Takeda counted the five hundred yen bills like he was making love. There was sensuality and practised grace to the rhythm of licking his finger, touching it to the paper, peeling it back, slipping it from the pack; and then, again, the lick, touch, peel, slip. His other hand rubbed the grainy shaft of a cigarillo. He liked to make you watch.

Jounouchi wondered if that was the only kind of sex Takeda had these days: watching, not doing. The skin of his neck drooped with age and decline, his hands shook sometimes, the caps of his knees pressed sharply through his slacks. If death had a face, it might be Takeda's. Jounouchi thought that, if death came for him in the night, it would breathe like Takeda into his ear and touch his bones like he touched that money.

'It's all there, pops. It always is, you know me.' Jounouchi winked and then he grinned until his gums ached. 'I've never held out on you.'

'No, Katsuya-chan, no you haven't. But everyone slips up eventually. Everyone betrays you. Trust doesn't pay the bills, angel cakes.'

Jounouchi gave a placid shrug and tried to lean back into the campfire chair. It burned his spine, but he relaxed anyway into the pretence of comfort. The warehouse chilled him.

'And besides,' Takeda continued, 'It's not like you or anyone else to cash in on a Saturday. No one has a Friday night that good.'

'I have Friday nights that good. Guess I'm just lucky.' He pulled another grin onto his face. Takeda's empty eyes twinkled at him.

'And how was the party? Lots of cute hunnies?'

'Not exactly. Well, yeah, the women there all look like models, but they're not going to, you know, canoodle with the staff.' Jounouchi considered not telling Takeda what had transpired the previous evening. There seemed something private about his meeting with Kaiba on the balcony and the way Kaiba had driven off alone and the hatred Jounouchi had nursed sleeplessly to bed the previous night. He wished he had Yuugi or Honda or Anzu to talk to. But he didn't have Yuugi, or Honda, or Anzu. He had Takeda. And talking to Takeda was easy. Takeda listened to what you had to say, though his attentiveness didn't stem from compassion; that's just what vultures did. 'I actually ran into someone I knew. Kaiba Seto.'

Takeda rolled a laugh around his mouth then spat it out. 'That bastard.'

'It's been nearly ten years since I last saw him. No surprise that he's just as much as an asshole as he when we were kids. I thought he might have mellowed a bit since his teenage years, but he's still just as fucking intolerable.'

'How so, love?'

'He's a pompous asshole. Thinks he's better than everyone else. Always has done, and I guess he always will.' Jounouchi paused to unravel a sneer across his mouth. 'No wonder the piece of shit doesn't have any friends.'

'He looks down on you,' said Takeda sympathetically. 'Treats you like you work for him.'

'It's not even that, you know. It's not just the class thing. No, it's more like he personally hates me just for, like, deigning to be in the same room as him. Like I'm going to infect him or cough on him or something. He was like this all the time in high school.'

'Known him that long, huh?'

'Yeah, since we were fifteen. He was unbelievable when we first met. Real out-and-out psycho. But he grew out of that and I guess I'd hoped he would grow out of the rest of his issues. But he's the same old creep he's always been.'

Takeda peeled the bills more slowly, counting them with the beat of a silent clock. 'Funny that you never mentioned being chummy with someone as high and mighty as Kaiba-sana.'

Jounouchi vaguely sensed some kind of danger bristling up against him, like the glint of the bared teeth of a dog he couldn't see.

'Well, we're not "chummy". He can't stand me. I can't stand him. I only talked to him because I hadn't seen him in so long and I thought… I guess I thought things might be different.' He swallowed. 'Idiot that I am.'

'Were you polite to him?' Takeda's bill-counting had slowed to a standstill.

'Of course I was. You know me, Takeda-san, I'm a bundle of joy to be around.' He tried to grin again but the smile got caught on his lips. He dropped it. 'He's an asshole, okay? He's like this. Has literally zero friends.'

