Chapter Text
It was barely noon, and Yugi Mutou was already planning his funeral.
"Shit, shit, oh fuck.." he muttered as he scrambled around on his knees, scrabbling at the floor to get as many golden pieces as he could before his mentor walked in. He was dead if she caught him amidst the shattered bits of something that looked extremely expensive, even to his half-trained eye. He poured a glittery handful back into the golden box, praying for just one more minute before Isis walked in.
Yugi didn't think of himself as a clumsy person - years of friendship with Jou had cured him of that - but he had no other explanation for why the box had fallen from the desk in the first place. He had just passed it, holding a ream of museum files, when he heard a crash and turned around to find an unbelievably valuable mess.
Yugi brushed his hands free of floor lint before struggling with the box's heavy lid. It refused to cooperate at first, and Yugi had to turn it several times before - there... The top slid reluctantly into place just as the sound of footsteps reached his ears.
Shit.
Yugi had just enough time to yank his bag open and shove the box inside before his mentor walked into the lecture hall.
Isis Ishtar was a tall woman of thirty, impeccably dressed, with a calm, stern gaze that could make even the staunchest critic wilt under her scrutiny. She only had to raise on elegantly shaped eyebrow to make Yugi regret every single one of his life choices, a trait that he both feared and respected.
Blushing, Yugi stood up quickly, fumbling with the zipper on his bag to give himself a moment to compose his expression. The last thing he wanted to do was to look guilty after he had almost gotten away with knocking over one of their new artifacts.
“What were you doing down there?” Isis’ voice was as smoothly inquisitive.
“S-sorry, Isis.” Damn it, why did he have to stutter when he was nervous? “I d-dropped my bag, but I have it now, it should be fine…” Yugi trailed off when he realized he was babbling, and blushed even harder. Isis’s expression took on a faint note of concern. He didn’t blame her – he hadn’t been this awkward around her since he had started working as an archivist several months ago.
“As long as you’re all right.” Isis watched him a moment longer while Yugi tried not to fidget. He hated it when people stared at him, something that was leftover from his gaming days. "Is everything ready for the lecture?"
The Domino City Museum periodically held events such as lectures and galas in order to raise money and Isis, as the museum's African art curator and with her career as a specialist in ancient art, was in charge of most of them. Yugi had found himself her impromptu assistant when no one else was up for the job, in addition to working in the archives. He loved the work, when he wasn't too busy to think about anything other than pottery shards and paperwork.
"Everything's ready - I organized your notes and the artifacts have all been catalogued.” Aside from the one I pretty much smashed. “Do you need me to head to the archives?”
“No, but thank you.” Something twinkled in her eyes. “Yugi, why don’t you take the rest of the day off? I can handle things here.”
“Wha- are you sure?”
“Of course.” She smiled at him. “Go spend the day with your grandfather, you’ve been working hard lately.”
Yugi grinned brightly. “Thanks, Isis!” He grabbed his bag and hurried out of the lecture hall, turning once to give her a wave from the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow for the preparations for the new exhibit!”
Her fond acknowledgement faded behind him as he headed through the museum, hitching his bag more firmly onto his shoulders and breathing out a puff of air at how heavy it was. That box must be pretty much solid gold. Yugi reasoned that he had the rest of the night to try to fix whatever had broken when it had hit the ground. If all else fails, I’ll just tell Isis the truth. I doubt it’s the first time something like that has happened, right? Yugi mused as he heaved open the heavy glass doors that led outside.
It was drizzling lightly as Yugi walked down the city block past the library where Ryou worked. He spared a moment to wave at the building – Ryou’s desk was near the window, wasn’t it? Oh well – before continuing down the street toward the game shop. His friend had expressed a preference for the quiet peace of the library as he worked to pay his way through grad school. Yugi found that he much preferred the museum, with its silent, dusty archives and noisy public areas in turn, as well as the valuable experience he got to add to his resume aside his own grad school classes.
It had come as a huge surprise when he had actually been accepted to work in the museum in his own home city – an honor he suspected had not been entirely independent of his level of fame after dueling professionally for several years. He had sent in his resume alongside – he suspected – hundreds of others, many of whom were probably qualified enough to be curators in their own right. However, when Yugi had gone in for the interview, wearing his best clothes and a tie borrowed from his grandfather, Isis had given him a long searching look, handed him an orientation packet, and quietly informed him that he started the next day. Strange or no, Yugi had been ecstatic even to start in an entry-level position as a junior archivist, and since then had never stopped relishing the challenge it afforded him.
The game shop that he and his grandfather lived in was just closing for lunch. Sugoroku had continued his tradition of sitting down for meals, even when Ryuji began helping out around the shop – “one of his old quirks”, or so he put it – so Yugi wasn’t surprised at the sight. He went around the back door to get in, as there was no use in having his grandfather lock up in front only for him to unlock it straight away. Setting his bag down on the counter with a hopefully muffled thump, Yugi called for his grandfather as he moved farther into the shop.
He really needed to think up a better way to carry the box around if it was going to be with him for the night. Yugi didn’t look forward to having to explain why he was heaving his bag around like he was carrying around a golden brick inside of it. Perhaps if he hid it upstairs….
His train of thought was interrupted as Sugoroku walked in to their small shared kitchen, broom in hand, his fading hair hidden underneath his ever-present bandanna.
