Title: A Persistent Shadow (Chapter 15)
Pairing: Ryou Bakura x Yami Bakura, possible others
Rating: M
Summary: The Pharaoh uses a spell to force Yami Bakura out of Ryou's body, but unfortunately for Ryou it doesn't work quite as well as intended.
Ryou would have given anything not to go to school today, but at school he was, hiding behind a large bush just outside the entrance. He'd been goaded by the spirit into leaving early, but as far as he was concerned, he could put off talking to Marik until he absolutely had to. He didn't want to go up to the classroom, in case Marik had gotten there early as well, but he also didn't want to run into him outside.
Ryou was peeking around the bush at the arriving students when he felt a hand on his shoulder and jumped sky-high. "Ah!" He spun around to find Marik standing behind him. The spirit was watching the whole thing from off to the side, with obvious amusement on his face. Ryou would have glared at him if he could. Why couldn't you have warned me he was coming up behind me?
I have no reason to help you avoid him, Landlord.
Ryou would really have preferred arguing with the spirit to facing Marik, but he knew he couldn't get out of it any longer. "H-hi. You don't usually come this way," he said, realizing afterward that he'd pretty much just announced what he'd been trying to do, if it hadn't been obvious already.
"I needed to get something from the store," Marik said, holding up a small box of pencils. He looked Ryou up and down, then nodded. "You're looking a lot better than you were yesterday."
Ryou turned red, shifting uncomfortably under the scrutiny. He knew Marik had to be thinking about why he felt better, which probably meant Marik was thinking about what he'd presumably done to feel better, and while that was bad enough completely on its own, it also meant that Marik was likely remembering their conversation from the day before, which brought whole new levels of embarrassment to the situation.
"Y-yeah. Um." Ryou struggled for the right words to say, though he wasn't sure there even were right words for this situation. "L-listen, I figured out what you were talking about yesterday once I got home." Ryou covered his face with his hands as he realized that sentence might imply something he really didn't want it to. "I m-mean, I already knew about it. The thing you were, um, talking about. I just didn't know you were talking about it. A-and I didn't mean to ask you... to ask you... w-what I asked," he finished weakly. He dropped his hands, knowing he should really look at Marik's face at some point, but only able to bring himself to look at his shoulder.
Marik tilted his head to meet Ryou's gaze, face unreadable. "That's good," he said. "For a moment I really thought I was going to have to explain it to you."
Ryou looked away. "You don't need to explain anything," he said emphatically, wanting to make absolutely sure that Marik wouldn't start explaining it to him. "I'm not that unaware. I was just... n-not really paying attention."
Marik's expression became a little concerned. "Yeah, about that..."
"Can we talk about this later? Somewhere else?" Ryou asked. He didn't like interrupting people, but he was a little desperate not to have that particular conversation just then.
Marik looked at their surroundings. "Right. That's probably a good idea. We have to get to class, anyway," he said, starting for the door and tugging Ryou along with him.
Ryou sat down at his desk and was disturbed to find that his body started responding to where he was, as though expecting the same treatment it had gotten the rest of the week. Great. I hope this doesn't mean I'm going to find my desk painfully attractive for the rest of the year. Still, it wasn't anywhere near the level the spirit's torment had been, and Ryou thought he could ignore it without much difficulty.
Or Ryou would have been able to ignore it, if it hadn't made him think of what the spirit had promised him the day before, about being able to have... that... whenever he wanted it.
Ryou wondered why the spirit had even told him that. It seemed like it would make more sense to hold out for specific things he wanted Ryou to do, and only offer it then, not to just have the offer wide open for whenever he wanted it. What if he decided he wanted it ten times a day?
That eager, are you?
Ryou turned pink. Of course not. I was just thinking that what you told me made no sense.
It's perfectly straightforward. If you cooperate, you can have it as often as you like. Ten times in one day is more likely to be a problem for you than for me.
Reflecting on the week of near-continuous torment he'd just experienced, Ryou had to agree with him there. He was still suspicious, though. He couldn't see the spirit doing more than he needed to for no reason. Maybe the spirit wanted to get him addicted to feeling that good, so that he could more effectively torment him if he stopped cooperating.
Or maybe the spirit just didn't think Ryou would ever actually ask him for it, and so he could get away with doing absolutely nothing while Ryou actually had to do things for him. But the only way to find out if that were true would be to call his bluff by taking him up on his offer.
