Author's Note: Something never satisfied me about Takahashi's explanation for Yuugi's father. First, if Yuugi's Dad - a wealthy businessman - is still connected to his family, why are his wife and son living with Sugoroku in a tiny flat above a game shop? And why don't we ever see Yuugi's Dad call his family, or send them letters, or fuck I don't know, actually come back in between business trips? I wasn't satisfied. So I read a bunch of fanfiction, came up with a theory, and then thought... what if I gender-bent this?

And thus did this story come to be.

Yes, this is a fem Yuugi story. It starts out as a childhood story, but will eventually leak into the actual series. It will be manga compliant, but will also include Japanese anime filler arcs.

I will add more characters as they appear. Pairings will happen eventually. I'm going to keep them a surprise.

I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh. That honor belongs to Kazuki Takahashi.

Special thanks to Little Kuriboh's Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged, which not only lifts my spirits when I'm feeling down but inspires me to stay involved in the fandom of my very first anime.

Enjoy.

Gemu no Jo-o (Game Queen)

Chapter One: The Color White

I knew the way to my grandfather's house by heart. This was not, you must understand, out of any sense of filial affection or love - though I did love my grandfather, dearly. But no, that was not it. My grandfather's house was calm, peaceful, if humble. It was my escape.

My father would stay at work late in the evenings, or go to work on weekends, and my mother would stalk. She would storm about the house, knocking things over, rearranging things, muttering under her breath, hands working through her short wild hair until it was matted. I would sit at the table with my cooked oysters and I would count the threads in the pristine white carpet below me. Trying to be small.

Eventually, I jerked my chair back with an aborted screeching sound, the chair jarring harshly against the wood flooring of the kitchen behind me, and my mother looked up. I paused.

"Gonna go play," I said feebly. She nodded, looking away, already seeing through me. A constant anger permeated her features.

I went through the vast, neat house, up the geometric staircase to my bedroom. It was a mess, the only room in the house that was. It was painted with winged unicorns and dragons from my storybooks, the only walls in the house that weren't white.

Everything in my first house was white, it seemed. Clean. Serene.

I still don't like the color white.

I heard the front door open and close on the floor below and I could picture him - my father coming in late from work, still in his business suit, putting down his scarf and his briefcase, his mind already working absently over whatever had troubled him at his car company today. My father's frown was not angry or malicious. It was simply the frown of a man who was trying to solve a problem. Sometimes he even had a small smile for me, which my mother never did. He liked how soft-spoken, gentle, and feminine I was, I think. I also think this is what my mother did not like about me - we don't like what we don't understand.

"Why are you home so late?" My mother's words sounded harsh in the silence. "You were supposed to watch Riyeko for the evening so I could get some painting done!"

I could see the vague surprise come over my father's features, as if noticing he had a wife for the first time. My father always looked surprised when my mother spoke.

My mother was gaining steam, puffing up, searing with heat. Even her reddish hair looked like fire. I could see her, too, though I wasn't there. This happened a lot.

"What, is that just the wife's role? To be subordinate to her husband, to look after her child?"

"Don't be ridiculous. I'm trying to put food on the table. I'll stay home this weekend and you can paint then."

"You always say that -!"

"A mother should be glad to look after her daughter." The rebuke was cold, but strangely, it just added fuel to the fire.

"Oh, don't you turn this around on me -! You!" The word was hateful. "You could have a harlot on the side for all I know!" At long last, my father became indignant, that anyone would accuse him of failing in his duties, and the shouting began. I hummed to myself, rocking back and forth as I played with my dolls on the floor, a silent tension building and building inside me. My stomach tied itself in knots. My mind went to a million different places - to how funny going to the bathroom was, and then to my dolls at their tea party, and then to the way I'd dressed up as an Indian princess just the other day, and then I began to wonder what India was like.

It was no use. I could still hear the shouting below me.

I knew even at that young of an age - I was maybe five or six - that my mother had never wanted me. She'd married my father, a traditional man who had wanted a family. In his own quiet way, my father usually got what he wanted, so they had a child. My father was very fond of me, and so was my grandfather. I was not sure who had named me. "Riyeko" means rational child in Japanese. It could have been my father, a huge fan of rationality; it could have been my grandfather, who ran a shop full of rare, unusual, and exotic games and puzzles and who was a gaming strategist.

But either way, I knew it wasn't my mother. Not my fiery anti-establishment artist mother.

Why had she married my father, I wondered? I'd asked her once and she'd slapped me. I didn't ask again.

I realized the world had begun to blur and my eyes stung. I stood up, wiped my eyes, and tiptoed down the stairs, crouching on the landing and looking through the bars. I could see their shadows, shouting and gesticulating in the living room. I crept past them into the entryway, grabbed an umbrella, and moved out the front door into the rain.

The walk to my grandfather's house - he lived above his game shop, did not have nearly as much money as my father, his son, who had gone down such a different path in life, so different my grandfather had lost all hope for him and turned to me to fill the void - was long for a small child. It was dark and in the rain the figures brushing past me in Domino City, Japan seemed like huge black ghosts. Yet I kept walking. One of my little shoes was loose. I didn't stop to fix it. I was in a hurry.

