Set early in Season Four when Ryo is still recovering from his heart condition.
"A coloring book? Really?" Ryo shook his head in disgust as Fubuki grinned down at him eagerly.
"Yup! I found it at the academia gift shop. And it was on sale! Tome-san says hardly anyone buys them."
"Gee, I wonder why," Ryo replied, eyeing the cover disdainfully. He was grateful the office was empty and that most of the staff had gone to lunch.
"I thought it'd be the perfect thing to keep us entertained," Fubuki said cheerfully, plopping himself down into his favorite swivel chair.
Ryo rolled his eyes. "Fubuki, this isn't playtime. Samejima needs us to work."
"And we will." Fubuki gestured to the phone sitting quietly on the desk. "When someone calls, we'll answer. If Samejima comes in with some filing, we'll do it. But right now there's nothing for us to do except sit here. Might as well have a little fun."
"We're not getting paid to have fun," Ryo reminded him. Fubuki ignored him and opened the coloring book, which contained pictures of famous monsters used by pros such as Kaiba Seto and Mutou Yuugi as well as pictures of the duelists themselves. "Besides, you don't even have anything to color with."
Fubuki winked at his friend and promptly reached into his backpack, retrieving, much to Ryo's dismay, a ninety-nine pack of brand new crayons, complete with a sharpener. "These were on sale too," he replied smugly and started coloring.
"Of course they were." Fubuki could be so childish sometimes. What if someone came in and saw them? They were supposed to be the elite students, or in his case, the Kaiser. At the moment they were also temporary receptionists for the most esteemed dueling university in the world (the former receptionist had quit and fled the island shortly after the alternate dimension affair), and how would it look if one of those elite students-turned-temporary-receptionists had a coloring book in front of him?
Ryo hadn't wanted this job. He'd only taken it because with his heart acting up, he couldn't leave the island yet and therefore had nothing better to do when everyone else was in class. Well, that and Samejima had asked him to. He'd seemed desperate, and a part of Ryo- a small part felt a bit bad for the way he'd treated his teacher the last time they'd met in that mountaintop dojo.
Fubuki had followed soon after, as he was always in need of extra cash for his dates, so for the past couple of weeks, he had come whenever he had a free moment. Though during that time, or at least it seemed to Ryo, he tended to fool around more often than he worked. Answering the phone in different accents, doodling on important paperwork, and stealing food from the faculty longue were just a few of the antics he'd pulled.
"Ryo?" Ryo's head snapped up. "You wanna color with me? There's plenty of crayons for both of us."
Ryo stared at him. "You're kidding, right?"
Fubuki stuck out his lip in a pout. "Aw, why not? It's not like you're doing anything."
"Fubuki, those things are for five-year-olds."
Fubuki reared back with a hand over his heart as though he'd been struck. "Nonsense! This Jumbo Creative Kids' Coloring Book is in no way for five-year-olds." Ryo raised an eyebrow. "Okay, maybe it is, but I'm bored! I can't just glare at a wall for six hours like you can. I have needs."
Ryo shook his head. "I can understand the need for entertainment, but couldn't you have invested in something a bit more mature?"
"Like what?" Fubuki asked. A book. Some homework. A video game. He might have even preferred Fubuki's collection of dirty magazines to a juvenile coloring book. But before he could say any of these things aloud, Fubuki tugged on his sleeve and whined, "Color with me! Please?"
Ryo jerked his arm away and pushed his feet against the floor so he could roll himself a good distance away. "No."
"Aw, come on!"
"You color. I'll work."
Fubuki stared into Ryo's face with the biggest puppy-dog eyes he could muster. "Ryo, you're not really gonna make me color all by myself, are you?"
"Yes."
"Color with me!"
"No."
"Please?"
"No."
"Please?"
"No."
"Pleeeeeeeaaaase?" He swiveled his chair over, grabbed Ryo's shoulders, and started shaking him. "Pretty please with Cyber End Dragon on top? And Cyber Dark Horn, and Cyber Dark Keel, and Cyber Dark Dragon, and-"
"Enough already!" Ryo shoved Fubuki away from him. "Fine," he growled.
