Yu-Gi-Oh! (c) Kazuki Takahashi
This is the result of a major rewrite. I feel as though I improved dramatically on the first version.
It was nearly twilight, and little Yugi traipsed through the forest. His heart was joyous and free, and his mind was filled to the brim with pleasant imaginations. He was an explorer discovering new lands. He followed winding animal trails, skipping over the foliage with the agility of a deer.
His pack was stocked with provisions. The night would be pleasant and warm. The glorious weekend had just begun. He could stay out here for days, if he had the mind to. It was a romantic thought, but he was already beginning to miss his parents.
That was the only problem with the woods. The large expanse of dense trees and plants was beautiful, exciting, peaceful… but it was also lonely. It might not have been so bad if the wild aborigines didn't flee when he approached. Yes, he was a human, but he wasn't going to harm the little fox and her cubs; he wasn't going to crush the swallow's brood of chicks. It was prejudice; that was what it was. It was discrimination against his species.
Almost as soon as the thought ran through his mind, a little bushy-tailed fox cub poked its head curiously out of its nest. Yugi crouched down, moving slowly with great restraint. He longed to cuddle the little ball of fur to his stomach and give it love and food, but it would fear his good intentions if he rushed in any way.
The fox stretched out his nose and sniffed Yugi's knees. Yugi almost trembled with anticipation. The creature seemed just about to leap into Yugi's lap, but it reconsidered and dashed back into its nest in the bushes. Yugi sighed. Absolute discrimination.
He stood up against and brushed the leaves off his pants. The encounter with the fox had dampened his spirits a bit, so he decided that he would just travel to the lake and then head back home. The lake was his favorite spot in the entire forest, because it seemed to have a strange, melancholy beauty that filled his soul with magic.
He was about to set off again when the bushes stirred once more. Perhaps the cub, in an astonishing leap of logic, had decided to reconsider his biases and give Yugi another chance. Or perhaps the cub's mother had decided to take a chunk out of Yugi's leg for interfering with her children.
But the creature that emerged from the bushes was neither fox cub nor fox mother. Instead, it was a young, dirt covered boy. He could have been Yugi's long lost brother—oh, that was a very romantic idea—because he looked so much like Yugi. His eyes were just like Yugi's, his hair was just like Yugi's, even his clothes were just like Yugi's. There were a few subtle differences, but they were hardly noticeable. "Hi!" Yugi said cheerfully. His voice seemed to echo loudly in the serene quiet of the woods.
The boy recoiled. He seemed as frightened of Yugi as the little fox cub had been. Yugi frowned. Was he really so intimidating to these forest people? "Do you want to have dinner with me?" Yugi offered. The boy opened his mouth as if he was going to reply, but all that emerged was cooing noises, as if his words had come straight from a pigeon's beak.
Yugi, young and innocent, assumed that this was just an elaborate game of make-believe. The boy was imitating a pigeon, and in Yugi's estimation he was doing a spectacular job of it. He wasn't hopping quite as much as he should have, but his pigeon sounds were beyond compare.
Yugi opened up his pack and handed the boy a loaf of bread, since it was so conducive to a pigeon imitation. The boy tasted it with careful hesitation, and then he began shoving it into his mouth with gleeful gusto. This wasn't a pigeon's way of eating, Yugi realized. Maybe the boy had grown tired of being a bird. Yugi took this opportunity to try and learn more about him.
"I'm Yugi," Yugi declared. "What's your name?" The boy stared at him, eating but not answering. Was he still playing his little game? "Time out, for a minute," Yugi said. "What's your name?"
The boy's eyes glazed over with confusion. Yugi's brain began to supply a number of creative explanations. Maybe the boy was from a village beyond the woods, where they didn't speak English. Maybe, even, he was from a village within the woods. How exciting!
Yugi pointed to his chest. "Yugi," he said. He pointed to the boy. "What's your name?"
The boy swallowed the last slice of bread—he had eaten the entire loaf in minutes—and he seemed to understand. He must have been very intelligent to get Yugi's meaning so quickly. He uttered something that sounded like a sneeze merged with a cough. Yugi gaped at the difficulty of the pronunciation.
"Uh… A-tem?" Yugi repeated. That was the closest that his thick English tongue could get. "Atem?"
The boy seemed to find this mutilation of his name satisfactory, so he nodded. "Yugi," Atem repeated. His voice seemed to fade back into a pigeon's coo when he enunciated the long U, but the word was still understandable.
