I received the phone call during my lunch break. Apparently my secretary thought it was important enough to bother me with. I made a mental note to forget the bonus she earned last week.
"Kaiba," I answered when she put the caller through.
"Hello, Mr. Kaiba." It was a woman's voice, disembodied, sounding prim and full of purpose. I disliked her immediately.
"Who is this?"
"I am the principal of Domino High," she said, still in that nauseatingly self-important voice.
"What do you want?" I had better things to do than listen to schoolteachers prattle on about…whatever schoolteachers prattled on about.
"I was calling to perhaps arrange an appointment – "
"You can set up an appointment with my secretary." I made a move to turn off the phone, but her words caught me before I could.
"It's about your brother, Mokuba!" she half-screeched.
"What about him?" I demanded. There had better be a good reason you're bringing Mokuba into this conversation.
"His writing professor has asked that I call you. Apparently he's been displaying some rather – disturbing – tendencies in his work." She sounded too satisfied with herself, as if my brother's perceived failings were supposed to boost her to new heights.
My watch told me I had another forty minutes until the meeting for the board. It took eight minutes and thirty-two seconds to get to Domino High from my office. Nine minutes if traffic didn't cooperate.
" – with no ability to control – " She was still talking, oblivious to the fact I wasn't paying attention.
"I'll be right there," I interrupted, and then hung up. Barely five seconds later, I was on the line connecting me to my secretary's desk.
"Yes, Mr. Kaiba?"
"I'm leaving for a short while. If I'm not back before the meeting convenes, stall. I do not want them making any decisions without my presence, is that understood?"
Timidly she offers a confirmation, but then asks what she should do to stop them.
I had no time for this. "Do a striptease if you have to," I growled at her. "Do not let them begin." Then I hung up, feeling like I had adequately punished her for putting a grating-voiced schoolteacher through during my lunch break.
I was out the door, down the hall and in my car on the way to Domino High before I really began to wonder what I was going to be dealing with when I arrived.
What did Mokuba write? I wondered, turning at the stoplight to get on the street passing the school's front entrance.
He hadn't been acting strangely as of late, so I had no fears that my little brother had become suicidal. I also had no real idea what, exactly, could prompt a writing professor to have the principal call me. If Mokuba had gotten into a fight, or physically done something, I could understand. But writing? I couldn't make a connection there.
The hallways were empty as I walked through them. A few of the classrooms were devoid of inhabitants as well. It seemed, as I neared the end of the hall, one such room was to be my destination.
It was.
I didn't bother knocking on the door, just pushed it open and walked in. Mokuba wasn't in the room, but a dreary old woman with huge spectacles was. She didn't look like much.
I stood, arms crossed, watching her. "What about this writing?" I finally asked when the silence stretched too long. I could have out-waited her, but I had a meeting I had to make, and in all seriousness, I did not want my secretary to demean herself to keep their attention.
"It's right here," she said, waving a piece of paper.
I took two steps forward and snatched the offending item out of her hand. The title on it was neatly printed, but the writing across the rest of the page was undoubtedly Mokuba's untidy scrawl.
"I'll read it later," I said, folding the sheet up to tuck into my coat.
The old woman glared at me, and under the sting of her reproach, I unfolded the paper to attempt the deciphering of my little brother's handwriting.
My brother means more to me than anyone or anything else in the world. He's a great businessman, a hard worker and he is more supportive of me than many parents are of their kids. I'm lucky to have Seto as my brother, and he often tells me so. I think it's so I won't forget.
As if I could. I don't think he knows I couldn't forget, even if I wanted to. Even if I tried. We're more than just brother, I know. The two of us are connected deeper than that. If someone hears the term 'brothers', the immediate reference is to sibling rivalry and combativeness.
We don't have any of that… Maybe we're not really brothers in the true sense of the word then. We're family, though. Family is always supportive, always there for you. Seto's always there for me.
He's told me before that I have saved him. Me! I know he wouldn't lie to me. Sometimes I don't think he's capable of lying to me. A lot of people might think that would be a good thing, but sometimes I know it kills Seto not to be able to protect me from something when I ask about it. Sometimes I wish I'd never asked then, because he gets quiet and won't look at me.
