Chapter 11.

Decision Time.

With a slight sense of foreboding, Yugi helped Jonouchi carry bags of junk food and a crate of beer up the stairs to his freshly decorated kitchen. Why on earth he had let Jonouchi talk him into throwing a party was beyond him. But he had warned Jonouchi not to invite any of the guys from the warehouse at the docks where he worked – a couple of them had bad reputations. This was to be a get together for close friends and family only.

Although he was a hot head, who frequently acted before thinking, Jonouchi held Yugi in the highest regard and would never go against his friend's wishes. "It will be all good Yugi, I promise. I know I said we should have a party, but I only invited my sis, Mai, Honda, Bakura and Otogi. I asked Mokuba too and he said he would come. But I didn't ask stingy old moneybags."

Yugi could not help but laugh at that. "I doubt he would come anyway."

Jonouchi was about to dump the crate of beer on the brand new, shiny kitchen work surface, but Yugi stopped him by shrieking. "Not on there! You'll scratch it!" Jonouchi jumped at his friend's sudden outburst and quickly snatched the crate back up.

Embarrassed for yelling, Yugi scratched the back of his head with one hand and pointed at an old, fold out table he had found in the back of the store, with the other "Can you put it on there please?"

Jonouchi looked at where Yugi was pointing Even though he figured it would take more than a plastic crate to damage the durable work surface, he nodded and did as Yugi had asked.

Grinning sheepishly, he then inspected the work surface. "See! No damage done."

Yugi decided not to mention it again. Instead, he turned his focus to placing the bags of crisps and other unhealthy snacks they had purchased onto the work surface. "Do you think all this stuff will be enough?"

"Hey! Watch they don't scratch!" Jonouchi teased.

Yugi rolled his eyes at his friend. "Well... the plastic beer crate was on the ground earlier, so it might have picked up gravel or something. That's why I didn't want it put on here." He patted his pristine work surface.

"I get it Yug! But ya didn't have ta yell at me like that!" He started laughing, but Yugi did not really see the humour. Jonouchi had not just spent several hundred thousand Yen on a bespoke kitchen.

Seeing the irritation on Yugi's face made Jonouchi backtrack. If his little pal got angry about something, then you knew you had fucked up! "Sorry dude. What ya sayin makes sense. Anyway, about the beer: I told everyone to bring some booze or whatever they drink," he said, surveying the beer and cola they had purchased.

Yugi nodded. "What about the food?"

Jonouchi turned around to look at the mound of snacks. Scratching his chin in thought, he shrugged. To be honest, he could probably scoff all of that himself if he wanted. "Mai said she would bring some more stuff over to cook in your new oven.."

Yugi nodded, leaned the work top and looked around the room. It suddenly occurred to him that hey did not have anything for people to sit on.

::::::::::::

After a totally crazy, awesome day, Anzu was buzzing. She had spent the morning being interviewed. Her knowledge had been thoroughly tested, but thanks to her excellent schooling at Juilliard, she had survived. She had also been asked to dance some tough, set routines. It was nerve racking, but she rose to the challenge.

She had done her best and all she could do now was sit and wait with the other shortlisted hopefuls, and hope. But she felt quietly confident.

Harri had also been called back for the second interview and Anzu was pleased for him. He was probably the only friend she had in this city now.

When a lady with a clip board walked into the room, all the hopefuls sat up straight and tensed nervously. The room was so full of nervous anticipation that you could literally smell it.

Anzu had never chewed her finger nails, but right now, she could have chewed them all the way down to the knuckles. She kept her hands clenched and folded in her lap, just in case she actually did!

When her name was the first to be called out as a successful applicant, she could not quite believe it. "Oh! My god!" She gasped breathlessly and clasped her hands to her face in disbelief. Some of the other hopefuls congratulated her while others just sat there looking worried.

Her mind tuned out all surrounding noise as she sat in dazed euphoria. She had made it! Out of more than one hundred candidates, she was one of the six lucky hopefuls to have been successful in what was a very cut-throat environment.

She was now a professional dancer with the New York Ballet.

"Well done," Hari winked at her, bringing her focus back into the room. His name had yet to be called.

