kun, then to Honda-kun and Anzu, still walking closer, their hair tucked into their hats and Honda-kun rubbing his gloved hands together as his breath blew clouds around his face. Yami could feel the smile stretch across Other's face, little by little, bit by bit, until it stretched from ear to ear like the most wonderful thing in the world.
To Yami, it was.
"… yeah," he murmured, just loud enough for Jounouchi-kun to hear. Warmth in Other's chest blew back the chilling cold biting his skin. "I guess it's not."
Yami had grown far too used to feelings of rage, smug satisfaction, vengeance, that he had likely once thought they were the only feelings he could ever enjoy.
But contentment—impossible to tell from whom it came—burst past them all in a ball of light, settling into Yami's head and promising to stay for as long as it could.
More of the little white flakes had fallen from the sky an hour later, landing on Other's gloves and coat and hair, the snowman covered by so many new flakes it no longer even looked like a deformed toy, particularly when one of Jounouchi-kun's snowballs knocked off its head. But no one stopped. The snowballs flew. Forts were built up, knocked down, built up again. The clothes that had once been dry and warm cooled so they were as wet and cold as the snow itself, but Other never cared, and never hesitated in the laughter that rang from his lips.
Sometimes a quiet laughter, like a tickling in Yami's middle. Something loud and echoing, the kind that burst out like the alarm clock in the early morning.
But Yami heard all of it. He felt it, the tingling in his head, even though his head was not really there. The tingling and prickling somehow felt as pleasant as it did strange. The warmth of each laugh, of each smile, as if it was his own, as if the differences between he and Other had begun to fade, and they were one and the same.
And Yami wasOther, even if he knew it was only another lie to cover up the uncertain, hesitant truth that could not remain.
Even if Other only just seemed to know he was there.
Time was not something that Yami had ever cared to consider. It wasn't something he kept track of, not something he watched or even tried to watch. And he didn't want to watch it now.
Time was pointless. Time was all that had once kept him trapped.
Now he was here. Now he was free.
Now he was with Other, and with Other, time had no place and no purpose, and he would not let time take all the joy away.
But time was still there, and Honda-kun's voice reminded him after such an impossibly long stretch of laughter and joy and perfection, breaking into that glow like a hammer shattering glass.
"Hey, anybody know how long we've been out here?"
Other looked up from the snowball patted between his gloves. He dropped it, the snow crunching on the ground, and raised his eyebrows at Honda-kun looking around as if he expected to find a clock.
Anzu nodded and rubbed both her arms.
"Yeah, maybe we should go inside and warm up …"
Jounouchi-kun scoffed.
"Oh, don't spoil it, Anzu, we can warm up later!" he shouted to the skies, so loud that Yami wondered whether any of the people living nearby even bothered to pay enough attention to hear him. "I say Round Two!"
Anzu quirked an eyebrow. "That would be Round Eight, Jounouchi."
"… right. Anyway! Charge!"
Jounouchi-kun knelt and scooped up what looked more like a handful of laundry detergent than a snowball, chucking it at Anzu and sending the girl leaping off to the side and rolling along the snow only to jump back to her feet in what Yami could only guess was a dance move she had likely practiced time and time again.
The laughter went on. Honda-kun and Jounouchi-kun and Anzu, laughing and chattering words Yami could not make out, picking up chunks of snow from the ground and tossing them ahead, not caring whether or not they hit any target in mind.
But Other stopped. Stopped just a few steps away, standing perfectly still, staring out with eyes that showed something Yami wished he could have read, wished he could have even seen.
He did not even have time to wonder when, in a familiar burst of tugging at his soul, but with the unfamiliarity of one who had never tried to do so before, Yami was yanked out into the cold and wet and stood in thick clothes with biting wind and laughter ringing into ears that were not his own.
Other's ears. His ears.
Ears he could barely feel for the cold that nearly tore the lobes from his head.
His feet, heavy in boots, heavy in socks, heavy pressed against the snow on the ground. Cold and thick, not as cold as his ears but still cold. All the thickness of the clothes around his body, the tug of the Puzzle and its heaviness against his stomach, the weight of the hair on his head. All surrounding him in a mess of sensations he knew, and knew so well.
But sensations he didn't think he had ever felt without coming out on his own.
And the presence somewhere inside him, settling in as the faint glow of the Puzzle faded away.
Yami's shoulders tensed, then dropped, and Anzu seemed to laugh with her hand and her voice as she waved high in the air and dodged another snowball that might have come from Jounouchi-kun or Honda-kun or might have just fallen from the sky.
"Yuugi! Come on, they're already winning! And there's no way I'm going to let those idiots beat us!"
Anzu's words rang like a bell in his ears, like Other's voice, like Other's life, like the light that coursed through him more every moment. The light that calmed his tension like the laughter, the light that spread bit by bit into the recesses of his soul.
Once dark. But shimmering with the beginnings of a glow as bright as the snow.
A smile that might have been his and might have been Other's curled onto his face.
Thank you … mou hitori no ore.
There was no reply. But Yami felt the distant contentedness of Other deep in his soul as a snowball smacked him in the shoulder, and he knelt with a laugh that echoed through his being to gather the cold wetness through the fingers of his soaked gloves.
And the remnants of the laughter did not cease until long after the sun had set.
Laughter in his ears, and laughter in his head, with words he could not really hear but could not help but imagine whispered nonetheless.
Of course, mou hitori no boku. Of course.