Start Three
Treasure Vase

Two hours later Jounouchi collapsed into his desk at school, wrinkled uniform more or less in order, took one deep breath, and decided the first the thing he was going to complain about was the heat.

According to Yuugi (who looked very comfortable, and subsequently could not possibly have sweat glands--that or the spirit of the puzzle was just keeping him magically cold, which wasn't fair), the air conditioning had given out earlier that morning, and all the windows--even those on the ground floor--had been thrown wide, allowing a quiet, unbearably warm breeze to slip in and whisper through the hallways and classrooms. By mid-morning it had become almost painfully obvious how little everybody wanted to be there, the typically loud student body speaking largely in subdued, exhausted tones, and even in some cases taking the calculated risk of napping at their desks.

This was the second thing he complained about, though internally this time instead of out loud; that he was apparently the only person in the world who couldn't sleep through this thing, even though he now felt as though his head was splitting from exhaustion. Focusing on anything for extended periods of time was becoming the biggest pain in the ass he could imagine.

The third thing he tried to complain about, but could only notice in a rather shocked daze--that most of the school noticed--was that Kaiba was late.

Jounouchi was pretty sure this meant that the very fabric of space-time was beginning to fray irreparably, because Kaiba Seto was never late. Kaiba Seto was a god of punctuality. Kaiba Seto gave other people shit for being late. He simply could not be.

And yet that morning, completely out of sync with the obvious laws of physics, the universe, and everything else that was supposed to be constant, Kaiba was not at his desk when first period began, and was still not at his desk fifteen minutes later. He was at his desk half an hour later.

All things considered, his entrance was undeniably graceful. It took a while for Jounouchi in his current state of mind to piece it all together, but he remembered distinctly looking up as the door opened abruptly, revealing Kaiba, tall, impeccably put together, glaring in at all of them. He remembered no one speaking. He remembered his mouth falling open a little.

He remembered Kaiba stalking in, shooting him one sharp glance, then sitting at his desk as though nothing was out of the ordinary.

After that, Jounouchi only remembered wondering why Kaiba didn't look like as much hell as he felt.

-

The lecture went through and right out of Jounouchi's brain so easily that he hardly even realized he was missing it, spending his time staring glassily out the window instead. He thought of anything and everything to float abstractly across the planes of his mind, from computer games to card decks to how he was going to beg for lunch to Kaiba and back around again.

So, in order of importance...the computer game was the new one, Ammit, the card deck was that damn one of Kaiba's (which he still had no idea how to go about returning), the lunch was probably going to be a combination of Yuugi's and Honda's, since he had forgotten his own, and Kaiba...was just Kaiba. And a problem, like always.

Just a different kind of problem. Before last night he had been a bastard problem and nothing more, ignorable and easily relegated to irreparable asshole status.

But last night Jounouchi had finally done--on accident, but he'd done it all the same--the one thing he had only just been telling himself he didn't want to do, which was see into Kaiba's head, and in so doing reinforce the stray scrap of knowledge which had been drifting around his own head for so many years: that Kaiba actually was a human being, for all he pretended he didn't breathe oxygen like the rest of them, and more importantly that he was a kind of sad human being at that. Sure, he was rich as fuck, but what did he get to spend his nights doing? Buying fancy Western coffee and moving computers around in the small hours of the morning, reading until his eyes bled, like he was going to learn anything about anything doing that.

All in all, Jounouchi was conflicted. On the one hand, it was kind of nice to watch the guy stewing in his own juices. On the other, there was a reason Honda had been able to convince him to leave the gang in the end; for all he'd been obsessed with toughness throughout his life, he had for just as long had an inconvenient soft spot for helping people out of bad situations. A gangster who ended up feeling sorry for the people his gang took advantage of was bound to fail at it eventually.

