Work Text:
Shini yuku hoshi
Never had there been a living boy who’d looked as lifeless as Yugi Amane.
Blood beat under his skin, Tsuchigomori could hear it, but he was pale as the moon and as sickly as its craters, sunken eyes and dark spots decorating his body like spilled watercolor.
He’d fit in better in a coffin than in a school.
An image of a monster long deceased, hollow, broken, nothing left but an empty husk scooped out of all its innards. Nothing in his stomach, nothing in his skull, he was void of all recognizable humanity. What a terrifying creature of an abyss that no longer existed.
Eyes were not supposed to gloss over white as the body still moved. He was not a corpse, not yet, and yet there was film over gold to be peeled off and reveal his sickly eyeballs, rimmed with red from tears.
As disgusting as he was, Yugi Amane was more alive than most.
He was filled with dreams and hopes, intelligence that soared above his peers and teachers, a heart too large for his thin, tiny, young frame, a heart that pushed against his ribcage and threatened to pop with every droplet he shed.
Hen he smiled, a sun shone from his features, hope enchanted, not for him but for the reassurance of others. He gave so readily but he never saved any love or happiness for himself. He lit up the room and darkened the corner he hid in. He destroyed himself piece by piece to make another's day lighter, tore his skin apart in his endeavor to make the world a better place for everyone but himself.
A horrible memory he had that he existed at all. He remembered the stars and the moon, the birthdays of anyone who talked long enough to him, pages of books word by word. He did not remember his own life, that he was meant to live not for others, but himself. So giving that he forgot a boy named Yugi Amane.
He was lively and he was dead, bright and suffocatingly midnight, an oxymoron of what could’ve been a great person had it not been for who he was.
Who he was was a child with no limits, never taught to not give more than he had, never learned that to truly live, he had to glue himself together and fight back when he crumbled. Attacked but never retaliated, allowed bruises and scars to form and kept beckoning for more because it made someone else happy. His happiness didn’t matter, he was at the bottom of the food chain, prey to every closed fist and sharp tooth in the world he so desperately strived to leave.
This child, barely double digits, already lost to the notion that he was at the end. Lost to his choice, chosen the only option he could see despite the thousands of others in front of him. He could not perceive living past thirteen, making it another year, another month, another day. His string was long and winding, and it fell to its end at the point of the silver knife in his trembling fingers, cut and marred by the shortest lifetime of suffering he couldn’t think to change.
And the fact was, Yugi Amane never wanted to stop.
He never looked at a grave with envy or stared off tall roofs, he looked to the moon and said, “ Anything is possible, I can make it .” He vyed to touch the stars and float in zero gravity, make it to his one heaven of the living.
And Yugi Amane was a liar.
He warped his own truth and addled his own brain, smashed his own dreams with a hammer made of wounds too deep to heal over with tissue. He prayed for help, a hand to guide him, but he cut off any wrist who dared lend him their aid. Self-destructive and oblivious to his impending flatline, he ripped his life apart with his cracking fingernails and wondered why it fell apart. He fooled himself and he fooled everyone into believing he’d make it out alive, such a wonderful fibber he tricked the fabric of his future.
He did not write his own book of fate, he simply erased the pages, scribbled out the semicolon and replaced it with “ The End .” He touched an untouchable novel and shred it between his teeth and spit out a wad of soaked-off ink smeared beyond recognition.
He ended his life and he chose to, but he never really knew he had another choice.
He could’ve told someone. He could’ve asked for help, he could’ve fought back, he could’ve grasped the lifeline thrown to him over and over again after school every day.
Could’ve .
But he never knew there ever was a “ could’ve .”
There were only definites in this carcass of a student who held power enough to change the course of moirai.
Who held both life and death inside the cavity of his chest.
Who was both dangerous and pathetic as a lifeform.
Who was covered with hatred he could never bother to wash off with anything but the blood he wished he could pour back into the hole he carved.
Yes, Yugi Amane was a horrifying monster.
But he was brimming with life and love.
Something as intense as he was never meant to live long.
He was born to burn.