This one still could have definitely used more work. But if you dwell on something forever you'll never finish anything. Ehhh? Ehhhhhh?
[NINE] ["MILLENNIUM MUSEUM MAYHEM pt. 3"]
Allow me to start your tedious, mundane, hum drum of a day with a bold, controversial statement. Squares are rectangles, but rectangles are not squares.
Much akin to this, Amy's mother often started her days with a similarly bold statement. People are monkeys, but monkeys are not people.
There is so much that defines the line between person and monkey. Things like thumbs. And forks. And bras. And lacey dress shirts. Monkeys don't use thumbs (untrue), forks (debatable), bras (don't Google this), or dress shirts (Google this). More importantly the thing that truly separated the Homosapien from the Cercopithecidae, is the Homosapien expectation to tuck in your shirt.
Shirts, sweaters, long jackets, it didn't matter. In the outside world, tucking in shirts was a trend. Inside Amy's house it was the trend. If you're eating dinner, you're going to dress like a proper human person. Amy was told to tuck in her shirt almost as many times as she was told to button her shirt properly.
Not that the reminders were unwarranted.
Tucking in her shirt during the day was, of course, out of the question. It was uncomfortable, and time consuming, and more importantly Amy was an independent child who didn't need no mom telling her what to do. Until dinner time. When mom was necessary. By then her shirts were so rumpled and wrinkly from a day of play that no amount of tucking-in could make her properly "dinner clean."
Then, one particularly spicey day, it hit her. She didn't have to be neat, she just had to pretend to be neat. There were tools for that. Which was the day Amy taught herself how to use an iron.
Being at the ripe old age of 'child', she missed a step or two. Easy to miss steps. Nearly forgettable even.
Example: Step 1 - Take off the clothes you intend to iron.
In between hands shaking at the weight Amy pulled the heavy steam iron towards her clothes. And subsequently her herself. If she had been smart enough to understand Rule #1, that an ironing board is the proper tool used to iron clothes and one's self is not the proper tool, she may have gotten away with it. Instead, the spit of the iron coming close to her caused Amy to shout undignifiedly, toss the iron as far as her weak child arms would allow, and continue to shout like it was some poisonous snake until her mother got home.
Not so coincidentally, it was also the first time she'd ever been spanked with a kitchen towel.
That spanking was always the memory that came to Amy whenever she reentered her body. A rat tail and a mind swap were surprisingly similar sensations. Long moments of anticipating her consciousness being pulled back in her body, but still never being quite prepared when it happened. Whiplash upon reentering a world that you'd left (but never really did). The two occurrences were near identical, right down to the burning sting and ear rumbling crack.
When Amy came to, she was leaning up against Yugi. They were both heaped on the floor, leaning up against the glass case, two shoulders tapped against each other. Two heads tilted together.
Forgetting for a minute that it's a scientific fact that boys have icky cooties, Amy lingered. Realigning her mind, the echoing of the crack in goosebumps along her spine, she may have even leaned a little harder. Too disoriented to even pray Yugi didn't open his eyes when they were this close. In fact, the only thing she could think of right then was how Yugi's hair was softer than it looked.
The last few hours were unclear. She remembered bits and pieces of it, and was aware of what had happened. There were no gaps in her memory, but it didn't feel like it was her memory. Like she had been watching a film.
Until finally, she spit out a wad of hair that had entered upon the inhale, and said perhaps too loudly "Cheesus [4filter] crust." At that, goosebumps along her back subsided, the prickling in her fingers began to fade, and Amy's posture could finally straighten. With no support to Yugi's sleeping body his torso began a collision course with the ground. If Amy hadn't caught his shoulders and centered him against the glass, he would have sprawled out on the floor. Even then, there was a creaky lean to his spine.
Yami was gone. As fast as he'd come, he had disappeared. Amy listened to the hum in her own mind, searching for any instance of her own inner voice. The mysterious woman inside her own head, not so different from Yugi's. 'Aimee? Hello? What happened?' she thought. 'Mission control, this is Apollo, do you copy?'
The gasp next to her was becoming very familiar, very quickly. It snapped Amy from her mental prodding. At the same time Yugi, eyes now flickering with light, flinched forward covering his head.
