ONE CARD SHORT:
CHAPTER TWO - A BRIEF BOUT WITH ETERNITY
" …You think I'm going crazy, don't you?"
Written by Gregory Smith
All characters portrayed within are copyright 1996 Kazuki Takahashi,
With the exception of Gradius, who is copyright 2003 Gregory Smith.
Jounouchi looked out the classroom window, waiting for one specific bus to pull up to the school. "Yugi's bus is late today…" he muttered to himself, as the rain obstructed his view through the lucent portal in the wall, "…Eh, must just be the rain causing some sort of delay, or something." But, deep down inside, that wasn't what he felt; something wasn't right today, and he just couldn't place it. He shut his eyes, thumping his forehead against his desk with a loud "WHACK!" At this sound, Anzu was startled, and walked over to Jounouchi's desk.
"You sure you want a concussion so early in the day?" she asked, sitting on the corner of Jounouchi's desk and looking down at him, smiling her esteemed smile.
"Ehh, very funny, Anzu," Jounouchi mumbled into the cold tabletop, "but I just have this weird feeling… y'know, like something's not right?" Jounouchi looked up at Anzu through half-open eyes; she stared dully back at him. "…You think I'm going crazy, don't you?"
"Err, no!" Anzu quickly defended, even though she did think Jounouchi was off his rocker, "Not at all, Jounouchi-kun!" She smiled again, hoping Jounouchi would believe her, despite the fact that she was a terrible liar.
Jounouchi smiled back. "Well, thanks, Anzu-chan," he said, clunking his forehead back against the school desk.
"Hey, stop that," Anzu said, now looking concernedly at Jounouchi, "you really might end up hurting yourself. You'll get a bump on your head or something."
"Ehh, so?" Jounouchi sighed, and raised his head for another whack against the wood of the desk.
"Jounouchi-kun, that's enough!" Anzu shouted, placing her hand in between the desk and Jounouchi's ill-protected brow.
Jounouchi blinked, stunned, his forehead now resting in Anzu's soft palm. Anzu had never once stopped him from hitting his head against stuff in previous years, and he had hit his head against a lot of stuff. There was the concrete wall, and the lamppost, and the car door… What was making her stop him? He looked up confusedly at Anzu, lifting his cranium from her hand and quirking an eyebrow. "Uhh… Anzu?" he inquired, blinking once again, still rather stunned, "What was that about?"
Anzu didn't know. She had always found it kind of funny when Jounouchi hit his head against things, as long as it hadn't seriously injured him. So why was she stopping him from such a little thing like hitting his forehead against a school desk? She thought up an answer as she pulled back her hand, but nothing she could say would make any sense. "Well, I…" she faltered, as she had always been bad at improvisation, "I was just…"
Their eyes met, and locked in eternity.
And, as fast as eternity had begun, it shattered with Honda's entrance into the room. "Yo, Jounouchi! Anzu!" he bellowed with his annoying voice, rainwater dripping from his trench coat, "That rain sure is crazy out there, isn't it?"
Anzu and Jounouchi quickly tried to make it look like they hadn't even been talking, but it was too late for that; any person of average intelligence would have seen the looks in their eyes and known immediately that something had happened between the two of them. However, Honda was not a man of average intelligence, and he simply figured that the two hadn't talked yet this morning.
"Yeah, that rain is hell!" Jounouchi fake-laughed, sitting up straight in his chair and looking over at Honda, "Soaked my clothes completely!"
Outside, Yugi was stepping off the bus, and getting rain-soaked all over again. "Dammit! I was almost dry, too…" he muttered, taking up a slow pace to the school entrance, "Oh well, doesn't matter how fast I get into the building. I'll still be soaking wet, anyhow." As the rainfall pounded against his back, Yugi couldn't stop thinking about the red-haired girl on the bus. Who was she, he thought, reaching the school's doors and opening them, and why did she look so sad? The answers escaped him as he stepped into the school building, his shoes making a squishing noise as he walked.
