Thus far, I have contented myself with staying mostly in familiar territory. That is to say, I've stayed mostly in Seto's point of view while writing these. And don't get me wrong; the majority of chapters will more than likely be that way. Seto is my comfort zone, if that makes any sense. I know him well, and fall back on him to get my point across because I know his voice. But I started this project with the intent of getting to know other characters besides Seto, and this time, like "The Boys," I have decided to shift into Mokuba's persona. However, whereas the previous pair of chapters showcased what he's learned from his brother, this chapter will focus on what he thinks of him.
For this, I decided there was no better way to do that than to enlist the help of a new acquaintance of mine: Miss Joanna Lorwell.
1.
Joanna Lorwell was fully aware that her students thought of her as a slave-driver; if she were being completely honest, in fact, she would have said she liked it. A lot.
"I gave you all this assignment last week," she said sternly, raising her voice to rise above the sea of protests. "More than long enough to have finished. I told you that you could interview another family member, or a babysitter, or even a neighbor if you had to, so don't try worming your way out of it now."
"But Miss Lorwell—"
"We didn't—"
"My mom—"
"My—"
Joanna held up her hands. "Those of you who do not have a report to give today will get a zero. I told you this at the beginning of the year. If you don't do the work, you won't get the credit. Now...who has something to present?"
About seventy-five percent of the students grudgingly raised a hand. Most seemed to have been hoping that she would delay the inevitable if she thought enough of them hadn't done it. Joanna resisted the urge to smirk.
She knew that oral reports were the bane of most students' existences. She, herself, had been petrified of them until high school. That, perhaps, was the reason she had given the assignment in the first place. Best to get them used to the work early, right?
Sure.
"What I want each of you to do," she had told her class, "is to interview your parents. Think of it like detective work, or journalism if you like. Find out who they are. Who they used to be. Where they came from, what they do; you will write a report—an article, if you like—based on this information and present it to the rest of us this coming Friday. That gives you a full week, so...do a good job. All right?"
This last request had come out as something of a threat. Joanna wasn't surprised at the groans and the half-hearted protests. She crossed her arms and waited for them to finish.
As Mokuba Kaiba and Connor Brinkley, together as they almost always were these days, had passed by her desk on the way out at the end of the period, she stopped them. "I just finished going over the work you handed in," she told them. "Good work. I'm giving you each half-credit for your botched book reports, okay? It's still an F, but it's better than a zero. Now...don't make me regret taking it easy on you. Got it?"
Both boys had nodded.
"Good," she said. "Now...Connor, is your father still away on business?"
Connor nodded. "He's coming back this weekend, though."
"Ah. Good. So you'll be able to complete the assignment with no problem, then, yes?"
The blond boy shrugged. "Mom'd just have me call him. I'll get it done, Miss Lorwell."
"Very good. Mokuba, you of course can write on your brother. But, uh...I expect a bit more detail because of that. So dig deep, if you take my meaning."
Mokuba had flinched, but recovered almost instantly. He said, before Joanna could even think of responding to the sudden flash of...was it fear? Anger? She wasn't sure. But he said, "Uh...well...Niisama's busy a lot. I'll try to talk to him, but if I can't...can I just write the report? Like...without the interview thing?"
Joanna raised an eyebrow. "I...suppose so, yes."
"I won't make anything up," Mokuba assured, taking the slightly confused, apprehensive expression on her face to be suspicion. "You'd probably find everything on the internet, anyway, I bet."
He flashed a faintly embarrassed smile, and Joanna thought such an impossibly adorable expression shouldn't be allowed for any child past the age of six. She laughed, unable to stop herself. And she said, "All right, then. However you'd like. Just make sure you have a presentation for Friday."
Mokuba nodded enthusiastically. "Yes, Miss Lorwell. I will."
2.
Joanna had been wondering, through the week, what Mokuba's report would be like.