'Friends or not, you guys clearly got history. Years of knowing a guy like that, someone really elite, well… that's what we call a contact, Jounouchi. That's an open door. I did not think you were the type to hold out on me.' He tutted and waved a grimy finger. 'You've disappointed me.'

Jounouchi was too nonplussed to keep up his glitter-and-smiles façade. 'What did you want me to do? Get his number?'

Takeda's movements were slow, oily, sleek. 'Of course, Jounouchi. If he buys, you sell. That's a way into a whole new tier for us. Imagine our income if we counted Kaiba Seto among our contacts. Gotta say, I'm pretty fucking pissed off you kept information like that from me.'

'I'm… I'm not his friend, Takeda, I barely know him. We – you know, we went to high school together. He went to high school with a lot of fuckin' people, you think he's close with any of them?'

Takeda was unmoved. 'So that's the extent of your relationship with him, huh? You never hung out outside of high school?' His eyes had brightened, and Jounouchi sensed the approach of those bared teeth. Takeda dragged out the silence, smoking deeply and exhaling rings. 'You're not holding out on me, eh, Katsuya?'

'We used to duel,' said Jounouchi, as matter-of-factly as he could. 'A couple of times. But you know I was a duellist, Takeda; I duelled literally hundreds of people. I don't remember most of their names.' A lie.

'The Battle City. I remember that tournament. Big deal for Domino, I remember the fucking traffic was abysmal for weeks. That cunt Kaiba, he should have been drowning in lawsuits. But I digress. You and him duelled at the, what, semi-finals?'

Jounouchi creaked his chair forwards, backwards. 'No. We didn't get matched. He duelled Mutou.'

'Oh yeah, oh yeah. I remember now. Kaiba wouldn't announce the fucking line up until the day of the duel, so all the bookies had to void the bets on match ups that didn't happen. Real pain in the ass. You vs Kaiba was one that got voided. Your odds were seven-to-one against.'

It shouldn't have hurt, but it did, even now, all these years later. Jounouchi kept his eyes fixed on the tumorous dirty pipes crowding the ceiling. 'Good memory you got there.'

'Yeah! Yeah, right? I remember it so clearly. You know why? It would have been, what… early evening, I guess. I was running this little betting shop on the east side and I had this chick working for me – fucking fantastic tits but terrible at her job – and I had to explain shit to her over and over. One day there was this mix up. Some guy came in to place a bet on the Battle City semi-finals, and my little cashier couldn't figure out what he wanted to do. Dumb as a ton of bricks. This guy, he wanted to place a bet on Kaiba to win against you. But the guy keeps saying "Jounouchi" and the cashier is like, "I thought you wanted to bet on Kaiba." And they have this little back and forth, neither having a clue what the other is saying, until I step in. "Sweetcheeks," I say, "The gentleman is called Jounouchi and he wants to bet on Kaiba." And we all have a good laugh about it.'

Jounouchi creaked his chair and listened to Takeda's watch tick. One second, creak back; one second, creak forwards.

'I knew that guy. Not by name, but I'd seen him around the card houses. Serial gambler, drunk, waste of space.' He filled the air with smoke. 'Embarrassing, huh? Your own dad bets against you.'

'There's more than one drunk Jounouchi in Domino, I'm sure,' said Jounouchi, trying to sound bored.

'Not ones with baby angel faces like you got, Katsuya-chan.' Takeda reached out to slap his cheek with a parody of affection. 'I'd know your old man anywhere. But that's water under the bridge, piss under the turnpike. You're my best guy. Hell, you just cleared 100 grams in one evening. If I sent you out to do the same tonight – don't worry, I won't, I won't – we'd clear 100k by Sunday. But it's not all about money. Well, it's mostly about money.' He spat out another cancerous laugh. 'But I want to raise our profile too, Katsuya-chan. And a contact like Kaiba – wow, we'd really be moving up in the world. Get me his number, Katsuya. Just that. I'm not asking much, just the phone number. Personal cellular number. Get me that. I can do a lot with that.'

