Beastly King (Yu-Gi-Oh fanfic Puzzleshipping/Blindshipping)

The Intruder in the Garden (1)

I don't own Yugioh or Beastly

7 Months Later

    I picked up one petal from my dresser, dangled it out the window, then watched it fall. One year left.
    Since Halloween night, I'd only talked to Ryou and Mai. I hadn't been outside. I'd seen no light except in the rose garden.
    On November 1, I told Ryou I wanted to build a greenhouse. I'd never built anything--not even a birdhouse or a napkin holder in camp. But now I had nothing but time and Aknamkanon's Amex card. So I bought books about greenhouses, plans for greenhouses, materials for greenhouses. I didn't want a cheapo plastic one, and I needed the wall to be solid enough to hide me from view. I built it myself on the ground floor behind my apartment, a big one that took up the whole yard. Mai and Ryou helped by doing everything that had to be done from outside. I worked by day, when neighbors were mostly at work.
    By December, it was finished. A few weeks later, shocked by the sudden spring, yellowish leaves began to grow from the branches, then the green buds.
By first snow, everything in full bloom, the red roses showing in the winter sun.
    The roses became my life. I added additional beds and pots until there were hundreds of flowers, a dozen colors and more shapes, hybrid teas and climbing roses, purple cabbage roses the size of my outstretched hand, and miniatures barely the size of my thumbnail. I loved them. I didn't even mind the thorns. All living things needed protection.
    I stopped playing video games, stopped looking for lives in my mirror. I never opened the windows, never looked out. I endured my teaching sessions with Ryou (I didn't call them tutoring anymore; I knew I wasn't ever going back to school), then spent the rest of my day in the garden, reading or looking at my roses.
    I read gardening books too. Reading had become my perfect solution, and I researched the best food, the perfect soil. I didn't spray for pests, but washed off those that came with the roses with soapy water, then guarded against reinvasion. But even with the hundreds of flowers, I was aware of the small deaths brought by each morning, as one by one, the roses withered. They were replaced by others, of course, but it wasn't the same.
     Each tiny life that bloomed into being would live only in the greenhouse, then die.
In that way, we were alike.
One day, when I was plucking a few dead friends from the vine, Mai came in.
    "I thought I would find you here," she said. She had a broom with her, and she began to sweep up some of the fallen leaves.
    "No, don't," I said. "I like to do that. It's part of my work each day."
    "There is no work for me. You never use your rooms, so nothing to clean."
    "You make my meals. You shop. You buy plant food. You wash my clothes. I couldn't live the way I do without you."
    "You have stopped living, Yami."
    I plucked a white rose from a vine. "You said once that you were afraid for me. I didn't understand what you meant, but I do now. You were scared I'd never be able to appreciate beauty, like this rose." I handed it to her. It was hard for me to do, to pick my prizes, knowing they'd die sooner that way. But I was learning to let go. I'd let go of so much already. "That night, there was a boy at the dance. I gave him a rose. He was so happy. I didn't understand why he cared so much about a rose, a stupid rose that was missing petals. I understand now. Now that all the beauty of my old life is gone, I crave it like food.
A beautiful thing like this rose--I almost want to eat it, to swallow it whole to replace the beauty I've lost. That's how that boy was too... I think."
    "But you do not...you will not try to break the spell?" Mai said in worry.
    I gave her a small laugh with a true smile. "I have everything I need here. I can never break the spell." I gestured for her to give me the broom.
    Mai nodded a little sadly, and handed it to me.
    "Why are you here, Mai?" I said, sweeping. It was something I'd been wondering about. "What are you doing here in Domino, cleaning up after a brat like me? Don't you have a family?"
    I could ask that because she knew about my family, that I didn't have one anymore. She knew they'd abandoned me.
    "I have family in my home country. My husband and I, we came here to make money. I used to be a teacher, but there was no work. So we came here. But my husband, he couldn't get his green card, so he had to go back. I work hard to send money back to them."
    I stooped to get the leaves with the dustpan. "Do you have children?"
    "Hai."
    "Where are they?"
    "They grow. Without me. They are older than you now, with children of their own I have never seen."
