“Hey,
shut up,” another student hissed at them. This teacher was
notorious for his lectures about behavior in class, and used every
disturbance as an opportunity to launch in one of those lectures about
respect for authority and the good values and morals of the previous
generation. Jounouchi muttered a few curse words and was about to say
more when the teacher looked his way, but remembered at the last moment
that the teacher could send him away for detention…which
would seriously clash with his afternoon class, so he shut up.
At lunchtime,
Honda inquired if Jounouchi had heard something from Yuugi about the
missing Puzzle piece.
“Huh,
no, why?” Jounouchi scoured his pockets for money. He wanted
to buy a sandwich as he was really hungry, and Honda biting into a very
delicious looking one didn’t help much.
“Hey
man, do you have a few yen left?”
“Lemme
see…well, about that guy? Or about his precious
Puzzle?”
“I
don’t even think he has my telephone number,”
Jounouchi said, shrugging. “I don’t think
it’s as important as that Mahaado fellow made it out to be.
How can the fate of the world depend on one piece of one stupid golden
Puzzle?”
“Yeah,
you’re right. Hey, what are you going to do this
afternoon?”
Jounouchi
showed a happy grin. “Going to pick up my sister;
she’s spending this weekend with me!”
“Wow,”
Honda said. “That certainly changes my plans. I’ve
to baby sit my nephew this afternoon, mind if I come over? Maybe
Shizuka-chan would like to hold him…”
“No
fucking way,” Jounouchi growled at him. “Leave that
smelly kid at home!”
“But
Jounouchi…!”
“By
the way, my sister is practically engaged.”
“What?”
“Hey,
stop shouting! Yeah, Otogi asked her to be his girl, and she said
yes.”
“Otogi?
As in Otogi Ryuuji, the owner of the Black Crown?”
“One
and the same…”
Honda balled
his fists. “Shizuka-chan is clearly brainwashed by that guy!
He’d never care about a girl like her! It’s
probably one of his plans to make himself look good in the public
eye!”
“He’s
rich,” Jounouchi said as if that was the most important
thing. “He can pay for Shizuka’s care better than I
at the moment.”
Honda muttered
something inaudible. “Otogi… I can’t
believe it…” He dug deeper in his pants pockets,
finding a few crumpled bills. “Here you are.”
“Thanks,
man.” Jounouchi bought himself the sandwich and greedily tore
off the wrapper.
There was only
one hour of school left after lunch, and if he hurried, he could catch
an early bus to Schizuka’s school. The sooner he got to see
his sister, the better.
Leaving Honda
heartbroken after the news about his sister, Jounouchi rode the bus to
the institute where he’d pick her up. Heh, he
couldn’t imagine Honda’s troubles with girls - Miho
had rejected him, and now he apparently had a crush on Shizuka.
Jounouchi hadn’t laughed at his friend when Miho refused to
go out with him, but he didn’t see the necessity of dating
girls yet.
He was too
busy with his job, his school and his situation at home, not to mention
everything involving Shizuka. Her future was more important; the girls
would follow later. He grinned to himself, though his good mood
dwindled rapidly when he noticed Shizuka at the gates of the institute
with someone next to her. What the hell is he doing here?
“Shizuka!”
“Onii-chan!”
She flailed with her arms in his direction, and he quickly embraced
her, hugging her close. It hadn’t escaped him that
she’d been holding hands with Otogi before he called out her
name, and he shot him an irritated look.
Domino
City’s well-renowned playboy showed him a perfect smile and
even a thumbs-up sign. He’d shared a few classes with
Jounouchi before dropping out and resuming his education with private
tutoring, as he’d been too busy with his store and game
designing to follow the regular school program. Jounouchi disliked him;
he knew enough of the guy to not see him as the perfect boyfriend for
Shizuka.
“So, where’s your fan club?” he snarled
at the other.
“Onii-chan!”
Shizuka sputtered, shocked.
Otogi raked a
hand through his dark hair, twirling a lock around his finger.
“I’ve given up all the girls and fame to be with
your sister, Jounouchi. Shizuka’s the best thing
that’s happened to me in all my life, and who cares for some
dumb fan girls when they’ve found true love?”
