Painted Sky
^_^ Hihi, minna! This chapter takes place on Monday, although the beginning of the chapter is an explanation of what happened on Saturday night.
Speaking of drunkenness and general insanity, I would like to at this point recommend Triste-san's "Things We Do For Love". Yeah, yeah, I know I never review these days, but that story just made me giggle too much to keep me quiet from saying anything. Although a word of advice… don't read that fic and then work on a Ryuuji fic. For some reason, I kept seeing him in a dress while I was writing chapter 3…. Oo;;
Anyhow, since I have nothing else to say except thanks to rayemars-san for beta-reading this fic, as well as all the reviewers: Ishizu Sango Halliwell (:p Well, as long as they're good stories, it's okay that they're one-shots right?), nell (*PM gets hit by one of the randomly flying dice… itai….*), Bronze Eagle (^_^ Now if only this fic was this eager to be written…. *sweatdrops*), Tuulikki (They're second year students, which makes them about junior year here… that's what Kei-kun said at least. Anyhow, I'm sure everyone finds Seto's low tolerance of alcohol amusing… except Seto XD), Lillith7 (I must submit you to the horrors of PM's rant of "He's sooooooooo feminine! He's SOOOO girly! He's SOOOOOOO gay!" :p), Ninetails-chan (Spread the Seto/Ryuuji goodness! *dances* Brainwash the world! And I hope you loveeee your wallpapers… :p Any more requests?), Nephthys-san (YES, dedicated to you! I'm not kidding when I say this story would not have been written without you… you gave me the confidence to actually start it! And… defensive helmet? *grin*), Ashuri chan (Ryuuji: *sticks tongue out at Seto* Mwaha. I'm more important than you are. *PM twitches*), Zoo-sama (I like ramifications! It was one of the few words I learned from those vocab tests we had last year… Oo;;), and MarmaladeGirl (xp Glad you thought so!). ^_^ Arigatou, minna~!
~ Tomadoi – Bewilderment ~
Seto would have been pleased to know that he was indeed right in blaming Ryuuji for coming onto him that fateful Saturday night, but he would not have been pleased to know that he was equally to blame for creating the means of allowing it to happen.
What had happened, on that day, was something that neither participant could really remember. Seto, a victim of the usual bad practical jokes that seem to be especially pervasive in the most unexpected of places (the fates tended to have an uncannily ironic sense of humor), was not in the most familiar of senses due to a spiked drink (well, to be truthful, several spiked drinks). As it was known that he was liable to get drunk easily, and with the number of people who were more than willing to see the billionaire drunk and humiliated, it was really only a matter of time.
Ryuuji, on the other hand, did not have another person to blame. Or perhaps he did, since the party was so mind-numbingly boring that there wasn't anything else to do but drink. After all, when under the influence of alcohol, it is somewhat easier to blame all mistakes on persons (or in this case, a liquid) other than oneself. Upon being unable to find anybody interested in talking about games or anything remotely interesting to the DDD inventor, he had mistakenly decided to have a drink. Just as an experiment, of course.
So it was really only a matter of time before the two of them met up. And that, of course, was when all the trouble just randomly decided to happen.
~ * ~
The first drink had tasted odd as soon as he took a sip, but before he could find the girl who had given him the drink she was already gone. The second drink had turned out fine, and the third drink he had gotten himself was unexplainably switched when he turned his back for a single moment.
It struck him as odd that so many people who were supposed to be respectable liked to play such practical jokes, but by the time he realized that it was already too late. In fact, it was quite possible that he never really did realize it, but that he had known it all along. Not that it mattered now, anyway, when everything had already happened and one was at a rather unfortunate inability to do anything to reverse the course of events.
One way or another, what happened in the end was that somehow, Kaiba Seto found himself at the bar talking to the bartender about all his woes and whatnot.
Truly, one did have to wonder if bartenders got paid extra money for having to deal with drunken wrecks such as Seto, although there was a definite amusement factor attached to the whole thing. After all, how many people got to claim (while they were sober even) that they had seen the great CEO of KaibaCorporation acting like a complete drunk and blabbering all his important secrets?
