Happy Halloween, everyone! What are you all going as? Since it's fairly difficult to go trick-or-treating at my age, I'll be spending the day with a friend from school, dressed in our Halloween costumes, watching movies and eating Japanese-style candy, some of it homemade! I'm dressing up as Yuugi, the little one!

This story was a challenge, and took forever to finish. The idea was simple, but mixing humor and horror is fairly new. This story actually warrants its rating: no romance, but more violence than most of my works (and my idea of "realistic" violence comes from movies, so we'll see how that worked). And an entire section in a POV I never thought I'd be able to write from … I almost rated this T for the horror mentioned, but not quite. If you're very squeamish, you might want to stay away. I've been fortunate enough in my life to have never been involved in or witnessed real violence, so again, hope this is at least remotely realistic. It's Season 0/pre-canon, a few months before Duelist Kingdom.

For those unfamiliar with Japan, two notes: first, all Japanese homes have an area in front of the door called a "genkan," that is one step lower than the rest of the house. It is there that you remove your shoes before entering the house. You never wear shoes into a Japanese home. Also, "a few hundred yen" is synonymous with a few dollars. However, it's a few dollars in the mid-1990s, so back then, a few dollars could actually buy something.

A note for those following my work: I will not be posting any of my regular oneshots during the month of November. There will be one birthday fic, but that's it. November will be spent writing the first draft of an extremely long story for this fandom hopefully to be posted early-mid next year, and therefore I will have no time for writing anything else. My apologies to all those who so loyally follow my work! I will return in December. Wish me luck in an insane writing endeavor...

The title can either translate to "Night of Darkness" or "Yami's Night." I hope you enjoy, and pretty please review!

Yami no Yoru

"Um … Jounouchi-kun?"

"Yeah?"

"What … what are you wearing?"

"It's my costume."

"Yeah, but … what is it?"

"It's a werewolf, obviously! A werewolf!"

It did not look like a werewolf. It looked, in Yuugi's opinion, like someone had covered Jounouchi-kun with glue, pushed him in a pile of dirt and mud, dumped feathers on him, pushed him in the mud again, then thrown on a few patches of fur from a shedding cat.

Yuugi forced his lips up into a smile that so twisted against the natural position of his mouth it hurt his cheeks. "Oh … right. Of course. That's a great werewolf, Jounouchi-kun."

He was particularly bad at lying. But Jounouchi-kun was too busy admiring his costume in the glass of a display box for what was probably the fourth time that evening—even though he had only been here less than a minute—to notice the blatant falsities of Yuugi's words. Yuugi sighed, put a hand to his forehead, and just smiled at his lucky slip out of trouble.

Jounouchi-kun followed him to the living room after Jii-chan walked in and insisted they wait somewhere else. He said it was because he didn't like loitering in his shop, but Yuugi could see in his eyes it was because he didn't want his potential customers frightened off by the strangeness of two teenage boys' costumes.

Yuugi didn't bother to remind him that no one ever came to the game shop on Halloween.

Especially since Jii-chan had a habit of using every cheesy Halloween decoration they owned to make the shop front look like a haunted house.

Yuugi stepped in front of the TV and gazed into his reflection in the black screen. He pulled on the oversized coat that hung over his shoulders, fingering a few of the buttons and poking the makeup under his eye to make sure it would stay in place for as long as he needed it. To be sure, he was going to need a long shower to get all of this off before leaving the house tomorrow.

"You almost ready?" Jounouchi-kun poked his head into the reflection, obscuring Yuugi's image and looking more like a mass of fur and fabric in the TV screen than a werewolf.

Yuugi tried not to chuckle. "We have to wait for Honda-kun, remember …"

Jounouchi-kun opened his mouth in that way he often did when he had nothing to say but simply had to make a point, even if he had no idea what it was. But his mouth stayed open, and no words came out, and as soon as Yuugi made a final adjustment on his jacket and turned to look him in the eye, he stopped and leaned to the side at the sound of footsteps shuffling into the entrance to the room.

The edges of a long skirt fluttered into view before the rest of the older form, walking along with that usual mix of dainty movements and a confident strut. Yuugi's mother peered into the room with her gaze flicking about.

"Yuugi, I—"

Her eyes fell upon Yuugi standing in the center of the living room.

And if the neighbors didn't hear the shriek that pushed past her lips, Yuugi would have been stunned.

She threw a hand to the center of her chest, like she thought it might make someone believe she had heart trouble. "Yuugi!"

Yuugi swallowed far too loud and tried as hard as he could to look innocent.

He couldn't tell if it worked.

She gasped in what sounded like her first real breath in minutes, though it couldn't have been more than five seconds. She gawked at him with the gawking of a parent smack in between desperation and horror.

"What are you wearing?"

Yuugi smiled, and even he wasn't sure if it was beaming or sheepish.

"It's my Halloween costume, Mama!" He shifted back on the soles of his feet, and his socks slipped a bit on the carpet. "We're all going over to Anzu's tonight."

His mother looked at him, and lifted a hand to her head as if wondering what she had done to deserve such terrors. Yuugi bit the inside of his lip and begged to any mercy out there, smiling all the way. She looked at him again and sighed very long and loud. Her hand dropped to her side.

"Just … don't scare me like that!"

She shook her head one more time, her short hair bouncing back and forth, and without another glance to Yuugi's face—as if she was scared to look again—she turned and walked away.

Her footsteps faded, bit by bit. Yuugi looked at Jounouchi-kun. Jounouchi-kun looked at Yuugi. And as the footsteps disappeared from range of hearing, they both broke out into laughter which echoed on the walls and leapt around the room.

As his laughter faded into chuckles, Jounouchi-kun cocked his head.

"So, you're a … zombie?"

Yuugi furrowed his brow and stood up as tall as his physical stature would allow.

"I'm an undead archaeologist!"

It looked very much like Jounouchi-kun was about ready to bang his head on the wall, bandage the wound, bang his head again, then poke it to see if it hurt, just to check if his imagination had taken over his hearing. "A what?"

Yuugi almost frowned.

Granted, he knew should have expected that people wouldn't be able to guess what he was right away. Even Jounouchi-kun had gone as one of the most common choices in the book, and Yuugi hadn't been able to guess—even if Yuugi really thought he might have put a bit more work into his own outfit.