"Yay!" Fubuki's face lit up like a Christmas tree. "Trust me, it'll be good for you, Ryo."
"Somehow I doubt that," Ryo mumbled. Fubuki put the coloring book and crayons in between them.
"Go on, start coloring. You know you want to," Fubuki teased. Ryo glared at him and eyed the book reluctantly. After musing over all ninety-nine of his choices (and taking his sweet time doing so in order to annoy Fubuki), he selected a dark blue crayon and began to color the fins of Kaiser Seahorse. Fubuki followed suit, grabbing a purple crayon.
The hours ticked by quickly as the two filled the pages with color. Dark Magician Girl, Blue Eyes White Dragon, the Egyptian Gods, and so on. They had to stop several times to answer the phone, but other than that, no one bothered them. Ryo was just finishing up Dark Magician when he looked over at what Fubuki was coloring and did a double take. Fubuki, who was never one to follow tradition, was currently using a hot pink crayon to fill in the lines of Mutou Yuugi's hair. Ryo looked the picture over and noticed that the King of Games had orange eyes, pink hair with purple highlights, blue skin, and olive clothing.
"Um…Fubuki?"
"Yeah?"
"You do know that's not what Mutou Yuugi looks like, right?"
"So?"
"So why are you making him look different?"
"It's part of the fun! Anybody could color him the way he normally looks. It takes a true artistic vision to make him look like this." He eyed Ryo's picture, which had been filled in neatly with the same colors used by Industrial Illusions. "You should learn to cut loose, Ryo. Have some fun once in a while." He glanced at the clock. "Whoops, I gotta go, my sweetheart awaits." He stood up and grabbed his backpack.
"Hey, aren't you gonna take this with you?" Ryo pointed to the coloring book.
"No." Fubuki smirked. "I'll leave it for you to enjoy. Oh, don't look at me like that, Ryo, you know you liked it."
"It was…amusing," Ryo replied grudgingly. Fubuki grinned wickedly and waved as he left. Ryo glanced at the clock. He still had an hour left until his shift was over. At least now that Fubuki was gone, he wouldn't be forced to color anymore. He could just sit there and…well, one more page couldn't hurt. He turned the page and nearly gasped. A pro league duelist glared back at him with icy green eyes.
Marufuji Ryo. Back from when he was an undefeated pro.
A small smile graced Ryo's face as he scanned the box for a blue crayon to fill in his hair and the trimmings on his uniform. The problem was, there were about a million different blues. Navy, robin's egg, cerulean, cornflower, indigo, sapphire, aquamarine, violet blue, blue green, sky blue, turquoise, the list went on and on. Ryo tested all of them by making small stray marks on the page, but none of them seemed to match the actual color of his hair. The only one that came close was…blue. Just plain old regular blue.
For some reason Ryo couldn't explain, this disappointed him. That was all he was, just a boring old blue with nothing special about it. Nothing to distinguish it from the others. He sighed and slowly began coloring in his hair. He was so lost in thought that he didn't even notice a man leaning over the front of the desk.
"A coloring book, huh?" Ryo jumped, startled. A short man with a kind face was smiling down at him. "I used to have those when I was a kid. They're fun, huh?"
"I suppose," Ryo answered, embarrassed. He quickly closed the book and shoved it aside. "Anything I can help you with?"
The man asked a few general questions about the academy and Ryo answered them respectfully. The man was one of the friendlier people Ryo had met and for some reason he looked familiar, though Ryo wasn't quite sure why. But he was sure he'd seen him somewhere before.
When he seemed satisfied with Ryo's answers, the man gestured to the coloring book and asked, "Mind if I take a look?"
"Sure." Ryo shrugged, handing it to him. He flipped through the pages, smiling.
"Hmm…Dark Magician, Blue Eyes, hey what's this?" He flipped to the page of the wacky-looking Mutou Yuugi. The man grinned widely and laughed.
"I didn't do that one," Ryo said quickly. "My friend did."
The man chuckled and handed the book back to Ryo. "Your friend sounds like a pretty good artist." He turned to leave, then stopped at the door and grinned at Ryo. "Ya know, I think I look pretty good with pink hair."
He let the door shut behind him, leaving Ryo standing there with his mouth wide open.