"…people are born with sin…and live life to obtain forgiveness from someone. Or perhaps they are born with riddles…and live life searching for someone to solve them. People are riddles. They want someone else to solve their riddle. They live life wanting someone to solve the riddle that they are, the most difficult riddle in the world. They want someone to look at the riddle they are. And they want that person to solve it."

—Umineko no Naku Koro Ni

Mutual Life

It was late, but not too late that neither Ryou Bakura nor Anzu Mazaki would be expected home soon. The air was crisp and cool; dead leaves swirled around Ryou's feet as he ran down the street. Anzu's class had just ended and there was something about being late that he would take any steps to avoid. Time just seemed to be getting away from him lately.

He had just gotten to the bottom of the stairs when Anzu left the building, dance bag over one shoulder and an easy, contented smile on her face. "How were your Go matches?" she asked as they started back down the road.

"Won one, lost one. Did your class go well?" He was surprised she wasn't shivering; he could still make out the thin sheen of perspiration on her face and neck.

"Same as always. When we were stretching, I thought of a new riddle for our walk back." It had begun as something of a gallant offer when Ryou was one of her newest friends—twice a week they had lessons on opposite ends of the same street, and afterwards they would walk home together. The riddles and puzzles were simply a way to pass the time—the first weeks were awkward enough, when they barely knew each other and had even less to say—but, in time, Anzu had begun to look forward them just as much as her dance classes.

"Circles of black and white, life and death. Don't stop—"

"Go," Ryou answered, picking it up right away. "It's Go, Anzu."

She hopped over a spider-web of cracks in the sidewalk. "You've always been better at them than me," she said, forcing a laugh to cover just how long it had actually taken to come up with it—although she supposed that Ryou could solve a riddle about Go about as easily as he could beat her at the game.

"Don't sell yourself short. I couldn't ever come up with a riddle about ballet. I have one for you, though." He looked at Anzu, who gave an encouraging smile back at him. "There are five men going to church and it starts to rain. The four that run get wet and the one that is still stays dry. How?"

She tapped a finger to her chin. "Maybe…he had an umbrella? No, that's not it—there's a clue in the riddle somewhere…"

"Right," Ryou said, smiling. He could almost see the wheels turning in her brain. "You have to think in the terms of the riddle itself. And it doesn't hurt to know the person behind the puzzle, either."

"Tell me the answer then! I'll work backwards." It ruined a bit of the fun when she refused to guess, but Ryou could never hold out for long anyway. One reason he liked the riddles is that knowing the answer gave him a reason to share it. Even in a crowded classroom he would sit alone, head bowed over his desk, and create a world of games and stories to live in. Some puzzles could be solved alone, but others were for sharing, and those he secretly liked best.

"The four men who got wet were carrying a coffin…the fifth man, the one who stayed dry, was inside."

Neither of them said anything for a minute. For the first time that evening, Anzu finally began to notice the chill of the night air on her skin. "Ryou…I know it's been a few months since your mother…and A-Amane…" One shoulder dipped, as if she wanted to reach out to him but wasn't quite sure how to start. "You know I'm here if you want to talk."

The light from the streetlamps cast odd shadows on his face. For her, Ryou put on a bleak smile and dipped a shoulder back towards her. "I know," he whispered.

Ryou knew that his father was already asleep when he opened the door to their apartment; he could hear him snoring through the cracked-open bedroom door. Ryou stored his shoes and jacket neatly beside the door and went to his own room, picking up his school books along the way to his desk.

The apartment was brand-new and felt it. Their old home had memories around every corner; there was always something good to eat—his mother practically lived in the kitchen, and the table there became his desk and his father's office even during mealtimes. Amane would help in her own earnest way, and together they made something wonderful of it.

Now, the walls were bare and white, and every time he looked at them he saw gravestones. Ryou brushed aside the clutter across his desk, pushing the game tokens, bandages, and school supplies to the back to clear a space for his books. He sat down and started to read.

