disclaimer: Emerald Twin Blade does not own Yu-Gi-Oh! GX or any of the characters, settings, monsters, etc. that appear in this fanfic that are from the show. She owns absolutely NOTHING that appears in this fic, unfortunately.

summary: With Johan back in Europe, Judai's fallen into a depression. He's been skipping classes more than usual, completely avoiding his friends, and even avoiding breakfast, lunch, and dinner! That's definitely a sign that something's more than wrong! What happens when his desire to be with his best friend becomes so strong that he just can't handle anything anymore? Can't stand being away from him...

Emerald's News & Nonsense:

... Yeah, I did it again. XD!

I got out of my Shugo Chara! phase about... 2 days after I updated the fic. I've been stuck on Yu-Gi-Oh! GX for about two months now, so I don't think this obsession is gonna go away as easily as the last one did. X3!

Okay, to those of you who don't know me, I'm Emerald Twin Blade! Although new as I am to writing Yu-Gi-Oh! GX fanfics, I've been writing for a very, very long time. Haha, okay... Anyway, I'm obsessed with Spiritshipping, and while I was watching an AMV, I got the idea for this fic! I absolutely loved the idea, so here I am! Writing it out!

This was originally going to be a One-Shot, but it got to seven pages and I realized "Okay, this is not suitable for a One-Shot from me," so... yeah. It's a chapter fic now. XD!

Lots of hints toward Spiritshipping in this chapter... Johan won't actually appear for a while, though. I know, I know, that's bad, but no worries! It's mostly from Judai's point of view, y'know? And sorry in advance for the many bad things that will befall our favorite Slifer Slacker. Eh heh...

Enjoy? XD

Comatose

Yu-Gi-Oh! GX

: Fragment No.01 : Mistakes

The room was dim… The curtains were drawn closed over the windows, closing out all that could disturb the silence of this lonely sanctuary. The room seemed next-to abandoned, save for a few items scattered on the desk and shelves. Some crumpled-up pieces of paper laid ignored and forgotten on the carpet floor by the trash can; several booster pack wrappers were piled up inside of it, leaving no room for anything else to fit inside. Dirty clothing had been carelessly tossed over the floor and the only things that showed any sign that someone was still living there were the neat stack of Duel Monsters cards sitting at the desk's corner and the fact that there was a lump underneath the sheets covering the bed of the lower bunk. This lump was obviously a person, seeing as it steadily rose and fell, breathing easily and peacefully.

Somehow, the curtains shifted slightly, moving in opposite directions for a split second before settling again, motionless. A thin ray of sunlight streamed into the dark room, landing itself directly at the topmost part of that lump. A low groan echoed through the quiet room before the body beneath the covers seemed to turn over, still completely concealed by the sheets.

Another moment later, the curtains just seemed to fly open, forcing the morning's sun to shine over the entire room, illuminating all of the untidiness it held.

"Aaagh!" came a harsh growl from the bed, its source effectively becoming annoyed and shoving off the covers to sit up.

Dull chocolate brown eyes were narrowed in irritation at the first thing they saw: a floating ball of shaggy coffee-colored fur with big, dark eyes and feathery white wings on its back. His own messy brown hair was very much askew, the orange mop atop his head the messiest with several bright strands of hair spiking out in random directions. Apparently, he hadn't been wearing his usual pajamas and had just gone to sleep in his boxers. His skinny right arm lifted itself, causing the strange, winged creature to become cautious and careful.

"Winged," the one-and-only Slifer Red student began, his eyes closed in annoyance and his eyebrow twitching before he quickly grabbed at the Duel Monster spirit, effortlessly snatching up a handful of bushy brown fur and yanking it into his arms in what could be compared to a headlock, "Kuriboh!!"

"Kurii!! Kuri, kuri!!" it cried, struggling frantically to get away from him by flapping its mini-wings to throw off his arms grasp.

Due to having been in this particular situation more than once this week, Yuki Judai had no problem keeping a firm hold on what was supposed to be a completely see-through ghost. The power of the Duel Monster that'd fused with his soul, however, had given him some very extraordinary abilities. This was obviously one of them.

The 18-year-old switched his hand's grip from its back to its head, holding it at eye-level so it could see what it had done. Having removed his left arm from it, he put his hand to its cheek and lightly tugged at it, making it let out an uncomfortable whine.

