Ryou's Story

By: ACE329

Summary: This story is mine to tell. No, not the one whom most refer to as Bakura, the spirit of the millennium ring, just me. He already stole my name but I cannot- will not- let him take away the one thing that I have left…my words.

Disclaimer: I do not own Yu-gi-oh!

A/N: I just want to clarify again- there will definitely be some deviation from Ryou's true origin in the manga vs. what I'm writing. I want to stick to the real story as much as possible, but it wouldn't be much of a story if everything were exactly the same, right…?

Chapter 3- It's My Name

My father and I had moved seven times before we finally settled down in a random city of Japan.

It was called Domino City, also known as gamers' central. This is also where I attended school, and met Yuugi, Jounouchi, Anzu, Honda and many other individuals who had made brief appearances in my life.

But before I established myself in my newest settings, I was wholly terrified when I found out I would be thrown into a Japanese school halfway through the first semester. If I couldn't make any friends in my home country, how could I in a foreign one? But my father didn't care.

Ever since my mother and sister had passed away, my father dedicated himself completely to his work, completely willing to move whenever necessary. After all, he only had me to drag around, and I wasn't much of a complainer, despite the fact that fear would well up inside of me every time I became aware of my home's impermanence.

As one may guess, I didn't have many attachments to material items. Before I even had a chance to become familiar with where my things were in my room, I had to pack up again.

The only thing that I truly developed a fondness towards was my mother's grand piano. My father wanted to sell it, especially because it was always a struggle to move into our cramped apartments, but I refused to allow it.

It was the only thing I fought for. Clearly, in order to cope with my sister's and my mother's death, my father wanted to pretend as if they had never existed. I couldn't understand it; how could he make a living off of reviving ancient civilizations, yet refuse to let our deceased family remain in our hearts? My father wanted to eliminate everything that reminded him of our past.

So I let him. I even let him destroy all of Amane's paintings. But for some reason, I would not allow him to sell away that piano. Maybe it was because it was the only memory I had left of my mother, the only piece of evidence that I even had one to begin with.

Somewhere along this line of moving, my father had given me the millennium ring. As I had stated before, I believe it was because of his guilt for never being there for me. Too bad I never told him that after he had missed several Christmases, birthdays and other various holidays one was supposed to spend with family, I stopped caring.

Many seem to be under the impression that my father and I constantly switched homes and schools because of my millennium ring's doing. It is believed that the spirit would possess my body, put everyone within a ten-foot radius into a coma, and then burn down a school. Or so Yuugi and his friends thought.

My darker half isn't so careless. While it is true that the malevolent spirit had a penchant for using my favorite RPG as a means of capturing souls, he did it in such an inconspicuous way that no one would ever suspect that it was my doing (or rather, the item around my neck's doing). And besides, where would be the evidence? The spirit got rather creative in trapping souls; he conveniently placed them into RPG figurines. While the bodies of these souls would still exist, their souls would literally be encased into inanimate objects. On the surface, it looked like the people who were the victims to the spirit's evil ways had simply fallen into a coma.

I had no clue how the spirit was able to do it; the mere idea of such a feat was so ethereal, so unbelievable, who would have thought that my RPG game board was the home to the lost souls?

At first I felt complete and utter dismay that it was ultimately my body that was the vessel to such misfortune, but then I began to envy those souls. By no means am I endorsing my darker half's unforgivable behavior; I'm just recognizing that sometimes, being trapped into a figurine could be more pleasant than living in this world. To not feel anything, to not have to think, what a sweet release that would be for me!

And like a true thief who is a master at his craft, my darker half managed to pilfer around twelve souls without having a single finger point at me in accusation.

So really, the fact that my father was constantly on the move for his job was more of a convenience to me than one would think, for it made it infinitely easier for the spirit to satiate his sadistic appetite. And when the spirit was satisfied, that made my life infinitely easier as well. I will get to that part later, though.

My father and I ultimately moved to Japan- and have stayed there for longer than any other residence I have settled in- because there was a growing firm that needed more permanent employees. Namely, those with more experience. Being that my father had been immersed in his career for many years, he was finally progressing from a field supervisor to the director of his sector of the firm. His sector existed specifically to continue investigating the ruins of Egypt, and my father finally had the power to sit behind an office desk and conduct the action. For my father, this job offer was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity; he couldn't pass it up.

So yet again, I found myself packing up what little I had and moved to Japan.

To be honest, although I was terrified to move to a foreign country- my Japanese was certainly not perfect after all- I was also relieved.

I always believed that eventually, people would recognize that I was the culprit to all the mysterious occurrences that took place while I had been in Britain.

So that is how the country I was born in never quite seemed like my home again.

To clarify, living in Japan never felt like home either. The brutal and honest truth is, if you look foreign, you will always be treated as such. There's no getting around it.

My stark-white hair and my undeniable accent did not help. And, there are just so many rules in Japan. My father and I both had trouble becoming familiar with them.

For instance, it took me about a month to accept the fact that I could no longer use a fork (at least if I didn't want to draw attention to myself), wear shoes in a house, or address people by their first name. The latter especially bothered me because I could only call people by their first name if I knew them well enough. Which was essentially no one. Likewise, no one knew me well enough to call me "Ryou."It was a painful reminder that I wasn't connected to the world.

And that's why it bothered me so much when the spirit of the millennium ring insisted on being called "Bakura": where was the distinction between me and my other half? There wasn't one.

And now that I have explained myself, hopefully it can be understood why from this point on, I will refer to the spirit of the ring as "Nameless." I will not call him by my name. Nor will I ever.

I don't care what Yuugi and his friends think, the spirit of the ring's name is not Bakura. He just claimed that it was as a means to steal away my identity, to make me lose hope of being recognized as a separate individual.

Is everyone really so dense? Does "Bakura" honestly sound like an Egyptian name? He is a spirit who inhabits an artifact from ancient Egypt, for the love of rational thinking.

I suspect that everyone knows this but does not bother to make the distinction. Even Yuugi, who is a victim of a spirit's will himself, sees me as just a vessel as well.

While it is true that Yuugi and his friends had made an honest effort to be my friend upon my arrival at Domino High, ever since that one incident where Nameless revealed himself as a threat who inhabited my body, things haven't been the same. From that point on, they have been carefully avoiding me, as if they fear I will unexpectedly transform into my darker half or worse…

They probably fear that I am working with him.

So badly I want to shake every person who has claimed to be my friend and say, "My name is Ryou. I am one of your classmates. I used to have a family, and I have interests, too. I like to play the piano, I like to read, I like to play games! My biggest hope is to have a future."

But I know, I absolutely know, that if I were to say such a thing, whoever would be on the receiving end of this would give me the blankest stare; would anybody even have an idea what I am talking about?

My "friends" would probably be like, "What? What are you talking about Bakura? Of course you have a future. Doesn't everybody?"

But hasn't anyone figured it out yet?

As long as I am the puppet to Nameless's strings, I will never have a future.

I will always wake up, not knowing where I am, or have any idea what Nameless has done while taking control of my body. I won't have a clue as to when the last time I ate was, or when I last went to school.

At first, I didn't have the faintest idea regarding what Nameless did while he possessed me, but one day, I finally became aware of how horrible he could really be.

It was that day when my spirit had finally been broken.