Strictly speaking, what he really hated was watching people give up on things, particularly themselves. For example: his life wasn't exactly a bed of roses, but the one thing he had managed to never lose, through all the shit that went down with his parents and his income and staying in school and not making an ass out of himself 24/7, was the belief that things would brighten up eventually. They always did. And he liked knowing that he got to wake up on those better mornings as him, Jounouchi Katsuya, the former thug with the golden fingertips. Put simply, his life sucked; but not as bad as it once had, all because he hadn't ever given up believing that someday it wouldn't. Not as much, at least.

Kaiba, on the other hand, was proving to be human, but no kind of person. The more Jounouchi thought about it, the more he found himself wondering--who was Kaiba? It was part of what freaked Jounouchi out so much about him; that all he saw anymore when he looked at Kaiba were neuroses, obsessions and frustrations and that horrible, overwhelming disdain.

He was giving up on himself. Jounouchi wasn't quite sure how, but it made him sick to his stomach all the same, having to watch another guy his own age go so far downhill so fast. It was kind of like puberty all over again, seeing the first friends he'd made in Domino become gangsters like himself, or alcoholics like their own fathers, or womanizers, or thieves. He couldn't think of very many he'd still talk to, given the choice.

Maybe it was just the insomnia putting this crap in his head, or maybe it was just the insomnia solidifying crap that had already been up there. Jounouchi wasn't really sure. All he knew was he'd gotten a chance to inspect something, and having taken it, he was now going to get to carry the results around for the rest of his life, and possibly never have any idea what to do with them.

Or maybe the insomnia was just making him think stupidly complex, falsely deep-sounding things as a matter of course, and none of it actually meant anything at all.

-

The morning dwindled into afternoon, and Honda started to give him slightly weird looks about an hour before lunch, while everybody tried not to give Kaiba looks for any reason. This, however, was hard, because while he appeared utterly composed, he also wasn't following his usual routine of bouncing back and forth between ignoring the world and abruptly jumping into Jounouchi or Yuugi's conversations (because obviously he'd been eavesdropping the whole time, or maybe had the classroom bugged--Jounouchi had never been able to decide which). Today he was instead in exclusive silent mode, just like his laptops, and only looked up from his books and neatly transcribed notes when their teacher called on him.

That, and when Jounouchi took a peek over his shoulder on one particular trip to the restroom, it was hard not to notice that the notes weren't quite as neat as usual (Jounouchi knew because he'd had a bunch thrown in his face once, and he remembered those scary, mechanical katakana drifting before his eyes in their scary, mechanical rows), and there were even doodles in some of the margins. These were tiny schematics and a few object designs instead of the usual flowers or endlessly flowering spirals, but Kaiba had never been what Jounouchi would call normal.

Anyway. The point was that something was wrong with Kaiba.

"Jounouchi, did you eat anything this morning?"

"Huh?" Jounouchi said, jerking in his seat to stare at Honda.

Honda, who was now nodding sagely at Yuugi and holding his chin with the thumb and forefinger of one hand. "Yeah, I think that explains everything. Come on, dude, it's lunch time. You didn't bring anything, right?"

Jounouchi shook his head, trying to remember when class had ended, and more importantly when Kaiba had left the room. Hadn't he just been there?

"That's alright, Jou-kun," Yuugi said cheerfully, "you can share ours."

And this was how Jounouchi got to eat that afternoon without having to beg at all.

-

Kaiba swept back into the classroom from wherever it was he'd gone to eat his lunch ten minutes after Jounouchi. The blond had long suspected that this was the limo, but was prepared to learn otherwise (for example; that the school reserved an area of special bastard seating in the basement to spare the more or less normal students from having to socialize with him).

Watching him sit in his depressingly close seat (and fuck J coming right before K, anyway--why did they even use the Western alphabet for seating?), Jounouchi waited, waited, waited for the perfect second, took aim, then slammed one heel into the closest leg of Seto's chair. The bastard jerked forward hilariously, one raised fist (what was he holding, a pencil?) thudding against his desk.

