This Friendship Business: A YGO + Negima Crossover Oneshot
By: Storychan
Plot: Twice, Seto Kaiba met Ayaka Yukihiro at corporate parties intended for professional networking. Twice, he very nearly became her friend.
Seto Kaiba couldn't believe that his stepfather, Gozaburo, had stuffed him into a tiny suit and commanded him to appear at this boring party. All the adults there were CEOs of corporations in tuxedos and ballgowns, schmoozing and trying to casually broker business relationships. Gozaburo, Seto noticed, was chatting it up with some snow-haired American bigwig, wearing a gracious smile that anyone who truly knew the man, as Seto did, could tell was fake.
Why do I have to be here? Seto thought, leaning with a bored expression against the wall. At least at the last one of these stupid parties, that German kid was here screwing with the chandeliers to make things interesting. This time, everything's just….lame.
Mokuba, somehow, held none of Seto's ennui, and was running around introducing himself to all the other brats that had been dragged here by their rich parents. You'd think one of them could afford a babysitter, Seto thought, rolling his eyes. Then, suddenly, Mokuba ran over to him, dragging a blonde girl (her father had probably married some gaijin) in a white dress by the hand.
"Seto-niisama!" Mokuba cried excitedly. "Meet Ayaka-san! Her daddy runs Yukihiro Corporation!"
"How do you do?" Ayaka smiled politely. "Would you like to be friends?"
This girl, Seto figured, would probably inherit Yukihiro Corporation some day, just as Seto was the heir to Kaiba Corporation. Gozaburo would want him to befriend her, then, so that they could be business partners someday in the future. Seto, of course, always sought to undermine Gozaburo's wishes at every turn. He hated the man.
"Sorry, I'm not really interested in this friendship business," Seto shrugged, turning away coldly.
"Wha – Seto-niisama, why do you have to be so mean?" Mokuba pouted. "I think you and Ayaka-san have a lot in common! For instance, she's about to have a little brother, too!"
"Oh, really?" Seto blinked, turning back to them, curious.
"Yeah!" Ayaka grinned, her usual polite speech pattern fading in her excitement. "He's gonna be born real soon! Mommy and Daddy and I have been filling his nursery with lots of toys and games, because I can't wait to play with him once he gets here! Maybe me and my baby brother and you and your baby brother could have a playdate sometime!"
"Not interested," Seto insisted.
"I'm interested!" Mokuba protested. "I'd love to play with your little brother, Ayaka-san!" He fished something out of his pocket: a foil packet of Duel Monsters cards. "This is my favorite game," Mokuba explained. "Seto-niisama and I like to play it together all the time. Maybe your brother will like to play it, too."
"Thank you," smiled Ayaka, taking the packet. "I hope he does like it! I'll definitely give it to him when he's old enough, after he comes out of Mommy's tummy!"
"Yay!" Mokuba grinned. "What else do you like to do for fun, Ayaka-san?"
"Well, I like to arrange flowers when I have time after my lessons," Ayaka replied.
"Do you have a private tutor, too?" Seto asked, figuring if Mokuba liked this girl, he should at least try to socialize with her.
"Not for long," Ayaka pouted. "Daddy says he's going to send me to a boarding school called Mahora Academy. He says I need to be around other little girls. He says we're going to buy a mansion in Mahora City, too. I don't want to move! I love it here in Domino City! It's no fair," she added, stomping her foot. "I already visited the school once, and there was this really rude, loudmouthed , blue-collar girl named Asuna there! I shouldn't have to be in a class with a shrew like her!"
"Aya-chan!" called a visibly pregnant blonde woman who Seto assumed was Ayaka's mother. "We're leaving, come on!"
"Oops, sorry, gotta go," Ayaka blushed, embarrassed by how much of her true self she'd shown to a stranger. "I hope I see you again, Kaiba-kun!"
But you just said you're moving, Seto thought to himself, wondering why he even cared. Tch. It figures.
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Seto didn't think of Ayaka for a long time after that. But when he was forced to attend Domino High School a few years later, with the common rabble, and was stuck in a classroom with that lout, Jounouchi, who was as aggravating as that Asuna girl Ayaka had described, he thought, for a moment, that he wished he had some way to contact Ayaka, because he felt she would have understood his annoyance.
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Years later, now the CEO of Kaiba Corporation after Gozaburo's "exit", Seto found himself once again in a tux at another stupid networking party. The Big Five had insisted that it was important for Seto to make connections with other wealthy, corporation-owning families. He wanted to be almost anywhere else.
