"If you can't even handle a simple thing like that, then maybe you should consider whether you deserved to be fired!"

The young CEO slammed his phone down as he leaned back into his leather office chair. Feeling cross, he let out a frustrated sigh. Idiots, he thought furiously as he loaded his laptop. It's no wonder I practically have to run the whole company by myself.

Just as he was about to start on his work on the laptop, there was a loud knock on his door. Ignoring it, Seto Kaiba bristled again in his mind: And just my luck to have a dumb secretary who doesn't seem to understand the meaning of "do not disturb". Don't the people here understand simple orders?

The knock became more insistent and louder. Eventually, Seto gave up and grunted a half-hearted permission to enter. His mahogany office door swung open to reveal a petite brunette at the doorway who had her head bowed slightly in what seemed to be an apology for interrupting him.

"Make it quick," he commanded, still not looking up from what he was typing onto his laptop screen.

"I'm sorry, Mr Kaiba," his secretary's voice seemed to quiver. He always had that effect on most of his employees, anyway. "I know you said not to disturb you, but your brother insisted on seeing you." Turning to the small long-haired boy beside her, she whispered, "Your brother seems to be in a bad mood, but I think you can still go in."

The younger Mr Kaiba bounded into his brother's office, a huge smile plastered on his childish features. He took a seat facing his brother, and as always, glanced around at Seto's office. Despite being here countless times, Mokuba had never failed to be amazed by the office interior. It was spacious, and the most noticeable furniture was the plain teak desk where his brother was at now. The minimalistic seats for the guests was limited in number – five in all, he counted – but made of fine leather. But the view from the office window was the best. Seeing how Seto's office was located on the highest floor of Kaiba Corporation HQ, one could see practically the whole of Domino City.

I want to be just like big brother! Mokuba kept telling himself that all the time.

After a while, Seto glanced away from his laptop and looked at his brother quizzically. Somehow at the same time he managed to sneak a peek at his watch. "What's up? Shouldn't you be out playing some video games?"

Mokuba turned to look at him and shook his head. "Nopes," he replied cheerfully. "Not today. I wanted to show you this."

Seto paused typing as he watched his younger brother trying to fish a piece of paper out from his backpack. He finally took the paper out himself after seeing Mokuba struggle to take it out from his packed backpack. At the same time, Seto could not resist sounding like the responsible older brother he was, "Mokuba, how about you pack your stuffs properly next time? And what's this?"

As his keen blue eyes skimmed the content of the letter, his brows furrowed. "Work shadowing?" he asked out incredulously. "What, has your school run out of projects for you all to work on? Kids your age should be copying and pasting stuffs from the Internet for projects. Create something useless, even. What's with work shadowing?"

Mokuba was eager to explain the whole thing to his older brother, despite the fact that Seto knew what it was all about. On the other hand, Seto seemed to have pushed away all the irritating business deals from his mind as he patiently listened in to his younger brother repeating what the teacher had told him about work shadowing. It was the simply the way that Seto was; his personality towards Mokuba was a stark contrast to that with the rest of the world.

After Mokuba finished, Seto sank back into his chair. He understood what his brother was hinting at already, and although he loved Mokuba dearly, he was reluctant to agree to him. A niggling feeling deep down, however, was urging him to agree. After all, he rarely saw Mokuba nowadays. By the time he reached home a little bit before midnight, Mokuba was already asleep. Even during breakfast, they could only spare each other 10 minutes before Seto was called up to settle some problem that his useless employees could not deal with, including a broken water pipe. He had given them hell after that and made them memorise the emergency numbers found on various plaques around the office. He no longer became the World's Greatest Boss among his workers.

Sliding the letter across his sleek desk back to his brother, he said kindly but firmly, "No, Mokuba. Not me. You'll be bored to death seeing how I do my job. Meetings, conventions, arguing, fighting for tenders, and the occasional actual fights as well. You're not ready to be exposed to all these."

"But – but... Big Brother!" Mokuba sounded desperate to get his brother to let him be his shadow. "I've told everyone that I'll be shadowing you. And they're all so excited about it. Please, big brother, please?"

"Why don't you shadow someone else?" Seto suggested, intent on changing Mokuba's mind. "If the worst comes to the worst, I'll even allow you to shadow him, although I have no idea what you can shadow about a game shop assistant keeper."

