The resonant ringing of a bell ran through the hallways. Upon its completion, hoards of students began crowding the building for immediate departure. Despite complaints from the administration, students continued to shove their way through the halls. Eventually, the teachers had no choice but to give up on the matter once echoes of conversation blurred out the complaints like any other day.
A resounding laughter soon differentiated from the crowd. After pulling herself together, Haruna looked back to her friend. "Wait, so you were paired with him?" her voice shook through the remainder of her laughter.
"I know, isn't it ironic?" Lydia smiled as she grabbed another book from her locker.
"You must have bad luck,"
"I wouldn't say that. It's just weird thinking about the coincidences of it." Lydia shrugged.
"At least you seem to be making good progress. I've heard other people in that class haven't even looked at what their topic is yet."
"Well, Kaiba's clearly not someone to let time go to waste, which isn't necessarily a bad thing."
Haruna slowly nodded. "Oh yeah, speaking of deadlines, I heard your family announced the hotel project with Kaiba Corp."
"Yeah, everything's supposed to be done around January."
Haruna nodded. "Have you thought about interning with your family?"
"Having a job during school is against the rules, remember? You almost got expelled for it." The two girls laughed as they reminisced about that time.
"I'm sure they can make an exception for family work though."
"Well, I don't know, I've thought about it, but I just…" Lydia's words soon trailed off. "We'll see. But hey, how'd that chemistry test go for you today?"
Haruna raised an eyebrow to her friend. After a moment, she shook herself from her doubt. "I think I failed, to be honest." She chuckled. "Molar conversions just aren't for me."
"I'm sure you didn't do that bad."
"Well, your intuition is probably wrong." They both laughed as Lydia shut her locker. "Hey, I need to go to my student council meeting; it starts in ten minutes. I'll see you later."
"Sure, I'll—"
"Hey, Lydia!"
The two girls turned to see a small group of four walking towards them. Lydia first noticed the boy in the center with tri-colored hair and recognized him as Yugi and his friends. "You made some new friends?" Haruna smiled.
"I guess you could say that," Lydia replied.
"I'll leave you to it then. See you later,"
"Bye, Haru,"
The midnight-haired girl wandered off just as the group approached. "Hi, guys," Lydia smiled to them.
"Sorry, were we interrupting something?" Yugi asked.
"Oh, no, Haru was leaving to go to a meeting."
"I see. Well, we were just wondering if you were busy right now."
"I was about to head home, but other than that, not really."
"Do you want to walk home with us?" Tea asked. "We'd love to have you."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah!" Yugi smiled. "I know we've only talked once, but we all agreed that we wanted to get to know you better."
"Okay, I'd love to." She returned a smile to the group.
"Oh, right, you didn't meet him before, but this is Tristan." Yugi said as he pointed to a tall boy with spiked brown hair.
"Hey there," he waved.
"Nice to meet you."
The group of five soon made their way out of the school. Faced with the cool autumn air, they made their way through the school grounds. "So, how's your project with Kaiba going?" Tea asked.
"It's good. I don't think he's as abrasive as you guys initially said though; he's just kind of difficult sometimes."
"Really?" Joey inquired. "I didn't think Rich Boy was capable of bein' nice."
"I wouldn't use the word 'nice'," Lydia grinned. "But, I wouldn't say he's mean—well, he can be kind of rude though."
Yugi laughed. "Yeah, that's Kaiba all right. What's your topic on?"
"Oh, it's the dangers of virtual reality. What about you and Tea?"
"It's about converting the city to a new energy source." Tea explained.
"Ah, I guess our teacher wasn't lying when he said the topic range was pretty wide."
"Yeah,"
A silence soon fell over the group as they walked. Perhaps it was the unfamiliarity between them, but neither side was sure of what to discuss next. Eventually, Tristan said goodbye to the group once they reached his home. The remaining four continued on with their walk. Silence still resumed as the group studied one another.
"Hey, I gotta question." Joey said, breaking the silence between them.
"What is it?" Lydia turned to him.
"Are ya really Japanese? You don't look it much."
"Joey!" Tea gasped as she elbowed the blond harshly in the ribs.
"Agh! What? I was just thinkin'!" Joey yelled as he threw a harsh look to the brunette.
"You really are hopeless, Joey," Tea sighed. "Sorry about him, Lydia."
"Oh, no, it's alright. I don't mind him asking."
"See?" Joey flashed a cheeky grin towards Tea. She retaliated with a stern glare and a threat to hit him again.
"But yeah, to answer your question, you're partially right; I'm half Japanese."
"Half?" Yugi inquired. "Really?"
"Yeah, my dad is from here while my mom is from the UK."
"Do you get asked about it a lot?" Tea questioned.
"No, most people just assume," Lydia admitted. She couldn't help but reflect back on the times that those events took place.
"Well, that's awesome, Lydia," Yugi smiled. "You know, our friend Bakura is from the UK too. I think he's only a quarter related to there but he certainly has the accent to prove it."
"Bakura? You mean the boy with the big fanclub of girls?" she chuckled.
The trio nodded. "The accent certainly helps."
"True. Sadly, I never picked up my mother's accent though." She smiled.
"Ah, that don't matter," Joey began. "If anything—uh, hey, whose phone is that?" The blond wondered as a muffled ringing broke their conversation. The group all checked their bags and pockets for the source of the ringing.