She reached out and squeezed his hand, willing some good fortune to go his way as well. When they got to the sixth and final place, they were starting to lose hope. They held their breath when the woman calling out the names looked at Harri and opened her mouth to speak.

When she smiled and called his name, he let out a whoop of joy. Both Anzu and Harri had made it.

The woman thanked the disappointed dancers for their time, wished them better luck next time and showed them the door.

While Anzu felt bad for them, she could not allow herself to dwell on her own good fortune over others. There was still a lot of hard work to come over the next few weeks and she needed to knuckle down and prove that they had not made a mistake by selecting her.

::::::::::::

The party was in full swing. Earlier that afternoon, they had made a quick call to Mokuba, and in no time at all, they had a large flat screen TV hanging on the wall, and a music system. The music was blasting out and the TV was showing pop videos. Yugi had offered to pay for the equipment, but Mokuba just grinned and explained it was a gift and was tax deductible anyway.

For seating, Yugi had scrounged a few fold out garden chairs and a couple of upturned buckets.

Everyone was dancing, drinking and eating the food that Mai had prepared using Yugi's new oven. There was only one person missing – Anzu.

Feeling lost without her, Yugi resorted to watching his friends.

Leaning against the wall, clutching his bottle of beer, he observed as Mai and Jonouchi danced and smooched. Jonouchi had reassured him that he had not breathed a word to anyone about the engagement, but Yugi was fairly sure he had told Mai. He doubted they would keep it to themselves once they had consumed a few drinks.

Ryuji Otogi had turned up with six eager young women. He claimed they were all his girlfriends, but much to his consternation they seemed more interested in Ryou Bakura than they were him. Yugi smirked, and watched as the girls surrounded poor Ryou and started pawing at him. Two of them had hold of his arms and were trying to get him to dance with them. But still he resisted.

Having lost out to Bakura, Otogi was now resorting to competing against Honda for Shizuka's attention.

Yugi chuckled to himself, because Jonouchi had not even noticed that his sister was actively flirting with her two admirers.

He suddenly found himself joined by Seto Kaiba, who, by some miracle Mokuba had managed to drag along with him. "I presume I paid for that?" He had a half smirk on his face.

"Huh?!" Yugi was only half listening and did not quite grasp what he was on about at first, and then noticed Seto was gesturing at the sixty inch screen and the surround sound system. "Oh! Yeah..." He scratched his head. "I can pay for it if you like?"

Seto shrugged. "No. It's okay. But I will kill Mokuba... slowly, for not asking me first." Yugi knew he was only joking by the smirk etched on his face. He chuckled in response.

Seto took a long drink from his bottle of his beer. "Congratulations by the way. Mokuba told me you and Anzu are getting married," he stated blandly.

Yugi spat his own mouthful of beer out. It seemed that Jonouchi may have already blabbed to Mokuba – must have been when they were setting up the TV. This was bad. It was only a matter of time before one of them contacted Anzu. "Shit! Who else knows?"

Seto shrugged and gestured towards Jonouchi. "Everyone is about to find out right now, unless you can shut that moron up."

Yugi's jaw dropped. Jonouchi was muting the music to make an announcement. He yelled out to Jonouchi not to, but it was too late; he was already telling everyone.

Yugi sweat dropped. "I need to call Anzu." Not giving anyone the chance to congratulate him, he legged it to his bedroom and locked the door.

Leaning his back against it, he groaned.

Trying to collect himself, he checked his watch. He had a rough idea of Anzu's schedule and knew she would probably be at the gym today. But would she have her phone with her? Hopefully, he could reach her before she started receiving messages congratulating her on her engagement to him.

Ignoring the confused shouts being aimed at him from the other side of the door, he dialled her number, only for it to go to straight to voicemail.

He left a rather desperate message and pleaded with her to call him as soon as possible?

::::::::::::

Having survived the selection process, the six successful dancers were briefed about company rules and regulations and then given contracts to sign. They were also issued with staff identity cards and standard company leotards and tights – which they had to pay for.

They were then sent home for the day and asked to come back in three days time to start training and rehearsals.

