Akio- Or is he? I have no idea myself yet. But this chapter, I think, is very cute. So enjoy! No, really, I think you'll really like it. It has Bakura, Miho, Tea, Yugi, and YAMI! (Woo-hoo!) (Insert wink here.) Lol. It also has a reference to one of my favorite metal bands! Woo! Ok, enough spoiling. Read on!
Leona Saclat- Don't worry about Seto for now. And, to tell you the truth, I stayed in Belgium, land of waffles, and I never once ate a waffle while I was there.
It was after school, just before Miho and Bakura would have to report for cleaning duty. Tea frowned. Miho, Bakura, Seto… something weird was going on there. She couldn't quite put her finger on it.
A loud ring from her cell phone interrupted her musings. She picked it up.
"Hello?"
Hushed whispers greeted her, like dead leaves being rubbed together. Something chilly ran down her back. Her heart squeezed itself inside.
The line went dead.
It rang again. She picked it up.
"Hello?"
"Hi, it's me again," laughed a pleasant sounding voice. Tea nearly dropped her phone.
"RYOU?"
Never had she felt such relief!
"…Tea?" Tea picked up the phone again, blushing a little.
"Sorry; dropped the phone. Did you just call me?"
"No, I just got home. My dad and I were—"
"Oh. What is it! How are you! What's wrong!" Tea flipped out. Tristan passed by her, muttering a "hello"; but he gave her an odd look and hurried on.
"Didn't we go through this earlier? I'm fine; I'm sorry for bothering you, but I need to talk to my better half."
"Oh, yeah," Tea said sarcastically, "he sure is better than you, let me tell you… Wait a minute, you called ME? AGAIN? You're wasting my long-distance minutes!"
Tea could practically sense Ryou sweat drop. "You have free long-distance, Tea. You told all of us that when you got your phone. It was all you could talk about for a month."
"Oh. Oh yeah. Here he comes now, hold on."
Tea placed her hand over the mouthpiece. "BAKURA!" she screamed. "GET YOUR LAZY BUM OVER HERE, NOW!"
Bakura, who had been slowly making his way down the hall towards his cleaning duty, (actually, he had been splashing people with water from the water fountain, laughing, and pointing like an evil Yoda high on pot,) looked positively pissed as he made his way over, slouching abhorrently, his eyes red, evil slits, and his lip pulled up into an affronted scowl.
"What do you want, woman?" he shouted in his best Vegeta impression. Tea gawked.
"Uh… Ryou's on the phone for you…" Tea shifted uncomfortably as she awkwardly handed him her phone, mentally citing a little prayer in hopes that it would come out OK.
Bakura pressed the phone up against his ear. "Yadonushi-sama?" he breathed.
"- Hi. Got some good news to tell you! I'm coming home!"
"When!" Bakura cried. Tea rolled her eyes.
"Don't sound too unhappy, Bakura, you'll give us all depression," she said.
Bakura narrowed his eyes at her. "That doesn't even make sense!"
"Whatever." Tea twirled around and started to pluck a textbook here, notebook there from of her locker. Bakura went back to the phone.
" Soon!" Ryou announced cheerfully, as if this solved everything. A girl smacked into Bakura and he fell on top of the water fountain as somebody bent over to drink from it.
"Ew…" The person wiped their mouth and lumbered off.
Tea couldn't help but notice how Bakura seemed to melt away everything but the phone and himself right then.
"Soon?" Bakura didn't sound hopeful; in fact he sounded pained. If only he had known how soon!
"Yup! I'll probably get dropped off at home just when you get out of school! 'Kura?"
"…What day?"
"Soon day!"
"Ha ha ha," Bakura laughed sarcastically.
"Don't worry about it, Bakura!" Ryou lilted, and added coyly, "I have a surprise for you…"
"…Sh—" Bakura dropped the phone. Tea, who had been talking with a boy in their class, dove and caught it. Random people in the hallway broke out into thunderous applause.
"Thank you, thank you," she said, bowing. "You idiot!" Tea screamed at Bakura. "That's my phone!"
