Valerie's Writings

Author’s note: This is incomplete but it basically follows the events of the first YGO series (the really old, 1998 one) so if you’re wondering what eventually happens, watch the first series (or read the manga). It is called “From Ryou’s Side” because I wanted to depict how Ryou Bakura might have experienced being possessed by “the Spirit of the Ring,” seeing as their relationship was never made clear at all in the manga or anime.

Two other things you might want to know:

1. I am familiar with both the English and Japanese versions of the anime, and I understand that Bakura is not really British in any way. But I thought it would be fun if, for the purposes of this story, he had been born in London and later been forced to move to Japan due to the bad reputation he was getting from his friends dropping into comas. I hope you’ll let me indulge in this little (non-canonical) fantasy. (I really just wanted to try writing someone with a British accent/manner of speaking, to tell you the truth ^^;)

2. I’ve never watched the ending of YGO so I actually don’t know what happens to Bakura/the Ring/Yami Bakura/etc at the end. I’m going to assume that the Ring is destroyed and Yami Bakura goes away for good.

-

I promised myself not to think about it anymore, because it would only give me trouble, and for the week or so since I’ve returned, I think I kept to this promise as well as I could. I thought with it finally gone, not to ever return, I could stop mulling over the past and get on with my life. But it hasn’t worked. I may be able to kid myself and my friends that I’m fine, but some days I don’t feel like it at all. One night I’ll come home and it’ll happen to me again, I know it. It’ll happen so fast I won’t remember a single minute in my life where I hadn’t been possessed. And of course, none of this has happened or will happen—it’s just crazy rubbish—and I want to stop these thoughts, but it’s like he’s controlling me again—I can’t.

Today it was in the evening when I panicked, when I was just outside my apartment; I’d already unlocked the door and I was ready to enter, when I noticed from under the door that the lights had been turned on inside. I stood out there for a full five minutes, wondering if I should risk it and enter. I thought for sure he had come back. Eventually, some of the neighbours came through the hallway and I still hadn’t the courage to open the door. So I had to pretend I was leaving my room and hide in the stairwell. While I was in there I even thought about running to the shopping arcade or something. But it’s a good thing I didn’t. When I finally opened the door I dashed through to my bedroom and shut the door fast. The whole thing was completely silly. I’d forgotten to turn the lights off this morning and now here I was thinking that blasted Ring had come back and turned them on for me.

Well, I suppose I can’t blame myself for thinking like that; it has happened that way before. I always remember that time long ago. It was back in London when I must have been eleven or twelve; I’d left the Ring in the playground—accidentally or not, I don’t remember—and then when I came home I’d found it lying on the floor of my bedroom. At the time I never thought about how it had gotten there; in fact, I treasured the thing even more after realizing I could have lost it forever.

But never mind about these stories. I’m doing this in order to remember all that has happened since that Ring first got into me. After I’d shut myself into the bedroom a few hours and realized what a right fool I was, I decided I’d try something completely new. I’ve never really written before, aside from assignments, but I think I’ll give it a try. Yuugi recommended it to me, after all. I didn’t think he was the sort of type to write, either—but anyway, I think it can only do me good to try it. Just in case it happens again, maybe I won’t forget everything if it’s all written down on paper.

-

Well, it’s difficult to know where to start. I don’t even know what’s true and what’s not, sometimes. After his soul was sent away, I suppose my memory went back to normal, but I have no way of knowing for certain. I know when he was still with me, I’d forget things all the time, there were parts of my memory that were just nowhere to be found, and I’d sometimes have memories that were false. And most terrifying of all was when I’d regain consciousness somewhere not knowing where I was at all. Well, I should say these things have been happening to me ever since I was a child, so I imagine I’m a great deal more comfortable with it now than I would’ve been experiencing it the first time.

So, perhaps the first thing I should explain is how I got the Ring in the first place. Well, my father bought it for me when I was very young, and even though it was just some dusty artifact among many others I had, I still bore a great interest for it all along. I didn’t wear it when I was younger, but when my father moved away to Japan I decided I’d have it with me every day, to remember him.

About a few months after he left—I think I was around seven—the Ring went and preyed on the friends I had for the first time. I remember almost nothing about what happened. I just found out after I came around in the hospital that all of my friends had become unconscious like me, except that they would have little chance of recovering. I wasn’t blamed for what happened, so I kept attending school there for the next few years. But it was miserable without any friends. I couldn’t make any after what had happened. I would’ve been better off had I transferred at once, but my mother had to stay there, and I couldn’t leave my mother.

When I’d finally made some new friends in year five or six, they fell unconscious too, after only just a week or two of playing with them. This time my mother hadn’t been home, so when I’d come around I found those two guys just lying there near my games. I had to dial for an ambulance myself—it was terrifying. Worse yet, the incident made the news, and some people even blamed me or my mother. I remember I was in tears that night and I refused to return to school for a week. I thought over what had happened so many times, trying to make sense of it, yet somehow, I never linked these things happening with my father’s Ring or with that game board, or anything. I just thought there was something wrong with me, and that I had the worst luck in history.

Well, Mom said I had to go back to school sometime, but I was too frightened and ashamed to ever return there. So I made a decision that I’d move. I wanted to turn over a fresh leaf, and just getting out of London wasn’t enough for that; I had to fly halfway across the world to Japan just to escape it all. Looking back, I realize I must’ve been so foolish! I never was very clear-headed, was I? Anyway, my mother agreed, so I waited three long weeks for my father to return to London, and then I boarded a plane with him to Tokyo.

I was twelve at the time, speaking English all my life, and although I suppose I should have been concerned about not speaking the language very well, I wasn’t. My father had taught me a little throughout the years and, well, this will probably sound stupid but I was dead determined not to make any more friends. I thought I would never speak to a person my age again. And if I wasn’t going to go anywhere near them, I didn’t care what language they were speaking. I thought I might even be better off if I didn’t understand a word they said to me. I suppose you could say I had fallen into some kind of depression.

Well, once I’d spent some time in Tokyo, I began to change a bit. Before I’d passed a single term at my new school, I found this new need to get better at the language and find some people I could talk to. Even my father thought I’d gone mad, since I don’t normally like doing my studies—or making friends. Now as I write this, if I think hard on it, I realize it may have been the Ring all along. I don’t want to admit it, and I can’t be completely certain, but I think it wanted me to find more friends…so it could destroy them.

And unluckily, when I was beginning my second year of junior high school, that is exactly what happened. I found a few friendly fellows in that new class; didn’t know them very long before one of them invited us to try out Duel Monsters at his house. I don’t know how that—what shall I call him? Spirit?—how that bloody Spirit managed to do it this time, but when I got woken up by one of the kids’ parents, the souls of my classmates had all been destroyed, and in my hands there were cards. I can’t begin to imagine how that Spirit managed to do this so many times without anyone else noticing, without me catching on, but he did. He did it so many times.

That time I didn’t cry at all, I just ran to the condo where we lived, and I didn’t tell my father about anything that had happened. I thought I was going crazy, and I was just imagining this all. Well, Father learned about it from the news, and then the next day an investigator dialed on us to have me answer some questions. It was probably one of the most frightening experiences I had ever had up to that point, just speaking to someone over the phone. I felt like a criminal on trial. Even after my father had taken the phone from me, I couldn’t keep myself from listening as he answered the investigator’s questions, one by one; I remember my throat feeling so dry it actually hurt me to swallow.

I tried a new school after that, a junior high in another part of Tokyo. That would make the third transfer, if I counted correctly. I can barely remember all the schools I’ve been to. I liked this one though, I was very fond of it, and nothing bad happened to me for a while. The school had some nice greenery nearby, and I used to be able to spend a lot of time alone in those parks. I kept away from people. They kept away from me. I guess I really did feel like a criminal. Not that I was given much of a choice. I knew some of my classmates were bound to have heard of me somehow, with that last incident having happened just miles away in the same city. Rumours floated around…. And since I was a foreigner, they were especially wary of me.

Well, I didn’t mind spending the days alone if it kept me out of the newspaper, but then one day I had a talk with a classmate, this nice girl, because she was interested in my Ring, and I just couldn’t resist. I wish I had. Maybe that Ring would have forced me into it, anyhow. Maybe I’m just making excuses. So we got to chatting a lot, and she was really nice to me. When I told her the Ring had some connection with Duel Monsters, she said she was a fan of the game too, and told me how lucky I was to have that Ring. I ended up telling her everything I knew about Egypt from my father.

This next part will sound terrible. I think I’m the stupidest, bloodiest dolt to have done it, but I did it and I’m not going to pretend any longer that it never happened. To tell the truth, I wanted to ask her on a date or something like that, but silly me hadn’t the courage to do it. So instead I asked if she would come over to my place to play some of my games; I actually asked her to play those games with me. And it wasn’t the Ring that did it. I’d left that at home, I’m fairly certain of it, since I’d been in a rush to get to school and it’d slid somewhere where I couldn’t find it; besides that, it was far too hot to be wearing that heavy bit of metal in the middle of August.

