Chapter 13: Priceless
In all honesty, Yori hadn't really thought through her shadow game with the spirit of the ring. Most of it had been based on instinct, the same way she lived most of her life. So she felt extra responsible when things became worse for Ryou afterward. When she asked to borrow the ring, she was no longer playing things by ear; she had a plan. A plan with two phases.
Phase One: The Civil Approach.
Yori wasn't about to hang the ring around her neck at the risk of demonic possession, so she sat in her room, held it between both hands, focused on her bracelet, and tried to reach the spirit with her voice.
He definitely heard—she could tell because of the return snide comments he shot out—but he didn't manifest or listen to anything she tried to say.
Phase Two: The Non-Civil Approach.
She took the ring to a small studio in town where they taught glass-blowing on the weekends. After picking the lock on the door, she turned on the light in the back room.
Then she turned on the furnace.
She also gave the spirit a play-by-play of all her actions from the time she reached the studio.
"I know this is for melting glass," she said, "but it should work just as well for gold, right?"
/YOU WOULDN'T DARE,/ he screamed in her mind. The resulting headache only made what she was doing easier, and the fact that he screamed without action confirmed her suspicion that he couldn't actually do anything without a host.
She held her hand out toward the furnace. "Mmm, it's getting hot. I thought it would take longer."
/MY VESSEL MADE YOU PROMISE TO RETURN THE RING./
"About that." She shook the ring so it jangled. "I toldRyou I'd give it back because that was what made him hand it over. Not because it was true."
/YOU DON'T HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO KILL ME./
She laughed so hard she had to lean over to catch her breath.
"All it takes to kill you," she said, "is a quick toss. A toddler has what it takes."
She opened the door to the furnace. A wave of hot air billowed out.
The spirit appeared next to her. His frizzy hair looked like it had been through a lightning storm, flaring out on all sides; she'd seen a cobra with its full hood flared before, and it looked much the same.
"Cut the charade," he hissed. "You threw your bleeding heart to the shadows for a boy you'd barely had one conversation with. I've lurked in my host's mind long enough to know how soft the lot of you are. You can talk and play big all you want, but I know the overripeness of your soul."
She stepped close, bringing her harsh eyes inches from his.
"Your host," she said, "is a boy who would love a stray dog even if it chewed his leg off. He and Yuugi are a breed apart, and in your black soul, you know that. If everyone was that good, you wouldn't exist, and neither would I."
She tossed the ring in the open furnace.
"I'LL STOP HAUNTING HIM!"
She tugged on the cord she'd kept wrapped around her finger. The ring retracted like a yo-yo, barely heated.
She held it up, dangling it in front of the spirit's ashen face.
"I can get into this place at all hours." She smiled sweetly. "Next time it goes in the furnace, it doesn't come back out."
He bared his teeth at her.
But she knew he believed it.
Plan: Success.
Luckily, the ring's cord hadn't been burned by her escapades, so when she returned it to Ryou, he was none the wiser.
"Let me know if he bothers you again," she said, "and I'd be more than happy to have another heated discussion."
But after dealing with the ring, Yori still had a spirit problem. One of a completely different nature.
It went by the name of Yami.
Whenever he would pop up, her heart would start pounding—and not in an about-to-spill-tea sort of way. She learned Monster World purely because of his offer to help her with it, and although she thought the game was not bad, the company was better. She looked for excuses to talk to him at the game shop, and even when they didn't discuss anything important, she always wanted the conversations to last twice as long. He repeatedly encouraged her to take Yuugi to one of her concerts until, finally, she borrowed Reo's acoustic guitar for an evening and played a few of her original songs at home.
As she packed it back in its case, she noticed Yami studying the instrument.
"Ever held a guitar?" she asked.
He shook his head. Yuugi didn't need more invitation than that to disappear, leaving Yami in the physical world. Grandpa had already headed upstairs, so it was just the two of them.
So Yori had Yami sit on a chair while she showed him how to brace the body of the guitar on his thigh and where to put his fingers on the fretboard. She taught him an E-major chord and an A-major chord, then had him strum back and forth between them on a four-beat rhythm. She sang the first line of a song while he played, and he only fumbled once.
"See that?" She smiled. "Now you know how to play an instrument."
He chuckled, rubbing the tips of his fingers where the strings had already worn bright red grooves. She showed him the bullied fingertips of her own hand.
"I don't get to practice as much as I should," she said, "so it's a little rough. If I had my own guitar, I'd be in better shape."
"Will you get your own?"
