Our house was always a lot quieter after Amane's death. The mundane, everyday noises- the tunes my mother would hum while cooking dinner, my father's quiet chuckles at anything he found amusing, and the blaring of old cartoon reruns Amane and I would, without any exceptions whatsoever, sit in front of every Saturday morning- all vanished almost immediately.

None of us could bring ourselves to do what we needed to bring them back, either. My mother never sang while she cooked, because her definition of "cooking" eventually became "calling the number on whichever takeout menu she pulled out of the drawer in the kitchen." My father never laughed, because there was nothing to laugh about- nothing was ever funny to any of us anymore. And the TV always remained blank and silent on Saturdays, because one glance at the shows I had recited word for word as Amane's bedtime stories was enough to make me inconsolable for hours.

All of these minor things had been small enough that we had taken them for granted while they were still there, but looking back on it, I can't help but wonder if their disappearance was a factor in the downward spiral that threatened to pull our family closer to rock bottom, every moment of every day.

It made sense, though- the once-commonplace happiness in the Bakura household simply wasn't there anymore. Even my mother, who had always been so vibrant and cheerful even when things got difficult, spent an increasing amount of her days in her bedroom, locking the door and not speaking a word all day. Even when she did remember I was in the house and came out to say something to me, she always looked and sounded completely exhausted. Losing her youngest daughter, the only other female member of the family, at such a young age was a harsh blow for her, and it was only made worse by the fact that she had been right there with her the day it happened. She was never the same person after that day- she had given up on trying to make things better, and all I could do was watch her get worse in some vicious cycle she kept up without even realizing it.

Every now and then my father would attempt to talk her out of her constant bad moods, but that was rare, as he was almost never home to do so. Even before Amane's death he had been gone more often than not, but now days would pass before my mother and I would get so much as a phone call. He told me once, years later, that he couldn't stand the negative atmosphere at our apartment anymore. He took on as many extra hours as his job would let him, and if he still wanted to run away after that, he went to a cheap bar a few minutes from his office and drank some cheap alcohol until he couldn't even remember that there had been a little girl named Amane.

As for me, it had quickly become my job to take care of any household chores. I had been raised in a home where everything was clean all the time, and once my mother lost any motivation she had had to tidy things up, I found myself doing everything on my own, without being asked. I never really minded, though- I was just dealing with our situation in a way completely opposite from my mother's. While she was content to lie in bed staring at the ceiling all day, I felt like I was going to go crazy if I didn't keep myself busy at least most of the time. I realized around then that I had an interest in cooking as well, after I realized how tired I was of eating sweet and sour chicken every night.

my new hobby did require me to start going out for ingredients, though, and that was the hardest part of my new routine to adjust to. My mother had not only lifted her ban from me that forbade me to leave the house alone, she outright refused to go with me. Even the smallest reminders of her trip outside with Amane would cause her to break down sobbing, and compared to that, my fears of going outside were absolutely miniscule. I stopped minding as much after the first couple of months, though, because I started to look forward to the time I could spend outside of the apartment. The longer I spent at home, the more I would suffocate under the smothering, gloomy atmosphere that everyone inside , it became an ironic sort of comfort to slip outside and mix into the enormous crowds, pretending that I was still a normal child from a perfect family.

Even if I tried to space out my trips by never leaving without a reason, I would always take extra, subliminal efforts to keep myself outside as long as possible. I would linger by the vegetables as I searched for the perfectly-shaped carrot, hesitate to stare in wonder at an elaborate window display, and make mental notes of the winding streets and alleyways I could use as detours when I was done shopping. I was making up for the two years I had spent cooped up inside, and finally seeing what the city had to offer.

Eventually, though, I would run out of tasks to entertain myself with, and I would return home. No matter how many times I stepped inside, the moment where I remembered who I was and what my situation was always sent a sharp pain through my chest. The apartment, filled with a heavy, dead silence, was all the reminder I needed to know that I wasn't really an anonymous boy of almost twelve years anymore, who could convince anyone and everyone that the world was wonderful with nothing more than a smile and some polite words.

I was simply Ryou Bakura, a boy who could no longer even convince himself that the world was wonderful.

After a while, those days began to blur together, forming a mass of memories that was similar to the blur of my earlier childhood. My mind seemed to divide itself, in a way, until I had two distinctly blurry sections of my memory. But I couldn't bring myself to focus on the details from either one, even if I tried- remembering the dark, recent past was understandably painful, and I tried to avoid those thoughts as often as possible.

