Google Search: What to do if you're in love with a mega-billionaire egotistical maniac
Google Result: mega-billionaire egotistical maniac Seto Kaiba recently gave a press conference on-
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Bing Search: the dude I have a crush on has a thing with a hot mess mama with perfect hair.
Bing Result: how to get hot, perfect hair when you're feeling a mess
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Yahoo search: how to light someone's perfect hair on fire.
Yahoo Result: the police are still looking for a barber who set their client's hair on fire with a blowtorch.
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Google Search: help, I'm a hopeless jealous romantic.
Google Search: feeling hopeless and jealous about that one relationship in your life?
Click.
...here are seven helpful tips to help you get over that one special somebody in your life (number seven will blow you away!) Step one: don't let them know that you're jealous. Go out of your way to make them believe that the exact opposite is true! Make them respect your indifference while proving your mental advantage. For example: buy them flowers just for the hell of it! Catch them off guard and make them wonder what they did to deserve such a gift. Surely, a person scorned would be too distraught to make such a power move.
Marie sighed and scrolled down the page to tip number seven (if all else fails, assert dominance by lighting their hair on fire with a blowtorch!) A cigarette lay burning in the dirt of her cactus pot. She picked it up, took a drag, and damn near coughed up a lung. How the hell do people smoke these things, she thought to herself. She still had an entire pack left. She had bought it on a whim, hoping that maybe a good nicotine hit would lift her out of her morose mood. But it wasn't working. She could only imagine what she looked like: hunched over her laptop in tattered PJs, day-old makeup still on her face, and cigarette smoke circling her head like a smelly thunderstorm.
She and Sara had been working on their project all day. Their offices had proven to be too cramped and suffocating, so they had moved the party to Marie's apartment. Sara had left an hour ago, leaving Marie behind with a mad migraine and hundreds of tabs to fake profiles. There was no true end to the job that Kaiba had given them. The more fake scenarios they dreamt up, the better chance they had at discrediting Aronnaxx. Already, she had seen the impact of their work. The internet was a sucker for drama and more than happy to chew another soulless corporation to the gristle. Now, all that was left to do was report back to Kaiba
She yawned and pushed herself away from her tiny desk. It had been easier to focus when Sara was there. But now, with nothing but her roaring AC and the downstairs neighbors' arguments to keep her company, she had been forced to face the thoughts that had been gathering on the edge of her mind: Seto and Mizumi, Mizumi and Seto. Or...Seto and any of the other faceless, sexy ghouls conjured up by tabloid gossip. Once again, she felt like she was beginning to lose sight of who he was. There was the Seto who saved dogs and cooked hotpots and laughed at her jokes and let her run her finger along his chest. And then there was the Seto behind the darkened windows of the conference room, one second waging psychological warfare against his competitors and in the next watching the human equivalent of a cherry bomb slipping out of her blouse. Had he and Mizumi done it on the table, she wondered. Had he even had time to take those leather pants all the way off? Had they kissed at all or was it straight to the point? Was there crazy amounts of spit involved, like in the porno movies?! So many questions!
But most importantly...was Mizumi the ride or the rider?
"Okay, you know what…" she jumped out of her chair seconds before it crashed to the ground. No more of those thoughts. She just couldn't handle them. She tried to call Ryo again but to no avail. He hadn't answered any of her calls over the past three days.
"Heeeeey," she said into his voicemail. "It's me: dollface. Listen, I need you to come over and eat raw cookie dough with me and help answer some very important questions about Kaiba's sex life. Or maybe don't, I don't know. I just really need you right now and...call me when you can, okay? Love you lots."
She hung the phone up, feeling ten times more foolish than before. It was uncanny, how similar jealousy felt to drowning.
-don't let them know that you're jealous…..make them believe that the exact opposite is true! Make them respect your indifference...mental advantage...buy them flowers! Catch them off guard...make them wonder...something about a power move.
