Pre-DSOD

She was nearly as unnoticeable as the flickering dirt speck on the navy fibers of his perfectly ironed school uniform. A speck, however, instigated the merest acknowledgement. That was how Seto Kaiba felt after walking into his homeroom class and briefly noticing the previously empty desk next to his currently occupied by a girl.

He only allowed himself to deduce that for one, she was new and must have graced the halls of Domino High School some time he was absent - which was often with how much he prioritized his technological pursuits outside of school. Secondly, he thought her alabaster sheet of hair was her best feature, or rather, her only feature he could observe from the way her face was uncomfortably planted into a thick workbook.

And that was all he cared to note once he sunk into his desk and slipped out his laptop. His distinctively calculating eyes momentarily drifted toward the outside world through the dirty panes, and he himself felt nothing as the first remnants of snow lapsed into the earthly hell of Domino. As any tedious school day went for Seto, he started off doing work completely unrelated to the academic curriculum and did his best to eradicate the buzz of his peers' chatters.

"Good morning, Kaiba," an annoyingly familiar voice arose two seats down from his.

Seto's fingers flinched to pause for a second before returning to their rhythm as he replied, "Because this will be my last morning here, I agree. It is a good morning, Yugi."

Midway through senior year, the little twink had finally, although partially, hit the boundaries of puberty. His eyes were angled differently, and his disposition carried an air of maturity coupled with a lower vocal range that Seto had otherwise believed would have been skipped. Consequently, Yugi Muto's maturing qualities dismayed Seto from having to speak directly to his face, for as the days of adolescence passed, Yugi looked more and more like someone in the recesses of his past.

Normally, Yugi would have continued with small talk, either regarding Duel Monsters as a sport or KaibaCorp's current developments pertaining to Duel Monsters. There wasn't much the two could share, mostly due to Seto's apathetic attitude and conversational briefness. This morning constituted a rare and peculiar silence from Yugi.

From the corner of his eye with his attention mainly on his laptop screen, Seto noticed Yugi's gaze wasn't on him. Instead, he appeared to be staring in the direction of the girl next to him. Of course, this didn't constitute Seto to glance the same way. There was nothing valuable to discern despite how oddly long Yugi's attention was fixated.

Before Yugi could open his mouth again, Anzu Mazaki had fortunately interrupted him as she greeted her friend and pulled him into some conversation that Seto had even less care to eavesdrop. He was left alone to his laptop with his trademark frown and furrowed eyebrows enough to spur away questionable classmates.

Again, however, he noticed how Yugi and Anzu's head reversed in the way Yugi did before. They were suddenly and shockingly quiet too. It was rather unnerving to Seto, so much that he affirmed their attention by tearing his eyes from his screen to their line of sight.

He turned his head to the right and couldn't understand their interest in the white haired girl. She wasn't doing anything remarkable and maintained her position of a dismal nap. Seto's gaze returned to Yugi and Anzu, realizing they had changed their eyes to him. Their unreasonable silence irked him.

"...What?" Seto declared with a pang in the air that caught the attention of other students in the room, for it was rare he spoke so audibly and any drama between the Seto Kaiba and Yugi Muto excited them.

Yugi, aware everyone had eyes on them, said, "Nothing. Anzu and I will miss you." He turned to the room and loudly asked, "Won't we all?"

No one really would miss Seto. He never talked to anybody, initiated or addressed. Even as a notable figure, he would never give some teenagers the time of day about KaibaCorp or Duel Monsters aside from Yugi. However, during the times he was at school, Seto was a source of comedic gold when it came to shutting down their teachers, for his snide, rude attitude toward intravenous authority never failed to amuse his classmates. For that only, an ironic applause erupted from everyone with a couple whoops and hollers, ultimately confusing Seto.

Seto figured that Yugi was just playing around with him again. He shook his head and returned to his laptop. All the noise died down once their first teacher walked in.

"Sanada. Sanada. Sanada."

A rather exhausted tone elapsed from Mr. Ito, who had taken it upon himself to traverse to the back of the room and loom in between Seto and the girl. An ominous crack from the metal of Mr. Ito's infamous ruler imploded on contact with the wood of the girl's desk.

