I feel like, even if I'd been the sort of kid to bully other kids in school.
I wouldn't have fucked with Ryo Bakura.
.
Noa moved on to tenderly brush his thumb against a red patch of the rainbow blanket, and he asked: "How did you take to being a big brother? Was it . . . strange, being older, when she was the brave one?"
"I suppose, at first," Ryo admitted, "but it worked out. Mostly, what it ended up meaning, was that my job was to rein her in. Make sure she didn't go off on adventures on her own. Because she would. More than once, our parents would worry themselves into a fit about her, calling out for her loudly enough to frighten the neighbors, and it would turn out that she'd found some new tree to climb, or some new hole to fit herself into. I was always the one who found her. I always worked out where to look."
"How's that?" Noa asked.
Ryo shrugged, with a little smile playing at his lips. "I would look around, and I'd think to myself: where would I never go in a thousand years? And then I would go there." Noa laughed, which made Ryo laugh. "The only difficult thing, honestly, was convincing her that I didn't need protecting. That I was old enough to look after myself. She didn't seem to believe that. She never understood why I would say I didn't need her to step in for me."
Noa smiled, and it was a soft smile. "I think Mokuba would understand that," he murmured.
Ryo nodded. "I think you're probably right." He paused, then grimaced. "I was always the weird kid. You know what kind I mean. I was the kid everyone decided, seemingly all at once, like they were doing it by committee, was an acceptable target." Ryo's smile was soft, like Noa's, but it was also sad. "Amane didn't like that much. She would offer to come to my school with me, specifically to kick anyone who made fun of me until they cried."
"And I'm guessing," Noa said, "that she didn't understand how having your little sister protect you would have only made things worse."
"I think she understood," Ryo said, "but she certainly didn't like it. I think . . . honestly, I think she just wanted to kick people. Amane always liked wearing big shoes. Heavy shoes. Boots. She was always on the look out for anyone or anything that needed kicking. People who bothered me were always at the top of her list."
"What did your parents think of that?" Noa asked, eventually.
"At first," Ryo said, "I think they tried to teach her that violence wasn't the way to solve problems. Then I came home with a split lip one day, and she got so mad that they eventually compromised: they told her that if she insisted on kicking people, then it was best if she knew how to do it properly. They enrolled her in a Muay Thai class."
Noa nodded sagely, but there was laughter in his eyes. "A wise decision," he said. Then his eyes narrowed. "How'd your lip get split?"
"Somebody tripped me," Ryo said. "I hit my face on a door handle."
Noa hissed. "Yeesh," he said. Then he quirked an eyebrow. "What did you do?"
Ryo shrugged. "I honestly don't remember what I said, but I smiled while I said it. Apparently, seeing blood run down my face, and onto my teeth, scared the kid so badly that he left the school."