Despite her less-than-comfortable meeting with Seto Kaiba, she still found herself fascinated by the man. She thought that she had a somewhat more sympathetic view on the many negative opinions she had read and heard about him, but nonetheless, she wondered what Mokuba, his most passionate supporter, would say on the subject.
She would have had to admit, however—with some amount of chagrin—that she didn't pay nearly as much attention as she should have to most of the reports. They were standard affairs, most of the almost-prepared students simply reading—verbatim—the questions and answers of their interviews, and quite a few simply making up details on the spot.
By the fourth one, Joanna began to regret her own assignment.
"My mom doesn't work anymore, but she runs the house. So she's a dictator!"
"My dad's a secret agent! So, like, I can't tell you anything about what he really does. It's...classified information. But he's like James Bond. Seriously."
"My mom works in...real estate. Which probably has something to do with fishing poles or something."
"Mom's a superhero! And Dad's her sidekick!"
The vast majority of the reports didn't make it past the three minute mark (although Connor's, she noted with a smile, was about five, and it was clear that he had put much more effort into this assignment than he had in his previous ones), and by the time she reached the last student—who seemed to have purposefully been waiting so that he would be—there were still seven minutes left.
"All right, then, Mokuba," Joanna said, forcing herself awake. "Your turn."
Mokuba stood smoothly from his desk, pointedly ignoring some of his classmates' less than friendly expressions—everyone knew that he was not only younger than everybody else (even Connor), but that he had the best grade in the class, even with the failed book report—without picking up his written report. He did, however, pick up a few newspaper articles and a book that he had set on the floor by his backpack.
He walked up to the front of the room, picked up a piece of chalk, and wrote his brother's name on the blackboard. His handwriting was something of the messy, inconsistent scrawl one would have expected of an eleven-year-old boy, but he seemed to be ensuring that these two works, in particular, be perfectly legible.
Beneath "Seto Kaiba," Mokuba began to draw what seemed at first to Joanna like random lines and scribbles, but she quickly realized that they must be the characters for Seto's name in Japanese. Unlike his English handwriting, these strokes were quick, practiced, and clean. Joanna thought that he must have been practicing these characters for a fair amount of time.
海馬瀬人
Once finished, Mokuba set the chalk down and turned to face his classmates.
Joanna suddenly felt like she were the student, her grade-book a pad of notes, preparing for a lecture. And indeed, it seemed like Mokuba were preparing to give one. He picked up one of the news articles. "'Seto Kaiba,'" he read, "'is the best example we have of exactly what's wrong with the rich in America.'"
He picked up a second. "'Seto Kaiba is an arrogant child throwing a tantrum, demanding that we take him seriously...or else.'"
Next: "'The first thing you learn when you see Seto Kaiba in person, if you are privileged enough to do so, is that he doesn't care. About you, about your troubles, about anything...except money.'"
He picked up the book, turned to a marked page, and said, "'He is a genius. He is wildly successful. He is, at times, charitable. The trouble with Seto Kaiba is that he takes these things, these inarguably good things, and makes you wonder if they're all that good after all.'"
Mokuba waited a moment before looking up at his classmates. He bundled the book and the articles, lifted them, waited another beat, and tossed them unceremoniously into Joanna's trash can.
3.
"The first thing," Mokuba said, and Joanna was surprised at how...magnetic the boy's voice was, now that he was in front of a crowd (now that he was performing), "that any of you would learn, if you met my brother...is that you aren't going to learn anything unless he decides to let you."
He began to pace along the length of the room.
"My brother, Seto Kaiba, is the only parent I've ever had. And he's the only one I want. Because he lets me see who he really is. He lets me learn about him. I am the only person in this room...in this city, in the world, who really knows him. Because I'm the only one he thinks worthy of that."
There was a kind of frustrated, angry pride on Mokuba's face as he said this, and the beginnings of a smirk. The other students looked confused, and Joanna couldn't really blame them. This was not the sort of presentation they had been expecting. Connor, though, was paying very close attention.