Interesting justification you've come up with, Landlord. The spirit appeared next to Ryou's desk. Are you calling my bluff right now?
N-no! Ryou thought frantically. I can do that later. Or not at all.
Heh. The spirit disappeared again.
Ryou forced his mind off the subject and started working on his homework. He'd been ahead last week, but not having been able to get anything done in the past week, he'd fallen back to where they were supposed to be at this point in the semester. He spent the rest of the day working ahead during all his classes, sitting between Joey and Tristan during lunch to avoid having to talk to Marik.
After school was over Ryou turned to Marik, nervousness filling him again. "Where should we go?"
Marik slung his bag over his shoulder. "How about my apartment? Ishizu should be at work right now, so it'll just be us."
"Okay," Ryou said, trying ignore the dread he was feeling. He followed Marik out of the school and over to his apartment building.
Marik opened the door to his apartment and waved Ryou inside. Ryou took a moment to admire the place – it looked far more lived in than his did, and he'd been in Domino City somewhat longer. The living room had all the usual stuff like a couch, television, and so on, but it was mixed in with some clearly Egyptian decorations. There was a mirror on the wall just next to the entrance; Ryou wished he didn't look so obviously nervous, but at least he wasn't blushing. Yet.
"Sit down," Marik said, gesturing at the couch.
Ryou took a seat on the couch. Marik sat down at the other end. They sat in silence for nearly a minute, Marik staring at Ryou while Ryou avoided looking in his direction at all.
Marik was the one who finally broke the silence. "Um. Ishizu has me seeing a therapist."
Ryou blinked. Whatever he'd been expecting to come out of Marik's mouth, it hadn't been that. "Is that where you've been going after school?"
"Yeah," Marik said, looking somewhat uncomfortable.
"Do they know about shadow magic and... everything?" Ryou asked, wondering how anyone would go about finding a therapist that would actually believe even half the things happened in relation to the Millennium Items.
"No," Marik said. "He just knows the basics, without any of the magical stuff. To him, I had Dissociative Identity Disorder."
"Oh." Ryou didn't really know what to say. "Is it helping?"
"Um. Yeah, actually," Marik said. "My dark side was where I put everything I couldn't deal with. When he was banished, everything I put there went with him. But I had plenty of unwanted thoughts and feelings after that, and I still had no idea how to deal with them, only now they had nowhere to go..."
"That must have been hard," Ryou said, feeling sympathetic. He'd had plenty of unwanted thoughts and feelings that past week, and he hadn't dealt with them very effectively at all. He had no idea what it would be like to have the kind Marik probably had to contend with, which really made his seem very minor in comparison.
"It was. Less so now, but if I'm not careful and try to go back to what I used to do, I could create another dark side all over again," Marik said, watching Ryou's face as though somewhat uncertain about his reaction.
"Is it really that likely?" Ryou asked. "I don't know that much about what happened to you, but it seemed like a very... um... extreme situation. Wouldn't something that bad have to happen for you do that again?"
"It's not likely, no," Marik said, relaxing at his response. "But it's still possible if I'm not careful. Um." Marik tensed up a little again. "Please don't tell the others about this. Especially the Pharaoh."
"It's really not my business to tell them," Ryou said, knowing he wouldn't have said anything even if Marik hadn't asked him not to.
Marik smiled. "Thanks." His expression turned a little more serious. "Right. Um." Marik paused for a moment, as though trying to think of the right words. "One of the first things I was told was not to try and repress anything I didn't want to feel, because it never works very well. It can actually make the feeling more powerful than it would have been, and people who try it can end up... uh... obsessing about something that wouldn't be that big a deal otherwise, until it completely takes over all their thoughts." Marik looked at Ryou as though expecting some reaction to what he was saying.
Ryou nodded. "That makes sense," he said, not really sure what Marik wanted.
"Yeah." From the look on his face, Marik had been hoping for something else. "And like I said, it doesn't really work. Whatever the person was trying to repress can just start... um... exploding out of them, making them say and do things they wouldn't normally."
"Oh," Ryou said, finding himself unable to continue looking at Marik's face now that he understood who Marik was actually talking about. "I-I'm not repressing anything. Really." The denial sounded weak even to him.
"Then what was this past week?" Marik asked.
It was me being harassed by a malevolent spirit, Ryou desperately wanted to say, but couldn't.
Just go along with it, Landlord.
