Disclaimer: Yu-Gi-Oh! belongs to Kazuki Takahashi. Vampires belong to the collective unconsciousness.

To Neco-chan and Ceresi for liking it. To Skai, Meg, and Sam for the fact that the story exists at all. To sleep deprivation.

And, in the words of the great Joss Whedon: B.Y.O.Subtext.
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#0: The Fool

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"Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men"

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It had been a normal day.

There had been a quiz in Geometry, but Ryou had studied for that. There had been another long lecture in Japanese class, but he'd taken enough notes that he would be okay on the eventual test. There had been a fight during lunch, but no one he knew was involved. As far as Ryou's life usually went, there wouldn't have been any reason to remember the day past getting up tomorrow.

Except for the small fact that he had taken his usual shortcut through the alley between a coffee shop and a small grocery, thus cutting a block of heavily trafficked sidewalk off of his trip and causing him to find Honda with his face buried in a woman's neck.

Ryou blinked, blushed, and then tried back away quietly without being noticed. But Honda chose that moment to let go of the woman, and Ryou blinked again before frowning as she fell limply to the ground. Honda wiped his mouth with a thumb, and then licked it clean.

Ryou began backing away again, just as carefully, but this time it was out of reptilian instinct rather than societal embarrassment.

The movement caught Honda's eye, and for a moment he and Ryou just stared at each other.

"H-Honda-kun?" Ryou began hesitantly. His gaze flicked back to the woman on the ground, despite the fact that he didn't think it was smart to look away from the other teenager.

The alley was shadowy, but Ryou could still see that part of the woman's neck was much darker than the rest. He shivered and jerked his eyes back up.

Honda blinked slowly one more time, and finally let his hand drop to his side. He took a step towards Ryou.

Ryou turned and ran.

He wasn't stupid. As soon as he was out of the alley, he squeezed his way into the middle of the crowd on the sidewalk and stayed there, even though it meant that he took the long route back to his apartment. When he reached the street where he lived, the crowd had mostly thinned away to nothing, so Ryou ran down the sidewalk and up the stairs with a panicked feeling in his stomach and his heart pounding in his chest the whole way. But he made it inside with no trouble, and locked the door behind him.

Once Ryou had calmed down and his pulse had sunk back to normal, his actions seemed silly. He told himself they were silly. He told himself that he was imagining things, or projecting them, or something sensible and rational like that. But he didn't go outside for the rest of the day. Instead, he threw himself into finishing his homework, cooking, washing the dishes, doing a load of laundry, vacuuming the carpet, and as many other minor things that he could think of. By the next morning, he had almost convinced himself that there was nothing important about yesterday.

Ryou still scanned the newspaper the next morning, though, looking for any articles on a murder in a certain part of the city.

He didn't find anything -- but then, he only made it through half the paper before he had to start out for school.