And then it happened again. I just suddenly found myself lying against my bed, and in front of me, she was curled up on the carpet like she was sound asleep. I thought at first she was, and wondered what we’d been doing together—when suddenly it struck me, and I began to shake horribly. I could barely lift myself or even see straight, I shook so terribly. I thought the only choice I had left was to throw myself off the building onto the streets.

I might have spent five minutes contemplating this before I finally managed to dial my father’s work cell. I couldn’t even explain to him what had happened, I just begged him to hurry back.

I was, and still am, so angry, and sorry for what I did. I must have apologized to that girl’s parents a thousand times, and I still couldn’t begin to forgive myself at all. But I suppose, to look at it fairly, if it hadn’t been her, the bloody Ring would only have gotten someone else.

I remained upset over the incident for a long while, and all the circumstances made it impossible for me to cheer up. By now, no one still believed my friends’ comas could be a coincidence. And there was a question that just needed to be answered: if I had recovered every single time, why hadn’t the others? My father sent me to see doctor after doctor, just to check that I wasn’t housing some rare disease. Theories were surfacing from everyone; some thought I might be gassing my classmates or forcing them to swallow pills, or somehow making them sustain head injuries. Personally, I always thought that it must be a ghost haunting me, a ghost that wanted revenge on the world. It was the only explanation for me. But then why didn’t it kill me, too?

Well, I received the answer to that pretty soon. I began to think that if the ghost wanted to steal away those who were close to me, there was nothing stopping it from taking my father, too. I didn’t think I would be able to bear it if I were the one to destroy my father, so I told him one night that I had to leave here; I would take the train in the morning to Domino City, three hours away from Tokyo, and I’d attend class there until I was seventeen. I told him I didn’t want to be followed. Well, luckily, for the first time in my life he didn’t stop me, and so the next morning I really did it. I left on my own.

That’s how the Ring and I both got here in Domino; I brought it with me, as I did all my games and figurines. What a fool I am! I honestly would never have guessed it could’ve been my father’s artifact Ring that was causing all this. As I wore it almost every day, and most days nothing at all happened to me, I didn’t have any reason for suspicion. Before I met Yuugi, the Ring had never glown or moved or pointed at anything, ever. I could take it on or off freely, and I never felt a compulsion to always keep it near me. Sometimes I did feel safer with it on, like it might protect me or something. But that was just foolishness.

-

I remember on many occasions regretting that I’d come to Domino. There wasn’t anything specially about Domino that I didn’t like, but now that I was truly left on my own I felt even more deathly lonely than I had before. I kept telling myself how foolish I was to have made a split-second decision to move here alone, and now I could never turn back, because I’d promised Father that I’d stay until I was seventeen. Well, that was two years away and by the end of the week I was already hating living alone. I brought home cold food from the corner store practically every day. No one was around to talk to, television was no fun watching alone, and I couldn’t cook worth a damn so there weren’t even dishes to wash up. For many long hours every day, there was absolutely nothing I could think of to do.

So I began playing my games even more and more, longing to have friends who would play them with me. There was something connected to the games that had made my classmates fall into comatose—I wasn’t stupid enough to have missed that—but even knowing that I still couldn’t keep myself away from playing them. And the Ring too—I cherished that more than ever; my father working as a museum curator and only able to spare me a limited allowance each month, I fear the Ring must’ve been worth more than every object in my apartment put together.

And then there was school. School was a source of yet more concern. I had just turned fifteen so I needed to get myself accepted into Domino High, but the administration was rigid about my needing a guardian’s approval. My father finally had to write them a letter and everything, explaining the situation. I spent weeks doing absolutely nothing, until I was at last accepted into the first-year class 1-B, which was just beginning the second semester. I was used to having a lot of catching up to do, but it was made especially difficult this time by the trials my Ring was presenting.

Attending classes, I had to bear with the usual rumours and the occasional tormenting of me, but as it was my policy to ignore everyone, I made it fine through most of it all. Oh, and there were also the girls who kept talking to me, trying to get me to go somewhere with them after school, and I couldn’t just offend them all by staying quiet like I usually did. I had to figure out ways to gently make all these people leave me alone. It was always a struggle, coping with these various bothers.

But definitely the biggest problem, which I was getting to, was Yuugi and his Millennium Puzzle. The Ring started its acting up—and I suppose its possessing of me. The first time I had ever noticed it move was the first time I sat down in class, a few seats away from Yuugi and his friends. I remember I was wearing it under my uniform and I’d felt something poking my arm from there, so I unbuttoned the jacket to have a look. The Ring was there, shining a little like usual, but strangely one of its crystals had begun rising upwards as if there was a magnetic pull on it. I couldn’t believe it at first, but then again I’d always known there was some kind of magic in it.

After I stopped being so mesmerized by it, I noticed where the floating crystal was pointing: behind me, over to where Yuugi was sitting. I didn’t even know the guy’s name yet or what I would say to him, but I knew if there was one thing I was going to do today at school, it was to talk to him and make us two friends. And I had to do it as soon as I possibly could. The thought that I might be bringing him into danger by doing this never crossed my mind.

As soon as the instructor had begun gathering his things for the noon break, I turned over to where Yuugi was and had a good look at him. He was wearing the Millennium Puzzle around his neck, a gold chain ending in an upturned pyramid, and something told me I had to acquire a knowledge of its every detail—and I would, if things went right. For now, it would be enough for me to hold it in my hands.

When I had made sure he was engaged in conversation and wouldn’t notice me, I got up and walked straight to his desk, hoping I’d get a better look. Unfortunately, I wasn’t exactly inconspicuous, especially with my hair the way it is. His friends noticed me watching them, and then Yuugi had turned to look at me, surprised.

“Hello there,” he said, sounding cheerful.

“The new kid?” I heard one of his friends whisper to the other.

But I barely heard them; I hadn’t the time to fool around. I didn’t want to talk to any of them or explain what I wanted, I just needed to see the Millennium Puzzle up close.

“Umm…” Yuugi was staring at me with his huge bright eyes. “You’re Bakura, right?”

It took me some time to realize I must look very odd indeed with my expression, and creeping up behind them. Although I felt anything but glad to talk to him, I forced myself to make it look like I was smiling.

“Right, I’m Ryou Bakura. Nice to meet you all… and… um, if you don’t mind…” Here I nearly stopped talking completely, I got so very nervous. I badly wanted Yuugi’s Puzzle, but I couldn’t just blurt it out.

“You have quite a nice artifact, don’t you?”

I could tell they thought I was queer by the flurry of exchanged glances, but I couldn’t help it and I didn’t care. I didn’t have time for proper introductions or small talk of any sort. That could wait till later. Right now that Puzzle was all I wanted.

“Artifact?” Yuugi was blinking at me. “Um, you mean this?”

He held up the Puzzle in the palm of his hand. For the first time, I noticed the black eye shape cut out of its rippling golden surface—the same shape that dominated the center of my Ring.

I tried to avoid staring too hard at it, knowing I was becoming irrevocably strange in the eyes of my new classmates; I had to stop it if I wanted to be their friends. I tried instead to focus on Yuugi.

“What an interesting shape it has,” I said.

Yuugi began turning the pyramid in his hands, smiling the whole time. “It’s an upside-down pyramid.”

“Does it have a name?”

“The Millennium Puzzle. That’s what my grandpa told me it’s called, anyway. He also says it came from ancient Egypt, so who knows if any of what he says is true!”

He laughed a bit, a little nervously, causing his two friends to stare at each other.

I said nothing, I couldn’t, I was too preoccupied with how I was going to get that Puzzle from him. It was beginning to frighten me, how much I wanted it. I knew I couldn’t just grab it; his friends looked tough, and they were right there watching me with suspicion. They’d beat me to a pulp. But maybe it was worth risking.

Finally, I couldn’t stop myself and I reached out for it.

“Would you let me hold it for a second?”

Yuugi had looked wary of me when I reached out, but once I’d asked, he nearly jumped up to show it to me.

“Sure! Just be careful, it’s heavier than it looks!”

I took it from him. And I remember feeling so pleased for just that moment that I hardly noticed the physical pain—pain that seemed to come out of nowhere and shot through my whole body from my outstretched left hand to the roots of my feet. In that same instant I heard a voice screaming at me, a voice that had come from the inside of my own head.

I fell backwards and luckily caught a desk. Was I in pain! My hand felt like it had been singed to the bone, and I had to actually stare at it for a few seconds to realize it was fine. I had no idea what had happened, but I knew I wasn’t going to go near that Puzzle again. That chunk of metal had lashed out and hurt me somehow, and for now I wouldn’t touch it again lest it hurt me again.

“Wow, something happen?”

I looked up and saw Yuugi standing near me, looking concerned. I was still cringing from the pain that had come out of his Puzzle, but I knew it wouldn’t do to let him know. I decided I had to leave.

“Hey, you okay? Can you hear me?”

By the sound of it, he must have thought I’d suffered cardiac arrest of some sort.

“Oh—oh, I’m all right. I’m fine.” I stood still for a second and nodded at him, but the expression on his face was incredulous, like I’d just shown him something shocking. “Sorry about that. Right. See you then.”

