Mr. Taniguchi's math class was enough to put the most seasoned calculus student straight to sleep.

That's why, on a gloomy Tuesday afternoon, instead of paying attention to quadratic equations like he should have been, Yugi's mind was drifting.

His grandpa had received a scheduled shipment of foreign strategy games before he had to leave for school. No matter how much he had begged, pleaded and promised flawless attendance for the rest of his life, he hadn't been allowed to stay behind to try some of them. And now he was stuck listening to a droning lecture about variables instead of playing Catan.

Outside, the dark rolling clouds were reflecting his mood. Nature apparently wasn't going to offer any entertainment, so his gaze now drifted over to the empty desk to his right. Seems like someone else had decided to stay home and play some strategy games.

While he was never one to cause much trouble at school, Ryou was known to skip class whenever he fancied. His parents were hardly ever home, usually off cross country on work business, so his attendance suffered without consequences. Lucky.

Mr. Taniguchi was now tracing a graph on the board.

The soft sound of the arching chalk seemed to finally have done Honda in, who was sitting to Yugi's left. His head had been lulling around for a while, but he was now fully asleep and perilously leaning up against his folded arm.

Three minutes.

Miho was a few desks away, looking completely lost, anxiously scribbling down notes that she didn't understand.

Two minutes.

A kid in the back was jokingly throwing gang signs at one of his friends across the room.

One minute.

Mr. Taniguchi, monotonal, was asking if anyone had any questions.

The bell masked the sound of Honda's head smacking into his desk.

It took Yugi half a second to round up his belongings and hightail it out of the classroom. Even with the drab weather leaking in through the windows in the hall, he felt like the sun was shining down on him. He could finally get out of here.

Miho appeared through the doorway, sighing and pressing two fingers between her eyes.

"I'll be eighty before I make it through this class."

Yugi scoffed. "I'll die before I make it through this class."

Honda emerged next, his eyes tired and bleary.

"Paying good attention to your studies?" Miho giggled.

"Oh, can it, Miho. I know you don't understand any of this stuff either."

He earned a scoff back.

"You guys want to go out and get something to eat? Mr. Taniguchi's class always makes me hungry." Honda was gazing longingly at thin air and smacking his stomach. "I'm thinking burgers."

"Yes, please!" Miho and Yugi answered together.

The trio pushed its way through the throng of students in the hall and down the stairs. Yugi kept an eye out for his other friends, knowing they'd want to come along with, but didn't see them. It wasn't until they'd switched their shoes and gone to wait outside that Honda spotted Anzu by the gate, who happily waved at them when they caught her eye.

"Hey guys! Do you want to go out for b-"

"Burgers?" They all asked in unison.

"Yeah! How'd you know?"

Honda, now leaning up against the school gate, smirked.

"You're very predictable."

"Oh, shove it." Anzu reached over and wiped her hand down the front of Honda's uniform.

"Hey, come on!" He was now frantically rubbing away at the spot she'd touched with a rag he'd pulled out of his pocket.

While Honda was busy rubbing a hole into his uniform, Yugi spoke.

"Have you seen Jonouchi anywhere, Anzu?"

She smiled and nodded.

"I bumped into him and asked him about burgers on the way out. He knows I'm waiting for him. He was acting kind of weird though."

"Weirder than usual?"

"Yeah, if you can believe it. Did you guys see Ryou at all?"

Yugi thought back to the vacant seat beside him in class.

"No. I think he's skipping again."

They watched and waited as more students filtered out, none of them Jonouchi.

"Want to play while we wait?" Yugi fished a small green satin drawstring bag from his uniform's pocket. He pulled it open and carefully tipped out a set of Jacks onto the ground, making sure to grab the rubber ball before it could bounce too far.

Honda let out a guttural groan. Miho smiled devilishly.

"Yesss." She hissed.

After playing a few rounds with elimination rules, Honda and Miho were, unsurprisingly, the only two players left.

Just as Miho was about to bounce the ball for the last time and no doubt bag another victory, Jonouchi finally tore around the corner. His hair was messier than usual and there were huge black stains running down the front of his shirt. When he reached them, he sucked in a huge breath and then urgently belted out "Sorry, got into something after class. Let's go. Now."

Honda shot up, happy to have an excuse not to lose to Miho again.

They barely had time to ask Jonouchi what had happened when the unmistakable voice of Ushio, one of the stricter, scarier hall monitors, blasted from where he had sprinted from.

"JONOUCHI! Get BACK here!"

Yugi rounded up the Jacks in one swipe and he and his friends bolted. He caught a quick look of a bright red Ushio angrily appearing and stomping around the same corner Jonouchi had come from.

