Autumn had never been kind to the ones Mokuba loved. Leaves scattering over his parents' graves, over the roof of the orphanage, the grounds of the mansion—trying to bury him, too, everywhere he went. Even Seto's birthday mingled with memories of the Kaiba Corp. takeover, those heavy shards of glass landing among the red, dead foliage.
The latest seasonal offering arrived in the form of an obituary for Sugoroku Mutou.
Mokuba set down his mug and squinted at his phone. "That's Yuugi's grandpa," he said to himself. Seto looked up from his own phone.
"In the news?"
"He died yesterday."
Seto rounded the breakfast table and stood over Mokuba's shoulder. They read the obituary together. The long list of those who'd preceded the man in death...the small list of survivors.
Mokuba felt the hole in his chest, an absence he'd been born with, widen again. He contorted to read his brother's expression. "Yuugi didn't tell you?"
Seto shook his head. He grazed a finger over the tiny, yellow-tinged photo of Sugoroku, young and rakish, hat askew. It was a gentle acknowledgement. "I just knew he'd been sick."
A smattering of debris blew against the floor-to-ceiling windows. The wind was high; there weren't many leaves left to be torn off. Mokuba sighed. "Poor Yuugi," he mumbled.
"Yeah."
A year went by, and Mokuba found himself sitting next to Joey and Honda and across from Yuugi and Anzu, all of them dressed in windswept blacks and grays, fresh from paying their respects at Sugoroku's grave. They sorted through the games Yuugi piled between them, debating what to play.
"He wouldn't want us to sit around and mope," Yuugi said, his smile more melancholy than ever, though not by as much as it might've been. He had, in his young life, endured a great deal.
Yuugi also brought out a photo album, which intrigued Mokuba most. It fascinated him to see younger versions of his peers. All he had in the way of recorded memory was hanging around his neck. Fading, too. He still needed to take it out and scan it so they'd at least have a digital copy. But he wasn't sure he could extract the glued-down pieces without inflicting fatal damage.
Mokuba twirled his locket and flipped a page. There was little Yuugi on his birthday—turning four, according to the candle on the cake—running over with laughter. There he was again, bare feet dangling off a porch swing, sandwiched between Sugoroku and…
"Is this your grandma?" asked Mokuba, flipping the album upside down to show Yuugi, who smiled again.
"Uh-huh! I remember her a little. She was always laughing." Mokuba had read her grave marker earlier, through thrashing strands of hair in the bitter wind. She hadn't lived long after this picture. The others leaned in, setting down the games, taking in the photos.
"You were so cute, Yug!"
"Why thank you."
"You look WAY more like Grandpa than your grandma."
Anzu said, "I never met her. Cuz you and I didn't meet til kindergarten."
Yuugi nodded. "I know she would have liked you, though!"
"Didn't—" Anzu thought of something, but she hesitated, glancing at Mokuba. "Er. I remember you saying Grandpa saw her once—after she died?"
"Oh yeah," blurted Joey, "on his way back from the Shadow Realm at Duelist King—ow!" He recoiled from Anzu's pointed kick.
"It's fine," said Mokuba. He shrugged. "That was forever ago. Did he really?"
Yuugi rubbed his chin, a little unsure. "He said he did, yeah. I believe it. He said she asked about us—uh, my parents and me."
"Whoa." The gang pondered the mystery of the encounter. But the pondering went a bit long; the next question hung between them. Mokuba shifted, avoiding their eyes, searching for a way to respectfully bow out of the subject.
"Nii-sama should be getting off work pretty soon," he said, and thank God, right then he heard a car door slam.
"You called it!" Yuugi hastened for the door. It blew open before he reached it. Leaves tumbled in and swirled around Seto's slender ankles.
"Sorry I'm late," he said, shrugging off his black coat and scarf as Yuugi closed the door behind him. Yuugi offered Seto the chair he'd been in and went to find another.
