2.
Yuugi's first slumber party with the other girls was really when it all came together.
Her grandmother walked her to the girl's front door that night and kissed the top of her head. Yuugi was standing there nervously, purple sleeping bag and pajamas underneath her arm. "You'll do fine," said Hanetsuki, and she knocked on the door before Yuugi could stop her. Yuugi swallowed.
The door swung open and a middle-aged woman with neat shoulder length hair, pearl earrings, and a nice sweater was standing there. This was a townhouse in one of the fancier parts of Domino City. "Here for the party?" she said. "Come on in." She stood aside to let them through.
Yuugi walked through the door, and then her grandmother stayed outside and called, "Have fun, Yuugi!" And the door swung shut, making Yuugi feel very small and alone in the entrance hall. It was paneled with wood, wood flooring, fancy bright lighting, and crimson-colored furniture.
"Come with me," said the girl's mother, and Yuugi followed her shyly up the stairs to a bedroom with a four-poster bed hung with gauzy mermaid-scale-colored curtains. The rest of the girls were all sitting on the bed, gasping and giggling.
"Yuugi! Over here!" Anzu called, smiling. Yuugi put her sleeping bag down and went to join them.
"We were just telling scary stories," said the head of the party excitedly. The girls went around the circle, each telling a different made-up scary story. Yuugi gasped in awe, eyes wide, through several different stories, before all eyes turned to her.
She swallowed. She wanted to impress these girls. This would have to be good.
"Once there was a little girl," she began, "who was walking through the forest, when she came upon a goblin. And the goblin said, I control fire, and if you don't make a deal with me, I'll have my fire eat you up.
"So the girl made a deal with a goblin, who said she had to bring him one meal at this spot every day. So for a few days, the girl did. But then one night she went camping with her friends. Time and time passed… and the girl still did not bring the goblin a meal.
"So she and all her friends were sitting around the campfire, roasting s'mores, and the campfire rose up -" She lifted her arms, eyes wide, really getting into her imagination now, and the girls gasped. "And it swallowed the girl whole!"
"I've never heard a scary story about a goblin before," said Anzu.
Yuugi hesitated. "Was it not good?"
"No, it was very imaginative!" said Anzu excitedly, impressed. The other girls were nodding.
The next game they played was Truth Or Dare. Yuugi, buoyed by her success, really wanted to impress her new friends, so when it was her turn she chose dare. "You have to get in your pajamas and run down the street yelling like crazy," said the girl whose job it was to make up the dare, and everyone around the circle smirked.
Yuugi hesitated. Shy and reserved, easily embarrassed, she didn't want to run down the street in her pajamas shouting.
"See? I knew she couldn't do it," one girl jeered.
"Don't be silly! Yuugi will do it, won't you Yuugi?" Anzu turned to her.
"... Yes," Yuugi decided, bucking up her determination. "I will!"
So she put on her pajamas, and snuck down the stairs, peeking around the doorway into the kitchen. The mother and father were sitting at the table with late-afternoon cups of coffee. She tiptoed past them, and out the door onto the street.
She looked around - it was late, and nobody was about.
She took a deep breath, and tried to shout. What came out was a very small sound. Yuugi became frustrated with herself. Why couldn't she do this?! At last, frustrated, she let out a great yell and tore, charging, down the street like a wild rampaging bull.
Lights turned on all over the neighborhood, people came out of their houses. "What on earth are you doing?!" one old woman with rollers in her grey hair and a nightgown demanded.
But Yuugi had stopped and she was grinning. All her new friends were cheering from the bedroom window.
The girls were all firmly scolded, and they sat there back in the bedroom pretending to be contrite and trying not to snicker. Once the mother had left, all the girls turned to Yuugi excitedly.
"That was incredible!" said one of them.
"Yeah, super brave!"
Yuugi grinned.
"So I don't get it. You seem cool," said the girl who'd thrown the slumber party, puzzled. "How come no one likes you?" The question hurt; only a child would be so unthinkingly blunt.
"I don't know," Yuugi muttered, staring down at her feet. "Because I'm quiet. And… different."
The girls looked at each other. "Yuugi," said Anzu at last, smiling. "We have presents for you."
Yuugi looked up in surprise. "Really?"
The girls all began taking out clothes and makeup - fancy, pretty clothes, like skirts and blouses. One girl even had a pair of brown slip-on shoes. "If you seemed cool, we thought we'd give these to you," said the lead girl. "We thought your look could use some updating."
Yuugi looked down at her faded, holey jeans and crummy sneakers and baggy T-shirt. Then she looked up at the pretty clothes in astonishment - and a wide smile grew over her face. "Thank you so much!" she said. The other girls smiled back.
Yuugi had friends. Real, true friends.
