Disclaimer: We do not own Yugioh, however everything else in this fiction is our own intellectual property and woe betide thee if you dare to steal it.

Author's Note: This story, all of it, not just this chapter, is a fusion of our dreams, our memories and our love. We wrote it to heal a sorrow, and to fulfill a seven year old fantasy. Any feedback is much appreciated.

~ Flawless Masquerade

Chapter One

The first day back at High School after Christmas was a sea of wonderful balmy heat that you could almost touch, topped with a crystal-clear sky that glowed a tantalising sapphire-blue. Typical. It was days like this that made Emily appreciate Winter. At least you knew what to expect. Like big storms. Big storms were always such romantic things; making love indoors next to a fire while a raging torrent battered impotently at the windows... well, a girl could dream. She was a sixteen-year old young woman with cheeky blue eyes, a feisty smile, and long, dark brown hair. She strode to the office block, laughing inwardly at the haggard faces of her fellow students - clearly they weren't as happy about starting the new year of school as she was. She had finally got her wish and been put up a full year, rather than just doing advanced classes. This meant this was her final year, and that she'd leave High School as a seventeen-year-old graduate. Although she was rueful that the good weather had only started when she couldn't enjoy it as much, part of her couldn't wait to get back to class - especially Art, her unrivalled favourite. Except for maybe French.

The receptionist in the school office raised her eyebrows when she picked up Emily's timetable.

"Are you the same Emily Rose I met last year? You grew up awfully fast!" she chirped. "It'll be a shame to see you go so soon."

"As much as I like it here," said Emily cheerfully, "I don't want to be here any longer than I have to. Days like this make me want to climb a cliff and paint the horizon. I can't do that while I'm glued to a desk!"

"Looks like a pretty packed schedule. Don't overdo it, okay?" laughed the receptionist as she handed over the dense little chart. Emily looked over it eagerly.

"YUSS!" she whooped. "French and Art History on Monday mornings. And Wednesday is pretty much all my favourite classes, and it's a short day too. And the week ends with IT, oh, this is wonderful! See you later, Mrs Steiner!"

Mrs Steiner's wry waving went unnoticed as she bounced away towards her new Homeroom at the upper end of the school with her face buried in her timetable. She was already thinking about how she was going to colour-code it. French would be Gold, she decided, as appropriate to its high status. And Art Painting... she was glad she had managed to get into two Art classes as planned. She would colour that in when she had access to her Art supplies. Sparkles were definitely in order. She was so engrossed in her thoughts that she didn't notice that she was about to step off the sheltered concrete path and into a garden. She put her left foot down, and it took strangely long to reach its destination. And when it did, her ankle sagged awkwardly to one side and she tumbled through the air, landing clumsily on her side. She groaned. She sat up carefully and rubbed her ankle. Nobody came to her rescue. A group of girls who had seen her fall giggled gleefully amongst themselves and shot occasional glances her way to see if she had noticed them. Boys wandered past her, not even looking into the garden where she lay. She was about to struggle to her feet when a hand appeared in front of her. She looked up. A brown-haired boy wearing surprisingly formal clothes - at her school there were no uniforms for the students - towered over her, looking disdainfully in her general direction. She took his hand and he tugged her briskly to her feet.

"Thank you," she said gratefully. It was nice to see that there was still some good in humanity after all.

"Don't mention it. I would of done the same for any fool who didn't watch where they were going," he replied condescendingly. He turned around and began to walk away.

"Hey! You can't just help me and then insult me!" she yelled, going from blissful gratitude to a towering rage in an instant. She chased angrily after him.

"Don't forget your timetable, kid," he called over his shoulder, sniggering.

She balked. Her timetable was still in the bushes! She spun around and dashed back to where she had fallen.

"Asshole," she muttered to herself as she plucked her timetable from the ground. There was a smudge of dirt right through the middle of it. She cursed. The cluster of girls giggled even harder as she stomped off in search of her new Home Room.