No! Ryou thought back vehemently. I don't want Marik to think I'm some kind of... of... repressed sex maniac.
Oh, I believe he's going to think you're a repressed sex maniac no matter what you say, the spirit replied. All you really have influence over is how much he feels he needs to help you with your repressed sex mania.
Ryou fought the urge to hide his face in his hands, knowing that Marik was watching him. He remembered that he'd just been asked a question. "It's not what you think it is."
"Yesterday during class you were..." Marik's expression became a little distant. "You were clinging to your desk and panting and moaning like..." He shook his head and swallowed, grabbing a pillow to hug in his lap. "What would you call that?"
Ryou's went fully red at the memory, much worse now that he knew Marik had been watching him the whole time. "I d-don't know, but I don't think we can legitimately call it repressed at that point," he said miserably.
"What got you so..." Marik waved one hand. "Worked up?"
He's not really asking me that, is he? Ryou had no idea how to respond. He didn't feel like he could say any of the explanations his mind was throwing at him while Marik was staring at him. "M-my imagination just ran away with me," he said weakly.
"It shouldn't run away with you that much," Marik said. "Not in that situation, anyway."
"I know," Ryou said. "But I was better today, wasn't I?"
"Yeah, but this happened a few other times before this week," Marik replied. "Where you got a little... um... flustered during class. It seems like it's getting worse."
From his perspective, it really would, wouldn't it? Ryou thought, realizing how the other times the spirit had been distracting him lined up. "U-um. If it happens again, I can deal with it then," he said, hoping it wouldn't ever happen again and give Marik the opportunity to use his words against him.
"You really shouldn't let things get that far," Marik said.
"I don't really have any way of stopping it," Ryou said, feeling slightly exasperated. It wasn't like he had control over when the spirit decided to make unreasonable demands.
You could always do what I want you to all the time, the spirit offered helpfully.
Ryou didn't bother to dignify that with a response.
Marik cleared his throat. "I really think you do," he said. "Whatever you did yesterday worked pretty well. Why don't you just, um, do that more often?"
You should listen to him. He's giving you sound advice.
No! You just want me to have to agree to anything you ask me to do, Ryou thought. And anyway, he thinks I was... o-on my own. Ryou looked up at Marik's concerned face for a brief instant, then quickly looked away again. "I can't do that," he said, realizing afterward that he really should have just agreed to get the subject dropped.
"Why not?" Marik asked, not that he seemed all that surprised by the response.
But then, he wouldn't be if he thinks I'm repressed, Ryou thought. "I just can't," He said evasively. "Why does it matter?"
"It matters because you completely lost yourself during class yesterday," Marik said. "I think I'm the only one who saw, but you can't always count on that. And I, ah, really shouldn't be seeing you like that either," he added, conflicting emotions flickering across his face.
"Oh. R-right." Ryou had been so embarrassed about the fact that Marik had seen him in that state that he'd forgotten what it must have been like for him to have to watch that. Ryou forced himself to look at Marik's face while he apologized. "I'm sorry. I r-really didn't mean for you to see that. It must have been u-uncomfortable." Ryou knew that was an understatement, but it felt like any word would be an understatement in this case.
"Yeah." Marik coughed. "It was a little... distracting," he said, hugging the pillow a little tighter to his body.
"It had to have been worse than that," Ryou said, feeling guilty. "Especially the last time."
"Um. Yeah. Kind of. I mean, I'd already seen you the other times, but I'd never seen you look like that before. I'd never seen anyone look like that before," Marik said, shifting a little in his spot on the couch. "It's not really something you expect to suddenly see in the middle of class. I mean, for a moment there I thought you were going to..." Marik swallowed, his gaze unfocusing a little. "And you were looking right in my direction while it was going on..."
"I didn't want the Pharaoh to see me," Ryou said, feeling a strong urge to justify that particular point, though he couldn't quite put his finger on why.
Marik shook himself out of his revery, then looked at Ryou again. "Right. I wouldn't want the Pharaoh to see me like that either."
There was a short silence.
"W-well. Um. I think that's been settled," Ryou said, hoping they would never speak of it again.
"Wait," Marik said. "At least tell me you'll consider what I suggested. Especially if you start getting... um... overwhelmed again."
"Y-yeah. I'll th-think about it, I guess," Ryou forced himself to agree over his embarrassment. He's not going to leave me alone if it happens again, is he? Ryou thought, imagining having to deal with both the spirit driving him nuts and Marik wanting to talk about his 'problem' at the same time.