That was it, then. The only way that she'd be able to pull herself out of her funk was to convince herself that she wasn't even in a funk at all. She'd use reverse psychology: make herself believe by making him believe that everything was Okie-Dokie between them and that she totally wasn't jealous of his love life. But Kaiba wasn't the type to accept something as petty as flowers, at least she didn't think so. So what could she use in their place?
She thought about this as she slipped into a pair of leggings and a sweatshirt with a random college's name stamped across it. The reflection that looked back at her from her bathroom mirror was haggard as it dragged a toothbrush around in its mouth. You're in over your head, its expression said. She yanked the mirrored door to the side. The view inside of her medicine cabinet was much more pleasing anyway.
After shrugging on a jacket, she stepped into the hallway and locked the door behind her. Her neighbors were still awake, presumably yelling at a late-night game show by the sound of it. She knocked on their door and waited impatiently until an older woman with giant purple curlers in her hair opened the door.
"Oh," the woman said in surprise, eyeing Marie's getup. "HONEY, IT'S THAT GIRL FROM UPSTAIRS, THE WEIRD ONE! What's your name again, sweetie? Annie?"
"Marie-"
"HER NAME'S TIFFANY!" The woman called back. Her husband said nothing to this and instead yelled something at the television.
"Right...well...listen. I have a request," Marie said shyly. "You and your husband watch Catching Up with the Clarkdashians, right? So can you tell me...what kind of gifts do rich, young celebrities like to give each other...aside from the still-beating hearts of young children?"
"SHE WANTS TO KNOW WHAT KIND OF GIFTS RICH PEOPLE GIVE EACH OTHER," the woman called back to her husband. "Sorry, what's your name again, sweetheart?"
"Marie-"
"HER NAME IS KATY!" The husband gave another shout again and the woman looked back down at her. "He said they like to give each other expensive alcohol."
"Okay, so, second question...do you have any to spare? I only have a bunch of IPAs in my fridge-"
"HONEY, DO WE HAVE ANY EXPENSIVE ALCOHOL TO SPARE?! THE NEIGHBOUR GIRL WANTS TO KNOW! What's your name again?"
"...Marie…"
"SHE SAYS THAT HER NAME IS NICKIE!" The woman paused and listened over her shoulder. "Hold on, dear, he says we might have some vintage wines in the cooler."
The woman shuffled into her apartment and then reappeared a few minutes later with a bottle of red wine in her hand. "Here you go, baby. You trying to woo a man?"
"Uh, I mean-"
"SHE SAYS THAT SHE'S TRYING TO WOO A MAN, HONEY! CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT?! I'm sorry dear, I don't think I caught your name."
"You know what," Marie said. "It's fine. I'll pay you back later. Thanks."
"No problem. TURN THAT TV OFF, WILL YOU, HONEY? IT'S PADDLE TIME!"
The woman closed the door, leaving Marie feeling very confused. She turned away and took the stairs two by two until she reached the garage. Her car was still out of commission due to the strain from the street race and so she took the bike. She still remembered the way to Kaiba's house. It was something that she'd never forget, even if she were to leave KaibaCorps and never look back.
The streets were mercifully silent as she rode along. She hummed nervously to herself, the wine bottle clinking in her backpack. It would be another in-and-out mission. She'd give him the report on the dummy accounts, hand him the wine, and hightail it back before her feelings got the better of her. Or, better yet, maybe he wasn't home and she could give the report to Mokuba, or leave the wine at the door with a short note.
She skidded to a stop at the gate and put the code in. The lights to Kaiba's luxury apartment were on, she could already see it from her position in the courtyard. Shit, she thought, so much for wishful thinking. She pedaled slowly now, her eyes watering from the sting of the wind. There was movement in the window - a tall, black shadow had been watching her. Then the garage door opened slowly, revealing a brand new luxury car. The lights flashed across her face and then Seto Kaiba appeared at the door.
"Get in," he said as she pulled up to the curb.
"Wait, Seto, I-"
"You gonna make me repeat myself?"
Well, when he put it like that.