"That's probably why 'arrogant' is the first word most people think of when they hear his name," Mokuba continued. "He's rich, and he doesn't smile about it, so he's a snob, too. He's young, so he's spoiled. He doesn't like parties or talking to reporters, so he's a shut-in. He doesn't go out of his way to be friendly, so he's a jerk. Any of this sound familiar?"
Several of the other students nodded, murmuring softly.
Mokuba frowned. "Here's what none of the people who have ever written or talked about my brother—and yes, I've read and heard almost all of it—want to think about: he's busy."
Mokuba sounded accusatory now, and Joanna realized the reason he looked frustrated was because of his audience, as if they were the ones responsible for Seto's bad press. She supposed she couldn't really blame the kid.
"My brother works thirteen, fourteen hours a day," Mokuba snapped. "He runs an entire company, and he's only nineteen. He passed his high school equivalency exam before his twelfth birthday. He's a genius, a real genius, and because of that, people think he's Superman, and expect way more out of him than they would anyone else."
Joanna found herself following the black-haired boy's pacing with far more interest than even she had anticipated. There was something immensely charismatic about the way the young Kaiba carried himself, and she remembered that she had actually seen broadcasts of presentations and speeches that Mokuba had given at various conventions. He was used to working a crowd.
"The funny thing about that," Mokuba said, "is that they're angry when he does it. He doesn't believe in complaining. He doesn't ask for help, or pity, or anything; he just does his job. And because he does it right, he's a horrible person."
Far from the presentations of his classmates, Mokuba was giving a sermon. And quite a few people were paying rapt attention to it, Joanna herself included..
"I'm not going to talk about what my brother does," Mokuba continued. "I'm going to talk about who he is. Seto Kaiba is a man that was taught to excel. Taught to use his genius to build something worth building. To make a difference. And he's doing that, but it isn't for society. He doesn't do it to be recognized, or rewarded, or to get into a history book."
Mokuba sent a scathing glare toward the trash can, and Joanna wondered about the book he had thrown into it. He turned his eyes forward again.
"He does it for me."
There was a somewhat stunned silence as this sank in, and Joanna found herself smiling. Connor, for his part, was impersonating the Cheshire Cat. There was such pride, such love, such undying affection in Mokuba's voice. And it was clear to her now that however Seto Kaiba made her feel didn't matter. How he made anyone feel didn't matter.
He made his brother happy.
"I don't know if that's how a parent should be," Mokuba declared, "but it's how mine is. All the fame, all the money, everything. He does it for me. To set a good example for me. To give me a good life. He does it all so I can be proud to say he's my brother."
Mokuba's gray-violet eyes swept hawk-like across the room, as if he were daring anybody to tell him that he shouldn't be.
Joanna had a sneaking suspicion that Mokuba hadn't done any sort of research—other than what he'd thrown away—for this assignment. He hadn't needed to.
"I wonder," Mokuba said, suddenly somber, "if any of you know what it's like to have a stranger come up to you out of nowhere and tell you they'd be happy to take you in, because your parents are so obviously horrible. I hope not." He was suddenly an impossible contradiction; his face was simultaneously painfully young and far too old, his eyes filled with a kind of indignant pain that made Joanna shudder. "And I wonder if any of you know what it's like to tell that stranger that they're wrong, and have them laugh at you."
She flinched violently.
"A lot of people think they understand him. A lot of people feel like they need to tell me how terrible he is, because apparently that's their call to make. That's why I'm not walking you through a 'day at the office' or telling you what year he was born. That isn't what's important. That isn't who he is."
Mokuba turned to regard his brother's name on the board. "Seto Kaiba has given me more than a good life. He's literally given me every opportunity. I owe him my life, so many times over that I can't count them. He's worked so hard to give me that, and he doesn't expect anything in return. He doesn't care about what other people say about him because they aren't important enough to bother with. What's important to Seto Kaiba is his family. Me."
He pointed to those two words, those two words that defined his entire existence, and every eye in the room was drawn to them.