Yeah, that was definitely a pencil. A pencil with no tip now.

Kaiba turned and shot him a long, slow, smoldering glare. Then, moving with all the graceful dignity of a bald cat, he stood, and without a word went to hit up the pencil sharpener in the hall. This at last confirmed the suspicion which had been forming in Jounouchi's mind regarding his school supplies--namely, that Kaiba had forgotten his regular pencil case. Typically he used a mechanical pencil (a very sharp mechanical pencil), technology freak that he was, and definitely had his own sharpener (for the normal pencils he carried for show, of course). Yet another bizarre display of forgetfulness on the CEO's part.

As far as Jounouchi could later recall seeing out of the corner of his eye, busy grinning at his desk as he was, it was Jumpei Kanda who ran into Kaiba first, but nobody actually saw it straight on. Rather, it was Jumpei's indignant, offended grunt that actually got everybody looking around in anticipation of a fight.

Kaiba shot him the same flat, cold stare he'd used on Jounouchi, then tried to pass him quietly: the silent asshole treatment.

Having been on the receiving end of this several times, Jounouchi had long ago decided that he was actually more irritating silent than he was speaking, being frighteningly talented at using silence to effectively humiliate those around him. But in this situation he was kind of torn; Kaiba was being a dick by saying nothing, but Jumpei was a snotbag, and one of Jounouchi's other least favorite people in school. Kaiba would always top that list, but this little worm came pretty close.

Put simply, Jumpei was the kind of guy Jounouchi had really liked beating up four years ago. He was a dumbass, but just articulate enough to think he was actually smart, which was irritating in a way completely separate from Kaiba, who really was, and as such didn't need to prove it every time he opened his mouth.

True to form, Jumpei did probably the stupidest thing he could have in that situation (the thing Jounouchi might have done, now that he thought about it) and yanked Kaiba's pencil out of his hand, physically blocking him from the door.

"Hey," he said, standing at his full height. They were about even, though the CEO probably had the better part of an inch on him. "Kaiba-san, you don't just walk by someone you run into without apologizing."

It wasn't surprising behavior, especially in light of how the class at large treated Kaiba, even on the good days. For the most part all the girls liked him, of course, but were generally too nervous to speak with him openly.

The boys hated his guts.

This was mainly because Kaiba in every single case had done to them almost exactly what he had done to Jounouchi three years earlier: snubbed all their offers of friendship and effectively crushed everything about them into the dust of humiliation and teenage insecurity. Needless to say, the resulting hard feelings hadn't exactly dissipated with time, particularly when girlfriends kept dumping inferior-by-comparison boyfriends to pursue painfully hopeless crushes on the reticent brunet.

On some level Jounouchi figured that Kaiba had to recognize this, though whether he did or not, he apparently didn't care about it enough to bother changing his behavior. Mostly all he did was glare, like he was doing right now, and maintain as shitty an attitude as possible when anybody approached him.

...like he was doing right now. "You ran into me."

"Bullshit!" Jumpei barked. If the room hadn't been quiet before this point, it went there now with a vengeance.

"Move," Kaiba said softly.

"Kiss my ass," Jumpei growled.

And then Kaiba socked him in the nose.

Jounouchi had been following pretty well up to this point, the situation having been all but a carbon copy of the vast majority of his casual encounters with the guy. This, however, was a new development. Jounouchi had never seen Kaiba actually hit anybody before, no matter how angry he'd been.

It was kind of a beautiful thing in isolation; even acting weird, Kaiba had the sense to smack him with the heel of his hand, quick and sharp, instead of wasting time splitting his knuckles, a trick Jounouchi had needed months to work out on his own.

The look on Jumpei's face was also hysterical. He actually tipped over onto his ass, he was so surprised, and then just sat there dribbling blood down the front of his uniform and staring like a little kid.

Kaiba, meanwhile, leaned down to retrieve the pencil he had dropped, then straightened to stare coldly down at him.