She dropped her bike rather clumsily onto the sidewalk and moved towards the car like a woman in a trance. It was cool inside and still had that fresh, new car smell that she loved so much. She slung the seatbelt over her chest and buckled in as Kaiba turned the key in the ignition. The dashboard flared to life in an array of neon colors and a smooth, electronic voice bid him good evening by name.
"Your car talks to you?" she said, half-joking and half-amazed.
"Yours doesn't?"
"Only when the Check Engine light comes on. Where are we going?"
"On a little flight to heaven. I suggest you hold on to something."
With that, he reversed out of the garage and took a sharp turn through the courtyard. The wind was knocked out of her and she quickly wrapped her fingers around the grab handle. Setos' car stalled for a quick second before the gate and zoomed out of it before it had fully opened.
"Neil Diamond, sir?" The electronic voice cooed. Seto drummed his fingers on the wheel as he maneuvered the tight corners of the city. His wheels churned through a puddle, spraying an unfortunate couple with a wave of street water.
"How about something a little more upbeat this time," he said back. "I'm not in the mood for anything tame right about now."
"I heard you say the word, 'tame,' sir. Now playing Tame Impala - Let It Happen."
The sound of a twinny buzz lifted from the speakers, increasing in volume. Then the sound of a heavy, rhythmic drumbeat. Kaiba tapped his finger along with the music and once again she was caught off guard by his music taste. They were gathering speed, heading back towards the stretch of road that spread out along the water. She stuck her head out the window, closed her eyes, and breathed in the cold night air. She could hear the sound of the waves crashing against the rocky shore, and the voices of the joggers moving along the path. The sound of their laughter rose and then fell away as the car sped past them. The engine gave a deep growl and shudder as Kaiba applied steady pressure to the gas pedal. They were going sixty, seventy, eighty mph and not showing any signs of stopping. The wind began to whip harder at her face but still, she held her head outside the window, breathing in, breathing deep.
The car grumbled again. The needle of the speedometer teetered at ninety and then one hundred. He had one hand on the wheel, the other on the gear shift, a frown on his face. The music pulsed and grew louder, so loud that she could barely hear herself think. Her head began to bounce in time with his finger as she muttered the lyrics to herself, distracting herself from the scary speed at which they were traveling.
"All this running around...I can't fight it much longer. Something's tryin' to get out and it's never been closer. If my take-off fails...make up some other story. But if I never come back...tell my mother I'm sorry."
The wind snatched the words from her lips and flung them away behind her. She closed her eyes again. One hundred miles per hour, one twenty-five, one fifty. Maybe she'd never come back from this. Maybe this was the take-off that the singer of the band was warning about, maybe she should call her mother and tell her that she was sorry. She didn't know if Seto even had any control over the car anymore. They were flying through space and time. Stopping was no longer an option. She yanked her head back into the car and felt the force of the speed press her against her seat. She tried to breathe, but her heart was beating too fast. It was suffocating her. Something was suffocating her. She put her hand over Seto's.
One fifty, one sixty, one sixty-five, one seventy. One hundred and seventy-five miles per hour. Never in her life had she ever even imagined going so fast in a car. It was thrilling and alarming and frightening and fantastic. The music changed in pace. The lyrics faded away into a rollicking instrumental cut with elevated tension. She felt like she was in a spaceship, blasting off into another dimension entirely. She felt his hand tightening beneath hers on the gearshift, so tight that she could feel his tendons straining. His lips were moving. The wind was yanking his hair back and forth across his face. His eyes were narrowed, there was a grimace on his lips. He was feeling it, too - the pure heat of the moment. The adrenaline. The danger. The rush.
He had asked her if she wanted to go all the way.
"God, yes," was her response.
They hit two hundred miles an hour. Everything outside the windows was a galloping blur. She knew then that she was going to die. There were a million ways that it could all go wrong, it was all a matter of which one came to fruition. He'd lose control of the wheel, the car, or maybe there'd be debris in the road that would launch them off the road and send them spinning into the water. She was gasping for breath, her heart was hammering beneath her ribs. She couldn't speak no matter how hard she tried.
But she loved it.