“True
love?” Jounouchi parroted. “Don’t make me
laugh. You’re not the type to be swooned by even the concept
of true love.”
“Onii-chan,
don’t fight,” Shizuka pleaded. “Ryuuji
took the day off especially for us…!”
“He
did, huh? That’s very kind of him, but
unnecessary,” Jounouchi answered rudely. “Come on,
Shizuka, we’re going home.”
“Not
so fast, Jounouchi,” Otogi interrupted. “I promised
Shizuka to take her to the park, and you’re…more
than welcome to come with us. We can have dinner together in the
evening?”
He was about
to say something scathing when he caught Shizuka’s hopeful
and enthusiastic look on her face. Jounouchi wanted to protest, but it
melted away as she smiled at him, nudging him a little at his elbow.
“Oh,
all right,” he grumpily agreed. Shizuka clasped her hands and
chirped with joy. He could stomach Otogi’s presence for her
and for her only.
“Let’s
go, then!” Otogi suggested. “We would’ve
called you about our plans, Jounouchi, but since you don’t
have a cell phone…”
“Too
bad, I presume,” he bit back, having already noticed that the
other was wearing designer clothes. His paper job barely enabled him to
pay for his tuition and the occasional sandwich. Otogi chuckled and
possessively took Shizuka’s hand. The moment they started
walking, Jounouchi looked behind him. Am I really getting
paranoid? He didn’t have that strong feeling of
being followed like before, but still…
“Onii-chan?”
“Yeah…yeah,
I’m coming.”
It started to
rain soon after they left the park. Jounouchi was bored to death, but
Shizuka enjoyed it immensely. It made his stomach boil with helpless
anger when seeing her so happy while she was listening to the sounds of
everyone around her, her imagination filling in the missing images. It’s
not fair. Damnit!
“Onii-chan!”
She kept calling him, trying to involve him and he grudgingly obliged -
he wanted to make her happy, and if he needed to be Otogi’s
best friend for it…so be it, but it wasn’t by
choice. He didn’t like him talking about his business success
and how everything seemed to come on his path at the right time.
Meanwhile, Otogi kept holding onto Shizuka’s hand, and
whenever he didn’t look, they’d exchange a quick
kiss.
Sickening,
really, but Jounouchi shoved his hands in his pockets and decided to
not give into his childish desire of beating Otogi up. The game
designer suggested a fancy restaurant for dinner and when Jounouchi
protested, he gallantly offered to pay for him. If there was something
Jounouchi hated the most, it was charity, especially when it was
‘offered’ to him like this. He had no choice,
though; he didn’t have enough money on him to pay for it
himself, suggesting going somewhere else had Otogi’s veto and
he didn’t want to escalate the situation. Annoyed, he went
with Otogi and Shizuka to the restaurant. He was used to eating an
awful lot of food, but as he didn’t want to run up the bill,
he contented himself with a few sushi rolls.
“Aren’t
you eating any more, onii-chan?” Shizuka asked in surprise as
he described his plate to her.
“I’m
not that hungry, Shizuka,” he said, the lie easily slipping
over his lips.
“Your
sister told me about how much you can wolf down,” Otogi
chuckled. “Are you really sure those rolls are enough for
you?”
Jounouchi
glared at him. He was going to have a private conversation with Otogi
later, oh yes. If there was one thing he hated even more, it was people
rubbing salt in the wound.
As soon as
dinner was over, Jounouchi suggested that they go home, as it was
getting late. Draping her coat around her shoulders, he waited for
Shizuka to say goodbye to Otogi and he casually looked around. The
restaurant was in the middle of a fancy shopping street, with stores
way above his usual budget. The street lanterns were lit, the rain
drizzling from the sky, and no one in sight but a few late shoppers and
some people looking for a place to eat.
Jounouchi
narrowed his eyes.
