Monachopsis

Chapter 2

A/N: I do not Own Yu-Gi-Oh or any characters created by Kazuki Takahashi. I only own my OCs, this fic is purely for entertainment.

Chapter 2

A week after the reading of my mother's will I was taken to the Domino City Orphanage. The setup of the orphanage was nothing like I thought it would be; there were actually two that shared the lot of land, one that housed all boys and one that housed all girls. Meals and play time were shared between the two in a third building, and the whole setup reminded me of a boarding school instead of an orphanage. I was given a room to myself, there weren't enough children currently to warrant doubling up bedrooms which I was grateful for. I was given a day to settle in, and to learn the rules. They were fairly straight forward; the older children, such as myself were to help with the chores and looking after the younger children. Of course we were supervised at all times, and upon seeing the other children's reactions to me I was taken off childcare duty quickly enough.

I had never given much thought to my physical appearance, but it seemed that I was an anomaly amongst children my own age. I was of a much shorter stature than most, but not unhealthy in anyway; that is to say I wasn't undergrown, just petite. I had inherited my father's dark red curls, but my eyes were even darker than my mother's. There was literally no distinction between the iris and the pupil. My black eyes, combined with my pale skin made my appearance rather striking. Add my unusual maturity into the mix and I tended to make others around me uneasy. Adults accepted me easier, but children my own age teased me and seemed to have a lot of fun trying to make me lose my temper. I paid them no mind, knowing that it was a tendency in children to make fun and pick fights with people they didn't understand. I tended to avoid conflict, content to just leave them be and entertain myself with books and the radio. There was no piano at the orphanage, but there was one at the school I had been transferred to. After explaining my situation to the music teacher, he had been more than happy to allow me to practice during my lunch hour, and even helped me learn to play better without charging me his usual tutoring fee.

I wasn't above using other's sympathy to get what I wanted.

Two months passed quickly in the orphanage. Every few days or so, one of the bigger boys would try to start a fight with me but I avoided them fairly well. The most persistent of them was a boy named Toshiro. He had given me the nickname of "Demon Girl" because of my eyes and seemed to have made it his personal mission to make me lose my temper. But I had an extra twenty plus years of life experience on him, and I could take anything the kid could throw at me. Besides, it pissed him off more when I didn't react, which led to him doing something brashly and getting himself into trouble with the caretakers, all without my personal involvement. My days slowly blurred into a routine, and for the most part I was content in life. I stayed at the top of my class in school, and there had even been talk about me getting a scholarship into one of the select high schools in the area; with my current grades it would be a breeze. Domino City had a surprising number of good schools, but I was still unclear as to what direction I wanted to take with my higher education. Something in music appealed to me, but I would need more time to hash out exactly of what I wanted to do. I didn't necessarily like being in the spotlight, preferring to do my work from the sidelines so I was leaning towards music management, maybe even songwriting.

Thoughts of the future filled my head as I was heading back to the orphanage from school, which I refused to call home on principal. I had stayed after to browse the library while the others headed home, and a translation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice waited for me to begin reading in my bag just waiting for me to get back to my room and dig into it. I almost ignored the two boys standing in front of the gated entrance in my haste, but a sniffle caught my attention and I turned to see what was going on.