But after he tells me something, even if he seems so much farther away, I know we're actually closer. He trusts me, and I'm proud I've earned that sort of trust. It's hard to come by in the real world, and sometimes most especially hard to find in the people who are supposed to be open and honest with you.
It's important to me that I have Seto. He'd tell you the same thing, but probably in fewer words.
I read once about a Native American belief that said there were only so many words a person was allowed to speak over the course of their lifetime. Because of that, they always chose their words carefully and never said too much. Seto's that way too. He thinks everything through, all the way, before he says something.
That's part of what it means to be Seto, I think. It's not only that he's Seto Kaiba, a champion duelist and the youngest CEO in the world – he's also a genuine person beneath whatever exterior the real world chooses to see.
And under that external shell, there's a lot to my brother. He's paranoid about bad coffee beans making their way into his morning dose. He hates the cold. He's partially colorblind, but learned how to make up for it, so no one can ever tell. He still gets lost inside our house sometimes. Once in a while he falls asleep when he's working. He's never forgotten me at school but occasionally he forgets about important meetings for KaibaCorp. He only eats Cheerios in the morning, and we have a whole closet filled with boxes of them. He's told me I'll probably be taller than him when I finish growing. He knows more about technology than any ten tech colleges put together, but he still keeps on trying to find out more. He can't cook anything else worth a bent nail, but somehow manages to make perfect French toast and passable omelets. Those are the little things that really matter, I think.
What it means to be my brother is the same thing it means to be a lover. We're closer than air.
I looked up from the paper and gave the teacher a scathing look. "Yes?" I prompt, catching sight of my watch and noting with a little twinge I have twenty minutes to get back.
She shakes her head dismissively. "I just found it…odd."
"Odd?" She called me here because she found one his pieces odd? What are these people on?
I nodded and started out the door.
"Mr. Kaiba!" she called after me.
I thought about just continuing, practicing selective listening, but I don't want to be responsible for her breaking a leg trying to chase me down the hallway. From the tone of her voice, I figured that she probably was the type to do something like that.
"These are his too," she added, shoving a heavy sheaf of papers into my hands.
I nodded again and left.
Thank the gods almost all businessmen are prone to being late. I arrived three minutes later than I wanted to, but still, none of them had showed up yet. It gave me enough time to go through a few more of Mokuba's pieces.
I wasn't surprised to find they all seemed to deal with me.
I am the most important person in Mokuba's life. He said so himself.
None of them were quite as good as the first one though, that I read in the classroom. I flipped back to that one, letting the assorted stack sit untidily on my desk. That was one thing he forgot to mention in his list of my virtues and vices – I'm not a neat freak in the office.
The clock on the wall made a couple clicks, reminding me I had a meeting soon. But first, I picked up my phone and dialed Mokuba's cell number. He answered on the third ring.
"Nii-sama?"
"Hey, kiddo."
"What's up?"
"Your teacher called me in to read one of your essays."
"Which one?"
I looked at the printed words across the top of the page. "The one called 'What it means…'," I replied.
He laughed a bit. "She probably got the wrong idea."
I chuckled softly. "You need to watch the wording, kid. The paparazzi would eat something like that up. I don't want people coming up to me asking how I make French toast."
He was silent on the other end for a moment. "I meant what I said, though."
"What, that my omelets are only passable?"
"No." He sounded slightly annoyed with me.
"What then?"
"That we're closer than air."
I sighed. "Of course we are. You've got to understand how that looks sometimes though. You said it yourself – brothers aren't usually that close."
"Since when have you cared how something looks?" He sounded accusing on the other end.
"I haven't."
"You have a meeting don't you?"
He startled a bark of laughter out of me. "How did you know?"
"Instincts, big brother." The phone clicked off just as my door opened. It was Mokuba.
"Don't forget, we're closer than air."
Author's Note: I had a hard time deciding on a title for this one. It wasn't supposed to be Tabloidshipping, so hopefully I avoided that... Although it was supposed to seem like that at the beginning and then not be and... Whatever.