Blondeshipping (Dark Magician Girl/Marik Ishtar)

. . .

"I'm not stupid. I know who you are."

The girl made a brief show of looking surprised—wide eyed and her mouth in the shape of an 'o' as she put one elongated hand over her mouth.

"How did you know?" she said, with an over the top shocked voice that made it clear she was faking. Marik just rolled her eyes.

To anyone with a modicum of sense, it was obvious that she wasn't who she said she was, and more obvious that she wasn't precisely human. Her eyes were just a little too big, too pure of a green, her face a little too round and her cheeks too perfectly rosy. She looked closer to a cartoon character than a human if you looked too long, with her hair bouncing around her shoulders like it was made out of cotton candy and her every pose balanced too perfectly when by all rights she should fall over from holding some of them for too long.

Marik huffed, shoving his hands into his pockets as he turned on the Dark Magician Girl—because that's who she was, and he wasn't sure why, or how, she was on his college campus.

"I don't want to have to—deal with you," he said. "So why are you suddenly in almost all of my college classes?"

"You noticed me in all of them?" the Dark Magician Girl said. "You're really sharp, Marik-kun!"

"Don't—don't call me that," Marik said, rolling his eyes. "You're not even Japanese, and we're not even in Japan."

"I've been there a lot lately, it rubs off!" she said, laughing. It made a sound closer to bells chiming than actual human laughter, another tiny sign that she wasn't the human being she posed as. "I just wanted to say hi, that's all! You were sounding kind of sad when you talked to Yugi last."

"You…huh?" Marik said. He had talked to Yugi the night before, and he had been feeling incredibly depressed at the time, but he thought he hadn't let on. And what, had she been listening?

"I live with Yugi and Anzu sometimes," she said sagely, as though this explained all of his internal questions. "Anyway—Yugi was worried about you! So I thought I would come say hi, and check on you, and maybe see if I could cheer you up!"

"Do you actually care, or are you just trying to help Yugi out?"

"Both!"

She tilted her head at him, as though that were a suitable answer. Maybe for her, it was. He had never actually met her, if he was honest—except from the other side of the field during a duel. He didn't know how or why she was in the human world, or why she was meddling with his life of all things. How could she say that she cared when they had never spoken before now?

She grinned at him, then bounced forward to grab one of his hands, tugging it free from its pocket.

"Listen," she said. "I like everyone. Especially the ones that Yugi likes! So I'm not gonna go til I can get a smile out of you, okay?"

Marik almost laughed, but it was all so ridiculous that his face wasn't catching up yet.

"I'm being lectured at by a trading card," he said, shaking his head as he ran a hand down his face. "Fine. I was going to go for a coffee. You can come, if you want—if people like you drink coffee."

"Yay!" Dark Magician Girl said, leaping into the air with both hands stretched up. She actually floated for a few seconds longer than was physically possible before her feet hit the ground again. Then she grabbed Marik's arm and hugged herself almost uncomfortably close to him, chattering away about something inane that had to do with what Yugi and Anzu were doing, probably their house search or something.

Marik just shook his head, and tried to hide his smile.

Maybe hanging out with someone that did most of the talking was what he had needed today.

. . .

A/N: I suppose that was cute enough. Next is Blockshipping (Honda x Mokuba).