Mokuba knew who him was; Yugi Mutou, his brother's arch-rival and occasional duel partner (when they had no choice). Seto respected Yugi, but so far he has not shown any signs of regarding Yugi as a friend. Three-quarter of the time, Seto viewed Yugi as the person to beat. The other one-quarter of the time, Seto rendered Yugi and his friends – nicely dubbed the Geek Squad – the most annoying beings on Earth.

The second heir of KaibaCorp shook his head fervently. "No! I want to shadow you!" he declared stubbornly.

Seto stared at his brother for a moment in surprise. Since when did his brother learn to be as headstrong as him? Gathering his composure almost instantly, he sighed, "Do whatever you want. When do you want to start?"

Mokuba's eyes followed his brother's movements as the latter stood up to adjust his navy blue suit. "Tomorrow?" he asked hopefully.

"Don't you have school tomorrow?"

"Not if I have started work shadowing. Ms Ulrich said all we have to do in that case is to call her to inform her. So we can start tomorrow?"

Seto waved a dismissive hand in Mokuba's direction before heading out of his office, but not before he warned, "Don't forget to get back home and do your homework, Mokuba. I'm stuck in meetings all the way till night. I can't be skipping them to look for you. I'll call in at 6pm. Make sure you're back home by then, or you can forget all about shadowing me tomorrow."

XO XO XO XO

By the third meeting, Seto had grown agitated with the people he met. The first group was a bunch of know-it-all businessmen from the States – who, much to their chagrin, knew close to zero what Seto knew about holographic technology. And they still dared to strike a deal with him by offering him their latest holographic technology. All Seto needed to do was to take out his own prototype and stuff it in their face to signal to them that they were wasting his time.

The second meeting was no less pleasant than the first. He had hoped to secure a deal with one of the major amusement park ride creators in the world to further upgrade Kaibaland. Despite reminding them repeatedly that he set up the theme park for orphans and underprivileged kids, they were still insisting on going after the money.

"It's for the underprivileged kids," Seto had finally said heatedly. "Underprivileged. I'm sure you all know what that means. If you don't, I can ask my secretary to drop by your branch office and lend you a dictionary. Or I can simply give you the meaning right now."

"Which is?" one of the balding, smartly-dressed men had stupidly asked.

"Which is what you'll be if I burn down your whole bank accounts, your mansions and your assets. Can't you see? We can't raise the prices for the rides at Kaibaland, no matter how advanced they are."

"I understand Mr Kaiba," the bald men's bespectacled friend tried to assure the near-flaring KaibaCorp CEO. "But we must take into consideration the profits we need to gain from these rides. That's how we keep these rides going. They're one of a kind! Surely we must charge more!"

Needless to say, Seto had played along with their game. Then, just as they took out the various documents for him to sign, he calmly took those papers and ripped them right in front of their eyes. Nobody changes what Seto Kaiba had set out to do. Certainly not a group of pathetic old men insisting that they suck up the money from these poor kids.

Now it was nearly ten, and his current meeting was his most reluctant one: with Kenji Nakamura, the asshole who had been aiming and itching to take over KaibaCorp ever since Seto became CEO. Deep down, Seto wished he could tell Nakamura to go on and create a Barbie doll of himself – then he could really be a plastic person. But there was no point angering your archrival. The strategy was to cleverly protect KaibaCorp, and then take over Nakamura's business.

"So what do you think, Kaiba?" Nakamura regarded him with a wide smile that threatened to cleanly slice his face into two. "We should be business associates. I help you run yours, and you help me run mine, and in the end, both of us benefit from it."

You mean, in the end, you'll kick me out of my own company, Seto added on dryly in his mind. But I'll make sure before you do that, Nakamura, I'll kick you out of the country in tatters.

Instead, Seto replied with false amicableness, "I think I'll need to think that over for some time, Nakamura. I don't haste into business stuffs."

Nakamura let out a deep laugh. "Kaiba, Kaiba. Always the cautious one, eh? Trust me, Kaiba. I mean what I say."

"And I mean it when I said I don't rush into business deals with people," Seto said coldly, gathering his briefcase and getting up to leave. Any longer and he could vomit blood just listening to this scum. "Especially people like you."

Nakamura chuckled to himself as Seto strode out of his office. Shaking his head, he mused, "Such arrogance and ignorance. And that's going to be your downfall, Seto Kaiba. It's just a matter of time. Hahahaha!"