Three days? Anzu felt a knot forming in her stomach. She had hoped the starting date would not be for another two to four weeks – to allow for people to work notice periods etc... But if she was starting in three days, it would mean she was going to have to tell Yugi that she could not go to Germany with him.

All she could do was hope that he would understand and not be too upset with her.

Grabbing her bag, she pulled her phone out and turned it on.

Harri approached her. "Hey! Fancy coming to celebrate? A couple of the guys suggested of getting something to eat."

Until she had spoken to Yugi, she did not feel very much like socialising. But she did not want to go home to her lonely flat to eat beans on toast either.

She smiled awkwardly and hummed in thought as she tried to decide what to do. She was about to speak when her phone started vibrating and pinging like crazy, as several messages all came through, distracting her.

Harri laughed. "Someone's popular!"

"Yeah..." She glanced at the first one and caught the word 'congratulations'.

Raising a puzzled eyebrow, she wondered how they all could have known about the second audition, because she had not told anyone.

But when she opened and read the message properly, which was from Shizuka, her mouth fell open in surprise. "Engagement?!" She gasped. For some reason, everyone thought she and Yugi were officially engaged to be married. What on earth was going on?

"I'm sorry Harri. I need to go. I.. er, have to work tonight." Maybe Yugi could throw some light onto what was going on.

Concerned that she was acting a bit strangely, Harri ran after her. "Hey! You alright? Only, you look like you've seen a ghost."

Anzu let out a funny, manic sounding laugh. "My friends all think Yugi and me are engaged to be married!"

He raised an eyebrow. "And I take it you're not?" He had a huge grin on his face that reminded her of Jonouchi.

"It's not funny Harri! I will kill Jonouchi. I bet it was him that has been spreading the rumour." It had to be him since he was the only one stupid enough to start a silly rumour like this.

"Who's Jonouchi?"

"Oh! Katsuya Jonouchi. He's Yugi's best friend but he can be a real idiot sometimes."

Harri shrugged. "Well, if you wanna talk about it, I'm all ears?" He tugged on his ears and went cross eyed to make her laugh.

Anzu let out a squeal of laughter. Blushing, she clamped her hands over her mouth and flushed with embarrassment at her outburst. "You're such a dork Harri!" She scolded.

"Me? Dork?" He replied, innocently. "I cheered you up, didn't I?" Anzu shook her head and rolled her eyes.

"Look! I really would love to come for a meal with you all, but I should get home. I need to speak to Yugi. I have something important to tell Yugi and this engagement rumour is making it more complicated."

"Isn't it the middle of the night in Japan? Come for the meal and then you can ring him later, when he's awake," Harri persisted.

"It's actually about five in the morning. And no, this can't wait! It will serve him right if I wake him up."

Harri looked surprised. "Don't you want to be engaged to him?" Did that mean he had a chance with her?

"Actually..." Anzu looked thoughtful. "I do. But we talked about it and agreed to wait a couple of years."

"Are you sure it isn't all just a misunderstanding? Maybe Yugi doesn't even know about it."

Anzu snorted. She had her suspicions as to what might have happened. Yugi wasn't always as innocent as he pretended to be. Whenever he wanted to stir things up a little, he would tell Jonouchi something in so called 'confidence', but being a blabbermouth Jonouchi would broadcast it. Of course, Yugi knew his friend would blab, which was probably why he told Jonouchi in the first place. The pair of them together could be a nightmare sometimes. But why would Yugi do something like that? It didn't make sense.

"Oh, yeah... It's a mistake alright. Just you wait until I get my hands on them." It was not that she was upset about the idea of getting engaged to Yugi, she was annoyed because an engagement was a serious commitment between two people who were in love. It was not something that should be taken so lightly and made into a joke.

Running home, she dashed up the stairs to her apartment, closed the door and threw her shoes and bag into a corner.

Composing herself, she read through all of the messages properly. From what she could gather, it appeared that last night they had a party, where it was announced, without her even being there! "Nice one Yugi!" She grumbled. He really should be have been a bit tougher with Jonouchi, and stopped him from spreading gossip.

Shaking her head in dismay, she dialled her voicemail and listened to Yugi's message.

