by WSJ
I don't own YGO.
I was writing my story Loser and the last paragraph then spawned this.
()()()()()
I saw him laying there, so innocent and peaceful. He could only be about five or six.
He had moved into my house that day with his mother and his father and his older sister, who was a teenager. Usually I don't really care when a new family moves in, there have been several over the last few years, but this boy seemed to draw me.
I stood by his bed, the breeze from his open window, my open window, not touching my hair or clothes. His curly, platinum blond hair flopped across his face, and his long black eyelashes curled perfectly against his porcilin cheeks. He was the perfect picture of an angel.
Unlike me.
I reached out to brush a few errant curls off his forehead, and he stirred, and awoke. I jerked my hand back.
His violet-blue eyes blinked open and looked around wildly, as if trying to figure out where he was. "Oh," he finally muttered, laying back against the pillow, relieved. "The new house."
He looked around the room again, and seemed almost ready to go back to sleep when his eye caught me. I was surprised, to say the least. Usually I am invisible to all but the most innocent. Well, I thought to myself, he most obviously is innocent.
He didn't seem scared of me, just curious. "Who are you?" he asked, cocking his head to the side.
"Who do I look like I should be?" I asked, surpressing a smile. This kid reminded me a little of myself, before I got the... I cut the thought abruptly off and waited for his answer.
He regarded me for a moment, taking in my appearance. "Well, you have wings, so you must be a Duel Monster." he said.
I opened my mouth to say something, and then my mind caught up with me and left my jaw where it was. "What?" I finally managed to sputter out.
He looked at me for a few more seconds, and then threw the covers off of him. He slid down onto the hardwood floor (I noticed that the blood-stained carpet that had been there during my life had been removed) and padded over to the desk. I saw for the first time the Duel Monsters deck sitting there, and he picked it up. He flipped through it, and then finally came up with a Magic Card that he showed to me.
I couldn't surpress a smile of delight. Of course! The Change of Heart. The picture of the angel on the front had one white wing and the other black, like I now did. "So I'm the Change of Heart, huh?"
He nodded solemnly and placed his deck back on the desk with almost reverence. He turned to me then, and pointed at my chest. "What's that? It ain't on the card."
My hand reached automatically for the pendant about my throat. "This? ...Nothing."
He regarded me seriously, as if he didn't quite believe me, and then shrugged. "Oh, well, I was jus' wonderin'." He went back and sat on the bed, swinging his legs back and forth over the side. He patted the sheets next to him, and obediently I sat. "I seen you somewheres b'fore." he said after a moment.
I cocked my head slightly to the side. "Really?"
He nodded, seemingly deep in thought. "In a pic'ter somewheres. Not on the card. Somewheres else."
"Oh. I used to hide my wings and play Duel Monsters. I won a couple tornaments." I said, thinking fast. "Was it in the newspapers?"
He shook his head, his brow furrowed in concentration. "No. I think it was in Daddy's study. In a frame."
I shrugged. "It might have been someone else."
He stared pointedly at my hair and I chuckled. "Ok, point taken."
He yawned and blinked up at me sleepily. "Are you really a Duel Monster?"
"No," I said, smiling, a sudden desition made. "I'm your guardian angel."
He seemed to perk up a little as I helped pull the covers over him. "Oh good."
The next morning I faded into invicibility, as usual, and followed my new little charge down into the kitchen, where his mother and father were sitting, his sister apparently already gone to school. This was the first time I'd seen his parents, having been upstairs haunting my room while the movers unpacked everything.
I stopped short in the doorway, my jaw dropping for the second time in twenty-four hours, as the kid began to jabber away at his dad about me. My hand again went to the pendant around my neck, and I rubbed it out of habit as I tried to take in the scene before me.
As my little charge began to describe me I saw his father start and spit out the mouthfull of eggs he'd been chewing. "He looked like what?"
The little boy blinked, unaware that his father's hands were shaking, and across the kitchen so were his mother's. "He had long white hair and wings. One was white and the other black. He had on a necklace, like this," He held his hands out and began to sketch the shape of my pendant in the air. "It was round and had a triangle thingy inside, like yours daddy!"
His father's eyes were wide, and I could see the sweat running down his face and the tears in his eyes. "Ryou, why don't you go get your clothes on, okay?"
His son, Ryou, (I smiled at the name) apparently didn't notice the tremble in his father's voice and nodded happily, taking the stairs two at a time. I stayed in the kitchen.
Ryou's mother came over and plopped down into a chair, and husband and wife just stared at each other for a moment. "Do you think...?" his mother asked, leaving the sentence dangling. "He did die here after all."
The father winced at the word 'die'. "Murdered you mean. By his own other." He shook his head and I saw a tear slip down his face. "I'm sure it's him."
His hand went for his own pendant, a heavy, inverted pyramid that I was very familiar with. He looked up, and, I swear, for a second, he saw me.
And he smiled.
"Hey Anzu, do you believe in ghosts?"
()()()()()
WSJ: ^_^ Oooo! So kawaii!!!! *hugs Ryou Moto* He's so sweet!!!!
Ryou (Bakura): -_-;; And you kill me yet again...
Ryou (Moto): 0.0 Ack! Can't breathe!
Yugi: *whaps WSJ on the back of the head* Let him go for heaven's sakes!
WSJ: *rubs the back of her head* Sheesh! Well, in answer to my sister's question the first time she read it, the reason Ryou (Moto) has a dueling deck even though he's only six is because of his father. I mean, come on! I can easily imagine Yugi giving his kid a Dark Magician plushie for his first birthday. *grins at the adorable picture*
Yugi and both Ryous: -.-;;;
WSJ: Reviews and presents welcome! Happy birthday to me!!! (Actually, it was Monday, but what the hey!)
God bless minna-san!