The normal response would have been a sudden jerk. A couple students in the room slightly jumped from their seats at the sound, but the girl did nothing of the like. Instead, her head slowly lifted up, as if nothing in the world could elicit an excitatory response from her. A shallow yawn dared to escape her.

Even Seto sideyed the scene, although her face was hidden by Mr. Ito's body. He quickly returned to his own business.

"With your grades, Sanada, I hardly believe you are spending late nights studying. You are invited to my office after school."

Mr. Ito promptly left her desk and elicited a panicked tone from the Sanada girl.

"I-I can't!" she exclaimed.

"No excuses."

"What about hi-"

Her lips thinned, and her sudden protest intrigued Seto enough for him to glance to his side. Much to his surprise and displeasure, her eyes, her weirdly nostalgic deep blues, had landed on him. His own eyes narrowed a bit but he had little opportunity to dissect the rest of her features, as she instantly blushed a faded pink at his acknowledgement of her stare and quickly turned her face forward.

She stuttered to quietly follow, "Nevermind. I'm sorry." For the rest of the time, she made sure not to accidentally turn her head his way again, and he ended up being mentally preoccupied by her behavior.

It eventually dawned to Seto that the girl had wanted to argue the partiality of their teacher to Seto's own privilege. No other student in the room possessed a laptop on their desk. It was custom to clear one's desk at the start of the day as well. If he so blatantly disregarded the laws of the school, then he too should have an appointment after school.

He concluded she was pathetically irresolute. A small scoff escaped under his breath. If she had an ounce of gut, perhaps she would have been successful, and he would have been mildly impressed to see someone else argue against old Ito logically for a change. Of course if she knew who he was, which was highly likely, it might have been the smarter choice not to have him involved in something so trivial, especially on his last day of the abysmal institution of high school.

Seto really should have withdrawn sooner, for there was nothing academically challenging here for someone of his bearings and intellect. His lawyers had the worst of times trying to negotiate the case of his early graduation with the stubborn regime of Domino's education system. He could've bought his degree but it wouldn't take long for the media to catch. KaibaCorp's shareholders and employees still weren't completely confident in his remarkably young age, so going on without a high school degree was supposedly more damaging. Even with the massive success of the duel disk, Seto Kaiba was doomed to sequester himself to a suffocatingly tiny school desk in order to appease others. That was the worst part - appeasing others.

Until tomorrow. Tomorrow, he would throw himself into the developments of the latest version of the duel disk, his controversial space elevator, and his secret side project. No one was going to stop tomorrow, not the stupid school system, not Yugi's sentiments, and certainly not what the girl next to him was going through.

Towards the end of the homeroom period, Jonouchi Katsuya and Honda Hiroto arrived

in the awfully tardy fashion they magically managed even on Seto's sporadic school days. Their public scolding gave Seto no interest with its inherent futility. If anything, he suffered from a growing headache amplified by the unnecessary bickering from Jonouchi and Honda.

The headache clung to him all day, a pestilence to his otherwise peaceful day. His last walk in the bleak, monochromatic halls of the school would have been blissful as well, if not for someone's hand on his shoulder.

No one at school had touched him like the way Honda just did, and it caused Seto to abruptly stop and give the other man a weaponized look down. It was enough to make Honda immediately take his hand off and raise up his hands as if to indicate he was backing off.

"Sorry, man," Honda said and nervously rubbed the back of his head.

Honda was the least annoying of Yugi's band of dimwits, despite being the dimmest of wits. This was due to him having the least interaction with Seto. Because he wanted to leave so badly, Seto merely assumed Honda had mistaken him for someone else and chose to ignore him by walking away.

"Wait!" Honda shouted out, "You haven't seen Kisara have you?"

And the aching of his head was miraculously worse than it ever was. Seto slowly turned back to face Honda.

"I don't know who that is," he plainly answered.

Honda immediately looked perplexed. He opened his mouth as if to say more but quickly shut it.

"Aye, Honda. Old Ito is gonna bust our asses if we don't meet him in his office," Jonouchi announced his entrance. He stopped after realizing Seto was also in the hallway. He awkwardly said, "Er...hello, Kaiba."

