The corridor beyond the door lead to multiple rooms. They split up to check them all, and Jounouchi was the first to poke his head through the right door. A moment later Shizuka's cry, though soft enough not to be heard back in the main hall, brought the rest of them running. "Onii-chan, please!"
They burst into the small study, Honda and Otogi leading. The heavy curtains had been drawn, so the only light came from the hall behind them, spilling over Jounouchi, who had one fist grasping the collar of Kaiba's suit jacket and the other drawn back, about to slam into the taller boy's face.
"Jounouchi!" Honda jumped in and wrestled his friend back. Kaiba didn't step away, just straightened his lapels and stared down at the two of them with as little consideration as he might show a restrained, frothing dog.
"You son of a bitch," Jounouchi snarled, mad enough to be rabid after all. "It's your own brother's wake. If you can't show any real feeling, then at least show some decency!"
"Jounouchi-kun," Yugi said, raising his hands to placate.
"That was why he left in such a damn hurry—to answer that! He must have had it on manner mode. Polite as any guy on the subway!" Jounouchi spat, pointing to the corner. Kaiba's celphone lay on the floor, its casing cracked apart, spilling the battery and wired circuitry onto the polished boards. The wall above was pocked where Jounouchi had thrown the phone into the plaster.
"Maybe it was a call from relatives?" Anzu suggested, tentatively, but Jounouchi shook his head.
"He was saying something about proceeding as planned when I came in—it was a goddamn business deal. Couldn't quit being a CEO and be a human being for even one day, could you, Kaiba? Even for Mokuba!"
"It was an important call, it couldn't wait. Never having held a real job, you'd hardly understand, Jounouchi," Kaiba said, calmly, as ever unaffected by the shock on all their faces.
"He was your brother." Jounouchi felt tears burning, didn't bother wiping them away. They felt like a victory in the face of Kaiba's bone-dry eyes. Something he could unequivocally do better. "You bastard, can't you even care?"
Kaiba looked at him, at all of them, laser blue gaze sweeping over them like a security system scan. "None of you were invited here today. I don't have any obligation to put on a performance for you. You've given your condolences; I accept them. There's no reason for you to stay, unless one of you wants to issue a dueling challenge?" and he glanced at Jounouchi, then Yugi, a faint, provoking smirk curling the corners of his mouth.
"We'll go." The water shining on Anzu's face didn't sound in her voice, which was firm and steady for all the unreserved feeling in it. "We're sorry, Kaiba-kun. For Mokuba-kun, and for you." She turned and walked out of the room without looking back. The rest of them proceeded after her. Yugi was last, and he did hesitate at the doorway, cast a quick glance behind him.
Kaiba stood in darkness in the center of the room, watching them depart but making no move to follow, his arms crossed and his back straight, as adamantly proud a figure as ever. Yet there was something wrong, Yugi thought, looking at him, and it took him a second to place it.
Kaiba had always stood apart from the rest of their group. But Kaiba had never stood alone, because Mokuba had always been beside him.
Yugi swallowed. Kaiba's eyes fell to him, and for a moment he thought he saw a flicker in them again, that unidentifiable feeling behind the cool blue. Then Yugi turned away and joined his friends, leaving the mansion under the same sunlight that had ushered them in.
o o oOver the course of the following week, conversation between Yugi and his friends gradually started returning to normal, but there were still pauses, gaps of silence when casual talk skirted too close to darker areas. Even their old standby of talking Duel Monsters was awkward, because it was hard to discuss the cards for too long without bringing up one of the tournaments, and hard to discuss the tournaments without coming to Kaiba, sooner or later. And that was too uncomfortable, too sore a hurt, for any of them to mention willingly. Easier to talk around it than to think about Kaiba alone in that dark room, not crying.
Though Jounouchi finally broached it openly, coming to school one morning late, and so pissed off that he earned himself a detention by swearing back at the teacher's reprimand. At lunch he explained, his fists clenching on the tabletop. "So it was seven days yesterday, since the funeral. I went by his grave this morning. Mokuba's grave. And there wasn't anything there. Not a single damn offering, not even incense ash. Like there'd been no services at all."
"Kaiba-kun must be very busy lately," Anzu said softly. "I stopped by his house a couple evenings ago, but he wasn't back from the office yet, and the maid said he's hardly been home at all."
"Because his damn corporation is more important than anything. He doesn't care." Jounouchi gritted his teeth. "That bastard—I should've hit him after all. Mokuba was a good kid. He deserved a better brother than that."
To which none of them had a good answer.
A couple days after that, however, it became more difficult not to bring up the matter, because the entire school was buzzing about Kaiba. His name was plastered all over the news again, though this time the catastrophe was of a wholly different nature.
"I guess he has been busy," Jounouchi remarked the next day, though that admission wasn't said with any trace of forgiveness, and none of them thought it should be. That Kaiba's behavior might make more sense still didn't justify it. But even if they didn't talk about it, they couldn't help but feel a touch of concern that Kaiba's world seemed to be shaking apart around him, all at once.
"Kaiba Corporation going under?" screamed the current headlines, and the subheads underneath read, "Latest accounts show Domino's most successful business on the verge of bankruptcy; MainBrain Entertainment Inc. making a bid for corporate buyout, while KC President Kaiba Seto (age 18) faces possible charges of fraud."
o o o"You're thinking about Kaiba-kun," Yugi said to his other self that night. He was already in pajamas, sitting in bed playing a handheld game. Now he put it aside to focus on concerns that were not exactly his own, but would keep him up all the same.