"He keeps whining that I don't pay him enough attention." The words were somewhat slurred but the young woman tending the bar nodded sympathetically anyway. She didn't say anything… there was no need for her to. Seto wasn't looking for conversation… no, he was looking for somebody to talk to. And it was just as well that the somebody he had chosen was the person who could keep giving him more to drink, which meant that he was going to have more to talk about. Well, technically, he didn't have anymore to talk about than he did before the drinks. It just happened to be that his tongue was made looser, which meant that he was going to be talking about things he normally never talked about.
"How does that work?" a new voice interrupted, and both turned to see Ryuuji sitting there with an expression that seemed to be a mix between a sympathetic look and goofy smile (which, in short, ended up becoming something completely indistinguishable and downright horrifying). "You can't stand to leave that kid alone, if what Honda says really is true. Although knowing him, it's very much debatable."
Seto blinked, and as soon as the six Ryuuji's had shrunken down to a more reasonable two (nobody had said that Ryuuji didn't have a twin brother), he asked with a rather incredulous tone, "Otogi?"
"Cheers," Ryuuji grinned as he held up his glass. "Although frankly I'm surprised that you haven't forgotten about all of us already."
Kaiba frowned as he slowly took in the details. For example, he noticed with some vague interest that despite the party being formal dress, Ryuuji was still wearing the clothes that he more or less wore everyday. The information came slower than it usually did, mind, but at least he managed to get his brain to function properly in the end.
Finally, "Are you drunk?"
A short laugh, "No more than you are, Kaiba."
"I'm not drunk."
Ryuuji shrugged, not interested in the topic enough to pursue it any further, "Whatever you want to believe. I'm not going to try and point the obvious out to you."
"And what's that supposed to mean?"
"Whatever you want to believe."
"You're really annoying, you know that?"
"I live to serve."
"Serve yourself, you mean," Seto snorted as he turned away.
Most people, even the drunk ones, would be intelligent enough to realize that this was a sign that they had been dismissed and thus it would be in their best interests to move away quickly. More to the point though, was that Ryuuji was apparently not such an intelligent person because the only thing he did was continue to pester the billionaire despite the curt rejection of his undoubtedly pleasant and witty company. Of course, that was not a very polite thing to say about the black-haired man… perhaps he was merely too stubborn to be so blatantly waved off.
Whatever the reason, whatever the case, Ryuuji did not leave. Instead, he continued to sit there, watching the brunette with an expression that clearly seemed to say 'What is your problem?'. It was a very common expression for Ryuuji, although often times it seemed that people were giving him the look rather than it being the other way around.
Finally, he spoke up.
"That's not very nice, Kaiba. Especially since I was only trying to be friendly," he complained, green eyes focusing on Seto in a hawk-like way. Whether or not it was meant to be intimidating, the only impression it gave at the moment was one amusing enough to cause Seto to turn and fix Ryuuji with one of his menacing glares.
"Your friendship is not one that I would welcome," he spoke simply before turning away again.
"See what kind of a person he is? No wonder his brother is always complaining," Ryuuji grumbled to the bartender, who had been watching the conversation from a safe distance. It had been in her experience that when placing two seemingly incompatible personalities together, glasses tended to be broken and injuries sustained by innocent parties.
Of course, the guilty participants were never hurt.
She nodded shakily before somebody called to her, and she gratefully fled. Ryuuji couldn't help but scowl at that; apparently, his usual oozing charm had failed to work on her.
"What do you mean by that?" Seto growled without ever looking at Ryuuji.
Since he could not leave matters alone, Ryuuji was more than delighted to enlighten Seto, "You're so cold, you know? You push everyone away, no matter how hard they try to get close to you. You probably don't mean to do it to your own brother, but how can you change your personality when it's so deeply engrained in you?"