Still. It had taken him a good half hour to dig out the old Halloween makeup from the bathroom cabinet nobody used, and coat his face with it until he looked like a cartoon character about to lose his lunch.

He reached a half-conscious hand to finger the rope and gold around his neck, the weight pressing against his overcoat and wrinkling his shirt. He had thought about just leaving the Puzzle in his room for the evening—just hiding it under a pillow would almost guarantee it wouldn't be stolen. And yet he somehow couldn't seem to bring himself to leave it behind, even though he knew it changed the costume and the whole outfit might have looked a good deal more realistic if he didn't have a shiny Egyptian artifact hanging around his neck.

Or maybe it was an artifact discovered in an ancient tomb and he wore it for luck as he went on thousands of danger expeditions throughout ruins around the world …

Jounouchi-kun still quirked a brow in his direction. Yuugi shook his head and tugged on his clothes as if in display.

"An undead archaeologist!" he repeated, this time articulating each word as if to a toddler. He tugged at the bottom of the shirt he had found in the back of his closet and cut up until it looked more like rags. "You know those old stories that if you go into the tombs of ancient Egyptian pharaohs, you're cursed and you die?"

Jounouchi-kun blinked a long and slow blink.

"… yeah. Like in all those cheesy movies Anzu likes."

Yuugi could not quite keep his lips from curling into an eager grin that stretched to his ears. He nodded, so fast his hair almost fell over his face. "Right! Well, I'm an archaeologist who disrespected the tomb of an ancient pharaoh, so I died and now I walk the earth, cursed for all eternity!"

Another blink. Faster this time.

"… where'd you get the giant coat?"

"It's Jii-chan's!" Yuugi pulled on the beige overcoat that hung down to his knees and wouldn't button up no matter how much he tried, either because the buttons were too old or because there was far too much fabric and far too little him. His grin turned sheepish. "From his days as an archaeologist. I just haven't … grown into it yet."

Jounouchi-kun scanned over him as if he had suddenly lost a few centimeters, and did not even try to stop himself from snickering.

Yuugi tensed. "Hey!"

He opened his mouth with some retort even he hadn't yet decided fresh on his lips, and closed it a moment later when the sound of the doorbell rang into his ears.

He tried very hard not to look at Jounouchi-kun as he rushed past him toward the genkan and their second front door, but even then, he had a very good feeling that Jounouchi-kun was still smirking and still snickering like a wild hyena. Yuugi sighed and shook his head and decided to shove this into the category of things that were never truly going to stop, and climbed down the single step to the lower portion of the house and pulled open the door.

He looked, and he looked some more, and it took him several seconds before he jolted and blinked in a recognition he couldn't believe he had managed at all.

"Honda-kun!"

Honda-kun grinned a very big grin and proudly adjusted the oversized mass of brown furry fabric hanging off every part of his body but his face.

"Hey, Yuugi, how's—Jounouchi!"

Jounouchi-kun not quite pushed past Yuugi to stand near the doorway, Yuugi slipping off to the side and already trying not to get involved as Jounouchi-kun's jaw dropped open in what could only be described as utter horror. "Honda!"

Silence. One moment of silence, where they each flicked their eyes over one another in scrutiny, and met each other's gazes in a certainty of something neither of them—or Yuugi—could quite believe.

Both their mouths fell open at once.

"You're a werewolf, too?"

Yuugi did not think his eyes had ever gone so wide.

He had never really taken a moment to imagine what his friends were going to choose as costumes for their Halloween get-together. He supposed he had been too busy helping Jii-chan in the shop, or making his own costume out of old green Halloween makeup and Jii-chan's coat and old clothes he could wear without his mother killing him for tearing intentional holes and covering them with extra paint.

But even if he had never imagined anything, and therefore had no way to be proven wrong, he could scarcely have pictured standing here, staring at two of his best friends, one dressed as a werewolf of brown paint and chunks of fur, and the other in a full-body suit with painted eyes on the hood and gloves that acted like paws.

It had been a very long time since Yuugi had had to try so hard not to laugh.

Jounouchi-kun scowled as if he had been challenged to a wrestling match while wearing a tutu.

"Okay, I was a werewolf first, you go pick something else!"

Honda-kun scoffed, and if it weren't for the furrowing of his brow, Yuugi might have thought he was just making the whole issue a joke. "Oh, no, I've been planning this costume for weeks!"

"It looks like your mom made that for you!"

"It looks like you just dunked yourself in mud!"

Yuugi bit the inside of his lip in a manner that might have made him bleed had he not long learned to control his own jaw strength. He slipped forward—as he had found was particularly easy to do when Jounouchi-kun and Honda-kun both towered above him by a number of centimeters—and between them, hands up, face the face of the weathered peacemaker, skilled in his unusual art.

"Guys, guys! You can both be werewolves. I'm sure it'll be fine."

Jounouchi-kun groaned. "But, Yuugi …"

"Oh, fine," Honda-kun agreed in the midst of a long and heavy sigh. Something deep in Yuugi's chest lifted, and he almost got to the point of smiling. Honda-kun crossed his arms over the sagging fabric on his chest."I'll share my costume idea."

"It was my idea!"

"It was my idea first!"

Yuugi did not bother to remind them how much they sounded like several of the senior girls who had bought the same headband and spent half the day arguing over who gets to actually wear theirs. He sighed and shook his head, and opened the door to lead his two friends out, taking care to close the door behind them as they continued their arguing walk.

But somewhere deep inside him, he smiled, and decided that if putting up with Jounouchi-kun and Honda-kun's arguments was the price of them as friends, it was hardly a steep price to pay.

Yuugi spent about a minute after they arrived at the house simply staring.

Well, at least he tried not to be too obvious about it. There were about a million things he wanted to say, not as if he would actually say any of them. Jounouchi-kun and Honda-kun, however, apparently didn't see fit to be even that discrete.

"Holy—"

"Anzu, what is that?"

"Kinda looks like her closet exploded on her."

"Hey, maybe working at that burger place really did mess with her head …"

Anzu was livid.

To put it simply.

"I'm an American girl from the 1970s!" she spat, and Yuugi ducked—even though he knew there was no need to duck—when she stepped forward and gave both the other boys a fair whack across the face with the back of her hand. He doubted it really hurt all that much, even though Anzu was plenty strong, but it left both of them rubbing their cheeks.

