Author's note:

This is my English translation of the story I had written in Hungarian, my mother tongue. Special thanks to Hero Beater and Fluffy Pillow for helping me every step of the way.

INSIDE THE NUTSHELL

As soon as Mokuba finished his fruit juice, Kaiba rose and walked to the counter to pay for their drinks. His little brother quickly gathered the photocopies, sweeping them into the folder, and the brothers left the café to hail a taxi. Within ten minutes, they arrived in front of the dorm, and once they paid for their fare, Kaiba drew his little brother behind him.

"Hide behind me and try to be quiet," he told him as he began to walk slowly towards the entrance. Mokuba thought the request odd, but obediently ducked behind the tails of Kaiba's trench coat and tiptoed silently after his Nii-sama, who was already busy fabricating a fitting alibi.

"Seto?" the receptionist called to him when he entered the entrance hall. Kaiba's face flinched a little at the sound of his name, but he forced himself to stay calm and proceeded to the glass window of the booth.

"Good day," he replied, leaning forward slightly to cover for his little brother, who crouched down by the wall of the booth and carefully slunk towards the stairway.

"Hello there. I hardly recognized you in that coat… How come you aren't at school?"

"I was," replied Kaiba without missing a beat. The lie left a bitter grimace in the corner of his mouth, but he fortified himself and the grimace was soon smoothed away. "I noticed during break that I was missing my keys, and I just had to come back and check if I've left them in my room or lost them on the way."

"Oh, I see. Yes, yes, it would be bad if you lost your keys. I'll get you a spare in a minute."

"Thank you."

He was soon presented a spare key, the room number inscribed upon the tag. Kaiba took it with a grateful sigh, finally feeling another step closer to learning the truth.

"If you manage to find your keys, please bring the spare key back to me," said the receptionist as he scribbled a few words in his notebook. "If you can't find me, just put it in the central mailbox."

"Thank you. I will," replied Kaiba.

"Oh, and I almost forgot!" the receptionist called after him. "You have a letter."

Kaiba stopped in his tracks, looking puzzled, but luckily, he soon noted the mailboxes lined up on the wall and thanks to the key tag, he quickly found his own. What was sticking out of it wasn't so much a letter as a piece of paper, a message scribbled in its folds:

Tomorrow's your last day, you worthless mutt, and no deck in the world can save you now. Come to the school yard tomorrow at three in the afternoon. We'll be waiting. Don't even try to get out of this, because we're going to find you anyway and it's harder to duel with a broken hand.

Y. M.

J. W.

T. T.

What on earth is this? screamed his mind. Who could be foolish enough to threaten me? Unless… unless I'm even more of a loser than I thought.

At this point, Mokuba had no choice but to hiss at his brother, because all he could see was Nii-sama's hand clenching around the key, trembling like he was ready to spill blood at any second. Fortunately, Kaiba understood and quickly left the entrance hall, and once he was certain that the receptionist could no longer see him, he stormed to the stairway and ran all the way to the second floor, his little brother wheezing behind him.

"What's wrong, Nii-sama?" asked Mokuba the moment they reached the top. Kaiba shot a murderous glare at the sheet clenched in his other fist, and then tossed it to his little brother like it was filth that decent people wouldn't be caught dead laying their hands on.

"Somebody wants to duel me, Mokuba," he snarled, and then broke into a cruel smile that gave Mokuba goose bumps. "And something tells me that someone is going to be very short-lived."

They soon found the room, and after making sure that there was nobody around, they knocked carefully on the door, but all was silent on the other side, and so Kaiba tried the lock and slowly turned the key. Two clicks and the door was open, and after a few moments of hesitation, the two brothers stepped through the threshold as though their worst fears awaited them therein. They hardly knew what they expected to find. Not this, thought Kaiba as he shut the door behind his little brother and they finally looked around that small room.

Two beds with thin, hand-mended bed-linen. Two small nightstands. A worn but orderly writing desk, a built-in closet and two shelves laden with second-hand textbooks. That was it. And yet, the two brothers desperately wanted to believe that this just couldn't be it. They exchanged glances – Kaiba's eyes flashed, Mokuba nodded –, and both started tentatively towards the beds of their respective counterparts.