"And please return my property, too," he murmured.

Then he walked out into the hall, shutting the door quietly after himself.

-

The news was in every classroom by the very next break: for the first time in the history of his enrollment at Domino High, Kaiba Seto had been called in by the principal.

Even Jounouchi was surprised. It wasn't like this was the first time Kaiba had done something that should have resulted in a good hand-slapping--it had just never actually happened. He was precious to the faculty, who had been touting his enrollment for years as a statement of the quality of their institution's curriculum.

But then, Kaiba had never actually been violent before, and in Jounouchi's experience, violence was the one thing that you could never really get away with in a school setting. Not when you punched the guy in front of half your class, at least.

On top of everything else that had already happened with Kaiba today, this final development at last forced Jounouchi to come to two very firm conclusions:

First, that this was probably the most exciting Monday of his whole life.

Second, that it was entirely possible that he was at this very second watching something happen that he had never thought he would get to see; that being the implacable, unflappable, immovable, unshakeable mountain known colloquially as Kaiba have, maybe for the first time in his eighteen years of existence on this plane of reality, a long-overdue meltdown.

And if this was in fact the case, Jounouchi wanted to be there for every second of it.

-

Losing Honda and Yuugi as soon as school ended, Jounouchi managed to track Kaiba down on the sidewalk just outside the front gates. Approaching him quietly from behind, the blond waited until he was without question in earshot, then began casually with the line he'd been working on for the past four hours: "That was almost cool, you know. Kind of Jet Li."

So it wasn't very original. He was tired, damnit.

Kaiba paused, turning to stare at him over one shoulder, then began to walk again once Jounouchi had more or less caught up. "You would think so, wouldn't you?" he muttered, switching his school bag to his other hand and not looking at Jounouchi.

Jounouchi in turn grinned, shrugging and hopping up to walk along the low granite wall of a long, decorative flower planter which contained at this second a very impressive collection of dead twigs and desiccated petals. "Hey, if there's one thing I can appreciate, it's a good punch. Would've been better if he'd punched back, but you can't have everything."

"He wouldn't dare," Kaiba replied, soft and surprisingly tired.

"You get detention?"

"No," Kaiba replied. "Just a lecture. But they've never had any teeth in my case."

Kaiba fell silent, and Jounouchi, figuring that this was probably as good an opportunity as he was ever going to get to bring up the deck, said as casually as possible, "I still got your cards."

Then he eyeballed the older teen. Not too obviously, of course, but enough to let him know that he was paying attention.

Kaiba wasn't. It took him a second to even lift his head, let alone frown at the blond. "What?"

Jounouchi frowned back, turning to look at him a little more obviously. "Your cards, man. The deck we were playing with? I took it home on accident."

Kaiba's expression became instantly focused, the frown spreading. "Yes, I noticed."

Jounouchi raised his hands defensively, not liking the CEO's expression. Like he'd done it on purpose or something. "Look, I said it was an accident, okay? I'll give them back. Not like I want your fucking pansy cards anyway."

"Give them back, then."

It was only at this point that Jounouchi realized the damn things were still sitting on the floor beside his futon. Fuckall. "Uh."

"You forgot them?"

Jounouchi sighed, shoulders falling as he dredged up what edges he could manage of a sheepish grin. "Yeah. Guess I'll have to bring them tomorrow instead. You gonna be on time, man?"

He expected Kaiba to say something immediate and sharp, like of course or none of your miserable business. Instead he got one small calculating look and a miniscule shrug. "I can't really say. Bring them by this evening instead."

Jounouchi almost stopped walking, tipping unsteadily off the end of the wall and only catching himself mid-stumble. It was still unbearably hot, the pressing warmth of the red mid-afternoon light shoving atmospheric thumbs into his temples relentlessly. "You mean--wait, take them to your house?"

"That would be the idea." A light smirk. "And don't you mean my mansion?"