"Eventually. I'm saving up."
He played the E chord again, smiling down at the instrument.
"When I do get one," she said, "I'll give you a real lesson."
He met her eyes. "Can you teach me to play the song you sang in the park?"
"Of course." She frowned slightly. "Why that one?"
"It resonated with me."
He handed the guitar back to her, and she settled it in the hollow of the case, closing and snapping the lid.
"That song . . ." She hesitated, heat burning in her face. But she'd already started the confession, so it was pointless to stop. "This'll sound cheesy, but I had a bad relationship once, so I stayed away from love songs. That's the first one I've written since."
He contemplated that for a moment, hands braced on his knees.
"What changed?" he asked.
"I came to Domino."
He smiled.
So as the days passed, her spirit problem got worse and worse.
The day registration for Battle City opened, Yori tagged along with Jiro to an auditorium at Domino University just after 7:00 AM. It was the place the Battle of the Bands would be held in September, and with a record deal on the line, Jiro wanted to scope out the territory ahead of time.
"Our lighting is all state-of-the-art, of course," the student showing them around explained. He gestured at the impressive control panel before him as if it fully supported his words. To Yori, it just seemed like a whole lot of buttons and switches waiting to be played with.
Jiro leaned forward, glancing between the controls and the looming glass window before them that looked out on a polished stage.
"We have a disco ball, patterned spotlights, strobe lights—you name it." The student flipped a few of the switches to illustrate, bathing the stage first in green lights, then in red. Another switch sent a white spattering of lights in a wide arc across the empty auditorium seats.
"I want to walk the stage," Jiro said.
He walked it from side to side, and then from front to back. He shaded his eyes against the lights, sweeping his gaze over the audience seats. He muttered to himself about equipment placement and visibility. At one point, he told Yori to stand front and center, and then he jumped down and moved to various places in the auditorium, yelling for her to move to the left or right as needed so that he could get a feel for the audience's view.
When he seemed satisfied, he climbed back on stage.
She raised an eyebrow. "You brought me to play Barbie since you couldn't be in two places at once?"
"Naturally," he said, not even glancing at her. He was too busy studying the rafters and squinting at the various lights suspended above the stage. After another minute, he finally met her eyes. "Well, not just that. I need your advice."
Yori tightened her ponytail. "This isn't really my area of expertise. I think it's a great place to play a show, but I couldn't tell you if it's better or worse than other venues."
"There's this girl," he said.
"Oh." She lowered her arms. "That kind of advice. I'm not great with that either."
"I've asked her out four times."
She winced, embarrassed for both him and the mystery girl. "Maybe stop asking?"
"The thing is she likes me just as much. She kissed me first, and whenever she says no to dating, she isn't mean about it. She's just . . . sad." He rubbed his shoe across a scuff on the stage. "She finally told me last night it's because of the band. Every other time, I thought. . . . Well, her family spends more on their dog than mine does on all three kids."
Yori frowned. "What's wrong with the band?"
"Her dad's famous, but he's a waste of space. He's on his fourth wife and his second rehab center. She says she can never date any guy in the entertainment business because she would spend every second worrying that he was cheating on her, among other things."
Yori gave a low whistle. Jiro continued to rub at various marks on the stage, hands in his pockets, staring at the ground.
She wished she had some kind of profound advice.
Or even semi-useful advice.
"I'm really sorry, Jiro. I'm, like, the worst person to ask about this—I have zero good relationship experience."
Even that felt like an understatement. Her relationship experience was the same kind that might be gained by falling into an open pit and surviving the spikes only to be eaten by the starving lion.
He glanced up at her. "So that guy you brought to our concert isn't your boyfriend?"
She gave a half-hearted laugh, and suddenly she was the one studying the wear and tear of the stage. If Jiro's situation was impossible, what did that make a relationship with the 3,000-year-old spirit of a pharaoh?
"Just a friend," she said. She had to swallow against the sudden tightness in her throat.
Jiro raised both eyebrows. "I know the feeling."
"It's not the same." Yori shook her head. "There's literally zero chance of a relationship with him. Less than zero. Negative zero chance."
"I know the feeling," he repeated.
Yori abandoned it as a lost cause and looked away, staring intently at the empty auditorium, at the hundreds of darkened seats. She thought of all the people who would file in for a show, fill the seats, then leave them empty again. The people would come and go over and over and over, and the seats would get more and more ragged, but they would still be there. Just sitting there. Empty.
"Something about impossible relationships," Jiro finally said. "Don't they just make you want them all the more?"