"…Sorry," Bakura said. Tea blinked at him. Bakura had just apologized to her?
Bakura walked off, looking as if he was in a daze. "My other half is coming home soon…" he told one girl. His voice sounded strangely disembodied. She looked at him funny, and then backed away. He headed into the classroom.
Tea brought the phone to her ear. "I think you put him into shock," she said. "So, do you want me to get him again, or did you decide to tell him when you get home?"
"I'll tell him when I get home…"
"Good choice!" She would've said good choice no matter what the choice was. She always wanted to cheer up Ryou. He always seemed so… alone, even when he was with them. Of course, this wasn't true, and Ryou had called Tea delusional several times because of her assumptions on the subject, but still… everyone loved to see Ryou smile.
15 minutes later…
"Give it back!"
"No!"
"Give it!"
Miho hated this; she really did. It was so weird, and so creepy. Once again, Bakura and she had been chosen to clean up after school. (Ms. Jono hated her, she could swear!) And once again, Bakura was teasing her. However, this time, it was eerie.
He had her new Ipod and was dangling it over her head while he stood on his desk. Miho was fruitlessly jumping up and trying to grab at it. She could just climb up on his desk and push him over, but she had this bad image in her head of her doing that. Bakura would fall over, grab at her to steady himself, and they'd both end up crashing to the floor on top of each other. What was worse was that this image wouldn't leave her head for anything. God dn Pop-tarts, giving her images….
The horribly creepy part, though, was that he was watching her jump. He wasn't, ya know, watching her jiggle… he was watching her face. As if he was taking down mental notes on how she reacted to different things. She felt like a lab rat.
"Please, give it to me, Bakura! It isn't mine! It's… it's Tristan's!" Although it was a bare-faced lie, her supposition was that it wouldn't hurt to make Bakura feel a little guilty. And, to her surprise, Bakura blanked out for a second.
"Oh." The notorious boy flopped back into his seat and shoved the device into her hands roughly. Miho held back a gasp.
"Here then," Bakura said with blank courtesy. "If it's… not yours…"
Bakura then seemed to close into himself. His eyes became narrow and calculating; his eyebrows nearly met in the middle of his face. His mouth tilted downward until it was the ugliest frown Miho swore she had ever seen on a person. His hands were clasped in front of him, placed nicely on his desk. He was hunched over and for all Miho knew he could be muttering world domination plans to himself.
"Uhm… thank you." She turned.
"So Tristan has the song 'Dip It Low' on his Ipod, then?"
Miho would've ignored this question entirely if Bakura hadn't posed it as he had; he sounded confused, curious, and for all the world surprised. Miho smiled, knowing that Tristan was going to be picked on for weeks.
"I guess so…"
"That says a lot about him, ne?"
Miho could hear the smirk in Bakura's voice. It caused her to turn around. He was smiling—not a deranged, I'm-coming-to-get-you smile, or a smug, I-am-so-much-more-powerful-than-you smile, but a… normal, hey-that's-funny smile, an I'm-am-so-going-to-make-fun-of-him-tomorrow smile. A mischievous Ryou smile. It took Miho's breath away to see Ryou's smile on Bakura's wicked face. His eyes were almost twinkling the ways Ryou's did…
When Bakura started to pick at the wood of his desk, a cold, dreadful feeling seeped back into her in a hurry. She felt like she was watching a madman at work, so quickly she turned and busied herself with moving the desks around so that she could mop the floor. Bakura just hummed a light tune to himself. She thought that this was creepy.
The sunlight that filtered into the room was dusty, making it seem as if they would never be finished with their work. However, soon it was done. Miho looked at Bakura before she left. He was still muttering to himself. He hadn't helped mop up the classroom, but he had helped to move the desks out of the way and put them back, so Miho didn't feel like yelling at him. Besides, at the moment, it would feel like yelling at Ryou.
"Um, goodbye, Bakura…" Bakura nodded towards her, his eyes still kind of… sad. They looked more like Ryou's eyes than ever.
Inside Bakura's mind…
"Now, Bakura, you can't go ruining other people's things! It's not nice!"
