When Fubuki first met with Marufuji Ryou, he noticed the boy had very pretty eyes, intense and full of feeling, although too often glazed over with cold arrogance and scornful disdain. But at rare times, they were innocent and painfully truthful, and beautiful, jewels of deepening cobalt lined with silver in just the right flash of light. It was funny, though, that a boy so handsome would be so quiet as well.
Fubuki's not surprised that the sky is dark today. Ryou is at the exact same place he was yesterday, at the pier and underneath the lighthouse. His eyes are fixed on the ocean waves that roll back and forth like an endless turmoil between white and cerulean. Fubuki doesn't think it's necessary for a proper greeting or to even attempt reasoning with Ryou's twisted logic anymore. All he does is slide on a mask so frozen solid that it resembles the face Hell Kaiser wears like a mirror reflection. With this emotionless façade, he marches up to Ryou and extends his hands to him. In his open palms are forty cardboard slips, all piled up neatly so that no seditious corners stick out.
"Take my cards," Fubuki instructs him; simple, blunt, and straight to the point. No greeting. No nothing.
The cards radiate a dark aura, silently proving without any need of words that this is not his real deck. But if Ryou loves the darkness and dragons so much he would have no trouble taking this deck from Fubuki especially when Fubuki himself doesn't want to be associated with it.
"I don't want them," is all Ryou says.
Fubuki pushes the deck closer to the other man who doesn't do as much as flicker an eyelash at him.
"Take my Red-eyes Black Dragon," he tries again, fighting to maintain the apathy in his voice. "It's one of the strongest and rarest dragons around—I'm sure it'll bring you more success in the future. Just take it, as well as the rest of my deck. I have no more use for any of these cards."
Yet despite this heartfelt speech and generous offer, Ryou doesn't move a muscle and his eyes never leave the water. "Get them out of my face," the other man replies coldly.
He hears the lack of warmth in Ryou's tone and for a moment, Fubuki falters. But then words from their previous encounter enter his head and he attempts one last time hoping his cause isn't lost yet.
"It's power," he reasons quietly, his voice softer than he had meant it to be. But the gentleness that cradles those two words doesn't hide the meaning to them. Ryou turns his head sharply in his direction.
"I don't love power as much as you think."
Fubuki feels his patience wear quickly as the seconds pass and Ryou only glares at him. "How long do you plan on being like this? Don't you see it's unbecoming of you? The darkness—"
"—save your breath. I never had darkness in my heart. I'm merely crushing everything in sight with raw power," Ryou retorts and Fubuki is unable to understand his words because they're coming out of the mouth of a demon rather than a friend.
Ryou says it so naturally, so shamelessly that Fubuki can't stand it any longer. His fist connects with Ryou's face and plows him into the ground but the next moment, he's kneeling down and groveling over Ryou who has a bit of crimson dripping from the corner of his mouth.
"R-Ryou…Ryou, are you hurt?" he shouts.
Fubuki panics, arrows of guilt and terror shooting his heart in the same rhythm it is beating. But Ryou just pushes his hands away roughly and rises from the ground.
"Hurt? What kind of question is that? Why am I hurt?"
Surprisingly enough, there isn't a trace of anger present in his voice. It is composed and cool and his eyes are still icy as ever; the flame has already died out permanently a long time ago. Ryou sweeps his tongue over the blood trickling down his chin and licks it clean before he flashes a smirk beaming with voyeurism. Fubuki watches in a mixture of anxiety and disgust, and in the back of his mind he wonders if Camilla ever had a hidden influence on Ryou.
"A piece of advice," Ryou says bitingly once he's done tasting his blood. "Don't touch me again."
A shadow flickers through cobalt eyes but instead of tearing at his heart like all those other times, Fubuki finds himself losing his cool and growing infuriated. This impassive mask he wears fractures and splits into two.
"What's wrong with you?" he bursts out yelling. "Why can't you act normal? Can't you feel any pain? Is victory all that matters anymore? Winning—even without dignity or honor?"
Suddenly, the air is filled with a storm of dark cards. Fubuki can't help but be reminded of their last duel when Hell Kaiser had activated Power Wall, taken more than 2/3rds of his cards and thrown them to the wind, creating a card-filled whirlwind so similar to the present state of affairs. Ryou is unperturbed by his sudden outburst and merely glares a thousand daggers from his eyes. Fubuki, being unarmed and undefended, takes each dagger flung at him head on. But rather than cowering, he stands firm and tall.
"Is it? Is that all that matters anymore?" he demands.
"I don't need to answer you," Ryou responds steely.
Ryou turns and strides past him but this time Fubuki is unable to just stand by and watch him walk out of his life again. Not again. He intercepts Ryou's path and grabs him by the collar, pulling their faces close together.
"Stop it! Stop this indifferent attitude of yours!" Fubuki hisses and shakes him violently. "Open your eyes and start caring!"
Fubuki wants to say a lot more, he wants to cry out and scream at this Hell Kaiser fellow or whoever replaced the real Ryou for being such an ignorant fool and not caring about all the friends he left behind when he chose power over everything else. What about Juudai—didn't he care about the duelist who he gave his blessings to one day surpass him? What about Asuka—did he remember those times he always visited her underneath the lighthouse they were standing at right now? What about Shou—didn't he care about his own brother who is worried sick about him and what about…
…what about…
…what about Fubuki—his rival for three years and his best friend at this academia? Did Ryou care about him? Did he?
