The weather inside the Spirit's soulroom was interesting. The temperature was always a comfortable room temperature regardless of what was actually happening in the environment. The people within Ancient Egypt could be suffering from severe heat under the hot desert sun, but Ryou and the Spirit would always feel like they were at a comfortable room temperature. Same thing happened at night, when the environment was supposed to be cold, sometimes cold enough to snow.

Snow was falling in the desert. When Ryou discovered this, he was overjoyed. He ran around, shouting at the top of his lungs, "It's snowing! It's snowing! In the desert!" He laughed exuberantly, spreading out his arms and welcoming the snow as it fell down on him. The snow sprinkled around him, dazzling, sparkling.

As the Spirit watched his host dance around happily in the snow, he couldn't help but think how beautiful Ryou was. The boy's hair was as white and dazzling as the snow in the air. His face was glistening, full of joy and wonder. Ryou sure had a beautiful smile.

However that joy didn't last long, because several hours later Ryou was sitting on the ground next to his nearly-finished diorama, crying his eyes out. The Spirit asked him, "What's wrong? Why are you crying?"

"I screwed up the diorama! The buildings are a few centimeters off the map! I'll have to redo this entire section!" Ryou cried. "An entire day's work wasted!"

The Spirit took a look at the diorama, judged the situation and said, "It's fixable."

"But I have so much work to do! I'll never get it done by the deadline!" Ryou sobbed.

"How long have you been working?" the Spirit wondered. He looked at the clock and realized it was almost 5:30am. "You didn't get any sleep all night?"

Ryou continued to cry.

"Alright, that's it. You need to get to bed. You've been overworking yourself," the Spirit said.

Ryou skipped school that day because he slept the morning and afternoon away. Later that evening, Ryou called Malik and told him what happened.

"I had a meltdown this morning because I've been overworking myself," Ryou said. "I messed up on an entire section. I'm sorry but I don't think I can get the diorama finished in time for the new exhibition's opening."

"You can take your time. I can postpone the exhibition's opening for another month," Malik said.

"Wait, really? You can do that?" Ryou said.

"Yes, I want you to take your time. It's better if you don't overwork yourself. I know what meltdowns are like. They're exhausting."

"They're also really embarrassing," Ryou said. "I'm happy that only the Spirit saw me like that. If other people saw me acting that way, I'd never live it down."

"I can relate to that," said Malik.

"I used to have much worse meltdowns when I was younger," Ryou admitted. "Especially when I got angry. Don't tell anyone, but sometimes I can have massive anger issues."

"Really? I never would've guessed."

"Yeah, I know. Most people are surprised when they learn that about me."

"I would pay money to see you have an angry meltdown," Malik said with a small laugh.

"I'd rather not have you see me like that. It's not something I'm particularly proud of."

"Join the club," Malik said with a chuckle. "Anyways, because the museum's opening of the exhibition is being postponed, we'll have to postpone the day we retrieve the Pharaoh's lost memories too."

"What? Why?"

"There are artifacts that have to be in the museum at the time of the adventure, otherwise it won't work properly."

"What artifacts?"

"Just certain artifacts. It's magic-related. It's hard to explain."

Ryou shrugged and said, "Alright, I'll take your word for it. I'll be sure to get the diorama finished within the new deadline."

"Great. I'll talk to you later."

"See you. Bye."

However, even though Ryou said he would get to work, he actually didn't work on the diorama for the next entire week. The Spirit wasn't too concerned about this, but it made Zorc angry.

The Spirit was chilling in Ryou's soulroom, watching movies, when Zorc entered the room.

"What are you doing in here!?" the Spirit said angrily. "This is the host's room! Get out before he sees you!"

"Your host has been slacking," said Zorc. "He hasn't worked on the diorama for a full week. If he continues to procrastinate on his work, we will never achieve power."

"Eh, I'm not really worried about that. Who cares if he finishes the diorama in a month, a year, or fifty years? We're immortal. The boy is young and has a long life span. As long as he finishes it during his lifetime, I don't see what the problem is."

"If he keeps procrastinating so much, he'll never get it done."

"I'd rather have him take his time. I know what he's like. When he gets bored of his special interest, he takes a break, and then after a while he starts up again. He works fast when he's interested in a project."

"How long will it take for him to be interested again?"

"It's hard to say for sure. Sometimes it takes a week, sometimes a month, sometimes several years. Humans are fickle and unpredictable, and our host is particularly the unpredictable sort."

