Chapter 25: And Now Ryou Likes Seto, Too

Apparently, Seto Kaiba didn't realize that four thirty in the morning was way too damn early to call people who, unlike him, operated under regular human hours. Ryou had answered the call anyway, bleary-eyed and voice choked by the fog of sleep that still encased him. Ryou hadn't even been sure who was calling him at first, and had assumed it might be his father. Sometimes his father called at strange hours when he couldn't sleep and needed someone to listen to him list every problem and failure in his life that was keeping him up. Ryou never had any sensible, good solutions to offer the man, but Ryou always had a patient ear.

Seto, however, had called not for any emergency or even for a late night chat, but rather with the answer to a chess problem he'd forgot to give Ryou two days ago. Ryou stared into the darkness at the edges of his room, the little streams of light around the window blinds and the hazy shapes of his bedroom furniture, and on his face rested one of the most incredulous looks a person straddling the line between the world of sleep and wakefulness could adequately be said to throw into the empty night. Seto, the intended recipient of this look, yet half a city too far away to know it had even been cast, kept on talking. He asked if Ryou had paper to write everything down.

Ryou didn't budge. He reminded Seto of the time.

Seto didn't see the problem. Seto always got up at 4:00am to get ready for school. In fact, Seto held scheduled office hours from four thirty to seven in the morning for emergencies and to facilitate communications with offices overseas. Upon hearing this, Ryou reminded Seto that Ryou didn't run a gigantic corporation, so, that meant Ryou got up at six forty-five like normal people. Seto was not normal people. Seto was Seto Kaiba.

Seto had been unconcerned and said that while he'd keep that in mind in the future, the important thing now was that Ryou had to write this chess problem down, because the chess team had a tournament tomorrow, and Ryou had to make sure the better players knew how to use a Sicilian Defense. Ten minutes later, Ryou was sat at his desk, in his pyjamas, scribbling on the blank side of a leaflet a girl had given him advertising the school talent show. She was going to be playing the clarinet or the oboe, and she really wanted Ryou to be there to cheer her on. He'd told her he'd be there. She'd asked if Seto would come too, because she was scared that that kind of pressure might make her mess up. Ryou promised to tell Seto that Seto couldn't go to the talent show; he'd make all the contestants too nervous sitting there, and the show would subsequently suck.

"…You promote to the necessary knight, and there you go. Checkmate," said Seto, finished at last.

Ryou wrote down "prom knight checkmate", silently stared at it for a moment, and then erased it to write out the entire sentence.

"Read it back to me so I know you have it right."

Ryou mimed hitting his head against the table in tired exasperation. Seto asked him what was taking so long; did Ryou drop his notes? Ryou cleared his throat and began to read, his voice utterly devoid of emotion. The hour of four was too early in the morning to feel anything. Seto Kaiba seemed to live his life like it was perpetually four in the morning, so it was no wonder why Seto was always in such a bad mood.

"Also," added Ryou in the same breath he'd used to repeat the checkmate back, "you can't go to the school talent show because you scared people."

There was a slight moment of hesitation before Seto asked, "Uh…what?"

"I was told to tell you that on Monday, but I forgot. I didn't think you'd go anyway, so yeah."

"I didn't even know there was a stupid talent show."

"Well, everyone would really like it if you didn't go. I got a text saying 'please please please please please please please remember to tell Seto Kaiba not to go to the talent show' like three hours ago. That's a lot of please's. They seem pretty serious."

"Is that all?" asked Seto, his voice annoyed like Ryou was the one keeping him up and wasting his time, and not the other way around.

"I mean, I might've left out a please, but essentially, yeah, that's all."

Seto hung up without saying goodbye, and Ryou didn't even notice or mind it too much. Ryou's mission had been completed, and sleep was fast approaching once more. He laid back in bed and shut his eyes, ready to drift off into dreams.

However, sleep stopped short at the door and went no further. Ryou tossed and turned, trying to find it, but it couldn't be found. He kept hearing in his ear Seto's voice in the phone, intruding, so incongruous and faintly unwelcomed in Ryou's now silent bedroom. It had been there just now, there in the dark with Ryou. And Seto'd been right there with it, also with Ryou, at some weird distance just out of Ryou's reach and yet right in his ear, the voice rousing Ryou from sleep with its call on the phone and now keeping Ryou awake with its echo in his mind.

