Sad Smile
by BridgitKiido

Disclaimer: I'm not Kazuki Takahashi.

Timeline Note: This takes place pre-series, shortly after Fubuki's disappearance. There will be spoilers for season 4. Also, this being a side-story prequel-ish thing to Lost Heaven, it is in an alternate universe setting.

Four days. It had been four days since Ryou – since anyone, for that matter – had seen Fubuki anywhere on the island. Ayukawa-sensei had specifically stated that he hadn't been to the infirmary during that time, not that he would have ever stayed there for that long, no matter how sick he was. He hadn't been to class; his fan club hadn't seen him on the beach though they scoured it day and night… there were no signs of him even having come back to his room at all.

And yet no boats had been allowed to leave the island without being thoroughly checked ever since the first student had vanished two weeks and four days ago, and it had become a seemingly steady stream of one disappearance – every time either from the Honors or the Obelisk dormitory – every few days. If he'd been on one of them, the staff would know.

(The teachers were telling most of the students and any media that happened to come by that the missing students were simply lucky ones who had received scholarships to participate in an exchange program in America. But Ryou knew the truth of the matter – Fubuki had told him about the first one himself, after all, through his tears.)

The last time Ryou had seen Fubuki, the dinner before he went missing, he had been talking about the special class he was taking, the one Daitoukuji-sensei was running after normal hours about the magic involved in dueling and the Shadow Games. He'd mentioned something about having to take a test duel that night, but the head of Osiris Red had denied any knowledge of any sort of examination that night.

Which, of course, meant that whether the cat-loving alchemy professor was telling the truth or not, something was wrong, and Ryou was going to find out what. Two of his friends – his two best friends – had disappeared because of this, and he was worried about them. Even if the teachers had searched everywhere on campus, he'd at least have a look for himself before he believed that they truly weren't there.

They'd do the same if it was him who was missing, after all.

He kept quiet as he traversed the halls of the Honors Dormitory, the place he had been calling home for the first half of the year. Of course, Principal Samejima had already decided that the building would have to be abandoned, judging by the trend for students to be last seen in that building before they disappeared. Ryou was one of the lucky ones, perhaps – he had been living there until just after Fubuki was determined to be missing.

The building was supposed to be off-limits to students now, but that didn't faze him much. Perhaps it should have, but there were certain things that, after being friends with Fubuki, tended to stop having the same effects. Besides, he knew the layout pretty well. It wasn't as though he couldn't get out quickly if he needed to.

He kept the hand that held his flashlight steady as he descended carefully to the basement. Yes, it was probably one of the more dangerous ideas he could have come up with, considering that it was there that Fubuki had claimed the class would be held, as well as where the first disappearance had occurred, but where else was he supposed to look? If they were going to be anywhere, it was there.

"Fubuki?" he called warily, keeping a calm exterior even though deep down a part of him had to admit to being nervous. Then, deciding that if anything was going to pounce on him at the sound of his voice it would have done so already, he chanced slightly louder, "Fubuki, are you down here?"

Still no answer, so Ryou pressed forward through the tunnel. Admittedly, he'd never been down this way before – the occasion had never arrived when he'd been asked to come, and he was admittedly less apt to act on his curiosity than most of his classmates.

He was, therefore, surprised to find that the hallway (littered with diagrams of the Millennium Items and other magical things, as expected) ended in a wide, underground cavern. Much of the floor below the raised area he came out on had been formed into a flat arena, possibly suitable for dueling. The carvings on the floor, however, were hardly suitable for that – Ryou didn't care to know all that much about magic, only learning what he had to in order to pass his classes (with flying colors), but even he recognized a few of the markings as being used in various rituals.

He called out again, "Is anyone down here?" hoping for an answer even though he could see almost the entire cave by now, and not only was there nobody, there were no other exits that he could see.

Perhaps someone heard him, however, because just a moment later, a large burst of energy erupted from the very center of the room. If energy had a color, this was a deep purple, with black spots ascending it like embers from a fire. But it was very unlike a fire in every respect – if anything, Ryou instinctively shielded his face with his arm in order to protect it from the surprisingly chilly winds that had appeared out of nowhere.

The energy burst persisted for a few seconds, while a voice echoed through the cave. A deep, chuckling voice, like nothing Ryou had ever heard before, but one that drove chills down his spine. "This child is useless to me," it said. "You may have him back."