The Home Room she was in this year was one of the rooms used for Cooking classes; situated in the heart of the oldest section of the school. The desks were worn smooth by countless schoolbooks, and covered liberally with an astounding patina of graffiti both modern and antique. She picked up a chair that had the smallest amount of bubblegum on the underside and placed it in the middle of the room, at a desk close to the teacher's table. She knew that most of the other students thought of her as a try-hard that tried to ingratiate herself with the teachers just to improve her grades. In reality, she just liked to treat the teachers as people. She found many of them easier to talk to than her peers, who weren't all bad people, but were far too obsessed with the politics of High School life for her liking. She was the first person in the room, even though the bell had just rung. She felt a twinge of panic. Maybe seniors got to start later than she was used to? Her fears were assuaged as the classroom door was flung open violently, its flight being softened at the last moment by its pneumatic hinge. An apple flew through the door and shattered against the leg of a desk, followed in by a group of big boys who were laughing and shoving each other in an apparently macho fashion.

"Greeeeaaat," muttered Emily. These must be the guys who were taking 7th form for the third year in a row. She giggled at the thought. They were probably the ones who drew all the penises inside half of the school's copies of Level 6 Science. Luckily, boys like that always sat at the back of the class, so she felt relatively safe from anything they might do, save the odd low-flying apple core. Her intuition was confirmed when the boys knocked their chairs from off the tops of the tables and began slouching diagonally on them, seeing if they could bend the chair's plastic legs. A few girls walked into the class and sat on the far left of the classroom and laughed as one of the boys tried – and failed – to balance a chair on his chin. Seven minutes after the bell had rung to signal the beginning of Home Room, a thin man in his thirties shoved the door open with his shoulder and waddled into the room with a large box in his hands and a roster clenched between his teeth. Emily's spirits lifted immediately. It was Ron, her old English teacher. Scatterbrained and eccentric, he was nonetheless the most gifted teacher she had ever had. He had a strange way of understanding what students needed that had made him well-loved at Titirangi High School. That, and the fact that he seemed to regard teaching policy as a highly flexible item that didn't necessarily apply to him. Emily reckoned that he had probably never even read the document in question. She didn't mind. He knew Latin.

"G'morning shudents," he grunted in a friendly manner. He dumped the box solidly on his desk and plucked the roster from between his teeth gracefully.

"Well well, who do we have this year? Emily! Hah, I heard you were put up. Recommended it myself, actually." One of the girls in the background snorted. "Grace! I thought you graduated last year! A pleasure to have your company again, I'm sure." He smiled. Grace resumed painting her nails with a sour look on her face. Ron nodded at a few of the other students he knew. The boys whooped when he mentioned their names. Ron ticked them off his list and noted the absentees - about forty percent of his list.

"Alright, you kids can do whatever until the bell rings. I've got to set up all this gear before the next teacher comes."

Emily hovered at his elbow.

"Ron, would you be able to print another copy of my timetable for me? The one I got this morning was ruined by...ah, a freak accident," she embellished.

"Sure Emily," he grinned. "Just help me organise all this cutlery and I'll print you off a new copy."

They clattered merrily around the room, chatting about Ron's latest car purchase - a 1955 Hillman Minx in dilapidated condition, that he had been refurbishing over the summer. They were still chatting animatedly by Ron's computer when the bell rang. Emily cringed. The mouse had been stuck on the irritating spinning rainbow wheel for what seemed like an age before the printer actually reacted. As soon as the last line of ink had been applied to the page she jerked it from the machine and ran off, shouting her goodbyes to Ron as she sprinted towards her French class. She was never normally late for anything, but today fate seemed to be conspiring against her.

"Why today, of all days?" she thought as she dashed down the halls. She burst through the door of her French class and began apologising in flawless French, when she noticed Him, sitting in the corner at the back of the class. It was that asshole from before! She gasped.

The teacher was slightly bemused at Emily's incomplete apology. She waved to an empty chair in the front row near the door. "Er, thank you for that, erm..." she glanced at her class roll. "Ah, you must be Emily. My name is Erica. Assez vous, s'il vous plait."