Confused, Jounouchi tipped his head to one side, shoving his free hand absently into his jacket pocket, where he discovered a small handful of yen that he had happily forgotten about. The fact that Kaiba had just made a joke was beyond processing right now. "I thought you didn't want me anywhere near your place, moneybags." He couldn't quite keep the suspicion out of his voice.

Kaiba simply shot him a withering look, his own hands trailing neatly by his sides. "I'd rather you weren't there," he admitted curtly, "but I want those cards. And I still have to beat you at war."

Oh, well. That explained everything.

-

Six o'clock neared. Jounouchi had spent his afternoon doing, all thing considered, surprisingly little. He'd almost fallen asleep toward the end--he was certain he'd been about to--but then the hooker next door made too much cold soba and came to invite him over around five thirty, which took care of dinner nicely, but nevertheless made him wonder if he was even meant to sleep ever again.

By way of payment he stuffed some toilet paper in his ears and prowled around the corners of her apartment while she cooked, finding the cicadas that had gotten in throughout the day and tossing them back out the broken window they'd first climbed through.

"You should really tape this up, y'know," he called, tossing another one outside and shaking his hand to dissipate the tingle from its buzzing. These were higurashi, and every one just getting started for the evening--plus the little fuckers got a lot louder once you grabbed them. Like every kid, he'd enjoyed collecting their larvae when he was little (or maybe it was just a guy thing), but when it came to crap like this, he found a lot of that boyhood fascination disappearing real fast.

"I know," the hooker--she called herself Kogata, but Jounouchi seriously doubted that was her real name--replied, and there was a giggle underlying the words, just a little nervous. She hated cicadas. Jounouchi had been doing this for her for years, in fact, as had most everybody else on their floor when he wasn't home; as the one bug hater in the building, it was naturally her apartment that became the bug magnet. "I'll ask Daichi-san for some tape later."

She always said that, too. Shaking his head, Jounouchi rolled his eyes, found what he hoped was the last one, and chucked it in the direction of one of the scraggly trees lining the street below. That finished, he made his way into the kitchen, dusting his hands off and dropping the impromptu ear plugs into the trash. "Need any help?"

"Uhm," she said, red mouth pursed with concentration. She was chopping a few wilted green onions vigorously at the counter, the soba already washed and set out on a plate beside her. "The sesame seeds in the pan. Are they burnt yet?"

"What, you wanna burn them?" Jounouchi laughed, wandering over to peer down into the pan as she giggled again. They looked fine, and smelled even better. "They're brown, I guess."

"Okay!" she said brightly, sweeping the onion off the cutting board and into a chipped dish. "Just get the tsuyu and the ginger out of the fridge and we're set! Oh, and wash your hands."

"Roger that." Clicking the burner off, Jounouchi rinsed his hands vigorously under the tap for a moment, wiped them dry on his pants, then retrieved the condiments. She couldn't afford more than these three, but Jounouchi didn't mind. It was nice just to eat. "How's business, by the way?"

"Banging!" she chirped. "Want to carry the soba?"

-

"Oh, Jou-kun," she said a few moments later over the sound of clinking dishes, speaking as they arranged everything on the table. Jounouchi raised his eyebrows at her, dropping a stack of bills on the floor and crossing his legs. "Todaiji-kun came back to Hoshi last night."

That would be the place she worked at. "Oh yeah?" Jounouchi replied mildly, pressing his hands briefly together. "Itadakimasu."

"Itadakimasu," she echoed, dipping her head in brief reverence. "Yeah, and he said Hirutani-san was going to make some rounds soon. Saturday night, I think."

Jounouchi almost dropped his teacup in the middle of filling it, staring at her in surprise. It had only been two weeks since the last big job. "What, seriously?"

"Yeah," she pouted, lifting a bundle of soba delicately onto her plate. "For Obon. Said it was supposed to be seasonal."