And with that, the energy disappeared just as suddenly as it had appeared in the first place, leaving only the form of a human male behind, collapsed on the ground. A human male, wearing the uniform of Duel Academy's Honors Dormitory. A human male with impossible-to-occur-in-nature green hair.

Fujiwara Yusuke had disappeared two weeks and four days ago. Fubuki had been there, had seen the ritual he'd performed, had told Ryou everything that he'd witnessed. Told Ryou when he hadn't told any of the teachers all of the details, not even Principal Samejima. Fubuki had said that he'd gone to some sort of world of Darkness place, willingly participating in some ritual to bring him there, likely to never return again.

And yet there he was, collapsed in the middle of the basement floor, hair matted, arm bloody and barely beginning to scab, barely breathing by the time Ryou had forgotten all form of caution and run to make sure he was all right.

"Yusuke," Ryou said urgently as he laid his non-occupied hand on the other's shoulder. The fact that his green-haired classmate didn't even twitch slightly at his touch was slightly worrying – usually, he shied away when touched by most people, even his friends. "Are you all right?"

The other's eyes opened slightly and attempted to focus on Ryou, though it was only barely successful. Yusuke managed to quietly say, "I thought… I thought I could do it." A slight half-laugh. "I was convinced that I could detach myself completely… could forget everything entirely and leave it all behind… that it would be a good thing…"

"What are you talking about?" Ryou asked, attempting to pick his classmate up and get him onto his back. He was injured, and he had to get him to the infirmary – Ayukawa-sensei would know what to do.

"It hurt, you know," continued the green-haired boy, "to give up some of them, the better ones. They were returned, of course, an incomplete payment… But it was his condition to give them all up before I would be permitted entry… and I tried my hardest to give them up… I really thought I could…"

"Everything will be all right, Yusuke," Ryou assured quietly, though at this point whether it was more for the benefit of his classmate or himself was debatable. "Ayukawa-sensei will fix you up, and you'll be back to normal in no time."

"But I couldn't…" Yusuke continued, whether he had heard Ryou or not remaining unclear. "I couldn't forget everything… there was one thing I couldn't let go of, no matter how hard I tried…"

By this point, all Ryou had managed to do was get into a kneeling position, Yusuke's weak body supported by his arms so that the boy was halfway to a sitting position, if you could call it that. And from this position, the green-haired boy somehow managed to lift his head up so that he was looking Ryou straight in the eyes, a bit of a sad smile on his face.

"I could never… forget your smile, Ryou."

And with one final shudder, Fujiwara Yusuke breathed one last time before his body went limp in Ryou's arms.

The next few minutes passed as a blur to Ryou, in his state of shock. All that he knew afterward was that, somehow, he had managed to carry Yusuke to the surface without being seen, had somehow managed to bring him to the infirmary, where Ayukawa-sensei had done all she could to save him, though it was too late. He had been dead from his final words.

Principal Samejima was, of course, informed of what had happened, as was Chronos-sensei. However, the four of them decided amongst themselves that it would be best for the sake of the school if as few people knew about this as possible. Fortunately for the situation (though still unfortunate), the boy had been orphaned at a young age and under government custody, so he had no family who would sue, and as long as what had happened didn't get out, nothing would happen.

His body would join those of his parents. The location of his deck was never discovered by the teachers – Ryou had taken it upon himself to bury it in a spot that only he and his two (well, now one) best friends knew the exact location of. It was placed in a box with three subdivisions, each one just large enough in which to place a deck of cards, and its location was marked by a large rock.

Principal Samejima did what he could to make things easier for Ryou as he continued his schooling at Duel Academy, hiring a private counselor just for him. The job didn't last long, however, as Ryou insisted that he didn't need the counseling. Yusuke was dead, Fubuki was missing, and there was nothing that anyone could do to change that, so what was the point?

He dove even further into his school work from then on, keeping away from others socially when he could. Many residents of the female dorm noticed his loneliness – it was no secret that his two best friends weren't around, after all – and tried to cheer him up, but he would never let him close, so many of them simply gave up after a while, turning their attentions to hoping that Fubuki would return soon.

He would gather his thoughts by the lighthouse at night. Seeing where Yusuke had come from, he knew that Fubuki wasn't on the island, so searching wouldn't do much good. All he could do was wait and hope that he came home safely, someday.

Though, on occasion, when he was up late in his room, working on a project or refining his deck, something unexplainable would happen – the feeling of someone's hand brushing up against his, or a flash of green in his peripheral vision that disappeared when he turned to look.

And whenever that happened, all he could do was offer a sad smile.