'How the fuck am I supposed to get his number? He hates me, Takeda-san, I told you. He's not going to agree to lunch with me, he's not going to let me up to his office. What do you expect me to do, waltz into the lobby of his eighty floor skyscraper and demand an audience?'

Takeda waved his hand and batted away these trivial concerns. 'Oh, don't you worry about that. You're the most lovable guy I know; I trust you to win the wallet of Kaiba Seto. And you know why?'

'No.'

Takeda negotiated himself further in his seat until he was sat inches from Jounouchi's face. 'Because you can play to your strengths. If Kaiba likes shitting on you, let him do it. Give him as many openings as you can. You smile and you laugh and you take it. That's what this job is. You let him treat you like dirt if that's what he wants, and you deal to him, and you take his money.' His lips stretched in a yellow smile. 'Am I clear?'

The concrete pit of the KaibaCorp. parking garage was unguarded, though its black temperature turned Jounouchi's knuckles white. He stood out of the range of the electric orange lights that buzzed at him like dying cicadas and waited. The cold ate at him. He wore threadbare jeans and his old, good leather jacket – another of Honda's hand-me-downs he had had since high school – and stamped his booted feet against the ground for warmth. His breath misted.

He had considered, briefly, attempting to insinuate himself at the front desk. Hi there! Katsuya Jounouchi, to see the big guy. Kaiba. An appointment? Haha, I don't need an appointment! The big guy and I go way back, known each other since high school. I duelled him at Battle City, you remember? No? Okay, hah, I guess it was a few years ago now! Can you give him a call, let him know I'm here? But, listen, I already told you – I don't need an appointment! We're friends from a long time ago. Just give him a buzz. Aw, c'mon, is this a face that would like to you? Kaiba and I, we're friends! Trust me, he'll be pissed off if he knew you didn't let me up. Do you want to piss him off?

The humiliation of it made his chest burn just to imagine. Jounouchi reasoned he could probably keep up that kind of patter for three long minutes before security inevitably dragged him off the premises. Even if Kaiba wanted to see him, there was no way he'd be able to get in direct contact with him. Kaiba was a celebrity; how many stalkers and fans showed up demanding an audience?

Even more briefly, he toyed with giving the American a call. He still had the card, snug inside his wallet, and perhaps he could show that to the front desk. C'mon, I'm on the Tanner account. You really gonna make me do this? Okay, I'll call him, and he's gonna be pissed about this, let me tell you!

But he couldn't do it. The man wouldn't remember him, he probably gave out his number to every drunk idiot he ran into at these parties. Tanner would hang up on him, the receptionist would curl her lip in disgust and embarrassment, security would be called…

Jounouchi pulled his jacket more tightly around his shivering body. He didn't belong there, in an office. That was their world. That building lobby, its massive po-mo chandelier, its gaping empty spaces, like the inside of an enormous creature. Everything was too clean and organised, and everyone wore suits that fit like they'd be born in them. That wasn't Jounouchi's environment. It'd be like making a dog walk on its hind legs.

And so he had retreated to the parking garage. He manoeuvred around security cameras – not difficult, they only covered the car bays – and kept to the shadows in order to find the section where all the cars cost six figures. He couldn't say if Kaiba even stored his car here, but it was the only chance he had of catching him. And so Jounouchi found himself a dark corner of the garage to hide himself, and there he waited.

He removed a 10¥ coin from his pocket and walked it along his fingers. What a pointless skill to have learned. He could have invested that energy doing something useful, productive, making himself marketable. He spun the coin with deft familiarity. Every revolution shimmered with the waste of his life.

It didn't matter if Kaiba didn't show, not really, and it would give him a free excuse to ditch this gig. Takeda could go hang. Fuck him, fuck the lot of them. And he'd quit the job. He'd do something else. He could get back into deliveries, that was fine. He was good at lifting heavy things, picking up the bulk and weight of a thing then moving it to a place. Good, honest work. He was built for that. Tall and all thick, ropey muscles, like his father had been. Once had been, before the booze had eaten away his muscles and layered him with fat and sluggishness and, later, dementia. God, those last few weeks had been hell. Real hell.