I had to struggle to keep my voice straight with every word. It still felt like my fingers had been burnt right off, and every moment I spent without cold water on them felt excruciating.

I tried to leave again, but when I turned I noticed Yuugi about to follow me. He was already starting to say something, and since I knew he wouldn’t leave me alone, I had to ignore him and walk as fast as I could out of the classroom and to the sinks.

-

After that day, I paid more close attention to my Ring. Nothing much ever happened with it again, except whenever I got anywhere near Yuugi and his Puzzle. You can’t understand what it felt like. Every time my Ring would react, I’d have a blinding urge to find the Puzzle, take it, and make it belong to me. Of course, now I realize it wasn’t me but the Spirit who wanted it, but at that time I couldn’t guess what was happening to me. And it frightened me all the more because I could remember that pain that had come over me last time, and I didn’t want to ever experience it again.

I began to become friends with Yuugi; we’re both very fond of games so it was not a very difficult process. But I don’t know why I let it happen, knowing how it would end: whether I’d been overwhelmed by Yuugi’s generosity, my loneliness, or that Ring’s bidding, I can’t really say. It definitely wanted me to be friends with him, I know that. Everything I did earned me a reward or a punishment from it. For example, whenever I sat in class with Yuugi in a desk just behind me, I wouldn’t be able to concentrate because of all the things the Ring was making me want to do. If I approached Yuugi I’d start to feel sharp pain; but then, if I spent a lot of time together with him, it would all settle down pleasantly, and that was the feeling I tried to achieve.

So I spent many of my afternoons in the arcade, wasting away pocket change. I had even less money to buy meals with as a result, but I tried not to care. Yuugi almost always came with me if I went after school, although his two friends Joey and Honda were a little more reluctant. I didn’t mind. Sometimes some girls came too, including Tea, but they were mostly just trying to impress me into going out with them, which I was a little afraid of agreeing to. I never wanted to hurt a girl again, after what I had done the last year.

Of course I didn’t want to hurt Yuugi or any of his friends, either, but I just couldn’t stop myself from joining them. I’d walk with Yuugi and his friends to the game shop he and his grandpa own, and we’d fiddle away for hours with any old game we could find in there. They’re a loud bunch, and since I never really spoke much, I suppose they still thought I was the weirdest transfer student they’d ever had. Not that I minded; I was glad enough that they didn’t know about all the people I’d put in comatose.

At least they didn’t until that one day where everything suddenly happened at once.

I’d just gone to school like normal and I was busy dislodging some girls from my back when Yuugi and his friends called out to me. I hadn’t talked to him in about a week, and I was glad to have a distraction. But I felt miserable that day: the pain the Ring was giving me seemed to have had increased twofold.

I tried to respond to Yuugi’s greeting but before I could get the words out completely, I felt like something had physically cut into my flesh. The wound was on my chest; it was burning and stinging me. Compared to this cut, whatever normal aching I received from the Ring didn’t deserve to be called painful.

Fortunately, Yuugi hardly even noticed, I was so used to stifling my reactions.

“So, it’s looks like you’re getting used to Domino High!” he said. “That’s great. How’ve you been doing?”

“Fine,” I said.

I knew I must be bleeding now, but I almost couldn’t believe it had happened; I couldn’t imagine how or why the Ring would have cut me. But I could certainly feel it, no joke, still buried in my chest.

Joey was frowning at me like usual. “You’re fine? Heh, if you call lookin’ like you put one too many sour pops down your throat ‘fine’…”

“Bakura, don’t worry about him…”

This time I didn’t even have time to nod; another one of those crystals had just plunged into my chest as I heard a voice scream at me, “Take it!” I found my concentration suddenly trained on Yuugi’s Millennium Puzzle.

Then I looked away. I felt almost as if I would be sick. This time I couldn’t hide it very well at all; I was grabbing my chest, trying in vain to scratch out whatever it was in me. I heard shouting too, and I suppose it was them trying to help me. I knew my friends were used to my taking sick, but this time it was different: I had never had a real injury before.

I managed to say a few words of apology before I took off. I was glad they didn’t try to follow me, because it started to get very ugly.

I went straight to the bathroom as usual, and I was so dizzy from the pain that I didn’t even check to see that it was empty. I practically collapsed onto one of the sinks. I couldn’t think clearly for minutes, and when I finally did, it only made me sicker when I realized I was going to have to reveal what had cut me. And I was probably going to go insane once I’d found out.

Shakily, I undid my shirt and braced myself and looked; and I must have stopped breathing for a whole minute. Two of the Ring’s crystals had almost disappeared into my flesh, amid patches of wet and drying blood. It was a sight I don’t much want to describe ever again in my life.

I couldn’t believe it had actually happened, that those things had gone in that deep somehow, by some kind of magical power in the Ring. I felt like ripping it and the two crystals clear out of my chest, but I couldn’t make myself do it. I didn’t want any more pain or lost blood, and I didn’t have the courage to force it out.

After a minute more of just standing there, trying to come to grips with the wound, I got a real fright. I thought I heard someone laughing at me. I froze, panting and waiting in utter mortification to hear the footsteps of the one who had discovered me like this. But I only heard the thudding of my pulse in the silent capsule of the bathroom, and when I turned around, there was surely no one there. I heard not even the sound of breathing or of rustling clothing. The inside of my chest felt like it was steadily tightening, and I was beginning to feel that something was very wrong.

Then, slowly, it came upon me that the voice that had been laughing was familiar to me. I had heard it – had felt that voice before. It was the one that had been screaming inside my head just as the pain started.

I’d gone completely insane.

I was shaking, every finger on my hands trembling and my knees rattling uncontrollably. I wanted to be back there, chatting with Yuugi and the others, lost among the swarm of noise and sunlight and cheer. I wanted anything but this terror that had gripped me. I thought I’d break into a run at any moment, but my feet were planted to the floor.

And then the voice spoke directly to me, right in my ears so it echoed and gave me pain for moments afterwards:

“Who do you think I am?”

I was terrified beyond sense. I didn’t know why I wasn’t running. I begged myself to get me out of here. But I was frozen in place. I tried not to breathe for as long as possible, praying the nerves would settle down and the voice would eventually fade with it.

“I’m afraid you won’t be able to escape…”

I pressed my back against the wall, steadying myself, head reeling. But I realized just then how very odd it was that the voice spoke not in Japanese but in English, and I felt suddenly naked, as if whoever it was had seen the contents of my mind, knew me and every aspect of who I was deeply.

“Of course,” the voice said deep in my ear, “because who do you think I am? I am you!”

The last word it shouted with violent bluntness, and somehow I ended up on the cool tiled floor of the bathroom in the silence, my elbows bruised and my chest panging, clutching my head with my hands.

The voice went away after that, and I got out of that place as soon as I could. Even standing outside in the clouded light of the school track, my shirt buttoned up and my uniform straightened out again, every inch of my skin felt riddled with goosebumps and I couldn’t keep my thoughts straight. For minutes my pulse seemed as if it would never return to normal.

I knew what had happened in there was not normal. I was split between thinking I had gone insane and thinking that some unbelievable prankster had been leading me along all the time. I didn’t want to decide. I didn’t want my mind to linger on what had happened for a second longer.

I felt terrible. I thought I should return home immediately. I knew I was in no condition to be sitting in classes, chatting with friends, pretending like everything was all right…. I wanted so much to phone my father and tell him all about what had happened, what the Ring had done to me – but then I already knew it was useless; I would never be able to put into words something as horribly unreal as what had been done to me.

In the end I forced myself to bear it. I had to be realistic: there had to be some plain and obvious explanation for what had just happened. I’d sort it all out when I returned home, I said to myself. I knew I’d regret it if I ditched the next class. So I went, ten minutes late and in a great deal of pain, to the P.E. class of the nastiest teacher I knew at that school.

When I arrived to the track I kept my head down and tried not to look anywhere near the big bloke that was the P.E. teacher. I just couldn’t bear to have any more trouble after what had happened. I prayed he wouldn’t look my way as I tried to join in with the others already circling round the field.

I suppose with the way my hair stood out from the rest, I didn’t have much of a chance to begin with. Before I knew it, a big hand was pulling me backwards from my shoulder, and the P.E. instructor was shouting at me from behind in his bearish growl. I couldn’t believe it. I felt just about like dying; I had no choice but to stop where I was and face the bear-teacher.

I noticed a couple of students already pausing in their warm-ups to stare at me and the teacher. As the teacher came towards me, I felt myself growing hot and frustrated. I was already regretting having decided to stay for classes.

The last thing I wanted was to look into his boarish face, but the bear-teacher came closer until he was standing just a step away from me, scowling down at me. I tried to keep my expression apologetic, but I was too tired to say anything.

“Strollin’ in ten minutes late,” he said suddenly, with a blunt sort of tone. “What’s the matter?” I opened my mouth blankly, thinking of what to say, and he watched me, scrunching up his face. “None of your excuses, this time. Come on, what’s the matter, cough it up!”