There was a funny strip of paper wedged into the chapter's last page—it was small, barely noticeable, and when he pinched at it with his fingers it escaped and fluttered back down onto his desk. In large, plain letters, someone had written:

What has a bed but never sleeps, and has a mouth but never eats?

His stomach called out one possible answer. There wasn't enough room on that side so Ryou turned the strip over, reaching for his pen to scribble the answer onto the back. For Anzu, it was a very good riddle—he couldn't think of anyone else who could have left it in his textbook. Holding one fingertip down onto the paper to steady it, he wrote:

A river.

Ryou had just taken the first bite of his lunch when Anzu ran up to the table, Yugi Mutou following just behind her. "I'm on to your game," she said, winking at him as she slid into the chair opposite his. "And you said you couldn't make up a ballet riddle!"

Not waiting for him to get a word in, despite the fact that he couldn't with a mouth full of carrots, she slapped a small piece of paper down onto the table's surface. "And because I was so proud of myself for figuring it out, I made extra onigiri for everyone! I thought the colors were appropriate for the riddle; you know, for the black and white swan?"

Ryou had to fight to swallow. He recognized the strip of paper, not because he had given it to her but because it was the same as the one he had gotten himself. He couldn't quite make out all of the words, but the color of the ink, as well as the handwriting, looked similar enough for suspicion.

Feathers of white and wings of black,

Under Von Rothbart's spell, she can never turn back—

"I was confused at first, because I wasn't sure whether you meant Odette or Odile, but that role is played by the same dancer…" Anzu said, handing a rice ball to each of her friends. Ryou waited to finish his before removing the second strip of paper from his pocket. "Ooh, is that another ballet one?" She leaned in eagerly towards him.

"I found this last night inside my textbook." Ryou searched her face for any clues to this riddle, but she looked just as confused as he felt. "It looks similar to yours…Anzu, I didn't give you that paper. Someone else gave them to us."

They each turned, slowly, curiously, to Yugi.

"Don't look at me!" He had speared a piece of salted salmon and waved it in the air at them. "I told you, I've sworn off riddles until I can finish this puzzle that I've been working on myself. Besides, you know my handwriting is terrible. I didn't write that."

"Okay," Ryou said, the events materializing in his mind like the opening moves of a game of Go. "Then who did?" With every piece of evidence the board subtly changed as white and black stones were placed in a seemingly random array, and at the center of it all were two stones that marked their places.

Ryou shrugged deeper into his jacket. If anything, it was getting colder. "You got another one too?"

"Yeah." Anzu pulled another strip of paper from her dance bag as they walked; Ryou's was clutched tightly in his fist. "Want to trade?"

It was dark on their walk back from her dance studio, the only light coming from the streetlamps. They cast a weak yellow light that made the paper seem old and fragile, but Anzu knew it wasn't. These riddles were mysterious but not in the way Ryou's were. He was always willing to share the answers with her, but this time they didn't have one. Sometimes the unknown answer, like a shadow, could be menacing. She didn't want to know what it could hide.

What is it that you can keep after giving it to someone else?

Anzu turned the paper over to find his answer. "Your word? …Ryou, this isn't fun anymore. I'm getting scared…my riddle was in this bag. How could anyone have gotten it there?"

"I don't know," Ryou said as they turned the corner. There were mostly houses on this street, with a small park at the corner near a bus stop. All of a sudden, he didn't want to go back home. "Alright then…we'll forget those riddles. If we don't solve them, they can't hurt us, right?" Impulsively, he took Anzu by the hand and led her towards the park.

"Come on! I want to try the swings."

In the park the streetlamps' yellow light became charming and the shadows that the swings cast transformed from chains and slotted boards to nothing more than what they were. Ryou and Anzu didn't have to make a riddle where one never was to begin with.

She pumped her legs, getting the swing to go higher and higher. Ryou was content to twist in his seat, the sound from the swings bringing him back to a time of sunlight and echoed laughter. Amane loved the slides the best, but this was always his place.

