Begin Chapter 1: Shizuka


It had been by pure chance that they had met each other. It had been luck that she was blind to the world around her and to the words that had been told about him. And it was by some grace of god that he had the chance to be able to have held her in his arms.
But both of them knew it was not any act of random meetings. Some other force, one that some may call gravity, had spun them out of control and so they would collide in a blissful amount of sparks. It would be saying that the past wasn't meant to happen, but yet both had turned out successful because of the horrid past that had warped itself around their auras.

But today was random chance of luck, though it wasn't very good luck if one looked at it in the right way. Seto knew that, as he lay back in his armchair, his eyes lying closed, listening to the silence around him. So quiet, so peaceful…his thoughts weren't wandering into the world, they stayed within the confounds of his mind. They only escaped through his eyes, which released small crystalline tears falling down his pale cheekbone and fell to their death upon his neck, gathering in the pit of his collarbone.

The phone was pressed to his ear by his shoulder as he hugged his hands close to his chest, around a light fuzzy teddy bear he had bought the other day. It was meant as a gift for her, but on his way back home with America, he had fell slowly in love with it. He had named it Shizuka…it was odd that his favorite thing in the world, silence, had her name. The name that he loved so much, the name that would slip off his tongue causally and send a smile to his haunted features.

"Seto-kun, are you there?" her sweet voice rang out over the phone, interrupting the silence that always lay between them across the distance. They would go for minutes, neither saying a word as they went along with their business. Then suddenly talk again, neither minded those silences. They were just a fill in their relationship, of understandment. No words had to be said for one to know what the other was thinking, or so Seto had thought. He doubted that now as he sighed, his ragged breath shaking as he exhaled.

"Hai, I am listening. I'm just waiting for you to ask your question…" he answered softly, matching her tone of voice. He was unconsciously stroking the head of his teddy bear, grabbing at its subtle softness. Fear was gripping him, he had worried about this all day.

They hadn't talked all week, across the distance. It had been only five miles away, just down the street or half way across the world, depending on the day Kaiba had. It was short conversations as they went about their lives here and there, just keeping in contact, always missing each other when the longing became too great to stand.

He had missed her voice the most, her voice was so soft and caring. He had saw her last week and he enjoyed seeing her once a week. It was important for him to separate his life that way, being the teen billionaire of a multinational country, and his personal life. He never had much time for it but he tried. Anyone who denied he didn't even try was fired his favorite form of killing the person.

It had been two weeks since they had been going out. He didn't know why he even decided to go out with her. She wasn't very pretty at least in his eyes, and he could have anything he wanted. But something about her intrigued him. Perhaps it was the gentle way she asked him what he wanted. No one had ever asked that about him. It was just expected for him to do what had to be done, without having to think about the consequences, they were just expected for him to take them upon his already burdened back.

"Uh…I don't know how to say this. But we never see each other, and I was like thinking that maybe this isn't fair. Do you want to break up or keep trying to make this work?"

Bile seemed to rise within his throat but it never escaped, just burned his soul, as the tears began to flow again. All of his control…he wanted to damn it and just sob, show her the pain he was in, but that was an impossibility. Being so cold in all your life makes one so inept at showing emotions. He clutched the stuffed animal closer to him.

"Life sucks…I wish I could see you so much more then I can…" he whispered back into the phone, letting his voice grow soft, attempting to be honest to his feelings. He highly doubted she noticed.

At first, he had kept it to once a week for a reason. But now, he longed to see her every day. She was a forbidden fruit he was addicted to. She put him at peace, and life was so hard. She made sense of him. It wasn't the constant kissing which he was new to. The infamous Kaiba had never been kissed before. He didn't enjoy kissing her much, he found it rather dirty. He couldn't get over the fact of salvia drying above his upper lip, right under his nose. He wasn't sure she was a bad kisser or just that was how it was done, but he longed to figure it out and dominate it. He had came to respect it, and had been it his goal to master and enjoy it from her.

He had admitted to himself that he thought he loved her. Sure, he didn't know what was love, being the person he was, but he thought it was what he had for her.

"I know…but I don't think it's fair for you." She was whining, and he couldn't read her emotions. It made him mad and he opened his eyes to stare up at the dark room he lay in. It was his work office, his feet propped up on the desk, all the lights off. The computer glowed in the corner with his profit earnings etched onto the screen. They had made a huge jump, his work was not for naught.

"It's plenty fair for me. I love you…" he admitted, feeling the ping in his heart for admitting his feelings. He could now be hurt, and it terrified him. He tried to stuff those feelings away, he had to do this, to keep her with him. "What do you want to do, Shizuka?"

"Je ne sais pas."

His knowledge of languages was that it was French, meaning she didn't know. They just lay there in silence, and he could hear the shuffle of nimble fingers hitting the keyboard. She was typing to someone, he wasn't sure whom. He didn't want to ask, it probably was one of her friends. But then again, all her friends were male who were in love with her, and she had no idea.

He lay there in his chair, rubbing his lips against the top of the bear's head, feeling the softness against his lips. It was perfect and gentle, and he re-closed his eyes, thinking about her, as he waited for her to speak or he could come up with something original and witty to say.

