Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ Costume Jewelry ❯ I ( Chapter 2 )

Disclaimer: I know I've used this before, but if I owned Yu-gi-oh, there would be actual character development! We have one scene with young Mai!

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Please write an essay explaining who you are and why you would be a good addition to the Eastvalley University community.

Who am I? Why do you care? No one does. All you care about is the money Mr. Kujaku is donating to get his daughter accepted to a prestigious university. The Pre-Business major, obviously. I am your ticket to a new stadium.

And by now, you have come to the conclusion that I am an obnoxious, ungrateful brat. Well, you'd agree with my father on that. His trophy daughter whose intelligence scores are off the charts, put in the right pre-schools, elementary schools, Preparatory Academies. Note the plurals.

I was taking ballet and piano and cotillion when I was in the goddamn preschools. Friends? No point. No time. When I was always moving, my father moving up the corporate ladder. And, according to my loving parents, I had more important things to do.

Until I was in high school. Then I needed to be associating with people. Extracurricular activities. Only the right ones, of course. And then my father hired on at Industrial Illusions. And brought his perfect little daughter to social functions to show me off. So he gave me some money and told me to buy cards, so he could have a little Duelist daughter, who loved the game the great company made.

Brown-nosier.

Only… I was browsing at the company's online site (my father had credit there), and I saw them.

The Harpie Lady Sisters card.

A family.

A real one, not a five-to-nine father and a mother always out shopping and a much, much older brother already moving up the corporate ladder, a little clone of my father.

So I bought them. And things to help them. I got only orders, no help. My parents would never quiz me before an exam, listen to me play the music I hated. Oh no.

I would help my new family.

They're just cards, I bet you're saying at this point.

Well, the Harpie family is a lot more real than any family I've ever seen. They actually cared about me.

I won. I dueled other kids at the parties my father brought me to. He let me join the Duelist club at school, you'll see it on my extra-curricular activities pages. Duel Monsters is the chess of the modern age, of course he approved.

He even let me enter a few tournaments. You'll see them under the non-academic awards category.

Here I was, among people who judged me only on my skill. Who didn't care about my family's money, who didn't suck up. They just dueled. The best man won, not the best at sucking up.

Real people. Honest competition.

But of course, I couldn't spend time with them outside of dueling. Couldn't make friends with people who couldn't help me on my way up.

I knew what my father would say. Dueling attracts the best and the brightest. The scholarship kids, held in contempt by the rest of the school. If my father found out, he'd make me quit the club.

I'd get a lecture about associating with the wrong crowd.

Yes, my parents really are that scary.

They have my life all planned out.

I've met my future husband.

Well, I have my life planned out too.

And my plans don't include attending Eastvalley.

Sorry about applying early decision, my parents made me. I know you're not supposed to apply early decision unless you are sure you will go if accepted.

Sayonara.

I want to be who I am, not who they want me to be. I want golden trophies, not gold wedding rings.

I want to roar, not simper. I want honest wolf-whistles, not perverted old men staring.

I'm eighteen now. A legal adult. I have sole access to my funds. I've returned all the entering-college gifts.

I'm free. I'm leaving.

Mai Kujaku, trophy child, is dead. Long live Mai Valentine, Duelist Queen.

I've had my name legally changed. I'm serious about this. I am not coming back. I am not going here.

So put my essay in the rejected pile, because I reject you, you elitist bastards.

Tomorrow, I fly out for Germany, to enter a tournament there. Then Spain, England, Italy… all those languages I had to learn will actually be useful.

Nothing else will.

There are hundreds of duelists who travel the world, supporting themselves. Several of them were at the tournaments. The tournaments I won.

By the time you get this, by the time you forward it to my `loving' parents, I'll be long gone.

I'm going to be independent and flaunt myself and kick ass. I'm going to be the bitch queen I am instead of having to act all perfect.

It's my life. And damn you all, but you can't stop me from living it anymore.

I'm writing this to you, Mr. or Ms. Application Reader, because I can't tell it to my parents. Their ears will edit out what they don't want to hear, like they always have. They'll insist, and won't be able to grasp that their anger has no power to move me anymore. I'll just get angry at them, at their arrogance, at their blindness, and they aren't worth it. They aren't worth my anger.

But I needed to say this. It needed to be said.

So, sorry for wasting your time.

Bye bye for real now, babe.

I gotta go pack. Hell, I gotta go shopping.

I don't really own anything that fits me. That fits who I am. My parents would have tossed it out and lectured me.

I fucking hate that. Hated it. Past tense, notice.

If you want to pass this on to them, feel free. But don't think `clearing the air' or anything will bring about a reconciliation.

I'm never going to speak to them again. Just like they never spoke to me except to give orders.

I think I'm being much nicer, don't you?

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I always viewed Mai as American. I'm picturing third-generation, but with Japanese ancestry, obviously. The scene in I think episode 92… she's standing at the window of a mansion. I picture her as a poor little rich girl.

A theme in this thing is going to be appearance vs. reality, as you can see in the title, Costume Jewelry. She's been forced into being a little princess all her life, here she's declaring herself to be what she conceives of herself to be. But… is that reality?

I thought the name Mai Valentine was dumb until I thought of Fay Valentine. I can picture an impressionable Mai sneaking out to the Cowboy Bebop movie. She seems to have modeled herself after her, don't you agree?