“Right…. I’m sorry, sir.” I glanced at his ferocious face before weakly grimacing and holding my stomach. “I wasn’t feeling too well, so…”

He held his hands up and cut me off, his expression not changing. “Don’t give me that. Listen here,” he said roughly as I tried to protest. “You don’t want to get a bad rep this early, new kid. Be a little smarter. Own up to it and take your detention.”

“But I – I mean it, sir –”

“You really don’t know how to keep your back covered, do you? My advice: spend less time beautying up with the girls and come to class on time. You got that? You’re here to get a work-out – not have your afternoon tea.”

I didn’t even try to apologize after that. I just looked at him, shocked, my hands at my sides, feeling my face burn up but doing nothing about it. It was hopeless.

At that moment, I noticed a group of students coming towards me and the bear-teacher; in fact, a whole bunch of them had stopped on the track in their blue suits and were watching me, most of them snickering and whispering to their friends and pretending to look uninterested.

The group coming towards us was Yuugi and Joey and Honda. I looked up at them for a second before fixing my eyes back onto the gravel on the sides of the track, ashamed and uncomfortable. I could feel my cheeks growing hot, but I tried not to pay attention to any of it.

“Hey, ‘scuse me, whaddya want with this guy?”

I looked up at the sound of his voice: it was Joey, barking at the teacher while Yuugi and Honda stood beside him, watching me with concern. It took me a moment to realize they were trying to defend me, and I almost couldn’t believe it.

Joey went on, that angry look of his on his face as usual, but this time it was directed against the teacher. “He ain’t lying,” he said loudly, “we saw ‘im.”

The bear-teacher removed his scowl from my direction and slowly turned to face Joey, his hands on his hips. “Jounouchi, you’re heading for trouble,” he said in a threatening tone.

“But he’s telling the truth,” Yuugi chimed in. “I don’t see why anyone shouldn’t believe him. Bakura’s never lied to us, and he respects the teachers more than anyone else! He’s just not that type of person!”

Honda and Joey both nodded, and I looked at the three of them in shock: I couldn’t believe what they were saying! I was so ashamed. I hadn’t known they thought of me that way…. It was relieving, but I couldn’t help feeling guilty about it. I hadn’t told them about a lot of things. I lied to them practically every time I saw them. On everything that mattered, they didn’t know half the truth about me at all. If they’d really known me, then they’d never be able to say what they did….

My eyes met Yuugi’s, and he looked at me with a bright smile on his face. I tried to smile back and mouthed “Thank you” to him, feeling heavy with guilt.

“Is that right?” said the bear-teacher mockingly, cocking his head to the side. He had a vicious expression on his face. “Any of you boys know exactly why your friend’s been transferred here? Seen his name on the news?”

I looked at him in horror, but it was too late: Yuugi and the others already looked intrigued, and the man didn’t look like he would stop talking about it anytime soon. He didn’t even glance at me. I stood frozen in place, powerless to do anything, as he went on telling them.

“Reason none of the schools want him is because everyone sticks around Ryou Bakura gets bad luck – big time.”

I didn’t even dare to look up at Yuugi and the others as he said it, but I could almost feel the ripple of horror and shock that went through them as they learned about me….

“So far there’s been eight kids in the news –” the man went on, “all went comatose after going with Bakura, haven’t woken up since. They’re good as dead.”

I was staring at my shoes. I felt like I was going to suffocate from my shame and misery, but I just stood there, trying not to let my expression change. It’s not my fault, I kept saying to myself. It’s not like I murdered them! You make it sound like as if I wanted it to happen!

Everyone was silent, and I could feel them exchanging glances and staring at me like as if I would burst out and snatch them by the neck at any moment.

Then Yuugi came over to my side carefully. “He’s just joking, right?” he said to me, smiling.

I thought of nodding my head and saying no more about it, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I didn’t want to lie again. There was no use trying to keep it from them anyway. One way or another, they’d all eventually hear of it, and they’d come to hate me even more if I tried to deny it now….

Still staring at the gravel at my feet, I shook my head.

“It’s like Mr. Karita said. My friends, they really did fall into comas…. Every one of them….” I couldn’t look at Yuugi, or any of them. I couldn’t even lift my head. “I think… it might be best if I didn’t come near any of you from now on.”

Without giving them any time to react or to try to stop me, I headed onto the track and broke into a run, wishing I was as far away from all of them as possible.

-

I managed to avoid seeing Yuugi and his friends during lunch by hiding in the library as I often did. I began to unwind a little. But just when I had settled in doing homework for a few minutes, I was forcefully reminded of the injury on my chest. There was some sort of tingling starting up near the two embedded crystals, and I had a sense that my Ring would act up again. Suddenly I was in a panic and started packing up my things in a hurry. I couldn’t have anyone around when the crystal cut into me; I was afraid this time I’d lose consciousness, or start screaming in pain, or worse.

I made it to the bathroom before it happened, and this time I locked myself into one of the stalls. It was no less painful than the last time, and I could hear that voice laughing at me again, but still I did nothing to resist it. I knew that Ring wouldn’t easily be pulled out of me, and even if I was capable of doing it I didn’t think I wanted to. The whole scene was rather traumatic. I remember my hands shaking wildly while I attempted to calmly wipe the blood away with tissue. I think I feared being found out almost as much as I feared the Ring itself. I kept thinking how no one could know about this. No one would believe me, anyway; if I told them the Ring had done it of its own accord, or by the work of a spirit, they’d probably think I’d done it to myself, and call me a psycho. So I wasn’t going to tell anyone.

I was morbidly curious as to what would happen when all five of the Ring’s crystals had gone into me. There had to be a reason for what was happening, and it gradually dawned on me that the appearance of the voice and the Ring acting up were no small coincidence. Possibly it was that voice who was making this happen to me. Once all five of the crystals were attached, I was certain that voice would have something new in store for me. I didn’t know how I could prevent it, I was probably powerless to do anything about it, but I could at least get away from this school. And maybe I would let my father know, somehow.

I decided to go to the headmaster’s office and ask for a leave of illness, but I was met with trouble there from the secretary.

“You’re not taking care of yourself properly, Mr. Bakura! Now I know you live on your own so you haven’t got much help, but you’ve got to learn to take your health more seriously. You’re grown up now. Don’t be shy about asking the school for help if you need it.”

It wasn’t the first time I’d heard all this; it was part of the reason I didn’t want to tell anyone about the Ring. Each time they gave me a lecture like that it really embarrassed me. I was never sure if I should be thanking them or apologizing.

As I made my way home that day in a light-headed haze of pain, I thought again and again of the conversation that had happened in the morning. I myself had said the worst of it, telling the only friends I had to keep away from me. I didn’t want to be miserable with no friends for the rest of my years, thought of only as a freakish outsider. I doubted if they would just ignore what I’d said, since I knew they thought I was a deadly serious type of person who would never lie. How I wished someone would smash that gym teacher. Of all the things that had gone wrong today, the Ring seemed to me the least of my worries.

I had no sooner stepped into the lift in the building than the fourth of the crystals acted up. I tried to will it to leave me alone as a last resort, but it stuck into me all the same. I’d already been feeling hot and dizzy, and that crystal was just the blow I needed to lose my grip. I dropped my bag and nearly sat down on the floor of the elevator before catching my balance. I barely made it out onto the right floor. The lady riding inside with me must have thought I was a ruffian just emerging from a fight with a schoolyard gang, with the look she gave me.

I was terribly glad to be back in my room, where I could deal with my problems in privacy. But it didn’t take very long for fear and dread to take ahold of me again. I enjoyed five minutes of peace while I undressed and cleaned up my new wound, before I started to realize I was too disturbed to pretend nothing had happened today. I had to phone my father, or someone. But what could I say to him? Father was so occupied with his work, and although I don’t mean to say he’s cold, he tends never to have advice for my problems. And what did I expect him to do for me, anyway? I didn’t want for him to come here and I didn’t want to waste any more money visiting a doctor. Maybe I was just afraid to let others see the Ring.

In the end I did absolutely nothing about phoning him, and instead lay down in bed staring at the thing that had become lodged in my chest. The fifth crystal still dangled freely in the center, and I thought of how I could make sure it stayed there. But I was too afraid to even touch it with my fingers, fearing I might trigger something if I tampered with it.

I was still in a lot of pain and I wanted rest, but as one might imagine, it wasn’t easy for me to sleep. Eventually I began leafing through some old letters my sister Amane had written me throughout the years; it’s just something I did to help me relax. I promised myself I would write her a letter that evening after I’d had my nap, but I soon began despairing about it…. There was nothing I could write about that wouldn’t frighten her or sound terribly depressing. I surely wouldn’t mention the Ring, or the bullying teacher, or the fact that I hadn’t any friends now. My life is utterly terrible, I thought; and somehow, I got to thinking about transferring schools again. If I could only do it secretly, without needing to tell Father…

Contemplating these things was how I triggered his appearance.

“I don’t think you’d want to do that.” I was wide awake in a second, sitting up in bed, as he spoke almost right in my ear. It took me no time at all to understand what he was talking about; I knew at once that he’d been stalking in my mind all along, listening in on my thoughts – though I don’t know how.

