Chapter 37: To Never Ever Stop

Seto Kaiba was awesome at keeping busy.

If Seto stopped, the company stopped. If Seto didn't get the things done, none of those things happened. He was on top of the world, but the peak was tapered to a fine point of scant millimeters that required a tremendous balancing act to stay perched upon. Building his company back up from the brink of disaster had taught Seto just how much he stood to loose if it all toppled over. Titan of technological industry he was, Seto knew the eternal struggle for market dominance, for always aspiring to the next new and great thing. He was thus compelled to never, ever stop.

Seto Kaiba had so many endless, fantastic reasons to never feel, to never be Seto the person as opposed to Seto Kaiba the monumental entity that permeated all and preceded him everywhere he went. Even when it seemed Seto might run out of emails to send, budgets to set, directions to give that were proclaimed to be towards the better and brighter future, Seto still found even more to do. In a pinch, he could always fall back on his passion for technology, and it would consume his attention for days. Seto had always been a creator of tools, of useful devices to improve those things in life that mattered to him the most. He himself wrote the scripts that dictated the operation of his creations in logical, predictable patterns that never surprised him. It was so orderly and perfect. Everything in Seto's hands depended on him. Everything obeyed his instructions. The peace and clarity to be found in being the master of one's work, one's home, one's creations, was truly limitless. Seto's life was indefinitely full.

Seto wouldn't squander such a hard earned specter of happiness and fulfillment for the crushing misery of unrequited love and pining rejection. He wouldn't swap contentment and completeness for the empty feeling that would undoubtedly pollute him the moment he allowed himself to peruse a relationship that would reward him with nothing but the pain of his labor.

Thus, Seto kept busy. He drank coffee like vital blood infusions staving off death. He was three minutes late to a videoconference because coffee ran through you like it was trying for the Olympic gold when it was the only thing you'd consumed in the past twelve hours. He'd fallen asleep (or perhaps momentarily unconscious) in the middle of a conversation with Mokuba on the phone, and it'd freaked Seto out, because he'd only thought he was blinking before opening his eyes moments later and seeing that three minutes had evaporated from his life. It'd been years since Seto'd overworked himself to the point of unconsciously nodding off and subsisting solely on the simulative effect caffeine. It'd been years since he'd come to this sort of sudden, fainting away level of physical exhaustion, as his weak human body failed to keep up and instead began to mutiny against him.

Faintly, Seto was reminded of Ryou's story about falling asleep with his eyes open during a chess match.

Ryou was an idiot.

Seto opened the huge packet of legal papers (his own copy for his records) of an application of some sort that had been submitted recently by the legal team down the hall. He reviewed it casually without seeing it, not remembering what he was applying for, or even if it was supposed to be the company itself applying and not Seto personally. He assiduously read over each line of text and saw nothing. He held the brick of paper in his hands, and it didn't exist.

Honda had been there before. Seto hadn't even remembered the guy's name, though he knew the face perfectly in how it related to the infuriating Ryuuji Otogi. Honda had literally needed to introduce himself to Seto after sitting down, and that had pissed Honda off. The feeling had been mutual.

Seto had then sat through a long, strange, and occasionally somewhat non sequitur speech from Honda about the importance of opening up to people. Seto had feigned attention to this while reorganizing the documents on his desk with his mind, memorizing the neat and tidy order he would put them in later once Honda had gone and it was no longer totally rude to do so. Seto pressed the tips of his fingers together and rested the furthest protruding point of his chin against them in a pose Seto knew would make him look severe and attentive, though he was rather the opposite of attentive.

In addendum to his usual speech, Honda had warned Seto, in too many words, that Ryou wasn't the kind of person who came crawling back asking for forgiveness or understanding in relationship standoffs. Ryou was more the kind of person who, when he saw you were cutting him loose, took the hint and drifted away while it was still easy. There would be no dramatic confrontation with Ryou if Ryou were the one intended to decide the next stop. Ryou would let the relationship die, and Ryou wouldn't even care.

Seto had no problem dealing with confrontations, if that was the action Honda wished to incite in him. It wouldn't be all that hard to confront Ryou, especially. Seto confronted people daily, and not all of them were very nice about it. It was something of a routine of his life at this point.

No, what Seto disliked so much wasn't the idea that he might have to confront Ryou himself, but rather the idea that it had to be him. That Ryou would never try. That Ryou had better things to do, apparently, then to fight to keep a fleeting relationship alive.

