The next morning, Seto did not want to leave his room. He was brooding again, still trying to accept everything that had happened. He also wanted to have an excuse to have Nagusami bring him breakfast, to see if she was still angry, but no one guessed that. She entered with the tray, but refused to meet his eyes. She laid out the food on his table and turned to go, but stopped. Slowly, she walked back and then did something very brave and completely unexpected. She apologized.

"I'm sorry," she murmured, sounding strained, "about last night, you know. I lost my temper, and I wasn't thinking about your feelings."

"My feelings?" He certainly hadn't thought about hers.

"Well, yeah. It's been hard on you, being stuck here. You haven't taken it like your friends did."

"They're not my friends," he said, though mostly to himself.

She didn't hear. "So, just, I'm sorry."

Looking into her eyes, Seto realized how hard it was for her to be saying those words. He knew what kind of pride she held. Something inside him melted a little. "Me too, I guess," he muttered reluctantly. "I said some things I shouldn't have. Sorry."

She smiled as she poured him a glass of kuin.

It hit Seto after she had left that he had just apologized to cleverly constructed, inanimate data. Eating his breakfast, he mulled over that concept. Little by little, she seemed to grow ever more real, almost as if she had come from his world too.

He blinked, putting down his fork. Yes, there had been another world, but it all seemed rather distant. A feeling prodded the back of his mind, insisting that forgetting the other place was a bad thing. But he couldn't remember it well, either. It all seemed like it had been…a dream.

*

Yami watched worriedly as Yuugi scampered down every street he found, gazing at all the appearing decorations and laughing with the children he met. It wasn't that in particular that worried Yami, on the contrary, Yuugi seemed almost happier than Yami could remember him ever being. It was just…well, the first night trapped in the virtual world, Yuugi had cried himself to sleep, dreadfully homesick and missing his beloved grandpa. He had talked of home constantly over breakfast, but as the day wore on, the chatter faded. The next night, Yuugi had gone to sleep rather quickly.

Now Yami could barely sense any memory of the real world in his Hikari, if there was any at all. Yuugi seemed as at home here as if he had known it all his life. He remembered names well and by now could talk with many of the people as if they were old friends.

And Yami realized that he also didn't have any desire to return to… He stopped to think, concentration wrinkling his brow. Wherever it was they had come from. That other place.

~Sorry, it's a little short but I had to have one cliff hanger. Tee-hee ^.~