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It was summer when Yuugi confided in Ryou: the cicadas returned from their year-long slumber and shed their pasts, emerging renewed and full of new life. The humming of the insects' romantic reverberations served as the soundtrack for the evening. The two boys stood on Ryou’s tiny balcony and chatted in the cool darkness of dusk.
“I still think about him, Ryou. Every night I reach for a hand that isn’t there to return my touch.” Yuugi could never really touch him, but just knowing that he was there, the other him—no, Atem—was reassuring even though his ghostly form only ever phased through him. But briefly, there was a warmth he could sense—the echoes of fingers interlaced with his own.
“What was he like for you, Yuugi?” Ryou brushed Yuugi’s bangs from his eyes. His hair was soft.
Yuugi shrugged. He’d never really thought of how to explain something so purely sublime to anyone—the feeling of sharing your body with another that views himself as a god, capable of making all of his wishes come true and having charisma that naturally allures anyone. With Atem, Yuugi could do anything.
“The other me,” Yuugi started, “I knew him better than any of you did.” He played with the chain around his neck, reminiscing that it was Atem who suggested he wear it: an unbreakable symbol of their bond. “Have you ever fallen asleep as a kid and woken up in another place after someone carries you to bed? Tucked in and everything?”
Ryou considered Yuugi’s question for a moment. He’d woken up plenty of times in places he didn’t fall asleep, with no memory of how he possibly could have gotten there. He tried to think of times before his misfortune of possessing the ring, but he wasn’t sure if there’d ever been someone who cared to move him somewhere more comfortable. But he wanted to hear Yuugi talk, so he decided instead not to fully answer and risk stirring Yuugi’s sympathy for him. “I know what you mean.”
“Well, it’s like you have that person who’s watching over you all the time. And that feeling of knowing that everything will always be okay, even if you’re not in control…” Yuugi stopped, his voice starting to crack. Tears welled, their conversation dowsing and digging up emotions he’d buried shortly after saying his final goodbyes. Ryou put a hand on his shoulder and the sounds of the cicadas drowned out the silence, each chirp and ring like wails to the heavens from mourners.
“I know what it’s like not to feel in control,” Ryou murmured, pulling Yuugi’s hand into his own. Ryou wanted to pull Yuugi close and share the pain with him, but he just didn’t have the same kind of relationship with the spirit of the ring. Ryou was simply a vessel, while what Yuugi had with Atem was much more intimate, almost primal—the puzzle piecing together their best qualities. But even without the one who he viewed as his missing piece, Ryou believed Yuugi was already complete. But Ryou doubted he could ever seal the gaps in Yuugi’s life the way Atem had before. If anything, he’d only add confusion. What the others had made them feel more whole, but Ryou’s experience with Bakura left him with permanently missing pieces—a disappointing jigsaw with gaps that will never be filled.
Standing in silence, Yuugi realized he’d struck a nerve sharing his melancholic nostalgia and pulled himself toward Ryou for a hug. Ryou stiffened, surprised. Yuugi’s touch stirred something in him that he bottled up ever since he met him. But the tenderness of Yuugi’s arms eventually put Ryou at ease, tearing down all of the defenses he’d built up not to feel for most of his life. And Ryou hugged him back.
“Yuugi, you’re a good person,” Ryou said, petting the back of the other boy’s head. “And even though I didn’t know you before him, I know that you were still the Yuugi I know now, always looking out for everyone else.” There was a lull and the cicadas hushed as if time had stopped. “I know you’d never hurt me like my darker half did to me...” He trailed off.
The sweetness of summer lingered in the air, the smell of magnolia blossoms with a subtle spice and charcoal flames from faraway barbeques. The cicadas resumed their symphony as a cyclist rode by two floors below them.
From the stillness, Yuugi emerged with the confidence to pull Ryou down to him, their lips mirroring the softness of this midsummer night. They embraced with an understanding that even though they could never completely empathize with the other’s loss, there was still a sense of comfort in being a whole person with four arms, four legs, and two lips moving in unison together.