I was sixteen years old the first time it happened.

Father was never a man to tend towards favorites, but after Mother's passing, he always favored Ryou. I suppose there were many reasons things might have turned out this way.

I still hadn't stepped up to the position of managing the household my mother had left vacant and my father pointedly ignored. It probably would have been the womanly thing to do to tidy things, and care for Ryou, and care for Father, and throw myself into being the perfect daughter to honor Mother's memory, but I could never bring myself to do it.

I was distant with Father myself, always finding some trouble to get myself into—a scrape here, a fight there—rather than occupy the house. And I always found reason to be cruel with Ryou when we were in front of Father, just because I knew how it irritated him.

Sometimes, though, I think he just plain didn't like looking at me. I'd catch him staring from the corner of his eye with a look of sadness and apprehension. Days would pass and I would decide he didn't like the Ring, and I'd tuck the ever present pendulum under my shirt. More days would pass and I would decide he didn't like me again. Maybe I looked too much like Mother, where Ryou had been bleached clean. Maybe I just looked disappointing.

No matter the reason, Father quickly found excuses to make himself busy elsewhere. Important digs would surface that he needed to visit or he might very urgently need to fly overseas to negotiate an exhibit on lend from another museum. The point stood: what had once been a very tedious desk job now required a minimum six months of travel yearly.

Ryou had been deemed responsible enough for both of us and we had become used to being the only people left in the house.

It was difficult for us both, but Ryou always fared better. Ryou had learned to curb his bad temper and exercise all the impeccable manners that kept him in the good graces of not only our schoolmates, but the adults as well. I, on the other hand, had learned to fight, and run, and climb, and take utmost pleasure in the solitude of just myself, the grass, and the sky. The further isolated I had become, the less being around other people seemed to make me happy.

I took great comfort in the Ring that had belonged to my mother. The chiming of the points jingling along the sides never ceased to soothe me and, although a great deal of bad luck still found me, I thought the ancient eye of the necklace, probably warded the worst of it away.

It never quite felt like she was still there with me, but it never felt like being alone either.

It was companionable, I decided.

But Ryou and I were growing up. We were growing older and, while we still were bonded as close as the day we had been born, we were beginning to drift apart in the sea that was adolescence. Although, he was mere minutes older, Ryou had fallen very starkly into the role of older brother and it made him seem unapproachable and parental.

In short, I was moody, and lonesome, and feeling particularly unloved, as all teenage girls do at one point in time or another, and the easiest distraction I had learned was 25 miles away in Domino City, Japan.

Domino had become something of a Mecca for the trendy card game Duel Monsters, and while I had never set my mind to learning how to play, the cards were small, portable, and easy to flip for a pretty penny—provided you knew what you were looking for. A bump here, a flirtatious smile there, and most teenage boys never noticed they were without their decks until they made it back home.

I had ditched Ryou at the subway station on the way to class, hanging back behind a group of blue-coated schoolgirls until he had turned the corner towards the red line boarding station and casually turned the opposite direction towards the boarding platform for Domino, slipping my own uniform jacket off of my shoulders as I walked. The plain color of our uniforms, while recognizable close to home, looked somewhat ordinary in Domino and were less likely to attract attention.

It was not my first rodeo.

It was more than an hour of riding and stopping and transferring, but it was better than pre-calculous by any stretch of the imagination, so I tucked myself into a corner between an irritable-looking business man and a man who may well have been homeless, but for the moment was only sleeping.

And there I sat, thinking and fidgeting and pawing at the gold ring dangling at my chest for comfort.

As time wore on, fewer riders began to board and more riders departed, schoolchildren bustled off for fear of being tardy, professionals hurried off to important meetings with briefcases in hand. Travel hours seemed to very strictly end after the 9 A.M. business day had begun. Soon it was only my drowsy companion and I, lazing about the car, waiting for something noteworthy to happen.

The bum appeared to be stirring, maybe a bit hungover, maybe just a bit beat-down in general. He stared at me with glassy eyes, seeming disoriented and dangerous all at once.

My heart began to pound, reverberating against the Ring resting there. Abruptly, the thought entered my head: Get off of the car.

It wasn't a feeling of dread or unease. It wasn't necessarily even a concern I would have applied words to. The thought felt foreign and strange, even though it aligned with my apprehensions. It only served to disarm me more.

Get off of the car, I couldn't help thinking again.

And suddenly I was left with the sinking realization that it was too late. It was too late to get off the train and it was too late to run.

The man was rising now, tottering as the car shook along the track, reaching up to grasp at the hand holds dangling from the ceiling, and as the lights flickered and faded through the subway tunnel, he seemed to jump forward rather than walk. It was as if every time I blinked, he had simply transported his body a few feet closer without ever taking a step.

"That's an awful big hunk of gold," he thought aloud, appearing just a few feet from me, "for such a tiny neck."

The lights flickered one final time. It was only just long enough for me to meet his eyes.

And I screamed.

And he lunged.

I remember very clearly the feeling of his hand at my chest. I remember the ripping way his fingers clawed at me. I remember the painful jerk of my head snapping back and only the force of the cord wrapped in his hand had kept me upright.

But when I fell backwards, the whole of my weight resting on the cord, his hand had slid down the taught leather and only the very tips of his ungloved fingers touched the outer gold circle of the Ring.

They touched them only just for a second.

And I felt the heart-sinking fear of falling backwards into sleep, but never actually landing in the abyss of dreams. I only felt the falling.

And as my body lurched upward, seeking for a handhold, looking for a savior, I saw a flash of white. It was the sort of dead shade of white that adorned Ryou's head, blurred into a streak of bronze.

A deep, rumbling voice filled my head, and my chest, and my stomach. It reverberated from outside and within me. It laughed in loud, echoing guffaws, and it said, "Oh, little thief, do you hear me now?"