"Fuck." Jounouchi returned his attention to the cup reluctantly, biting his lip. It just figured that prick would pick the time Jounouchi was at his worst to get a fresh bug in his pants. "What an asshole."

She wrinkled her nose cutely. "I know. I hate to go out when I know they're wandering around. Makes me want to run everywhere, you know?"

"Better than anyone, Ko-chan," he murmured, and tried hard not to think too much about it. "Thanks for the tip. Hand me the ginger, would ya?"

-

Twenty minutes saw Jounouchi back on the street, relatively well fed and whistling avidly in an attempt to ignore the trembling exhaustion which was eating at him. The higurashi were in full swing now, u ke ke ke ke ke filling the air and beating at his eardrums as the sun began to sink. In his present state the sound was almost worse than car horns, but not quite. At least it faded a little once he got closer to Kaiba's place, where the CEO apparently didn't believe in the whole concept of trees. Probably had special oxygen pumped in fresh.

Asshole.

The cards were tucked firmly in his back pocket, bound up with a few stray threads from the bottom edge of his comforter. He put his hand back to check regularly, convinced they were going to disappear if he turned his attention away for too long, but by the time he got waved through the security gate and began hammering on the mansion's front door, they were still there, still bound.

The door was hot to the touch, despite the lateness of the hour--getting on to eight, actually, and the sun was nearly gone, the fancy wood and mortar of the building's face shining red and tangerine, almost blindingly bright. Within ten minutes the effect would vanish, but true to his occasionally drunk luck, he had managed to arrive just in time to have his eyes burned out.

Mokuba answered the door after the third bang, looking up at him in a considerably nonplussed fashion; certainly more of a snotty look than he had any right to conjure up when he was still so much shorter than the blond. "What do you want?"

"Hello to you too," Jounouchi snarked, squeezing in past him without waiting to be invited. "You better ask your brother about that. I'm just returning something."

"Stealing from businessmen now?" the kid quipped, shutting the door and folding his arms, watching as Jounouchi kicked his shoes off. "How old do you have to be to go to jail proper?"

Shit, they were like clones sometimes. "Twenty," Jounouchi replied, and waggled his eyebrows sarcastically, heading for the stairs. "Guess I've still got some time, eh?"

He half expected another sharp response, but instead Mokuba just looked after him with those freaky, gigantic black eyes, and abruptly said, "He's in his study."

Oh. Jounouchi had kind of figured that was the case, but then...what was the final room count again, twenty-eight? Twenty-nine? He could've been anywhere. Fuck. "Good to know. Take it easy, kid."

Mokuba didn't respond. He just stood, watching silently, until he fell out of sight.

Okay, case in fucking point: the Kaibas were all freaks. No bones about it.

-

Kaiba was sitting at his desk, back to the door and head lowered. Jounouchi didn't bother knocking, going for the direct method instead.

But Kaiba didn't look up, even when Jounouchi slammed the door half-heartedly and waited for a few seconds.

It was like going back in time or something, Jounouchi reflected, or perhaps just like watching time freeze. His own room caught the sun right as it was rising, while this one went the opposite way, pointed full west, with its middlemost window framing every second of its descent. Nothing had moved throughout the day, not a book, not a scrap of paper; even Kaiba's clothes were just differently colored variations of the same ones he'd worn last night, or the same ones period--black slacks, blue button down, grey socks.

"You're earlier than I expected," Kaiba said.

Skin prickling in alarm, Jounouchi jerked his head back to glare at him--and found that he was still staring at the desk, intent on whatever the hell he was doing. "Yeah? Sorry to disappoint."

"No you're not," Kaiba replied. It took Jounouchi a few seconds to realize that he was parroting back his own words from the evening before, right down to the last inflection. "Are we going to have to provide the dog with a bone tonight before he'll return what he took?"

Jounouchi blushed reflexively, offended on a whole kaleidoscope of levels by that particular sentiment; that he needed help to feed himself, that he needed to be bribed to do something he'd already offered to fix for free. "Fuck you. Kogata-chan next door had some stuff to share. No need to worry about wasting your fancy crap on me."