"Kanekura!" After a few seconds of nothing happening, Yugi withdrew his arms. Slowly, hesitantly, afraid that doing so would result in pain. Eventually, working up the courage to look around. "What happened… to curator Kanekura. And the robed man."
"They're gone." Amy made a walking man with her fingers.
"O-oh right." Yugi said. His face flushed, although unclear if it was over embarrassment or stress. Possibly both. One uneasy glance around the room epilogued the silence. "Just kidding."
The room went stifling with his fake hahas. He still laughed, but his eyes did anything but smile. All of which made Amy press her palms through her mad curls and a mumble barely audible, "Coc y gath."
She didn't know Yugi Muto very well. She didn't know his favorite color, or favorite food, or favorite TV show. She didn't need to know any of those mundane things about him to know that Yugi Muto has no poker face. He didn't know about Yami. He didn't know about the switch.
Switching with Aimee always felt like a dream. Everything around her was there, it just didn't have any meaning. She heard people speak, but the words didn't mean anything. She watched people do things. None of which were really… actions. Everything was just there with no comprehension of how or why.
Like an omnipresent, celestial narrator being, she felt nothing towards the world around her. She only floated next to her own body taking in information.
It wasn't until Aimee left her body and she returned to it did anything that happened start to make sense. A lightbulb flickered on and all the implications of the words and images around her flooded her senses at one time.
Did Yugi feel the same way when Yami possessed him? Did he feel anything? Would he even be able to process what he felt if he did?
Amy moved her hands through her tangles. Her hair has never been easy, not really something she could be proud of. But, today was coming in handy. Between it and the crew collar, it hid the tense line her lips were pressed in.
Suddenly a little bit of the last few days made a lot of sense. Yugi's anxiety and uncertainty was so embarrassingly clear Amy was feeling it second hand. Was there a reason Yami hadn't come out to him? If there was a reason, she couldn't come up with.
Someone would say it wasn't really her business to know. It wasn't her business to say something. This was between Yugi and his shadow. That someone was wise, mature, and clearly never looked a sad Yugi in the eye.
There was only one thing to do. She took a deep breath. Deeper. Deeper, holding into her lungs.
Then she let out a bawling laugh, "Good one dude. Phew. I needed that. Can you believe that all happened? That weird robbed guy was wandering around, the curator took your puzzle, weird guy got your puzzle back after the dude went absolutely whack. That all happened! I saw it! Crazy day! Are you okay by the way?" she hollered in between oh-ho-hos.
One slap on Yugi's back sent him flying forward. Which was good, because Amy's face had turned super red, which she could confirm was, in fact, to both embarrassment and stress. Emotions there weren't enough hair in the world to cover.
"Haha… yeah… that all happened…" For the first time, Yugi's eye caught the room around him. His exclamation of it was a slow breath in, reading the Industrial Illusion plaque. "What's this?"
If she'd try to muddle something snarky, it would have come out in broken words. Yugi's eye caught beyond the scuff in the floor and the fallen stanchion, drawn to a greater world around him. Plastic characters boldly advertised 'Egypt' mounted alongside the doorway. EGYPT AND THE ORIGIN OF DUEL MONSTERS. "It's Pegasus's exhibit? We found the exhibit?"
'No [4filter], what gave it away. The I2 logo sprawled out over everything or the ceremonial ribbon at the entrance.' She thought. Then tried to say out loud. Nope. She pulled her tangles further over her face, hair completely fisted. Instead she lumbered over to the exhibit title and the audio tour prepared beneath it
Amy pushed the headphones onto her ears. A woman's voice played on the other end, enunciating her words dry and straight, sounding like she almost didn't want to be there. Probably some former pop idol who had aged into retirement and spent her retirement doing voice work as a way to hold onto her glory days.
Maybe it was a tone in her voice, or just the tickle headphones, but the monotonous words somehow began putting all the bees in Amy's chest to sleep. "Historians believe that the game of Duel Monsters goes as far back to 18 Dynasty Egypt and is thought to be played by only the most powerful members of the court. The tomb of an unknown priestess believed to have lived during the New Kingdom housed countless memorabilia displaying popular Duel Monsters."