All the more reason to just continue to cooperate, don't you think?
You're the only reason he even thinks I have a 'problem', Ryou thought. This is all your fault!
"I'm glad," Marik said, though he didn't seem entirely convinced by Ryou's promise. "Um. One more thing." He paused for a few seconds before continuing, as though not sure he should be bringing it up. "You kept coming up to me this whole week, like you were trying to say something to me." Marik looked unusually nervous.
"Oh. That," Ryou said. "I wanted to ask if I could see that magic book you told me about. I just kept getting distracted," he added, figuring that Marik would probably want some kind of explanation for why he couldn't just ask him properly the first time.
Marik inspected his face closely. "That's really all it was?" he asked, sounding surprised.
"Yeah," Ryou said, starting to feel uncomfortable again. "What did you think it was?"
Marik looked extremely relieved. "Nothing." He shook his head and smiled. "I didn't think it was anything. I'll go get the book." He stood up and walked toward the hallway. "I'll be back in a minute."
Ryou watched him go, feeling a little puzzled. I wonder what that was about.
The spirit appeared next to him on the couch. I really couldn't imagine.
Ryou eyed the smirk on the spirit's face warily, but since Marik didn't seem concerned by whatever it was anymore, he decided it wasn't worth worrying over.
Marik walked back into the room carrying a large, fat book in his arms. He set it down on the coffee table and sat next to Ryou on the couch. The spirit disappeared from the couch and reappeared on top of the table next to the book.
Ryou admired the designs on the old book's cover, including what looked a little like the version of the Eye of Horus on the Millennium Ring, but he didn't dare touch it. "Shouldn't we at least be wearing gloves?" he asked, remembering the many, many precautions he'd seen his father take with ancient documents when he was younger.
"With other books, maybe. But this one's practically indestructible," Marik said, knocking on the cover. "Don't tell Ishizu, but I once spilled a drink all over one of the pages, and the liquid just sort of vanished. It didn't even leave a stain." He pushed the book in front of Ryou, passing his arm right through the spirit without noticing anything. "Go ahead and look through it if you want. Don't be surprised if you find something horrifying, though."
Ryou was reaching toward the book and stopped when he heard that. "Horrifying?"
"Yeah," Marik said. "Some of the spells in the book are kind of disturbing. Not all of them or even most of them, but it seems like the book always opens to one of the worst. Or at least it has every time I've opened it."
"Oh." Ryou carefully undid the strap holding the book closed and opened the book to the first page. Or tried to, anyway. Somehow, when he looked down he found the book open to a page near the very back. The first thing he noticed was a drawing that looked a little like Frankenstein's monster, stitches covering every bend and joint on the grotesque body. "I can see what you mean."
The spirit leaned over the book, then scowled. I can't read any of this.
Huh? Ryou took a clear look at the words on the page, noticing for the first time that they looked a little strange. "These aren't normal hieroglyphs."
"No," Marik said. "It's another language I've never seen or heard any mention of outside of this book. This thing predates even ancient history – the language had already been forgotten by the Pharaoh's time. It took thousands of years for all the spells to be translated."
"Thousands of years..." Ryou repeated. "How did they translate it without anything written in that language to reference?"
"I have no idea how they did it at first," Marik said, holding his hands up. "The first several spells were translated in a totally random order, and the people who worked on translating them seem to have just sort of... spontaneously figured out what they said after staring at them long enough."
"That doesn't make any sense," Ryou said.
"Hey, don't look at me," Marik said. "This was way before anyone alive now was even born. After the some of the spells were translated, enough of the language was understood to start translating it normally. It only got easier over time."
Ask him if he has a translation of the book, the spirit said.
"Do you have a translation of the book?" Ryou asked. He didn't normally go along with what the spirit wanted so quickly, but the book was starting to give him the creeps. If a translation existed, he'd gladly look at that one instead.
"No," Marik said. "Once the whole thing was translated, it was decided that the spells were too dangerous to leave an easily readable copy around, so the translation and all the notes were destroyed. The ability to read the language itself was passed down in my family."
"So, what does this one say?" Ryou asked, looking down at the page.
"It says..." Marik paused, eyes skimming over the text. "It's a spell to give a spirit of the dead a living body."
"R-really?" Ryou asked, feeling distinctly unnerved that the book had opened to exactly what the spirit had asked him to look for. "That doesn't sound so bad."