He
hadn’t shaken that feeling of being followed completely, and
wasn’t that Bakura he saw? He couldn’t imagine the
shy kid from school in an area like this. The kid had told him he
always went straight home after school, spending the rest of the day in
the apartment his father bought for him. Jounouchi vaguely remembered
Bakura telling him something about his old man being an archaeologist,
but like so many other things, it had gone in one ear and out the other.
Even stranger
was Bakura’s company. Jounouchi couldn’t make it
out from this distance, but there was another guy with him, with the
weirdest hairdo he’d ever seen. It looked spiky,
gravity-defying, and generally so absurd that he was convinced it was
some kind of wig. The other had remarkably dark skin, an even stranger
combination with his blond hair, and he was wearing some kind of metal
around his arms and neck; as it was dark, Jounouchi couldn’t
really see exactly what. Weird. Oh well,
he’d just found something to pick on Bakura about the next
Monday.
“Onii-chan,
are you coming?” Shizuka asked.
“Yeah,
sure!” he answered, looking over his shoulder once more.
Bakura looked different. Something with his hair, but what exactly?
“You
know those guys?” Otogi suddenly asked.
“One
of them is in my class,” Jounouchi mumbled. “I
don’t know the other one.”
“They
give me the creeps,” Otogi answered and he sounded serious.
For once, Jounouchi didn’t mock him - they gave him the
creeps too. He wondered briefly if it was Bakura
who was following him. Still, if he did, the kid would be too smart to
just show himself so openly like that, wouldn’t he? It simply
didn’t make sense. Bakura didn’t say more than two
words in a class, kept to the background and was even embarrassed at
the notion of the fan club some of the girls had created for him. It
just didn’t make any sense.
“Let’s
go home,” he said. Two against two, if it came to fighting.
He didn’t have the slightest clue about Otogi’s
fighting abilities, but Bakura would go down in a breeze - Jounouchi
had seen him at PE, and the kid already keeled over when catching a
ball.
“Are
you going to show us some movies, onii-chan?”
He gritted at
the ‘us’ in her words, which meant that Otogi would
come along to their place. He didn’t like to show his
apartment to anyone else. He’d cleaned a bit, but still - it
was in a rundown neighborhood and no one cared about the maintenance.
Shizuka couldn’t see it and probably wouldn’t care
in the least, but Otogi would have more ammunition to shoot him down
with. Grumbling, he stuffed his hands in his jacket once again and
startled listing the movies he could show. One big advantage with the
Internet was the availability of movies; Jounouchi didn’t
care that he was downloading things illegally and he’d built
up quite a library this way.
Otogi added
his two cents about the movie titles and promised Shizuka to tell her
all about it if they’d ended up watching a movie.
“We
can also play a game,” he continued talking. “There
are lots of games especially adjusted to the visually impaired. Card
games, for example, or dice…”
It was really
getting dark now. Where was that bus stop? Jounouchi half-heartedly
listened to Otogi, getting fed up with his smooth talk and
Shizuka’s swooning replies. Three is a crowd,
he thought bitterly, feeling immediately guilty that he
wasn’t happy for Shizuka’s happiness. She was
obviously in love with that guy, who was he to criticize it?
“Shizuka,
we can…” His voice trailed off.
“What,
onii-chan? I want to go home…it’s so
cold.”
“Too
cold, actually,” Otogi muttered. They were standing still, in
complete darkness. There wasn’t even a lantern pole to be
seen, even though they just walked over a rather enlightened street.
With no bystanders around to ask, Jounouchi felt it in his bones that
something was very, very off.
“Who’s
there?” he suddenly cried out, startling both Shizuka and
Otogi. The latter tightened his grip on Shizuka, who huddled in her
coat, quietly asking what was going on.
Silence.
“Who’s
there?”
“We
have to find the bus stop,” Otogi said, shooting nervous
glances left and right. Shizuka hung onto his arm, her eyes blind to
their surroundings, but instinctively picking up on their fear and
anxiety.
“Where
are we? Are we lost?”
“Poor
little sheep.”
“Who’s
there?” Jounouchi asked again. He took a relaxed stance,
moving his feet a little apart, balling his fists. He was ready for
action whenever necessary. “Show yourself!”