Jounouchi-kun looked at her with a cocked eyebrow, but he had backed up a step further into the hallway and now had a distinct cautious glint in his eyes. "… an American? Anzu, I watch TV, Americans don't dress like that."

"Not a modern American, you idiot, from the '70s!"

Honda blinked and gave Anzu one more look over. "… did Americans' closets used to explode on them a lot?"

He squealed and whimpered when she smacked him again, this time loud enough for the sound to echo around the walls.

Yuugi gave a very, very hesitant second look at Anzu. Well, he had to admit that Jounouchi-kun and Honda-kun had a point, even if they really could have been smart enough not to say it out loud. Yuugi had known Anzu for enough years to see her in plenty of different outfits, including Halloween costumes. A purple cat one year, another year a witch, then a ballerina, and a princess, and a few things he couldn't remember the names of.

This costume, however, left them all running for their money.

And probably rubbing their eyes.

It was still Anzu under all the mess, that much was obvious. He could see her short brown hair in its normal style, for the most part. But she had taken to wearing a pair of jeans that seemed to get about three sizes too big starting at the knees and fell over a pair of socks that shone so bright a hot pink it almost bored itself into his skull. It looked like someone had decided to play multi-colored paintball on her shirt, which for some reason had sleeves cut off halfway to her wrists, and she wore what seemed like a thin headband right around her forehead.

The rest of the jewelry—including a peace-sign necklace and about fifteen bracelets on each arm—pretty much spoke for itself. He didn't think every female member of his extended family combined owned as much jewelry as Anzu wore right then.

She finally looked at Yuugi and grinned. Yuugi just about blanched.

"What do you think, Yuugi?"

She twirled around once like she was modeling the outfit for one of those fashion shows she watched on TV sometimes. That malicious face had disappeared, and her smile stayed, but Yuugi still just stood there in silent horror and desperation as to what next move wouldn't get him killed.

He rubbed the back of his head and begged to everything he knew that this at least wouldn't end in a smack.

"Um … it's … it's a great costume, Anzu!" She kept looking at him. He swallowed. "Very … unique!"

Cheesy, and he felt a part of himself laughing at how unbelievable it sounded. But after being insulted twice, Anzu didn't seem particularly keen to take his comment negatively. She smiled at him, and he just about collapsed from the relief that washed over him.

"Thanks!"

It had been quite a while since Yuugi had felt this happy about Anzu smiling.

He tried with everything he had to steer the topic away from the strange "70s" costume that Anzu seemed so proud of. Of course, Jounouchi-kun and Honda-kun were just as eager to keep the topic on her clothes, and make every comment about them known to humankind. But Anzu just sighed and shook her head and gave them half-hearted smacks on the arm as she led them in out of the cold air on her front porch and closed the door behind them.

Yuugi had mastered the art of quickly taking off his shoes, and so leaned out of the genkan and into the living room while the other two boys were still struggling to get off the boots they had stuffed on over their werewolf costumes. He couldn't remember how long it had been since he had been to Anzu's house. Years, maybe, back when the two of them hanging out alone somewhere hadn't been the subject of disapproval by every parent in the vicinity. Back in the "sandbox days," as Anzu would so fondly call them, filled with watching movies on Saturday evenings and going together to the playground after school.

The living room hadn't changed much. It had the same worn blue couch by the wall, and the same TV, and the same cabinets off to the wall opposite the entrance where he now stood. Except several orange and black balloons now bounced against the ceiling, and a large bowl of multi-colored tiny candies now served as the centerpiece of the little table in front of the couch.

Two pairs of feet shuffled in behind him, and Yuugi turned.

Jounouchi-kun clapped his hands together once, and with the bits of fur he had attached to his wrists and palms with masking tape, it sounded more like two pillows being fired out of cannons.

"Candy, sweet!"

Honda-kun shifted his eyes and smirked. "Yeah, Jounouchi, candy's usually sweet."

"Oh, shut up!"

Yuugi suppressed a chuckle, and Anzu rolled her eyes as she closed the door and arranged the shoes that had been left messy and disorganized into a neat line near the genkan. She stood and brushed her hands on her jeans. "Now don't you two pig out all at once, I want leftovers at the end of the night!"

"Why, so you can pig out after we're gone?" Jounouchi-kun poked in with the twisted smile that almost reminded Yuugi of his old bullying days, but with a hint of humor that made it very difficult to equate the old Jounouchi-kun with now.

Anzu raised her hand before her face and tightened it into a fist. Jounouchi-kun blanched.

"Okay, okay, it was a joke!"

It had been a very long time—if ever before—that Yuugi had seen Jounouchi-kun wave his hands in front of him in such desperate surrender.

Anzu lowered her fist and rolled her eyes, and Jounouchi-kun seemed to be using every fiber of his self-control to keep himself from making a face. She turned and gave Yuugi that signature smile he had once thought so condescending, but had never realized how much it was to appreciate.

"You want some candy, Yuugi?"

Yuugi grinned, not caring that he probably looked like a little kid. "Yes, please!"

Anzu giggled, the giggle Yuugi wondered how many people had lost years ago. She shuffled over to the little table in front of her couch—shuffling was all she could do in the jeans without tripping over the ends, which she seemed to have forgotten to trim—picked up the big orange bowl, and held it out.

He smiled back and tried not to make it too obvious how hard it was to only take one piece.

Jounouchi-kun flopped himself down on the couch as if in protest for being scolded a minute before. Anzu spun around to quirk a brow at him, and Yuugi took the opportunity to snatch one extra piece of candy. Jounouchi-kun sighed and settled himself into the cushions like an old man in his home.

"So, Anzu, what'cha got planned for us?"

Yuugi just about dropped the candy as Anzu's face contorted. "I'm not a party hostess!"

Honda-kun scuttled over to the other side of the couch, around the little table to sit as far away from Anzu as seating arrangements would allow. "I thought you invited us."

"To come over, not for me to serve you!"

Jounouchi-kun widened his eyes and stuck out his bottom lip. Anzu went stoic.

"You want me to keep your share of the candy?"

Jounouchi-kun whined alike to a wounded pup. "I'll be good …"

Yuugi slipped his remaining candy into one of the pockets of his jacket, the little plastic-wrapped treats rustling against the coins he kept there in case of emergency, and scrambled forward to stand between Anzu and Jounouchi-kun in a gesture he hoped didn't look as obvious as it felt. He looked at one, then at the other, and he tried his hardest to give a genuine smile.