He sounded a bit desperate, and drunk. He kept apologising and saying it wasn't his fault. He didn't often swear but she was surprised to hear him curse under his breath.

The rumour had obviously spread quickly and Yugi had been caught up in the gossip and unable to stop it.

As the phone rang, she found herself thinking that maybe an engagement might not be a bad idea after all. Perhaps she should suggest it as a way of softening the blow of her not going to Germany.

The phone rang for a bit and then a rather gruff voice answered. He did not sound amused at being woken up. Still, hadn't he always told her that she could ring him any time, night or day? And she was too uptight for this to wait.

::::::::::::

Yugi had not gone to bed until gone three, and had basically crashed on a sleeping mat in his unfurnished bedroom.

The ringing phone startled him awake. He swiped his arm out to turn it off, but knocked it and it skidded across the floor. Grunting, he crawled over and picked it up. For a moment he considered throwing it at his newly painted wall. But then he saw who was ringing him.

"Anzu!" He barked.

"Yugi! Is that you?" He sounded rather hoarse and irritable.

"Yes! What time is it?"

"Oh! Sorry if I woke you. But you did say I could ring anytime."

"Yeah... sorry. I got to sleep late. I guess you're calling about the rumour?" He sounded almost resigned to a beating.

Anzu let out a nervous laugh. Where to start. "Yes. I have seen messages about our engagement." She had not intended to sound pithy, but unfortunately, she did.

Her tone made him cringe. "I'm sorry." He was tired, he was thirsty and his head felt full of wood. And from her tone, he knew he was in for some stern questioning. "It wasn't me who started it. Jonouchi just assumed..." Trailing off, he squirmed. He did not intentionally wish to drop Jonouchi in it, but she was bound to guess anyway.

In response, she gave a stilted little snort. "You don't have to worry. I already guessed he was responsible," she rolled her eyes for her own benefit. "Trust him to start rumours about us getting married. What happened, exactly? I want the truth."

Yugi cringed but stuck up for his friend. "He didn't mean any harm. He wanted to throw a party and it kinda snowballed from there. Are you angry?"

"No. Not angry. I've just had a busy day and wasn't expecting something like this." There was a note of nervousness creeping into her voice and he was not sure how to proceed.

An awkward moment of silence hung in the air as each of them tried to think of what to say next.

It was Yugi who spoke first. "Well, I'm sorry it had to happen like that. It isn't quite how I imagined us getting engaged." He let out a sigh. "I was freaking out last night. I thought you would want to kill me."

She sighed in response to his sigh. "I probably should kill you all," she tutted. "But now I'm over the shock, I think that maybe we should get engaged. What do you think?"

He was not sure if his hearing was playing tricks on him. He perked up a bit. "You do? Y... yeah...!" He hesitated slightly.

She took his pause as a cue to continue talking. "I know I said I wanted to wait a few years, but it would show that we have made a commitment to one another. I doesn't mean we have to rush to get married."

"Y.. yeah... sure," Even though he could not see her, he nodded thoughtfully. "But let's not make it an official engagement just yet. Can we talk about it while we're in Germany?"

Anzu was worried by his hesitancy. Perhaps he did not want to get engaged and was trying to put her off the idea. "Are you okay Yugi? I mean... My suggestion is okay, isn't it?"

"Yeah..." it sounded forced. "Of course it is." He scowled at himself for being so vague. His plan to go down on one knee and make a romantic proposal was in danger of being spoiled. "I just think we should wait until we meet up in Germany before we make any decisions. I kind of have something nice planned for your birthday."

Anzu did not really know how to answer. With everything that had been going on, she had forgotten that her birthday was a couple of days before the Germany weekend. She should have realised that he would be planning a special surprise for her.

But, she was not going to Germany. How was she supposed to tell him without breaking his heart?

She opened her mouth to speak but no words came out.

He knotted his eyebrows in puzzlement at her silence. "Anzu? Are you still there?"