"I have to go," Yori said.
She used the tournament registration as a distraction, and for once, she was relieved not to see Yami when she saw Yuugi. His friends were upbeat, particularly Joey, which helped her push everything else to the back of her mind.
But soon enough, they were all looking at her expectantly—store clerk included—and she realized that by shoving everything to the back of her mind, she'd forgotten to make one important decision.
Whether or not she was going to compete in Battle City.
"You're up, Yor'," Joey said, jerking his thumb at the counter.
"Name?" the clerk asked, fingers poised to type.
"Um," she said. Then she shook it off. Over the last few minutes, it had become obvious she needed to register, if for one reason only. She could worry about the actual competition later.
After taking a quick breath to regain her composure, she put on a smirk. "Can you look up a rare card instead of a name?"
The clerk shrugged. "I can try. It'll probably give me a list of names, so you'll still have to tell me which one is you."
The fact that he didn't much care whether she had any proof of identity confirmed the suspicions she'd had since walking in—that and the way he kept adjusting his bandana's position on his forehead, pushing it down on his eyebrows every few minutes.
"Here's my card." She slipped Dante from its place at the top of her deck, holding it up for the clerk to see—although she stayed well out of his reach.
"Huh, you got a dragon, too." Joey tilted his head to peer at her card. "Never heard of that one."
"I haven't either," Yuugi said. "We've never had one in the store."
"Looks powerful," Ryou said. "Eight stars."
Meanwhile, the clerk's eyes grew wide and greedy. Yori stared back at him expressionlessly. He turned the computer screen for everyone to see.
"Well, this must be you, then," he said.
The name on the ID profile was "Avenging Angel." She'd expected her tournament column to be empty, but instead it said Underground Duelist. She'd been given six stars. The picture was very recent—taken just days earlier when she'd fought her first match on a Duel Field, against Yami.
Kaiba really should have marked his fields with a warning that they would gather personal information on duelists. She didn't appreciate the candid shot of herself in what had been a very private match.
"Wait a sec." Joey squinted at the image of Dante the Fire Dragon on the screen. "I ain't readin' this right. Does that say . . . one copy?"
He whirled to face her, jaw halfway to the floor.
Yuugi's jaw matched. "I knew Pegasus kept one-copy cards for his private collection, but I didn't know he ever released them to the public!"
Ryou seemed to take it best, smiling widely. "Good show! Did you win it off someone?"
"Dante has always been mine," Yori said, keeping her eyes on the clerk, "and he always will be."
The man smirked. "Confidence. That's good. You're in for quite a battle, aren't you?"
She narrowed her eyes. "You tell me."
"Oh, I wouldn't know." He waved his hands carelessly. "I'm no duelist myself. I just enjoy watching the professionals."
No duelist—that she believed. But he'd sure rattled off the prices on rare cards with ease. And Dante would be worth more than everything he'd mentioned, possibly even combined.
The man slid a Duel Disk box across the counter to her and adjusted his bandana once more on his eyebrows. "You kids enjoy the tournament."
Yori slid Dante back into her deck pouch, snapped it shut, and tucked the white box under her arm. She felt the clerk's eyes follow her until she was out of view.
They exited the shop into sunlight, passing the guard who might possibly have been dozing standing up, and all the way down the street, Joey kept gaping at Yori.
"Maybe we should get some brunch," Ryou suggested. "There's a café just down—"
"Duel me!" Joey shouted, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk, pointing at Yori.
"You can't have my dragon," Yori said flatly.
His eyes bugged in his head. "You're gonna ante it up to every duelist in the city next week, but you won't let me take an early crack at it?!"
"Joey . . ." Yuugi said, looking a little sheepish.
Yori narrowed cold eyes on him. "Why don't you just trade me straight across? My Dante for your Red-Eyes?"
The fact that he hesitated made her expression soften.
"Cards are personal," she said. "It doesn't have anything to do with the number of copies or the attack power."
"I know that," he ground out, "but . . . man! Just once, I thought I was top of something."
"We could thumb wrestle if you want." She smirked. "You might come out on top."
"Eh, shut up."
"So . . ." Ryou pointed to a side street. "Brunch?"
"Sounds good to me," Yuugi said.
They all headed to Ryou's café. Yuugi insisted on the meal being his treat to celebrate everyone registering for the tournament. Joey ate enough for three people while Yori was still insisting that just a bubble tea was enough for her.
"I just don't have much of an appetite today," she said.