There was an ethereal chant coming from the speakers, a sensual guitar riff, a repeat. The singer was calling something out, begging to be heard above the chanting. She knew the words. They echoed in her head, going round and round like a dizzy butterfly.
...now I'm ready, moving on...but maybe I was ready all along...I'm ready for the moment and the sound...but maybe I was ready all along...now I'm ready, moving on.
Maybe this was it. Maybe Seto was ready to end it all, to move on, and he was taking her with him. All those years spent as a raging projectile in his industry, he was finally ready to come to a flaming, chaotic stop. Suicide by car crash. And she'd be there to witness it.
The thought of them burning and mangled beneath the crushed exoskeleton of the car flashed in her mind. She dug her nails into his hand and shouted his name.
The car gave an angry sputter and began to decrease its speed. She took a worried look at the speedometer. One ninety….one eighty...one seventy...one sixty. Her heartbeat started to slow and she collected her breath in ragged gasps. One fifty...one twenty...one hundred...ninety. Her stomach dropped as the sounds of the night snapped back into focus. They were approaching the hills of Domino City. He maneuvered his car deftly along the zig-zagging paths, holding a steady speed of eighty miles per hour. It was obvious that he had done this many times before. He was familiar with these backroads and barely glanced around as he drove. She lifted her hand from his and wiped the sweat from her forehead. The Tame Impala song had ended a while ago. Now, a song by Neil Diamond played in its wake. It was much less exciting, and she liked it that way. Diamond's gentle but adamant proclamations of love for a cheap sparkling wine fit the scenery well.
Slowly now, they wound their way through the hills. There was nothing but expensive homes set back behind large driveways shadowed by trees. The residents of the hills kept to themselves mostly, preferring to look out upon their forestry scenery in peace. The ownership of these houses had gone back generations, thus many of the houses still had that old-timey, hand-crafted look that was rarely seen in the downtown bustle of Domino City. She wondered if Kaiba owned property up here, hell, maybe he even owned the entire hill. Or the entire city. Or the whole goddamn planet. It was certainly hard to tell these days.
They made one more loop around the hill, approaching the top. She thought that he would take them all the way but instead, he pulled into a stretch of dirt lining the road. She tumbled out of the car and would have fallen on her ass had she not grabbed onto the open door in time. Below her, the twinkling carpet of city lights stretched on for miles, eventually coming to a point where the lights faded out at the hem of the dark blue sky. She scanned the horizon, trying to make out familiar places. There was her local grocery store in a puddle of lights, the library, Kaiba Corps, the bazaar…
He came around the side of the car and held his hand out to her. She took it and he lifted her away from the door. "You okay," he asked as she smoothed down her hair. Oh, now you ask, she thought to herself. She bit her bottom lip and nodded.
"Yeah," she croaked. "It's just...fuck. Every time I'm around you I feel like I've been hit with an adrenaline shot."
He smirked and folded his arms. "I get that a lot."
"Okay, remember what I said about the brakes on narcissism? Pump 'em. Hard."
"You think I've gotten to where I am today by being humble? I've had to cut throats ever since I was young, Marie. That was the only way for me and Mokuba to survive. I've gotten my hands so dirty that I don't know how to wash them clean anymore."
She had never considered that before. All this time, she had been led to believe that Kaiba was the way that he was by choice, that maybe he enjoyed being sociopathic, a sadist. The majority of her life had been lived in relative comfort with support and encouragement surrounding her from day one. It truly was a mark of privilege to forget that others had to scratch and claw their way just to get to a fair starting point.
She pulled her cigarettes out of her pocket and lit one. She was thinking of a quote from Macbeth, one that she had been made to study over and over again in high school. I am in blood...stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o'er. Kaiba was like a modern-day Macbeth. From a young age, he had waded so far through dangerous waters for the sake of his livelihood and his brother's that wading back was no longer an option anymore. This broke her heart.
She watched him out of the corner of her eye, took in his sharp nose and slightly sallow cheeks, the mop of brown hair swishing back and forth across his forehead. Kaiba, with his simmery blue eyes and sharp, designer suits and a voice like a whip cracking against the sky. It was easy to forget that they were actually the same age.