The surprising part for me was how painful the good memories had become. Any passing thought of my sister would only remind me that I would never see her again. All thoughts of my mother would make me imagine her in her room, silent and unsmiling- the complete opposite of the mother I remembered. And any memories of my friends from childhood would only force me to face the truth, and admit that I was completely alone now. All of these thoughts would crush me just as hard as the painful ones, because I was convinced that no matter how much I wanted to get those early years back, I was never going to see them again.

I spent countless nights lying in bed while still wide awake, insomnia taking over to the point where sleep became more uncommon than consciousness. And every single time, I laid there silently and motionlessly, wondering if I could fade and disappear into the surrounding darkness with enough effort.

I will say, though, that I never wanted to die. I spent months watching the devastating effects that Amane's death had on my parents. And while it was painfully obvious that my parents weren't as concerned about my well-being as they had been before the accident, I still wanted to believe that they cared a little bit. I didn't want either of them to suffer any more than they already had, and I couldn't stand to think of what might happen to them if they lost the only child they had left. I kept myself going with the questionable belief that I was keeping our family together, even if it as just by a thread. So I continued to exist, trapped in a world where time had screeched to a halt and everything refused to change, for better or for worse.

Until suddenly, everything shifted back into motion. And when it did, I only found myself drifting further away from my old life, wondering why I had wished for anything to change.

Xxx

One night, I woke up to a loud crashing sound from our living room, followed by the sound of shattered glass scattering everywhere. Still half-asleep, I initially wrote it off as the remnants of a forgotten dream, and rolled over with the intention of going back to sleep- I didn't want to waste a night where sleep came easily. But I had only just closed my eyes when the noise was quickly followed by yelling that easily traveled through the thin walls around my bedroom.

"Damn it, Sarah, think about what you're doing here! You aren't the only one in this family, so be a little more considerate of the rest of us!"

"Oh, so when you leave me at home alone with our son for days at a time while you work and get wasted, you're doing it for the sake of our whole family?"

Slowly, I sat up, trying to listen in and make sense of what I was hearing. As far as I could tell, this was my mother and father, arguing over something I knew nothing about. I had never really heard them fight like that before that night, and I had assumed those types of things only existed in movies and television. A year ago, I wouldn't have considered the possibility of a fight like this between anyone, let alone my parents. Now I just sat in my bed silently, without any real reaction- my parents weren't the same people they had been before Amane's death, and I had accepted that a long time ago. I had no reason to be surprised by their sudden aggression.

"This is different than what I've done, and you know it! Honestly, how is having a job and getting a few drinks anywhere near suddenly leaving by yourself to go to America? I do my job so that you and Ryou can stay home and eat every day- what are you going to do after leaving us behind?"

I froze. My mother was… leaving? She was getting on a plane, completely alone, and flying halfway across the world? She was abandoning my father and I?

No matter how many times I repeated the idea in my head, I couldn't comprehend it at all. How long ago had she started planning this? How much time did she spend planning this, making absolutely sure that my father and I wouldn't find out and try to stop her?

Why was she doing something like that?

"If you want to keep contributing to the family like that, go ahead. Leave Ryou here alone, and keep staying out all night while you drink your problems away. Or you could sober up and be a dad for once in your life, you know- I've taken responsibility for that boy for twelve years, and you know as well as I do that I can't handle that anymore."

"What, I can handle a full time job and taking care of him? He has to eat, and that won't happen if I don't work- where do you think money comes from?"

For some reason, it was when my parents started arguing about me that I couldn't bring myself to listen anymore. I didn't want to hear the two people I loved more than anything else in the world as they talked about me like some sort of pet, trying to push me onto each other because neither one wanted me around. I closed my eyes and tried to block my ears with my pillow, trying desperately to fall back to sleep and escape whatever twisted reality I was in at the time. I wouldn't have minded if the world I awakened to was a bland, colorless monotony. If things weren't going to brighten up, then I would have been perfectly fine living in a monochrome world forever.

Anything would have been fine, really, so long as the world didn't become any darker than it already was.

Xxx

By that morning, my mother had already vanished.

My father told me this point blank, staring straight at me with emotionless eyes. He said she had "gone away for a while to sort things out for herself," and that he had no idea when (or even if) she was going to come back. I just nodded. I didn't need, or even want, to know anything else.

My father moved closer to me and wrapped his arm around my shoulder, in an awkward sort of hug that was probably his best attempt at comforting me.

