Hollow

"What part of sell or burn it wasn't clear?" Seto asked the realtor, standing in between him and the mansion he discarded a year before. The midday heat already had a narrow band of sweat forming on his forehead, but the realtor wouldn't budge, ignoring the budding sheen on her own face.

"There are a great number of personal items inside," she said. "The team refuses to touch it until it's been cleared."

"Niisama," Mokuba said. He was quiet until Seto looked down at him. "I didn't leave anything."

"I didn't either. The team is welcome to demolish everything."

She shook her head to Seto's frustration. "They insist. If you want the house off your hands, you'll need to go through it all so they can't be held liable."

"What do I need to sign to waive the liability?"

"Mr. Kaiba," she said, almost sounding as frustrated as Seto, "It will take days to draft the document, and we have someone interested in the property starting on the first."

Seto glanced at the massive front doors, the same doors that held him inside for years. The house had stood abandoned since a year after Gozaburo's death, when Seto couldn't shake the feeling he was still being watched. Dismissing the staff hadn't helped; neither had taking down the security cameras.

They moved and never looked back.

"You're really not going to let this go, huh?" Mokuba asked, and the realtor shook her head.

"We can't take the risk of a lawsuit."

"I'm telling you I'm not going to sue."

"There are apparently boxes of antiques, particularly in the attic."

Seto inclined his head, more as a gesture to himself than her. They had left a lot of Gozaburo's things behind, and Gozaburo had never bought anything cheap in his life. While he understood their concern, he could hardly bring himself to care about a few thousand-dollar knick-knacks, not when it meant spending the day inside.

"Please, Mr. Kaiba. We can begin closing tomorrow."

After being on the market a year, the idea of washing his hands of the mansion was too much to pass up.

"Fine. But even if we leave things inside, that means we have no interest in them. The crew can take what they want or trash what they want."

The realtor smiled in relief and passed over the key, which Seto took with a glare. In and out, he told himself. She wouldn't stay around to make sure they combed the rubbish left behind.

The door groaned as it always had, and a rush of chills trailed Seto's neck to his legs when he stepped in. He held the door for Mokuba and left the key on the entry table, noting that aside from a layer of dust and the light from uncurtained windows, nothing had changed. The deep reds surrounding them that painted the walls and floors like blood, the chandelier that hung too low, the displays of wealth left to age—erased the year gone like he had never walked out.

"Come on," he said, leading Mokuba up the stairs and to their old rooms. "Let's double check for our things first."

"I really didn't leave anything," Mokuba said, close at Seto's side.

"We'll go in and out."

They scoured Seto's room first, giving Mokuba opportunity to look through all the drawers and cabinets he had never been allowed to peek inside. "You really didn't hide anything fun in here?" he asked, and stuck his head inside the closet, tapping his fist against the wall like he was searching for one of the mansion's many hidden passages.

"Only textbooks and more textbooks."

"I don't see any."

"I put them in the attic." Along with the rest of Gozaburo's possessions Seto hadn't wanted to bother with. "And I packed all but the furniture."

Mokuba agreed Seto's room was boring before moving to his own room, where he found nothing of interest aside from a hidden pack of playing cards. Mokuba laughed when he found them, and asked, "Do you think the rest of our stolen toys and games are still here?"

Seto put down the framed picture of a turtle Mokuba had left on his desk. "I doubt he kept them."

"But maybe. Wasn't he always shoving stuff in the attic and basement?"

"The attic, maybe."

The path to the outside lab Seto had claimed was in the basement, and Gozaburo never wanted to risk anyone stumbling across it. And Seto followed his example with it since he wanted his lab to remain private. Last he had checked, boxes of old paperwork were still piled high in front of the door.

"We should go look."

"What happened to in and out?" Seto asked.

"I wanna see what's hidden up there."

"If we find anything good, it will be alcohol."

For some reason, that got Mokuba to his feet. "We've gotta go look."

"We don't have to."

Mokuba took his hand to drag him toward the stairs. To say they went through all the floors, Seto followed along with him with no delay, but did check his watch. If they could be out by five, Seto could squeeze in a few more hours of work before going to bed. A day like this called for a full night of sleep to keep the memories in the past.

"What if we want to take stuff with us?"

"Have you missed anything in the last year?"

At the top step, just outside the attic door, Mokuba paused. "Well, no. But maybe I just don't know I'm missing something."

"That's how hoarders get started."

The attic was a maze of boxes and shadows. The streams of light through the window highlighted the dust floating slowly around them. It was thick enough Mokuba reached out a hand to cut through it. And with the stifling heat crowding the space, Seto almost expected Mokuba's hand to cut through that as well.

"Looks like no one's been here in a decade."

"And you still want to look?"

"It's our last chance."

Mokuba started and Seto stood in the doorway, content to watch while Mokuba rifled through the first box. Seto had never seen the trinkets inside—a candlestick with a half-burned candle, a pair of bookends, a paperweight, and many more nickel objects Seto couldn't remember having seen in the mansion in the years spent inside. Even as Mokuba stacked them in a row to look over them, Seto couldn't bring back a single memory of any of them.

In mere hours, he would never have to see any of them again.