The pharaoh was a translucent shade sitting beside him on the bed, his nonexistent weight making no depression on the mattress. "I'm sorry, aibou."
Yugi shook his head. "No, I've been thinking about him a lot, too. Him and Mokuba-kun..." He kept his voice down, so as not to worry his mother and grandfather with his apparent talking to himself. "It's not fair."
"As has been often observed before, life isn't fair," his other self said, seriously.
"Life, or death. Mokuba-kun was so young. It feels like he should have been saved, somehow." That wasn't just his own thought, he knew, but his other self's. Yugi didn't know how else to deal with that nebulous guilt save to put it into words. "Even if there wasn't any way to save him, it feels like there should have been. It should be against the rules for someone like Mokuba-kun, for any kid, to die like that, all of a sudden, for no reason. But there was nothing anyone could have done."
"Aibou..."
Yugi drew up his knees, wrapped his arms around them, unconsciously like a little kid himself. "Do you think Kaiba-kun has been thinking like that, too?" If anyone could understand what Kaiba was thinking now, it would be the pharaoh, who had the same pride as his greatest rival, and other ties Yugi didn't fully comprehend. "Whatever's happening with his company, this bankruptcy problem, I'm sure he can handle it. Kaiba-kun won't let something like that beat him.
"But with Mokuba-kun, he couldn't do anything at all. He wasn't there, it wasn't his fault, but he can't do anything about it now. Maybe he doesn't know what to do now." For Kaiba, who put his faith in nothing but his own will and had come so far with that strength, to have lost so much and have no way of winning it back, the futility must be tearing at him. Tearing him apart. He had woken from a coma before, pulled himself from the shadow world, when Mokuba had needed him; would anything be strong enough to pull him from this failure?
His other self didn't share that fear, however. Instead the pharaoh said, "Kaiba will be searching for the one responsible. The man who killed his brother."
"You mean, the driver of the car that hit Mokuba?" Yugi asked. "But it was an accident, it had to be. Maybe the driver was drunk, he might not even have known what he did—"
"Maybe," his other self said darkly. "But intentional or not, he's still guilty, all the same." In the darkness the faint glow of the third eye flickered on his forehead. "An honorable man, having caused such a terrible accident, would admit to his crime, accept his punishment. That he has not..."
"What are you saying?" Yugi heard his voice rise, brought it down to a whisper again. "That it wasn't an accident? That it was—on purpose," and he felt sick to his stomach, just saying it, "that someone murdered Mokuba?"
"I'm sorry, aibou," his other self said, sincerely, but Yugi knew the apology was for upsetting him, not for making the accusation. "I don't pretend to understand the world of money that Kaiba works in. But I know ruthlessness, and what ruthless men will do. The way Kaiba duels, it's because he was taught to fight in that world. Though Kaiba has, I'm sure, far more honor than any of his opponents. And with that honor, he'd never forgive the man who so insufferably trespassed his soul."
"The police must be investigating the accident," Yugi said, "but the news reports said there weren't any witnesses..."
His other self shrugged. The pharaoh didn't consider modern law to be an especially adequate or meaningful system of rules. "Kaiba will seek and take his own justice."
"Revenge," Yugi said, and his other self nodded, not really appreciating the difference. "But, Kaiba-kun..." If vengeance had been occupying Kaiba at the wake, not the threat to his company after all—that would be easier to accept than Kaiba's seeming indifference to his own brother's death. But shouldn't they have seen some sign of it? If that kind of rage were driving him—Kaiba had never been one to conceal his anger before.
Yugi thought of the flicker of unidentifiable emotion he had glimpsed in Kaiba's eyes. But that hadn't been either as hot or as cold as his rage should be. If anything it might have been—not guilt, but something like it. A sort of anxiety, but too subdued to really tell. And ultimately that was what had been so wrong. Not just that Kaiba had seemed to feel no grief. But that he had seemed to feel practically nothing at all.
In Duelist Kingdom, Yugi recalled, Kaiba had seemed at first to be the same as he had been before, the same arrogance, the malice of his insults. But there had been something visible beneath the surface when they had dueled, something different and powerful, and Yugi's other self had noticed that difference, had realized that Kaiba had been as completely changed then, as he had seemed unaffected now.
Yugi didn't need to say any of those thoughts aloud; either his other self was sharing them, or had the same thoughts himself, if indeed there was any difference. The pharaoh answered Yugi's unspoken question, "No. I looked at him and saw nothing, either. To have sealed his feelings so completely—I wouldn't have thought Kaiba capable of it. Even when his heart had fallen to his own evil, he still was able to feel, as twisted as the emotions were."
"You're worried about him," Yugi said.
The pharaoh's answer came in his silence. "I am, too," Yugi said. To be hurting so much that one would choose instead to feel nothing at all...Kaiba was too smart to damage himself like that. Wasn't he? How could a true duelist continue to fight with no heart at all? "Let's go see Kaiba-kun tomorrow," he said.
"All right, aibou," his other self agreed, and Yugi could tell he was relieved, for all it barely sounded in his voice.
to be continued...
Thank you for the reviews, great to know you're reading. Would love to know what you think, as the story continues. And avecmeri - hee! having spent years combing archives for smarm and h/c anime fic myself, I know how you feel. Hope my stories can continue to satisfy!