I looked for sign posts and finally, past the tiny corner drug store, I found it. Kame Games. Kame, the turtle, represented wisdom and longevity. Grandpa said he'd called it that because when he'd started the shop he was already old. I think he was only half joking.

Kame Games was a bizarre building, but that was why I liked it. It was painted bright pink and green and yellow colors, its second floor bulging like a pregnant lady's belly. I could see the pregnant lady, if I looked - the shop was her legs, the house was her belly, the pointed red roof was her neck, and the metal chimney chute was her head.

I knocked on the pregnant lady's legs. "Grandpa!" I called out.

I heard hurried footsteps and he opened the door, staring down at me, his face looking rather pale through his silver beard. "Riyeko-chan?"

"Grandpa, Mommy and Daddy are fighting," I said, looking up at him from underneath the black umbrella. I must have been a very small little thing indeed, tiny even for my age, with a head of short, straight black hair, my heart-shaped face pale and my violet eyes large.

"Again?" His eyes turned sympathetic. "And you came here again, huh?" Then he gave me a hug. I liked Grandpa. Daddy sometimes sneered at his worn overalls, but I liked the rough feel of them and the smell of smoke that pervaded them. He was like a great big portly cushion, warm and comforting. I realized my eyes were making the cloth of the overalls wet. I clutched at him with little fists, the umbrella falling.

He patted me on the back. "Come on inside. I'll make you some snacks and we can watch TV and make another puzzle together, yeah?"

He only played with me for so long. Eventually he left me to my own devices in the living room, putting together the puzzle on the secondhand couch in front of the coffee table, and went into the hallway with the telephone. He thought I couldn't hear. I could hear.

"I take it by the fact that you haven't called yet that you didn't realize your daughter was missing." Grandpa's tone was dry and acerbic; he'd never have taken it with me. "Don't worry, she's with me. You could have at least noticed she's gone. Can you please come pick her up?"

I swallowed, a hard ball of fear in my stomach. I didn't want Mommy and Daddy to come get me. Not when they were so stressed and angry and upset.

They'd just get mad at me for running off again, and that would hurt. A lot.

My father came to get me. It made sense. He was the one with the car. It was a nice car, too, a black Cadillac CTS-V, brand new. Leather interior.

We sat in silence during the car ride back to my house. Flashed under lamp posts and neon signs.

"You've got to stop doing this, Riyeko-chan," he said at last. My father never shouted, except around my mother. He was not the type to get angry. I was glad he had picked me up.

"Sorry," I said in a small voice, looking at my hands folded in my lap. "The shouting got really loud."

He sighed. "Yes," he said wryly, "it did." A pause. "She leaves little traps for you," he said at last. "Poisons in disguise." I looked up hesitantly, curious. He had never spoken to me about my mother before. "She'll say things like, 'You don't hate me anymore, do you? Now I'm just dead weight.' If you say that yes, you don't hate her anymore, that would imply that you used to hate her, and that you consider her dead weight. If you say that no, you do hate her, well, then you're saying you hate her."

I paused. Working up the courage to ask, without asking, what I was about to ask. "She recited your wedding vows to you a few nights ago," I said. "She asked you if you even understood what they meant."

He sighed. "You heard that?"

I nodded.

"... Look, Riyeko-chan," he said. "Marriage can be very rewarding. But you have to know what you're getting yourself into. You have to know who you're marrying before you marry them."

"But I know you, Grandpa, and Mommy. I know you just fine," I said.

"No, that's not what I meant," he said evenly, still concentrating on the road before him. "I meant, the man you're going to marry? You have to see the absolute worst side of him. His darkest parts. You've seen Mommy and I scream at each other, haven't you?" I nodded. "And do you still love us?"

"Of course!"

"Well," he said, almost too quietly for me to hear, "at least someone does." Then, louder: "That's what I mean. If you can hate someone and still love them, that's love. I'm not telling you to put up with someone who treats you badly. I'm just saying that if you ever want to get married, you have to find someone you like even when you absolutely hate their guts.

"Understand?"

I nodded. "Yes, Daddy."

I understood what he was saying, I think, even then - that when he hated Mommy, he didn't love her. He hadn't known her well enough before the wedding. Hadn't seen the worst side of her yet. And she hadn't seen his.

I have never forgotten this conversation.

My mother was all over me the minute I got home.

"Riyeko-chan, what on earth were you thinking?! You could have been abducted! You could have been killed! You could have been -!"

I made myself very small again, and my father closed his eyes and sighed, as if the noise annoyed him and he'd been enjoying the reprieve.

Later, as I was going to bed, he came inside my room to kiss me goodnight and turn my night light on. I was far too small for my huge blue bed, soft and lacy.

He kissed my forehead and went to the door.

"Daddy?"

He turned back absently, as if deep in thought. "Yes?"

"Are you and Mommy going to get a divorce?"

His eyes flew open wide for the first time. "That's a silly question," he said at last, and he left the room, turning off the light and shutting the door. He didn't give me an answer.

Unusual for my father.