"So… what was it like, having the Millennium Ring?" Duke asked casually over breakfast one Sunday morning. Neither of them were in a rush to go anywhere, and it was nice to just enjoy the morning. "If you don't want to talk about it, that's fine," he added, to put Ryou's mind at ease. "I was just curious."

"It was… strange, that's for sure," Ryou answered slowly. He picked at his scrambled eggs with his fork as he thought carefully before speaking again. "Painful, sometimes. Physically, I mean." he held up his left hand to show Duke the star-shaped scar that marred both the front and the back of his non-dominant hand.

"I always wondered how that happened." Duke studied the scar with interest.

"Do you know the Monster World game? It's a tabletop RPG, not as popular as it used to be, or as popular as Duel Monsters, but it's been around for a while."

"Yeah. My store's one of the few in Domino to carry its merchandise."

"The first time Bakura tried to hurt Yugi and his friends, it was through a Monster World game. It was kind of… complicated." Ryou began to explain about how Bakura had played against Yami, because all of his friends' souls had been transferred to their lead figures. Bakura himself was linked to Zorc, the final boss of the story that Ryou himself had written and that Bakura had used against his friends.

"And when Tristan chopped off Zorc's left hand, I regained control of my own left hand," Ryou explained. "Bakura didn't realize this at first, so I did what I could to help them out by hiding his mind-dice, altering the probability stats on the PC, stuff like that. When I caused him to fumble by throwing the mind-dice and rolling a 99, he realized what had been happening and impaled my hand on one of the turrets of Castle Zorc to stop me from interfering." Ryou smiled a little and added, "It didn't really work. Yugi was able to use his powers as the beast-tamer to separate my White Mage from Zorc. He was a much higher level than anyone else and allowed us to destroy Zorc. I was him, but I also wasn't. I don't know how better to explain it. There was a piece of me in him, which was enough to save me when I… I had to put my soul into Bakura's soul-dice for the final roll to ensure the outcome. The dice shattered, Bakura lost, and I… kind of died for a few minutes there." His eyes became glassy as he went still and silent, only stirring once Duke placed a reassuring hand on his arm.

"What happened next?" he asked softly, a small smile gracing his features as he said, "You can't just stop at the best part, you know."

That surprised Ryou into a light laugh, and he continued, "My White Mage sacrificed himself to bring me back to life. And for a while, he was gone and I was free." He looked wistful as he recalled that brief period in his life.

"That's incredible." Duke was genuinely impressed, feeling like, even though he believed in his friend and his courage and his strength, he'd underestimated Ryou all along. Ryou was braver than he could imagine anyone being.

"Ah, well, it didn't last for long, as you well know," Ryou continued ruefully, taking another bite of his toast.

"What about the Shadow Magic?" Duke asked then, intrigued. "I know Yami, Pegasus, and Marik were able to manipulate it because they had Millennium Items, but what about you?"

"I never liked the idea of using Shadow Magic," Ryou answered quietly, looking troubled. "Bakura used it to do such horrible things, I had a hard time imagining it being useful for anything good. Some things I didn't get to choose, though."

"What do you mean?" Duke found his flatmate's remark puzzling.

"The Millennium Ring allowed me to see ghosts." He'd hesitated before speaking, as if he was afraid that Duke wouldn't believe him. Duke did, though: after everything he'd witnessed in Battle City and beyond, he believed him without question. Besides, the Monster World fiasco was less believable than being able to see ghosts, and Duke believed that.

"What's that like?" Duke asked in quiet awe.

"Well, most of them are fairly apathetic things floating around in limbo," Ryou answered casually.

"Limbo? What's that?"

Ryou thought hard for a moment to come up with a decent explanation. "For the ancient Greeks, the spirits of people whose bones weren't buried couldn't find peace in the afterlife and would wander along the banks of the River Styx until their bones were buried, at which point they were permitted to cross and find their final resting place. John Milton, in Paradise Lost, described limbo as a place where the souls of infants went, because they were too young to make any sort of conscious decisions of their own when they died." That was a sad thought, and one that Ryou didn't subscribe to; he couldn't believe that infants didn't go to heaven. "In Dante's Inferno, limbo is the outermost ring, the very first layer, of hell, where 'virtuous pagans' reside: people who didn't believe the right things but were still good people." He ate another bite as Duke sat in stunned silence. "Those are typically the kinds of ghosts that I see, and they don't bother me much. Sometimes the lonely ones will talk to me, but I don't mind that. I'm just glad that I can help make them feel better. I wouldn't go to graveyards, though, because there were just too many loose spirits around. They can't do you any harm, for the most part—unless you're like me and you can see them."