Don't think about it, idiot.

He shuffled about his pockets to find his phone and sought solace in its cracked screen. He refreshed this and that page, hoping for some message in a bottle from the outside world. Nothing, of course, as to be expected.

He navigated to his messages. He flicked between his conversations with Honda and Yuugi. He chewed the inside of his cheek, then flipped the coin.

Honda.

Ran into Kaiba last night, he typed. Still a psycho loser. Go figure.

He hit send and replaced the phone. It would be hours before he got a reply, knowing Honda. He had never been technologically savvy, and was even less so now with the baby.

Kaiba wouldn't come. Who's to say he was even working tonight, and if he did, what if he didn't head home until the morning? Was he to wait here until five, six, seven AM like a stray animal and hope for Kaiba to make his appearance? God, he hated it. He hated being the dog for Takeda or his dad or Kaiba or Yuugi, or…

He hated Kaiba so much it burned him. He hated how much he'd had to beg and scrape for the guy's approval – if not his emotional approval, then the bureaucratic approval of getting into Battle City, buying that fucking duel disc, working himself nearly to death to compete in a tournament that Kaiba didn't even want him entering. Kaiba was scum, he always had been. It made sense that the piece of shit was a cokehead now, that was what he deserved. He hoped it would kill him the end.

Better way to go than meth, Jounouchi reasoned, and that was probably, really, what had got his dad in the end.

Fuck you, Kaiba.

He spat onto the concrete. The saliva frothed and dampened the bits of grit in the dirt. And then he left. If he never saw or heard from Kaiba Seto again, it would still be too soon.

Jounouchi's phone was ringing.

It was five AM on a Tuesday and Jounouchi was submerged in a deep, blank sleep. The ring was tinny. He cracked his eyes slowly, with reluctance. Likely it was Takeda, and Jounouchi had to make himself available day or night. Part of the job. As he reached and fumbled for the phone, he dared to entertain the brief hope that it might be Yuugi or Anzu, thriving on American time, blissfully unaware of the time difference. He peered at the screen. The number was not one he knew.

He pressed the answer button and negotiated the handset to his ear.

'Yeah?'

'He just played magical hats.'

These words reached Jounouchi on several distinct tides of confusion. First of all, the sentence made no sense. At five AM, the concept of playing hats struck him with the absurdity of Alice in Wonderland. He might have immediately contextualised the phrase had the voice been Yuugi's, but though this voice was familiar it was not one he was accustomed to hearing on the phone. And the tone was savage, as though Jounouchi had committed some awful transgression and was now being held accountable.

'What?' said Jounouchi, this being the only possible response.

'Magical hats, idiot. Dark Magician Girl is in the graveyard, he holds a monster reborn, and yet he just played magical hats. What is wrong with him?'

Jounouchi listened to the traffic lap at his consciousness. His head was throbbing.

'Can you hold on a sec?' he said, then gently placed the phone onto his bed. He sat upright. He took a large swig of water. He rubbed his eyes. He pinched himself. He picked up the phone again. 'Sorry about that, Kaiba, just had to make sure I hadn't died in my sleep and slipped into some fucking hell dimension in which Kaiba Seto calls me at five in the fucking morning to talk about – what the hell are you talking about?'

Kaiba's voice was acid. 'Turn on the television.'

Jounouchi removed the phone from his ear and stared at it like it had committed some terrible personal affront to him. His hatred for Kaiba had gently receded under a veneer of absurdity. 'I don't own a TV.'

Kaiba made two or three noises of surprise, annoyance, disgust, amusement, and exasperation that all seemed to overlap with one another. 'Turn on your laptop, then. Just find a USDM stream.'

'A you-ess-a what?'