They dressed her up in the new clothes and makeup, took her hair out of its pigtails and pulled it up into a dark ponytail. She looked reserved, she decided, staring in the full-length bedroom mirror, yet sporty and classy. Girly.
It was a total transformation. She was in something close to awe.
"I think," said Anzu bossily, "that you should make your traits work for you. You strike me as this really shy, feminine, cute, different and intelligent sort of person. So you should work that angle. Make it admirable and use it to your advantage."
When Yuugi went home the next day in her new clothes, her grandfather frowned in worry. "They wanted you to do things and look like someone else?"
"They just wanted to see if I had guts," Yuugi argued. "If I was cool." She was confused. Her concerned grandparents had always understood before. "And besides, I like the way I look now." She lifted her chin.
Grandma and Grandpa looked at each other, and at last they smiled. "Well, if you like yourself and you're happy," said Grandpa, "so am I."
Mom wasn't nearly as understanding. She demanded all sorts of questions as to how Yuugi had gotten the clothes, as if Yuugi was some sort of juvenile shoplifter. Yuugi answered her questions unwillingly, scowling, and eventually her mother had to let it be.
Pretty soon it was known all over school that Mutou Yuugi was cool now. She was more confident, she looked better, she had a new group of popular girlfriends, and she was especially close friends with Mazaki Anzu.
A class project Yuugi was assigned to randomly with a bunch of other girls and boys really sealed the deal.
"What are we going to do?" everyone was asking, and so Yuugi drew down a detailed and imaginative plan on a sheet of paper. More sure of herself now, she showed it to everybody.
"Hey, how about this?" she said.
They expected the idea to be stupid, but they stared at the paper and slowly their eyes widened in surprise. "Hey!" said one boy, impressed. "That's pretty good!"
Yuugi put down the paper and blushed, curling her shoulder shyly, smiling sweetly. With her new appearance and self confidence, people took it better.
Soon, no one had a problem with the shy but feminine and classy Mutou Yuugi at all. She was a little different, but most people wrote that off as eccentricity and creativity. She made all kinds of more distant friends at school - even people who used to pick on her.
She ate it all up eagerly, thrilled.
Anzu and Yuugi spent special times together on play dates after school. They met at each other's houses at first, and Yuugi showed Anzu all her favorite games, though the fiery Anzu got easily frustrated when she didn't win, much to Yuugi's amusement.
But Anzu also introduced things to Yuugi. Anzu's distant parents took a very hands-off approach, both of them with away-from-home jobs, so when they were at Anzu's house they could go out and explore the city together.
Yuugi saw all the things Domino City had to offer - from graffiti ridden buildings housing arcade games set next to adult clubs and massage parlors, to wide gleaming shopping centers, to little narrow streets full of tiny foreign food places. They took the bus and the metro, and saw everything from women in expensive coats to homeless old men talking to lamp posts. They went to bowling alleys and skating rinks and burger places and everything in between.
Anzu gave Yuugi her first taste of adventure.
Yuugi and Anzu got drinks and snacks while exploring the city together, and Yuugi found she loved iced teas, lemonades, and smoothies. Peach green tea lemonade and mango strawberry smoothies were her favorites. They quickly became her go-to snack and drink, she sipping at the straws in big plastic containers.
But Anzu also introduced Yuugi to music. Yuugi found her favorite kinds of music to be electronic and dance pop music. Anzu loved music of all kinds - listening, playing, dancing, singing.
"I want to be a ballet dancer in New York someday," she admitted to Yuugi excitedly, and Yuugi told her new best friend she was sure Anzu would make it. And Anzu did have genuine talent - Yuugi didn't know how accurate a measurement this was, but Anzu always beat her at Dance Dance Revolution.
Yuugi genuinely believed the ever-confident, teasing Mazaki Anzu to be capable of anything. Anzu's lack of money seemed only a minor obstacle in Yuugi's admiring eyes.
It took Yuugi a while to realize she didn't talk to her imaginary friends anymore.
It crept up on her slowly. She talked to them less and less, and then one day she realized she was too busy to talk to them at all.
They stood in front of her one afternoon in the setting sun after school, in front of the game shop.
"I'm sorry," said Yuugi, looking guiltily up at them as if she honestly believed they were real. "I don't talk to you anymore."
"It's okay," said the purple brontosaurus gently. "We're happy for you. You have new friends now."
"Yeah. And other kids need us," said the fluffy orange one-eyed square. "So you have to let us go."
Yuugi smiled, her eyes stinging. "Okay," she said, full of bittersweet, sour-apple sorts of feelings. "Goodbye. Thanks for everything."
And they disappeared in the last rays of the setting sun as it slid down under the Domino City skyscrapers, the sky above beautiful shades of pink and gold.