The whole speech might have sounded more promising and deep if it had not been for the fact that Ryuuji was swaying throughout the entire thing. For one who had never experimented with the drink, Ryuuji certainly had taken his little test a little too far.
A long silence followed his proclamation, and for a moment Seto looked ready to punch him. Ryuuji wasn't very worried though… Seto was usually restrained enough to keep from doing such foolish things. Unlike people like Jyounouchi, for example, who had no self-restraint whatsoever.
Unfortunately, Ryuuji was wrong on that count. Seto did usually have enough restraint to keep himself from reacting to such barbs, but that was when he was clear-minded. However, Seto currently wasn't clear-minded, so it was only a matter of time before Seto had walked over to Ryuuji with a rather infuriated look on his face.
He wasn't, however, infuriated enough to fail in noticing how Ryuuji was rather attractive… for a flamboyant and extremely annoying young man. His eyes were a pretty shade of green and the long black locks of hair seemed to frame his face perfectly. Everything seemed to be about opposites with the inventor, such as the red hair band that he still wore which contrasted with his eyes.
If he was wise, Ryuuji might have kept his mouth shut. Instead, the malicious little imp who apparently controlled his mouth continued to force words through his throat with startling audacity, "I guess you didn't like that, hmm? Can't deal with the truth, can you?"
"Everyone knows that half the things which come out of your mouth are not worth listening to in the first place," was the clenched reply. "Don't push it, Otogi."
"Push what? Your many, many buttons?" Ryuuji had a very self-satisfied smirk on his face. "You seem to have that problem pretty often, don't you?"
"Only because people like you exist in this world."
"But what fun will there be if people like me didn't exist?"
"A much quieter one, to start it off. It would take me too long to list everything."
"Come on, Kaiba. You like me." The grin on Ryuuji's face was definitely coming off now as blatantly suggestive. Not that it was saying much, especially when neither of the conversationalists could be exactly sure what he was trying to blatantly suggest. And of course, this was not to imply that he was not being blatantly suggestive. He was… it was just that they weren't clear-minded enough to realize what he was trying to suggest although that didn't stop them from noticing in the first place that he was being blatantly suggestive.
Essentially, the point was that neither had very much common sense at the moment, which was something that was not going to be acting in their favor in the moments to come.
Seto didn't reply to the most definitely ridiculous comment. He settled, instead, for taking a sip of his drink, a fuzzy part of his brain noticing as he did so that there was a funny taste in his supposedly non-alcoholic drink.
He was, in fact, so absorbed in his drink that he didn't even notice what Ryuuji was going to do until that something had been accomplished. Mainly by the raven-haired man draping himself on the brunette, a position that was decidedly uncomfortable and extraordinarily difficult to ignore.
His eyebrow twitched, but he didn't have the sense to shove him off, "What do you think you're doing, Otogi?"
"Being friendly. It's something you never do," Ryuuji replied as he stuck his tongue out, a fake pout on his face. To be truthful, he was also pretty surprised that Seto hadn't shoved him off, although that fear of being rejected had not prevented him from acting so foolishly in the first place. "Don't try to tell me that you don't enjoy my company, Kaiba. Everyone enjoys my company!"
"Everyone? Hm," was the distracted reply, even as a little part of his brain (the part that was extremely drunk and had absolutely no control over what its mangled ramblings came out as) screamed out quite happily, 'And I can see why!'. He ignored that part of his brain… didn't even hear it, in fact. "You certainly do get around."
"As I said," was the light reply as Ryuuji continued to give him a goofy grin, "I only live to serve."
~ * ~
Things had progressed quite rapidly from that point on, and it wasn't long before the two were completely wasted. And thus it wasn't long before the two emerged from the party, drunk and astonishingly ecstatic about their current relationship.
It was, as mentioned before, Ryuuji who had made the suggestion, a suggestion that was so blatant and to the point that even a drunk Kaiba Seto could not fail to understand what he was saying. A drunk Kaiba Seto could, however, fail to note the consequences of the suggestion, and an equally drunk Otogi Ryuuji could fail to stop the rapid deterioration of bad to worse very quickly.