"Do you want to talk about this at all, Ryou? Are you alright?" I muttered that I was fine, and stared down at the kitchen floor, wanting nothing more than for him to leave and let me figure things out on my own. He stared at me for a long moment with some unrecognizable emotion flashing through his eyes, then removed his arm from around me.

"I'll be in my office if you change your mind, then," he finally said, after a long pause. "Now that it's just the two of us, I'm going to try to work from home more often. I'll try not to lock the door as often, so just let me know if you ever need anything." He didn't look back at me once as he closed himself up in his office down the hall, leaving me alone in our cramped, messy kitchen.

At that point, I probably should have felt worse than I did. If my mother had abandoned me before all these horrible things had started happening, I would have had no idea how to handle it. My whole life would have come screeching to a halt without her. But when I imagined her in some foreign country all the way across the ocean, miles away from all the problems that made her sink so low in the first place, I felt more relieved than anything else. Even if I hadn't really spoken to my mother in almost a year, I still hated the idea of her being so upset. If abandoning my father and I was what it took to make her smile the way she used to, then even the small part of me that protested against her absence wasn't enough for me to wish she had stayed here.

Xxx

...Why couldn't anyone keep her here?

It started raining later that morning, and continued late into the evening, when the 5:00 news came on. I only remember that because I had been planning to go shopping until I heard a loud crack of thunder, and rain started coming down in sheets. That was why I had resigned myself to sitting mindlessly in front of the TV,still too numb from that morning's news about my mother to think of a new, productive plan.

The first few stories they covered were nothing special- simple crimes and inconveniences that occurred relatively often in cities as huge as Tokyo. A convenience store robbery, the beginning of a major road construction project… problems that only mattered to the people who were directly involved and would need to pay for them, and that everyone else would just consider background noise. Small, insignificant events that would be entirely forgotten as soon as their five minutes of fame were up.

At 5:13 P.M, after a quick commercial break, they started to talk about their "breaking news" for the evening- a plane crash, that had just been updated with new information.

At first, I only felt a little bit unnerved, and assumed that it came with the severity of a story like that. I didn't try to think about it any more than that. Even if the newscasters said that the plane had departed from Tokyo's airport earlier that day, it didn't have to mean anything. There had to have been hundreds of flights that left the city that morning. The odds of it being a plane with any significance were just too-

"Flight #9029 left for New York City at 12:10 this afternoon, with 36 passengers and 4 crew members on board."

...New York City…? Wasn't that…

"The cause of the crash was unknown, and the wreckage of the plane was found on an island off the coast of Osaka, where the pilot had attempted to-"

"Turn it off, Ryou."

I jumped a bit when I heard my father's voice from the doorway. His tone, which lately had carried little to no emotion whenever he spoke, was more forced than it normally was- his voice shook with each of the few words he said, even if his voice sounded neutral as always. I couldn't help but turn around and look at his face. Something was obviously wrong; I could tell that much from his expression. It never took him this much effort to stay calm and composed. If there was nothing wrong, he wouldn't be shaking, his eyes wouldn't be wide, and his face wouldn't be as white as a sheet. As much as I hated to say it, he probably wouldn't even be talking to me.

But he was, and every single one of those things was true.

So, I concluded, something bad must have happened.

"Ryou. Turn it off."

I stood up, and wordlessly did as he told me. I didn't let myself show any emotion, but inside, I was a complete mess, because I wasn't stupid- I already knew exactly what had happened. I didn't turn back to look at my father, because I didn't need him to tell me that my mother had boarded flight #9029 that morning, hoping to arrive in New York as soon as possible. No, he didn't need to tell me, and I didn't want him to tell me.

It didn't matter, after the banner across the bottom of the screen announced that everyone on board had been declared dead at the scene.

…I didn't want my father to say anything at all.

Xxx

I should probably apologize for the delay in getting this chapter finished. I wasn't lying when I said in my last author's note that I had started the draft for this chapter. I really did start it immediately after the second one went up. But in all honesty, I have been much busier this past month and a half than I thought I would be when I promised regular updates. I've been working on it here and there when I can, but realistically, between school being a little bitch (If anyone has taken AP US History before, you probably understand), drama club responsibilities, and other assorted "fun," I have a bit more to deal with than I had thought. So sorry about that. But hey, long chapter with extra angst. Ryou is starting to get more bitter. Get excited.

Next chapter won't take this long. I (kind of, probably) promise. In the meantime, feel free to review if you have any burning questions, comments, or concerns. Or, you know, if you just like what I've done so far. I like talking about my writing with people, so don't hold back.