"How about a movie?"

Anzu's lips turned into a grin, a real grin, and Yuugi thought he might sigh in relief.

"Great idea, Yuugi!"

"Just tell me we're not watching one of those sappy ones," Jounouchi-kun quite-near groaned.

Anzu lowered her brow, and Yuugi flinched. "That's not all I own, Jounouchi!"

Honda-kun lowered his head and muttered, barely loud enough to hear, "Just most of what she owns."

"I heard that!"

Honda-kun and Jounouchi-kun gave collective jolts.

Yuugi sighed.

But Anzu resisted her tendency to smack the two boys again, and merely knelt next to one of the cabinets and began flipping through the shelves full of videotapes, some of which Yuugi recognized, but so many of which it was far too difficult to see, especially with Anzu blocking his view. Anzu fingered each tape she saw, one by one, until her finger rested near the middle.

She turned her head with questioning brow.

"'Labyrinth'?"

"What?" Jounouchi-kun crossed his arms over his chest, and the fabric scrunched up near his torso so much he looked more like a werewolf with a flabby skin condition."What language is that in?"

"English, you idiot."

Honda-kun groaned. "Oh, come on, my sister showed me that one, that's a kid movie, it's not scary! They sing!"

"It's creepy!" Anzu's face had grown vaguely pink and scrunched up almost to ruin the bit of makeup she seemed to have slipped on. If she hadn't been kneeling over, she might have stomped over to Honda-kun and given him one of her more serious glares. But she didn't stomp over to Honda-kun. She didn't even stand up. She scanned her eyes over her video cabinet again and reached her hand into the back. "You want scary? Okay, then, let's try this …"

She slipped a video from the back, pulled out the tape, and tossed the box toward the couch without a glance. Jounouchi-kun leapt forward and scrambled to catch it in his hands, holding it just high enough so Yuugi couldn't see.

Jounouchi-kun squinted at what Yuugi could just tell were English letters printed across the front of the tape. He mouthed words, mouthed syllables and letters, as if he really had been sleeping through English class the whole year so far.

"N… nai … Nightmare on E … eru … Elm Street?" He turned his gaze up with a naïve look that almost, though Yuugi could not for the life of him figure out why, seemed ominous."What's that?"

Anzu's lips curled into a smirk that beat just about every other smirk Yuugi had thus far seen.

She slipped the tape into the VCR just under her TV and shuffled over to flick off all the lights in the living room and close the windows and doors. Honda-kun bumped into the little table as he found a more comfortable position on the couch and gathered the candy bowl onto his lap, and Jounouchi-kun reached forward to pull Yuugi by the back of his coat to flop down in between them as Anzu finally took her seat on the couch's other end.

The TV's glow came on with the familiar start of an unfamiliar tape, and all eyes locked on the screen. Anzu's, Jounouchi-kun's, and Honda-kun's. But Yuugi's flicked for just a moment away from the screen and to the three surrounding him on both sides, the light from the TV shimmering on their faces. All together. All for one evening. Just the four of them, as if nothing else mattered in the world.

His first Halloween in high school, and his first Halloween spent away from the game shop, and with friends.

He smiled, and he tried very hard not to let the others see his grin.

And somehow, though he knew it was silly, his fingers fell to rest upon the smooth metal of the Puzzle around his neck, and he almost felt that somewhere deep inside and in the corners of his mind, someone else was happy to be here, too.

Yuugi snatched the Puzzle the fifth time it poked him in the stomach and held it very firmly in his hands. The thing never seemed to be able to hurt him through his school uniform, and yet it stung so much more now when he was wearing a significantly-thicker costume. And he had had enough of that.

For some reason, the Puzzle seemed to protest, almost squirm away from his grasp when he cradled it. But he tried very hard to ignore that and continue on his way.

The others had offered to walk with him back home, particularly Jounouchi-kun, who insisted that Halloween wasn't a very safe time to be out on your own at night. Yuugi was quite well aware that he only knew this because of the many Halloween pranks he had pulled in his gang days, and Yuugi had gotten that same speech from his mother every year since he was old enough to trick-or-treat. But he still just smiled and declined every offer they gave—even Anzu had offered to take him, though it was her house in the first place, which he had to say he found almost embarrassing—and started out into the late night back toward the shop.

The Puzzle slipped out of his fingers the instant he loosened his grip, and poked him in the stomach a sixth time. He gripped it with both hands and lifted it to stare into the Eye of Horus he had grown far too familiar with.

"Listen," he started, and he paused to glance around and make sure no one could see him talking to a necklace. "It's late, I'm tired, I just want to go home and get to bed. I'll be home in five minutes. So can you not poke me, just for that long?"

The Eye of Horus stared back at him, and though it did not glow or make any noise, nor did he suddenly feel some foreign power stoking within the golden surface, it still seemed that that Eye was trying to tell him something.

He sighed, released the Puzzle again, and one of the points hit him particularly hard in the ribs.

It had been a long time since Yuugi had had to try so hard not to smack himself square in the forehead.

It bounced harder now with each step he took. He somehow imagined some sort of transparent, not-quite-there form standing next to him, whacking him over and over again across the shoulder like some kind of friend with a bad sense of humor, trying to warn him of some nonexistent danger without saying a word. Yuugi looked ahead of him and behind him and to each of his sides.

A moment later, he sighed, and pulled the Puzzle from around his neck and over his head and carefully slipped it into the paper bag Anzu had given him to help carry his candy home.

He bit the inside of his lip and shook his head.

"I don't like doing this, you know," he muttered, and hearing his own voice, quiet and rebounding in the night and the silence of the streets of this part of town, no longer struck him as odd. He patted the bag and adjusted the thin paper handles in his other hand, and he imagined the eye of the Puzzle had turned a bit to look at him through the opening at the top of the bag. He did not check to make sure. "I'll put it back on as soon as I get to the shop."

He nodded to himself, but somehow that failed to offer more than the slightest tinge of comfort.

The Puzzle no longer poked into his chest, but without its steady rhythm, the night around him somehow seemed darker and more eerie. There was no longer the glistening of the moonlight on the polished gold or the ever-present sense that there was someone there beside him. He could feel the Puzzle's weight in the bag in his left hand, yet even that small distance felt like halfway across the world after all he had gone so used to.