Instead, Seto found the suggestion extremely appealing, especially when considering who the suggestion was coming from. Sure, Ryuuji was a rather ostentatious flirt, but he had rejected every single proposal for a date except one, and that one had been from a long time ago. But now, with common sense thrown conveniently out the window and into the swimming pool, it was remarkably easy to get a proposal accepted.
It didn't take very long for Seto to find his chauffeur, and it took even less time for them to get into the car. The chauffeur, for his part, did not make any comments to his employer, although he did fix them both with a long, hard stare that was promptly ignored.
Later, he supposed that it might have turned out better if he had commented on the situation rather than just letting it happen. Perhaps if he had questioned Seto when he learned that they only had one destination but two people, nothing would have occurred and Seto wouldn't currently be stomping through the mansion as if he was still deliberately trying to make the entire building fall apart around him.
However, it was too late for 'perhaps', and the damage had been done. He had driven Seto and Ryuuji back to the Kaiba Mansion, and then spent the entire night trying to convince himself that the two of them were more grown-up than they seemed and that drunk or not, they wouldn't do anything foolish.
Apparently, that had not happened, judging from the screaming that had rocked the entire place yesterday morning. It hadn't taken long for Ryuuji to leave, and about twenty minutes for Seto to seek him out with some very curt orders.
He'd been relatively bewildered when Seto (dripping hair and all… apparently he had spent those twenty minutes taking a very long shower) had told him to find Ryuuji and take him home, but he had obeyed without questioning the command. He doubted that Seto felt any actual concern for the raven-haired man, especially considering the loud argument that everyone within a three-mile radius could hear without even straining their ears. He supposed it might have something to do with how Seto didn't want to deal with the possibility of a lawsuit if Ryuuji got into any trouble on the way home… a likely thing, especially since this was Otogi Ryuuji. Anything could happen when he was involved… in fact, he would not have been surprised if the two young men he found trying to rob the inventor had secretly been trying to recruit him for a pornographic video [1]. That was how problematic Ryuuji was, and why Seto was very intelligent in sending somebody after him.
It did not, could not, and would not ever be because Seto cared for Ryuuji. That was a fact, and nothing in the world would ever change it.
~ * ~
Knowing that, however, was not helping Kaiba Seto at the moment. Even though he had spent the past day trying to get past that morning's events, he had long ago realized that unless he came to terms with what had happened, he wouldn't be succeeding.
"Kaiba-sama?"
Seto didn't turn to face the other man, didn't even bother to answer. There was no need; his companion knew that he was listening… he always seemed to listen.
"I'll bring the car out front."
There was still no reply, but again, no need to wait for one. By the time Seto turned around to leave, the driver was already gone and he was alone with his thoughts. His thoughts, which he currently wished he could beat senseless and leave outside to shrivel up into nothingness from the rays of the sun, continued to run around in dizzying circles around his mind.
He didn't know why he was having so many problems accepting what had happened. Perhaps it was because it was… well, Ryuuji. Not that he could really say there was something particularly wrong with Ryuuji… well, there was, but he could say that about almost everyone on the planet. Was there something particular about Ryuuji that made the situation more difficult to ignore, or would the same thing have happened with anybody?
He didn't know, and he told himself that he didn't care.
It helped that he didn't know all the facts… the entire situation. It made the whole thing seem more like a hoax rather than an actual event that they had both willingly participated in… well, as willingly as one could when he was flat out drunk. He doubted if Ryuuji knew either, despite the raging accusations that had been made by both.
He also found himself wondering if Ryuuji even cared anymore.
This caused him to purse his lips as he continued to glare out the window, resisting the urge to just lash out and break it. But what was the point of that? It wouldn't solve any of his problems or cure his thoughts, and all it would leave him with were cut up hands, medical bills, and a broken window. Not to mention the unneeded stress of having Mokuba haunt his every step demanding to know what was wrong with him, as if somehow he could solve all the problems.