"Looks like everything in the room came from a priestess's tomb." Amy reiterated. This was what Maximillion J. Extra-asus wanted her to see? The belongings of some old dead person?
"Did she have long black hair?"
There it was. There was the finally tension breaking stupid question could release the snarky floodgates. "I'm sorry, was I not clear about Ancient Egyptian Priestess. '' she said. Thank god for stupid questions. "Why would she have dark hair - she was clearly a platinum blon-"
"Oh." Amy snapped around and saw what Yugi was looking at. A faded painting of a woman with long black hair, a gold headdress, and long white robes protruded from the wall in a display case. The woman in the painting held her hands up in front of her, to another set of hands. Those being blue. Yeah, blue hands. Attached to blue arms, green robes, and her own headdress. Although it severely faded, Amy could be confident in its colors. Mostly because the headdress also appeared to be sitting in the case next to it.
"Yeah, probably." Amy said. "That, uh, could be her."
They closed in on the displays.
Both teens simultaneously reached for the audio tour. Amy coughed, quickly dropping it and Yugi's palms brushed. They awkwardly fumbled at each other for a second, Yugi ultimately ending up with the headphones.
While he focused on the audio tour, Amy continued to examine the painting. God that headdress was gaudy. You could barely tell on the painting, but the nearby display of the headwear itself showed it all to clear. It appeared to cover most of the wearer's head in a cream cloth, which was fine. It looked like it would go all the way down the back and over the shoulder like a cape. Also fine. Probably practical even.
What wasn't practical was the gold lining the edges of the face. Now we were getting gaudy. The eagle coming out of the forehead also seemed more decorative and less practical. Was it an eagle? A hawk maybe? Amy couldn't tell. Were there even eagles in Egypt a millennia ago?
"Falcon." Aimee corrected.
Oh, so now Aimee wanted to talk. Classy. 'Okay, but why? Seems like kind of a little much.'
"To wear such a thing would have been a great honor, Amy."
To wear such a thing would seem more embarrassing than honorable, but what would a modern tween know about honorable jewelry.
Amy's gaze returned to the truly most outstanding mystery of the painting. Which wasn't the priestess at all, but the blue woman facing her. Holding their hands up to one another. The two were so starkly contrasted, the blue woman would have felt like the real focal of the painting - if there was more of her to look at.
All they were given were hand, her face, and upper torso. The rest seemed chipped and cracked away. But, aside from being blue, she was unusually blond. Something about the white crown atop that long blond hair seemed familiar.
Insight struck her. Yugi put the headset down in curiosity, watching Amy reach into the her overalls and pull out her cards. She shuffled through furiously, finally ending with a "Eureka" and holding one card next to the case.
Blonde, blue, green robes. "It's the Mystical Elf." Yugi said. His eyes, wide, glazed between the card and the painting. Down to the Elf's bare shoulders, this was a portrait of it. "Why is a Duel Monster in an old painting?"
"I guess some people think that this is where Duel Monsters came from." she said, cracking a half grin through her frills, "Imagine using the desecrated remains of a culture to build a card game."
"Look at what she's wearing!" he said.
"Yeah, a headdress. I know, it's ugly, but apparently it was an honor or something. I don't get it either."
"Not that," he pointed out, "her necklace."
"Oh." Amy squinted, looking back at the painting. She did seem to have a golden eye hanging from her neck. Another Millennium Item, Amy would suppose.
Yugi wrapped his fingers first around the dirty shoe string holding his puzzle, then the puzzle, his knuckles white the with grip. "Just like my Puzzle. It always leads back to my puzzle." Cupping her arm in discomfort, Amy moved back to the other side of the room. To the biggest display. A stone tablet that told her coincidences didn't live here.
The room became quiet. Stillness bounced off the wall just as prominently as its light. At least, for Amy. Yugi wasn't looking at her, not paying attention to her at all. He was wholly engraved in his thoughts. Yet, somehow, Amy felt exposed, in the open, and in attention. Her wrist burned with anticipation, like she'd had her arm naked to the wind.