Ryou sighed and rose from his bed to get ready for school two hours early. He suspected he probably had a crush on Seto Kaiba now. Awesome. He felt absolutely terrible.

The first thing Ryou was worried about when he arrived at school a few hours later was that his new status of crushing after Seto Kaiba would be plainly obvious to everyone who saw him, like it had been tattooed onto his face in the night. Things seemed pretty much normal, though. Seto was absent, which helped. In fact, when Ryou had entered the classroom and seen the empty corner desk, he'd muttered a small "thank you" to whatever celestial deity was looking out for him so benevolently in his time of need.

As first period happened around him, Ryou thought of Seto and supposed the worst part of having a crush on Seto was the devastating sense of betrayal that consumed him from his toes to the tips of his giant mane of hair. Ryou was Seto Kaiba's only friend, and Ryou was messing it up big time. Just because Seto had decided not to voluntarily contribute to the miracle of life didn't mean he wasn't attracted to girls. Creepy and weird as it was to think about in clearly defined words, maybe the perfect, totally sterile woman of Seto's dreams was out there, somewhere, waiting for Seto to marry and never have kids with her. That might be what happened, right? Love didn't equal children. Love was more than a household and the propagation of the species. Seto could still totally fall in love with a woman so long as he could trust her uterus not to doom him to a sudden succession quagmire.

Ryou had to be the worst friend ever. For the sake of the still young friendship between them, and to ensure that Seto didn't suffer the fickle winds of chance that constituted Ryou's raging teenage hormones, Ryou decided he wouldn't tell Seto a damn thing. Crushes were like hit songs, they came on strong and inescapable, but eventually they overstayed the welcome and were phased out of airplay. From then on, they rose up only at random intervals, not lasting for long. A crush was not the end of the world. A crush could be gotten over. Ryou would just have to make sure he was never, ever tempted to go beyond that, or wish so strongly to go beyond to the point where it would ruin the friendship. Hope would not be lost so long as Ryou could keep himself under control.

The next night Ryou spent staring at the ceiling, willing his phone to ring and Seto's voice to be there with him. The ridiculous, dramatic thinking that was so common in the small, restless hours of morning overwhelmed Ryou as he lay in his room. Soon, it wasn't just the childish crush on Seto Kaiba keeping him awake, but his very real fear that this lack of sleep would impact him negatively tomorrow in the tournament with the chess team. It would be the seventh competition they'd played in together, and Ryou was still the most winning player they had. The team's reputation was on Ryou's shoulders, because Ryou was also helping to coach and organize everyone. Ryou was Seto's personal liaison, his eyes and ears and fount of chessic knowledge to be passed down to the team. Ryou couldn't let the team down. He couldn't let Seto down. He needed to sleep.

Ryou had been able to sleep a few hours at last, and then later on the two-hour bus ride to the tournament. Jounouchi seemed concerned, having never seen Ryou so exhausted before. He was considerate and treated Ryou delicately, more out of confusion and alarm than any real knowledge of how to deal with someone in Ryou's condition. He reminded Ryou that Ryou didn't need to win, just in case Ryou was pushing himself too hard. Ryou needed his points and his rating, and the rating didn't have to be all that great. No pressure.

In spite of himself and the weights pulling down on his eyelids, Ryou wasn't too bad off competitively. It was hard to feel anything toward his opponent when he was exhausted and dull inside. Ryou didn't immediately fall apart in his play as he struggled against his drowsiness, but there was definitely a lag in his decisions. He committed more than a few blunders, because it was so hard to think his moves over when his mind was full of so much fog. The matches seemed far away, unimportant, no more real than dreams he had to physically sit through. He didn't win his section. He wasn't even very close. He got fourth, and fourth was practically nothing.

Naturally, it was only when one was under-preforming that the world suddenly decided to look over and pay attention. A reporter approached Ryou when the awards ceremony was over and congratulated him on fourth place. Ryou, not expecting the woman to appear so suddenly, choked on a yawn he hadn't had sufficient time to stifle. He wasn't very sure what to do in this situation. Seto had suggested Ryou call Seto or Seto's secretary if anyone bothered him, but Ryou wasn't totally sure he was being bothered right now. He supposed that would depend on the line of questioning to follow.

"I'm sorry it's not a great result," said Ryou after the reporter congratulated him. "I'm under the weather. It's a shame having driven two hours here for this."