"Like I give a rat's a—"
"And plus, this wasn't even mine! It was my friend's! He's going to be mad…" A seven year old Ryou scooped the broken Game Boy into his hand. "How did you manage to wreck it in two?"
"Um… perseverance?"
"What's that mean?"
"I… hit it a lot," the spirit explained. "And it broke. That's perseverance."
"Oh. Doesn't sound very nice…"
Outside of Bakura's mind…
"I am such a dog-gone sap. Ryou better come home so I can slap him a little," Bakura grumbled to himself. He grabbed his backpack and exited the room. He even remembered the turn the lights off. Tea gave him an odd look from her locker. "What are you still doing here, Gardner?" he asked.
"Nothing," she sighed. "So what did Ryou want?"
Tea could've sworn that she saw Bakura's eyes twinkle when he told her, as tartly as he could be, "Ryou told me that he is coming home soon. Have you seen Otagawa?"
"Yeah, he's over there." Tea pointed towards the door, where Otagawa was joking with a nervous-looking Akazaya and a peevish Joey. Obviously he had interrupted one of their bi-daily make-out sessions.
Bakura made his way over towards his friend. Tea gave him one last look before exiting the school. The day was gray and humid; a disgusting day that wriggled under her skin like a flea and itched at her mood. To further this bad mood, she hadn't been able to speak to Miho for the rest of the day. When Miho had come out of the classroom, she had seemed in an awful hurry to get far away from Bakura. Now Tea was even more curious as to the situation that her best friend and Seto Kaiba were in. Were they dating?
If they were, was it possible that she had misjudged Kaiba? Could he actually be a good person?
Miho probably just had bad taste.
Delusional fantasies of what it might be like to have Kaiba as a friend ran through her head until she nearly passed the game shop. "Oh," she said aloud when she realized that she had gone too far. She backtracked until the large letters were right in front of her.
KAME GAME SHOP
Tea jogged up the stairs and went into the upstairs living room without hesitation. A sudden flashback of when Yugi had played Pegasus's tape at the start of Duelist Kingdom overtook her, and she shook her head to clear it of the bad memory.
She heard low music—it sounded like some form of metal-rock—playing, while the boy she had come in search of was laying face-down on the couch, trembling slightly in his sleep.
"Yugi?" she called softly. He didn't respond. "Yugi?"
Angered by her close friend's silence, Tea yelled, "Yugi Motou, you get down here right now and finish your homework!"
Yugi sat up as if he had been lit on fire. "But Mo-om!" he complained loudly. Tea giggled.
"Your mom's out shopping, Yugi; it's only me," she explained. Yugi blushed.
"Oh," is all he said. Then he slumped back on the couch. Tea rolled her eyes. Typical lazy Yugi, she thought to herself. As always. After all, even HE is a guy. …Maybe. …Mwaahahhahaha.
"Is this a new CD? Where did you get the money for it?" Tea asked. "Oh, and what band is it?"
"Yes; I didn't pay, it was a gift; and Sonata Arctica."
"Sounds cool!" Tea exclaimed, still trying to process all the information Yugi had just given her.
Yugi smiled a bit. "Yeah."
"Who was it a gift from?" Tea asked, squinting at the stereo as if examining the CD inside. She picked up the CD case and admired it. There was a picture of what seemed to be a half-buried emblem on the case. The colors on it were all grays and dark blues. The last 'A' in 'Sonata' and the first 'A' in 'Arctica' were combined as one giant double eye, which, Tea realized, was what the shape of the half-buried emblem was.
The band, Sonata Arctica, was American metal. Interesting.
"Aaliyah," Yugi said wearily. Tea was barely paying attention.
"Who?"