I was frozen, listening to the beating of my heart in the silence, praying he wouldn’t speak and I’d never hear that voice again, and at the same time unable to bear slowly, painfully waiting for the inevitable.

The voice came back.   “Now that I’ve finally located the Millennium Puzzle and awakened, I’m going to want to stay here for a while longer.” It was a deep and gravelly voice, a voice that was always laughing snidely. “Hopefully I’ll have your cooperation.”

He made a loud, jeering laugh while I clamped my hands over my ears, hunched up on the bed. I remember suddenly feeling very desperate, nearly in tears: I’d prayed and prayed that the voice might only be my imagination or the work of some trickster, but now I had no choice. It was in my head. I had to believe in it. This had to be real.

“You did this to me, didn’t you?” I burst out, shouting at the wall, feeling like a maniac. I was sure he would understand me, sure he knew exactly who I was talking to and what I meant if he could read my thoughts. But he said nothing, only laughing loudly as if I must’ve been joking.

I felt a sharp tug of anger; I didn’t know what I was thinking, but I wished I could kill him all of a sudden. I jumped up from the bed, my pulse thundering through my skull, half-expecting him to materialize from thin air and ready to tear whatever I could get my hands on to shreds. “You did this!” I shouted again and again.

He was still laughing, and the noise of it was far louder than anything that could come from me. I heard him catch his breath. “That reminds me – ” He said it quietly, but it was still loud enough to make me freeze.

I couldn’t react quickly enough. Before I could get one last word out, the fifth of the Ring’s crystals came to life as though possessed, and the sharp end drove itself into me like a knife. The wounds felt like they’d been set on fire. I couldn’t see from the pain. I thought I was dying. I fell back against the bed and lay there, twisting around, seeing black and red, wishing with all my concentration that it were over with, that I would flop unconscious onto the floor. I knew it was no use trying to fight with a ghost.

Suddenly, his voice gave an amused snort, and the pressure boiling in my skull seemed to leak away a little. I saw the bed under me in a flood of light that dazed my senses.

“Trust it to you mortals to be so pitifully stupid,” the voice was saying. “I’m no ghost, you fool. No, I exist in reality and I reside within you. I am you. As I’ve told you once already.”

I was curled on my side, panting, my head still spinning. I tightened my fingers around the cold smooth edges of the Ring that had embedded itself inside me. “You’re part of this ring, aren’t you?” I was speaking now in a whisper that was hurting me to make.

“The Millennium Ring does contain me…” He sounded disinterested, but his voice suddenly developed a relish. “But so do you.”

I couldn’t think clearly any more. I grabbed the Ring and tugged at it with all my might, fighting and cursing, but even after I began to see spots from the pain, it wouldn’t come loose.

The Spirit found my efforts amusing. “It hurts, doesn’t it? You won’t ever be able to separate that from where it clings to your flesh, not in five hundred millennia’s time. Try all you like. I’ve decided that I’m going to stay within you for eternity, and my decisions are always final.”

For a moment, it all seemed to make sense to me. This Spirit that had come from the Ring now wanted to possess me so that it could take Yuugi’s Puzzle, a goal I had been aware of all along. But I had no idea what would happen if it truly managed to possess me. It sounded as if that would essentially mean my death.

The voice laughed again. “Don’t jump to conclusions,” it said. “As long as you stay out of my way I’ll be sure to keep you in the best condition. You will not die. You won’t even suffer. Once I’m done my work you won’t remember a thing.”

Contrary to what you might expect, hearing this did not reassure me. In fact, it had me nearly paralyzed with fear. It wasn’t that he sounded insincere—far from it this time—but that he sounded deadly serious. It was starting to hit me that this Spirit was no mere meddling prankster. He definitely had plans for himself, and from the sound of it, he had made plans for me as well.

“It’s Yuugi’s Millennium Puzzle that you want, isn’t it?”

“Clever boy, aren’t you. Yes, once I obtain all seven of the Millennium Items I shall come to control the legendary power that I’ve been seeking. And the first and simplest step in my quest will be obliterating the soul of that worthless mortal and ripping the Millennium Puzzle from his lifeless hands.”

As he once again made my ears ring with his insane laughter, I could only shake my head in horror. My whole body was already trembling. I feel I could’ve shouted out a dozen different threats and curses, but nothing in my body would move.

“I assume you understand by now how the Ring and I work,” he said.

I didn’t.

“Otherwise we would have destroyed all the souls of your previous friends for nothing. And what a shame that would be!”

His sick laughter made the revelation all the more unbearable. I was feeling so nauseous my mouth started tasting like acid. I think I did pass out briefly from shock, because I found myself on my back all of a sudden staring at a bright ceiling. The truth was almost impossible for me to believe: I was in the presence of what had caused me a lifetime of misery and strangeness, it was laughing in my face about it, and yet here I was, absolutely powerless to do anything against it. And soon it would be preying upon even more of my friends—and me.

I was so angry and yet so helpless, I just started to lose it. I acted as if I hadn’t heard a word of him. I wished I could forget what he’d said and go back to living my miserable life without knowing anything. That was all I wanted, and I pretended it would be possible even after all this.

I lay back on my bed, shut my eyes and tried to sleep. It sounds like a terribly stupid thing to do, but the pain from the Ring was making it unbearable to be awake. And I didn’t want to speak to that voice ever again. If he would’ve stopped taunting me for a second, I should have passed out at once.

“I see you’re trying to withdraw from the truth already,” he said. “Well, it’s far too early for you to start cowering like this.”

I concentrated on shutting out his voice, but he wouldn’t stop.

“How pitiful you are. And how fortunate I am to have you. You see this trait of yours, your futile rejection of reality, will prove supremely useful to me when the time comes.”

I couldn’t make sense of what he was saying, and I didn’t want to make any sense of it. I thought if I could just get to sleep, I’d be able to deal with it all later when I wasn’t in such pain.

“Hmm. I wonder if you’ll encounter me in your nightmares when you sleep. Wouldn’t that be such fun.”

I groaned at him, “When are you going to leave me alone?”

He feigned surprise. “Ah, what’s this? But didn’t you desire companionship?”

“No, and I don’t want to hear any more from you.”

“You seem to have forgotten the wish you made to me.”

I actually sat up and brandished my fist at the air, I was so angry. “I never wished anything from you!”

He laughed, unsurprisingly. “Now do you see? Your refusal to accept reality is perfectly predictable.”

“There’s no reality in this, you’re just making things up.”

“No need to vent your pathetic anger at me. It was your wish, after all, not mine. And after striving for so many years to achieve your dreams whenever you couldn’t…”

“You haven’t done anything like that! You bloody liar—”

I was fed to the teeth with his mockery of me, his acting like a concerned friend when actually he’d destroyed all of mine. He was making my blood boil as much as the pain was making my head spin.

“You’re the one lying—and to yourself, no less. But it’s too late to take back your wish, I’m afraid. You’ll just have to live with all its consequences.”

After this, I completely lost my grip. I started screaming at him to get out of my head and stay away from me, probably a million times. When he started laughing, I tried to block it out as best as I could, and it worked for about a minute.

But at the end of it all, he had somehow ignored me completely. And then he gave me a great speech:

“The power of the Ring and I have been granting your wishes all along, and this is your gratitude! As a child, do you remember, you were pathetically friendless, and you made a wish upon the Ring to have friends who would stay at your side forever. And so, here you are, wish granted.”

He burst into laughter again.

“Yes, and contrary to what you expected I don’t mean me, although I do make an excellent companion, don’t I? No, I’ve been trapping the souls of all your friends for years, for you to keep eternally and to do with them as you wish. Consider it my gift to you.”

I had no idea what to make of any of what he was saying. I had assumed he’d meant he was the companion I’d wished for, but if that wasn’t the case, then what was he saying? That he’d put my friends into comas in order to fulfill a wish I’d made? Had he truly been with me, watching me, all these years, or was he only trying to fool me again?

“You’ll find out what I meant soon enough,” he answered. “Now that I’ve woken you up, I think it’s time we had a little fun, don’t you? What do you say to another gift from your master?”

I thought I knew exactly what he meant. But my heart started pounding when I thought of how I could possibly stop him—I couldn’t.

“So think you can get to Yuugi, do you?” I said, breathless. “You think I’ll let you?”

He only laughed in response. I tried to be as brave as I could, but it must’ve been clear that I was terrified since I could hardly breathe well enough to speak properly.

“I won’t help you. No… I’ll ruin all your plans.”

“Brave words. If only you’d be able to remember ever saying them once I’ve taken total possession of you.”

“You won’t do anything like that. Because if you try to touch my friends again, I’ll take a knife and I’ll carve out this bloody Ring! I swear it!”

“If you actually had the courage to do so, I would gladly watch,” he laughed. “I won’t touch that pathetic friend of yours just yet. That mortal’s fate will come in due time. No, the victim I had in mind was that foolish man who dared to humiliate my host this very morning. I’m having second thoughts about leaving him alive, aren’t you? And revenge never comes too late. Well? What say you? You did wish someone could pulverize him.”

