2. He Used to be a Lovely Boy

Time to leave this town,
Now your dreams have all let you down;
No-one here will miss you, no.
Time to wake up and look around.

-- From He Used to be a Lovely Boy by Keane

Ryou stood by the counter, seemingly trying to decide between café-au-lait, cappuccino and espresso, but his eyes were darting everywhere except the list on the wall-mounted chalkboard. Anyone who paid him more than precursory attention would have been able to tell that while his body was relaxed, it was a forced pose. His shoulders were held level by the invisible spirit-gauge he'd installed at the base of his neck; his hands fixed in a half-curl that was neither straight-palmed fear nor a claw-fingered almost-fists. His long hair wasn't quite unkempt, but had a windswept look that was actually cultivated so he could hide his expression behind it just by tipping his head forward slightly.

"Hey, buddy," said a fat man behind him, who could practically balance his tray on his stomach without using his hands. "Move it or lose it." To emphasise, he bumped the tray against Ryou's arm.

Ryou made his selection without even looking at the board, retreated to a table in the far corner and emptied packet after packet of sugar into it, also without looking. His hands worked tirelessly, his gaze caught by the sight of the ship docked outside the third-floor café window.

In an hour, I'll be on that, he thought, tearing a particularly stubborn packet with his teeth and dumping it into his mug with unerring accuracy. His ticket burned in his pocket and his passport cried out from his backpack. He was travelling light for an easier, quicker getaway. It's better this way.

"Who are you trying to convince – me or you? And why on earth did you choose coffee? Like you need caffeine to make you any more on edge?"

Ryou didn't flinch. He was long used to voices nobody else could hear – or rather, two voices nobody else could hear. Still, two or two hundred, it was enough to land him in a psychiatric ward. Ryou's head was more than a little crowded these days, and he took no comfort in the fact that he wasn't just stark raving bonkers.

"Stop being mopey," chastised this voice. "You're making me depressed."

"I'm making you depressed?" he muttered. He still hadn't got the hang of talking to the voices in his head. They heard his thoughts if he wasn't careful, but mostly he clung to actually speaking back, like a thin rope tether of his sanity trying to hold up the ten-ton anchor of reality.

The voice was silent for a long moment. "You didn't have to leave, you know."

"I did. Do. I have to, I mean. It's not safe if I stay. Not now."

"I can keep you safe. You don't have to give up your whole life because of this."

He didn't have the heart to point out that Duellist Kingdom had proved he wasn't safe anywhere, no matter how hard anyone tried to help him. Yuugi drove out the Spirit of the Ring with magic; Honda threw the damnable thing off a castle; and Ryou himself had tried to tear it off when he awoke one day to find it back around his neck. None of it had worked. When the cuts healed, he'd have scars where the pins dug in, refusing to let him go, as though they had a life of their own.

And perhaps they did.

But then again so did Ryou, and no way was he going to waste it being the pawn of some evil … thing. He still wasn't sure what to call whatever it was that inhabited the Ring. If his pain and anguish hadn't melded with its evil magic and punched a hole through to the spirit world, he still wouldn't be sure it was even there at all and not just a product of his own addled mind. When the Spirit was trying to possess him before it had been insidious, making him think he was just passing out from low blood sugar or exhaustion and then doing terrible things with his body as its tool. Now, however, he knew different. He knew it was there and what it wanted, and he'd learned to read the signs that it was on the attack.

He also knew how to read the writing on the wall. Graffitied across it this time was the very clear order that if he valued the friends he'd made in Domino he'd get the hell out of there and not come back until he wasn't playing host to the spirits of a malevolent piece of jewellery and his dead little sister.

"I fought off the bloody thing before," Amane said, trying to be reassuring. "I can keep you safe, I promise. Don't do this to yourself, Ryou." Ryou had an impression of her hand on his shoulder and knew that if he turned around he'd feel another lump in his throat because she wouldn't really be there. "You were so lonely before you got here. I was watching you from the other side – I saw how grieving for me and Mum made you so isolated. But you have friends now. You shouldn't have to give that up -"

"I won't let it hurt anyone else," he whispered fiercely.

"So what are you planning to do?" Her tone turned snappish and exasperated. She'd been trying to talk him out of this since she first heard the thought ricocheting around inside his skull like a phantom bullet looking for an exit. "Keep running away for the rest of your life? Hide like a hermit in the mountains of some country whose language you don't even speak? Never make friends again? Never make acquaintances again? Live in the wilderness with only rocks and buzzards for company?"

"I'll think of something."

"Crazy asshole."

Ryou glanced up to see the fat man leading his equally fat wife and son away from their table next to his. He sighed and finally picked up his mug, almost spitting out what he drank the moment it touched his tongue.

"What? What?" Amane demanded, spiking all over with protective ghost-magic the way she always did when she felt the Spirit stirring. She stopped short of actually throwing herself across Ryou's consciousness, however. "I don't sense the Spirit of the Ring nearby. What frightened you?"

Ryou stuck out his tongue and rose from his chair. "I need more sugar."

"But you've had twelve already!"

"It's not sweet enough."

"You'll rot your teeth before you're forty."

"If I make it that far."

Her snappishness faded. He felt another ghostly touch, this time to his cheek, the way she always used to when she was a toddler and he pretended to read her bedtime stories when the most he could read was 'the cat sat on the mat'. Amane would never make it to forty either, but the iron resolve in her tone was that of someone much older than the thirteen she'd been when she died. "You will, Big Brother. We'll make you all better and get rid of that horrible Spirit, I promise."

Ryou shrugged. "Whatever."

"It's true! Then you can come back and tell everyone here you were a pillock who should've had more faith in his little sister."

Ryou sighed. He feigned indifference, but inside he wished she was right.