"I…I always thought riddles and games were a way you could come to understand the world," he said, the words soft whispers in the empty park. "I thought…if I solved enough of them, then maybe I could understand why my family was taken from me…"

Anzu dug the heels of her shoes into the ground to still her swing. "Ryou…"

"I'm sorry, Anzu. This was my fault. If I hadn't started with the riddles on our walks, then this might never have happened." He bowed his head, unable to look at her, and his fingers tightened into fists on the swing's chains.

The swings creaked as she inched closer to him until her hand wrapped around his and joined the two together. "I don't regret it," she whispered, leaning in and kissing him on one cheek. He reached for her shoulder with his free hand, twisting the chains of the swing to bring them closer together. He quickly leaned in to steal the second kiss.

Before they left the park Ryou tore the strips of paper into pieces and let them scatter on the wind.

Ryou often had dreams where he was unable to fall asleep. He would toss and turn, hair limp with sweat, and sometimes he would get up and walk around the room. Things looked different in shadow in ways that vanished when the sunlight came—there was a mystery in shadows that called to him to uncover it.

The bandages on his chest needed to be changed. Sifting through the mess of supplies on his desk, he checked the desk drawer for the necklace out of sheer habit than anything else, just to make sure it was still there. The tines of its pendant were much sharper than he had ever suspected the first time he put it on, and it had frightened him.

His face was half-hidden in shadow, and the image in the mirror grinned back at him. "Such a naughty landlord, denying his tenant his keys," he said, lips moving in the mirrored glass.

"Stop." Ryou's mind was a matrix of open doors and this shadow had access to every room within. For a moment, Anzu's face flickered in his mind, but one moment was all it took. "Go away!"

"But Ryou… I don't exist." The mocking smile widened as tendrils of shadow curled around his ankles. "You can't destroy a part of yourself. You don't want that."

His mind was a very curious thing, and much more interesting to him than the body that housed it. Anyone could be his container; the real challenge lay in dominating the mind. Like any prey, Ryou seemed to know it too, always playing Go and thinking up riddles, but that only made him a more worthy victim.

It was only a matter of time.

"I have a riddle for you," he sighed, drawing Ryou closer and closer to the mirror to whisper the riddle into his ear like a secret. "You saw me where I never was and where I could not be. And yet within that very place, my face you often see."

Ryou looked into the dark eyes of the mirror and saw the answer there. Stumbling back into bed, the bandage tight against his skin and the coolness of the pillow on his face, his mind was still racing away like a heartbeat would in the dangerous night. His mind and heart were very connected even in their isolation, and to conquer one he would have to rule over the other.

His shadow murmured one more riddle into his ear. What question can you never honestly answer yes to?

In his sleep Ryou turned over uneasily. Smirking with his victory, he whispered the answer before fading back into shadow.

Are you sleeping?

The next days were surprisingly ordinary; despite fleeting smiles and one wonderful moment when she slipped her hand into his, they had barely had any time to themselves. Ryou wasn't sure whether it was something he preferred, or if it was killing him. Anzu was the kind of riddle that he had absolutely no experience solving.

He had no idea what to expect when he waited for her class to end that evening. His mind was everywhere; he lost every game of Go he tried to play and practically ran down the street once his lesson was over to pace in front of her studio. She wasn't long, bounding down the stairs with a happy smile that reached her eyes. "How was your class?"

"Great! It went great." Ryou made for a terrible liar. "Yours went okay?"

"It was fine." Together they started their familiar walk home. "I couldn't think of any riddles…to be honest; I can't really concentrate on anything."

"Me neither…but I do have a riddle for you. I wrote it down because it's a little wordier than usual." He fished a large folded square of notebook paper out of his pocket and handed it to her. Her eyes scanned the handwritten lines in Ryou's slanted handwriting, mouthing the first line of the riddle to herself as they walked. "What do a Monarch, Red Swallowtail and Mariposa Lacrimosa have to do with me? …Ryou, this is a riddle about you?"