Seto sat, folding his arms and legs and tossing Mokuba a wordless greeting: Hey, kid. Mokuba caught it and smiled. Hardly a kid-kid—well into his twentieth year, and taller than everyone there, save Seto—but a kid brother, always.
The others fidgeted. Mokuba perceived the shift in mood that had blown in with the leaves. After so many years, it was mild now—not so much a plummet, more of a gradual dip.
At last Yuugi returned with a chair and politely smashed the ice with a hatchet. "You're just in time, Kaiba," he said, all smiles. "We can't decide on a game. Your pick?"
"No thanks," said Seto shortly.
Yuugi's smile didn't falter. He rose again, headed for the stairs. "I'll grab snacks while you guys decide!"
Without Yuugi, things tended to deteriorate. Honda scooped up Risk and resumed his passionate defense on why they should spend the next eight hours playing; Joey grumbled and repeatedly told Honda to shut up, vying for Clue instead; and Anzu bent over to peruse the back of each box, occasionally rolling her eyes.
Mokuba felt a nudge. Seto indicated the album in his lap. "What's that?"
"Old pictures." Mokuba handed it to him. "We were talking about Yuugi's grandma." About how his grandpa saw her and talked with her at Duelist Kingdom when his soul traveled back to his body, even though she was already dead. About how I saw someone, too, but I didn't recognize her. I don't remember what she said. It's weird and embarrassing. And I still sure as hell don't know if you saw anyone.
Seto possessed a curiosity for the scrapbook that Mokuba hadn't anticipated. He paged through it with slow and careful turns.
"It's cool, huh?" said Mokuba, stretching across the furniture, sinking his elbows into the worn leather of his brother's chair. "We don't have any scrapbooks or anything."
"Lost in the move…" Seto muttered, trailing off. His hand hovered over a certain image. Another one of Yuugi's grandmother, looking younger than before. She was strolling across a sunny lawn somewhere, laughing, linking arms with another woman.
THAT woman!
Mokuba shuddered. No. That was impossible. It was just because he'd been thinking about it a moment ago. There was no way this was the woman he saw—
He nearly toppled off his perch when Seto shot to his feet and disappeared up the stairs, with the album, after Yuugi.
"What's that about?!" Joey growled. "He tryin' to start somethin'? Today of all days?!"
Mokuba tensed, but Honda blocked Joey's path with his arm, and Anzu raised a staying hand. "I doubt it," she said. "You know him. If he was mad at Yuugi, we'd know already." Fair. The four of them waited, listening, holding their breath.
Ugh, he couldn't take it! Mokuba clambered over the coffee table and made for the stairs. But Seto met him halfway.
"Let's go, Mokuba."
Next minute, he was in the passenger seat of Seto's Audi, idling at a red light.
They rode in silence. Mokuba angled the visor back and forth—the sun was always in your eyes in fall. This was not the way home, he noted...this was the way back to the cemetery.
Over the chestnuts the two of them crunched, weaving through narrow passages flanked by column after gray column. They passed the turn-off that led to Sugoroku's grave. They even passed that crowded corner where their own parents lay—not that Mokuba had shared that particular fact with the gang earlier.
"Where are we going?" he asked. Seto didn't answer. He seemed to be speed-reading the name on every sun-bleached column, every protruding sotoba, taking a half-step and pausing over and over. Mokuba grit his teeth, finally frustrated. He was proud of his ability to go with the flow, but Seto's wild hairs remained the exception to this virtue.
"Nii-sama, what's the deal?!"
"Nakai Kuri."
"Huh?"
Seto had stopped before an unobtrusive column. There were neither offerings nor remnants of them; a smattering of leaves and twigs dusted the base. It bore that small, quiet name:
中
井
栗
Nakai Kuri. Then Seto took from his pocket and passed to Mokuba that same photograph, the photo of Yuugi's grandma and that woman. Mokuba looked between the photo and the grave, struggling to understand.
"This is a picture of...Kuri-san?" he asked.