"You can still see ghosts?" That was a surprise.

"Yes, but it's only a residual power," Ryou admitted. "I probably won't be able to do so for much longer. I haven't been able to see the spirits in limbo for a few months now, and the others are starting to fade."

"Others? What others are there?"

"The ones with 'unfinished business,' which are actually quite uncommon," Ryou answered calmly, sending a chill down Duke's spine. "The malicious ones who haunt a certain place or item, or even a person. Their purpose gives them power, and that makes them dangerous. They only show themselves to people they wish to show themselves to—unless you're like me, in which case you can't help but see them no matter what they do. I've had to deal with a few of them in my time, and if you're careful, they're not too hard to handle. It takes a lot out of you, but I haven't encountered a revenant that I couldn't banish."

"You've exorcised ghosts?"

Ryou looked up and finally took notice of Duke's shock. He smiled a little in mild amusement.

"I never thought to call it exorcism before, but yes, I suppose so."

"What did you call it?"

"I was simply cleansing a spirit and helping it to move on to the hereafter."

"You're way too casual about this."

"I've been seeing ghosts for years now. It's something you just get used to." Ryou shrugged before eating the last bite of his toast.

"That's really cool that you're a medium," Duke mused, standing to carry his dishes to the sink. "So, do any movies portray ghosts or exorcism accurately, or are they all nonsense?"

"I wouldn't know. I don't watch those kinds of movies, especially not horror movies." Ryou visibly shuddered as he held his tea mug with both hands. "My own life was enough horror for me."

Duke glanced back at Ryou over his shoulder. "I'm sorry, I probably shouldn't have asked about it at all. I didn't mean to upset you."

"No, no, it's okay," Ryou assured, forcing his eyes to focus on Duke so that he could offer him a smile. "It feels kind of good to talk to someone about it. I never even told Yugi that I was seeing ghosts. I didn't really want to draw attention to myself anymore than I already was." He paused for a moment. "You know, whenever Yugi was dueling, I could see both him and the pharaoh. I'm sure they thought nobody could see when their spirits would separate so they could talk to each other during a duel, but I could. I could hear them too." A secretive smile illuminated his features then as Duke looked back at him in shock.

"You spied on their thoughts?"

"It's not like I could choose not to," Ryou defended with a defiant tilt of his chin, not really feeling bad about it. "It was interesting enough that it almost made up for all of the time that was stolen from me." It was also informative enough that Bakura could take advantage of the things he heard in his enemies' thoughts, but he didn't like to think about that.

As Duke washed his dishes, he was starting to feel like they should change the subject. He was glad that Ryou could speak about it all so calmly and without getting upset, but at the same time, he didn't want to draw it out and take the risk that.

"So, did you see the game last night?" he asked casually, turning the water off and drying his hands with a towel as he turned around to grin at a miffed Ryou.

"Duke, you know me," he answered coolly through pursed lips, his chocolate eyes dancing with amusement as he lifted both eyebrows at his companion. "I don't do sports."

"Mr. Kaiba, sir?"

Seto looked up from his laptop at the maid who'd disrupted his work. It was Saturday morning, so he was working from home, as his brother had requested he do long ago on the weekends.

"What is it?" he demanded, clearly displeased at being disturbed.

"My apologies, sir," she said nervously as she bowed to her employer. "Your brother was asking that we requisition as many mattresses and couch cushions from around the mansion as possible, and I thought it best to clear his request with you first, sir."

Seto looked simultaneously confused and irritated. "He asked you to what? Where is he?"

"In the entertainment center, sir," she answered promptly as Kaiba stood and strode out of his office to figure out what his brother was trying to do.

"What do you need the couch cushions and mattresses for?" He spoke as soon as he entered the room, but as he looked around, he started to understand why.

"I'm building a pillow fort!" Mokuba exclaimed from where he stood in the large space that had been cleared in the center of the room. "But not just any pillow fort, it's going to be a castle. It'll be epic!" He grinned, looking very pleased with himself. Seto still looked dubious and grouchy, so Mokuba continued, "I even have blueprints. See?" He carried the pieces of paper over to his brother so he could see them for himself, holding his breath as his brother perused them with a critical eye.

Seto found himself impressed with his brother's innovation, although he didn't say so right away. Certainly, this endeavor was just proof of the fact that he'd been right in limiting Mokuba's videogame time, since it allowed him to use his mind to come up with something like this. He knelt down and lay the blueprints—which were fairly decent considering the age of their creator—on the floor, pulling a pen out of his pocket as Mokuba knelt with him.

