Chapter Text
He pretended that he didn't notice, but the signs were all there.
"Ey Yuugi, wanna pl- Oh, I forgot that you got your own name back again…" An apologetic Jounouchi sheepishly grins, rubbing the back of his head as he corrected his sentence. "Atemu, wanna Duel? I've improved my Deck again!"
The former pharaoh would always shrug it off and return with a confident smirk gracing his face, crimson eyes brightening in sparked interest. "Why not," he murmurs as he brings out the deck he carries with him all the time. "But we both know I'll win anyway."
Inside however, it hurt.
Yuugi, Yuugi, Yuugi. He really is a darkness befitting for the boy, isn't he? Destined to be forever deigned as the hikari's shadow. It feels as though he didn't even find his identity back then in Egypt, as though they never had the Ceremonial Duel, as though he never seperated from Yuugi Mutou, the boy who was kind enough to not only provide a house for his soul after 3000 years, but aid him in his journey in order to find out his identity. He would forever be in the hikari's debt, along with everyone else for coming.
Atemu had gone all out at the Ceremonial Duel, and he had managed to narrowly defeat his aibou. The Eye of Wdjat witnessed everything, the Milennium Items vanished into the earth as the place cracked and shook, never to be retrieved ever again. They had ran out of the place, and the entrance was blocked by collapsing rocks. An elated and relieved Yuugi then happily pounced on the former monarch, who gratefully returned the hug. He was grateful, to Yuugi, to his friends, to the Ishtars, to the Kaibas, to everyone that helped him on his journey. He supposed to an extent, he was also grateful to even the former dark spirit of the Ring for helping him at particular occasions.
But, there was a few problems that cropped up when Atemu returned to Japan with the rest, courtesy of the sceptic Kaiba finally proven that Atemu's presence wasn't just Yuugi suddenly going schizophrenic, and that magic did exist, in the past at least. For one, Atemu had no identification papers, no passport, nothing. He didn't have a single possession to his name, aside from his deck and the newfound knowledge of his name, his memories, his identity. Because of that, it irks him when his friends still called him "the other Yuugi". He isn't another of someone, he was his own person, damn it. Or is he no longer allowed to even be himself? But for the sake of his other self, he'd swallow it. He couldn't bring himself to hate Yuugi; the boy was literally the light of his life.
He hated how it felt, how he felt. But all he could do was just bottle it up and hope nothing went wrong from there. He was only the shadow accompanying the light that was his aibou, after all.