I do not own YGO! DUEL MONSTERS.

"What?" Yami asked surprised.

"I don't want to go to the hospital," Mana repeated confidently before fixing her eyes on Yūgi and smiling.

Mana parted her lips again to add something else, but Yūgi interrupted her unintentionally.

"Hm? Did she say something?" Yūgi questioned, moving his eyes from side to side, perhaps looking for her.

However, he soon stopped with a shrug and a slight sigh.

Yami recalled, then, that Yūgi couldn't see or hear her without the Puzzle hanging from his neck.

Relaxing his shoulders and at a moderate pace, Yami walked to the nightstand next to his bed and took the ancient object in his hands. And, although he still felt doubtful about Yūgi's feelings, he didn't think about it anymore when he threw the Puzzle straight into his hands.

As he could, and reacting in a surprised way, Yūgi caught the pendant alone from the chain and looked directly at Yami. He could only nod at the same time that Mana floated next to him and then back to Yūgi's side.

"Why don't you want to go?" Yūgi asked once he had heard the whole story from both sides.

Yūgi had taken a seat on the bed while Yami decided to use his desk chair; Mana, on the other hand, remained alarmingly distant and with her body supported —if it could be said that way— on the windowsill facing outwards.

She took her time to respond, frowning and biting her lower lip as if she were looking for the exact words that could accurately describe her thoughts and emotions.

Then, after what seemed to be hours of silence, but they were only distracted seconds, Mana took a breath and then exhaled.

"Everything is... confusing," she said barely audible and leisurely. Then she put her hands to her head and avoided looking at them. "Everything. Everything is confusing. So far I have been able to remember most of the things. About my family, about my studies, my passions and my past, but there is something... obstructed. Yes. Something that doesn't want to be unlocked no matter how much I try."

"Something like what?" Yami ventured to ask, slowly rising from his chair and approaching with an outstretched arm toward Mana, however he never dared to touch her.

Mana looked up at him. Her eyes weren't watery or tormented, but she seemed distressed enough to explode at any next time.

She swallowed and her hands, previously perched on her hair, went down into her arms. Hugging herself and looking back at nothing, as if she wasn't accompanied by both brothers.

Feeling alone, Yami noticed in a second that he shared a look with Yūgi.

"The accident..." she confessed after a while in silence. "You talked about an accident, but I don't remember any of that. The last thing... The last thing I know is that I was at the arts academy, looking for someone, meeting that person and then... And then..." she shook her head and looked at him. "And then everything is blurry and confusing. Like a fog that prevents me from seeing more than a meter from my nose."

"Mana..." both brothers tried to stop her, but she seemed to be in a world far away from them.

"... And I know… I only know that if I find myself… That if I am again the" me' alive, of flesh and blood, I will continue as I am… confused and without memories of what happened," she looked up at Yūgi and then turned to Yami. "I also know —My goodness, I also know that it wasn't just an accident."

Yami frowned and looked at his younger twin brother with the same expression of misunderstanding on his face. Of course, both had suspected that it wasn't a simple accident. Things were too complicated for everything to be a clumsy misstep, but none had a certainty to tell Mana so lightly.

And then she simply said it.

"I never go from side to side with all my canvases in my arms," she explained. "Especially since I had no reason to do so. The canvases stay in the same room where you are so that they are not ruined and are treated with great care when being moved from one place to another. Don't you think it would be silly and reckless of me to come and go with so many canvases on top? How could I take the entire collection I would present at the exhibition?! They weren't even complete!"

"But, according to Yami, it didn't seem strange to your family that you fell, if that was the case," Yūgi objected, putting himself on the side of coincidences.

Mana shook her head.

"I bet my brother and Ishizu are just saying the same thing so that no one suspects anything. If we could talk to them—"

"We can," Yami interrupted her confidently. "Granps must know a way to call them, and it seems that they have been interested in us since we said we met you during the winter. But..."

"But?" Yūgi looked at him.

Yami brought a hand to his chin and rubbed it carelessly.

"They think we are only interested in that Atem," he said aloud. "It would be weird to suddenly arrive and ask for Mana knowing the state she is in."

"It would be weird if it were us, huh..."

"Only it doesn't have to be us," Yūgi said after thinking for a few seconds.

Both Yami and Mana looked at him in confusion. Who else, apart from them, could go?

"Yugi?" Yami wanted to know.

Yūgi smiled bitterly at him and took his cell phone from his pocket before turning it on.

Rare, thought Mana and Yami at the same time. It was weird that it was off being the time it was.