A drawn-out
cackle was his answer, followed by a different, deeper, boisterous
chuckle. The sound approached them, and finally he heard footsteps.
Jounouchi braced himself. The footsteps sounded regular; no one was
running towards them, and the darkness seemed to light up a little - as
if it moved away from whoever approaching.
“Poor
little sheep.”
“Bakura?”
Jounouchi asked, flabbergasted. It was Bakura, and
he looked creepily different.
His hair was
wilder, spiked up, the bone white strands pointing in all directions.
He was wearing a simple light blue jacket with a blue and white striped
shirt under it, combined with faded blue jeans. He should have been
shivering from the cold, but the temperature didn’t seem to
affect him. Jounouchi’s eyes went wide when he saw what else
Bakura was wearing - some kind of golden pendant, brightly glowing, in
the shape of a circle. The triangle in the middle of the circle bore a
stylized eye similar to the one on the puzzle piece
he’d stolen, and the prongs attached to the circle
rattled faintly.
“Look
what I found,” he said slowly. “Bait.”
“What
the hell is going on?” Jounouchi demanded. “Why do
you look so funny?”
“Heh,
he thinks you look funny.” The second person, the same
Jounouchi had seen before, became visible, the darkness moving away
from him as if he was parting a sea. It looked more to Jounouchi like
the strange shadows were afraid
of this person who casually came to stand next to Bakura. He was
slightly taller, though that effect was exaggerated by his wild
hairstyle.
“Who
are you people? What do you want from us?” Otogi asked.
Jounouchi
gaped at the boy standing next to Bakura. His sharp eye already caught
the foreign object in the other’s hand; a rod of some sort
with a sphere on top of it, carrying the same eye as on
Bakura’s pendant. The sphere had a sharp wing on each side
and the whole thing looked preposterous to Jounouchi - but the eye was
disturbingly familiar, and he was starting to feel rather ill. Fuck
I’m screwed.
“Nothing,”
Bakura answered. “Nothing but a few answers…then
we’ll decide whether to let you go, to let you live, or to
let you…well, die.”
Otogi wrapped
his arms protectively around Shizuka, who softly whimpered. She huddled
close to her boyfriend, shivering.
The blond
stranger tilted his head and licked his lips rather vulgarly.
“Mmm… pretty,” he said, his eyes locking
on Shizuka.
“Don’t
even think about it,” Jounouchi said,
growling. “You don’t scare us with your stupid
trinkets. Go home, Bakura.”
“Why
are you so mean to Master Host? I don’t think so,”
Bakura answered. “I’m not interested in you.
You’re trivial.”
“Master
Host? What the fuck are you talking about?”
“It
would go above your head, so I won’t even try to explain it
to you,” Bakura said dryly.
“There
are powers existing in this world that go way beyond your imagination.
Look at you, pitifully waving your fists, as if you think you can do
something that will hurt us?”
“I’m
damned good with my fists,” Jounouchi snarled. “Not
many have walked away on two legs after I was finished with
them.”
“What’s
taking so long?” The other spoke up. “You promised
I could have them, Bakura.”
“In
a minute, Malik,” Bakura said. “First, I want my
answers, then they’re all yours.”
“Over
my dead body,” Jounouchi retorted.
“Yes,
exactly…” The one called Malik looked very pleased
with Jounouchi’s shown aggression, and licked his lips again.
“The
kid with the Sennen Puzzle. You know him. Where is he?”
Yuugi?
“I don’t know what the fuck
you’re talking about…!”
“You
know him as Mutou Yuugi,” Bakura said, his voice dangerously
edgy. “Master Host knows this via other classmates. They have
seen him with the golden box. The Holy Container! Where is it, where is
he?”
“I’m
not a fucking tourist office!” Jounouchi cried out, repeating
what he previously yelled at Mahaado. It was a
déjà vu, and his gut was telling him that it was
a bad déjà vu.
Otogi looked
confused. “Mutou Yuugi? That kid from the
Ga…”
“He’s
a nobody!” Jounouchi interrupted him, drowning his voice out.