"All of you get back here NOW!"

But the frenzied yelling was already growing quieter and quieter. Ushio might have been huge and scary, but he'd have trouble beating a snail in a race. The students could always count on being faster than him. All they had to do was keep running until he forgot why he was angry at them. And that was usually pretty quickly.

The group ran several blocks until it felt safe to slow down. When they'd all caught their breaths, Honda launched into his usual questioning.

"What did you do? Why are you all dirty? What is that?" He was pointing at the huge black splotches on Jonouchi's shirt. It looked like they were still wet.

Jonouchi grinned and threw his hands back behind his head. "Ushio was making me put things away longer than he said he would so I had an 'accident' with some of the ink. No biggie."

"That's awful! You should be ashamed! Wasting of school property," Honda looked over and pointed at the stains again, "and a perfectly good uniform! What do you think would happen if everyone started to act like you? There's a reason rules exist Jonouchi! For order! If I was anywhere ne-"

He stopped abruptly when Miho decided to hang off his shoulder and make kissy faces.

"Oh, come on Honda. At least no one got hurt! It could've been a lot worse. It's just a bit of ink."

"Well. Yeah. I guess. Whatever." He was doing a very bad job trying to hide his reddening face.

Miho shot a glance over his shoulder at the rest of the group, smiled and gave them a thumbs up, which Jonouchi gratefully returned.

They walked for a while, passing small corner shops, one of which was displaying a five-thousand-piece puzzle in the window. Yugi practically had to be pealed away from the glass by the others.

"Not worth it, Yugi. That puzzle's like math class. You'll be geriatric before you even put half of it together." Honda said as he laughed at Yugi's determination to keep staring.

It wasn't long before Burgerworld's weird cartoony mascot was looming over them, its big plastic yellow hands begging them to come inside and spend money. Yugi knew its curly mustache, big eyes and crooked hat were meant to be comical, but the thing gave him the creeps. It was very precariously perched on top of the establishment and he felt like it might topple over and squash them at any point. Miho thought it was cute. She was the only one who thought that.

Crossing inside through the glass doors was... not a breath of fresh air. They were greeted by the heavy smell of frying meat and the thick garish magenta carpet. A waitress was leaning up against her arm on the front desk, unenthusiastically flicking around a small crumpled ball of receipt paper. Most of the people in Domino city gave Burgerworld a wide berth. Although it was for some people, mostly thugs and high school students, an acquired taste.

When Yugi was finally able to get the waitress to abandon her game of finger football, they were shown to their table. It was a bit of a squeeze, but they all managed to fit. Ryou's absence wasn't too bothersome, they would have had to split the group if he was around.

Their food and milkshakes came surprisingly quickly. Yugi took advantage of everyone digging in to break his news.

"Grandpa got a bunch of new games in this morning. They're all foreign. I've never seen any of them."

Jonouchi was grinning through his mouthful of burger.

"Awesome! Can we…"

"Come over? Yes."

"Sweet."

Miho spoke next, putting down her strawberry milkshake after taking a swig.

"Should we call Ryou?"

Yugi thought. He didn't want to bother his friend. Usually when Ryou skipped school, it meant he wanted to be left to his own devices. Although this could be an exception. It's not everyday grandpa got a bunch of new games. And out of everyone Yugi was friends with, Ryou was the closest who came to liking games as much as he did.

Honda had seemingly been watching him debate with himself, because he poked him on the shoulder and pointed outside.

"There's a pay phone out there if you want to try and call him. Got some change?"

Yugi fished into his pockets and pulled out some lint and a five yen coin. He smiled sheepishly at Honda, who sighed, rattled around in his own pockets and pulled out five yen of his own that he lightly clinked against Yugi's and dropped into his hand.

"Make it quick. I'm not giving you more."

Yugi lifted himself up in the booth and waited for his friends to move so he could go make his call. As he was rounding the corner to leave, Jonouchi grabbed his shoulder, pushed a ten yen coin into his hand and winked.

"Just in case." He whispered.

Outside, the sun seemed to be trying to make an appearance. The sky was still covered in clouds, but they had thinned out a bit. Yugi watched as a couple walking their dog let it do its business right in front of the payphone he was about to use.

Ugh.

When they left, he squeezed himself into the closed privacy of the phone booth. He lifted the handset and dialed Ryou's number, absently curling his fingers around the wire. The line rang for a little bit and then the sound of someone picking up on the other end came through the speaker.

Yugi waited for a greeting, but when it didn't come, he decided to go first.

"Oh, hey Ryou, we're at Bu-"

Whoever had picked up the phone had hung up. Or the line had disconnected itself.