After politely excusing himself from a conversation with a gaggle of ojou girls who were shamelessly flirting with him (for his money, obviously, as if they didn't already have enough) he loosened his tie and stepped out onto the balcony for a breath of fresh air. He saw Mokuba in the courtyard below, playing with some kid with ginger hair and glasses. Lucky, Seto thought to himself. He's still young enough that he can run off and nobody cares.
"Oh good," said a feminine voice suddenly, behind him. "So that's where Negi ran off to. It's so rare for him to just be a kid and run around with little boys his own age."
Seto turned, startled, and saw an elegant-looking blonde in a modest, alabaster sleeveless dress.
"…..Yukihiro-san?" he blinked.
"Call me Ayaka," the young woman smiled. "After all, we're old friends, aren't we, Kaiba-kun?"
"No," Seto argued. "We met once, at a party, years ago, before you moved to Mahora. That doesn't make us friends."
"You're as surly as ever," Ayaka clucked, hiding a laugh behind her gloved hand.
"So," Seto smirked, "I assume that kid hanging out with Mokuba-kun down there is your brother."
"No," Ayaka shook her head. "My little brother died."
The smirk fell from Seto's lips immediately as his jaw dropped. "I'm…. so sorry," he muttered with a surprising amount of sympathy. He loved Mokuba more than anything in the world. If Mokuba were to die….he'd be crushed beyond repair.
"It's alright," Ayaka replied with a mournful look that belied her statement. "It was years ago, after all. He died the day he was born."
Seto frowned. "That doesn't mean you're over it," he said understandingly. "My parents died when I was a child, but I still miss them." Why had he admitted that to this woman? he wondered. What was it about her?
"I thought Gozaburo-san was your parent," Ayaka replied, confused.
"No, I was adopted," Seto explained. What was with him tonight? This was none of her business.
"So, you're an orphan, then," Ayaka frowned sympathetically. "Like Asuna-san."
"You're still stuck in classes with that idiot?" Seto asked, raising an eyebrow. He would think that Ayaka would have used her connections to get herself transferred to a class far away from that allegedly awful girl years ago. Seto, after all, had quit Domino High entirely to remove himself from the presence of the dweeb squad.
"She's not an idiot," Ayaka defended. "She actually…became a really good friend of mine."
"Seriously?"
"It happened after my brother's death," Ayaka confessed. "I was just…sitting in his nursery, looking at all the toys and games he was never going to play with. Actually, those cards your little brother gave me were one of them. I…I always meant to give those back to you."
"It's alright," Seto shrugged. "I have all the Duel Monsters cards I could want now."
"Yes, I heard you became a Duel Monsters champion," Ayaka smiled, her mourning look beginning to fade a bit. "I also heard you changed the focus of Kaiba Corporation from arms dealing to the game industry. I think that's lovely – your company's technology was actually responsible for the arcade game version of a card game my classmates played during their field trip to Kyoto."
"You kept up with what I was doing?" Seto blushed.
"What can I say?" Ayaka tittered. "You made an impression on me."
"Anyway," she resumed her story. "So….back then, I was sitting there, thinking about all the stuff my brother and I would never do together….and then she showed up. Asuna yelled at me to get out of that dusty room and do something with my life. I thought she was extremely rude…I fought with her constantly. I still do. But…fighting with her brought me out of my shell. The rivalry I started with her gave me a reason to get out of my depression and go to school again. If only to best her."
"I have a rival I have to best, too," Seto admitted. Yugi.
"Is he your friend?" Ayaka smiled knowingly.
"Absolutely not," Seto scoffed. "And neither are you. I told you I wasn't interested in this friendship business."
"Yeah," Ayaka smirked. "That's what I would've told Asuna, too, if she ever asked if we were friends."
"But that's….!" Seto couldn't argue the implications of that comment, because suddenly Ayaka was turning and heading back inside to the party. "So sorry!" she said with a noblewoman's laugh. "I have to be collecting Negi-sensei now! He and I still need to solicit donations for Project Blue Mars!"
"Project…..what?" Seto stammered, but then Ayaka was gone, just as she had been at that party some many years ago.
"Seto-niisama!" Mokuba cried, bursting onto the balcony suddenly. "I heard our old friend Ayaka-san is here tonight again! Did you see her?"
"She's not our friend," Seto mumbled, but even he wasn't quite sure anymore if he believed that.