If Yugi didn't know about Yami, then he didn't have any memories of him, right? That means Yugi hadn't really looked at the tablet yet. Amy stood in front of it silently, while her companion continued to ogle the painting.
He was right, in a way. Everything did always seem to circle back to the Millennuim Items. Amy's reflection in the glass, as her face drifted from the tablet down to the replica, overlaid a frizzy haired reflection with lips still thinned into a cringe.
It was almost like seeing the bracelet for the first time. Somehow more mystical, magical, the display bracelet shined in a way that reminded Amy of just how greedy she was. It was impressive just how close the replica had come to the real thing. The gold beads were relatively the same. Even the way the thread wove the beads together was impressively familiar. Out the bottom, around the edge, in through the top of the next. If not for the brand defining eye facing flipped the wrong way, it would have been a perfect match.
How many hours had she spent looking at those weaves - her own private weaves. But here they were, in public; the threads belonged to everyone now. To Yugi technically. Aimee had finally been able to deliver her message, to give him the [4filter] thing.
What would Yugi say when he saw this? It was only a matter of seconds until he did. What would she say. Aimee had already introduced herself once, but he didn't remember. Any way the backlogged explanation played in her mind sounded confusing at best, awkward at worst, and crazy somewhere in between.
It had been so easy when someone else explained it. Now how was she going to? She would have to explain it if Amy expected him to take it.
'Any suggestions.' She asked mentally.
Not a single reply from the peanut gallery.
'Great brainstorming, thanks team.' she huffed to herself and apparently only herself.
"What are you looking at?" Yugi, having finally out of his own thoughts, suddenly wanted to know what his partner was so enticed with.
Yes, Yugi did make snark too easy. Something about those big panda eyes and innocent gullibility made answers such as, "A [4filter] museum exhibit, almost like we're in a museum. " or the ever classically passive aggressive ''Nothing", very natural. Instead Amy resisted her natural instinct. She simply made a picture frame with her fingers, focusing the boy in the center. Then, moved that focus to the likeness in the stone tablet.
"You? I think."
"Oh my god." He came to the same sudden halt. Yugi didn't touch the glass, but he hands to it in mezmer. Just enough to almost touch it. "I thought you were kidding. Amy, this guy really does look like me. Why does he look like me?"
Yugi's eyes continued to explore the tablet. His previous exhaustion had been overtaken by a hunger to make sense of what he was seeing. No, 'hunger' wasn't the right word. It was something much softer. His absorption of the details were not ravenous, but a sense of wonder. "There's my puzzle again. And… is that the necklace from the painting? Amy, do you see this?"
She did not have the energy to be sarcastic.
His eyes, glued to the tablet, never even looked at the bracelet. The anticipation caused fibers of Amy skin to itch and elsewhere goosebumps followed. Hair that stood up, unsure of which he'd see first, the replica or the queasy knot forming in her belly. Although, those goosebumps may have truly been less about this and more about the sounds coming from the stairwell.
"Er - Sport -"
Clomping down the stairs came to a stop, and an all too familiar button up guard popped out from under the frame. His voice, as annoying as ever, shouted, "There you kids are!" far louder than he needed too. Which may have gotten him the stink eye from Amy. "This area doesn't open for another hour, you can't be down here."
Yugi seemed to jump out of his skin for a second, his concentration broken with a curl onto his toes. "Officer!"
"I need you kids to come with me. The police are waiting in my office. We need to call your parents so we can get your statement about Curtator Kanekura."
"But -" I'm not ready to go, his eyes said, there's so much I don't understand.
Yugi's mother had been less than pleased to speak with the police. When she first arrived, her face had somehow found room for new worry lines, bursting into the Security Office and immediately suffocating Yugi with a hug.
To which Yugi had a very puppy response. Trying to hide behind a thinly veiled frown revealed his true intentions, a small smile around the corner of his mouth he just couldn't keep secret. He non-begrudgingly begrudgingly hugged her back. When Mrs. Muto asked when Amy's parents were getting here, she responded, "They're out of town." When the guard asked Amy when her parents were getting here, she responded, "Bite me."