"Clearly you wish for me to drop everything and find Ryou right now," said Seto when Honda was finished making his rambling points and seemed satisfied with himself that all the necessary things had been said. "Clearly this is the most important thing I should be doing."

Seto swept his gaze over the paperwork, the double computer screens with a very busy looking graph splashed across one, an extra laptop running a short simulation of one of the chip production process models, and a tablet scrolling through Seto's endless project notes. Work dominated the surface of the desk before Seto. Work, it was clear, that Seto could not be parted from. He looked back to Honda.

"I mean, not right this second, literally. You can just call him later. He hasn't heard from you in days. Apparently you guys used to talk a lot? Like, I didn't bug him for details. That's just the impression I got."

"We played a lot of chess. Days of it."

"I know. He taught me some, actually. Not days of it, though. More like an hour and a half."

"Otogi hasn't taught you?"

"Why does everyone think…? You know what, I don't care. But anyway, yeah right. Like I'm going to let that guy gloat at me across a chessboard for fun. Not fucking likely. He gloats enough as it is. He doesn't need more ammunition."

"Show me."

"What?"

"Show me what Ryou taught you."

A few quick minutes later, Honda and Seto were an elevator trip and a long hallway removed from Seto's main office. A chessboard was between them, and Honda was having déjà vu sitting in a small room surrounded by chess paraphernalia with a knight's fork problem set up for his consideration. Apparently Ryou and Seto weren't totally lying when they told people that all they ever really did was chess. Chess certainly seemed to sprout up a lot in relation to those idiots. Honda couldn't say it was a surprise.

"Tell me some points about the knight," said Seto after Honda had told him that this topic was what Ryou had taught him.

"You're not kidding, are you? Because I can actually answer that now, if you really want me to. I'm actually a pretty decent student, okay?"

"I'm not kidding."

"Okay. So the knight can attack and guard squares of different colors while basically being out of range of what it's going to attack. That can make it hard to get if it gets in the middle of your pieces. Also, the queen can't do its move, so it's often more useful joined with a queen than a bishop might be."

"What are the knight's disadvantages?"

"The knight can't move and keep watching the same squares as before. It can be trapped against the side of the board by a bishop…somehow. It can't quickly get across the board fast. It has to get super close to attack stuff because its range is really short."

"What's the bishop's primary weakness?"

"I told you I studied knights."

"But Ryou would've taught you something about bishops as well."

"Yeah, well, he did kinda say something about how each bishop moves on one color. That seems like a problem."

Seto nodded in approval. "You're not completely terrible. You aren't hopeless," he said. He smirked. "Maybe I should've taught you chess, too. Now I'm a bit annoyed you never joined the team. What a waste."

"Games aren't really a super big thing for me," said Honda quickly, "weird as that sounds considering who I hang out with. Plus, Ryou sent me home with notes, and then Ryuuji said I should study them before I came over here. And to that, I've just gotta say: What the hell is wrong with you people? First, Ryou's dad quizzes me on history, and then, you're here quizzing me on bishops and knights. Ryou's surrounded by freaking professors everywhere. Damn. No wonder he's such a dork."

"When did you go to the museum?"

"We went to see that thing about the Sea Peoples with his dad. By the way, I aced the quiz after. You need to make sure you look at their hats on the inscription. The horned hats. That's important for the essay."

"So you met Ryou's father?"

"Yeah. He's a weird guy. But then, so is Ryou, so yeah."

Seto, of course, didn't care how weird Mr. Bakura was. Seto already had an idea because he'd met the man already during a KaibaCorp sponsored exhibit at the museum. What Seto truly wanted to know, but didn't want to directly ask about, was if Ryou had finally spoken to his father. Seto hadn't "had time" to listen to any of the messages that Ryou'd left on his phone over the past few days. It would've taken him less than five minutes, but it was five minutes Seto suddenly couldn't spare. After the first one call had come in, he'd immediately got his secretary to send a generic reply to stall for time, all the while having no idea what the message had even said. He was reasonably confident Ryou hadn't turned him down in the message. Ryou was honorable. Ryou would do that to someone's face, or at least while having an actual conversation with them. He wouldn't cop out and hide it like the world's worst Easter egg in your damn voicemail inbox.