“You won’t do it!” I could sense he was serious about it this time, and it was making me feel queasy and weak. “I never wished for any of this!”

Suddenly, I had the most extraordinary—and frightening—experience I’d ever had in my life: my legs unfolded on their own, and the next moment I was jumping off the bed, without wanting to do any of it. And it was all so effortless. I couldn’t even struggle against it. I can’t explain how he does it—I don’t think I’ll ever be able to explain it—but from that instant on, I knew that Spirit truly could possess me.

“You pathetic fool,” his voice said, and there was no laughter in it anymore. “Don’t you yet realize that I will do as I wish, whatever I wish, regardless of any of the pathetically weak protests you come up with?”

Just as I started to open my mouth, he cut me off.

“You cannot stop me, you cannot speak, you cannot move any part of your body.”

Everything he said was true. Suddenly I was walking across the floor, picking up my jacket from the back of my chair, and slinging it across my shoulders. Then he stopped me and placed my hand over my chest. The Ring started glowing, and slowly I saw it rise out of my flesh until it was free and had settled on top of my shirt. I felt nothing, no pain or sensation. Then he covered the Ring under my jacket.

“If you learn to obey me,” he said, and this time it was my lips that were moving and the voice had come from my own throat, “I might consider keeping the Ring free like this all of the time, so you won’t have to suffer. We are partners after all.”

He was approaching the door now, turning the knob.

“Now it’s time for you to go to sleep.”

-

Suffice it to say, I was out for at least several hours and by the time I had regained consciousness the deed had already been done. I remember not even having to open my eyes or wake up at all; I just suddenly realized I’d been standing upright and staring for a long time at the corner of a setting sun from my apartment window. For maybe five minutes I couldn’t even remember the Spirit or what had happened with the Ring; I just sat at my desk dazzled by my memory loss. I knew something like this had happened to me many times, but it was always accompanied by unconscious bodies laying somewhere nearby. This time, I was completely alone in my own room.

I remained in my relative bliss for quite a few minutes, until I started to notice a slight stinging on my chest. I hardly had to open my shirt before it came back to me. I saw that the Spirit had reverted the Ring to the way it was before, lodged in my flesh.

Then I heard the familiar laughter in my head.

“I told you you wouldn’t remember a thing, didn’t I? You were a good host this time; you went to sleep just as I told you to—but you’ll have to behave yourself when the Millennium Puzzle arrives if you want me to release the Ring from your flesh permanently.”

My head still felt fuzzy, and I couldn’t make sense of what he had just told me. I sort of understood that he’d done something to that gym teacher, but I couldn’t remember how that could possibly have happened when I’d been in my room all along. I wasn’t even certain if what I remembered were memories or dreams. It was like a mixture of both. A few minutes later, it was just starting to dawn on me that the Spirit might have been controlling me for the past few hours.

“So then, you possessed me,” I said dumbly.

“You’re far too slow, you mortals.”

But then, I thought, if he’d really had as much control of me as he’d wanted, why had he relinquished it? Of course I was grateful to be back, but it didn’t make sense to me at the time. I’d expected to be under the Spirit’s spell for eternity, as I thought he’d said to me. Was it possible that his plans had somehow gone awry?

He answered for me.

“My plans? You’d wish, wouldn’t you? No. I’m pleased to say, your resistance was as pathetically weak as I’d surmised. It’s just that body of yours is too much of a burden for me to be expected to help you carry it around all the time.”

That kind of talk was sure to give me a headache. I couldn’t imagine—I didn’t want to imagine—how he’d actually managed to manipulate me into doing his dirty work. And what if one of my classmates or teachers had seen me while he’d taken me to the school? I didn’t even want to think about what he could have done to the gym teacher yet.

Soon though, I was starting to feel ill from the dread, and I just had to ask. I swallowed and tried to gather up the courage; I knew the Spirit could probably tell what I was thinking already.

“Have you killed him?” I said at last, very weakly.

“Kill? Now don’t kid me. Do you think I would have the heart to kill a person?”

“Have you killed him or not?”

“If you must know,” he said, “then I’ll let you in on some secrets of mine. Listen well. I never kill. What my victims suffer is much more fearsome than death.”

He paused ominously, which I found annoying. “Just hurry up and spit it out.”

“You’ll regret knowing. My method of choice involves a little something called a Penalty Game.”

So whatever he did to that man, he was calling it a game, was he? Obviously I didn’t believe him. I studied my hands and my clothes for blood or cuts or bruises, any traces that he’d had a fight, but at length I still couldn’t find anything. And it did seem unlikely that he could have obtained and concealed a deadly weapon somewhere, and without one I was pretty certain I would never be able to overpower that man, no matter how determined I was.

“So are you telling me you played a game with my teacher?” Believe it or not, I was actually a bit curious.

But he made a disgusted growl.

“Pathetic,” he snapped. “Your knowledge of Duel Monsters, as you mortals call it, is pathetic.” For the first time he seemed genuinely frustrated with me, like he’d expected better. “By way of Penalty Games, I have sealed away countless mortal souls, condemning them to hellfire for all of eternity. You judge whether or not to call that ‘play.’”

So he hadn’t played a game after all; he’d killed my teacher. I put my face in my hands. I had no idea what to do about this, how to react. The Spirit had apparently just destroyed another person’s soul and yet here I was, unconcerned. Well, what could I do about it now? I wasn’t going to scream at him again. I thought about my idea of cutting the Ring out with a knife—but what was the use when the Spirit was here watching my every move? It could take control of any part of my body when it wanted. Not to mention I’d probably bleed to death if I attempted anything like that.

I should have been terrified and angry, yet I wasn’t. I was too calm about it. Ever since I had woken up, the fear I’d had of the Spirit had all but disappeared. Why was I like this? I was more frightened of my own calmness in the face of what had happened, than I was of the fact that the Spirit was still with me, shadowing me.

I don’t want to say it, but maybe I was sort of grateful he’d taken care of that nasty teacher. Maybe I was starting to realize that the Spirit, no matter how evil, could be my companion if only I stopped resisting it. Or perhaps it was because he’d taken control of me once and, as he’d promised, nothing particularly unpleasant had happened to me so far; to me the whole ordeal felt little different than taking a short nap.

I felt that not really minding the Spirit made me somehow not normal. Instead of actually being angry or frightened, I was trying to work up a reaction from myself. I thought of all the things that could’ve gone wrong, and decided I should be afraid of criminal charges being pressed against my name. After all, it was true: if there had been just one witness to what he’d done, I would be in deep, deep trouble.

“So is he in the hospital then, like the others?” I said to him, staring at my hands since I wasn’t sure where else to look. “Never to awaken?”

He couldn’t bother himself to answer, and that made me angry. But after a moment I let it pass and assumed I was correct anyway.

“You know if you continue this, you’ll put in me prison.” I tried to sound threatening, but it came out more like I was asking him a favour. I added in a darker tone, “And then none of your plans can ever come true.”

He chuckled slightly, as if he were too distracted with something else to bother answering. Then he took a breath, and snapped back at me quickly, the confidence in his voice surprising me.

“Is that supposed to worry me, you foolish mortal? None of your present-day detectives will be able to find a trace of evidence to incriminate us.” He paused, and I was just about to protest but he cut in sharply: “And even if they managed the impossible, just let them try and catch me.”

The way he said it made me realize not even the Spirit could know everything. How could I get him to understand our cameras and DNA testing, and all that? No, forget DNA – I doubted if he had even made sure no one had been there to witness him do the crime!

I put my head in my hands, shutting my eyes tight. “God… what have you done? There must have been a witness around. But who needs a witness! Yuugi and the others will definitely suspect something. Anyone in the world who knows about what happened to my friends in the past –”

“No one will ever discover our secret and live to tell the tale, I can assure you. So keep your pathetic worries to yourself,” the Spirit growled at me, making me bury my face further into my hands. He gave a smirking laugh. “Then again… if they do find out, that will be your problem, won’t it?”

I felt like crying and bursting out in something risky and excitable at the same time. I had to calm myself down. I had experience with bullies, bluffing, and this was the same. All his talk was designed just to frighten me. The first thing I had to do was to stop being a target for his taunting games. And – I didn’t know how exactly I would accomplish it – but I told myself I was going to keep my normal life as normal as possible.

As I pulled myself out from behind my hands and decided to go over to the kitchen for something to eat, as I realized I was starving, I heard the Spirit snickering at me.

“Not to shatter your little make-believe bubble, but you won’t have much of a life once I put my plans in action. Of course, pretend all you like. It’s what you do best after all.”

Ignoring him, I opened the fridge and, without really looking inside, grabbed whatever I found lying around in there: it looked like another sandwich I’d meant to eat a few days back.

Even if it tasted foul, I started feeling better once I had food in my mouth.

Then I started asking questions, and I tried to seem casual about it: “Look, I suppose—I know I can’t control you, and I won’t try to do it, so why don’t you let me know what some of those plans of yours are?”

He only sneered at me. I suppose he could see through everything I tried to do.

“Do you have any sort of reason for having to kill these people, or is it like I think—are you just that sick?”

