3.
Grandma didn't usually go to the doctor's.
She had a great distrust of medical specialists of all kinds, and anyway, she hated accepting help. So when she started getting stomach pains, she ignored it for a long time. But soon, they began crippling her. She hunched over clutching her abdomen one night while making dinner, and for the next two days she was bedridden and could barely move, moaning from her bedsheets.
Yuugi was genuinely frightened, and Sugoroku broke down. "You have to go to the doctor," he told Hanetsuki.
So one day they did, together. Yuugi stayed at home for once, swinging her legs at the shop's front counter, waiting and waiting… They didn't come back until late at night. Grandma's eyes were red-rimmed and she couldn't look Yuugi in the face.
"Your grandmother has cancer," Grandpa said, an old, tired kind of sadness in his face and his eyes. For a moment, there was a curious ringing in Yuugi's ears, as if she had simply not heard properly.
"But - but Grandma can't die! Grandpa will float away!" she cried, alarmed, leaping to her feet. And then I'll be all alone, she didn't say.
Grandma broke down and hunched over, sobbing into her hand, and Grandpa looked at Yuugi like she'd said the wrong thing. "Go to your room," he told her in a dark, stern voice that was most unlike his usual one.
Yuugi went up to her room and sat on her bed for a long time, staring at the far wall. When she finally started crying, it was very sudden and vicious and loud and it only lasted for a few minutes, her body convulsing as if trying to hold something painful inside.
Yuugi had never had an official, adult job before, but as the young daughter, she was the one who had to take her grandmother to and from the hospital, caring for her as she underwent chemotherapy.
"Do your part," her mother said.
And Yuugi did do her part. She felt bad about making her Grandma cry that first night. She would sit beside Grandma in the hospital chair and watch the fluid drip up and down her arm through the IV, watching the liquid enter her grandmother's body in morbid fascination. That was twice a week. She would walk Grandma to and from the hospital. Later, when Grandma couldn't walk, Yuugi wheeled her in a wheelchair.
She watched the slow deterioration of her grandmother, but could do nothing to stop it. Grandma grew thin until she was skin and bones, her elbows knobby and in sharp definition, her frame newly delicate, her skin dry and flaky. She lost all her hair, threw up, had sudden vicious bouts of diarrhea, had to undergo surgery -
And Yuugi was there through all of it. She bought her grandmother wigs, sadly gathered up loose hair, cleaned her grandmother, held her as she threw up, moisturized her bare skin, clutched her hand going into surgery, tended to her bruises. This became a regular ritual, every day after school. Her grandmother became newly human and vulnerable to Yuugi, the adult miracle demystified for her in a way it had not been before.
No one at school ever said anything about the fact that Yuugi had no free time anymore, mainly because they had no idea what to say at all.
One of the only things that helped Grandma's pain was massage. Yuugi took after-school massage classes, read books about cancer - both about dealing with the illness, and about dealing with death. She would watch in amazement as nurses remained calm in the face of horrific things, soothing and healing things that seemed impossible to heal.
Yuugi never broke down. Instead, she found a painful kind of joy in helping and massaging her sick grandmother, and decided she wanted to be that person for lots of people.
"I want to become a nurse and a masseuse," she declared one day. Grandma's eyes watered, and she took Yuugi's hand affectionately.
Yuugi told Anzu at school this, and Anzu said, "So neither of us have any money for our dreams! We can work and pay our way to our dreams together!" She was very excited about this, one of the only times she'd ever allowed herself anything but sadness in the face of Yuugi's presence.
It felt good to Yuugi, knowing there was someone else whose poverty made dreams seem equally impossible. She had fantasies of herself and Anzu as adults, working fast food or retail as they tried to save up enough money to become someone important. Anzu as an artist and dancer - Yuugi as a medical student.
She began taking particular care with her studies. Any kind of work in medicine required excellent grades.
She took something horrible and made something good out of it - but the thing itself remained horrible.
One afternoon, Yuugi's Grandma had to undergo her second surgery. It was the last operation they would attempt, and there was a very good chance she would die while on the medical table. The hospital was then keeping her with them for a few days.
How they were paying for all this, Yuugi had no idea. Debt, probably. The idea was depressing.
Yuugi went home after her grandmother went in the surgery room and waited for the phone call. She paced up and down the shop, restless, unable to sit still.
At last, her grandfather put her to work. "Go sift through some of my boxes in the back storage room," he said, giving her something to do, and Yuugi jumped on the idea gladly.
So she was in the dusty, dim back room, surrounded by boxes, lit by a single naked lightbulb, sifting through things - and a glint of gold caught her eye. She leaned forward, and picked up a golden box with ancient symbols carved all over it. Curious, she opened up the top of the box - the lid had an eye carved into its center - and she found a broken, intricate, three-dimensional gold puzzle. One puzzle piece also had an eye carved into its center.
"Grandpa?" she called, walking back out into the shop. "What is this?" She held it up.
"Ah, you've found the Millenium Puzzle," said Grandpa, his eyes gleaming. He went over and said in a hushed voice, "I found this in the tomb of an unknown Pharaoh on an archaeological dig. This was back in an era when archaeologists were still allowed to keep some of what they found. Of course, as a game enthusiast, I had to have the Pharaoh's puzzle.
"I've sent it to game, puzzle, and strategy experts all over the world - some of the greatest minds of our time - not one has been able to solve it.
"That's the Ancient Egyptian Eye of Horus carved into its center. The symbols on the box are hieroglyphs. Some say there's black magic inside this Millenium Puzzle, a mysterious magic that can bestow gifts and curse the unworthy."
He jumped at her, grabbed her, and she leaped into the air. He straightened and laughed. "Of course, it's probably too hard for a child to solve -"
"I'm going to solve it!" said Yuugi, excitement filling her, and she sprinted up the stairs with the box without finishing her chore. She lay on her stomach on the floor of her bedroom, legs swinging in the air, fitting different puzzle pieces together. It was more distracting than difficult - something she felt she could do whenever anything was troubling her - but it was a genuinely complex puzzle. Certainly not one that could be done in a couple of hours.
Little did Yuugi know, this puzzle would take her years. But she was determined. She hated leaving any game or puzzle unsolved, and she loved cracking mysteries and unlocking hidden strategies.
But for today, she worked on the puzzle, putting this and that together - managing to fit a few different pieces into a sort of pointed corner shape - And then she started sobbing, only the second time she had done so, this fit just as sudden as the first, exploding out of her as if repressed.
"Please," she pleaded in a watery voice to the Puzzle, "please, if you have any power… Please let my grandmother live. I'll never ask for anything else again. Please let my grandmother live!"
Unseen by Yuugi, the eye inside the Puzzle box glowed faintly gold for a moment.
The spirit inside the Puzzle would not remember this later - he would not remember anything later at all, in fact - but for now, with his memories intact, the only thing he could think was that many had tried to solve his puzzle, but he had never encountered a solver or a request so innocent and pure before. So humble in only asking for one thing. One simple thing.
Grandpa ran into Yuugi's bedroom a few minutes later. "I just got off the phone. The surgery was successful. She's alive," he breathed. "Your grandmother is alive. There's a chance she'll survive the cancer."
Yuugi ran over to her grandfather, and he hugged her just as hard as she hugged him.
It was the first time the spirit of the Puzzle had ever granted a request. That should have been the first sign.