    I lifted the dead leaves and stared at her in surprise. "So you know what it's like, then, to have no one? And there is no way your older than 28, you look so young."
    She nodded. "Hai to the first question and arigato to the second." She took the broom and dustpan from me. "But I am old now; my life is older. When I made the choice I made, I did not think it was forever. It is another thing to give up so young."
    "I haven't given up," I said. "I've just decided to live for my roses." That night, I looked for the mirror. I had brought it upstairs, to the fifth-floor rooms, where I'd left it on top of an old armoire.
"I want to see Anzu," I said.
It took a few moments, but when she finally showed, she looked happy to see me. "It's been a while," she said. I stared at her figure in the mirror in confusion.
    "Why does the mirror take so long to show you to me, but others I see instantly?" Anzu rolled her glowing blue eyes at me.
    "Because sometimes I'm doing something you shouldn't see."
I start smiling with mischief. "Like what? In the bathroom?"
    She scowled. "Witch things."
    I hum, not buying her so called excuse. "Right. Got it." But under my breath, I sang, "Anzu's on the potty."
    "I was not!"
    "Then what do you do when I can't see you? Turn people into frogs?"
    "No. Mostly I travel."
    "American Airlines or astral projection?"
    "Commercial airlines are tricky. I don't have a credit card. Apparently, paying in cash makes one a security risk."
    "You are, aren't you? I'd think you could just wiggle your nose and blow up a plane or something."
    "It's frowned upon. Besides, I can time-travel if I travel my way."
    "Really?"
    "Sure. You say you want to go to Paris to see Notre Dame. But how about if you could see it being built? Or Rome at the time of Julius Caesar?"
    "You can do that, but you can't undo your spell? Hey, can you take me?"
    "Negative. If I hung around with a beast, they'd know I was a witch. And witches got burned in those days. That's why I prefer this century. It's safer. People do all sorts of weird stuff, especially in Japan."
    "Can you do other magical stuff? You said you felt sorry about the spell. Can you do me a favor to sort of make up for it?"
    She frowned. "Like what?"
    "My friends, Mai and Ryou."
    "Your friends?" She looked surprised. "What about them?"
"Ryou's a great sensei, but he can't get a good teaching job-meaning a job other than sitting around tutoring me--because no one wants to hire a blind guy. And Mai works really hard to send money to her kids and grandkids, but she never gets to see them. It's not fair."
    "The world just reeks of unfairness," Anzu said. "When did you get so philanthropic, Atem?"
    "It's Yami, not Atem. And they are my friends, my only friends. I know they get paid to be here, but they're nice to me. You can't undo what you did to me, but could you do something for them-help Ryou see again, and bring Mai's family here, or send her there, at least, for a vacation?"
    She stared at me a second, then shook her head. "That would be impossible."
    "Why? You have incredible powers, don't you? Is there some kind of witch code that says you can turn people into beasts but not help people?"
    I thought that would shut her up, but instead she said, "Well, yes. In a way. The thing is, I can't grant wishes just because someone asks for something. I'm not a genie. If I try to act like one, I could end up stuck in a lamp like one."
    "Oh. I didn't know there were so many rules." I didn't think that would be possible to go from a witch to a genie really.
    She shrugged. "Yeah. It sucks."
    "So the first time I want something for someone else, I can't have it."
    "I already agreed it sucks. Hold on one second." She reached over and took out a big book. She flipped through a few pages. "It says here that I can do you a favor if and only if it is tied to something you have to do."
    "Like what?"
    "Well, let's say that if you break the spell I placed on you, I'll also help Mai-san and Ryou-kun. That's okay."
    "That's the same as saying no. I can never break the spell."
    "Do you want to?"
    "No. I want to be a freak all my life."
    "A freak with a beautiful rose garden..."
    "...is still a freak," I said. "I love gardening, yeah. But if I was normal-looking, I could still garden."
    Anzu didn't answer. She was looking at her book again. She raised an eyebrow.
    "What now?"
    "Maybe it isn't so hopeless," she said.
    "It is."
    "I don't think so," she said. "Sometimes, unexpected things can happen."

And here it is, Yami get ready get to get your world turned upside down once more!

Ja Ne

Sagario