There were more noises. 'The American channel that broadcasts Duel Monsters tournaments, Jounouchi. USDM. You can stream it from their website.'

'Why would I want to do that?'

'Because Yuugi is going to lose this duel.'

'Right.' Jounouchi took another mouthful of water, spilling much of it over his T-shirt. He blinked at the time on his phone in case the numbers might rearrange themselves into a less offensive time. His window showed a black sky pocked with city lights. 'Kaiba, it's five in the morning.'

'It's three PM in America,' Kaiba retorted, as though this cinched the argument.

'I'm going back to sleep.' He paused. His earlier angered disgust bubbled to the surface, pressing against the roof of his mouth, simmering. A starstorm of insults ricocheted around his head, about Yuugi and Mokuba and Kaiba's overtly miserable life. With the last ounce of grace in his body, he swallowed them. 'You've got some fucking nerve, asshole,' he croaked into the phone. Then he hung up.

Jounouchi lay down once more. In the drowsy, syrupy moments of confusion before sleep took him again, he felt the twin stings of surprise and regret wind through him. He should have listened to him. He should have tried harder. It could have been different.

But god damn, he thought, just before passing into unconsciousness, what kind of freak calls you at five AM?

At seven sixteen AM, Jounouchi's phone rang a second time. The melody filled his bedroom, that metallic pitch, and Jounouchi stared at his ceiling while he considered. The phone shrieked. He didn't bother looking at the number.

He didn't want to answer. The thought of putting the phone to his ear and hearing that soft, smug, vile voice slide into his ears made bile tickle his throat. The only thing to stop him hurling the phone across the room was that odd sensation of anticipated regret. It wasn't about Takeda; he had the number stored in his call history now regardless. It was something else. That something that had made him speak to Kaiba on the balcony in the first place, in the blue light of the party with that deep weird jazz threading through their conversation. There was that sense that, should he not answer, then something rare and important would be lost. Something that –

The phone stopped ringing.

Jounouchi exhaled.

He had only eight seconds to consider experiencing regret before the phone rang for a third time. He smiled despite himself. He yawned, drank a cool mouthful of water, then reached for the handset.

'Kaiba, you're a lunatic.'

'Yuugi just lost,' Kaiba said rapidly. 'Yuugi just lost a duel to this Leo Ricci, the Italian champion. He had 300 life points remaining.'

Jounouchi sat up. Scratched the back of his neck. Picked a bit of dirt out from under his nail. 'So?'

'He lost, Jounouchi.'

'Was it a shadow game?'

'Was it a…' There was a pause, then a rustle, and then Kaiba's voice came through more muffled: 'Kaoru, get out. Out, out.' Another pause, then Kaiba's voice again. He sounded vibrantly ill. 'Was it a shadow game? No, you absolute moron, it wasn't a shadow game. Of course it wasn't a shadow game. It's the international semi-finals, there are no shadow games.'

Slow with sleep, a migraine threading through his head, his eyes pulsing, Jounouchi could still not help but smile. 'I was joking, Kaiba.'

'300 life points, Jounouchi, 300. It wasn't even close.'

Jounouchi stood up, cracked his neck, then sat down again. He contemplated breakfast. He felt calmer than he had in months. 'I don't know, 300 sounds pretty close to me.'

Kaiba made some choked, sputtering noises, like an indignant train. 'You – it's – Jounouchi, Yuugi lost. Doesn't that mean anything to you?'

'Not really, man. Sometimes people lose duels. It happens. When you're one of the top players worldwide, you're going to lose duels occasionally. Yuugi's winrate is still, what, thirty percent higher than the second top ranked player worldwide.'

'Twenty-six percent,' Kaiba hissed down the phone.

'Oh my god, thirty, twenty-six, whatever.'

There was a pause. Jounouchi could hear Kaiba inhaling and exhaling deliberately. It sounded like he was doing breathing exercises.'

'I can't believe you didn't watch the duel.'