If he hadn't finally realized that someone might see how silly he looked, he actually would have smacked himself across the forehead.

He really needed to stop this kind of self-talk.

Yuugi tried as hard as he could to turn his thoughts to something else. He was getting fairly close to the shop—there was only a few minutes of walking left, and he would be safe and sound at home. He could sit in his room until it was time to go to bed and pig out on the candy he had tried not to gorge himself on in front of Anzu. He could watch a movie downstairs as long as he kept the volume down so as not to bother his mother or Jii-chan, and he could spend the rest of Halloween quiet and alone.

His lips twitched into the faintest hint of a smirk.

Even after all the years he had known her—even though he was sure she had changed a great deal since elementary school and there were things he would have to learn about her all over again—even Yuugi could not have guessed how she would handle a movie like Nightmare on Elm Street. He had heard of the movie before, though he had never seen it, simply out of the fact that he could never find a version with Japanese subtitles.

The version Anzu owned had subtitles, but Yuugi had a feeling neither he nor Honda-kun nor Jounouchi-kun had had the chance to read them.

Yuugi had tried as hard as he could to keep his eyes open for the first half hour. He had had to smack his hand over his mouth to keep back a scream once or twice and immediately glanced over to Anzu to see if she had noticed. But Anzu had seemed much more preoccupied watching Jounouchi-kun and Honda-kun, diving behind the couch at the twenty minute mark, hugging one another at forty, and too nauseated to even look at the bowl of candy by the time the credits rolled.

Yes, there were a lot of new things Yuugi had yet to learn about Anzu if that movie had made her do nothing more than jump.

He shook his head and put a hand to his temple once again. Maybe next time he went over there he could try and sneak a look at her video cabinet and see what other movies she kept in there. If he could honestly go all these years knowing someone and yet still not be able to accurately guess the kinds of movies she liked, maybe he really did need to work on his social skills.

He noticed himself drifting further off to the side of the road, further onto the sidewalk, closer to the buildings. Almost everything near this part of town was closed, likely for risk of being egged for not leaving candy out. He wondered if Jii-chan had remembered to either shut off the lights of the game shop or put their candy bowl on the front porch.

Yuugi swallowed, like there was a bad taste in his mouth, though he tasted nothing. He quite nearly felt a tugging somewhere deep within him, or coming from the bag he carried at his side. He shook his head again, back and forth, forcing away the panicking thoughts that began to consume him.

No. He had to stop thinking like that. He was fine. He was only a few minutes from home, and when he got there, he could go up to his room and eat candy and read comic books and go to sleep.

And tomorrow it would be November, and Halloween would be gone.

Clouds had partially shifted over the half-moon, the pale gray light making those clouds seem to glow of their own accord. There were almost no sounds carried on the air, except for the faint rushing of cars on streets he could not see and crickets chirping far away and the wind gently blowing the edges of his costume.

And footsteps.

Footsteps that did not match his own.

Yuugi spun on his heels without a second thought about it, and felt brick scraping his back as large hands slammed him against a building wall.

The little bit of logical, almost stupid thought that still managed to run through his mind consisted of wondering how it was that he was still surprised. Science wasn't his best subject, but he paid attention. Animals learn. Animals adapt. When something happens often enough, the animal adapts, and what was once new becomes familiar.

Humans were animals. So humans adapt, too. And yet, somehow, Yuugi could not even see fit to scold himself at the panic that raced through his system as the dark figure before him shoved him harder against the brick.

His pulse raced, pounding so hard and fast he thought his heart might burst from his chest and his blood all flow out. He thought the swirling thoughts, the feelings that racked him to the core, might force his brain from his head. That the blood rushing, pulse racing, and every bit of emotion that felt like knives digging into old, familiar wounds that had come so close to healing, might kill him then and there.

But it didn't. Yuugi tensed himself as the cold-tinged hands shoved him further until the brick nearly dug into his skin, and he did not look down when his hand let go the grip he had on the paper bag in his hand, and the sound of plastic-wrapped candy splattering on the sidewalk filled his ears.

Along with the sound of metal, chinking as it rolled away.

Still, Yuugi did not look.

He whimpered, half against his will, and one of the hands pressing against his shoulders gripped his throat.

"Shut it!"

Hissing voice. Quiet, but rough, like a dull blade grating against stone, fingernails on a chalkboard. The fingers felt like ice against the frail skin of his neck, squeezing, not tight enough to cut off air, but just enough to make him have to think if he wanted to breathe. In, out. In, out.

He did not try to focus on the face of the figure as the other hand began to rummage through the pockets of his coat. Grasping, searching for clinking metal. The shadow of the building fell over the form, and his sight went blurry, heavy, like an anvil was weighted against his head.

Tall. Big hands. Rough voice.

Yuugi had long learned it was useless to try and remember anything else about an attacker.

He wanted to scream. He wanted to cry out and shove the hands away from his jacket, as he heard the sound of coins brushing against one another, felt the hands gather them in and pull them away. It wasn't much money. Jii-chan could give him more if he needed it. Still, he wanted to scream.

But he did not scream. He did not scream when the figure stuffed the clinking coins into his own pocket and leaned down just enough to gather the bag with the candy remaining into his fingers. Yuugi could not see it. He listened. Listen. Plastic wrappers, paper, all snatched up rough and quick. But no metal. The figure did not bend over again to reach for a piece of rope that held a golden pyramid lying somewhere near on the concrete in the shadows.

Safe. The Puzzle was safe. He knew that should have brought him little comfort as he drew a forced breath, and yet somehow, it did.

The figure scoffed and squeezed again on Yuugi's throat as the candy shifted in the paper bag.

"This all you got, kid?" Yuugi couldn't tell if he was talking to him. The candy rustled again. The coins jingled in pant pockets, his own coat pockets empty. He swallowed, and that made breathing harder. The figure squeezed again. "P'etty pathetic, at least you could carry some more cash on ya …"

Yuugi gasped in, gasped out, and tried not to look in the eyes he knew were boring into him.

"I-I …"

"I said shut it!"

The hand around his throat released, and Yuugi did not have a second to take the deep breath his lungs screamed for before a fist slammed into the side of his face, skin and bone meeting skin and bone, and Yuugi felt his legs giving way beneath him.