"Goodbye, Katsuya," Seto sourly disregarded as he picked up his pace to leave.

"Kisara-" Jonouchi started as he caught up and he dared to lay his hand on Seto's shoulder.

"I don't know who that is, and I don't know why I would know where they are, or why I should know either," Seto spouted as he snapped his shoulder back. He stayed still this time, silently demanding for an explanation.

Jonouchi placed his hands on his hips. He looked at Honda down the hallway, who only shook his head in a discouraging manner, prompting Jonouchi to return to Seto and say, "That's probably for the best then. See ya, money bags. Try to do good things out there, eh? Like making more of those duel disk lotteries for the new one next year."

Without further word, the two friends left Seto to unanswered questions.

The appalling, sharp screech of his car's tires was the last thing he wanted to happen on an already tainted day. His chauffeur had brought the car to a cruel halt, lunging Seto forward in the back. He felt the leather of his seatbelt dig into his chest and the breath knocked out of him. A violent coughing fit escaped from his lungs, earning panicked concern from his chauffeur.

"Are you alright, sir?! I'm sorry but a pedestrian suddenly ran out onto the crosswalk."

Seto regained his composure and lifted his head to only recognize the same girl who sat next to him in his homeroom class stare doe-eyed at the driver, clearly frightened from the possible cataclysmic event that could have happened. Whatever headache he had abstained had gotten surprisingly worse again as he unknowingly drifted off into a short and nightmarish sequence of illusory scent and noise that rendered his real vision of the girl in the frame of his car's front window gone. His hand slapped his forehead as if to quell his hallucinatory state and his head drooped low.

Not honking vehicles or the skid of tires across rubble street but foreign orchestra of perhaps scales and lutes and the pouring screams of street haggling and

Not the artificial citrus of the car air freshener lodged onto the conditioner or the faintness of the detergent on perfectly ironed business cloth but instead unprocessed, organic, natural,

cinnamon

myrrh

lily and

Not a forgettable Japanese school girl escaping detention but eyes and hair time immemorial.

"Sir?"

Seto took shallow breaths as he removed his hand and brought his face back up. Whoever was in front had left. He retreated back to his seat and collected himself, still ignoring his driver's questions. Behind them was a line of cars furious with their shouts and honks. He thoughtlessly chomped on his bottom lip, snatched his coat, and propelled himself out of the car and into the snow trodden streets of Domino City.

"Sir! Sir!" His driver opened his window and screamed out after him, but he had an obligation on the road to move on, so he drove off and muttered curses dealing with deserving raises and the like.

The brisk cold of the outside world had no impact on the hotness of his hummingbird heart as he ran toward where he thought she was and his eyes frantically scanned the passing scenery of concrete jungle. A couple people glanced his way, as he was not the typical citizen running willy nilly. It would be no surprise to find the tabloids tomorrow cite the crazy manners of KaibaCorp's chief executive officer, not that it was rare or anything.

Thankfully the streets had gotten quieter as he neared behind her. She felt the presence of someone following her and whirled around to find him pause at the same time. They stood approximately three feet apart. Her mess of long white hair appeared to be the only extra thing that kept her remotely warm aside from her already thin school uniform. Everyone else was appropriately dressed for the impending snowstorm that day.

"Catch," Seto declared.

She found his coat thrown at her and into her receiving arms. It felt nice, expensive. Possibly warm. Her gaze was lost at the article of clothing for a while when she failed to realize what the stranger had continued to say.

"What?" she asked in a daze.

"I said," he repeated with a more irritated tone. She had a feeling he didn't like to be repetitive.

"Consider this as payback."

Her puzzled face appeared as if she wanted to protest, but she couldn't waste her time. With having no idea of what he was referring to and having an urgency that trumped the current situation elsewhere, she didn't want to voice complaint.

Instead, she softly regarded, "Thank you. My name is-"

"Sanada," he insisted, "I know."

Seto turned his heel and walked away, leaving her to her own complications. Tomorrow would come and he would be a day closer to reviving someone else - someone that actually pertained to him and not the vestiges of an unwanted past. His head got a bit clearer.