Reminder

By Snare-chan

Pairings: None
Ratings: K
Category(ies): General
Warning(s): None
Status: One-shot, complete
Summary: When it rains, it pours, but there's the promise of a rainbow at the end.

Notes: My beta reader and friend, Cassandra Cassidy, wanted some Anzu-centric fic, so she got it. The request was, "Has she really been usurped from the role of 'best friend'?"

Rainy days were the pits. There was just something universally depressing about gray skies and pouring water that turned everything it touched into a soppy mess, and the way it forced people to stay inside and cancel plans that had been in the making for over a week.

It wasn't that long ago that Anzu could call up her closest friends at random and have her phone conversations escalate to a stop at a café or a visit to the arcade for some two-player DDR. Whether the weather was good or bad, there was always time to have fun.

Lately, she couldn't help feeling…not abandoned. That was the wrong word for it. Abandoned would imply that she'd been excluded, forgotten, or ignored, and people like Yugi Mutou just weren't humanly capable of that. In a way, it was more like getting short-ended.

Though she was more social than her long-standing friend, there was only a select group she felt emotionally connected to, and when Katsuya Jounouchi and Hiroto Honda befriended Yugi, his appreciation had been spread out. No longer was it "Yugi and Anzu" but "three boys and a girl." She was glad he had finally found others to enjoy company with – he deserved it – but it almost felt like it was at the cost of being shared. It was an unpleasant feeling to be the third wheel, and a terrible sensation to be the fourth wheel.

Which was why the weather had put such a damper on her mood. She'd felt disconnected from the boy she'd known since grade school and managed to get him on a day when there weren't any tournaments or previous engagements planned, and everyone else was busy but the two of them. It had been perfect, just two friends about to hang out and be themselves like old times. But storms seemed to have an uncanny sixth sense when it came to important dates, and now it matched her mood rather well, too.

She sighed dejectedly and rested her head on her arms, watching as people scurried below her apartment window under umbrellas and newspapers. There wasn't much else to do, and-

The doorbell rang.

Startled, she straightened in her chair and looked through her bedroom entrance and to the front door, as if the answer would already be there as to who was visiting. Anzu was alone and on her own for lunch, which was the usual as of late and the reason why she had wanted company, but due to the sudden onslaught of rain, this slot was now free. Not expecting any company to appear, she got up to address whoever had come.

"I'm sorry; I hope I didn't keep you waiting long… Yugi?!" she gasped and opened the door wider, faster. "What in the world are you doing here, and in this weather?"

He was wearing a raincoat and galoshes, for whatever good it did him in such a raging storm. It was windy out and had obviously aided in the rain pelting him during his travels, his pants rather wet in most places and his hair dripping water down onto his face. Yugi had to be freezing on top of it all, though he wasn't showing it, a smile in its usual place. He held out a bag of food which was sort of see-through, though who knew whether it was due to grease or rain.

"I'm not going to let this stop me from keeping plans with a friend; you should know that by now, Anzu! A picnic was out of the question, though…so I bought us some Burger World instead. I hope you don't mind."

Anzu had never felt more selfish and childish than in that moment.

"No. I mean, no, I don't mind!" she stammered slightly, a smile gracing her features as she ushered him inside. For a moment she had some difficulty in removing his coat, her ability to see a little blurred for some reason and making the task complicated.

"Er…Anzu, are you alright?'

Nodding firmly, she wiped at the bottom of one eye a little too quickly and said, "Never been better. I'll go and get us the dinner plates. Just…just don't you go anywhere, okay?"

-Fin-