There were exactly three messages now, each one under a minute in length. What they said was likely little more than "hey, call me back when you're not busy" and a farewell. Ryou wouldn't get more personal than that. His messages would be the sort of messages that were the seconds-wasting equivalents to leaving no message at all. And yet, Seto was still way too busy to check them. He was way too busy to waste the time to listen to Ryou's voice announce who he was (like this wouldn't already be stated in the missed call menu), comment on how he supposed Seto was busy (because he was polite and wasn't going to outright accuse Seto of blowing him off intentionally even if that was the truth), ask Seto to call him back when he had time (but Seto had no time), and then apologize for having missed him again, goodbye.

In quiet moments, especially at night, Seto would take out his phone and silently consider it as it lay on the table, daring himself to check the few seconds of messages he still hadn't played, while also patting himself on the back for his intense resolve not to care to check them, ever. This entire charade was inherently ironic and ridiculous, considering how steadfast Seto was about insisting he had no time, because it often turned out that Seto spent more time looking at the phone and deliberating with himself than it would've taken to actually get it over with and listen to the damn messages already.

"I guess you'd like to know if Ryou and his dad talked about you," said Honda, and there was a sudden light in his eyes that Seto just might've ventured to call mischievous. It was too much like Ryuuji. Seto was displeased. Apparently being human and liking Ryou had lowered Seto in the estimation of even the absolute dredges of Yuugi's friend group. They were starting to get big-headed.

"Of course they talked about me," said Seto to wipe the increasingly smug look off Honda's face. "Don't treat me like an idiot. Ryou said they would, and so that means they did. That's not a mystery. I highly doubt they included you in the conversation, though."

"They didn't, but I overheard."

"You eavesdropped on them."

"Not really. The museum was empty, and voices carry. It actually really got in the way of my concentration on the short answers of the quiz."

Instinctively, Seto reassumed the pressed-fingered, focused expression that he'd worn falsely when Honda had been lecturing him earlier. That had been more than a half hour ago. Seto had wasted nearly forty-five minutes on Honda's visit so far. Seto had yet to notice this.

"I can see you're implying you think you know something that would be of value to me."

"That's right. That's exactly right."

"And you have a price, don't you?"

"Nothing you can't afford, Kaiba."

Honda strode out of KaibaCorp headquarters twenty minutes later. He walked three blocks down to a café, ordered himself a lime soda, and took a seat at a corner booth. The booth's occupant, Ryuuji Otogi, didn't look up. He continued scrolling through his phone in idle silence while languorously consuming a pain aux raisins through the messy procedure of slowly unraveling it into bite-sized portions. Without a word, Honda removed a slip of paper from his wallet and passed it across the table. Ryuuji's face lit up like all of Christmas and Diwali at the sight.

"I'm so proud of you right now, Hiroto."

"The guy didn't even hesitate. One second he was asking how to spell my name, the next he was placing the check on the end of the table for me to take it. I was shocked he even carries a checkbook. In his own office."

"It's because he likes the drama of whipping it out when he needs to surpass some trifling obstacle with money. Probably gives him a little rush, too. Also, people typically expect so much money from him when they ask for it that it would be impractical to keep that much cash on hand all the time."

"He offered cash."

"And yet you forced him to write a check anyway. For a measly fifty bucks. Fuck. You're so cool, Hiroto."

"I had to prove it to you somehow. That's his signature and everything. He did it all himself."

"You definitely win our bet, and I don't even feel bad that I lost. I'm just so proud. You went 110-percent, and I can't help but respect that. I've never been more in love with you."

"Dammit, Ryuuji; it's a check," said Honda, turning red and looking around nervously. He reached out and took the slip of paper, folding it and slipping it back into his wallet. "Anyway, what do you want to do with fifty bucks?"

"I want to frame that check and hang it on a wall."

"Yeah, but maybe let me cash it first."

"We should cash it at an actual bank. So we can brag to the teller."

"Don't be petty, Ryuuji. I'm going to just cash it with my phone when I get home."

"You're right. Then we can kick your nephew's photo out of the frame by the door and put the check there. Hang it up in your line of sight, so you can see it every morning when you wake up. To remind you of the power within you."

Honda chuckled, amused, and took a long sip of his lime soda. Ryuuji, now with a new game to amuse himself, pressured Honda to hurry so they could hop onto Honda's bike and leave as soon as possible. They had a full day of bullshit comments and jokes at Seto Kaiba's expense ahead of them, and Ryuuji wouldn't be made to wait.

Back at KaibaCorp headquarters, Seto Kaiba hadn't yet returned to his office and the brick of legal documents he'd be dumbly staring and not reading in an hour. Right then, he remain where he was, sat quietly in the small room of chess, looking down at the board and the last of the problems Honda had set up and said Ryou had taught him. Seto was no longer oblivious to the sheer bulk of time he'd wasted on Honda's visit, but he also no longer cared.