'I don't—' Jounouchi started, then cut himself off. He had been about to say, I don't care about Yuugi's duel with the Italian whatever, but the truth of it surprised him. No, he didn't care about Yuugi's duels. Yuugi duelled professionally on a daily basis, and keeping up with them just wasn't something he had energy for like he once had. But Kaiba cared, so much so that it burned Jounouchi down the phone. 'I can't stay up to watch streams on US time, Kaiba. My work hours won't allow it. I can catch it later on their website if it's so damn important to you I give you my feedback.'

'I don't want your feedback, I don't want your opinion.' Kaiba's voice hissed low and intense, breathy and staccato, sharp against Jounouchi's ears. 'I thought you might have some insight on why Yuugi was playing so atrociously. My mistake. Your irrelevance to duelling is so great that you're not even aware of when an international duel with your supposed friend is taking place. Clearly an error on my part to ever think you might have some worth to duelling.'

The phone clicked. Jounouchi removed it from his ear and examined it, floating from one state of bafflement to the next. It was quite impossible to determine which part of the phone call had been the most inexplicable.

And then he saw he had a reply from Honda. He opened the message.

wow that guy is such a freak. did he try to murder you this time?

Jounouchi's fingers hesitated above the keys.

Not yet, he sent back.

In the shower, Jounouchi let unsoaped, lukewarm water thrum around him. He tried to think. He had never been a thinker, a planner. That was Yuugi's gig. He did things, and then he regretted them later. Or at least, that was how he once had been. Things were different now, if only barely. The brash hotheaded teenager that had once duelled Kaiba – and lost, and lost again – had slipped beneath layers and layers of time, work, loneliness, independence, sex, alcohol, death, life. He wasn't that kid any more, and he knew that more than ever as he found himself standing in the shower, not really thinking much of anything, as he decided whether or not he was going to call Kaiba back.

Kaiba made him feel sad. Really, truly fucked in his soul. Talking to him made all those years of growth curl away and made him feel stupid and young and vulnerable, but it also made him see what a perfect terrible fuck up Kaiba was. It stunned him that he had never seen it before. He hadn't changed. Kaiba was the same worthless loser he had always been.

Jounouchi turned off the water.

He scrubbed his hair with the one clean hand towel he had and padded through to his bedroom. He powered up his laptop and located the USDM website. There were photos and statistics and a lot of very angry comments arguing over why exactly Yuugi was variably the worst or best or most mediocre player to ever live. The site also told him that Yuugi would be beginning a new duel in exactly one minute, the evening session, with someone called Lisa Mountford.

Jounouchi looked out of his window. The upper floors of skyscraper behemoths spoiled much of his view, but the scraps of sky he could see were ripening into sharp yellows and thin blues. He breathed in and out, then picked up his phone.

So what's the odds on Yuugi vs Mountford?

He hit send then firmly set the phone down on his desk and wandered into the kitchen to scrape together some kind of meal.

Jounouchi returned seven minutes later with a pile of things that could mostly be considered edible: one slice of stale bread with ketchup on it, a packet of chips, one bruised banana, and a leftover packet of luncheon meat.

He picked up his phone.

Six new messages. All from Kaiba.

He scrolled through in disbelief.

8:43AM: No contest. 22/3 Yuugi wins.

8:44AM: Mountford has a chance-based deck. What an idiot.

8:46AM: DM on the field. Predictable.

8:47AM: 600/1900 to Yuugi. Like fish in a barrel.

8:49AM:This isn't even a challenge.

8:50AM: Yuugi wins, but down to 1500LP. Embarrassing.

Jounouchi stared at the phone. No answer presented itself. He typed two words.

You're nuts

He barely had time to give the string of messages a second thought before his phone buzzed with a reply.

You've never held an opinion that couldn't be accommodated by two syllables, have you?

Jounouchi snorted. In the impassivity of the textual medium he couldn't taste the hostility behind the words, if it was even there. He opened the chips.