"Damn it."

He took out the coin Jonouchi had given him and pushed it into the payphone slot a little more forcefully than he needed to. When he heard it clink to the bottom, he dialed Ryou's number again and waited. The line rang, once, twice, four times, six times and stopped. It was completely quiet. Nobody picked up the phone this time and there was no sign of an answering machine.

Weird.

Maybe Ryou really didn't want to talk to anyone right now. Or maybe his parents had come home and caught him skipping. Who knew?

As Yugi clicked the handset back down, he was surprised to see his friends hurriedly hauling brown bags out of Burgerworld. He stepped out and opened his mouth to ask what was going on, but Jonouchi cleared about six feet in a second and pointed at one of the restaurant's front windows. Ushio was sitting in one of the booths, digging into his own burger.

Yugi rolled his eyes.

"Great."

"Don't worry, I saved your stuff."

Jonouchi grinned and shook one of the bags he was carrying in Yugi's face.

"Did Ryou answer?"

"Nope."

"Hm. Probably busy, eh?"

"Yeah, busy shirking his responsibilities and education." Honda called up to the front.

"You know Honda, the responsible thing to do right now would probably be to go back there and apologise to Ushio for ditching him earlier. Maybe you want to go fix that?" Anzu retorted.

He huffed back at her but kept his mouth shut this time.

They ran back the same way they'd come earlier, again trying to put some distance between them and Ushio. Yugi didn't stop to admire the puzzle in the corner store this time. They turned down an alley they had passed earlier. Yugi saw a few cats scatter in all directions. They must not have been expecting a herd of teenagers to tear through. When they all emerged on the other side, they were greeted by familiarity.

Contrary to Burgerworld's mascot, Kame Game's logo was a welcome sight. Yugi had always loved the odd little building his grandpa ran his game store from. It was lopsided and its roofs and walls stuck out at odd angles. If someone found its architecture hard to miss, its colours definitely weren't. Bright yellows and greens were slathered all over the thing. It was bound to turn a few heads and net Yugi's grandpa a chunk of change from the local kids looking to get their hands on the latest trend.

When they pushed through the door and saw Solomon sitting behind the front counter, everyone seemed to breathe a sigh of collective relief. Even if Ushio had somehow managed to see them, he wouldn't dare follow them here.

Solomon greeted them all with his usual cheery disposition.

"Hello everyone! Come to try the new games I presume?"

"That's right! What do ya got for us?"

Jonouchi had abandoned his and Yugi's burger bags and was looking up and down the shop for the new stock.

"Right here!"

Solomon had bent over and pulled out a stack of games that he carefully placed on the counter. The boxes were almost as tall as he was. Yugi spotted Catan hanging out near the bottom of the pile.

"Now you should all go upstairs and test these out so I know which ones to display!"

They didn't need to be told twice. Jonouchi picked their burger bags back up again and everyone equally split the stack of games between each other, Yugi staying back so he could grab the last few boxes and get a closer look at Catan.

"Watch your step on the way up!" Solomon shouted after them, as they carefully teetered up the stairs with their bounty.

Yugi caught a look at his grandpa before rounding the corner up the stairs as well and mouthed a Thank you his way. Solomon gave him a thumbs up and a wink.

They all played the new games late into the night. It was so much fun, they completely forgot that they were supposed to be rating them. It was well past 10 when everyone finally decided to go home.

—

The next day was as uneventful as the day before. In fact, it was almost a carbon copy. Yugi spent all hours dragging his feet from class to class that he didn't understand or just couldn't bring himself to care about enough to pay any attention to. The day was still dark and dreary. The clouds were still thick and black. And the games were still sitting around at home while he sat around at school.

When the day started slowly coming to an end and math class rolled around again, he kept expecting Ryou to walk through the door. But he never did. Mr. Taniguchi disapprovingly shook his head when he called out Ryou's name and got no response.

As he stared at the empty desk beside him, something was beginning to scratch at the back of Yugi's mind. But he was too uncomfortable to properly acknowledge or entertain it. Ryou had missed school twice before. It didn't happen much, but it wasn't unheard of. He was probably just really into a new game or book he had picked up. Or maybe he had lost himself in a docuseries again.

All Yugi could really hope was that Ryou would show up the next day.

He didn't.

Chapter 1 Notes

Hey.

While the majority of this is already outlined, I haven't gotten into the nitty gritty yet, so tags that aren't currently present may be added down the line as I flesh things out some more. Archive warnings are current and won't change.

Just to keep myself in check, I've got a few goals in mind for this one. I'd like for it to eventually be finished, longer than my last fic and be posted quicker than it was as well.

Thanks for reading.