"On the contrary, I think the boy's actions are easy to predict. I can feel his emotions. He is procrastinating on purpose because he knows that postponing the opening of the museum's new exhibition also postpones the day in which he has to let go of you to the afterlife. He doesn't want you to go, so he is prolonging the amount of time it takes to finish the diorama on purpose."

"Is that so?"

"You didn't know?"

"Prying into the host's emotions is incredibly invasive. I don't do that more than what is necessary."

"The original plan was to get the boy to like you just enough so that he would allow you to possess him, but now he likes you too much. The plan worked too well. You have to get him to hate you again. That way he'll be eager to get rid of you, and he'll finish the diorama faster."

"I don't want to do that."

"So you're willing to wait the boy's entire human lifetime?" Zorc hissed. "Think about what kind of life the boy would be living. A lifetime with you? Haven't you meddled in his life enough? You make him miserable. You and I both know he'd be better off without you."

Zorc left the room, and the Spirit was left alone with his thoughts. A tear welled up at the edge of the Spirit's eye and flowed down his face.

As instructed, the Spirit tried to make Ryou hate him again. He acted rude and abrasive towards Ryou, getting irritated at everything the boy did.

Ryou was bewildered. "What's wrong? Why have you been so irritated lately?" he wondered. Then it came to him. "Wait, wait, I think I understand! You miss your family, don't you? You want to get your memories back sooner and go to the afterlife so that you can see your family. Oh dear, I am so, so sorry. This is my fault. I've been procrastinating on building the diorama because I didn't want you to leave, but I'm keeping you away from your loved ones. I need to finish my work quicker."

And just like that, Ryou got the diorama finished by the end of the month.


Bakura and Malik managed to get the room in the museum set up in preparation for the Memory World Shadow Game. It was a lot of work, but it was done.

"You're still going through with this, huh?" Malik said. "No matter how much it's going to break the poor boy's heart."

Bakura hmphed. "You're still trying to get me to change my mind?"

"You don't have to do everything Zorc tells you to do, y'know. You have options," Malik said.

"What options do I have?"

"Well, you could lose on purpose."

"Lose on purpose?" Bakura scoffed. "I'll die."

"Not necessarily. There are ways to lose the game without ending up dead. You just have to work together with Yugi."

"No way in hell am I doing that," Bakura said.

"I want you to think critically about whether this is what you really want. Is ruling the world going to make you happy?" Malik asked.

"Contrary to what you might think, I won't be a dictatorial ruler. I can make the world a better place. I'll only kill the bad people and spare the good ones."

"How are you going to tell the good from the bad?"

"I'll use the Millennium Scales."

"You want to be like Shadi?" Malik questioned. "Shadi abused you for three thousand years, and now you're turning into your abuser."

Bakura groaned. "Don't go lecturing me about that. It's not like you're much better than me. You tried to rule the world once."

"But I learned to do better, especially for the sake of my siblings. I've changed for the sake of the people I care about. And you have someone to care about too. You have Ryou." Malik sighed. "I guess since there's no changing your mind, I'll be taking my leave."

Malik grabbed his bag and started to leave. But before he left, he stood by the exit to say this: "I know what it's like having a highly stigmatized mental disorder. People like us attract the worst kinds of attention imaginable. The only time we ever get attention is from those who want to demonize us, fetishize us, use us as a scapegoat for all bad behavior, or study us like we're science experiments. We never get any positive attention ever. No one cares about people like us. They fear us as a matter of fact. But you, however, you actually managed to make friends with someone who isn't horrible. You want to throw away the only real friend you've ever had? Then maybe you actually are evil."

And with that, Malik left the room.


The Spirit couldn't stop thinking about what the therapist had said, about how ASPD is only the result of extreme amounts of childhood trauma. So bodes the question: what could have possibly happened during the Spirit's childhood that made him develop ASPD in the first place? He wanted to find out. So he went into his soulroom that night and willed the room to show him his past.

He wasn't planning on learning the details. He probably just had abusive parents, right? The reason he had ASPD was the same reason Malik had DID, and the same reason Kaiba had NPD. It was because of abusive parents. Very cliche and uninteresting. The Spirit planned on just confirming that he had abusive parents and getting out before he learned the details. Because he really, really did not want to know the details.

The room shifted to the past, showing Kul Elna, the Spirit's childhood home. And what the Spirit saw was horrifying.

Fire everywhere. Buildings burning.

People screaming.

The Pharaoh's soldiers storming the village, gathering ninety-nine victims and killing the leftovers.

All except for one little boy.

And the Spirit wished he had never come here. He wished he never found out the truth. It would've been better if he had never remembered.