He had met her because of the forces that kept him and Yugi rivals for eternity, the past he didn't want to admit he had. And through Yugi, he met friends. He met people who he hated and people he learned to respect. Her brother was one of those people. He would have never looked at her if her brother hadn't convinced him of it when he stood up to him. Kaiba's were never challenged by an underling but he still went for it, and lost with grace, laughing about it, smiling. And after all the fighting was done, and he had came to peace with the two boys who were forever going to be intertwined in his life, the Pharaoh and Yugi, he was able to see her merits.

She was going out with a different boy when he met her by chance at a class event, coming in with her brother. As her brother tried to flaunt the fact he had the highest score in French Two, she laughed at him, as Kaiba did his obligatory teasing of the mutt because he had a hundred average in AP English, and already passed French three which he had then quit to concentrate on other languages. They had a short conversation and later they talked on the phone.

They ended up going to the movies together and made out. And she was still with her boyfriend, it took her three months to break up with him, and Seto waited patiently, forgetting about her until that day they finally got together.

"I don't know either…there is no right answer." Kaiba spoke finally, feeling lame, finally out of words in his life.

" Do you want to stay together or break up? Because I don't want you to get hurt…"
"Either way, we both get hurt…you know that as well as I do."

It sucked being a pessimistic personality. Seto always expected the worst of people. When he was younger, he had tried to hope for the best, and every time he was always let down. So he promised himself he wouldn't get his hopes up because that way one could only go up in the world. And it worked…but not well in the love department.

Kaiba often wondered if he was cut out for love. He didn't feel…he didn't love anything but the things he had complete control over. He wasn't a creator as much as he was a destroyer, then rebuilding it up. He knew not of fun, but of gaining. He thought as life as a game he was meant to win at, and there was no losing allowed. And in love, you lose…you may win temporally but in the end, you lose and you lose big. But he wasn't going to give up, he was going to love Shizuka if it killed him. He didn't want to lose her. She meant a lot of him.

"True…"
"I don't care, chose whichever you want. I just want you to be happy, Shizuka."

There was a long amount of time where no one spoke. It seemed like hours when in reality, it was only ten or so minutes.

"Okay…anyhow I got to get off the phone. My mother is waiting for a call. Ja ne…"

"Wait! So what are we?"
"Together…bye." She hung up the phone and Seto just sat there for a second in shock. He reached numbly up to his shoulder and unlodged the phone from between his ear and shoulder. He hit the button and dropped it, letting it make a dead clunk on his steel desk, covered in various shades of white paper.

"She never did say she loved me…" he whispered to himself, clutching the stuffed animal to his chest desperately, sobbing into it to muffle the noise. His entire body was shaking and he removed his legs from the desk, curling them up to his chest in an unnatural position. " She didn't…" he muttered over and over again as he sneezed, sniffling up the snot that had gathered in his nose.

Why? Why was this happening to him? He loved her…she loved him, or at least he thought. Was he not good enough for her? Was he too prude? Did he not express his love for her enough? Thousands of questions washed through his body and he kept shaking his head, not wanting to answer them. He did the best he could have done under what he was given.
He wondered if he had made the right decision, he wondered if things would go back to normal or would stay awkward. He wondered if he should do something with her tomorrow so he could prove them spend time with each other. But he was so scared…so scared about what the future held for him, and unlike everything else in his life, he didn't have complete control over it.

"Seto?" rang out an innocent voice and Seto looked up from the stuffed animal burrowed against him, his teary eyes making out the shadowy form of his younger brother, staring at him. A sniveling lip shook and he felt his brother move, knocking the stuffed animal out of his arms to hug him, sitting on his lap. He was getting so heavy but it felt nice, having someone just holding him, loving him unconditionally.

"It's okay…it's okay…" his brother whispered, running his hand through Seto's hair, feeling his brother's body shaking against him. He never saw him that weak, but he was old enough to handle it. It was his turn to help his brother out like Seto had done for him over all those years gone by. Seto just clutched to him for dear life and finally after several minutes, he was calm enough to let go of his brother.

"Are you okay, Seto?" Mokuba whispered, landing back on the floor.

Seto's face was a bright red color, his blue eyes blood-shot, and his lips frowning in a painful expression, snot running between the gap between his nose and mouth. He obviously wasn't okay and Mokuba took his hand, leading him slowly away from his office and down the hallway to where his brother would sleep.

Mokuba slid the door open and led his brother through the dark empty room to the bed in the corner. Seto collapsed on the bed, and Mokuba handed him the teddy bear that he had been clutching for the last week on his travels aboard. He lay the blankets over his brother, wrapping them around him to keep him warm for the night.

He lay a gentle kiss along his brother's brow and began to scoot away towards the door. He stopped, hearing the clearing of a voice and he heard his brother whisper, before he could leave the room.
It would forever echo in his mind, " I haven't been okay in a long time."

Mokuba shut the door behind him, and Seto could hear their conversation, Mokuba and the maid, though they were attempting to stay quiet so he couldn't hear.

"Make sure he eats a good breakfast. Serve him blueberry scones, he always liked them. The recipe is down in the second drawer in the plate cupboard. He isn't allowed to go to work tomorrow, I'll call him in sick." He could hear Mokuba speaking and it brought a smile to his face to hear his brother caring about him so much.

"Why is she doing this to him?" the maid muttered. She was his personal maid since he was adopted, she was the only one who was allowed to clean his room. He didn't trust the other ones.

"I don't know, but I think she is thinking about cheating on him. She did it before…she can do it again." The voices were getting further away and he was slowly falling into sleep.

End of Chapter 1: Shizuka