"Fourth place was a great result considering the level of your competition," said the reporter with an odd sort of reassurance in her voice. This didn't seem to have been a part of her script. She hadn't expected Ryou to converse with her so casually right away. Didn't he realize she was a reporter? That anything he said might end up in print? Ryou told her he didn't know much about the competition there, because he didn't follow the rankings very closely. These days he was focused more on helping the team rather than competing for only himself. Was there anything in particular she'd wanted to ask him? He had a few paperwork related errands to run before leaving.

"Are you really friends with Seto Kaiba?" the reporter asked.

"Yes, I am," said Ryou brightly and smiled at her. He then excused himself and left to make sure the team was together and heading for the bus.

When the team arrived back in Domino two hours later, the same reporter was waiting for Ryou outside the parking lot. He greeted her politely as he passed on his way to a bus stop to start his journey home. The reporter followed him, and he wondered if perhaps now was a good time to call Seto's secretary for back up. He decided that if she followed him into the bus, he certainly would.

"Do you want to ask me about myself, or about Seto?" asked Ryou when the reporter, albeit awkwardly, followed him under the bus stop shelter. She didn't seem much like the normal, seasoned veterans of her trade that hid in trees or eavesdropped from adjoining tables in public. Ryou wondered if she'd ever interviewed someone in the field before.

"You'll really answer some questions?" asked the reporter, amazed.

"It will depend on the questions," said Ryou with a shrug. "According to the monitor at this stop, my bus will be here in twelve minutes. That's a long, boring time to wait. So, I guess you have 12 minutes."

"In that case, my questions are about Seto Kaiba."

Ryou nodded, feelings hurt but still relieved that he didn't have to talk about himself too much. Ryou wasn't sure what to say about himself. Anything he said might be etched in stone and irreversible, and that was more than a little daunting. Seto Kaiba, however, was a topic he knew well enough as a third party, because until recently, he'd been among the ignorant public who only knew of Seto Kaiba what Seto Kaiba wanted them to know. Ryou felt staying within that familiar narrative wouldn't be hard for him.

"Am I supposed to be an expert on the guy?" asked Ryou with genuine curiosity. "Am I considered an authority on Seto Kaiba now?"

"You're his best friend," said the reporter.

Ryou was about to tell her that he wasn't Seto's best friend, but stopped when he realized being Seto's only friend perhaps automatically qualified him as the best one, too.

"Well," said Ryou apologetically, "for being Seto's friend," he intentionally refrained from calling himself the best anyway, "I guess I can tell you all about his chess game. I'm not sure I know much more about him than that."

"Actually, this is related to chess," said the reporter.

This piqued Ryou's curiosity, and he allowed himself to relax a little. He hadn't expected a reporter to ask him about Seto Kaiba and chess. This might just be the easiest interview ever. "Go for it," he said.

"Okay, I've got a theory that Seto Kaiba and his pupil, Ryuuji Otogi, aren't dating," said the reporter. Ryou was a bit crestfallen, as Ryuuji and Seto didn't exactly count as a conversation about chess to him. It was gossip about people who occasionally played chess. Those weren't the same thing. "My editor doesn't believe me," the reporter continued, "but I've heard from sources that Ryuuji Otogi isn't actually in a relationship with Seto Kaiba. They're just drumming up cheap publicity."

"Huh. That's not really about chess," Ryou pointed out sadly, making no effort to conceal his disappointment.

"Well, I mean, you might know if they're actually close," said the reporter. "Maybe Kaiba has told you something? It's a common opinion that Otogi might just be pulling one over on the press for drama. You're in a position to confirm or deny that for people."

Ryou looked over at the reporter, catching her eye. "Do you know," he asked her directly, "that I'm actually friends with Ryuuji Otogi as well as Seto Kaiba?"

"I know both of you are friends of Yuugi Mutou," said the reporter. There was a growing touch of apprehension in her voice as she tried to puzzle the situation between her and Ryou out. This wasn't so much an interview as it had become a strange sort of conversation between them, and she was having trouble understanding the power dynamic. It was hard to tell who had more questions for whom, really. The reporter was trying to extract information for a story from Ryou while, at the same time, Ryou was trying to get a feel for how the media perceived him and his situation through her. Both wished to obtain something from the other, and it perturbed her more than Ryou, because Ryou wasn't as familiar as she was with the normal interviewer and interviewee status quo.

