The Boy by the Gate
No matter how harsh life was, Seto Kaiba always had the little boy by the gate to keep him smiling.
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Seto Kaiba remembered being an orphan with his brother Mokuba. He remembered playing games and having friends. And smiling. Seto Kaiba remembered smiling.
Then he made that deal with Gozuboro Kaiba. He and Mokuba were adopted and taken to the largest house Seto had ever seen. He was so amazed that the painful truth of the man who'd adopted them was that much harder to bare. He'd never been so tired, sad, beaten, desolate, or lonely ever before in his life.
Mokuba tried to make him feel better, but Seto could feel himself slipping into nothingness and despair. He'd taken to sitting in his study room and staring out at the sky during his break times, when he wasn't sleeping. One day, a little boy and an even littler girl walked past the front gate and they stopped to marvel at the immensity of the house.
Seto remembered sneering down at them from his window. How stupid those two were. There was nothing special about this house. The little boy grabbed a hold of the black metal bars that made up the gate and frowned. Then the boy looked up, directly at Seto's window, with eyes shining golden in the sun...
and smiled.
It was something Seto hadn't done in awhile. Seeing this boy, no older than he himself, smile so freely made Seto remember the days before they were adopted, and he felt a smile creeping onto his face. But then the door opened and Gozuboro walked in, demanding that Seto get back to work, and the smile faded before it was born. He was torn from his window seat and forced into an uncomfortable chair, surrounded by textbooks.
Every day after that, that same little blonde boy would stand outside the mansion, with or without the girl. He played silly games by himself, like hopscotch, making chalk drawings, peek-a-boo at random passers-by. He would sing little tunes that Seto could barely hear and barely recognized as cartoon openings or commercial jingles. Sometimes he would lay on the cement and point to random clouds and Seto was forced to try and guess what the boy thought the cloud looked like. He was slowly losing his ability to imagine shapes in the clouds, and he had no one to tell him if he was right or not when he guessed.
The guards became used to the little boy, thinking he just lived around here and chose the mansion front to play his games. But he was Seto's best friend. He was Seto's salvation. He was Seto's light in the darkness. He was the final piece Seto needed to stay sane, besides Mokuba.
One day, Seto snuck out of the mansion and to the gate. The little boy showed up, and frowned when he didn't see Seto in the window like normal. But he smiled when Seto announced his presence with a small 'hey' from behind a bush.
"Here, I got this for you," the little blonde boy announced at once, a smile so wide on his face that Seto almost smiled himself. "I thought I'd never see you so close!"
He handed a wad of brown paper to the little Kaiba. For a moment, Seto thought that was the gift, but it was too heavy to be so. Upon unwrapping the wad, he found a two inch statue of a white dragon. It was beautifully crafted and looked like diamonds in the sun. Seto turned it over and saw a price sticker on the bottom.
9.99
Seto couldn't help himself. He started laughing. It was crisp and clear and he realized then how much he'd missed laughing. The little boy was not similarly amused.
"Wh-why are you laughing?!" he yelled angrily. Seto calmed himself down and wiped his eyes where tears were forming.
"S-sorry. I just...It was so pretty I thought it would be expensive...," he said with a large smile. The little boy smiled too and cheered.
"Yay! I got a smile!" Seto tilted his head in confusion, his eyes wide in curiosity. The little boy laughed. "I've been trying to make you smile since I saw you. You frown too much! My mommy says smiling is the cure to everything!"
"Oh," little Seto said, blinking slowly. He smiled softly. "Smiling is the cure to everything."
"Big brother!" Mokuba cried out, running up to the two boys. "He's looking for you, big brother! He looked mad!"
Mokuba tripped just before he got to Seto and the boy. Seto frowned at the news. He looked back at the little boy and smiled. He helped Mokuba up and handed him the precious cargo of his dragon gift.
"Don't worry, smiling is the cure for everything." He was at once shocked by how childish he sounded, saying this to his little brother. "Can you take this to my room, please?"
Mokuba nodded determinedly and marched back to the mansion like a little soldier on a mission. It was cute. Seto turned around and smiled at the little boy again.
"Sorry, I gotta go. I'll see you later, ok? Up there," he pointed to his study room and the little blonde boy nodded, a naive and happy smile playing across his lips. He looked like a puppy.
"Bye bye then!" the little boy waved his hands wildly, even though Seto was still right next to him, just on the other side of the gate. Then the blonde boy took off down the road and Seto walked back to the mansion with a small smile on his face.
But he never saw that boy again. A few days after that, when he was beginning to worry that he'd been abandoned again, he heard news from the guards that the little boy who always played in front of the gate had come by in the middle of the night, distraught, crying loudly, and shaking the bars of the gate until they had to call the cops on him and he was taken away. A few days later he realized that the little blonde boy who had been his only friend...wasn't coming back.
And that was the last time Seto Kaiba remembered crying.
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I wrote a second part to this, but I don't -have- to post it. So, it's your choice. Would you like a second bit or should I leave it as is?
Also, sorry if I misspelled Gozoburo. I didn't look it up, I just typed from memory, and that's what I got.
