"Who knows what could happen
Do what you do just keep on laughin'
One thing's true, there's always a brand new day
I'm gonna live today like it's my last day..."
Title: If In Nite (1)
This chapter is dedicated to all the friends I have had, have, and will have. I hope they'll all be as crazy and as fun as these guys! Much love to you all!
Summary: Seto Kaiba had always been distant. Seto Kaiba had always kept himself isolated. Seto Kaiba is cruel, cold, and icy-hearted. That's because Seto Kaiba... doesn't exist...
Chapter One: Concerning Pencils...
In high school, there is an unwritten rule about who picks up a pencil if it should fall on the ground.
Yugi Mutou, his tongue between his teeth and his head bowed in concentration, was busily scribbling away at the math final. And if you listened closely, you would be able to hear the gentle hum of the gears in his head spinning their little hearts out. This test was a major chunk of their grade and Yugi had studied for an entire week to get all the formulas down pat. He WAS going to ace this test or die trying.
Two seats behind Yugi sat the infamous Joey Wheeler, the terror of any sane teacher. Completely nonchalant, he quietly doodled a rather good doodle of the Flaming Swordsman heroically battling the flames from a Curse of Dragon on his otherwise empty scantron. His eyes lazily glanced up at the clock, took note of the time, and while the teacher's back was turned, discreetly attempted to sneak a look at Tea Gardner's paper (as she sat to the left of him).
Tea carefully positioned herself between Joey and her precious paper when she felt him staring at her. She had fifteen problems left to go and she'd be damned before letting Wheeler copy all her hard-worked answers.
Joey waited until the teacher bent down to rummage through a file cabinet. Catching Tea's glare, he mouthed, "Friends don't let friends fail!"
The teacher cursed softly, and she opened another file cabinet and fumbled through that one.
Tea took that opportunity to hiss something back at Joey. Something that had nothing to do with friends at all (except for perhaps the letter "f"), and the statement made Joey to blink opened-mouthed. Either the test was stressing out Tea more than Joey had thought or it was that time of month again.
Joey hurriedly closed his mouth and returned his eyes to his test as the teacher slammed the file cabinet shut and gazed back over the class. Joey sighed and decided to just use his old standby. Neatly and profoundly, he bubbled in: A, A, A, A, A, B, A, A, A, A, C, A... and so on and so forth. Five minutes later, he was done. He smiled happily at the resulting "finished" scantron and perfected the rippling muscles of his Flaming swordsman drawing.
Across the room, Tristan Taylor groaned as though dying and hit his head against the desk with a loud and dull, "THUNK!" The teacher looked up from her file cabinet search in alarm, saw that it was "only" Tristan, and resumed her quest for that elusive file. Tristan gave in to the inevitable and unknowingly followed Joey's example: A, A, A, A, A, B, A, A, A, A, C, A...
Seto Kaiba, to Yugi's right, was naturally quite finished. His icy blue eyes flashed as they perused through the pages of a book titled "Why the World Is Already Yours." He flipped another page, seemingly absorbed in its contents.
If the pencil should fall under the desk of its owner, then all is okay. The owner simply swoops down, picks up the pencil, and continues working.
Yugi frowned. The answer to number forty-one seemed a little too extreme. He reread the problem, his lavender eyes grew dark and worried. There were only seven minutes let on the clock and still nine more problems to go. Letting out a breath when he found his error, he flipped his pencil to use the eraser when, oops! The thing slipped out of his fingers and twirled gracefully to meet the floor.
However, if the pencil should roll (as it most commonly does on tile flooring) there is the chance that the pencil is out of its owner's "desk territory." In this case, it is in someone else's "desk territory" and thus presents the age-old problem. Ultimately who is obligated to pick up the pencil?
Yugi nearly wailed in despair, as his pencil rolled away from him. He still had eight problems left and the clock was ticking ever faster.
This is where the hierarchical social status in high school comes into play. If the owner of the pencil is friendly with the person whose "desk territory" the pencil is in then there is no conflict. The desk territory friend-owner would return the pencil in a gesture of goodwill, usually with a smile. Both would return to their work. No harm done.
Yugi's eyes widened at the sheer horror of it all.
The pencil came to its stop under the desk of none other than the great Seto Kaiba.
Unfortunately, in quite a few cases, the owner of the "desk territory" is under no such good terms with the pencil owner, or the pencil owner is of a lower social class than the desk territory owner. In that situation, the desk territory owner would condescendingly lift an eyebrow as the pencil owner would blush and embarrassedly reach over in an uncomfortable position and pick up their own pencil. And sometimes, this can be a very humiliating experience; especially, if you had believed yourself, as the pencil dropper, to be on an equal level as the desk territory owner.