“If this is some kind of joke, Bakura, it’s
certainly not funny! Now get lost before I get really mad!”
“Do
try your best,” Bakura answered, the light from his pendant
still bright. “You don’t impress us, Jounouchi.
Where’s the kid?”
Fortunately,
Otogi didn’t speak again, and Jounouchi shook his head.
“He
left school. I don’t know where he is. Too bad, you have to
fucking find him on your own.”
“Aww,”
Malik said. “No cooperation?”
Bakura hissed.
“I need that Puzzle. You’re going to bring me to
him.”
“No
way,” Jounouchi refused. “You can find him for
yourself. Try a phone book.” He didn’t need the
eerie glow of Bakura’s pendant and the shadows dancing on his
face to figure out that something was terribly wrong with his
classmate; he almost looked possessed. But even if
he was, it didn’t matter; Shizuka was his only concern. He
needed to protect Shizuka, he needed to get them all out of here.
Bakura took a
few steps forward, followed by his sinister
‘friend’. Malik chuckled low in his throat, both
his hands on that strange object with the eye, holding onto it
possessively.
“I
like it when they don’t cooperate. I can make
them cooperate…”
“Soon,”
Bakura said casually. “Last chance, Jounouchi. You can get
your friends out of here alive if you just tell me where the kid
is…I only need his Puzzle…”
I
wonder what he’d say if I told him the Puzzle was incomplete.
I don’t think he knows…He opened his
mouth to divulge that piece of information, but decided against it the
very last moment. Whatever he was going to say, they wouldn’t
walk out of here alive. Bakura didn’t have any intention to
have them walk away alive; Malik hadn’t protested against his
words even though Bakura obviously had promised him some fun.
“I
don’t know where he is,” Jounouchi repeated and his
hand went to Shizuka’s arm. If they needed to run, he would
take the lead. He knew this area, even though it was harder to find his
way around with this strange darkness…that seemed to come
from the other two.
“Fine,
we’ll find them on our own,” Bakura heaved an
irritated sigh. His lips curled in a devilish grin, showing a very
sharp canines. “They’re all yours, if you want to
have some fun.”
“Run!”
Jounouchi yelled, immediately turning around, grabbing Shizuka with him
- and was frozen the same second.
“Onii-chan!”
Shizuka cried out.
“Jounouchi!
What’s wrong with you?” Otogi sounded panicked.
Jounouchi tried to move, but he couldn’t. He had thought that
it was for the better to run, as Bakura and Malik seemed to have powers
- because of their strange artifacts or not - and from his experience
with Mana and Mahaado, he knew physical force was futile. He gritted
his teeth, the only thing he could do in his state, and was overwhelmed
with an urge to…kill. That’s what you
want. It has always been inside of you, a voice echoed
through his mind. Give into it, Jounouchi. You know you
can’t resist. You want to put your hands around her soft
little neck. Look at her, bleating like a poor little lost sheep.
Abandoned by her mother, her father, her brother. Won’t you
help her out of her misery?
Jounouchi
found he suddenly had control over his body again, but not completely -
like a puppet on a string, he awkwardly turned around again to face
Shizuka and Otogi.
“Jounouchi!
What’s wrong with you, man?”
“Onii-chan…Ryuuji,
what’s going on?”
Do
you hear how she calls for him, not you? She doesn’t want you
near. She calls him Ryuuji and she laughs at him, not at you. You hate
him, don’t you? Oooh, he’ll be next…but
first, he has to watch how his beloved dies. You want her to die,
don’t you? She’ll sing for you, a beautiful song,
as long as you want, as high as you want.
“Jounouchi!
What’s wrong with you! Get a grip!”
He
couldn’t resist. The voice in his head, this overpowering
urge to feel flesh between his fingers, to feel the fear, to hear the
cries…his body moved on its own, his vision was strangely
unfocused, but still he could see everything. He realized he was moving
towards Shizuka, hands reaching for her. My own sister!
There was nothing he could do to stop it. He registered the abhorred
look on Otogi’s face, who tried to yank Shizuka away, and he
heard laughing, close to the left of him.