"Well, in order to do it, you have to gather up nine people, kill them, then dismember their bodies and--"
"I get the point," Ryou said quickly. I'm not doing that, Ryou thought at the spirit. And if you try to make me, I'll just tell the others that you're still here.
Don't worry, Landlord, I would like a somewhat better body than a spell like this could give me, the spirit said, sounding entirely serious.
Ryou was relieved to hear that. He hoped they wouldn't run into an equally horrifying spell that gave a better body.
"See?" Marik said. "Like I told you, it always seems to open to one of the worst ones."
"Can we look through it from the beginning?" Ryou asked.
"Yeah, but we'll have to a lot of page flipping," Marik replied. "If you try to go more than one page at a time, you'll never end up where you want to, even if that's just the front of the book. Believe me, I've tried."
"We'd have to flip through all that one page at a time?" Ryou asked, looking at the hundreds and hundreds of pages between the front of the book and the page they were on.
"Maybe not," Marik said, closing the book and opening it again. It landed on a page much closer to the front of the book. "I usually get this one."
Ryou looked the page the book had opened to. There was less writing than on the one he'd gotten, most of the page being dominated by the picture of a shadowy figure tying a ribbon around the neck of a confused looking man. "What does that spell do?"
"It binds people into trusting the caster, no matter what their normal feelings are," Marik replied, already flipping page after page to get to the front. "Here we are. The first spell in the book. 'To protect livestock from wild animals and thieves'..."
They went through the whole book one page at a time. Most of the time Marik just told him what the spell did in one sentence before they moved on, but occasionally they would talk about it more in depth and go over what went into it. The spirit listened intently, rarely speaking and never taking his eyes off the book itself. Ryou wondered at one point if he was attempting to decipher the language based on the translations Marik was giving them.
Only a few things really stood out in the massive list of spells. One was a spell 'to bind an in-between spirit to an earthly body through a conduit', listed between 'to keep vengeful spirits away from grave sites' and 'to create a stone amulet that reveals spirits to the wearer'. The spell took up three full pages, entirely text.
"What does that mean?" Ryou asked, wondering if the spirit counted as an 'in-between spirit', whatever that was.
"It means exactly what it sounds like – by in-between spirit, I mean a spirit that hasn't moved on to the afterlife, but can no longer interact with the living world. The conduit is a link to the living world – a person, in this case. And the spell creates a new body using..." Marik read through the requirements silently.
Ryou could only look at the incomprehensible writing on the page in complete ignorance. It seemed like the sort of thing the spirit wanted him to look for. He hoped the pages weren't full of instructions like: 'Gather up twenty people. The first must be killed using a particular kind of knife, while the second...'
It seemed like the book had a disturbing number of spells that began that way, mixed right in with the perfectly innocuous ones.
Ryou waited patiently until it looked like Marik was finished reading through the first page. "It looks like this one has a lot of ingredients."
"What?" Marik asked, glancing over the page again. "Oh, yeah, it would look like that. Actually, it just has very specific requirements for the spirit and the conduit."
"Requirements?" Ryou asked.
Marik read off the list. "The spirit can't have any link to the living world other than the conduit. The conduit must be a living human being with the ability to perform magic. The conduit can't be serving as a conduit for more than one spirit. The spirit and the conduit must have a sympathetic bond..."
"A sympathetic bond?" Ryou wasn't sure what exactly that entailed, but it didn't sound like something he had with the spirit.
"It basically means the spirit and the conduit have an emotional connection," Marik said. "A generally positive one. The spell won't work without it."
I guess that spell won't be working any time soon, Ryou thought. He might be able to claim a positive connection to the spirit some of the time these days, but he doubted the spirit would ever claim the reverse was true. Ryou snuck a glance at the spirit, but he was still looking at the book intently.
"How does it work?" Ryou asked.
"Well, it requires a kind of doll-like thing, called a..." Marik said a strange sounding word. "The conduit has to cut the left hand and cover the doll in blood..." Marik continued to describe the many other steps the ritual involved, then finished with: "And the doll should grow into a human body, which the spirit is then bound inside."
"It grows into a whole new body, just like that?" Ryou asked. It sounded too impressive to be true, no matter what he'd seen of magic before. Surely a human body had to be more difficult to create.
"Mostly, yeah..." Marik turned to the last page of the spell. "But the body is a sort of extension of the conduit. It will only last as long as the conduit lives."
