Chapter Text
Summer was winding its way down, edging its way into autumn and the awkward overlap of the two seasons. The mix of light showers and crackling thunderstorms of July had rolled into a stiller heat of August, but humidity still pervaded the air, sticky and too hot for comfort. Many youths were still out making the most of their vacations, splashing in public pools or hanging out in the air conditioned house of a friend. Yuugi Muto, however, had another matter he concerned himself with during the last month of his summer. Instead of socializing with peers like most of his age group did, he found himself holed up in his room, assembling a mystic sort of item known as the millennium puzzle.
Strange as it seemed, Yuugi had his reasons behind doing so. He’d had plenty of opportunities to spend time elsewhere, and a multitude of invitations from his friends Joey and Tristan to hang out at either of their houses or possibly pick on a certain Seto Kaiba from their homeroom. He’d refused a majority of them, and not just because of his aversion to conflicts, either. It was something more personal. A goal he’d set for himself. He needed to complete the millennium puzzle.
Now Yuugi had never claimed to be a puzzle fanatic, and he still wouldn’t, either. He did find some pleasure throughout the past in completing a puzzle every so often and could recall some fond memories of finishing a few with his grandfather. After all, it was easy to enjoy watching something come together. A laid back challenge was good for the mind.
The reason for the intensity of his efforts of completing the millennium puzzle came from the meaning it held to Yuugi. On the fourth of June, just a week before the end of the academic year, it had been passed down to him from his grandfather on his sixteenth birthday. In the early morning, when the first rays of sun touched the horizon, his grandfather had pressed a box into Yuugi’s hands.
The package wasn’t large, but it had a considerable weight to it. He brought the package up to his ear, and gave it a bit of a shift, immediately able to sense movement in the box. Yuugi set it down onto his lap and pulled off the iridescent wrapping, and finally removed the lid. His eyes narrowed, and he dipped his hand into the box, pulling out small pieces of metal and inspecting them. Upon first glance, he could tell the pieces weren’t uniform, but they reminded him of tiles to a board game his grandfather had taught to him.
“Are these like tiles to a board game, grandpa?” He asked, eyeing the curious figures, to which his grandfather gave a hearty chuckle.
“No, Yuugi. These are something much better than that,” he assured him, taking a seat at the foot of Yuugi’s bed. “They’re puzzle pieces. But even more than that, it’s a very special three-dimensional puzzle called the millennium puzzle… Rumor has it; it used to belong to an Egyptian noble. I forget exactly what their title was, maybe a Shaman?”
Mr. Muto gave a shrug, quickly dismissing the lore behind it, “but that’s not important. While I was working on excavation sites in ancient Egypt, a merchant gave this to me. What he told me was that this puzzle was extremely difficult to solve, considering the three-dimensional aspect of it, and the number of pieces. However, he also told me that if one were to complete it, they’d learn a great deal of patience, ingenuity, and perhaps even gain a new perspective.” His grandfather smiled down to him, “I thought those would all be great things for you to learn at your age, Yuugi. I hope you like it.”
“Yes, I do,” Yuugi agreed, his smile bright despite the sleep still in his eyes. “These are really incredible. Thank you, grandpa!” He beamed.
Ever since that fateful day, Yuugi had become inseparable from his millennium puzzle. The name may have been riddled with value and historical relevance, but to Yuugi, such things meant little to him. It was in the challenge, the difficulty meant to be overcome, the secrets he was so incredibly inclined to divulge from the ancient relic, and the new perspective his grandfather hinted at before that made his heart race.
However, he wasn’t so eager to assemble the puzzle on the first early encounter. In June, he had much more interest in cleaning dust from its surface with a rag and learning exactly what sorts of things he could use to clean something as valuable as a gift from his grandfather without deteriorating the material. He’d count the golden shards, and in his mind, he would rearrange the oddly shaped fragments into different amalgamates of what it could look like when he’d brought it to completion. As dedicated as he was with his puzzle, he still refused to touch his bare hands to the pieces, worried the oils from his fingers would damage his most precious gift, and so, he wore white, cotton gloves to negate such dangers.