Do you still know who I am, Ryou? Do I still exist to you?
But Fubuki never gets the chance to say any of these thoughts. Ryou's right hand encloses around his wrist like a vice and pries his fingers away from his coat collar while the other curls into a fist and slams into his stomach. Fubuki gasps in pain; Ryou has always been ten times stronger than he has.
"I told you not to touch me again."
Honestly, Fubuki doesn't give a damn about this jerk's words. He grasps onto Ryou's arm and involuntary buries his head into the other man's chest, gasping and wheezing to catch his breath after that blow. Despite this intimate action, Ryou doesn't show a glimmer of sentiment. He just gazes down at Fubuki's corn-brown hair, icy and piercing, like a blizzard gust.
"Let go," he commands.
Fubuki thinks Ryou is absurdly blunt—so absurd it's not even funny. He tightens his grip on Ryou's arm just to spite him.
"I'll hurt you if you don't let go this instant." There is a living threat behind those words but Fubuki has very little to lose.
"…well then…" He wipes away a bit of saliva that trickled out of his mouth with his free hand. "...I guess you'll just have to hit me again."
The second blow was a backhand that sent Fubuki flying to the edge of the pier. Hell Kaiser walks over to him and places a foot on his chest. Fubuki looks up at him, eyes golden and pure and beautiful.
"Are you going to crush my heart?" he asks weakly, but with a grin nonetheless. Navy blue eyes narrow.
"Stop your smiling," he demands.
"Why?"
"...your smile…is so irritating."
"Well, your frown is so irritating."
"Why do you insist on being stupidly happy when you're weak?"
"Why do you insist on being angry when it only makes you sad?"
He growls. "I've had enough with you!" Hell Kaiser snarls, taking his foot off Fubuki and sweeping past his body.
"Wait."
Footsteps stop. Fubuki pushes himself from the planks, silently thanking every single god he knows because if words can't stop him and cards can't stop him, then there was no way in heaven or hell love could stop Hell Kaiser but Fubuki stacks it up against the notion of fourteen-year-old friendship where he plays a moment over and over again in the sticky nightmare that is his mind.
"Listen. You can leave, but at least promise me one thing. If anything ever happens to me, will you look over Asuka and ensure her safety in my place?"
He hopes in the deepest entrails of his heart that Ryou would show some sympathy, show any sympathy…but to no avail. His lips curl into a cold sneer.
"Really. Why should I fret over that little girl? She can get herself killed for all I care."
Fubuki can do nothing but watch helplessly as the man who calls himself Hell Kaiser turn around and strut off the pier. Then it hits him—they're just too different. Even if he attempts to be like Ryou and act emotionless and pretend as if nothing bothers him, he just can't succeed. Ryou is ice. Fubuki is fire.
He stays at the pier for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, maybe because there's nowhere else for him to go. The Hikari no Kessha had already executed him from the Obelisk White dorms, and he isn't really in the mood to impose on Juudai and Manjyome's generosity by crashing in the Osiris rooms. So instead, Fubuki goes down to his favorite place at the beach and digs his toes into the sand. He leans his head against the huge boulder and stares at the darkened night sky looming above him. The sand beneath him is warm and moist; he always did like the beach comprised from millions of tiny pieces of glass, rocks, and whatever else sand was made up of. The ocean's quite beautiful during the evening. The waves are a deep midnight blue shade and a tiny silver crescent of the moon serves to illuminate the blackened sky by itself for there were no stars out. Its faint light gleamed overhead, shining dim rays onto his body. The cool night air breezes past his face and tossed his dark brown hair back and forth like a whip.
"…you never answered my question, Ryou," he whispers, observing the clouds floating over his head. "What do you love? Or maybe who?"
Fubuki wants to melt Hell Kaiser's icy heart with his flames of burning passion. But his voice can't even get through to his sister, so Fubuki thinks it's futile to try and contact Ryou again. The Blizzard Prince thinks about what Ryou said to him just a couple of hours ago. Hell Kaiser's audacious words trigger an involuntary flashback and Fubuki suddenly realizes how much Ryou resembles Asuka, not his Asuka…but Saiou's little white doll.
"You can't hurt me," Fubuki remembers she said in a voice so defiant that he would have never guessed she had a docile side only revealed to her 'master'. "I'll merely dance through your words, even if dancing is something I've never done before."
But the white doll isn't Asuka and Hell Kaiser isn't Ryou. And he can't bring either of them back because that merely isn't how the fairytale is supposed to be played out. If Hell Kaiser is the dark prince and Asuka is the white princess then surely he was nothing more than the court's jester while Juudai, the prince from a far away land, Juudai, manipulator of destiny is the one to save the day—and Fubuki is no Juudai. Because despite the overwhelming amount of fangirls and popularity he seems to possess, Fubuki cannot deny that nobody ever takes him seriously.
This thought depresses him and he doesn't handle depression to well. So Fubuki resolves this sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach in the only way he can. Fubuki takes his ukulele out and dusts off his sanded hands and plucks the strings because maybe if he strums hard enough, the music will lull him into a gentle slumber and cast him away to a place where the darkness and light merge into one and when he finally wakes up, he would discover 'Hell Kaiser' and 'Hikari no Kessha' were just figments of his nightmare.
Asuka will be Asuka, Ryou will be Ryou and Fubuki would be stuck in the middle of the two, an arm around each of their waists…and the three of them would walk down the road together, all happy and laughing as if there is nothing wrong in the world.