"The only opinion that matters about Seto Kaiba's parenting, to me and to him, is mine. This man is not horrible. He's not arrogant, he's not spoiled. Seto Kaiba is not 'what's wrong with the rich in America.' He's not a child, and he's never thrown a tantrum in his life."
His eyes flicked upward.
"This man is Seto Kaiba," Mokuba said sharply. "This man is my brother. This man is my father. And he's the greatest man in the world."
And perfectly on cue, as if he had planned it, the lunch bell rang. Joanna jumped, flinching as she looked behind her back at the clock. The class was over.
Mokuba gave a slight bow. "Thank you," he said.
Several of his classmates actually cheered.
4.
Seto looked through his mail with all the interest and enthusiasm of a coma patient.
He wondered idly if anyone actually enjoyed getting mail anymore as he leaned back, irritable and almost tired, in his chair. His initial impression was an emphatic no. Mail was terrible. Mail, in fact, was the cause of all war. People gained enemies not by insulting them, or by betraying them, or by stealing from them.
People gained enemies by sending them mail.
Something, though, actually caught his eye: it was a large envelope, marked as having been sent from East Rivers Middle School. His mind blurred to the same place that any letter from a school will send anyone: something had gone wrong. Mokuba was in trouble.
But when he opened the envelope, he found a blue folder and a handwritten note; nothing particularly official. And his initial foreboding was replaced by simple curiosity as he set the rest of the pile down, along with the empty envelope, and turned the note over.
"What...?" he murmured.
The note was from Joanna Lorwell.
Mister Kaiba,
I assigned a presentation recently; each of the students were to interview their parents, and give an oral report. Mokuba mentioned that you are, of course, often busy, and asked to simply write his report himself, without bothering you with the interview portion.
He gave his presentation earlier today, and I have no problem saying that his was — by and away — the best of the lot. I am, of course, supposing that he has learned public speaking from your example. I have seen him on television a few times, speaking on your behalf.
I have read and graded his written report, and have enclosed it with this note. I do not know if he has showed this to you; in fact, I am almost positive that he has not. And if that is the case, then I strongly urge you to read it, even if it will embarrass him, which it might.
You have a very gifted, very special little boy, Mister Kaiba. I am sure that you know this far better than I do, but I have to say it. I doubt enough people know just how amazing Mokuba is. But I am certain that you do.
I think you will enjoy this.
- Joanna Lorwell
Seto, his irritation forgotten as he felt a smile tug at his thin lips, took the blue folder that contained his brother's report as he set the letter aside. He leaned back in his chair again, this time somewhat relaxed, and his smile broadened into an outright grin when he read the title on the folder's cover:
"Seto Kaiba: I Don't Care."
Chuckling, Seto opened it and turned to the first page. He began to read.
His phone rang.
Seto didn't hear it.
END
Those of you with Japanese characters enabled in your web browser will see, in scene two, the four kanji that make up Seto's name in Japanese. I do not pretend to know them; I'm only just beginning to know the language. I "borrowed" these from Wikipedia of all places, and so I cannot vouch for their validity in any sense. However, they serve a purpose here, in reminding us of the Kaibas' heritage. For the sake of ease, I have placed these two in the USA, but of course they hail from Japan. And to me, that means Seto would of course know how to write his name in its "proper" form. By extension, so would Mokuba.
Borrowing again from another language, the title of this chapter, "Manifestare," is the Italian verb which means, "to manifest." And it is also the word from which our own "manifesto" is derived. That's Mokuba's goal this time, and I do believe he did a good job of it, don't you? This is the first time I've really tried to boil down what Mokuba thinks of his Niisama, and I think it works quite well. And yes, by the way, the epigraph here, "Perfect Fan," is a song dedicated to mothers. But the lines I chose are gender-neutral, I think, so they fit well enough.
After this chapter, I will embark upon the final two storylines that make up this introductory arc. Next is a three-parter that I think you may find...particularly enlightening. That is, if I do my job right.