“I’ve told you once already, and it’s the only answer you’ll ever get. What I’m after is power. No further explanation required. Although perhaps a little amusement wouldn’t hurt…”

I had gone into my room and realized, with a slight pang of guilt, that I hadn’t yet made good on my promise to write to my sister. I was afraid to do it now with the Spirit there, but I decided I wouldn’t let him control my life like that.

I sat down at my desk, folding my hands on top of it, paused a moment and then awkwardly, as if speaking into an imaginary phone, said, “Well… I have to write a letter to my sister right now.”

I don’t know why I even said it, but it felt strange not to, as if I would be inviting the Spirit to openly participate in writing it with me.

“Ah yes, your sister,” the Spirit said with a bit of a laugh. “She is one of the only mortals my host cares for dearly, isn’t that right?”

I should have known at the time what he was scheming, but I didn’t. So I just ignored what he said as usual; I grabbed a pen and started searching for a suitable lined sheet of paper among the clutter on my desk. When I had found it, I thought for a second, then began writing the letter in English. I found I didn’t really care if the Spirit was there reading every single word I wrote, so long as he didn’t interrupt me or make jokes about my writing. And surprisingly, he didn’t, not until I had finished the whole letter.

“No mention of a Ring or an evil ghost, I noticed,” he snickered. “How considerate of you.”

I was folding up the letter and trying to find an envelope for it.

“Well… you know. There’s no point letting other people worry about my problems.” I stopped moving and leaned back against the wall suddenly, as if I really were facing a real person. “You know… Listen. I won’t tell anyone. All right? I don’t mind this. It’s weird but I don’t…” I shook my head, feeling faintly weak for what I was saying. “But you know, that’s only so long as you don’t let things get out of hand.”

“Oh? I don’t understand.”

“Come on. You know I can tell people, can’t I? But I won’t. So… no more of your ‘gifts,’ all right?”

The Spirit laughed, but it was a clipped, impatient laugh. “Is this your attempt at threatening me?”

Without thinking I winced at the words, feeling his anger; I ran my hand against the wall distractedly.

“No, no, that’s not what I meant…. I’ve just had enough of ruining people’s lives, it always being my fault. Just please, just not that….” I sounded so desperate it felt sickening, but I couldn’t stop myself. “You know I could help you get your power, right? Or whatever it is you need. I could be useful. Just think about it. So long as you don’t harm anyone I’ll let you do anything else you want, I promise. Just so long as you don’t…”

This time he burst out laughing hysterically, and I looked up in surprise.

“You think you can negotiate the terms as you wish?” he bellowed when he’d caught his breath. I said nothing and didn’t move from the wall, stricken. “Well, well… I won’t silence you just yet—this is amusing. To think that such a mortal even knew how to negotiate with his master, a god!”

“You’re not a god, and you’re not my master. If you were either of those, you wouldn’t need me.”

I think this touched a bit of a nerve for him.

“You are rather more impudent than I expected,” he growled at me. “Well, I think your impudence has spawned an idea for me.”

“What are you doing?”

In just an instant, he had taken control of my arm and snatched the letter from the corner of my desk.

“What are you doing?” I yelled at him.

“You shall just have to wait and see, won’t you?”

I had forgotten just how frightening the experience was. I couldn’t move a muscle of my own. I saw the Ring surface from under my clothes, glowing. A moment later, he had grabbed my jacket again and was heading for the door. He spoke one last time:

“I won’t be going after any pathetic mortal this time, so remember your own worthless promise and stay out of my way.”

-

I went unconscious, and by the time I had woken I found myself in a place I had never expected. Or rather, it was he who was still controlling me, only I found I could still see what he was seeing, and hear whatever he was hearing. It was the weirdest experience ever, but it happened to me so often after that that it didn’t take very long for me to get used to it. Unfortunately however, just seeing out of my own eyes didn’t make controlling my own body any easier.

The Spirit had taken me to a card shop somewhere, and by the sound of it he was trying to force the owner into dueling with him. It was the most bizarre situation: hearing my own voice speak this way, feeling myself move sharply, roughly, having to face the plain anger on the shop owner’s face without knowing what I’d done to deserve it.

“Listen, you,” the Spirit was making me say in some rough tone of my voice, “if you think you’re worth anything at all, you’ll accept my challenge.”

The owner had crossed his arms and was glaring at me crossly.

“Alright pal, I don’t know who the hell you think you are, but no one comes in my shop and starts firing off random challenges. You haven’t even got a deck with you.”

“Precisely, fool. You see?” The Spirit held up his, or my – whatever – empty hands as if signaling ignorance. “I am a complete novice. So what’s to hold you back but your own lack of confidence?”

The owner started to smirk; the Spirit was actually getting to him.

“So you’re saying you want to be completely beaten down by an expert at this game. Is that it?”

“That’s it exactly. And I won’t leave you alone until you accept.”

“Fine, you asked for it. I’m accepting your challenge. Someone’s got to knock some sense into you sometime.”

The Spirit laughed wickedly, and I was surprised that the shop owner didn’t seem unsettled by this at all.

“Now then,” said the Spirit, “since I don’t have a deck, I will open four Starter Packs of my choosing and duel with those cards.”

The owner was reaching somewhere below the counter to find his deck. He had a confident grin on his face, which I already suspected would pretty soon be completely wiped off.

“You sure are crazy, boy,” he laughed.

The Spirit was busily selecting cards, and although his luck seemed rather rotten to me so far, he made his choices confidently.

“Here’s the condition: when I win, you allow me access to any forty cards that I choose. I keep them and return these pathetic cards to you.”

“What? Hey, no way I’m agreeing to that. Some of these cards are worth 30000 yen!”

“I don’t give a damn what they’re worth. And you wouldn’t expect a novice to know their value either, now would you?”

“Fine, but no rare cards! Now what if I win?”

“Hmm. I never thought of that one.” The Spirit laughed, then violently dug through the pockets of my jacket until he happened upon something. It was my wallet. He tossed it onto the counter. “There. How’s that? Since I know you mortals love money…. Everything in there will be yours.”

The shop keeper opened it up. Of course I was outraged, but I was pacified by the fact that the Spirit had at least told the truth about not trying to kill anyone this time. On top of that, it seemed like he was playing more fairly than I had thought possible of him.

The shop keeper was smiling. “You’ve got some guts. You’d better not chicken out on me.”

“You draw first. I’ve shuffled my deck.”

“What? Don’t you need the rules explained first?”

The Spirit was already drawing his first five cards. “Seeing as my being a novice was obviously a lie, no, I don’t think I do. Now draw!”

“What? Then hell if I’m playing! You can’t lie. That’s the same as cheating!”

“It is? You mean to say you can’t beat someone unless they’re a novice?”

After a tense moment, the shop keeper set his jaws and started drawing his cards. “You know what? I’m gonna waste your punk-ass all the same.”

“Pity you don’t know the slightest about who I might be, now do you?”

The Spirit sneered at his opponent’s first face-up card, a Mechanical Chaser. “Is that the best you can do?”

As it turned out, he said that nearly every single time that bloke played a card. By the end of the third turn, the shopkeep was down to the last quarter of his Life Points, and the Spirit had three monsters on the field. In spite of myself, I couldn’t wait until he finished off that shop keeper. The Spirit played even better than Yuugi could.

“The end is near,” he laughed. “Consider yourself lucky that I won’t be taking your soul as well, this time.”

“You cheating punk. What the hell did you just say?”

“I’d play your last pathetic card before you start to make me reconsider.”

When the shop keeper lost in the next turn, the Spirit yawned and stood up. “That took far too many turns. Seems I’ve lost my touch after all these years. Now, I’ll have that wallet back, and all of the rarest cards in this pathetic shop are mine!”

“I said no rare cards!”

The Spirit ignored him and began digging through the stacks of unwrapped cards. It didn’t seem to me like he took any particularly rare cards, although then again I had never seen half of the cards he chose. I did notice, however, that they were all fiend types.

“Well,” he said when he was finished, “I took a few extra, but they would have only gone to waste in a pitiful place like this.”

The shopkeeper was growling very threateningly. “You’re a damn thief!”

I was afraid it would break out into a fight, and the Spirit wasn’t helping at all.

“You mean you aren’t honoured to have suffered humiliation at the hands of the greatest duelist you will ever meet?”

The man rushed forward, but the Spirit calmly walked the both of us out of that store and into the street, where we were safe. I was glad at least he didn’t try to fight that bloke. Then I quickly realized wherever we were, it was night time already. I had no idea where he had taken us, only that it was somewhere in downtown judging by all the lights and cars. He walked for a little while in one direction, then stopped.

Then all of a sudden, I felt the coldness hitting me in the face and goosebumps crawling up my arms. I could move my arms finally, and I hugged myself. I was back in my body but I wasn’t really glad of it: it was freezing that night! And I felt like I hadn’t eaten for a whole day. Worst of all I had no idea where we could be. There were people rushing about everywhere, and I didn’t want to seem like a freak by trying to ask the Spirit where he’d taken me. I don’t think he knew, anyway.