Ryou didn't think the spirit would like that part, either. "What's the next spell?"
They went through dozens of other spells and were nearly at the end of the book when they hit a section with two pages missing, clearly having been torn out.
Ryou looked at Marik in confusion. "I thought you said the book was nearly indestructible."
"It is," Marik said, making Ryou wince when he casually demonstrated his point by taking the next page, 'to destroy cursed objects', and tugging on it hard. In any other book the page would have torn easily, but in this case absolutely nothing happened. "Those pages were missing before my family ever even had the book. Whoever did it must have really wanted those pages out."
Ryou looked at the torn edges that had remained in the book, which were completely blackened into a dark, coal-like color, as though the pages had been half-torn, half-burned out of the book, and he had to agree.
They continued going through the spells on each page, until they got to one three pages from the back, 'to create a human-like golem out of clay'.
"What does 'human-like' mean?" Ryou asked, thinking it could be anything from 'has two legs and walks upright' to 'is actually indistinguishable from a normal human being', though the picture on the page did look like a person.
"It means it looks and feels like a normal human being, though it will only last for a year in this case," Marik said. "This spell is different from the other golem ones. It only creates the body."
"What does it need?" Ryou asked.
"Let's see," Marik said, skimming over the page. "Clay from each side of the Half-Sun Valley... I have no idea what place that refers to. A cloth of linen. A large, flat stone. A small amount of blood and hair from a human being. Golden tools for sculpting the features..." The list went on, full of difficult or impossible-to-obtain items.
This spell is promising, the spirit said, speaking for the first time in well over an hour. Ask him more about it.
Promising? Ryou thought. I wouldn't know how to get half those things. I'm not even sure what some of them are.
Don't worry about that right now.
"How do you make the golem?" Ryou asked. The ingredients list might be impossible, but at least there wasn't anything truly horrible on it, like many of the other spells.
"First you take the clay from the dark side of the valley and form it into a basic human shape on top of the stone," Marik said. "Then you layer the clay from the light side on top of it, and carve it into the appearance you want." Marik made a face. "Ugh. It comes out exactly as you form it. Imagine making some tiny mistake and having a piece of flesh hanging off at a weird angle."
Ryou imagined exactly that. "Ick," he said, feeling repulsed by the image in his head. Worse than that, it made the whole thing seem even more undoable. He'd painted figurines before, but he'd never really sculpted anything, especially not clay. He doubted he could make anything approaching a real likeness of a human being, let alone one so accurate that it could be made flesh without looking disgusting. He didn't know what he'd do if the spirit wanted him to go through with it. "What happens after that?"
"Then you have to take it outside, into the morning sun, and cover it with the linen cloth. The whole thing has to happen inside a circle of..." Marik described the rest of the ritual.
"That's a very complicated spell," Ryou said after he'd finished.
"Yeah," Marik agreed. "Good thing neither of us needs to make a golem."
"Right," Ryou said, trying not to sound like he was obviously lying. "What are the last two spells?"
"'To ensure the loyalty of servants' and..." Marik turned to the very last page. "'To instill disloyalty in an enemy's servants'. Apparently that's not very difficult," he added, pointing to the short paragraph written on the page. He closed the book and stretched. "So. What did you think?"
"It's not what I was expecting," Ryou said. "But it was still really interesting."
"Well, if you ever need to keep a vengeful spirit from destroying your grain crop, let me know," Marik said. "I'll let you look at the book as much as you like."
Ryou snickered. "Thanks."
Marik yawned, then looked at the clock. "It's getting late," he said. "Ishizu will be back soon. You can stay for dinner if you want."
Ryou smiled. "Okay."
They talked a little while longer until Ishizu came home, and then helped her make dinner. It felt a little strange, since he hadn't been part of any kind of family dinner like this for years. Possibly a decade, though his father had tried a little more back then, even after his mother and sister had died. For a moment Ryou envied Marik, even knowing all the other terrible things Marik had endured because of his family. But after that brief moment, Ryou got drawn into the conversation and was enjoying himself too much to envy anyone.
He stayed immersed in the discussion for most of the meal, attention only rarely drawn away from Marik and Ishizu over to the spirit, who seemed deep in thought. Ryou wondered what the spirit would inevitably ask him to do next and whether he should go along with it, assuming it wasn't harmful. But he didn't think about it for too long; a once-in-a-decade experience shouldn't be wasted, after all.
