Hello my friends! This was an idea that came to my mind and I just had to get it started! This chapter is a little short, but the others should be a lot longer.

This is a sort of AU where Ryou is the only one with an item. There aren't really any fics with Yuugi's POV or how he feels about Ryou and the item. I don't want to give the whole plot away, so I'll stop there. Enjoy!

Friend Turned Stranger

Yuugi walked up to his friend's humble apartment that day, a cheery smile on his face. He had a gift. A beautiful little green box holding a cute little gift shop trinket. It was a 'Ghost Compass', or at least, that's what the shop owner had told him. "Find any ghost, anytime anywhere!" Yuugi laughed on the inside when the shopkeeper said this. It reminded him a lot of Ryou who at this point should have answered the door.

"Ryou?" The short boy called out, placing his small hand on the doorknob and frowning when it opened. "Ryou? Are you home?" Yuugi pouted a bit, trying to figure out if this was a weird game that Ryou made up. That happened quite often. Just last week Ryou told him to meet him in the park after calling him around midnight. Yuugi thought something horrible had happened, but when he got there, his heart practically pounding out of his chest, Yuugi found Ryou laying out in the night on a blanket, looking up at the stars with a telescope next to him. "Glad you made it," He had said without even having to look away from the shining sky, "I was afraid you wouldn't come."

This, however, did not seem like one of those times.

Yuugi entered the tiny home, the entrance eerily dark. He felt along the cool wall for the light switch, gasping when he saw the sight of Ryou's usually neat area. "R-Ryou? Seriously, this isn't funny anymore!" The boy stepped in further, stepping over broken pieces of glass and what looked like..broken eggs? "Ryou, I swear, if you're trying to summon that spirit that was in your dream.." As Yuugi trailed off, there was a loud thump coming from the bedroom and Yuugi darted in that direction and practically kicked the door open. "Ry-Ryou!"

Laying on the ground was Ryou. Blood trickling down his chin and his eyes closed. He looked sort of..dead to Yuugi. Was he?

"Ryou? Oh god..Ryou are you okay?" Yuugi cautiously stepped closer to his friend's body, getting down on his knees and looking closely at Ryou's face. "Ryou oh god..What happened?" As he moved his hand close to Ryou's face intentions to caress it, Yuugi saw something rather odd. A fang? Last time he recalled, Ryou didn't have such sharp-

"BLEH!" The seemingly dead corpse of Ryou reached up and pulled Yuugi down, lightly nibbling on the boy's neck. "Man, had I kept that going you were most definitely going to cry!" He said through a fit of laughter, moving Yuugi off of him and sitting him down. The smaller of the two looked a little..angry.

And he was angry.

Yuugi shook his head and stood up glaring down at the pale boy below. "Are you kidding me?! I thought you were dead, Ryou! You destroyed your whole apartment just for a stupid prank?! Why?" His glare softened into an almost sad expression, his eyes closing. "Dammit Ryou..That's not cool, okay?" When he opened his eyes, he saw Ryou just staring back at him, no expression whatsoever. "Well?"

"Well what?" Was the response, causing Yuugi to blink in disbelief. "What am I supposed to say?"

Yuugi frowned at that, blinking a few times to try to comprehend if that was actually what Ryou had said. He would never question Yuugi. Not that Yuugi was superior in any way, no, but they never argued. Ryou would apologize as soon as Yuugi got upset. The boy couldn't figure it out, but something was so off. Ryou wasn't Ryou, but he definitely was. Yuugi didn't doubt that Ryou did all this just to prank him, but why were they about to fight? They never ever ever fight.

"Ryou, I expect you to be a little more mature. You're going to be seventeen! Why do you still act like you're twelve? And don't tell me don't! Have you seen your living room?" Yuugi crossed his arms and tapped his foot, just as a mother would when scolding their child. "What were you thinking?" He watched as Ryou rolled his eyes and stood up, showing that he was, most definitely, taller than Yuugi.

"How are you going to tell me to grow up?" Ryou mumble through his fake fangs, taking them out and wiping the fake blood from his mouth. "You still play those stupid card games! What good is that going to do you? At least I've be-"

"Ryou! You play those 'stupid card games' with me! I'm talking about this ghost hunting phase of yours. Get over it already! You need to come back into the real world because this-this fake spirit stargazing time travel shit is just-It's ridiculous. I can't believe you don't see anything wrong with worrying your best friend..?" Towards the end of his argument, Yuugi's voice became softer and he almost felt bad.

Until Ryou replied with a mumble;

"Who said you were my best friend?"

Yuugi was almost blown away, his eyes blinking. "What?"

And Ryou's voice was louder, more clear. "I said you're not my best friend, Yuugi."

"What do you know about friends!" was Yuugi's horrible, backstabbing defense, "You don't know anyone else besides me! You don't have any friends, Bakura. Now you're alone, okay? Don't call me for awhile."

Yuugi turned around and immediately started to storm out of Ryou's apartment, not caring about the broken glass cracking beneath his shoes or the way he had slammed the front door. "Good riddance," He mumbled, shoving his hands in his pockets and starting the walk back to his own home, not once looking back.

As soon as Yuugi got home, he stomped right up the stairs to his room, ignoring the worried frown on his grandfather's face. What was that stupid kid thinking? Did Ryou honestly expect to get away with such a stupid prank? Whatever it was the other was thinking would happen it didn't. Yuugi was tired of it. He was tired of all the camp outings to the park, he was tired of all the stupid ghost traps being set up in his room when Ryou came to sleep over, he was tired of telling Ryou not to spend so much money on novelty artifacts, he was tired of play that stupid RPG. Yuugi was, in all honesty, tired of Ryou.

When the albino teen first came to Domino High, he was the perfect target for bullies. Of course, this affected Yuugi in a very positive way and he was able to walk home on time without bruises for about a month. However, as the time went by, Yuugi watched Ryou sort of..deteriorate. He had gotten skinny since he started and he looked paler than how his skin-tone usually was. That was when Yuugi decided to sit at lunch with him. He had offered Ryou his sandwich and the pale boy had never looked so happy to see someone sit next to him. That day, as Yuugi walked his new friend home, was the first and only time he had ever seen him cry. The two stayed friends for almost two years now, but now it seemed as though it was coming to an end.

The first time they had hung out, just the two of them, was at the local Burger World. Yuugi had never seen someone down two burgers until that day. "Ryou! When was the last time you ate?" Yuugi had asked, and what Ryou said made Yuugi laugh: "I ate at lunch. Why do you ask?"

It wasn't funny at all, but Yuugi could already tell Ryou was a very interesting guy. So he befriended him.

Weeks later, they were hanging out anywhere they could after school and on the weekends. When they were at Ryou's, they watched horror films and stayed up late playing video games. When they went to Yuugi's, Yuugi would teach Ryou to play Duel Monsters and every time he would improve. They were always so willing to try new things, especially for eachother, but now Yuugi felt like he needed to get away from that. Maybe it was the shock of his best friend almost dying, or maybe it was the guilt of-Oh god..

Yuugi got up from his thoughtful position on his bed and walked to the desk, staring at the phone that sat there. It seemed to stare back at him, taunting him in a way. "You said he didn't have any friends. You called him by his last name," it seemed to say, drawing ever so close to Yuugi's hand until he picked it up, dialing Ryou's number from memory. "Please answer.." he mumbled to himself, tapping his fingers on the desk as he leaned down on it.

Ryou didn't answer and didn't go to school for three days.