"Man, that's FUBAR," she said, blowing smoke and tapping her ash onto the ground. "Fucked Up Beyond All Reason."
Kaiba shrugged. "I don't need your pity."
"I wouldn't dream of it. I don't pity you, Seto. And you don't have to believe this if you don't want to but...I admire you, a lot. Even though you do insane things like build elevators into space and drive everybody crazy with your snarky comments and pretty, playboy hair. I think I get where you're coming from. And even if you are everything that the gossip and the tabloids make you out to be, I can tell that first and foremost you're a dedicated brother and a man who will do anything to keep his business from failing," she exhaled a stream of smoke and coughed. "I respect that, actually. Mokuba's got one hell of a good influence."
"Oh please," he said, that proud smile shining through again. "Me? His influence? That kid's the reason behind everything that I do. I don't know what I'd do without him."
"Big plans for the little man?"
"You bet your ass. I have no doubt in my mind that KaibaCorps will look completely different by the time he gets his hands on it. You think I'm a force to be reckoned with? Then you've never met Mokuba on the verge of winning a game of chess. Kid's relentless. And tougher than nails."
She liked him this way. Talking about his brother made him seem more human, somehow. At some point during the conversation, she had inched closer to him. A mere breath separated them.
"Why'd you bring me up here," she asked. His fingers began to rake slightly along his arm.
"I needed a break from everything. And since you were lurking around outside my house I figured I'd take you along for the ride."
Well, shit. That reminded her of why she had gone in the first place. "But Mizumi-"
"What about her?" His voice was sharp, tight. Warning her not to stray into this territory.
"I just don't wanna overstep any boundaries since you and her have a thing going on."
"What gave you that impression?"
"Well for one, I saw her taking her clothes off in the conference room before the windows went dark."
Kaiba gave her a look like she had sprouted tentacles out of her ears. And then he began to laugh, its high, unexpected sound echoing across the hills. "Seriously? You're suspicious because of that?! If I had a penny for every time she tried to come on to me, I'd be able to build a multi-billion dollar company - oh wait," he paused for effect. "I did. Sure, there was a little tussle but not in the way that you think. She's getting desperate. She knows I have my eye on somebody else."
"Really," Marie said, gobsmacked and disappointed. Was there no end to the list of ladies in Kaiba's romance circle? "And who's the lucky lady this time?"
"An oblivious little Social Media manager with a bad fashion sense."
"Shit. That sounds a lot like-"
He grabbed her collar and pulled her into a kiss. It was so unexpected that she lost her footing and would have fallen to the ground had he not wrapped his arm around her waist. She stared at him for a moment in surprise before grabbing his face and pulling him in again. She knew that she was being clumsy, desperate, maybe moving a bit too fast. By all accounts of every romance movie ever, she was supposed to be catty and sensual with the first kiss. Pull back, let the fireworks explode, communicate with the body language as Ursula would have it. But the adrenaline was pumping in her again and his body was just so warm, his arms strong, his smell irresistible.
There was no way she'd be able to get her clothes off fast enough.
"Wait," she said, pulling back "you are talking about me, right? Because if you are, I swear to God, I'm about to-"
"You think I kissed you just for the hell of it? Heh. What say you we finish what we started in my apartment a couple of days ago?"
"Jesus," she said.
"Just call me Seto," he said with a smile before pushing her back into the car.
X
Author's Note: I think one of my favorite moments in YGO canon history (aside from the fact that Yugi and Tea got married) is in Dark Dimensions when Seto jumped out of a jet in front of a bunch of KC employees in suits. And the KC employees were all professional and amazed, and were like, 'Mister Kaiba, sir.' And then you had Mokuba standing in the middle of them all with a huge smile on his face, and he's just all like 'hey, big bro!' The dichotomy between how the suits greeted Seto and how Mokuba greeted him was so cute. Seto's and Mokuba's relationship is just...so wholesome and adorable.