"And just why did you wake me up? It's not like there's anything to do…" he mumbled, letting Winged Kuriboh go after taking a good, long, deep breath, "Gaah… I haven't really been feeling up to doing anything lately, have I? Sorry…"

The creature shook itself, making its clumps of fur go back into its usual messy-but-tidy form. It then made a worried look at him before floating up close to his face and rubbing against his cheek. At least this motion was enough to make the unordinary teenager grin slightly.

"Kuri, kuri…"

"Haa… I guess you're right. Everybody's probably wondering if I've died or something." He managed to let out a weak laugh before, turning his softened eyes from the Duel Monster spirit to the now-clearly visible window that allowed him a look to the outside.

He hadn't been feeling well for the past several days… It was now Thursday, and he'd started feeling really depressed since Sunday afternoon. The most unusual thing about this was that he hadn't left his room since Sunday night for dinner. He didn't feel like talking so much, didn't have the energy to do a lot of things, and didn't even have much of an appetite! And when Yuki Judai doesn't want food, you just know that something is wrong!

The only thing that anybody could really come up with to cause the teen to skip so many classes, and even avoid his friends, was the fact of what had happened last Saturday. It'd been the day that all of the transfer students were sent back home on the big boat that'd brought them all there to Duel Academia. Among the student passengers were O'Brien Austin, Cook Jim, and the most important to Judai of the three: Anderson Johan.

Having lost his absolute best friend, even closer to him than Marufuji Sho, it was almost no surprise that he'd need a few days to adjust to not having the slightly older boy around. At first, it was going alright. The rest of Saturday night had gone fine, with almost no mention of the blue-haired teen. However, it was Sunday morning that things started to sink in for Judai.

Having gone off to the Slifer cafeteria to have some breakfast with Sho and Tyranno Kenzan, they'd been talking about the usual kind of stuff… food, duels, food, things that have been going on around the school, and food. However, when they'd reached the subject of another Tag Duel tournament being held at Duel Academia, the brunette had immediately piped up that he'd ask Johan to be his partner. It'd been Kenzan who burst his friend's bubble by reminding him that Johan was already gone. That had been when it began.

The rest of Sunday, Judai only seemed to be half-listening to everything that people were telling him about, and even during duels, though he continued his famed consecutive wins, he just didn't seem to be enjoying them as much as he had before. Once he'd retired to his dorm for the night, nobody had seen him since, though they'd all tried to go visit him, albeit unsuccessfully.

Now, here we are on a Thursday, and Judai is just now thinking that he should probably go out-and-about again. It's not that he's finally gotten over the fact that Johan is gone, maybe for good… No, no, no; don't get me wrong. He didn't seem to even realize that it was his best friend's absence that was affecting him so much and putting him in a gigantic state of depression.

"Kuri?" the cute Duel Monster spirit squeaked, looking up at the teen with its big, curious eyes.

This earned another weak chuckle before he finally nodded and swung his legs over to the side of the bed, "Naa… I'll be alright. Let's go see everybody else, then, huh?"

With that said, Winged Kuriboh fluttered around excitedly, having convinced its human partner to leave the sorrowful darkness of the lonely Slifer Red dorm. The boy got up from bed, but upon taking a step forward, he just fell to the floor.

THUD! He winced, thankfully having pulled his arms in front of his face so as to cushion his head from the fall. The Duel Monster quickly darted to his side, seeming to be asking him about what had just happened. All Judai could do was grin sheepishly as his stomach growled in response.

"I guess our first trip out will be to the cafeteria… but I don't really feel like eating."

The creature sighed, calming down. They had a lot of work to do before Judai could get back to being his old self again, and teaching him the wonders of eating food seemed to be the first step in front of them.

--Yu-Gi-Oh! GX – Comatose--

"Asuka! H-hey, don't leave me behind like this!!" called a slightly high-pitched voice.

The Obelisk Blue student stopped in her tracks, turning on her heel so she could face the hallway she had just walked down from. Her blue arm-socked arms came up a bit so that her hands came to rest on his hips. Leaning her weight on one leg, the left side of her hip stuck out a bit in the common "girlie" stance.

"Hurry up, Sho! You were the one who said you wanted to help out with the duties Manjoume and I are given." The blonde-haired girl reminded, a grin of amusement on her face.

The shorter Obelisk Blue boy scurried slowly up to her, carrying several books and papers stacked upward at least three feet high in his arms. A pout had formed on his face as he stopped in front of her, turning to stand at an angle so that he could turn his head to look straight at her. His small glasses flashed a bit from the reflection of the sun's light through the wall-windows to their side.