As time flowed and brought Yuugi’s region into the rainy season, he had even more reason to stay inside as thunderstorm warnings had befallen the outside. With more time to himself in his room came more time to work on his puzzle. By then, Yuugi had begun putting his best efforts forth to assembling the puzzle. Even as he became more familiar with the puzzle, he refused to remove his gloves when he handled it, which looked more than a little uncouth in the scorching summer heat. He came to making gradual progressions, assembling the base of the puzzle, and realizing it would form a pyramid when he reached its completion.
As much as he enjoyed the puzzle for its challenges and intricacies, what he appreciated the most that it had offered to him was a safe place when night terrors threatened his already troubled psyche. It was what he busied his mind with when nothing seemed to be going right.
By and by, the days passed and August came to greet Yuugi on the calendar. Every day he grew more and more feverish to complete the puzzle, and every day there were fewer pieces to place than there was the day before. However, as his desire to finish the puzzle increased, the frequencies of the hellish nightmares skyrocketed until restless nights were more commonplace than well-rested awakenings.
With the puzzle by Yuugi's bedside, it comforted him as well as an old friend. Something about it had a certain vitality to it, making it seem almost alive. It consoled him like no other and made him feel at peace within his head. He could hardly imagine facing the summer without it anymore. Recalling the number of faces to the pyramid, the number of vertexes, and how many pieces he’d assembled as well as still had to place to finish it distracted him from bad dreams, and he was so grateful for it.
As August came to meet Yuugi, his pace of completing the puzzle slowed down to a crawl. It troubled him, the idea of not having the puzzle to rely on anymore. The challenge and feeling of accomplishment that came with fitting two pieces together was something Yuugi had come to rely on to get through the night. The feelings that bloomed inside him because of its presence nurtured a haven, and he wasn’t sure how to achieve it anymore without it. However, he pressed on, even if it was only one piece a night, now.
Rain pelted at the siding of his house and filled Yuugi’s sauna of a bedroom with the sound. Yuugi welcomed what must’ve been one of the last rain showers of the season, and decided the yellowing grass of his grandfather’s lawn would be welcoming it as well. He was down to eight pieces, and tonight he was determined to complete the top of his pyramidal puzzle.
His nimble fingers pushed pieces into play gently, never forceful, allowing them to fall into place of their own volition, or refuse his gentle coercion and be tried in another placement until only one final shard awaited to be delivered upon the top as the puzzle’s rightful crown. Yuugi took a deep breath, reconsidering. The winds outside picked up, whipping water droplets at his window like bullets, only to fall in rivulets down the glass panes. He glanced over to watch the outside world blur through the curtain of rain and wondered how he’d ever manage to cope in the face of his fears in the same way he had while he had the comforts of the puzzle. Perhaps the new perspective would help with that… and he always had friends that were still up at the early hours of the morning, before dawn broke over the horizon he could talk to over the phone to calm down.
He grabbed the last piece of the puzzle in his ungloved hand and glided the flat of his thumb over the surface. As Yuugi looked own at it, he gave it a warm smile. There was no point in fretting over leaving a fingerprint on it anymore. It had become so familiar with him over time, accidentally bumping it off the table, spilling water onto it, and other mishandles. He was sure he could wipe any trace of his handling of it off with a clean rag, and no one would’ve been the wiser that it wasn’t brand new, if not for the structure of it.
He was ready to complete it. It would be unfair to his grandfather if he just stopped there…He’d already learned a substantial deal of patience from it as the man in Egypt had told his grandfather, and he felt like he might’ve already found a new perspective, as well as an appreciation for the world around him. With an unparalleled resolve to anything else he’d felt this summer, Yuugi pressed the tip of the pyramid into its due place, and completed his puzzle.