After all was said and done, the officer let her go with a phone call to her guardian. After which he, nor the security guard (who'd spent the last hour looking at her like she had three heads), could look her in the eyes as they took her statement.
She walked home with Yugi and his mother. Increasingly uncomfortable by his mother's switch between lectures, worried looks, and tiered sighs, neither of them speaking. Amy walked the entire way with her hands wrapped around her overalls. Mrs. Muto barely acknowledged her, which was just as well, because Amy's focus was elsewhere.
Mostly, on a bracelet itching on her wrist. 'Pegasus set us up. He wanted us to see that exhibit so he could send a message.' She thought.
Aimee's consciousness huddled over her own. "Did you understand the message Pegasus hoped to relay? Is it a threat of some kind."
'I shot way past the ability to interpret passive aggression when the dead man stopped the murder hobo. He knows all this is tied back to Egypt, for sure. I think he knows about Yami. And if he knows about Yami, he probably knows about you.' Perhaps out of moral obligation, she shot Yugi a half smile through her friz.
'Aimee, I need to know. The unnamed priestess in the painting… the tomb that he dug all that [4filter] from. Was it you?'
"I was never a priestess."
Amy stopped outside a convenience store while Yugi and his mother entered. She leaned against the wall next to the window, glad to have a chance to relax. Thanks to someone, who shall not be named for their own protection, she had one floppy sneaker threatening to fall off every five steps.
The sun was slowly descending down the sky, a warm breeze tickingling her nose. Somewhere, she caught a whiff of spices and steaks from a nearby family restaurant.
Neither party spoke for a long minute. It was hard to grasp just how she knew it, but Amy could tell that Aimee wasn't peering into her thoughts. Amy's head was private. As the minutes went on, her back slowly slid down the wall into a squat.
If that wasn't Aimee's tomb and her things, why the replica of her bracelet? Did Pegasus put it there just to taunt her? Was it his way of telling her he knew her secret. Was the entire rest of the exhibit just one big, expensive red herring?
"Amy."
'Uh huh.'
"I touched him."
Amy hacked up the spit she had been swallowing.
"I got to feel him. To feel the delectable creases in his palms and the curve of his forefinger. Touching his skin, it was a sensation -"
'TMI!' she hacked coughing vigorously in between breaths. 'More information than I needed to hear. Total not not something I needed to know.'
"It was divine."
At that moment, who but Mr. Divine-Hands-Muto himself walked out of the store. Amy wheezed. In the process of which caused her to inhale more silva, until those divine hands started hitting her back, trying to help clear her coughs.
Mrs. Muto's upper torso emerged from the store door, all too unphased. "Well Yugi, what did she say?"
"Oh, uh, I haven't asked her yet," he said. While her hacks had slowed to a stop, she still remained leaned over, utterly defeated. So she was caught by surprise by his next words, "Mom asked if you wanted to stay tonight."
"Stay? Like at your house? At night?" his divine hands were now scratching his face unsurelidly.
"Um, yeah. Since your parents are out of town?"
"Oh."
To which, Mrs. Muto showed her grocery bag through the door. Clearly unhappy with the bag the way she shook it. "Help me convince Yugi we need real food and not just fried chicken."
Yugi Muto was not a protester. Yugi Muto didn't argue. Yugi Muto didn't enforce his will upon you. Unless you were his mother.
Still not convinced that the store hadn't been a portal to a parallel world with an Anti-Yugi, his reply seemed almost argumentative. "Come on mom. Can we please? It's been kinda been a long day. I really don't want to cook tonight." In fact, I would go almost as far to say he was annoyed? Frustrated even. An chaotic event in this known universe.
But the world did not crack in half. Instead his mom just scowled, like it was any other Tuesday. Amy had trouble hiding the bewilderment on how the pair had seemingly so soon moved on despite the day's events.
"Since when do you cook?" his mother said.
"You know what I mean. Mom please, don't do this today. "
Unimpressed, Mrs. Muto jiggled the bag in her hand. "And you know what I mean. Amy, what do you think? Fried, premade, convenience store chicken. Or fresh, homemade chicken?"
Fresh chicken? Were they going to go outback and slaughter the [4filter] thing? Looking Mrs. Muto once over, Amy wasn't prepared to rule it out.