"Come on! This is heavy; give me a break! Can't you at least walk a little bit slower?" he asked, blowing at his sea green bangs in an attempt to get them out of his gray eyes. Apparently, his glasses weren't big enough to act as a shield against them.

Tenjoin Asuka sighed, nodding reluctantly before turning back around and beginning to walk again, her blue boot-heels clip-clopping on the tile floor and echoing down the hall. Marufuji Sho did his best to walk forward after her, stretching his neck off to the side in an attempt to see where she was and where he was going.

"So… have you had any word yet?" she asked in a softer tone than she'd been speaking with a few seconds ago.

It didn't take a genius to figure out who she was talking about, but Sho suddenly gained a saddened look to his expression, "No…"

"What?!" Asuka near-shouted, stopping abruptly and almost having the shorter boy run into her, "What do you mean "no?" He hasn't been seen for days, and even you, his best friend, haven't seen him since Sunday night?"

The light-haired boy lowered his gaze to the ground; some friend he'd come out to be, huh? He wasn't even sure if his supposed-best friend was alive right now.

"Well… I've tried to go talk to him, but his door's always locked… and he doesn't open the door, or even answer when I call to him."

The blonde's dumbfounded look changed to one of sympathy as she too averted her eyes downward, "I guess… he's taking Johan's departure really hard."

Hearing Asuka say this was enough to hit a nerve in Sho's heart; the young Marufuji boy bit his lip, beginning to walk again but at a faster pace than he had been earlier when he'd been trying to keep up with the other girl. He didn't want to hear it… didn't want to hear anything that had to do with Judai coming down with such a horrible condition because someone close to him left.

'I was Judai's best friend first… Why wasn't he like this when we got separated in that Dark World? If it would've been me who was left behind back then instead of Johan, I'll bet he wouldn't have gone back for me the way he did for him…' he thought pessimistically, completely ignoring Asuka and heading off toward the storage room at the end of the corridor.

The girl frowned as she jogged ahead of him to the storage room, opening the heavy metal door with a bit of difficulty, but managing to get it open enough for the smaller student to walk in comfortably. Letting go of the door, she dashed inside as it began to creak its way closed again.

"Manjoume-kun!" she blinked, mildly surprised where she stood beside Sho, who had finally put all the books and papers down on a random titanium table that stood off to the side of the room.

Standing before her, sorting through some folders and papers in a box, was the black-haired, arrogant rich boy who had made a name for himself as "Manjoume-Sanda," Manjoume Jun. His steel gray eyes looked up from the papers upon being addressed, an eyebrow being raised in the girl's direction.

"Can I help you?"

Asuka nodded, taking a few steps forward so that she stood directly on the opposite side of the table from him, "Samejima-kocho asked for me to get you to take that table over there to the Obelisk lunch room. One of the more… muscular students nearly got into a fight yesterday and broke one of the tables in half."

Manjoume's eye twitched, but he closed his eyes and slipped the folder he'd been looking at back into the box before getting up from his chair and walking over to the titanium table. All he did was stare at it for a moment before noticing the stack Sho had put on it earlier. He glared at the smaller boy, earning a frightened whimper and a meek "wh-what?" from him. Again, his eye twitched in irritation before he shouted.

"GET THE DAMN BOOKS OFF!!"

In the middle of his yell, Sho had already grabbed a hold of the stack again, quicker than he had intended, and as he pulled them back off the table and into his arms, he lost his balance and wound up dropping the books and papers to the floor. For a few moments, paper rained down in the air until they landed, but it was when one of them landed on Sho face that he took the paper and stared at it.

"Huh? What's this?"

Asuka approached him, leaning over a bit to get a glance at the page. It was filled with names of the students of the academy and types of shots and checkmarks by their names. She smiled, taking the paper for a better look.

"Oh, this is just from last Friday. Remember? We were all required to get certain shots by Ayukawa-sensei and a few other nurses that'd been called in for the event."

"Oh, yeah! I remember now!" he said with a smile, chuckling quietly, "When it was Judai's turn to get a shot, Johan had to hold onto him so that he wouldn't move… but they'd made a mistake and thought he was Yumi Janai, so they accidentally gave him insulin for type 1 diabetes. They said that nothing bad should happen to him, though, since it was a mistake."