"What about this?" Mokuba asked, holding up a letter opener from the same box.

"Do you often receive mail?"

"Niisama, it's made to look like a sword."

"Do you really want to keep an odd statement of his supposed strength around?"

Making a face, Mokuba put it down. "No-oo thank you," he said. "We'll just find the toys and go."

"He didn't keep the toys."

"You don't know that unless you help me look."

There were too many boxes for them to go through, all full of the trifles they had chosen to hide when Seto took over the household. He should have thrown out everything back then, and that way, they wouldn't have been stuck digging through the boxes now. He had wanted to be done with this house and everything inside of it. He should have known better than to assume he was ever going to have it all completely behind him.

But to speed the search along, Seto opened boxes without taking out anything, only to prove there were no toys or games tucked away.

"He had a lot of boring stuff," Mokuba said, picking up a stack of books only to drop them back in the box, casting up a billow of dust. "I mean, are old people really so boring?"

Seto laughed and closed a box of paintings. "It depends on the person."

"I'm not going to be boring. I'm going to go on adventures and keep playing our games. And I'll make sure you don't get to be too boring either."

"I'm already boring?"

Mokuba put down the mirror he found in the next box. "Not really."

"You offer such confidence."

"No, no really. Compared to Gozaburo, you're a hoot."

The room darkened, and without an overhead bulb, the only light came from the cobwebbed window at the far end of the room. Mokuba went to look out, asking, "Was it supposed to rain? There's a big storm cloud overhead."

"I didn't check. We should go."

"Afraid of getting wet?" Mokuba asked, glancing at the cloud once more. "There's probably an umbrella in one of these. Bring the candle and I'll look."

"The candle?"

"Yeah. I can't see what's in here."

Seto realized what Mokuba meant at the same time Mokuba turned to stare at the candlestick, where the small flame burned steadily. There wasn't a flicker without air circulation, but the shadows it cast seemed to keep growing.

"Did you light that?" Mokuba asked.

"No."

They both stepped closer to it, and Seto cupped his hand around the flame, then blew it out. They watched the smoke twist a moment before Mokuba picked up the candle, complaining about a drop of wax singeing his finger.

"How'd it get lit?" he asked, scanning it top to bottom, then doing the same with the candlestick.

Seto couldn't think of an explanation to offer. He pulled out his phone to use the flashlight despite the low battery warning, and did a lap of the attic to make certain they were alone. Somewhere, there was an explanation, but nowhere in sight.

"Niisama?"

"I don't know."

He hated those words and couldn't stop looking for a reason. Flames didn't just appear out of nowhere, and if Mokuba didn't come off so confused, Seto would have assumed it was a joke. But Mokuba hadn't stopped searching for something that would have lit the wick.

"There has to be something. He wouldn't have kept a weird magic trick."

"No," Seto agreed. "He wouldn't have."

Then why did he have one in storage? Seto took it from Mokuba to do his own search, but as best as he could tell, it was just a candle and candlestick.

"Are we sure it was really lit?" Mokuba asked. "Maybe there's just some poison fumes up here getting to us."

That was hardly more probable than a flame appearing from nowhere, but it didn't reappear, and it was easier to let the strange moment go than to linger on it any longer. Seto put it down back where they found it.

"Maybe. Are you satisfied there is nothing up here?"

"Yeah, now I'm just freaked out. Do we need to put anything back?"

"We don't."

"Good. This house always did give me the creeps."

The attic was still dim, and for how quickly the cloud had come into place, Seto had expected it to roll out right after. There wasn't any indication it had begun to rain, but he went over to the window to be sure, finding what must have been the same cloud Mokuba mentioned before. "There's no rain yet," Seto said. "We should go before it starts."

He leaned closer to the window to get a better look at the deepening cloud. His breath fogged the glass, and Seto moved away to run his finger over the pane, finding it cold, somehow, in the height of summer.

"Mokuba?"

Seto found Mokuba staring at the candle, and the flame burning steadily on top.

"I didn't touch it," Mokuba said. "I didn't touch it, Niisama."

Each step echoed through the room, ending with Seto beside the candle, reaching for it to make sure it was real. The heat licked the tip of his finger, and Seto hardly brought himself to pull away while Mokuba whispered beside him, "I didn't touch it. I didn't touch it."

"Let's go," Seto said, and left it to burn. "Maybe it will take the house down for all our troubles."

Mokuba fell in close to Seto's side, looking over his shoulder again and again until the candle was out of sight. And even then, he kept checking as if it would follow them out.

"I need…how did…how is it doing that?"

"We've seen a lot we can't explain."

"Not in our house."

"Another fifty steps and we'll never have to call this place ours again."

Since it had been so bright outside before, they hadn't turned on any lights. The cloud left the hallways dark, despite the windows in the foyer that normally let in plenty of sunlight. Now, the only light dripping in shone gray and faint.

Seto and Mokuba stopped walking at the same time, just as they reached the bottom of the stairs. They were so close to leaving, but across the foyer, framed by the two ceiling-height windows, the front door vanished.

Thanks for reading! I plan to update twice weekly throughout the month, so you can expect an update around October 6th.