In silence, Yūgi dialed something on the mobile device and then it rang and vibrated again and again, as if the sender of the messages was an insistent and desperate person.

Yūgi only sighed in response before showing the screen to both viewers.

There were many, many messages from Téa followed one after another even if they were only a two-word phrase after two more words.

The most had to do with Mana and her relationship with both twins. Or who was Mana. Or why Mana.

In short, Téa was looking for the answers to her questions in Yūgi.

"Yugi, you don't have to—" Mana began knowing what the idea would entail.

Yūgi waved his hand contemptuously.

"Don't bother," he interrupted. "She has been trying to communicate with me since, well... you know. I can't ignore her forever."

"Yūgi..." this time it was Yami who tried. "Are you sure? Téa is—"

"A little unstable? Probably, but this is the most effective solution I can think of. In addition, sooner or later we would have to see each other in the face and she doesn't even know what is happening."

"But she—"

"I'll go with her and make her leave her cell phone in call mode so we can hear what they say. I'll explain the circumstances superficially and she will do the rest," he smiled. "She's not crazy, guys, she's a good person completely in love."

The tone he used made it look like he was joking, but both Mana and Yami noticed that it was only a facade. That it was difficult for Yūgi to face everything so quickly.

And they didn't have the strength to oppose his courage.

Mana shot Yami a desperate look to stop his brother. It wasn't fair that, for her, he had to do things that way: so rushed and straightforward, but Yami only shook his head consciously of his brother's facade that, far from being just a facade, he tried to show that he didn't need to be protected. That he could protect too.

He wanted them to trust him.

"I'll leave it in your care, then."

Once Yūgi's impromptu idea was agreed upon, the hardest thing for the youngest Mutō came after he heard about Yami and Téa.

And that was to call her.

He wasn't as strong as he looked and he was really terrified of getting into a nervous breakdown from just seeing or hearing her, but he knew he wasn't so crazy after half-calming down with a couple of deep breaths.

He took the cell phone in his hands and looked at the screen a few seconds before pressing the button needed to make the call.

It rang only once before Téa's sharp voice answered.

"Hi? Yūgi?" she said on the other side of the line.

He took a breath again and threw it out his nose.

"Hello, Téa," he said with a half smile without relevance. "Tell me, would you mind helping me with something?"

And then he explained what they would do.

Meanwhile, Yami and Mana could only wait sitting in the dining room. Yami's fingers drummed rhythmically against the table at the same time as Mana kept a sepulchral silence.

Yami's amethyst eyes landed on the thoughtful Mana a couple of seconds before he looked away remembering what Yūgi had said:

«I'm glad you like her.»

For the moment, his mind had been occupied by other things that overshadowed youth romance, but now, in silence and being alone with nothing special in mind —at least on his part—, he had become terribly conscious of the presence of the messy hair girl.

She, at the time, noticed his gaze when she raised her chin toward him. Her greenish eyes also studied him, in silence, with a special glow of thanks and something else he couldn't distinguish.

"Hey, Yami," she called after a while.

"Hmm?"

"It's likely that I —That we can't see each other for a while," she said making him look up her. "I mean when all this is over. When I'm in my body and, well... you understand."

"Why?" it was the only thing he managed to ask.

Mana thought about it for a few seconds.

"Because I..." she swallowed and continued after exhaling. "Because now you are probably only seeing the best part of me. Because maybe, when I wake up, I won't be even able to talk or move. My body has been in a coma for almost a whole year, I don't want you to see me in that state."

"Mana..."

"Besides," she turned her eyes to the palm of her hand, "I think there's something strange about me right now."

Yami inclined his head with a frown in confusion. He placed his palms on the table and rose quickly, worried suddenly.

"Something strange? Are you okay?" he questioned.

However Mana only denied.

"No, it's not that, it's just that, when I see my reflection, I don't see myself, you know? As if it were a different version from me, but me anyway. I don't know how to explain it, but I—" she looked at him again. "Just... promise me we'll meet again after all this. That we will hang out the three of us again. Just..." she came close enough to him to put their hands together and look at him face to face. "Just wait for me to find you, yes?"

«...to find you,» Yami repeated in his mind. It was singular. She meant only him.

And he was talking to her.

The intensity of her eyes prevented him from looking away and took away his speech for a few seconds, merely nodding into a silent promise.

She smiled at him and slowly let go of his hands.

Yami suddenly found himself empty without them.

Was that...?

He didn't know, but he knew he had experienced it before. As a distant memory. An unreachable one.

He smiled softly.

An unreachable memory that seemed more like a dream than anything else.

A dream about the past. A rare sensation.