Asuka made a confused look, "Are… you sure? When they do that kind of thing, I don't think they just leave it alone like that…"

"That's what they said… but I'm not an expert with medical stuff."

As they were about to get even more into the subject of the conversation, they heard a loud grunt from the third person in the room. They turned to look, watching as Manjoume tried to pick up the titanium table. All they did was blink, but it was Asuka who suggested that he just use the flatbed in the corner.

The black-haired teen turned and saw the flatbed she'd been talking about, walking over to it and pushing it next to the table. He then walked to the opposite side and shoved it on its side with all of his strength. It landed on the equally-metal flatbed with a loud clang that echoed through the room. With it lying on its side, he grumbled a barely audible "thanks" to the girl as he pushed the flatbed forward, his ears swearing to bleed at the sound of the squeaking wheels.

"I'll be back in a while…"

--Yu-Gi-Oh! GX – Comatose--

Finally outside again, all of the students who happened to walk passed the Slifer Red student waved and greeted him warmly with a "welcome back!" or with a "you've been gone so long! Let's duel!" All he did was do his best to seem like nothing was wrong, smiling and laughing with everybody. He would good-naturedly turn down the Duels in favor of going out to find his other friends.

"Hey, Sorano! Have you seen Sho or Asuka?" Judai called to an Obelisk student a few yards away.

"Sho? Asuka? I think they're in the storage room on Obelisk's 2nd floor." Came a reply.

The brunette let a true smile curl on his lips as he nodded his thanks and started running off again. Yanking open the glass door to the Obelisk dorms, he rushed for the stairs, jumping up two at a time.

He just had to make sure his friends weren't worried about him… By not coming out of his room for several days, he wondered what they thought of him by now, or what they even thought was wrong with him in the first place.

Several thoughts flew through his mind as he continued running, automatically rounding a corner and running off toward the storage room that Sorano Taigo had told him to look in. Just as he was about to reach it, the metal door slammed open against the wall and a huge, rectangular table on a flatbed got in his way. His eyes went wide for a moment as a gasp escaped his throat; he couldn't stop himself fast enough because of all the momentum he had behind his run.

With a loud metallic BONG!!, everything went black. His eyes fell closed and he fell straight down to the tile floor, hitting his already-damaged head against it, too.

--Yu-Gi-Oh! GX – Comatose--

The sound of a human skull against one of the hardest metals in the world echoed down the empty hallways of the Obelisk dorm's second floor, making Manjoume Jun, Tenjoin Asuka, and Marufuji Sho cringe.

However, upon hearing the gasp and the loud grunt the teen had made when his head connected with the table, they immediately knew who had been hurt. Manjoume quickly pushed the table the rest of the way out into the hall and parked it off to the side before joining Asuka and Sho at their friend's side.

"Judai!!" Sho exclaimed, completely stunned to see his friend out in the open and to have finally met up with him in such a horrible situation.

"Manjoume, you baka! That's why you're not supposed to kick open metal doors and try to exit a room with a solid metal table too fast! Look both ways before doing anything like that!" Asuka scolded the black-haired teen, finding a way to keep herself from crying over her friend's newfound condition, "Didn't you learn anything in first grade?!"

"Wh-what?! What're you getting mad at me for? He was the lunatic running down the halls like a freaking Speed Warrior! Don't blame me when he shouldn't have been running like that in the first place!" he snapped back, trying to regain composure after what he literally just did to his friend, "B-besides, I'll bet he's fine! He just… just passed out, that's all!"

"M-Manjoume… Asuka… look…" Sho choked out with tears filling his eyes.

The two other Obelisk Blue students looked back to the shortest of the friends and gasped, seeing the huge red bump about two centimeters above Judai's forehead. It apparently became a scrape when he slid off the metal to the ground and it was now bleeding.

The metallic red liquid ran down his face, down the side of his nose and over one of his closed eyes. His normally chocolate brown bangs were stained red from the blood.

"W-we need to get him to infirmary! Now!!" Asuka shouted, shoving Manjoume-Sanda forward so he could pick up the injured Slifer from the ground.

"Let's go!!"

Emeralds Notes & Nonsense:

... Should I run and hide? XD

Please review, though! I'm actually particularly fond of the idea for this fic, so I'd like to see what others think of it...

And no worries, the Spiritshipping-ness will get stronger as the fic goes on! It's really going to be fun! X3! I'm excited right now!!