"Nice to meet you," Yugi continued.
"Nigh to me chew," Atem replied. Yugi almost laughed, but he thought that it would be offensive. Atem kept watching Yugi carefully and warily, as if Yugi was about to strangle him. He had a compulsive habit of rubbing the middle of his forehead, leaving streaks of red, irritated skin and brown dirt across his brow. Finally, the tension became too much for him. He inclined his head in a short bow of gratitude and then took off into the woods without a look back.
Yugi closed up his pack, slightly disappointed at Atem's actions. What was so frightening, he wondered, about a little Kitinese boy? Maybe if he came back again, Atem wouldn't be so scared of him.
Yugi's next visit to the woods was nearly three months later. He hadn't intended to wait so long, but he had gotten so caught up with his life that he had almost forgotten entirely about the forest boy.
He had taken along a large offering of food—more bread, a few handfuls of raisins, and the cookies he had managed to pilfer from the kitchen. He still couldn't imagine how he and Atem would be able to communicate, but as long as he could get across the concept of hide-and-seek, it would all be just as well.
Taking the paths he had discovered years ago, he hiked back to the bushes where the fox cub resided. Perhaps Atem frequented that spot. If not, it would always be good fun to head to the magical lake again. He sat with his legs crossed in the leaves and yelled, "Atem!" And then he waited patiently to see if anything would happen.
He was just about to give up and move on when a finger delicately tapped him on the shoulder. Yugi spun around and came face to face with Atem, whose forehead was still heavily caked with grime. "Hello, Yugi," Atem said. "It's nice to see you again. You've brought more food, haven't you?"
Yugi's mouth fell open. Three months ago, Atem couldn't speak a word of English. Now he was fluent, his pronunciation flawless! Atem looked at him amusedly. "Please don't be shocked. Yours is not the first language I've learned," he explained.
"I don't think anybody's learned English that fast," Yugi exclaimed.
Atem shrugged. "It's a gift," he said shortly. He eyed the pack, and he seemed to be fighting hard to keep his drool in check. Yugi handed the food to him, and he pounced on it, tearing into the familiar bread first.
As Atem gorged himself, Yugi brimmed with curiosity. It was such a nice surprise to think that his many questions could now be answered. "Why did you run away from me last time?" he began. It was the start of a long questionnaire.
Atem once again brushed a dirty hand over his forehead. "I admit that I was a bit afraid of you last time," he said.
"Why? I'm not scary," Yugi said defensively.
"You're different," Atem replied. This statement, albeit short, seemed very profound to Yugi, so he decided to move onto the next question.
"So where do you live?" Yugi asked.
"In the forest," Atem answered. Yugi used his eyes to urge him on. "I don't stay in one place very often. I need to travel to find food, or the animals become wary of me."
Yugi cocked his head. "Don't you have parents to feed you?" Atem finished off the last of the bread and looked away. "Oh… I'm sorry," Yugi said sadly. "Are you all alone out here?"
"The animals keep me company, until they realize that I'm not like them," Atem said. His own answer seemed to worry him. He started on the raisins quickly, as though he was afraid they would be taken away soon.
And very slowly, the pieces were coming together in Yugi's mind. Atem lived in the forest with no home to speak of; he talked about the animals as if they were close acquaintances; he was obviously multi-lingual; he had crawled, dirt-covered, out of a fox's nest; and he had managed to wear Yugi's exact outfit two separate times. Yugi's eyes widened, and Atem stuffed the last of the cookies and raisins in his pockets. "Hey," Yugi said slowly. Atem began backing away. "You're… you're a shapeshifter!"
"Th-thank you very much for the meal. I must be going now," Atem stammered. He was about to turn and run off again, and Yugi panicked. He couldn't lose such an opportunity. He had just met a shapeshifter, face-to-face!
"Wait!" Yugi yelled. "Come on, I'm not gonna tell anybody about you, I promise."
Atem froze. "You promise?" he repeated. Yugi nodded emphatically. "And what exactly do you want in exchange?"
Yugi frowned. "I… Well, I guess just to be friends with you."
"… Friends?" Atem said quietly. He seemed surprised to hear that word in reference to him. He stared at Yugi skeptically, as though he was playing some kind of cruel joke. "Do you mean… that you would come to see me often? With food?"
"Sure. Of course," Yugi replied cheerfully. "Whenever my parents let me."
That didn't sound quite so bad. "Alright," Atem said hesitantly. "Then I guess that we're friends."