Seto sighed in irritation and removed the phone from his pocket. He laid it alongside the chessboard and entered his password to unlock it and pull up his call history. Soon, there was the distorted sound of Ryou's voice, slightly tinny and pitched too high in the inadequate speakers, saying three times, like ungranted wishes to an aloof genie, all that Seto had already known it was going to say. Ryou was nothing if not largely predictable. It made him quite bad at chess once his favored lines were figured out, but it also made him something of a reassuring constant to have around.

The messages ended and the room was silent again. Seto had only been partly listening to them. As he'd feared, he'd spent the majority of their runtime contemplating not the words spoken, but the voice speaking. This room, with its proliferation of chess artifacts and materials, was not an unfamiliar habitat for the voice, face, and very presence of Ryou Bakura to occupy. Perhaps, if Seto had been planning an exact, suitable location in which to expose himself to the unwelcomed stimulus of Ryou's existence, this place was the best choice. He expected the memory of Ryou in this room. Without even being dead, the ghost of Ryou was everywhere here. And Seto Kaiba was all about corralling and shutting up ghosts (in this case, ghosts being the memories of people who'd exercised some past influence on him that even now threatened to undermine his ability to indisputably govern himself) into very narrowly defined spaces and ranges of influence.

Seto'd forgot the phone's volume was still set on high, and so the sudden phone call a moment later startled him. He'd been caught up in a bit of brooding once the messages had finished and had lost all sense of time and its movement. The ringing of the phone had jolted him back to the present. He glanced over at the screen crossly and was surprised to see a number he didn't know. He decided to ignore it, even though it was rare that an unknown number ever called him on his personal phone. It was not something he wished to encourage people to try by answering when it happened.

Seto had just reached over and set his phone back on silent when the screen lit up and the same unknown number called again. In an instant, he knew it couldn't be Ryou. Ryou was never this annoyingly persistent. Ryou had fucking manners, even if the polite messages he left were completely useless.

"Who the hell is this?" demanded Seto, figuring anyone who'd found his private number deserved a dressing down, because clearly Seto hadn't been the one to give the number to them. The caller would've been saved in his contacts if that had been the case. "Where the hell did you get this number?"

"The hell where I got the number was off my son's phone, and the hell who this is is Ryou's Bakura's father."

Seto quickly sat up in his chair as if the man had just entered the room. "This is my personal phone," he said gruffly by way of explanation for what he still saw as totally merited rudeness. "Tell me what you want."

"I told Ryou he ought to bring you around the museum one of these days, Mr. Kaiba, but he never does. So, I'm fed up, and I'm inviting you. This evening works best for me, though it's a bit last minute. How about you? Are you busy? I was thinking half past seven."

"Well, it depends on if you're asking me or telling me."

"I'm strongly suggesting you."

"Fine. Eight o'clock. I'm leaving today at half past seven, and the traffic will add twenty to thirty minutes."

This was a lie, but Seto wasn't about to let Ryou's father set all the terms. They were already meeting on the old man's turf at the old man's bidding. The only thing left to Seto was to assert his will over the time.

"Excellent. Come in the east wing door, or the group entrance if you have a lot of security. It's nearer to my office than the front doors are. It'll be much more convenient for me."

"Done. Anything else?"

"Do you know about the Sea Peoples?"

"Not a damn thing."

"Oh good, you'll learn something."

Notes:
Honda is intentionally really shitty at talking about chess.

Let me Take a Moment:
I just made a joke about writing checks. Clearly I need to stop lying and just admit to you all that I'm a forty-three year old buzzard in a people suit I found in a canyon and put on for the use of its enviable set of opposable thumbs.

Review Responses (with a note about any future Euroshipping from me):
Thank you, anonymous guest.
Thank you, Aniki-xvi! My arm is fine now. I figured out the cause and have cease to do that thing. Also, this chapter is obviously not the last chapter. There'll be like one or two more, depending on if I commit to splitting what I have for the ending in half (and then this fic will end on 39 chapters because that's satisfying to look at, right? Just short of a round forty?). For the euroshipping future, I have so far two other fics half-written, though they are rather darker and quirkier than this fic because in this fic I kind of glossed over Seto's worse traits for the sake of an easier characterization. I am not sure when I will post my other euroshipping stuff, though, because I like to write ahead of myself by a considerable amount so that updates will be be fairly regular.