"Do you recognize her?"
What a backward question. Yes, but no. But sort-of. And why would Seto ask him that? Unless—
"Did you…" Mokuba swallowed. "When you...when Pegasus—"
"Yes," Seto said, sparing him from finishing. His face was as fraught with confusion as Mokuba felt. He glared at the grave. "And you did, too, evidently. But who the hell…"
"Yeah." Mokuba ground his heels into the dirt. "For real. Who?"
"Yuugi said she was friends with his grandmother, but she died before he was born."
The brothers stood before her grave for several minutes, shivering, nonplussed. Mokuba wished he'd grabbed his coat. Bereft of other options, he pulled out his phone—intending no disrespect, hoping no one saw him—and typed Nakai Kuri obituary into the search bar. It returned a few hits, one an archived page of the Daily Domino.
"...Let's go," Seto said.
"Hold up—I think I found something," said Mokuba. Seto leaned over his shoulder. The wind sliced a sharp frame around them as the loading symbol danced its idle round.
A picture loaded first. Black and white, young and pretty, with dark, twinkling eyes. Then the text:
Nakai Kuri, aged 63, of Domino City, died on Thursday, October 21, 1976, of congestive heart failure. Nakai Kuri was born in Kaneyama April 6, 1913, a daughter of the late Hirano Yori. Her second husband of 9 years, Nakai Jun, preceded her in death March 27, 1970. Her first husband of 22 years, Noya Hanzou, preceded her in death August 4, 1958...
If Mokuba's eyes continued reading, his brain didn't pick up on it. He gazed at nothing. Noya. He knew Noya. It was uncommon. It had been their mom's maiden name.
Nakai Kuri was their grandma.
He whispered, "Did she talk to you? What did she say?"
Seto whispered back, "I don't remember." He paused, and Mokuba felt a hand on his shoulder. "...But it was kind."
"Sugoroku...Sugoroku, eh!" I shake my head. "Good heavens!"
Michi throws her head back and laughs, her tight curls framing her brilliant face, beaming as only Sugoroku could make her beam.
"I swear! That rascal!" She blushes. "Kissing an old lady like that!"
"Ooh," I say, "that was him, all right!"
We cackle together, clinging to each other's arm for support. A breeze catches our skirts; the wildflowers dance.
"Kuri-chan, you won't believe it. He told me our grandsons go to school together."
"Grandsons? Lord have mercy!"
"But they don't like each other!"
"Oh, Lord." I let the joy wash over me. Grandsons. Together. "Well, we didn't like each other all that much, either, if I recall."
"Nope!" says Michi. "Something else we can thank Sugoroku for."
"I always knew he loved you best." I wink at her. She rolls her eyes.
"He sure took his sweet time letting either of us know!"
Michi laughs and laughs. I look at her and love her. She unlinks her arm, takes my wrinkly old hands in hers, and looks back at me.
"He said your grandsons are close by," she says.
"More than one?" I'm surprised.
"Two!"
Two. "What are they doing, all the way out here?" They can't be that old. "Sugoroku I understand, but…"
"Well, God must've been wondering the same thing, since they're on their way back, too." Michi tilts her head. "You could meet them on the way."
There is no question. "Show me," I say.
Michi leads me by the hand to the little iron gate. I squeeze her hand—wait here—I'll be right back.
I trek beyond the fields of flowers to where the light blinds, where warmth and memory surround. Hearts rocket past me, all headed one way, save two.
There is the older boy, serious and handsome. There is the little one, and good heavens. He's the spitting image of my baby girl.
Yes, you are mine! Oh, how I dreamed of knowing you!
END
Doctor's Note: Inspired by this thought-provoking post by Danieco on Tumblr:
post/649745339239251968/excuse-me-youre-just-gonna-drop-this-little
the recent passing of one of my grandfathers; and an old photo of my grandma's grandmas-who were best of friends-strolling arm in arm.
Thank you, as always, for reading! - Dr. MP ❤️