If he could be grateful for one thing, it was that the oldest instinct in his system had remained even after going so long since his last beating. The instinct he had ingrained from the first, the instinct that curled his mind up somewhere dark and warm and safe, like an infant against a parent's chest, cradled, as feet in new tennis shoes drove into his stomach, his ribs, his left ankle, one into his head.

Quiet. Breathing. His own, or the figure's? Both, maybe. His own heartbeat. Yes, that was his own. No one else's. His own.

The feet stopped. Shoes shuffled on concrete before his face. He did not try to open his eyes.

Candy rustled in the paper bag, and paper crumpled as it was squeezed in unrelenting fingers. Coins jingled in pockets, a faint chuckle from the rough voice Yuugi knew he would never be able to name.

But no metal. No golden pyramid picked up from the ground, and dragged away.

The voice chuckled one more time, the kind of sound Yuugi heard a long time ago. A long time ago when kicks and punches came without protest, without thought of what might happen next, when he tried his best to make sure there was never anything with him to take.

Feet shuffled again, and he heard the footsteps step away, one, two, one, two, away down the street.

"Happy Halloween, kid."

Footsteps quieter. Quieter, then gone.

Yuugi winced and groaned and forced his eyes open.

He did not know what drove him to move. All the logic he had learned from every time he had been beaten before told him to stay still. Stay on the ground. Wait, make sure everything is safe. No broken bones. Nothing bleeding too badly. Then go home. Walk home, bandage the cuts, and pretend it never happened.

But Yuugi did not lie there quiet until he could assure it was safe. A force even he could not determine nor explain opened his eyes, blinking, not sure if the pain he felt was imagined or real. He lifted his hand without thought of checking how badly he had been hit. He slid his hand over the cold concrete of the sidewalk, not caring when his face scraped against it. He moved his hand without even thinking of where it was going.

Then he felt the cool, but almost warm smoothness of gold under his fingertips as his arm stretched out, and he knew.

He opened his eyes just enough to see the Puzzle beneath his hand begin to glow.

It was a feeling he should not have known well, but he knew nonetheless. It was a feeling that forced back any question of what had made him move on impulse to grasp the artifact in his hand, no matter what the hurt to his arm in the process. It was deep, ingrained, as if it had been there forever, and the glowing of the Puzzle succumbed to darkness which enveloped him all around.

Falling. He fell, down, fast, deep, his consciousness slipping, everything vague and uncertain about him. Forced back, in one push that sent him stumbling into oblivion.

But then the strange, familiar coldness that was not truly cold surrounded him in turn, like a large pair of hands that could cradle him in its palms. A pair of hands that took him gentle and secure in its grasp, and settled him into the safest corner of his own depths of mind.

And just before he let himself give in to the silence and the black, he could almost feel his own eyes—but not his eyes—glow red like blood, and his lips twitch up into a smirk.

Yuugi let the darkness take him, and the strange hiss of a voice that wasn't his filled his mind as if in the strange fuzzy state before sleep.

"Looks like someone wants to play a game …"

It had been a fairly good Halloween.

Granted, people seemed to be getting a lot less candy nowadays. The kids usually only had half a bag by the time he caught up to them at nine—those were the only ones he could get, the ones that went home later went in groups or with parents, and he wasn't going to risk that. Of course, he hadn't really expected to run into a kid coming home after ten, so that was a bonus.

Though that fact combined with the hair made him wonder if the kid really was as young as he looked.

But he had had candy. In a paper bag, but still, candy was candy, and he got a few hundred extra yen out of the deal, too. Maybe he could head out tomorrow and get some more candy with the yen got off that kid-who-didn't-look-like-a-kid. A few hundred yen might buy a bag, after Halloween when everything was on sale.

Keiji dug into the paper bag, pulled out a sucker, tossed its plastic wrapper behind him, and stuck it in his mouth.

Old candy. But still candy.

He shuffled down the street without much thought of where he was going, or much idea of how long he had been walking. There wouldn't be any more kids out this late—he had seen the clock, it was after eleven—but he didn't feel like going home. Maybe the movie theater was running one of their all-night horror movie marathons again. Maybe he could use the few hundred extra yen for that. Or just slip in through the back—security always got lax around Halloween.

Keiji shuffled down the street, one hand in his pocket, the other gripping the paper bag in his hand and the candy rustling inside, and his lips maneuvering a sucker around his mouth—cherry, he was hoping for blueberry—so as to appreciate the last of the flavor before it was gone. He flicked his eyes back and forth, at the clouds that covered up the moon, at the tall brick buildings to both sides of him, at the cars parked on the side of the street with eggs and toilet paper decorating them to be found by their owners sometime after four in the morning.

And at the clean piece of paper lying on top of the toilet paper and smashed eggs, as if it had been laid there not a minute before.

Keiji cocked an eyebrow and gave the sucker one last twirl with his tongue before spitting it to the sidewalk and snatching the paper from the dark blue convertible's hood.

Come and join the fun! Haunted House hosted at the Kame Game Shop. Open All Night. Free Admission from 10pm-12am.

The lettering had smudged ink as if from a cheap old printer, and the whole ad reeked of ten-year-olds messing around on a computer program they didn't know how to use to print out ads with red letters that dripped blood and a stock image of a creepy old house under the words.

The ad said nothing else. Just the place and the time.

And it was free.

Keiji shook the remaining egg from the back of the paper, stepped onto the sidewalk, and shrugged more with one shoulder as the other still weighed itself down with the candy bag.

Well, it wasn't like he had anything better to do.

He dropped the paper on the ground sometime on his way down the street. He didn't know where he dropped it, nor did he really care. He knew where the old game shop was. He had gone there a few times when he was a kid, picked up cards or a new board game. The one the old man owned. He wondered if the old man was in on the haunted house, or if some kids had hijacked his place and used it while he was out.

Keiji walked around corners with other egged cars and along streets with college kids stumbling back from their parties or strutting away to one that started late. Cheesy costumes. He counted three fairy princesses in the ten minutes it took him to round corners and glance at street signs until he found the game shop owned by the old man, the "GAME" sign over the door lit up by light bulbs that needed changing, and all the lights inside flicked off.

He wondered if maybe the kids who made the ad were playing some joke. Haunted house, his foot! He could make his apartment door look scarier. No one had even bothered to decorate it.

But if he peered in close and walked further toward the shop, he could spot a cheesy, homemade sign that matched the cheesy, homemade ad pinned to the glass with masking tape.