"The design is good, but not stable, given your available materials. It's so large that it won't be able to bear its own weight. If you remove this part here,"—he made the appropriate alterations on one drawing—"use the walls as props for these two sides, and substitute sheets for the covering instead, you can make it more viable and more efficient."

"Cool, thanks bro!" Mokuba pulled out a clean sheet of paper and began to redraw the design, incorporating his brother's input.

The brunette stood and turned to the maid. "You can use materials from supply closets and the extra rooms in this wing, but not from the library, parlor, and any part of the house that will be open for the party next week." She nodded, looking relieved that this matter had been peacefully resolved.

"Can I leave it up for a while, Seto?" Mokuba asked as his brother started to leave the room.

"Sure, just don't try to take it down yourself when the time comes," he answered as he paused in the doorway. "I don't want anything falling on you, so be sure to ask for help."

"Okay! Come on, Roland, let's get started!"

Seto allowed himself a small smile of amusement as he watched his little brother interacting with his head of security for a few moments before he turned and left. Roland was an irreplaceable member of his staff: patient enough to put up with the caprice and nonsense of a young child and the short-tempered moodiness of his older brother. Besides, he was discreet, dependable, efficient, effective, and stubbornly loyal. The last was a trait that, for Roland, couldn't be bought. His loyalty was absolute and based on principle, and that was perhaps the trait that Kaiba valued most in him, because that made him someone that he could always trust, no matter what. Seto didn't have many people like that in his life.

"You should be more strict with him."

Seto didn't need to turn around to know whose voice that was.

"I never let you waste your time like that, and look how well you turned out." There was a smug smirk in his voice that Seto didn't need to see. He could hear it well enough. He paused with his hand on the door to his office, glancing up at Gozaburo for just a moment to address him.

"I didn't turn out well. I'm a mess." It was incredibly humbling to be forced to admit those words aloud. The only thing that enabled him to say them was the fact that it was for the purpose of proving Gozaburo wrong. "He's not wasting his time, he's playing."

"He should be working," Gozaburo contradicted immediately, arms crossed as he glared at his heir.

"He's just a child!" Seto snapped, shoving open the door to his office and slamming it shut behind him, not caring who heard the reverberating echo of it. He let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding and leaned back against the door, closing his eyes as he covered half his face with one hand. A deep pain was welling up within him, a pain that he didn't understand.

"He's just a child..." he choked out in a quieter, softer voice.

He wasn't just talking about Mokuba.

"Did you hear about Kaiba's birthday party this weekend?" Duke asked one evening as Ryou frowned at a thick textbook. At the moment, Duke had a rubber band positioned near his fingertips on his left hand, stretching and strengthening his fingers by stretching the rubber band repeatedly. Now that the splint was off, he only needed minor physical therapy to ensure that his hand returned to its former capabilities. Even so, if he didn't do the exercises the doctor had shown him, his hand could become nearly useless, so he was careful to do exactly what they told him to as often as necessary. He couldn't stand the thought of losing any degree of functionality.

"I'd heard of it," Ryou answered absentmindedly, still glaring at the textbook while he tried to complete the reading for his anthropology class tomorrow. "What about it?"

"Want to go?"

Ryou looked up at Duke's mischievous grin, feeling hesitant. "Are we invited?" he asked dubiously.

"In a manner of speaking, yes." Duke's eyes glinted with a sort of puckish delight.

"I don't think I even want to know what that means," Ryou sighed with a disapproving shake of his head. "Are we actually invited, or did you have to twist some words to make that claim?"

"Hey now, I'm not that bad!" Duke laughed, Ryou's comment sliding right off of him. He was just joking anyways; Duke knew that. "We're actually invited, just not by name. We're included in the category of 'tournament duelists.'"

"Wait, 'we'?" Ryou repeated, lifting an eyebrow at Duke. "You didn't compete in Battle City or in the KC World Championship."

"I competed in the Battle City bonus round," he joked cockily.

"The—what?!" Ryou blinked at him, absolutely perplexed. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"When we were on our way to the island with the Duel Tower, we got sucked into the Virtual World and Kaiba's step-brother was trying to—oh, right, you weren't there." Duke grinned sheepishly. "Well, I'll be your plus one," he said with a wink.

Ryou bit his lip as he tried to decide if he wanted to go. His therapist had told him to attend a social function, and it was either this or attend Yugi's Halloween party… and Ryou hated Halloween parties. He hated Halloween in general, really, mostly because Bakura had been rather enthusiastic in his enjoyment of the macabre holiday.

"Okay, we can go," he said with a sigh. "I'm not sure if I have anything appropriate to wear to it, though," he grumbled as a blush stained his porcelain cheeks.

"Leave that to me," was Duke's only response as he grinned to himself. This was going to be fun.