Still, she was particularly impartial to one side despite the risk. "Fresh?"
"That's my girl." Mrs. Muto beamed, much to Yugi's chagrin. It was not a thick door. Or a thick window. Or maybe, Mrs. Muto's voice just unapologetically traveled. Boy could both kids, and probably everyone on the block, hear her tell the clerk - in the most polite, nurtating way possible - to shove his fried, premade, convenience store chicken up his undesirables.
Amy almost laughed. For a second she thought she might. Except Mr. Divine-Hands-Muto kept waving those hands in defeat and exasperation and it was very distracting.
It wasn't long until Amy was in the Muto kitchen unpacking a paper bag of fresh market vegetables. Perhaps through moral obligation or punishment, Yugi was stuck washing and cleaning the store. Before she could roll up her sleeves and grab a cleaning rag, Amy was pulled up the stairs and handed a dish rag instead.
No matter how much she bit down on her cheek, she couldn't hide just how she'd won in the repentance department.
The Muto kitchen bloomed with the salty smell of broth before Amy had begun even crumbling the consommé cube. Two small windows let the warm, natural, late afternoon light. It wasn't a big kitchen by any means. However, the way the sunlight, slowly transitioning to an orangey tint, feathered off the countertops made it cozy and comforting.
And a tad claustrophobic with both Mrs. Muto and Amy trying to shove around each other. Not that the older woman seemed to mind a bit. Her smirk didn't drop once, no matter how many times she had criticized Amy's angling of cutting the potatoes and carrots.
"Cut and roll them at a three quarter angle, then roll them and cut again. See how they're almost the same size now?"
Although Amy's chopping abilities were clearly not level 500, her determination to fight a kitchen knife for her honor was. [4filter] kitchen knives. Those [4filter].
Potatoes, carrots, onions, Amy and her newly self declared rival fought fervently for precision skills in a glorious shonen training montage, probably. Rangiri performed in the air. While running. And doing a flip. While dodging a kuni. Que explosion and heavy metal. Probably.
Which came to a tragic ending when facing her final opponent, Chicken-dono, on a battlefield of many fallen vegetable corpses. Amy-chan and Knife-kun, once filled with bitter hatred, had turned enemies to lovers to face this impossible endgame boss. Knife-kun in hand, Amy-chan rose against Skinless, Boneless, Chicken-dono, and rolled up her sleeves for the final of all final battles.
"Amy, you're not going to handle those thighs with your jewlery on, are you?" Interrupted Skeleton-Mentor-Yugi's-Mom-sama.
Her bracelet. Amy's fixation for hours. One that she'd managed to forget about for a minute, but here it was looming its ugly head again.
It stared back at her. Aimee stared back at her. Despite knowing Mrs. Muto was correct, she still hesitated.
"Please dear. That's dangerous. You should alway remove your jewelry when handling meats." Mom-sama added, wiggling her ringless ring-finger as some act of solidarity.
"No, I… I know." Amy said. "Sorry."
No, she didn't say "sorry." Amy doesn't say "sorry." Sorry is a sign of weakness. She said "[4filter] you" instead.
"No, I… I know." Amy said. "Sorry. I just haven't taken it off for a while."
'Sorry Aimee. Just for a second.' she thought silently.
The older woman shot her an encouraging smile. "I know, it can be tough. But it's so pretty, you wouldn't want to get bacteria on it." Mrs. Muto lifted the grave - I mean pot - of the vegetables and broth and gave it a stir. "I've never understood this 'eye fashion' fad nowadays, but yours is definitely the prettiest I've seen."
"No kidding." Amy bunched her fingers together in hopes the beads might easily roll past them, feeling in her chest bubbling up.
"Oh yeah, don't tell Yugi, but his pendant is a little much. I don't think wearing jewelry as big as his head is doing him any favors. And those necklaces. They're a little unsettling. At least you've got beads and charms, almost like something a princess would wear."
That made Amy pause. By the time Mrs. Muto's words finally processed, Amy was frozen in mid pull. She looked back down at Aimee, then at Yugi's mother. Had she said what she thought she'd said. "Hold on. When did you see a necklace that looks like ours?"