He wondered what Mokuba would say if he knew about the incident… what he would do and how would he react. Would he be shocked? Sympathetic? Disturbed or perhaps even disgusted?
The last thought was immediately discarded, although not with great reluctance. Mokuba knew about his sexual orientation… heck, everyone knew about it, although most people tended to ignore it. He tried to ignore it himself, most of the time, trying to forget the rather humiliating experience between him and the pharaoh's spirit.
It hadn't been that big a deal… sure, he wasn't comfortable knowing that he was equally attracted to girls and guys alike, but he had dealt with it as well as the supposedly ice-hearted billionaire could. But then the pharaoh had come along and changed all of that by somehow making Seto attracted to him.
That was something Seto could certainly do without.
At the time though, it wasn't. And it wasn't until Yami no Yuugi had, by the most freakish twist of fate, gotten together with the former thief that Seto was finally allowed to put those disturbing thoughts to rest.
But the memory still lingered… the memory of all those unwanted feelings and hopes that were so foolish from the very beginning. It was something that he hated to remember, but he also hated the thought of forgetting it and falling into such a horrendous trap again.
Until that morning, he'd thought he was over it. It had been several years, after all, and many things had changed. Yami no Yuugi probably didn't even know who he was anymore, too busy with Yami no Bakura and the usual saving the world (or really his omote [2]… honestly, Yuugi got into quite a bit of trouble for a single person) to deal with a rival who didn't have time for him as well. And as for himself, he had found himself something to distract himself… a girlfriend. One he liked, thank you very much… at first a distraction but now more than that.
Certainly, he held no fantasies that he had completely altered his preferences, but still… he thought he had gotten over it. Pushed it aside. Moved on. The usual.
And then, for the oddest reason, everything had come flooding back. Even though the event had nothing to do with the pharaoh, it still… well, he wasn't sure what was going on. He just wasn't sure why he cared anymore.
Biting his lip, scowling at the window, at his reflection which glared back at him without any emotion in those cold blue eyes… he shook his head and finally turned around to walk out of the room.
As he did so, he did the same exact thing that Ryuuji did as he had walked out of the mansion a little over twenty-four hours ago.
He promised himself that he would never think about last night's events again.
~ * ~
The green-eyed man sighed as he stared into the mirror. It looked like he hadn't gotten enough sleep last night, even though he had tried his best. It might have been that he was jumpy about the upcoming convention, but that was a lie and he pretty much knew it without someone even pointing out the discrepancies to him.
"You didn't get enough sleep last night, did you?" Honda's voice suddenly said, but Ryuuji didn't bother to turn around to face him. Instead, he just scowled, still extremely bitter over what had happened yesterday morning, and Honda could see it from the mirror. Ryuuji could also see the smirk on Honda's face, and he resisted the urge to turn around and pummel his housemate to the ground.
"No," Ryuuji replied shortly.
"I have sleeping pills if you want."
Ryuuji raised an eyebrow, although he still didn't bother to turn around as he started to comb his hair, "You are being surprisingly nice today, Honda."
"Do you doubt my intentions?"
"Just the tiniest."
"Well, believe whatever you want," Honda replied loftily as he sat down on Ryuuji's bed, watching his friend take care of his appearance with the usual precision and care. Ryuuji was quite good at hiding his emotions when he really wanted to, and if Honda hadn't known him as well as he did, he might have actually believed that Ryuuji really had gotten past everything that had happened the prior day. "I'm just trying to help you."
"Just like you were trying to help me yesterday, hmm?"
"I was!"
Ryuuji rolled his eyes and muttered under his breath, but Honda couldn't catch what he said. He pretty much knew, however, that whatever Ryuuji was saying at the moment, it definitely wasn't something that was extremely flattering.
However, Honda couldn't exactly take the hint and he continued to let his mouth run without his mind to keep it in constant check.
"So… ever think about getting a boyfriend?"
Ryuuji abruptly stopped pulling his hair up in a ponytail at Honda's sudden question, and he turned to stare at the brunette with a look of absolute disbelief, "What?!"