Haunted House. Please come in!

Yeah. Ten-year-olds.

But Keiji still had nothing better to do, and if he went home now his dad might still be up, and he wouldn't like him coming in this late. Better just pass the time until his dad was asleep, then go home, and no one would ever know how long he was out. He could go find a party, something more interesting, something with lights and dancing and food.

He smirked and shook his head. This wouldn't take long. And maybe he could scare some little kids while he was at it.

He dropped the paper bag of candy into the closest bushes he could find and kicked it inside so he couldn't see it no matter how close he looked. He scanned the shop for any sign of kids hiding behind the windows, peeking out at him, waiting to jump out with their grocery-story masks and child-safe face paint and clothes they threw together from discarded parts of their parents' wardrobe.

But there were no kids. Just dark windows. And so Keiji shrugged in the way he might have shrugged at anything stupid, and he pulled the handle to open the glass door.

It was dark inside, too. No lights. But the moonlight still shone in, and he could see the outline of the front counter and the display of old games he had seen years ago. It hadn't changed. The door still jingled when he opened it and when it fell closed behind him, and he was still left in a strange, not quite eerie silence, standing there in the shopfront.

No decorations. No kids. This was looking more and more like some stupid prank.

As long as they didn't call the cops on him—and what would they say, he broke in? He could just find that ad—there was very little a stupid prank could do to scare him away.

He was not going to be scared away by a group of snotty brats.

He huffed and started on his way to look around. This was a haunted house, wasn't it, or at least it was supposed to be? So he could look around. And he would.

And he did.

It was dark everywhere else, too, as he started his little venture. There was a door in the back of the shopfront leading to the rest of the house—so this was a real house, and here he thought the rest of the place was just storage—and from there he went on as he pleased. He walked in what looked like a living room—but it was hard to tell with the lack of light, and no matter how he tried he couldn't find the switch.

But he did find stairs. The best stuff at haunted houses was always on the second floor. So the stairs he climbed.

He ran up, his steps quiet even though he practically shouted at himself to make noise and freak out whoever was waiting for him upstairs. The steps didn't creak, though his feet scraped the floor and squeaked with every move. He only then realized he was still wearing his shoes, but he didn't take them off. He hadn't seen a genkan—maybe there was one, but if there had been, he couldn't see it—so there had been no place to take off his shoes anyway. He left them on, and he crept down the hallway that appeared at the top of the stairs.

Dark. Almost totally dark, fading into total shadows out at the end.

But first, a door on the left.

A door, with the third cheesy sign he had seen that night.

Room of Terror.

This sign was different. Still cheesy, of course, but different. The others had always been printed, in text he could have found in five seconds in a list of computer fonts. But this one wasn't made by a program. This paper wasn't the standard white copy-paper he found in the printers at school and took home to use as scratch. This paper was worn and yellowed and old, and the words were written by hand, in black ink that dripped and which he could only just see in the dark of the hall.

Or maybe it was red …

The door was simple. Nothing special. Nothing amiss except the sign. Keiji shook his head again. So a couple of kids took a piece of paper, tore its edges, threw it in the oven, and painted words on it with black ink. So a bunch of kids who had up until now used computer programs and printed and made cheesy signs finally decided to get smart with their last trick of the night.

A sign. One sign. A sign couldn't hurt him. There was nothing scary about a sign.

He chuckled, grabbed the doorknob, and threw open the door.

"Welcome … Keiji-san …"

Keiji had seen horror movies. He watched all the classics with the guys from school, and they all screamed like little girls while he just sat there taking people getting their guts ripped out like it was kids eating pancakes. He never jolted or screamed, and he could swear on his life he had heard every variation of the scary, creepy voice anyone had to give.

But this voice didn't fit the bill. This voice was kilometers from the rest.

This was not a horror movie voice.

Darkness. Not just a dark room, a black room, a black room with no light, not even from the windows, not peeking out from little slits that someone had forgotten to cover. All black. All nothing. Like falling into space with no stars.

The door creaked a high-pitched squeal and slammed itself into his back to send him flying forward and skidding across carpet that burned his face like knives. He scrambled forward, his bare hands scraping against the carpet as he was sure his face already had, but he pushed up anyway. Off the ground. Fight.

But Keiji did not want to fight. He couldn't fight. He spun his head back and forth, left and right. Darkness. Darkness.

And then the faintness of a glow.

The light, the tiny light that taunted him like a rope falling out as he hung over the edge of a cliff but never quite reached him, flicked around the darkness and illuminated it. Nothing. Nothing. He saw shadows glowing and things that looked like walls but couldn't be walls. No, they had to be walls. This was just a trick. It had to be a trick. What else could it be?

Keiji leapt to his feet, and his knees buckled and trembled under his weight as if they had a million times the load to carry, and he raced forward and backward and side to side, throwing his head back and forth. Follow the light. Find the edges. This is just a trick. It's a shop. It's a house. It's a room.

No walls. No ceiling. Just dark. Was the floor still there?

He slammed himself forward when the light flicked before his eyes, swirling in a circle, taunting him, laughing, the light was laughing and it wouldn't stop. Someone else was laughing, behind him, but there was no one there.

And suddenly, there was.

"Welcome to the game."

The voice. It was that kid, it had to be that kid, it sounded like that kid, but it wasn't that kid!

Keiji spun himself in circles, and thought he saw something to his right. The light was there, the little light, and he raced toward it. A chuckle to his left, and he raced there. Always quiet chuckles. They came from everywhere now. They swirled around him, never laughing, never cackling like he thought, like he almost wanted, but always that quiet chuckle like this was a stupid kid's board game.

And the voice was winning.

Get a hold of yourself. This isn't real. It can't be real. It's just that stupid kid who was out late and had that weird hair and had candy when no one else did.

It's just that stupid kid trying to play a joke.

A chuckle again. Keiji spun.

And this time, the nothing had gone. And something had come to replace it.

It was still dark. It was still black, and yet somehow, the little light flicked itself back and forth so fast he could hardly tell where it stopped each time. There was something there. Shapes. Shapes blurry like his eyes had gone bad, but he had perfect vision and his eyes were still seeing blurs.

Keiji ran forward, into the something in the light, and in an instant, he jolted back and slapped his hand over his mouth to stop a scream.