“What’s
gotten into you? She’s your sister! Jounouchi!”
He heard a
high-pitched scream, and then Shizuka’s voice, pleading. She
called his name, finally she’s calling for me,
but she’s too late, too late for everything.
The voice all but sung in his head, urging him on. Jounouchi was aware
that he was forcing his hands around her neck, convinced he was going
to kill her, strangle her to death - and he couldn’t care
less.
There was this
little voice in the back of his mind, howling, begging him to stop. She’s
your sister. The one you swore to protect from everything and
everyone... your whole future revolves around her. What are you doing! Was
this Otogi’s voice, or his own? Why were all these voices in
his head, and why was he listening to any of them? He was Jounouchi
Katsuya, he had a voice on his own. He’d made his own
decisions for so long, he knew who he was, who his friends were, who
his sister was…and yet he was standing here with
his hands around her neck.
Too much
noise. He wanted to cry and to laugh at the same time; he wanted to run
away and stand still.
Fight it! Otogi’s voice, that was for sure. She’s
your sister! Your sister! My sister! His own voice chimed
in, reminding him what he was doing. The third voice, the unknown voice
was fading away, slowly, too slowly…he heard Shizuka cry, he
knew she was prying at his hands, and yet it still felt as if he was
detached, watching from a sideline. He could still hear the laughing,
echoing in his mind, malice and venom dripping off of it.
Whatever they
had done to him, he wouldn’t give in to this - he was
stronger than anything they tried to pull off, and Jounouchi forced
himself to loosen his grip on his sister’s neck, horror
overtaking his earlier urge to hurt and kill. No
one… no one can make me hurt my sister!
It was just in a blink of an eye, but the bloodcurdling scream he heard
wasn’t his, nor Shizuka’s, and it broke whatever
spell held him in his power. Jounouchi stepped backwards, almost
tumbling to the floor.
“Otogi!”
he yelled. The game designer was holding his side, blood dripping over
his fingers. Blood?
He looked just as surprised as Jounouch was bewildered about the whole
situation, and his mouth opened for another cry of pain, when suddenly
his eyes widened and he fell to his knees.
“Otogi!”
Shizuka
was crying, calling for her brother between sobs, shifting from one
foot to another, literally left in the dark. She couldn’t
see, couldn’t understand what was going on, and she kept
prying at her own throat as if she could still feel
Jounouchi’s fingers around them.
“Delicious,”
a voice spoke, drifting through the shadows. Jounouchi recognized it
immediately - it was the same voice that had spoken in his mind.
“Pretty
pretty blood….too slow, too much noise, too
short…”
Jounouchi
looked around him, eyes darting back and forth.
This…supernatural darkness or whatever it was was still
surrounding them, blocking anything from his view. Otogi was lying on
the ground, the clothes on his back slashed open. He’d barely
had the time to realize what was happening to him; whatever God there
was, he had shown mercy to Otogi to have him die before the pain would
settle in.
Jounouchi had
once thought that he’d witnessed his father die, as the man
had slumped to the floor, collapsing into a heap. He’d been
nothing but a kid at the time, a boy around seven, and he had bawled
his eyes out. He learned soon enough that his father had passed out
from too much alcohol and the next time it happened, he’d
stepped over his father as he lay somewhere drunk on the floor.
This was
death. Otogi had died, stabbed to death…and when Jounouchi
looked up, he saw Malik hovering over his victim, his artifact in his
hand and…turned into a dagger. It was a sharp blade, and
long enough to slash through clothing and…he
didn’t want to think about it, but he was sure
Otogi’s lungs had been punctured. Quickly, Jounouchi grabbed
Shizuka’s wrists, trying to pull her close. She immediately
started to fight, kicking her feet, too confused and too upset to
recognize her brother.
“How
boring. You said you could keep them alive and torture them for hours,
Malik!”
“He
was noisy. I hate the fucking noise! Shut the fuck up!”
Bakura
appeared again, his pendant still glowing. “Interesting that
he could withstand the influence of the Rod,” he said, baring
his sharp teeth again. “You would’ve proven
interesting, but I’ve got other things to do. Have fun with
them, Malik. Just don’t make a mess like you did with that
blond chick, all right?”