"Well, I think that your little experiment was a sign," Honda smirked at the absolutely shocked expression on his friend's face, "that you need to get laid, I mean."
"What?!"
Before Honda could explain… not to imply that Ryuuji would have bothered to listen to any explanation that he could possibly have for such a… a… a horrible comment, Ryuuji had thrown two dice at him. The first one missed, but the second one hit him squarely in the face, and he yelped as he fell back, knocking his head against the wall as he did so. His harried mind screamed, demanding to know how Ryuuji could have so many dice with him at every moment of every day… did he keep them on his dresser? In his pockets? In… in… Honda didn't even want to think about the possibilities!
"What the hell are you thinking?!" Ryuuji shrieked.
"I was just suggesting…."
"Am I really that annoying if I'm not getting laid?!" he continued to scream, his raven-black hair falling into his face messily. "Is that the problem? Huh?!"
"I didn't say that!"
"But you implied it!"
"I didn't say anything of the sort!"
"Oh shut up!" Ryuuji snapped, his hand clenched around the hairbrush that he had been using only moments before. Honda was amazed to see that Ryuuji had never let go of the comb the entire time, and he also made a mental note to make sure not to aggravate Ryuuji to the point where he was throwing objects of a more substantial size at him.
"It was just a suggestion…."
"A completely unnecessary one," was the angry reply as Ryuuji turned away, returning to the important task of combing his hair.
Seeing that, Honda couldn't help but let out a sigh of relief at that… by returning to the task at hand, it appeared that Ryuuji wouldn't be throwing anything else at him. Well, hopefully… Ryuuji tended to be rather unpredictable, and it was hard to tell what he was going to do without some type of warning.
"It was just a suggestion!" he repeated desperately, as if by doing so he might be able to turn the clock back so that Ryuuji didn't throw things at him so often.
"And I didn't appreciate it."
"You could have just said that. There wasn't exactly any need to throw things at me!"
The only reply he got was a very even stare, and he shook his head in frustration, "It isn't my fault you made such a stupid mistake and ended up sleeping with Kaiba. The only person you can blame that for is yourself and Kaiba, but you don't know for sure."
Ryuuji didn't stop in the furious brushing of his hair, although it almost looked like the comb was going to break if his movements got anymore furious.
"What are you trying to say, Honda?" his voice was icy cold, a tone that Honda had only heard before from… well, Kaiba Seto, of course.
Honda frowned and finally said what had been on his mind ever since he had come across Ryuuji abusing his pillow, "Stop blaming me for what happened to you. Stop blaming other people! Jeez, can't you just live with it and move on? It happened! Big deal! I'm sure Kaiba doesn't care anymore… why should you? It was a mistake… don't spend the rest of your life moping over it. It doesn't change anything."
"I'm not moping," Ryuuji hissed.
"Well, it sure looks like that," Honda replied nastily as he got up, massaging his forehead even while he started to walk out of the room. "You better hurry up, Otogi… when you're ready I'll drive you over to the convention on my way to work. Maybe you should take some of the time you usually spend on your hair to think about what I just said, eh?"
He hadn't really meant to sound so cruel, but by that point he didn't really care. He had spent a little too much time being stuck with Ryuuji, and he honestly didn't think that he could handle it anymore without blowing a fuse. Which was more or less what he had just done… but that was a different story (he wasn't sure how that was a different story, but he was convinced that it was so he chose to leave it at that).
Ryuuji, on the other hand, didn't do what he wanted to do. He was tempted to, truly… tempted to just blow up at Honda but it seemed like he had already done that and it apparently did not have much of an affect on the brunette. And there really was no point in blowing up again if there hadn't been any use the first time, was there? Sure, it would make him feel better… but it would only be temporary and he figured that it wasn't a good thing to get the person who was providing you with rides for an indefinite period of time really pissed off at you.