A head. It was a head. Just a head, cut off at the neck, still bloody and fresh, hanging in the air! Nothing below it, nothing above it, eyes staring into him, dead eyes, but eyes that could see. The eyes could see him, the eyes were looking at him. Keiji moved back, back.

He jolted again, pulse hard and racing and stinging within him, when a point stung his leg, and he turned again, and there were knives were there were never knives before. Knives on the floor—there was a floor, there had to be!—knives there, when he had been there not ten seconds before, in that same spot. Knives with blood gleaming up, the smell of blood and flesh and rot in the air, the knives that had cut off the head, knives that would cut his head off, too.

Keiji turned and spun and everywhere the nothing had become something. Empty space was spider webs and spiders that leapt at him, big spiders, black ones, scrambling for his face. He turned again and there were skeletons, skeletons holding the head, and the skeletons were laughing.

Laughing. They were laughing at him. Laughing and trembling with their laughter and holding the head and the head was laughing, too!

And the voice still there, all around him. From the floor now. There was no floor. No more. Gone.

The voice that said things, things he could not make out, but never stopped speaking.

Keiji stumbled back and back and found himself falling into the oblivion below. Dark. Nothing. Horrid shrieks and laughter above him, below him, cackling, terrible cackling, never letting go. Nothing to catch him. Nothing to hold him up. Only darkness. Only oblivion. Only abyss. And into it he fell.

The last thing that echoed in his mind above his own screams was the faintest chuckle and the smooth voice lined with ice and needles whispering into his head.

"Happy Halloween, Keiji-san …"

The first thing he was actually, definitely aware of was Jii-chan opening the door.

He supposed he must have been sitting on the ground for a while, for his backside was sore and he was just now working himself out of a daze. How long, exactly, he doubted he could figure out even if he dared to look at the clock. All he knew was the moon was shining overhead through the window of his bedroom, and he was sitting on the ground with a sore butt.

And Jii-chan was walking through the door with his hands on his hips, as if he had decided to role-play Yuugi's mother as a costume.

"Yuugi!" Jii-chan's voice sounded a mixture of frustration and the vaguest sense of relief. "What are you doing? When did you get home?"

Jii-chan turned his head back and forth, and Yuugi's mouth fell open like a doll's. Limp. Opening and closing as if it was attached to puppet strings.

"Um … I …"

"Well, there are all my Halloween decorations!"

Jii-chan stepped further into the room as if the room had just turned out to be the home of his missing collection of silver and gold. Yuugi, for the first time, actually saw fit to turn his head back and forth and see that his room had been added to. Namely with everything that should have been in the game shop this time of year, or the rest of the year stuffed in the back of one of the storage closets to prevent anyone accidentally running into them and scaring themselves half to death.

It took nearly half a minute for Jii-chan to lower his eyebrows and quirk his head at Yuugi still sitting on the ground, blinking, staring without fully being able to comprehend what his eyes picked up. "Why do you have them all in your room?"

Yuugi looked to his left, and he looked to his right, and he looked at his grandfather, crossing his arms over his chest in a manner that used to intimidate him when he was younger.

"I … I'm not sure, Jii-chan."

The words hung in the air, and no matter how long they stayed there, they never sounded any more convincing.

Jii-chan sighed one of those sighs he gave when there was really no other choice for him but to accept the strangeness. Yuugi knew he should just be thankful that it wasn't his mother who had come up to find him. Jii-chan shook his head. "Well, bring them back down. I need your help putting them back in storage."

Yuugi flicked his eyes again to the decorations that somehow looked more and more foreign—and wanted to smack himself across the face at the idea that fake spiderwebs, plastic severed heads with ketchup smeared over them, rubber knives, skeletons, and even the old fog machine had ever seemed like they belonged here. He looked back to Jii-chan, still shaking his head at the mess cluttering everything in sight, and all Yuugi could do was nod.

However much Yuugi expected Jii-chan to sigh that heavy sigh again, he didn't. He shook his head once more, as if he was actually still the parent of a young child, or perhaps a parent who had been with children so long ago but had almost forgotten how odd they actually were.

Then Jii-chan turned on his feet and walked out of the room, pulling the door closed a little too fast behind him.

Yuugi jolted when the door vibrating against the walls seemed to make the entire bedroom shake to its bones. Something thudded, to his side and behind him, and he turned just in time to see the two small doors of his closet trembling as if holding up against some immense weight.

He could only too easily imagine a small child screaming somewhere off in the distance, screaming of a monster or a ghoul, when the closet doors finally fell open against the force.

And the bulky body of an older teenage boy came tumbling out of the closet.

Every bit of logic in Yuugi's mind told him to shout or yell or run away from the form that now slumped against the floor in a position he hardly thought was comfortable. Instinct told him to assume he had ended up with a corpse stashed in his closet. But Yuugi had long lost any traditional sense of instinct for situations like this, and he merely leaned in just a little closer to hear the faint sounds of breathing coming from the still unconscious form.

Yuugi squinted his eyes and stared at the body, and only just registered the familiarity of it when his eyes found their way to settle on the Puzzle that hung around his neck.

Gold gleaming, as it always did, shimmering in the moonlight. Glinting, as if there was something very funny at which it wanted so terribly to laugh.

"Yuugi! Come on, now!"

Yuugi sighed a sigh almost like the sigh Jii-chan had given not a minute before. He closed his eyes and looked again at the spot on the floor where the body of the older boy twitched, and he emitted what sounded like a groan. He had to be heavy, at least as tall as Honda-kun and with more extra weight on him. And last time Yuugi checked, he didn't have much talent with lifting weights at school, not even to think of carrying unconscious bodies down the stairs and through the game shop without letting Jii-chan or his mother hear.

The older boy groaned again, a little louder this time, and Yuugi let out another breath, this one longer and heavier and what might have sounded angry had anyone else made it.

He slipped the hand with the least healing scrapes to rest on the Puzzle that weighed down against his stomach, and without thinking he rubbed that hand back and forth, much like a overly passive parent of a child would who had just snuck into the cookie jar and stolen twenty.

"Next time, if you have to scare someone out of their wits," Yuugi started, quieting his voice as the boy on the ground twitched and he tightened his grip on the artifact around his neck. "Don't do it on Halloween."

He knew he couldn't be sure, but he almost thought he could hear a faint chuckle in the back of his head, and get the sense of someone nodding and smirking somewhere that could not be seen.