I'm eating chips he texted back.

Kaiba did not reply to that one.

But four hours later he sent another, unprompted: Electromagnetic turtle is such a vulgar card.

Jounouchi had been in the midst of attempting to put together another meal and he stared at the message as though he were supposed to have some kind of useful response to it, then finally texted back, I'm out of miso paste. Do I go to the store Y/N?

Then Kaiba would not reply.

A few hours later, there was another text. Did you really play Baby Dragon as much as your stats suggest?

And Jounouchi shrugged and replied, without thought, Yeah I guess. It got me through some tight spots in DK.

It's a crutch card, came the almost instantaneous reply. Amateurish. No wonder I beat you so easily.

Jounouchi looked around the room as though appealing to an invisible audience. Dude I didn't play BD when we first duelled

Had you a better deck, you'd never need to play an embarrassing card like that.

If Kaiba had said this to him in person, it would have tickled his ire. But here, in neutral electric hues, the message was mild, almost friendly. Kaiba probably hadn't meant it that way, but if there was one thing Jounouchi had learned about Kaiba it was that you never did anything on his turf.

He smiled to himself.

You're right. If I had 3 BEWDs I'd never lose.

He pictured Kaiba, alone in his office, clenching his jaw and baring his teeth at his phone in rage. He pictured Kaiba throwing his phone out of the window in anger, then ordering his secretary bring him a new one. Or perhaps Kaiba was in the midst of typing, and he would merely cock an eyebrow at the message and then ignore it, deciding that Jounouchi was, after all, immensely unimportant to him—

You wouldn't be capable of summoning one Blue Eyes, yet alone three.

Jounouchi smiled despite himself, a little with warmth and a little with pity. Kaiba had no one and abandoning him on the kerb was how he tried to prove that he liked it that way. Jounouchi wondered if Kaiba had made a single new friend since high school ended, if he had ever had a girlfriend, if he'd ever stayed up late watching a bad movie with his friends and laughing, the way Jounouchi and Yuugi and everyone had that last night of the summer before Anzu and Yuugi left…

His phone, unprompted, buzzed again.

But this time it wasn't Kaiba. It was Takeda's number.

6pm Friday usual place for pick up

Jounouchi's heart dropped through him. He had, for short blissful hours, forgotten about Takeda, about the parties, about all those beautiful hyena women and the men in shiny suits who smelled like sulphur.

The phone buzzed again.

got KS' number yet?

Jounouchi watched the phone and felt it watch him back. The characters stood bold and black behind the cracked screen.

It buzzed a third time. Jounouchi hadn't bothered to enter Kaiba's name into his contacts, but he recognised the number and the distinctly Kaiba-esque syntax.

It's an insult to the dignity of Duel Monsters that you should be permitted to play.

Jounouchi held the phone and touched the glowing characters. He considered his options. He was behind on rent. He needed to keep Takeda happy. He should be grateful for this job, he shouldn't risk compromising it. Kaiba deserved everything that was coming to him and more, and it would be doing the world a favour to give Kaiba a kick into the pit he so liked to hang himself over.

It was, he now realised, raining, like it had been a few nights ago. He had nowhere to go then, and he had nowhere to go now. It was an easy decision for so many reasons.

The thought of seeing Takeda again this week made his stomach roil and slime. Yellow headlights peered into his window, crested the ceiling, then slid onwards. He composed two messages.

I'm making progress. see you later. This he sent to Takeda.

You want me to watch the next duel you'll have to lend me your TV. This he sent to Kaiba.

It took longer for Kaiba to reply this time, but not so long that he could have conceivably been distracted by any other matters.

Fine. Now stop bothering me.

Jounouchi breathed out, lowered the phone, and watched the rain distort the street lights. He thought about how impossibly weird it had been to see Kaiba on that balcony, and the sound of his voice, and where any of this was going, and all around him the noise and glimmer of dirty degraded downtown curled about him, humming and burning.