There was no denying it. Yugi was just a touch too short to reach that far. His only option was to stand up, walk over, and kneel at the feet of Seto Kaiba to retrieve his pencil. He lamented ever finishing his test and was about to push his chair back to stand when the unthinkable happened.
Seto Kaiba reached under his desk and calmly placed it back on Yugi's desk with one capable long arm. He did all this without taking his eyes from his book.
Yugi gaped.
From two desks behind Yugi, Joey, who had witnessed the entire thing, also gaped.
Tea, on Joey's left, attracted by the movement of Joey's jaw dropping, glanced up in time to see Kaiba returning a pencil on Yugi's desk. She, too, gaped.
And from across the room, Tristan, now finished bubbling in the scantron with random letters, looked up in time to see the whole gang gaping at one cool, collected Seto Kaiba.
Tristan shrugged, and after a moment's more hesitation, he gaped as well – for the good of consistency, if you follow my meaning.
Seto, supremely still unaware of the attention, kept reading.
But sometimes, just sometimes, the desk territory owner will return the pencil, even if he/she is of a higher status. This could mean one of two things. Either the desk territory owner just wants to more firmly establish their superiority ("Look at me, I'm picking up your pencil because only I have the power to do so and I do what I please, you foolish mortal")...
After five more seconds, Yugi tore his wide eyes from Kaiba to hurriedly finish his test.
Two desks behind him, an insect, most likely a fly, cheerfully flew into the open mouth of Joey. He began to hack and cough wildly. The teacher looked up from yet another file cabinet drawer, saw Joey spasm in his seat, assumed it was just another of his efforts for attention, and went back to looking through more files.
On Joey's left, Tea rolled her eyes in what she also believed to be Joey's antics to throw the class into chaos and return to her test. Pushing aside contemplating Seto's motives for later, she bubbled in answer number forty. There were only five minutes left, after all.
Across the room, Tristan noticed his friend's face turning blue, and knocked his chair over in his rush to aid him.
And still, Seto Kaiba, read on.
... or it could lead to one of the strongest relationships a person could ever have.
By the time the bell had rung, almost everyone had forgotten about the whole Kaiba-pencil thing.
The teacher was too busy being furious at Tristan and Joey for disrupting her class and too busy being seriously ticked off that she never really found that folder.
Tristan was too busy explaining to the teacher that Joey had really been choking.
Yugi was too busy defending Joey at Tristan's side.
Joey was too busy spitting out fly wings.
And Tea was too busy arguing with the teacher that thirty minutes was definitely not long enough for fifty problems, so she should be allowed more time next class to complete it. And when she heard the gist of Tristan's/Yugi's argument, she too joined their cause and proudly proclaimed that Joey Wheeler was her friend and that she trusted her friends and that she would always defend her friends.
After that, Tristan, Yugi, the teacher, and Joey, were too busy sweat-dropping.
But there was one who did not forget the gesture of unexpected kindness.
One who was in no way too busy to think about it.
The millennium puzzle glinted.
Yami sat on a lonely stone stairway in his soul room, one hand supporting his chin as he replayed the moment again and again in his head and wondered why it bothered him so.
Subtly blocking the bond between him and Yugi (Yugi's indignation at the wrongful accusation of his friend was uncomfortably loud) so he could think more clearly, he came up with the answer in three minutes time.
The way that Seto Kaiba had moved, the way his arm just curved downward to retrieve the pencil, the way he never looked up... it all seemed so natural, like that was the way it should be.
It was as though the very notion of Kaiba taking care of him was completely normal, rational, and simply bloody fine.
And for some odd reason, it made Yami feel very warm inside.
Yami scowled at the gray walls surrounding him.
He did not like what it implied, oh no, he did not like the implications at all.
Dropping pencils is a very delicate area to tread upon. If you cannot deal with the consequences, it is recommended not to make a habit of doing so. It can start the wildest of complications...
Seto Kaiba slipped his book into his briefcase and exited the room with a brilliant whirl of a blue school uniform.
-End-
Author's Notes:
(1) If you haven't already noticed "If In Nite" spells out "Infinite" if you switch the letters around. O, the cleverness of me!
I have big plans for this story. Really, really big plans.
Plans that make my head hurt just thinking about all the future chapters I have to write and how I really should be updating my other stories... (whine-whine)
And not to mention that all my teachers are mental and are assigning way too much homework than humanly possible – granted that I'm not exactly human, but still...
You're probably not going to see an update for a while.
I have no sense of commitment. Review, and I might develop one.
Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh. I do not own song at the top: "Who Knows" by Avril Lavigne.