He nodded, smiling timidly as her eyes lit up. "Well you are a riddle, so I would expect nothing less. Can I solve it when I get home? It's nearly too dark outside to read and I can tell it will take some time to figure it out." She tucked the note into her bag and threaded her fingers through Ryou's, walking for some time in contented silence.

"I wonder what you'd call an unsolvable riddle…"

Ryou paused. "Is that a riddle?"

"No, it's a question," she said, grinning when he started to laugh, looking just as surprised and pleased as she was.

Anzu went right to her computer, pulling up searches for each of the three words in the first line—it soon became clear to her that Ryou was asking her to think about butterflies. It wasn't quite warm enough yet to start seeing them; she figured they were still in their chrysalises, the container which housed their transformation.

"All three butterflies are poisonous? I didn't know that." She clicked and scrolled impatiently; she never much cared for bugs. Ryou wasn't a bug, anyway. These butterflies were bad for any animal who tried to eat them…it was a defense mechanism. A strategy to stay alive, much like the end goal in a game of Go.

Mariposa Lacrimosa was a parasite that lived with sloths and ate the smaller bugs that wandered over its host's body. Anzu read as much as she could, but she still couldn't understand whether it was meant to be a beneficial or destructive relationship—between the parasite and the host. She hoped Ryou wasn't making any connections between their relationship.

She scanned over the riddle again, realizing that she hadn't unfolded the bottom of the paper. There was one additional line:

The next riddle is at the Natural History Museum

Anzu paused, remembering Ryou telling her when they first met that his father worked at one of the museums in the city. She couldn't help but smile a little at the prospect of a scavenger hunt. She couldn't wait to find out what waited for her at the end.

Ryou relished the weekends because it was the most likely time that he could talk to his dad. Most days with their schedules they passed like ships in the night—whether by coincidence or design, he couldn't tell.

He wanted to talk to someone…anyone, to help him sort out this riddle. It seemed that riddles were the only way he could communicate now. He knew Anzu would help him get to the bottom of it; she was pretty good at solving them when she wasn't demanding the answers right away.

Ryou hunted through his wardrobe for his journal—they had asked him to start keeping one after the accident—and flipped to the next blank page. He didn't know why, but he had started addressing each entry to his sister, as if somehow Amane would be able to read them and know that her big brother was okay.

He had forgotten to get a pen to write with. Moving across the room to his desk he happened to glance up at the mirror and nearly tripped over his own feet. He slowly made his way over to the mirror and reached up with shaking hands to remove the small strip of paper that had been taped to the glass.

I have her, and if you want her back you will have to play my game.

What has forests but no trees, rivers but no water, cities but no buildings?

Ryou ripped the piece of paper down the middle. A minute later he skidded out of his room on socked feet, hunting through their closet for the books he knew they had put there. The apartment had provided everything—a phone book, company listings, and extensive maps of the entire city.

He pulled the book—fortunately, the top one in the stack—into his lap and started flipping through the pages until he found one that had been written on in now-familiar handwriting. One building in particular on the map had been circled several times, and Ryou knew that was where he had to go next to get the next riddle.

The Natural History Museum had a whole floor devoted to bugs, and Anzu hurried past the galleries until she came to the exhibit on butterflies. Some of the specimens made her feel queasy, but for the most part, the butterflies did look lovely from a distance. The bright colors were quite striking.

A species most common in Asia, the Red Swallowtail had their own corner of the exhibit and Anzu found what she was looking for tucked behind a placard annotating a particularly artful display. It was a tiny piece of paper; barely enough for the riddle it was written on, but it had to be her clue. There was only one other person on the entire floor, a boy engrossed in a display about spiders, and she doubted they were the type to hide riddles, much less come up with one. Anzu held it flat against a backlit display case to read.

When is a door not a door?