"The idea of Battle City is quite nerve-wracking," Ryou said. "This will be my first big tournament, too. And with holograms no less."
She managed a smile. "You'll do great."
After eating, Ryou and Yuugi headed out early, saying they had to meet Anzu and Tristan for a mangaka fansign event. When Yori asked Joey why he wasn't going, he said his sister was having eye surgery in the morning and he'd promised to spend the night in the hospital with her. Despite the serious news, there was a light of anticipation in his eyes.
"You guys close?" Yori asked, fishing her straw around to catch the three pearls left in her cup.
"She keeps me going," he said.
"We all need someone like that." She tossed her empty cup in the trash and reclined in her seat, eyes on the sky.
After a minute or two of silence, she said, "I don't know if I'm going to participate in Battle City."
"Yeah, I kind of wondered."
She sat up in surprise. He had on a type of smirk she'd never seen him wear around Yuugi. It was a familiar expression—she wore it herself most days.
"You're the free-spirit type, ain'tcha?"
"Not exactly what I would call it," she said.
"Call it what you will." He shrugged. "You fight things on your own turf with your own stakes. Organized tourney is a scary thing."
"You're street, too?" She raised her eyebrows. Not to be insulting, but she wouldn't have tagged him for it. He seemed too reckless, too carefree, and sometimes just plain too dumb.
"Used to be." He stretched his arms over his head, reaching for the clouds. He yawned. "Me an' Tristan."
Tristan made more sense. He still had the wary aura.
"Yuug's the one turned us around," Joey continued.
Yori smiled. "No surprise there."
"He's one of a kind," Joey said seriously. "Tristan and I used to bully him. Me especially. The way he smiled at everyone—the bullies, the jerk teachers, the lowlifes—it pissed me off big time. The guy had no friends, no parents, no money, no grades higher than a C, and he was still all smiles all the time. It made me realize how ugly I was inside. So I finally took what was most precious to him, a piece of the Millennium Puzzle he'd been working for years to finish, and I chucked it out a window where he couldn't find it."
Yori's eyes widened—not because there was any surprise about Yuugi's character, but because she almost couldn't believe the surprise about Joey's.
"Yeah, I know, right?" Joey said, noting her expression. "I was a piece of work. And I got what was comin' to me; there was this big hall monitor at school, a real hulking guy, cornered me and Tristan for bullyin'. Gave us the beatin' of a lifetime. But halfway through, Yuugi shows up, and he steps right in front of both of us and says, 'Don't hurt my friends.'"
"Of course he would," Yori whispered, picking at the edge of the table. She could hear Yami's words again: "Yuugi extends friendship to those anyone else would turn away." And her soul felt the truth in why Joey had bullied Yuugi because sometimes when she looked at Yuugi, she felt keenly how much ugliness was inside her, too. He was someone who would defend a bully; she was someone who would throw a soul in a furnace.
"The hall monitor was a piece of work, too," Joey said, "and he went, 'Your friends? Then you're in this with them,' and he started beatin' Yuugi just as bad."
He sucked in a breath, blew it out slowly. There was a shine in his eyes.
"Sometimes," he went on, voice hoarse, "I still can't believe it. There he was. This little guy that barely came up to my knee—the geek that even geeks picked on. And he was takin' a beating for me. And I ain't done a thing to deserve it." He shook his head. "So me an' Tristan changed that day. We never talked about it 'cause there's some stuff you don't gotta say out loud. When a guy like Yuugi wants to be your friend, you don't pass that up, and you don't ask questions; you just take it. Whatever it takes, you take it."
Yori bit the inside of her cheek to keep her eyes from betraying her.
Then Joey's eyes were locked on hers, sharp and intense. "I don't know much about this tournament, but I know something's up. I know Yuugi's fightin' for something important. So even though I'm participatin' for my own selfish reasons, I'll fight for his, too. And if it comes down to it, if that's what it takes, I'll put his first."
He stood, pushed his chair in with his foot, and grinned at her. "So, you know, do what you gotta do, and don't pass this up. That's what I'm sayin'."
Then he left.
And she sat alone at an empty table.
After a while, she pulled out her Dante the Fire Dragon card, staring at it. She knew what Yuugi would be fighting for in Battle City—the three god monsters and Yami's memories. If she joined the fight, she would risk losing part of the only identity she had. If she stayed out of it and let them fight alone, she would risk losing the new identity she was building.
And either way, the longer she stayed in Domino, the more she was already losing herself to a relationship that could never end well.
She replaced Dante in her deck and left the café.