"I could probably tell you exactly what's going on with them," said Ryou, shrugging and looking away at last to check the time remaining until the bus arrived.

"Will you?" asked the reporter hopefully. It was something she'd never uttered during an interview in her entire life. Ryou turned back around from checking the time and beamed at her.

"Sure," said Ryou. The woman breathed easier, not aware until then that she'd been waiting with bated breath for Ryou's answer. "You're right," Ryou told her. "They aren't together. Ryuuji just has an awful sense of humor."

The reporter stared at him, stunned at how forthcoming with all of this Ryou was. "Are you serious?" she asked, her voice rising a little in pitch with her incredulity. "Or, are you just telling me what you think I want to hear?"

"I'm not joking," said Ryou, smiling again to reassure her as he spoke. "Knowing them," except now he was lying, "I imagine they have some kind of wager going on." Ryou knew she would take this as a hint at the real situation. "It's not really cheap publicity, more as it's Ryuuji just playing a sort of weird game."

"And why did Kaiba accept? What did they wager?" asked the reporter, typing the notes down to a cacophony of frantic clicks on her unmuted phone.

"I dunno," said Ryou with a shrug as the bus appeared around the corner a few blocks down. "Probably something stupid. Seto's more about the personal challenge than the stakes."

"More about the personal challenge than the stakes…that's not bad," said the reporter, frowning down at her notes appreciatively. "Can I quote you on that?"

"You can have it," said Ryou. "Naturally, you can put me as your source and stuff if you need to. But, just don't quote me. Quotes get taken out of context. I'm not sure I'm ready to be quoted on anything yet."

"Definitely. Thank you so much," said the reporter as Ryou signaled the bus to stop and moved to the curb in preparation to board.

"I can't answer any more questions," said Ryou as the door swished opened. "Have a good day."

"You, too," said the reporter happily and waving like they were two friends taking leave of each other. Ryou supposed he was the master of making friends. He'd even conquered Seto Kaiba, the friendless and cruel. When Ryou died, they should put that on his tombstone: "Ryou Bakura, the best friend".

Assuming, of course, he didn't ruin everything by nursing a sudden, unexpected schoolboy crush on Seto Kaiba that would lead him on the path to an early grave lined with chronic stress ulcers and the life-shortening strain of sustained anxiety in Seto's overbearing presence.

Ryou sighed softly and moved down the aisle. He took a seat near the back door and pulled his phone from his pocket. There was a rattle and a crash as one of Seto's travel chess sets fell from Ryou's bag. Luckily, it didn't pop open, though the pieces were in little pouches anyway and wouldn't have spilt. Ryou picked the case up and inspected it for damage. Not really thinking, he opened it and looked inside. There was a tiny piece of paper in between the pouches for the white and black pieces. It had been folded way too many times and was straining to open. Ryou plucked it out and closed the case before replacing it in his bag and snapping shut the opening of the pocket it had fallen from.

Ryou unfolded the paper. It was a small sheet from a pocket agenda Seto carried with him in case his phone broke or was out of reach, and he couldn't check his appointments. Most of the dates recorded in it were written in his secretary's handwriting unless they were spontaneous and had to be saved by Seto himself in the moment. The day from which this paper had been pulled had been mostly empty, though. Seto had found it and used it to copy down the notation for the King's Indian Attack, which was a common opening position that could be easy for some of the chess team to use. Ryou hadn't been fast or confident enough in reciting it, as he often forgot the names of openings, so Seto had made the decision to write it down for him in case he forgot about it later. Ryou had been annoyed, because he'd known what the opening was after the first two moves, but Seto had insisted on jotting it down it for him, if only to make Seto himself feel better about the fact Ryou hadn't known it immediately.

Now, Ryou read over the slip, remembering with acute attention to detail the image of Seto leaning over to write the notations down after waving Ryou away when Ryou had complained it wasn't necessary. Seto'd forced Ryou to take the paper, fold it, and place it in the travel case so that Ryou wouldn't lose it. Bitterly, Ryou had folded the paper repeatedly, as though by folding it to miniscule proportions, an infinite number of times, it could be made to cease existing entirely. Seto had called Ryou insolent, and a second later there'd been a message on Ryou's phone from Seto with the exact same notations written down there as well. Seto had laughed at the expression Ryou made when Ryou saw the message. Ryou observed that Seto only ever seemed to laugh when he causing another person grief.

