Kaiba was perfecting the simulation again.

Well, 'perfecting' wasn't the right word. It was more like he was in the simulation room, at two in the morning, and it was running, and he was staring at it, thinking. It stood in an idle pose, saying nothing. He hadn't activated it. The AI only has so many lines of dialogue, and if you let it run too long it would start to repeat them, which sort of ruined the illusion.

'I know you miss him' is what Mokuba had said. An absurd accusation. He didn't miss anyone. What he'd missed was the chance to become King of Games. Could he not go ten minutes without someone trying to talk to him about his feelings?

Mokuba was infected with a sentimentality that Kaiba lacked. The same kind of sunshine-and-rainbows schmaltz that often came out of the mouths of Yugi and his dweeby friends, except when they did it it was annoying and embarrassing and when Mokuba did it it was cute and endearing, because Mokuba was his brother and also a middle schooler, a reasonable age to still be mushy about friendship. Had he been the same, at 13? No, he didn't think so. He'd been a small, gangly chess master, in both the literal and figurative sense, a single-minded machine. But Kaiba had been forced to grow up too fast. Let Mokuba be mushy a while longer.

Then again, he considered, the kid was going to be in charge soon. Perhaps a wising-up was necessary.

Seto Kaiba didn't have any friends, and he tried to keep it that way. Only the weak needed to rely on others. The smart man lived on his own terms, by himself and for himself. Everyone is alone in this world, and anyone who didn't understand that would figure it out sooner or later.

So he had no friends. He had a brother, a handful of trusted business associates, and a group irritating nerds from the high school he'd only attended for a few months, who always showed up where ever he seemed to be, who had his phone number somehow and used it to send him duel links friend requests and memes about dragons, which he politely ignored instead of just blocking them.

Still, he could concede it was occasionally useful to have someone around willing to argue with him. Seto Kaiba possessed the modicum of self-awareness needed to know he had a tendency to take things too far. The higher up you got in the world, the fewer people challenged you, which felt victorious in the moment but could eventually lead to stagnation. Boredom. Worst of all, complacency. It is important, vital even, to have someone to challenge you. The problem for Kaiba these days was that no one was good enough to do so.

The simulation blinked. It was a very good simulation. Even idle, the chest rose and fell like it was breathing, locks of hair gently wavering in the breeze. Spots of colored light from the stained glass windows danced on the floor every once in a while. Many people would skimp on such details, but Kaiba never tolerated mediocrity as an acceptable standard. Still, it wasn't perfect. Something was off. The expression, that was it. In idle, the face was neutral, vague. The real one would have been smiling at him, that smug knowing look just before he played the perfect card. The kind of smile that made his blood boil.

It continued staring blankly ahead, a copy of a ghost, a simulacrum of a simulacrum. No, this was decidedly not about sentimentality. This was about winning. And it didn't matter how many times you won against a shadow. Not when the real thing was still out there.

Really, why had he even made this thing? What was the point? Him, Seto Kaiba, play-acting at victory like a child? It was stupid. Pathetic. Facile. He should delete the code and recycle the assets and scrub the whole thing from the network.

It kept looking at him, empty but eerily familiar. He did not delete it, and knew that he would not. He turned the simulation off.

Kaiba walked through the pristine, glass-and-marble halls of corporate headquarters that morning, trailed by an ever-present gaggle of staffers, including one or two he liked and a great deal more he didn't care for. It happens, once you become too important. It doesn't matter how much you try to avoid it. Bureaucracy reproduces itself. Inevitably, eventually, no matter how many you fire, swarms of interchangeable yes-men cling to you like flies, their precise job titles unclear, ever placative and eager to please and yet demanding more and more attention.

They were talking to him, to each other, an irritating, ambient buzz. He heard none of it; he was preoccupied.

"Isono." They all fell dead silent and at attention, the moment he spoke. "How long until the Duel Dimension System can be used again?"

"It uses a great deal of power, sir, and the measurements need to be highly precise. Since there was a forced shutdown, the engineers say almost everything will need to be reset."

"I didn't ask for excuses, I asked how long."

"At least several days, sir. Most likely a week."

Kaiba considered, recalculated. He could handle Mokuba, but the system was so fragile. He didn't have time for this. He had a duel waiting for him, boundaries to break, barriers to transcend. He'd been so close! So very, horribly close. The system would work. He knew it would work, all he needed was the chance to try.

The outburst yesterday was eating at him, though. Mokuba didn't get like that unless something had been bothering him for a while. Had he not noticed? It would be fair to say that the Kaiba brothers had been a little distant lately. He'd been busy, with great work, important work. He thought Mokuba understood that. It's not like the kid needed babysitting. Mokuba could handle himself, these days.

Seto Kaiba always had a lot of things on his mind. New inventions pieced together in his head over his morning coffee, carefully calculated strategies against his corporate competitors being constantly re-evaluated, duel monsters decks mentally reshuffled for new synergies, new counters, new loopholes. Mokuba, though? Mokuba was easy. He was clever and loyal and good-natured, if a little naïve. A people-pleaser, in a way Kaiba never really approved of but recognized was good for business. Sure, he could be stubborn and childish sometimes, but he was a kid. That was expected.

Maybe he'd been inattentive. To quick to go through with things. A week wouldn't be so bad. This morning he'd done a search and found his locket, lying on top of his dresser, and slipped it into his coat pocket. He must have forgotten to put it on one day, some time ago. That wasn't like him. He'd been so focused.

Yes, he could wait a week. A victory delayed is not a victory denied. He smiled. Why not bask in it a little longer? One last week in this dimension.

He didn't notice that they were all hovering behind him, waiting for him to say something. "What's next on the schedule?" he asked.

A young bespectacled man whose name he did not care to know read off a tablet. "A meeting with the Vice President, sir, with status reports from the lower departments."

Perfect. "I'll take it alone." He waved a hand dismissively, without looking at them. "Find something useful to do with yourselves."

He made a beeline for his office, and they all stopped awkwardly in their tracks, as if suddenly lost. It was almost funny. Really, what was this world going to do without him?