“Yugi! Back home sooner than usual, I see.”
“Yeah, grandpa.” Yugi moved in for a hug. “Isis let me out early! I came to spend some time with you.”
“Oof! I swear, you get taller every day, my boy. Ready for lunch? That museum food can’t be good for you to eat all the time with how much you’ve been growing.”
“Oh, grandpa.” Yugi rolled his eyes, but the statement was true enough. He had been gaining some height ever since high school and, although he would never be tall, he had almost came within a head’s height of Anzu, if she hadn’t shot up another six inches. As it stood, he was the shortest of their circle of friends, and it looked like it would stay that way. Jou still teased him endlessly when they all met up over the weekends.
“Well then! How was your day?”
Yugi smiled. As much as he loved his job and his classes, nothing beat having lunch with his grandpa.
Afterwards, they agreed that Yugi would watch the shop while Sugoroku ran a few errands. Ryuji was off today, so it was just Yugi in the shop with the occasional customer.
After a long period without anyone showing up, Yugi finally gave in and headed to the back, reasoning that he would hear the bell if anyone were to visit the store. Opening up his bag, he pulled the decorated box out and send it on the counter with another heavy clunk.
Yugi stared. He hadn’t had a good look at the box itself since the museum, and now he took the opportunity to study it.
The top was striped, almost looking like it was constructed out of strips of wood, with an intricate border that slanted down to the edge of the lid. The rest of the box was constructed in much the same way, with hieroglyphs running in sideways rows all the way down the sides until they ended at the heavy base. A symbol that Yugi recognized from his studies as the Eye of Horus was emblazoned on the front of the box. The entire thing seemed to be made of solid gold alloy, and was quite hefty.
The lid was unwieldy, the lip of it fitting so perfectly into the larger bottom of the box that it was difficult to wrestle it free. Yugi set it aside and beheld the angular pieces he had hastily poured back in only an hour earlier. The pieces were rather thick, the edges smooth enough that they could not have been broken shards. Yugi let out what felt like the biggest sigh of relief in his life as the knot of tension deep inside him finally loosened. At least he hadn’t actually shattered the thing – the pieces looked like they were part of some sort of puzzle. All he had to do was fit everything back together, no harm done, right? Easy.
It was anything but easy. The puzzle pieces were heavy and slippery, and too often Yugi found himself losing a piece he was holding back into the box as it slid like silk through his fingers. After a full hour, he had only succeeded in fitting three pieces together and getting fingerprints all over the metal, which he self-consciously rubbed out with his sleeve. There, good enough.
It was hard not to appreciate the excellent craftsmanship of the artifact; the puzzle pieces fit together almost seamlessly. Despite himself, Yugi ended up turning the bit of puzzle he had completed back and forth so that the gold shone and refracted darting spots of light throughout the room. He could definitely see why this artifact had pride of place on Isis’s desk. It was beautiful, the edges sharp and clean, much unlike the time-worn artifacts that had also been scattered across Isis’s desk next to…
The fragment sipped through Yugi’s fingers and broke into two pieces on the counter. Yugi felt himself deflate even as his attention shifted elsewhere. Isis’s desk! He had forgotten the stack of files he had been carrying before the whole disaster with the puzzle had started. Damn it.
Would he be able to leave them there until the next day? Unlikely: in a larger museum such as Domino’s, it was far too easy for papers to get thrown away or misfiled.
Yugi swept up the golden pieces and deposited them back in the box before carefully sliding the lid back into place. He would have to head over to the museum when his grandfather returned to watch the shop. Course of action decided, Yugi nodded to himself and stood up to hide the puzzle box upstairs in his room.
***
The rain had stopped by the time Yugi was free to head back to the museum, and he breathed in the early afternoon air appreciatively. It had been a hot summer in Domino and Yugi had been grateful to work in the air conditioned archives while the pavement baked outside in the sun.
He pushed open the glass doors and nodded to the museum greeter as he blew past, making a beeline forward and to the side toward the lecture halls. Too preoccupied with digging his keys out of his pocket, Yugi missed the conversation coming from the room until it was almost on top of him.
Two people were speaking in an unknown language. Yugi stopped to listen, but he couldn’t make out anything from the rapid-fire words and consonants sharp enough to punctuate the air even through the door. Shrugging, he knock once and turned the knob as the voices went silent.
“Excuse me, I just have to…” he trailed off as he came face to face with his mentor and someone he had never seen before.
“Yugi! I was just mentioning you-“ the rest of Isis’s words flew over Yugi’s head completely as he drank in the sight of the stranger standing next to her.
The first impression Yugi recieved was red. The man had spiky burgundy hair that stuck up all over the place, not unlike Yugi's own black curls. His eyes were a shade of maroon that perfectly complemented the reddish-brown freckles on a warmly toned face. Yugi had never seen anyone like him before.
The stranger was of average height, taller than Yugi but at least a head shorter than Isis as she towered over the two.
"Yugi, I'd like you to meet an associate from my hometown in Egypt. He is here to consult on a personal project of mine. Atem, this is the assistant I was talking about."
Yugi had to physically shake himself out of his daze as the stranger reached out a - rather well-muscled - arm and spoke in carefully enunciated Japanese.
"Yugi Mutou? I am Atem Sennen."