"Kogata?" Even with his back turned, the sneer in his voice was palpable.

Jounouchi's blush deepened, crawling slowly down from his cheeks. "Look, would you please tell me where I can put your shit so I can get the fuck out of here?"

"You're not putting it anywhere yet," Kaiba replied calmly, and finally turned around in his chair to look at him. "You're going to shuffle, and once you're done shuffling you're going to cut the cards and prepare to have you pride handed to you."

"You know, you never even asked if I was gonna do this," Jounouchi pointed out, but removed the cards from his pocket anyway, tearing the string off and dropping it on the floor. Let Kaiba clean it up.

Kaiba continued to stare. For the first time Jounouchi noticed that his eyes were very faintly red-rimmed, an odd compliment to the ever-present shadows. "But you're going to play."

He was right, but Jounouchi still didn't like it. And he didn't like that expression, either. "Kaiba?" he found himself venturing uneasily; "How long's it been since you slept?"

"Three days," Kaiba said promptly, and rose out of his chair, gesturing toward the leg of the desk Jounouchi had leaned against before. "Sit down."

"Three days?" Jounouchi demanded, shocked, and didn't move. That was almost how long he'd been up. "I thought you said your computer stuff got fucked up Sunday?"

"It did," Kaiba said patiently. "Sit."

Jounouchi figured this would be a good time to comply, given that he needed to work a few things out. "So hang on," he prompted slowly, sinking into a cross-legged pose and watching as Kaiba settled across from him. "You've been up that long just for shits and giggles?"

"I've been up this long," Kaiba said precisely, "because I'm in the middle of preparing for our exams next week, because I have a company to run, and because only two weeks from now that company will be entering final production on its most recent game."

Jounouchi stared at him silently. Kaiba shifted, abruptly looking uncomfortable.

Jounouchi continued to stare.

"...and because I haven't been able to sleep," Kaiba added at last, scowling. "Why is this so fascinating?"

"'Cause we're having insomnia at the same time," Jounouchi replied intensely, setting the cards between them at last and wondering how this could not seem as important to Kaiba as it did to him. "Don't you think that's weird?"

Kaiba, apparently fed up with waiting for him to do it, leaned forward and cut the cards, mouth pursed. "Not particularly. It's probably just the weather."

"You think we can't sleep 'cause it's too hot?"

Kaiba lifted one eyebrow at him. "Extreme temperatures interfere with natural bodily cycles. It's a scientific fact."

Really? Perplexed, Jounouchi scratched his neck, which was itchy from all the sweating he'd been doing recently. "I dunno, man. It's never bothered me before."

"Lucky you," Kaiba replied acidly. "Were you ever going to move, or did your brain lose its ability to deliver electrical impulses on top of everything else?"

end three

end notes
- Another school note: I have Domino high running an 8AM-3PM schedule, though I think most high schools in Japan actually run 8:30AM-3PM? (Anybody out there know for certain?)

- 'Kogata', as far as my kana/kanji dictionary seems to be telling me, means 'small in size' or 'tiny', which in Kogata's line of work functions more as an advertisement than a name. Furthermore, when connected to her place of work as 'Hoshi Kogata' her name becomes in essence 'little star' (though it probably doesn't conjugate right, re: me constructing this thing from a dictionary. Oh god, I will be so sorry if the joke is lame and makes no sense, you can't even imagine).

- Higurashi are evening cicadas, and are amazingly loud (h t t p : / / k i m o t o . c c / y k k / s e m i . h t m l).

- Cold soba is a very popular dish in Japan during the summer, and is typically served with a much broader range of condiments (Kogata's just poor).

- Believe it or not, the age of majority in Japan is really twenty. Go figure.

- And finally, Kaiba's scientific fact is in fact both scientific and factual. Also easily googled.