Notes: Done for ygodrabble. Set pre-canon by several years.
Life is like a game to him.
For Yuugi, most unlike the majority of people, that statement would mean that life was quite serious. At any point in his life he'd seen how much of an impact games can have on people. Sometimes in a negative way. Not always in a negative way, but…
But… even back then, before they had any effect on his life or the lives of his friends, games had been meaningful to him.
In his earliest memories, and even before them, he was with his grandpa in the Kame Game store. He played games, he watched games, and he saw them be sold over the counter to the different sorts of people who came in. Games were literally the thing that held his family together – without that business they wouldn't have been able to put bread on the table.
It was only natural that he took an interest in them.
The problem was that there was only so far you could go with playing games on your own. As much as he could his grandpa would take the time to play board games with Yuugi, but he had a business to run, so more often than not the child would have to make do with games you could play alone.
He'd longed for a friend who could play games with him, but by the time he reached school Yuugi realised that other children didn't think of games in the same way that he did.
They called him a nerd, they'd laugh at him for bringing puzzles into class, and they… gave off the impression that they were too old for games. Yuugi not seeing that he was too old for them as well meant he was some sort of social recluse in their eyes.
Was it possible to be too old for games?
In an instant he recalled the people who came to the store, some of them much older than he was. Were they in the wrong because they played games as well?
His grandpa played games though! He knew there was nothing wrong with his grandpa!
And yet… the other kids wouldn't see it the way he did.
Turning over a packet of the new cards his grandpa had ordered to try and sell at the store, Yuugi saw the notice that he'd comed to dread over the years: "For two or more players".
The one thing that Yuugi wished for was a friend who understood games.