So he kept his thoughts to himself, a rare show of self-control, and just watched as Honda left the room, slamming the door behind him. Honda didn't tend to get so angry like that, but… well, maybe he had been just a bit of a pain to live with.
Just a bit though.
Not that he would ever tell Honda that, he thought to himself very definitely as he finally managed to pull his hair up. There were just some things that you would never admit to even the person who you considered to be your closest friend… and while this shouldn't have been one of them, the rules of friendship did tend to differ depending on who was making the rules.
Ryuuji liked to make up the rules of a game. He didn't like to change them halfway through, so he always made sure that the rules were in his favor before he ever bothered to start in the first place. Of course, he didn't look at everything like a game… but sometimes, you could think of them as one.
And once you started thinking of things on those types of terms… he fumbled with his hair band as he struggled to think of a way to finish that thought.
Much to his disconcertment, by the time he left the apartment twenty minutes later, he still hadn't thought of any way to complete the sentence.
~ * ~
Honda was surprised when Ryuuji apologized for his behavior, and the conversation that followed the sudden apology managed to be neutral and not at all upsetting to either of the two men. Honda could admit, privately at least, that he had been a bit of an ass when he had suddenly asked Ryuuji if he was planning on getting a boyfriend, but otherwise he didn't really feel any guilt for what had happened. Ryuuji made no indication to the otherwise, so both figured that the rather nasty argument they'd had that morning was behind them.
To be truthful, if one had asked him, Honda would have said that he thought Ryuuji was just nervous about the convention, rather than actually being repentant of his prior actions. Ryuuji was not prone to apologies, and he usually didn't think that he was wrong even when it was extremely apparent. Still, whatever the circumstances, Honda accepted them and never bothered to look back.
And if one was to ask Ryuuji the same question later, he might have replied in the same exact way. He was indeed nervous, although he wasn't sure why. Easily, his company was the smallest of the participants, but was that really any reason to be nervous? He had been extremely successful, all things considered, especially with the huge setback he had received when the Black Crown had burned down shortly after its opening [3]. Not that he was particularly saddened by the event; he had finally managed to get away from his father and become more independent. It was almost a miracle that he had still managed to get his game up and running on his own, and so he really shouldn't have had any reason to be anxious.
Besides, it just wasn't like him.
Most people who knew him probably would have laughed if they had seen him at that moment. They would have thought it was a joke, or just an act, rather than it being real. But truthfully, Ryuuji was nervous… he was worried about making some type of hideous mistake that would set him back a couple of years. DDD was successful, yes, but any little road bumps and he could find himself in some makeshift hell for a long period of time.
Although he might have already completely destroyed his reputation after what had happened on Saturday night… he was pretty sure that nobody could possibly have not noticed that, even if he himself didn't remember all the details of what had transpired.
Still, head held high and the usual gracious smile on his lips, Ryuuji strode into the building as if he had suddenly shed all the burdens that had been trying to hold him back and nothing could possibly stop him now. What was in the past was… well, in the past, and besides, Honda was right. He shouldn't waste his time thinking about what had happened. It was too late to change anything, so he might as well learn to live with his mistake.
The smile slid right off his face when he found himself staring into all too familiar blue eyes.
Commentary:
[1] --;; I'm sorry, rayemars-san. I couldn't resist.
[2] Japanese term for the host of the Sennen item spirits (although technically Yami no Malik isn't a spirit…); basically, it's just a collective term for Yuugi, Ryou, and Malik.
[3] Volume 17; when Ryuuji's father, Mr. Clown, tried to put the Sennen puzzle back together, the puzzle created an illusion of him being trapped in an endless puzzle maze. Scared, Mr. Clown accidentally knocked over a candle, causing the entire game shop to burn up.
Well… this chapter took me a while to write. X_x I kept getting stuck on the scene where Seto was doing his little bout of introspection, but I finally managed it… and it didn't help that I got sidetracked by other fics too. ^^;;
Anyhow, not much for me to say again. Wow, this story is sure short on author notes, isn't it? :p
See you all in two weeks! ^_^
Pikachumaniac