“She
was feisty,” Malik said, grinning like a loon. “I
like ‘em feisty…” He turned towards
Shizuka.
“You
bastard…” Jounouchi wanted to say more, but
suddenly Bakura backed away, looking around him as if he was hearing
something. Even Malik stopped dead in his tracks, the dagger still in
his hand.
“What
is it, Bakura?”
“Something
just entered…” Bakura looked confused and insecure
for one split second, then growled. “Finish them off! We have
to leave soon-”
Before Malik
could respond, something purple flew past him, knocking him over with
such force that he lost his grip on the artifact.
“Idiot!” Bakura yelled, slightly panicked, and his fingers clutched around his pendant. “You can’t get me here! Are you really that foolish, to challenge the one who rules the Shadows?”
Jounouchi
wrapped both his arms around Shizuka, the girl going limp in his arms,
tired of fighting.
“Onii-chan…”
“Shizuka,
we have to run,” he whispered. His view was blocked when the
purple figure came to stand in front of him, his back turned. It was a
humanoid shaped form, clad in some kind of armor, holding a tall staff
in its right hand, pointing it directly at Bakura. It was distracting
the other more than enough to forsake his grip on the shadows around
them, and Jounouchi noticed how he could make out the faint outlines of
their surroundings once again. There was the street, the
pavement… he tugged at Shizuka.
“We
have to run, now,” he insisted. “Hurry,
hurry!”
“B-but…Ryuuji…”
“Shizuka,
come on! We have to run, now!”
“Ryuuji!
We can’t go without him!”
“He’s
dead! Come on!”
“Wh…”
She couldn’t even protest as he forcefully dragged her away,
tearing his eyes away from Otogi’s body on the street. He
started to run, forgetting that Shizuka neither had his stamina nor
could hold up with his pace, and he dragged her along with him. From
the corner of his eyes he could see Malik lying halfway on the
pavement, the dagger out of his hands, a few meters away. For a brief
moment, Jounouchi considered grabbing it, but quickly decided against
it. He couldn’t care less if Malik was dead or not, but he
didn’t want anything to do with those strange items, the
Sennen things as Bakura had called them…and Bakura was a
riddle for another time, now he needed to bring them into safety.
Jounouchi
couldn’t think of any other place where they were safe than
the Game Shop. No cop in the world would believe his story about his
possessed classmate that wielded a weird pendant with an eye on it and
teamed up with an even crazier kid who killed in cold blood. Not
knowing exactly why he was running into that direction, Shizuka crying
and calling his name as she was dragged along, but he knew he was safe
there.
“Onii-chan,
I can’t…!” Shizuka suddenly let herself
fall to the floor, her legs unable to carry her any longer. Jounouchi
almost lost his grip on her hand and he turned around, gathering his
sister in his arms.
“Just
hold on a little longer, please,” he begged her. The Game
Shop wasn’t that far from here, and in his panicked and
confused mind it was the only place sticking out to him. He
didn’t even consider going to his own home nor to
Shizuka’s - he wanted to go to the Game Shop, as if little
Yuugi could protect them somehow. He would worry about everything
later; they had to be safe first.
“Ryuuji…”
she sobbed. “Onii-chan, what happened? We have to go back for
him…”
“There’s
nothing we can do for him now, Shizuka,” Jounouchi said,
patting her on the shoulders as she clung to him. “Not
now…” Not ever.
“Is
he…is he really dead? I heard him scream…it was
horrible…!”
“Shizuka…”
“He
can’t be dead!” She started crying loudly, more
tears spilling over her cheeks. He didn’t want her to go into
shock, and gently coaxed her along, pace above walking speed, to get
her away from the scene as far as possible. They didn’t seem
to be followed right now, for which he was extremely thankful -
anything more happening this night and they wouldn’t both
survive. He almost counted their steps, mentally calculating how far
they were away from the Game Shop, and his relief was apparent when he
finally saw the quaint building.
Chapter 8 | Chapter 10