Ryou's thumb now traced the familiar handwriting, written by the familiar hands, the familiar fingers long and tapering to manicured points. Seto was always careful about the appearance of his hands. A lot of attention was placed on such a detail when you were always drawing cards and moving pieces across a board on television. Ryou's own hands weren't nearly so well maintained, though they weren't hideous or gangrenous or anything like that. There were a couple hangnails that looked more painful than they were, and his nails weren't ever filed after he cut them.

Ryou wondered what Seto had thought, if anything at all, about having to look at Ryou's painfully average hands for days upon weeks upon months at a time, while Seto's own hands never changed. Seto's hands were eternal, held to a standard and kept there, while Ryou's dried and softened with the weather, the nails growing long and then cut short. You could use the length of Ryou's nails like the cycles of the moon to track the progression of time, the same with Ryou's hair and the blemishes on his face that came and went on their own due course.

And throughout it all, Seto Kaiba remained forever the same. Money didn't just buy financial security. It bought the security that nothing about you ever needed to change, to morph into any state less than that of apparent perfection. The only way Seto ever changed was with fashion, which made him more like a face in a magazine, always perfectly groomed, that simply updated itself for the new season but always remained recognizable, always still the same Seto Kaiba without a hair out of place.

Seto Kaiba wasn't a person in the same sense as everyone else, but a representation of a brand. He was a living, breathing mascot of his own company and his vision for a world blanketed with the best of game technology. And this was the not-a-person Ryou had a crush on now, because Ryou believe that beneath it all, there was a person. This person had tried his best to train Ryou, Ryou the terrible student, to play a game Ryou would never, ever master. This person respected how far Ryou had been able to get, and though he got annoyed when Ryou forgot a common opening that Ryou really should've known, he never called Ryou stupid or worthless. Instead, he tried to help, to fix what had gone wrong by scrawling the formula down and forcing Ryou to take it for his own good. With a strange sort of patience and acceptance that this sort of thing would always happen with Ryou, he tried to make sure Ryou would at least not forget this particular opening again any time soon.

Ryou folded the paper up, not so many times over as before, and placed it in his pocket for safekeeping.

Ryou wondered now. His mind wandered. Why had Ryou confessed to the reporter that Seto wasn't actually involved with Ryuuji Otogi?

Ryou sighed and shifted in his seat. He glanced out the window to see if he was nearing his stop yet. Sun got into his eyes at the turning of a corner, causing him to squint and and giving him a slight headache, but he was too tired to lift his head from where he leaned it against the window. It wouldn't be a good idea to fall asleep here. His stop would come up in about five minutes.

Why had Ryou been so compelled to set things straight about Seto? What was Ryou trying to force? Was Ryou trying to inconvenience Seto, or Ryuuji, or…Ryou himself?

Ryou heard the distant, recorded voice from the speakers announce what sounded like the approximate shape of the pronunciation of the next stop. It was his street. He stifled a yawn behind his now less shiny and more worn out Italian leather briefcase. He tried to recall what exactly Seto had called the bag when he'd listed all the bag's specs to Ryou in those dark, dull those days before Ryou knew better than to patiently listen to such boring information that wouldn't ever matter. It had been some number in Italian. Twenty-whatever it was. Venti-whatever-it was. [1]

Would Seto, while not giving a fuck that the world knew he wasn't with Ryuuji Otogi, anyway be unhappy with Ryou just on the principle of the fact that Ryou had shared information about Seto's personal life without first consulting Seto? How soon would Seto find out what Ryou had done? And how much would Seto care when he found out?

Ryou stepped off the bus and walked the rest of the few blocks home. He placed the venti-whatever it was on the credenza and prepared to spend the rest of the day inside, half asleep until a reasonable time to go to bed arrived. A few times he checked his phone and wondered if Seto might call. He wish Seto would, and dreaded Seto might, simultaneously.

Notes:
[1] Uh, ventiquattrore, Ryou, jeez. Twenty-four. Like the hours in the day. It's a very nice bag. Stop being so ungrateful for the nice things bought you.

Let Me Take a Moment:
Why so many chapters this week? Probably because I'm trying to end this before it gets even longer…. I'm still a few chapters ahead, but I keep cutting chapters into smaller pieces when I edit them. This chapter and the two after it were supposed to have been one longish chapter, but then it got too long….