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When Arsis and Thesis met on the dance floor,
one bowed to the other, the other implored:
“Let’s strike up the band now with haste and due speed.
Why wait for the others? We’re all that we need!”
—The Dance, Vera Kochanowsky
Anzu still isn’t sure exactly how it happened. One minute she was stepping onto the Super Dancer platform, and the next, the arcade went black. The electricity zapped back on seconds later, and then Yugi’s Duel Disk—left on the dance pad beside her before he’d run off to try some new co-op game with Jounouchi—fritzed, the surge from the restored power interfering with the Solid Vision System.
Anyway, she supposes it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. What does matter is the very tall hologram that’s appeared next to her.
It? He? He, Anzu decides (because the former just sounds rude), turns his head and looks at her. His image is perfectly clear, not even a little staticky. He looks solid, almost like he could step right off the platform, and Anzu can only marvel at how far KaibaCorp’s technology has come.
He opens his mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. He frowns.
“You are Dark Magician, right?”
She feels silly asking, but he doesn’t look anything like the Dark Magician she is used to seeing, the one with purple robes and hair. It isn’t the alternate artwork, either. This one is all his own, dark skin and eyes. He looks familiar, though, and Anzu peers at him until it finally clicks.
“I remember you!” she exclaims. “You were there, when we played that Shadow RPG… You’re from the past.”
Not-Dark-Magician-but-still-Dark-Magician cocks his head.
Anzu’s smile turns bittersweet.
She usually tries not to think about that day. Anzu is nothing if not extraordinarily gifted at compartmentalizing and living in the moment. But being back in Domino City for summer break, removed from all the distractions that usually fill her days in New York—rehearsals, friends, her part-time job—has a way of stirring up nostalgia.
There had been that light. So much light. Then the strange transformation of his clothes, the way everything seemed to shift before her eyes, and finally the terrible realization that there would be no bringing him back.
Somewhere in the arcade, Jounouchi loudly swears, and the sound of Yugi’s laughter follows. For one brief and perfect second, they are all teenagers again, with nothing more to worry about than who is winning the next game.
“How is he?” she asks.
Dark Magician stares at her.
“Oh!” she laughs, embarrassed. “Right! Sorry. You can’t talk, huh?”
Dark Magician almost looks amused.
“Is he doing okay?” she tries again.
Dark Magician’s expression softens incrementally. He nods. It is a small one, but there is something reassuring in it, like he knows what she is really asking.
Behind Anzu, the Super Dancer machine chirps. The word READY flashes on the screen, accompanied by upbeat music. She reaches for the controls to cancel out of the game, but Dark Magician’s face stops her.
His gaze has moved past her to the arcade: screens, lights, beeps, explosions, laughter, shouting. Kids and teens and twenty-somethings caught up in the easy, uncomplicated joy of being alive.
Dark Magician simply watches them. There is something unspeakably sad in his eyes. Anzu feels a pang in her chest. She has no idea how old he was when he died. But looking at him now, she realizes he couldn’t have been much older than they are.
All those years ago, he had a whole life ahead of him, but somehow that life became watching other people enjoy mundane things he never got to experience himself.
Anzu looks back at the machine. An idea takes shape, followed by a smile.
“Do you dance?” she asks.
Dark Magician looks surprised by her question.
“This is a dancing game. You follow the arrows on the screen. When one lines up with the marker, you step on the matching part of the dance pad. Up, down, left, right…” She demonstrates with her feet. “You keep up with the music, and whoever gets the better score wins. Want to try?”
Dark Magician considers the screen, then the glowing sensors under his feet. He nods again, but there is a glint of mischief in his eyes.
A teenager walking by them calls out, “Cool Dark Magician cosplay!”
Dark Magician’s brows pull together in evident confusion.
“She thinks you’re dressed up as the Duel Monster,” Anzu explains.
His blinks at her.
“Never mind,” she laughs, selecting a random electro-pop track from the list. “Ready? Let’s go!”
3…2…1…
The music builds with each count and blasts through the speakers as the timer reaches zero.
START!
Colorful arrows pulse on the screen. Anzu follows them easily. She glances sideways at Dark Magician, assuming he will be following along, but he is more than competent. He is good. He reads the arrows faster than she expects him to. There’s a fluidity to his movements, too, a grace beneath all that heavy fabric and armor.
“Okay! I see how it is!”
The song speeds up, and so do they. They throw themselves into it, head and neck, arms and legs and all, twisting, spinning their way through the increasingly frantic stream of arrows. Anzu is grinning so hard her cheeks ache, gasps of laughter between breaths. Dark Magician’s face is split by a wide and soundless laugh, like he has forgotten, if only for a few precious minutes, that he is dead.
(And maybe that’s why their time with him was so precious, precisely because it was never meant to last.)
The last barrage of arrows flashes across the screen. Anzu drops into a quick freestyle flourish, kicking out her leg and sweeping it around in an arc before popping back onto her feet. Dark Magician keeps pace, gliding between steps and turning with a speed that would be difficult for any ordinary dancer to match. Anzu spins through the next few beats and lands the final sequence before the music cuts.
The results screen appears. She won by a much narrower margin than she would have expected five minutes ago.
“You’re a really good dancer!” she tells him.
Dark Magician gestures towards her and gives a little shake of his head, as if to say, But you are better.
“How did you learn?” she asks curiously. “I know you can’t talk, but…” Well, it’s not like they had dance school in Ancient Egypt, right?
Dark Magician ponders her question, then makes a slow rocking motion with his arms, cradling an invisible baby against his chest.
“You learned as a child?”
He nods and repeats the motion.
“Your mother?”
He smiles wistfully.
Somehow, Anzu can picture it: a little boy learning his first steps from his mother, music filling a space that has been gone for thousands of years. She wonders how many small, ordinary memories he must carry with him, ones no history book or Duel Monsters card could ever preserve.
His outline glitches. The colors of his robes distort, his face briefly dissolving into static before snapping back into focus.
He looks down at himself, then back at her. There’s a helpless little shrug that says, Looks like it is my time to go.
“Wait!” she says, even as the flickering intensifies. “I’m happy I got to meet you again. Properly, this time. I’m also glad that—”
His body fractures into jagged bands of light.
“Tell him we miss him,” Anzu says.
Dark Magician smiles again. A real smile.
Then he bows to her before he fades away. Anzu stands there as though she is a frozen hologram herself, staring at the empty space where he had been.
Soft as a breath, she hears it:
Thank you, Anzu.
She catches the tear with her knuckle just before Yugi and Jounouchi return. Yugi retrieves his Duel Disk from the dance pad and secures it onto his forearm again. When he looks at Anzu, it is with that familiar perceptiveness from their childhood. Best friends always have a way of knowing when something is off.
“What happened?” he asks.
“Nothing.” Anzu smiles and wipes the remaining moisture from under her eye. “I mean, it’s—” She smiles brighter. “I just remembered someone.”