Bakura awoke to the strange smell of incense burning. He slowly opened his eyes. There was a dark wooden roof over his head, and the sounds of footsteps echoed from what might have been another room.
He tried to sit up, but found himself completely exhausted. He didn't know how he got there, and he didn't know what would happen to him next. From what he could ascertain, his leg had been bandaged tightly, and he was now wearing a long red robe. He saw his old clothes in a pile on the floor nearby. But he could feel the millennium ring still hanging around his neck.
"You are awake." A soothing voice whispered from the other direction. Bakura quickly wrenched his head around. "You have had quite a night. Rest now."
Bakura painfully rose from the mat he had been sleeping on. He leaned forward, catching his breath.
"Where am I?"
"Among good people." The man answered. Bakura finally caught sight of him. He was dressed from head to toe in an orange robe. His head was shaven. He was clearly part of a monastic order.
"Why am I here?" Bakura managed to bark. He rubbed his hand over his sore leg. It felt as though someone had removed the metal ball during the night.
"So full of questions, aren't we…" the monk replied. "I do not know why you are here. But you are here now. And that is all that matters, isn't it?"
"Do you even know who I am?" he finally asked, glaring wickedly up at the monk.
"No." the strange monk answered. "Should I?"
"I'm the King of Thieves." Bakura growled. He was surprised at his own answer. He hadn't used that title for a long time. He took a long breath, and finally continued. "I am the darkness… I don't belong here…"
The monk knelt down next to Bakura. He brushed the man's white hair out of his face, and turned his chin towards him.
"So, your majesty, if you do not belong here, then where do you belong?"
Bakura didn't have a ready answer.
"When you feel rested, and after you have eaten, you can show me…" the monk replied, standing back up. He gestured towards several large jars of colored sand. "My master always said that sand provided the best window into one's soul."
"You don't want to look at my soul, trust me." Bakura scoffed. Only one person cared about his soul before, and he was long dead. "There's nothing there but…"
"Darkness?" the monk interrupted.
Bakura was dumbfounded. That was exactly what he was going to say.
"Again, show me."
The monk led the weary Bakura to a large garden, filled entirely with sand. Two monks with small rakes passed through it in straight even lines. They had been at the task since sunrise, and they still had half of the field to go.
"When they are finished, take sand from those jars. I want to see inside your soul." The monk smiled. "Show me who it is that you truly are, King of Thieves."
Bakura watched the monk walk through another doorway, leaving him alone. He was too exhausted to think, yet alone spread sand around some frivolous giant garden. So he sat back down on the pallet and went to sleep.
The next day, he approached the doorway to the garden. Again, the same two monks were raking it.
"Didn't you just do that?" he barked.
They didn't acknowledge his presence.
"Go. They will not disturb you." The familiar voice echoed from behind. Bakura jumped. He didn't know how long the monk was standing silently behind him. "Let your heart guide you."
Bakura groaned, but snatched the jar of sand anyway while limping out the door. It was black. He sat down in the middle of the garden, and picked up a handful of the black grains. Carefully, he started spreading it out in lines.
Before he had realized what he was doing, Bakura had drawn a sketchy picture of Ryou. A tear formed in his eye.
The monk walked over to where Bakura was sitting.
"So this is your soul." He smiled. "It doesn't look like darkness…"
He took a small rake, and combed over the picture. In an instant, it was gone.
"Hey!" Bakura jumped up. "What'd you do that for? You know how long I sat drawing that?"
"It doesn't matter." The monk answered, still as peaceful as before. "Draw it again."
Bakura looked at the monk, puzzled.
"Draw it again, your majesty." The monk smiled, and handed Bakura another jar of sand. This one was blue, the color of most of the clothing he was found in.
Not having anything else to occupy his mind, and nowhere else to go, not to mention the promise of food every day, he sat down again. He worked through the day and late into the night. He finished his drawing when the sun was rising the next morning.
It was Ryou again, wearing his school uniform. He was smiling innocently. A dark menacing shadow stood behind him, with a hand on his shoulder.
"I see…" the monk smiled again, and once again raked over the entire drawing. Bakura growled in frustration, but the monk pretended not to notice.
Instead, he handed Bakura a jar of white sand.
"Draw it again."
This process continued for days. Those days stretched into weeks, and those weeks into months. By the time a year had past, Bakura's drawings were made of hundreds of colors, and stretched over a large fraction of the entire garden. They were so large, that the monk could no longer tell what they were without climbing the cherry blossom tree in the middle of the garden.
Again, just as before, he had drawn Ryou. This time, the boy was holding the millennium ring tightly at his chest.
"I see…" the monk smiled. He climbed down from the tree and started to walk inside.
"Hey! Wait!" Bakura shouted, confused. "Aren't you going to rake over my picture, and tell me to draw it again!"
"No." the monk turned back around, but only for a moment. "It is time you did that for yourself."
Bakura looked around at the picture. It had taken him over a week to create, handful of sand by handful of sand. He looked at the rake, leaning up against the monastery house, and grumbled to himself. He walked over to it, took it into his hands, and started down the garden. He finished by the time the sun was setting.
"Now… you are ready to draw it again." The monk smiled. Bakura only looked up and sighed. He missed Ryou, and each picture only reminded him of the boy's sacrifice more and more.