"When it's a window? Come on Ryou, help me out here." Anzu made a circle around the exhibit to see if there was anything else she was missing. There were only two doors in the space, the one she had used to get in and a propped-open employee door. Suddenly, she understood.

"When it's ajar!" Congratulating herself for getting it right, she crept towards the other door, looking to see if anyone was around. The museum was nearly empty, and besides, she knew that this door had been left open for her. Before she could change her mind, she opened the door just a little bit further and slipped inside.

Ryou hurried to the museum, counting on both hands the number of cars parked outside. He knew this museum wasn't as popular as the others, but if less people meant he had an easier chance of finding Anzu then he was glad for it.

Comparing the notes on the map to the color-coded diagram of the museum in the building's lobby Ryou began his search. His feet seemed to lead him up the stairs to the second floor, through an archway and then another, and then his eyes got used to the darkness. He had felt this sensation before, the feeling of dreaming that he was awake, but it had never been so strong.

A grid appeared in his mind littered with small black and white stones; the Go board that held every riddle, every play made by either side. His territory was shrinking, dying, with every passing second.

"That's because you're playing against a master." The voice whispered in his ear. He flinched away from the sound of it, and that was when he saw Anzu.

"Ryou! I knew I'd find you here—your riddles were tough, but I solved them! Do I get a prize for winning?"

"Run!" He stumbled backwards as his territory shrank even more, surrendering his feet and legs. Frozen in place, Ryou couldn't feel his hands as they moved through the air, uncapping the pen that he kept in his pocket and writing down the answer to his riddle in large, plain letters. "No…!"

He had seen that writing before, on every slip of paper, every step and riddle, and as the seconds ran by his mouth had closed on him as well. The only thing he had left, his last defense, was his mind.

"Ryou? …Is everything all right?" Anzu asked, coming closer.

They had solved all of the riddles, played the game out to the very end, but Ryou was beginning to see that his every move had been anticipated. Like a swan, or even the smallest butterfly, he had been in the final stages of his transformation. The parasite had mimicked him and poisoned his mind, surviving until its host was weak enough to be taken over.

"Yes," he said, in a voice raspy with disuse. "I brought you here to play a game…"

It was beautiful, the way that she fell.

Ryou opened his eyes to find himself in a different place than where he had closed them. Anzu was lying at his feet, unnaturally still, and as he looked at his hands Ryou nearly expected to find blood on them.

"She's not dead, but she won't wake up...athough you can try if you like." His reflection sat on the other side of the Go table, studying the wave of black stones with an amused smile. The golden pendant hung around his neck, and Ryou unconsciously felt for the bandages on his chest.

"You've taken everything from me," Ryou said, reaching out to gently cradle her head in his lap. "There's nothing left."

"You have a room." His mind was a matrix of open doors. From one, he could hear the sound of swings and the echo of his sister's laughter. He had nearly forgotten the sound of it. His bandages must have needed to be changed because his chest ached, although he knew that this part of himself couldn't belong to any parasite. Ryou had already given it away.

He turned from the Go table, from Anzu, and went deeper into himself until he arrived at one particular room. All at once, he was home, hungry just from the sound of breakfast cooking and dishes clattering. He was in the park with Anzu but it was sunny outside, with no darkness to run from. They were on the swings, going higher and higher, until he thought they might grow large, white-feathered wings and leave the rest of the world behind.

Ryou went inside and closed the door behind him.

The End.

Author's Notes:

Mutual Life is a term in Go where both white and black share the same liberties and neither player would gain by moving into that area, which would leave them open to being captured. It's something of an impasse or symbiosis.

This story was inspired by the film Nemesis Game, which is the only movie that I've ever found so scary that I could not go to sleep afterwards ;~; It's about a 'game' of riddles—several of the riddles from the movie I used in this story, and others I found from the internet or made up myself. Mariposa Lacrimosa does not exist; some butterflies are poisonous or parasitic, but I couldn't find a species that had both qualities.

Thank you for reading and please review, I value and treasure each one.