Emily sat down. While the French teacher welcomed them all to their final year of French class, Emily snuck a glance at the boy. He wasn't paying attention to the teacher at all. He was staring morosely out of the window. This guy really was a piece of work. Too cool to pay attention, even though this was his final year. And who was he, anyway? She'd never seen him around before. She knew most of the seniors by sight, if not by name, as she had participated in a few higher-up classes last year. By his outfit she guessed he must be an exchange student - waaaaay too formal to be from around here. He turned his baleful stare onto her, and smirked coldly. She hurriedly looked to the front. Erica was summing up her introduction.

"And now, mon ami, let's see if you have been practising over the holidays! I would like some volunteers to describe what they've done during the holidays. Perhaps one of you boys from the back?"

Emily recognised one of the boys from her Home Room sitting in the back row with some of his friends. He stopped rocking in his chair and assumed a blank look, hoping to deter his teacher's gaze. Erica sighed.

"And how about you, Mister Kaiba?" she looked at the blue-eyed boy.

"No thank you, Miss. Why don't you ask Emily? She's clearly dying to share with us all." He smirked again.

"Alright Emily, let's see what you know," Erica smiled at Emily.

Emily felt like a deer in headlights. She'd actually raised her hand to ask if she could go to the toilet. She was more than competent for the task she was being asked to do, but doing just because this Kaiba kid had put her on the spot was galling.

Emily began carefully describing her holiday and recent weeks. She saw Kaiba watching her, with a smirk playing along his lips. She flourished and used some of the best words in her vocabulary, striving to show him that French was not a class you could just slack in, but nothing seemed to wipe the condescending smirk off his face. Rage boiled in her again. She finished her speech with an avid description of a chauvinistic idiot with brown hair and blue eyes. She spat the words acidly at the back row and then sat down pointedly. The class clapped bemusedly. Erica's eyes narrowed slightly.

"Well, that was... interesting. Your French was perfect though. Well done!" she said.

"It was merely passable," said Kaiba. "Miss, I'd like to describe my holiday after all. It might be a useful demonstration of the subjunctive tense when used in conjunction with the past tense."

"Certainly, Seto, go right ahead," said Erica.

Seto? What a strange name, Emily mused. He wasn't European, then, despite his looks.

Kaiba stood at the front of the class. In precise, almost fluent French, he described a boat trip with his brother. His vocabulary was considerably higher standard than the things Emily was used to seeing in school. In fact, it was stuff only she knew.

"Your use of the subjunctive is incorrect," said Emily. "It should be ais, not ait."

"I believe you are incorrect," said Kaiba, looking unperturbed. "You should focus on your sense of direction before you start looking for imaginary mistakes. At least I can navigate my way to class without falling on my face."

"I -" started Erica.

"At least I don't think I'm better than everybody else in the world! Didn't your parents ever teach you common decency? shouted Emily.

His face darkened. He growled, "don't you dare talk about my par-"

"That's ENOUGH, you two!" said Erica. "Both of you, leave the room and wait for me outside!"

Emily was about to argue, but Erica looked furious. At that moment, there was a loud crash in the back of the class. The boy from Emily's Home Room had rocked too hard on his chair and had toppled over, cracking his skull on the corner of a nearby desk.

"Oh god," gasped Erica, rushing over.

"What's happened to Daniel?" said someone.

"Oh man, he's bleeding everywhere!" shouted Daniel's friend.

"I think I'm going to be sick," said one of the girls.

Daniel was groaning softly. Erica and his friend lifted him up and helped him towards the doorway.

"I'll deal with you two when I get back," she snarled at Emily and Kaiba. "I'm putting you both in detention." She lifted the groaning Daniel's arm over her shoulder and, together with Daniel's friend, headed urgently towards the infirmary. Emily sat down and put her palms over her eyes. She couldn't believe it. She'd never had a detention in her life. Never! And now she'd pretty much ruined one of her favourite classes, right at the start of the year. She felt like crying.

Without the teacher there, the class instantly became a miniature riot. Balls of paper began flying everywhere, and the other students sat on their desks and discussed in loud voices whether Daniel would need stitches, and wondering aloud whether the cleaning ladies had stuff that could remove blood from the carpet. Emily peered sideways at the cause of her misery. He was sitting, like the eye of a storm, calm and serene in the midst of the chaos, reading a book. He didn't look upset in the slightest. Emily put her head on the desk and buried her face in her arms.