Mokuba was led there by one of the nightstands. There rested a small toy plane, his toy plane: a memento from the orphanage, and perhaps the only personal thing Mokuba had, because all he found in the drawer was a container of ointment for muscle pain, and the space below was filled to the brim with used, dog-eared textbooks because their owner just couldn't reach the shelves on the wall. It was so terribly little that Mokuba even peered under the bed, hoping to find something, anything… and he finally spotted a cardboard box stashed into the uppermost corner of the bed. It was full of small bits of cardboard that two small hands carefully cut to size, lined with a ruler and then painstakingly illustrated and colored so Seto could finally have his own Duel Monsters deck, and though Mokuba knew he held nothing but a bunch of useless cards with shaky letters and amateur doodles, his throat felt very tight, knowing that he, too, had drawn something like this once, just once, to make his Nii-sama happy. In the end, he couldn't resist looking at all twenty-two of those cards, in awe at his counterpart's hard work and effort, and after wiping his eyes, he took the box and slipped it carefully, almost tenderly, back to the corner in which he found it.

Kaiba didn't see it. Unlike his little brother, he first stopped by the shelves to inspect the books, soon realizing that Seto may have had a myriad used textbooks, but he did not own a single novel, album or personal purchase, though he scanned all the titles twice. He was about to give up and turn away when he spotted the only thing of interest on the bottom shelf: a bunch of colorful pebbles in the far end, lying on top of two sheets of paper held together with duct tape. Kaiba first thought it was some sort of bizarre decoration, but when he brushed the pebbles aside and folded the bound sheets open, his heart gave a leap. He was holding a chess board, painted with tempera, and on a closer look, he saw that the pebbles were painted on, too, the different pieces marked with small black and white symbols. He let out a sharp sigh and quickly put the board back, gathering the cool, smooth pebbles and letting them roll back onto the paper from his grasp. He had only seen a makeshift chess set once, from lines in the earth and ammo cartridges, but this was almost worse, though what he saw next pained him even more. Beside the bed, hung upon the wall, was a Blue-Eyes White Dragon poster: an old and wrinkled (he must have found it that way, he would have never done such a thing) and flat-pressed (how long could it have taken him to smooth it out?) Blue-Eyes White Dragon poster. It was a crummy, out-of-date promotional poster, worthless garbage, but to Seto, it was still a treasure… perhaps his only treasure beside Mokuba. He gingerly smoothed a hand over the paper body of that worn dragon. It felt as though his fingers had traced a thousand tiny scars. His hand clenched and he tore his eyes away for it. His head and heart were swimming.

He fled from the Blue-Eyes White Dragon to the built-in closet, but it was no use: all that awaited him beyond the open door were clothes, two pairs of winter shoes and some laundry detergent. Still, he stayed and looked through what little clothes the brothers had with growing despondence: six t-shirts, five shirts, three jumpers and four pairs of trousers all together (he was unconsciously grateful that the numbers were all in Mokuba's favor). Everything was clean but threadbare, with stitches on the elbows, and all Kaiba could think of was how enduring Gozaburo Kaiba was worth it so Mokuba wouldn't have to grow up this way. He didn't even notice his little brother sneaking over to him to stare at the scant wardrobe. Unlike him, Mokuba was more sorry that Seto had so little, having given everything he had to his little brother – everything in the world. He wiped his eyes and nestled to his Nii-sama's side. Seto kneeled down, gently drawing him into his embrace, and Mokuba silently let his tears fall against his brother's shoulder.

As the brothers mourned for their counterparts in that miserable dorm room, Yugi and his friends returned to the city center. They soon arrived at Kaiba Corp headquarters, and after some deliberation, Téa was chosen to be their ambassador, charged with the honorable task of speaking to the cold, wary receptionist.

"Good day," said Téa, standing tall and elegant. "We would like to speak with Mr. Kaiba."

"I'm sorry, but Gozaburo Kaiba is not receiving anyone today," stated the receptionist. Téa's eyes went wide. The others broke into whispers behind her.

"Did you say Gozaburo Kaiba?" she asked back. The receptionist nodded. "I would like to speak with his… his son."

"Noah Kaiba is currently abroad and will only be available the week after next week."

"But I thought he had another, um, another two sons…"

"You thought wrong," replied the receptionist in a tone that left no room for objection. "If you would like an appointment, call in advance, and now I must ask you to leave."

Reluctant as they were, they left the building, and soon enough, they were gathering in the same small square where Seto Kaiba realized that he might never have existed in this world at all. Yugi kept glancing back at the main building, his spirits low. First they ran into enemies and then lost track of the Kaiba brothers for good: they had run out of options and were even more helpless now than before. There was nothing else to do but search the city and find Kaiba as soon as possible, and Yugi wouldn't have cared if Kaiba still refused to cooperate, just so long as he got to see him safe and sound, and Mokuba with him.