"Erm.. Yes. I. I've got some...good news." She sounded so choked up that it sounded anything but good news. She paused again and she heard him humming in anticipation of what she had to say. There was no easy way, she realised. This was the moment where she was going to have to punch him in the gut by telling him she was not going to Germany with him. And rather than announce their engagement, they would probably be announcing that they had split up.

But she could not put it off. She had to tell him. "I need to tell you something..." She cleared her throat. "Well..." God, she was making a pigs ear of this.

"What's wrong Anzu?" He asked, tentatively. His voice was so full of concern, it was breaking her.

"Well, you know the audition I went for the other week?"

"Which one?"

Oh! That's right. When they last spoke, she had told him the New York Ballet one was not looking hopeful. She had also called him when she was upset and angry about the strip club audition, and she had vented all her frustration on him about it.

"The New York Ballet. They finally got back to me and told me I was on the shortlist. And... I went back today. I got it Yugi! I got a place with the New York Ballet!" Before she could continue, Yugi whooped with delight.

"That's awesome! But why are you so worried about telling me? It's your dream job! It's what you've been working so hard for.."

"Yeah...it is," she bit her lip. "There's only one problem..." The pause made Yugi nervous. What problem could that be?

And then the bomb was dropped on him. "I start in three days, which means I can't go to Germany." There followed a stunned silence from Yugi, while Anzu squirmed and apologised profusely.

However, no amount of apologising could make up for the disappointment he was feeling right now.

He wanted to shout at her. He wanted to tell her how she had just got his hopes up by suggesting they actually do get engaged, only to rip his heart out and trample all over his self esteem.

But being Yugi, he swallowed his emotions and stayed silent. He had no right to tell her she could not accept her dream job. As he had just told her – it was what she had worked so hard for.

He tried to find his voice; to tell her he was happy for her and that she should not feel bad for letting him down. They could get together another time, couldn't they? But all that came out was a rather choked sounding "Hey! I'm cool." What a stupid thing to say. He was anything but cool.

She started crying. "Yugi? Are you sure..?" Talk about rubbing salt in his wounds.

"Yeah... You've worked hard for this. Don't worry about me. Look! I gotta go, speak soon."

He could hear her sniffing and he felt cowardly but he could not deal with the emotions right now. He hung up before he lost it and said something he might regret.

Throwing his phone across the room, he swore and buried his face in his hands before letting out an angry, frustrated, tearful roar.

Anzu was left listening to the ring tone. Her whole world was so up in the air and it was crippling her. She had just found her dream job but it looked like her relationship with Yugi was the price she had to pay for that dream. Was it worth it? She doubted she was the first to be forced to make difficult choices, but it still stung.

She grabbed a cushion, hugged it and had a good sob.

::::::::::::

Two weeks later, Yugi found himself thinking about it on his flight to Germany.

After a good cry, he had calmed down and called her back. They had talked it through on video chat, and he had re-assured her that she must not feel guilty about Germany. She had dreamed of dancing with the New York Ballet for years and there was no way in a million years he would suggest she turn it down. Not that she would anyway; it would be foolish to turn down such an opportunity.

After much soul searching, Yugi had suggested they put any thoughts of their engagement on hold for now. They both had far too many work commitments at the moment and neither of them felt that they could give very much time to their relationship. They would remain the closest of friends and if they were both still single in a year or so, then they would evaluate their feelings and take it from there.

They were both sad about it, but if they truly loved each other and it was meant to be, then one day they would get married. But until then, they were free to do as they pleased.

Gazing through the window, he could see a ship loaded with hundreds of shipping containers, bound for... wherever. He knew it must be a massive ship, but from up here it looked tiny against the vast blue ocean it was floating on.

He felt a bit like that ship, cast adrift on the vast ocean. The only difference was, the ship had a destination, whereas his final destination was still unknown. Showing his game at Gamescom was but one step on that path towards his goal. But what was the point of pushing himself to be so successful if he had no one to enjoy it with?

He suddenly found himself wishing Atem was still here. Shouldering his burdens had always seemed so much easier when Atem's spirit was with him.

But Atem was not here to help him work out what he should do. He would have to do that on his own. And on such a long flight, he had plenty of time to think about it.

Well, that ended on a sad note! I do put the characters through the mill, don't I?