"Hm." she thought, swishing the wooden spoon into the air, "Last year sometime I think. A customer in the shop had one. I remember because it was so strange having a pretty young woman like that to come all the way to a game store. Not grandpa's usual target demographic."
"What did she look like? Did she give you a name?"
Mrs. Muto tilted her head in thought, leaning one hip out, crossed arm, and the spoon so close to her face they might touch. "Not really. It was so long ago, I mostly remember how it felt like her necklace was looking at me."
Amy finished sliding off her bracelet and washing her hands. A squeamishness rising up from the pit of her belly at the look at the knife and open gas flame. So instead, she volunteered to begin cleaning, hoping that would allow her to contiue to pry for anwsers.
Questions that went hopelessly unanswered. Not for lack of trying. Every non-subtle way Amy could think to invoke the subject again, she tried it. What kind of jewelry was really the best jewelry (silver and birthstone jewelry apparently). Who the prettiest people they knew were. (Amy, only knowing six people in the area, desperately led her to cite Téa and Ryo.)
But when it came to the necklace lady, Yugi's mom refused to reopen her vault of secrets. Right Up until the final moments of true desperation to invoke uncomfortable eye imagery by citing American horror icons five times in front of a mirror. Before she knew it, Mrs. Muto had left to gather her child, leaving Amy to take a few begrudgingly silent pictures of the cream stew on their Impulse Polaroid (and cautiously watch out for bees).
Laying on the couch, Amy held the polaroid up the ceiling and stared at it. Some of the corners of the photo were covered by the puffs in Mrs. Muto's old nightgown. Still, it looked kind of perfect. Still warm and cozy, and ready to eat. If only she'd had a camera in brain. If only we'd all had cameras in our brains. Then Mrs. Muto could spit her out a photo from a year ago.
"I believe that's what the artisan trade is for." Aimee reminded her.
'No one does that anymore.' Amy waved the polaroid photo around for emphasis, 'that's what these are for.' Now she just needed them implanted in the human brain.
She turned over to look at the rest of the living room. The ottoman and television. A few women's magazines and game catalogs peeking out from the coffee table. It should have also been warm. Instead, a ghost hung over it.
Yugi waddled with a comically large stack of blankets. "Here you go. Uh, mom wasn't sure what kind of blankets you liked, so there's one of everything. Light, heavy, fleece, um… sheets." The heightening of his vocal range at the end made Amy raise an eyebrow.
For good reason too, as soon as she saw the sheets she knew why he wanted to hide them. "Oh my god, are those little Dark Magician Girls?"
"A-and Dark Magicians! It's both! See - not just Dark Magician Girl - "
"You sleep on Dark Magician Girl bedsheets? Should I tell someone about this?"
"I-I don't even use them anymore! They're like, super old." He, at that point, shoved literally the stack blankets at her face to cover his shame.
This did not stop her. "Are there any more Dark Magician Girls I should know about? Any your mom should know about?" Mercy doesn't live here.
"Amy!"
"You're right, uncool. Mom is too far." She peeled off the layers of blankets, one as pink as Yugi's current flush. He really did make this too easy. Just, one more push. "Téa though…"
That was the tipping point, him now covering his face in defeat. Now completely, utterly red. And Amy finally, finally let out a laugh. One, two, three laughs even. This time, no ghosts, or spirits, or curators, or divine hands in the way. She couldn't stop laughing.
Then Yugi started to laugh in spite of himself. Two kids in the moment. It wasn't even really that funny. Inbetween, breaths she apologized and reassured his deep dark secret's safety. Then threw a pillow at him.
When the moment came to an end, the Yugi helped her put the fitted Dark Magician Girl Sheets over the couch cushions before retiring to his own room down the hall. Before he could leave, she seemed to have one more thing to say. The words weren't planned or thought out, they just came. "Hey Yugi?"
He turned back around with a curious hm.
"Thank you. And, nos da."
"Um, okay. Your welcome." he paused, "What does 'Nos da' mean?"
"It means… today was really [4filter], but tomorrow will be better."
"Oh. Okay. Well… nos da, Amy."