"Oh, sorry, that's mine," Lydia said as she grabbed her phone. She glanced at the contact ID flashing on the screen and immediately took the call. "Hello?"
"I trust you're available to work now," Kaiba's voice came through the receiver. "I gathered some materials for our project. Be here in fifteen minutes."
"Wait, I don't have—hello?" She pulled her phone away to look at it upon not hearing any feedback. She soon released an irritated sigh. He actually hung up! The trio all stared at her with curious expressions upon their faces. "Sorry, I have to go; Kaiba wants to work on our project."
"That's alright, we understand." Tea smiled.
"Yeah, we can always hang out some other time." Yugi said.
"Sure, I'd love to." Lydia quickly shook herself realizing her time limit. "Sorry, I really have to go! See you later!"
"Bye!"
"See ya!"
Upon leaving the group, Lydia soon became grateful that they had been walking near the downtown of the city. She pushed her way past the pedestrians on their way home for the day. As she ran, she couldn't help but to keep glancing at her phone for the time. Six more minutes, she told herself. She was unsure of any consequences of being later than expected, but wasn't eager to find out either. With the infamous KC skyscraper in her view, she pushed through her fatigue knowing her destination wasn't far. Eventually, she burst through the doorway to the skyscraper and headed up to the young CEO's office. The brunette ran through the halls until she had finally reached the office and entered.
"Hmph, you made it sooner than I expected," Kaiba stated.
"Well," Lydia gasped. She hunched over as she tried to catch what little breath she still had. "You didn't exactly leave a reasonable time limit." Her words were broken apart as she continued to gasp for breath.
"It was clearly reasonable enough. After all, you're here now." Kaiba took his eyes away from his computer screen to glance at her.
"You're just lucky I wasn't far from here," She said as she regained her composure. She walked towards him until she stopped to glance at the towering pile of papers at the corner of his desk. "What is all this?"
"Research. They're standard safety procedures put into Kaiba Corp's solid vision technology. I trust this will be sufficient enough for our project."
"Uh, more than enough," Lydia said as she picked up a file and glanced through the text. "Kaiba, this is going to take a long time to go through all of this."
"There's no need. I'm already familiar with it."
"All of it?"
"It's customary that I'm familiar with the procedures that I wrote."
"Then why did you gather all of this if you already knew it?"
"The guidelines state that physical research is needed."
Lydia raised an eyebrow to him. He didn't strike her as one to follow the rules laid out for him. "Well, I guess I should study up if I want to catch up with your level." She said as she grabbed a small handful of files.
"These documents don't leave this room."
"What?"
"The files aren't meant for public eyes outside of the company." The brunet replied calmly. His eyes displayed a stern glare however.
Lydia opened her mouth to retort, but then shut it promptly. It is only natural that companies don't show things openly, she reminded herself. "I guess that's only fair. But still, this is going to take a long time for us to look through."
"Us? Did you not hear the part where I said that I already know all of this?"
"No, I did. But, there must be something in here that you missed."
"Excuse me?" The brunet's eyes narrowed.
"I doubt you'd have been able to memorize everything in all of this." Lydia replied as she eyed the stack once again; it had to be at least a foot high.
Kaiba stared at her briefly. "Is that a challenge?"
"Sure," Lydia smirked.
"Hn, you clearly don't know what you've just done." Kaiba replied with an arrogant smirk.
"We'll see," She proceeded to glance through the small portion of papers in her hands. "How many meters can a hologram travel from its source?"
"Ten; the hologram disbands if it leaves the duel field." He replied flatly.
Lydia nodded as she checked the paperwork. "Can a hologram attack a person?"
"Not unless a direct attack is declared and even then, it doesn't cause physical harm."
Lydia raised an eyebrow to him and put down the papers. "What about if the user isn't playing Duel Monsters?"
"Solid vision was created for the game and is only used as such."
"Don't other companies use holograms?"
"Kaiba Corp's technologies are patented."
"Well, okay," she replied with a slow nod. She picked up the files once more to look at them. "How many programs are involved if a hologram goes awry?"
"Six; each has an extensive amount of coding."
"Okay, there has to be something in here that you don't know." Lydia sighed.
"Hn, your questions were rather lackluster. I'd hardly have called it a 'challenge'."
"Yeah, whatever, let's just start looking through all of this." Lydia sat down with a handful of files. "Also, we need to start researching negative data for the project."
"And where do you expect to find that information?"
"There should be a lot of it online. I can start researching later." She didn't look up from the files as she spoke.
"Hmph, fine," Kaiba sat back in his chair for a moment and studied her. He admitted he was surprised at her calm demeanor, but thought that it didn't warrant her any praise. But, he supposed she was tolerable. His thoughts were soon interrupted when a stack of papers was tossed in front of him upon his desk. "What?"
"You should start looking these over too, you know," Lydia replied. "You should keep your memory sharp or else I may know more than you do." She threw him a cheeky grin at the end of her sentence.
Kaiba's eyes narrowed as he looked at her. He sat there unmoved as he watched her look over the data. Eventually, he let out a low sigh and picked up a file to begin reading it.
And there we go! Ch. 6 is finally done! Luckily Seto is becoming a bit more casual as things progress lol. Also, I'm excited that Yugi and friends are getting their chance to shine now. Anyway, lemme know what you all think and thanks for the continued reads and support!