I ended up having to eat out, and then I roamed about in the dark streets for probably an hour before finding a train station that went to my stop. A half hour later, I was home. It was midnight by then, and I was exhausted. I just collapsed in bed without speaking a word to the Spirit. I didn’t even want to know how or why he had taken me so far into the city. Of course, it only took a few more weeks for me to get used to it….

-

The following day was an enormous disaster, even moreso than the day before it. I stayed home from school of course. I somehow managed to sleep without any interruptions, and didn’t get out of bed for a very long time. I remember finally waking up after growing frustrated with something that had been poking my back and causing me a lot of trouble throughout the night. Then I put my hand on it to realize it was the deck the Spirit had won the previous night. I didn’t think about it until then, why winning a bunch of cards would be so important to him. I didn’t realize he was already scheming to destroy Yuugi.

I got out of bed and dressed and so on all with silence from him. I almost thought he might have gone away forever, although I could see the Ring clearly hadn’t gone anywhere. As long as it was there, it probably meant he was there too. And the thought of spending another day with him around was almost more than I could bear. It was like I’d woken up from a nightmare only to discover that reality was worse, far worse.

I was sitting at my desk idly reading something when I remembered how I’d written a letter to Amane yesterday. The letter was nowhere on my desk. It took me a few seconds to remember how the Spirit had taken it with him after I’d made him angry. What had he done with it, destroy it? He had a lot of nerve. Well, I could just as easily write another one.

“Don’t bother. I’ve sent it for you.”

I tensed as I realized he was back. The Spirit was no longer just a voice to me; I could feel a certain presence when he was there. A presence that gave me the chills.

“So how about that? Why don’t you thank me?” he laughed.

“Can’t you be quiet? Just for today. Please. You had enough fun yesterday.”

He ignored me, and put on a dangerous, commanding tone.

“You’ll have to keep your promise about helping me. Not that you’ll have much of a choice.”

“Can’t you ever be quiet? There’s things I have to do.”

“You mean your usual moping about?” He laughed. “I don’t think so. Today I have much more important business to attend to.”

“Don’t!”

I knew what that tone meant by now. But there was nothing I could do to stop him, and he was far too quick. In just a second he had control of me again, and I was back to merely observing through his eyes. I stayed conscious for longer than usual this time, until we reached a train station and he suddenly decided I should go to sleep.
I spent nearly the entire day unconscious in my own head. I have no idea to this day what his “important business” could be, but I’m guessing he went looking for duelists to practice on. I just hope he didn’t destroy their souls like he usually did. Not that I could have done anything about it.

It wasn’t until the afternoon that the real trouble began. It was about four or five, when school would have been over for most kids, and I suddenly found myself in front of the phone in my room, about to pick it up. It was ringing. I had no memory of what had led up to this, but at the moment it didn’t really matter. But it was strange since no one really knew my phone number. In any case, I picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Oh hey, Bakura! It’s me.”

“Yuugi?”

I was very surprised. I had only been phoned by him once or twice in my life. And hadn’t I told him, in effect, not to talk to me again?

“How’s everything been going?” he asked, as if I hadn’t just been possessed for the third time and my head wasn’t reeling.

“Fine. How about you?”

“Great. Well, you know, school’s been kind of crazy. Joey’s been a big dork ever since I beat him at cards again.”

I laughed a bit and he joked around for a little longer, but more than anything I felt a pressing anxiety as to what this conversation might be about.

“Oh yeah,” he finally went on, “something strange happened today. I don’t know if this is good news or not, but you haven’t heard about what happened to that gym teacher, Mr. Karita, have you?”

I felt sick long before he finished the sentence. I had to force myself to make a sound.

“No… what?”

“Well, they won’t tell us what happened exactly, but – it’s very strange. They say he got injured or something and so he won’t be teaching here any more.” He sounded very dark just now, but his cheerfulness bounced back in an instant. “Well, I guess that’s good news for us, right?”

I felt sick to my stomach. I wanted to put down the phone as soon as possible.

“Yeah,” I heard myself say. “I guess it is.”

“Anyway,” he said abruptly, “I just hope you’re feeling okay. That stuff with Mr. Karita made me think of gym class and… well, I was thinking about what happened to you yesterday.”

“Oh. I’m fine now.”

“I guess…. Um, I know you think it’s no big deal, but I think you should stand up for yourself sometimes. I hate it when I don’t see you at school. It just bugs me.”

I tried to laugh it off. “Oh, it’s nothing that serious. I just have rotten health, that’s all. Sorry if I worried you, though.”

“Yeah… well. If you say so. So you’re feeling fine now?”

“Right, I think so. Just needed a day off.”

“Then I guess I’ll see you tomorrow?”

Suddenly I had this wild idea, which I don’t doubt the Spirit had put in my head.

“Wait, Yuugi, I’ve got an idea. I put together this new deck—for Duel Monsters—and I was wondering if maybe I could test it against yours. Unless you’re busy?”

“What? You mean right now?”

“Sure. Why don’t you come over? It would really help to cheer me up.”

“Okay then. Just give me a couple minutes to get my deck and come over, then?”

“Thank you so much, Yuugi. I’ll meet you outside the building.”

After he’d said goodbye and I’d hung up the phone, I stood there for nearly a minute, dazed. What had I been thinking asking him to come over? Then again, I was getting bored and it didn’t seem like too bad of an idea…. The deck was already in my pocket, but I deliberately took it out and placed it on my desk. Then I went outside and took the lift down to the lobby. After ten minutes or so of waiting, I spotted Yuugi in some casual clothes.

“Grandpa wants me back by seven,” he said, “I’m sorry if it’s not enough time.”

“No, it’ll be enough for what I want to do.”

I saw he was wearing the Millennium Puzzle, and that made me pleased somehow. I expect I was acting very strangely again, although Yuugi didn’t seem to notice.

“So where do you want to duel?” he asked me.

“We’ll go to my room. I left my deck up there.”

He agreed and we took the lift. The conversation we had… it wasn’t the usual me.

“So what’s this new deck?” he asked.

“Well, I wouldn’t want to spoil the secret for you yet,” I said giving him a weird grin. “But I’ll tell you it’s loaded with fiends and dark cards. It’s different from my last one, though.”

“Wow. The last one was the one with lots of zombies, right? So you’re really into that kind of thing.”

“Yeah. I hope it’s not too creepy.”

“Well, they are just cards….”

Once we got into my apartment, we chatted a little about how I managed to live by myself, and then after that, when I grabbed my deck, things got worse all of a sudden.

“So Yuugi,” I said abruptly – and even I thought I sounded weird – “I hope you’re prepared.”

I realized this was all just a trap to lure Yuugi into playing against the Spirit. He was using me to get at the Millennium Puzzle. But try as I might, I couldn’t seem to do anything to stop it from happening.

Yuugi just smiled at me and gave a determined nod. We sat down on either side of my study desk and began shuffling our cards. It happened suddenly. One moment I felt the cards shifting through my fingers; the next the sensation was all but gone. I wasn’t in control anymore. Now it was the Spirit sitting there shuffling the cards. But I could still watch, for now.

“Ready then, Bakura?” Yuugi said.

The Spirit laughed quietly. “Maybe I don’t need to play a card game against such a hopeless fool.”

“What?”

Suddenly, the Ring was glowing and floating above my clothes.

“Ring, destroy his soul!”

There was a flash of light, and the next instant, Yuugi had slumped in his chair and was about to fall to the floor.

The Spirit gave a scream of laughter. “Is this really the Pharoah?” he said. Then he lifted out of the chair and grabbed Yuugi by the shirt. He was just about to put his hand around the Millennium Puzzle when Yuugi’s eyes flashed open angrily. Yuugi knocked away the Spirit’s grasping hand, pushing him away with a force I didn’t know he had in him. The expression on Yuugi’s face was so fierce as he glared back at the Spirit, I couldn’t believe it was really Yuugi. And as it turned out, it wasn’t.

“I should have known you were in there somewhere.” The Spirit’s voice had become almost like a growl.

“You traitor,” said Yuugi. “Acting like Yuugi’s friend only to steal the Millennium Puzzle!”

“Hmm. It seems you’ve lost your ancient knowledge. Since you do not recognize me.”

“You’re Bakura! I know that.”

“I’m afraid you are deeply mistaken.” The Spirit sat down on his end of the table and put a hand on his deck. “Now then, you must know I desire the Millennium Puzzle. So we’ll enter a Shadow Game and duel for the rights to it. Unless you’d rather I sent you to the Shadow Realm right now.”

“I’m sure you know not to take the power of my Millennium Puzzle lightly. But if you wish to try me, go right ahead.”

“I am offering you a chance to duel in a Shadow Game.”

“Very well. I accept.”

Immediately, the room began to darken and fill with thick smog. At first I thought it must be my imagination, but before long I could barely see out the window, it was so dark.

“In case you’ve forgotten,” said the Spirit, “the rules dictate that whosoever loses be banished to the Shadow Realm.”

“Good. Then I’ll be sending you straight back to where you came from.”

The Spirit burst out laughing. “Let’s just hope the deck your host selected hasn’t all pathetic cards. Now, you draw first.”