Yugi continued on, ignoring her question: "You know, you're not supposed to be in here… I'm sick. And so is Yami," Yugi added as an afterthought. Tea was inwardly glad that Yugi always told how he was feeling before he explained how the Spirit of the Puzzle was feeling. It reminded Tea that Yugi did think of himself before others, at least sometimes. The brunette was constantly fussing over her friend because she was sure that somebody was going to come along and befriend him and then do him some kind of spiritual/mental/emotional/bodily harm. And, in essence, that wasn't far from the truth. Yugi had people that didn't like him. Yugi had… a lot of people that didn't like him. Duelists, bullies… and bully duelists. Yugi had people that stayed up at night and plotted against him, like Bakura. Yugi was vulnerable and weak. But with his friends, Yugi could stay safe. He gave and his friends gave, like the coexistence of some underwater creatures. And knowing that Yugi, usually selfless, put himself in front of Yami, at least sometimes, let Tea know that he was still sane. She couldn't imagine what it would be like, to have someone formerly royal stuck in your pendant that is able to read your thoughts, and…
"Wait…Who?"
"You know. My girlfriend."
"Oh. I thought you'd made that up," Tea teased. Yugi's eyes narrowed. "Just a joke," she assured him, holding both her hands up in submission. She wasn't sure if he heard her, because he replied:
"And that Yami was going along with it? Yami and I never make the same jokes. We always ruin each other's. We can't seem to keep our japes in sync."
"Oh."
Well, what was she supposed to say to that? She didn't really understand what he was getting at. So it wasn't a joke. So he really had a…
Yugi has a girlfriend.
Tea dropped the CD case.
Yugi has a girlfriend! (Squeal!)
"You have a girlfriend?" Tea asked as calmly as she could, grinning largely at Yugi. Yugi groaned.
"Yes! I do! Now either leave me alone or stop asking that."
"Run away run away run away!" the music sang.
Tea looked shocked. Yugi turned a very bright shade of crimson which actually made him look very cute.
"S…Sorry for being rude, Tea," Yugi mumbled. "I guess I'm not feeling myself t'day. …I'm sick, ya know."
"Run away run away run away!"
"Don't let it get to you, Tea," said a placating, heroic-sounding voice. Tea rolled her eyes.
"You don't have to sound like a superhero when you're just greeting somebody, Yami," she laughed. Yami struck a pose, pretending to floof out his flowing, super-heroic cape and point at something spectacular in the air. Yugi and Tea both laughed.
"Yugi's just a little down since we left Egypt," Yami explained. "That's why he's acting so human."
"Gasp!" Yugi gasped. "Double gasp, in fact! Triple gasp!"
"…Actually, Yugi's been pretty down in the dumps ever since we left Aaliyah."
"Stop teasing me!" Yugi whined. Tea winced. She had forgotten how high her friend's voice could get.
"Stop teasing yourself," Yami chortled back. Yugi made more protesting noises.
"That didn't even make sense!" the shorter boy cried.
Yami grinned cheekily at Tea. "Would you like something to eat Tea?"
"Hey! Don't ignore me!"
"Or shouldn't you be heading home, since you're not supposed to be here anyway?" Yami hinted that this was his option of choice by gesturing slightly towards the stairs with his hand. "If Yugi's mother finds out I'm talking to… an OUTSIDER…"
"Gasp!" gasped Yugi.
"…then I'll probably be grounded even longer." Yami grinned and sweat dropped. "And I'd really hate that."
It was like telling someone to go away with an infallible grin on your face. That was what Yami was doing. And Tea, for one, found it insulting.
"Fine!" Tea growled, "You two are such idiots!"
Tea exited the shop muttering unpleasant phrases under her breath. Those two had acted so ungrateful when they found out that she had arrived. Mrs. Motou probably wasn't going to come back until later—
"Oh, hello, Tea. What are you doing here?" Yugi's mother smiled liltingly at Tea. Tea gulped.
"Uh, hi, Mrs. Motou." Was that dynamite in her hand? "How are you doing today?"
Pleasant smile. Gulp. "Oh, I'm fine…"
"Glad to hear it."
Gulp. "Thanks. I… have to be going… he he." More nervous laughter. Tea scratched the back of her head as she walked backwards down the sidewalk. Mrs. Motou gave her a pleasant smile. When she turned away, Tea turned, too, and ran.
"Run away run away run away!" Yugi sang inside. Yami hit him with a pillow.