Myself

I don't know what attracted me to him at first. Perhaps it was the challenge. After I solved the Millennium Puzzle everyone I met either became my friend or vanished. Even my enemies normally ended up becoming good friends of mine. He was the first one who had been different.

The first time I saw him, I thought he was simply another one of the many people who had showed up to challenge me since I had gained the Puzzle. He was better looking than most of them to be sure, but I simply thought of that as a sort of added perk to being able to work together with my friends to defeat someone. The camaraderie between us was always greatest at times of stress, and I enjoyed being part of the team. It wasn't until later that I discovered I had been wrong – very wrong.

I dreamed about the fight that night, and many nights after, but that was not unusual. My dreams were often about important moments between myself and my friends. What was unusual was that after the first few nights my dreams began to focus on the thief's face as he spoke. His eyes were so wide and bright with what I realized over the course of those nights was suppressed grief and insanity.

After a while the dreams faded, but I still wondered occasionally what it was that had led the thief to attack us. It was nothing personal when he first challenged us, I was sure. When the other me had taken over my body and directed us, however, I had seen such blinding hatred that I was frozen. So the question still remained: what had my darker half done to deserve such enmity, and what had the thief seen to convince himself that it was deserved?

When he appeared the second time I think we were all shocked. The only one who had ever managed to shake off the effects of Yami's 'punishment games' before was Seto Kaiba, and even he hadn't come out of it unscathed. So why had this thief not only survived, but returned to attack us again without warning?

This time Yami should have been completely in charge. He held all the cards and he was the only one who could defend us if we got into trouble. Since I had nothing else that I needed to do, I watched the thief's face. It was obvious from his bearing that Yami was the only one of us he cared about. The rest were all meaningless pawns, not worthy of his attention. While I watched him, I don't think that the thief ever glanced at us with any emotion in his eyes at all. Even when he attacked me he didn't look at me. His full attention never wavered from his opponent.

Yami won, of course, but I simply could not get the thief's face out of my mind. His tenacious persistence worried Yami, but it impressed me, and the total concentration he gave to Yami made me feel… strange. It was frightening, but at the same time, it seemed to me to show that he was an expert at the game. I had seen something of the same look in the faces of the chess champions that I watch on TV.

That was when I first decided to get serious about the game. If he could be that focused on it and on defeating my Yami I wasn't going to let him down by being any less serious. How could I ever look my friends in the eye knowing that I wasn't as good as the thief who had caused us all so much trouble?

Ryou told me about how he and the others had been about to have their souls sealed by Pegasus when the thief rescued them, and I think that that was when I really fell for him. Knowing that apart from his intent hatred of Yami he actually did feel something for Ryou and was willing to fight to save him made me see him as a friend, and as someone that maybe I would like to be more.

When he fought us on the Battle Ship I saw that same focused concentration, and then the same compassion that had destroyed my inhibitions about an enemy the last time. I had thought that he would do anything to defeat my yami and gain his revenge for whatever deed it was that had made him so angry, but I saw the truth then. When Malik tried to use Ryou as the scapegoat for the game, the thief stopped him, protecting his light. Even though he tried to brush it off as something necessary as his plans, I saw the truth and liked him even better for it.

Malik refused to tell me at first exactly what it was that the thief was doing with Yami no Malik on the ship's deck, but he gave in eventually and explained that he was helping Malik to gain his own freedom. The defiant look on Malik's face showed that he didn't expect me to believe him, but in truth that was what I wanted to hear. The thief had acted with all honor for as long as I had known of him, and I had not wanted my perception of him to be changed, especially as I had realized the truth by then.

He still hasn't noticed me as anything more than a body for my yami, but he will now. Standing in the tomb of my Yami, facing the thief as he holds a duel disk he has summoned out of his own body, I make sure of that. As Anzu quickly scratches Yami's name on the pendant she brought and runs out of there with the others, blocking the way out of the tomb behind me, I swear that, whatever it takes, I will make him see me as myself.