Chapter Twenty-Five: Hypnosis
Dr. Tseusaki thought I needed hypnosis or some other collection of crap to find any bit of the truth. But if I took that route, no doubt the "truth" would be completely skewed even with the changes in protocol. My brother needed to be found, not just have a cock-and-bull story about him concocted to put an end to it all that wouldn't really be an end.
Still, my options were running out.
Hypnosis. I started researching that mode of awakening memory. Suggestion just sounded like asking me to lie, and guided visualization was a definite negative as well: Seto Kaiba would not spend time idly daydreaming at the behest of his doctor. Age regression…doing that would be a sin and against my nature. I would never do anything so undignified.
So…
That left hypnosis. And even that nearly overstepped my bounds. But desperation opened doorways long abandoned and scorned.
Admittedly, from my research, some of which included the packets the psychiatrist had given me, hypnosis wasn't quite as bad as it had been. The precautions that doctors now followed almost included common sense, and finding common sense in medical world certainly surprised me. Given their history of treatments for any type of malady, I had actually, occasionally, allowed myself to look upon this century with a bit of optimism. Technology and improvements to such did that to a person. After all, at least doctors no longer hung patients by their feet to calm them down. Then again, not too long ago, the lobotomy had been the best way to soothe an angry person…
If I were actually considering hypnosis, I knew I must be getting weak.
Staring out the window where clouds threatened rain, the slushy type common in winter, though real snow wasn't expected for another month, I realized what I had secretly known for a long time.
I was weak. Without Mokuba, I was nothing.
The next morning, I groggily opened my eyes to see the sunlight streaming in. Odd…it had been the first night where I had not been fatigued through a constant barrage of nightmares.
But, amazingly, I had slept in late. The sun beamed into my room, highlighting the reddish streaks in the wooden shelves.
What a strange morning.
The phone rang in my room, startling off the last vestiges of sleep from my eyes and mind. My feet slipped to the floor, and I raced to pick it up. Breathlessly, the receiver at my ear, the voice of the police marshal told me to come to the station.
"We've a lead in the case at last."
Those words entered my ears and nothing else registered. In a flash, hardly recalling to put on less wrinkly clothing (having slept in what I had been wearing the previous day), the limousine waited for me without my having to call it.
Riding to the station took far too long. No way, no conceivable way we'd ever get there. The road seemed to melt away before the road and go on and on, through deserts, and mountains, and forests, and over water…
Amazingly, we did reach the station after an eternity of blasted nerves and new gray hairs. My heart was pounding so hard that it seemed someone had replaced it with a vibrating toy that wouldn't shut off.
Inside the station, the police turned to me with whoops and cheers as I strode into their midst. Glaring around, wanting some information, I swooped down upon the nearest man, demanding to know what was going on. Had they found my brother? What was the lead? What were they doing now?
"Mr. Kaiba, Mr. Kaiba," one said affably and smiling too similarly to that psychiatrist. "Look over here."
He moved to the side along with other officers who had been grinning and waiting to go aside like a curtain. And as my eyes traveled from the men's twinkling eyes down their creaseless uniforms, they alighted on something—someone—that they could have gazed at forever without growing weary.
"M-Moku-Mokuba. Mokuba! MOKUBA!"
He ran into my widespread arms, and as I returned the affectionate hug and squeezed him tightly to me, without shame, the tears fell glittering into my brother's soft black hair. Tighter and tighter I hugged him, seeming never to have enough substance to feel like I could let go.
No…
It couldn't be happening. My brother was disintegrating! He wasn't in my arms any longer! He vanished again!
All around me, the walls whirled to blur the policemen and walls into one constant dull shade of gray-brown. Then, screaming my brother's name once more, I woke up from my bed and saw only darkness.
Panting, I tried to grasp the feeling of ecstasy that had enwrapped me upon seeing my brother, but it had all faded, all left me long behind.
"Mokuba, please come home," I whispered to the stillness, the dark utterly complete.
Nightmares or false hopes. I couldn't stand either of them, but I couldn't have chosen which one was worse.
My tormented cry rang once more throughout the mansion: "Mokuuubaaaaaaaa!"
The real morning dawned with much of its usual harsh clarity. Light crept to my faded window glass, and a headache throbbed with its usual dull intensity behind my eyes as I suffered from complete lack of sleep once more. This, I knew, was no dream. But I damned well wished it were.
Chuckling softly, I murmured, "Can't decide what dreams I'd rather be without, but as to reality, I'd have no problem getting rid of it. Someone must be having a field day planning my life and its irony."
A simple cup of coffee and a glass of water would sustain me for the rest of the morning. My stomach cringed and squirmed away from anything more. For once, I knew what it was like for those pathetic dolts who claimed to be lovesick and unable to eat. But this love was different. Deeper, stronger. Realistic: that was what it was. And that was why a part of my being had been ripped from my soul; without it, how could I function through the daily routines that were so much less important?
The pamphlets and papers about the different options available to retrieve a lost memory shone in their own hopeful light. If these dreams and lack of leads continued…I just might turn to them.
"What I really want to do…what I really need to do…is force the truth out of those who were there." Remembering where the eyewitness account had ended a couple sessions ago, I immediately snapped out, "Bakura was certainly suspicious. Saying he, too, didn't remember things and only awoke to see my brother convulsing."
The collected notes and reports of those present in the haunted mansion that night had been given to me by Dr. Tseusaki in the hopes that if I learned them well enough or studied and thought about them hard enough I'd come to some recollections on my own.
I skimmed the pages until I came to Bakura's report, swiftly rifling through what he mentioned about not exactly knowing what happened at the end of our meeting about school and turning immediately to his description of Mokuba writhing on the floor, clutching his head.
Even now, the words hurt, and I didn't want to have to read them again, even with the knowledge that my brother had not found the end that way and he had not vanished at that time.
Taking a breath, I plunged into the notes on what ensued:
I didn't know what was going on or where I was. I don't recall at all what happened up to then from the point I left off. Mokuba was screaming. I bent over him, trying to discover what the problem was, but nothing stood out as what was causing him harm. He stopped screaming rather quickly, though, and lay white-faced on the ground. I said his name softly and looked him over, but he was soon stirring. I helped him to his feet. He looked at me in slight confusion, rubbing his head. Then, he turned to the couple workers who had tracked him down in the dark and reassured him he was fine. Mokuba smiled shakily at me and urged me to continue on with the game. I asked what he was going to do and what had happened. He never said what had occurred and just smiled once more and nodded at his workers to accompany him. I did as he requested and resumed the maze. Nothing more of Mokuba did I see that night.
The account proved far too suspicious. Why would Bakura have just let Mokuba walk away claiming he was fine? And how did anyone know Bakura hadn't been doing something and stopped, acting to be helping my brother when the servants arrived? All appeared too calm a tale after such drastic actions, and I resolved to find him.
Looking for the foreign boy immediately after the disappearance had been ill advised by my psychiatrist, and I had actually heeded it right then. Later, when I tried, Bakura had always been with his friends, and with those two idiots claiming me a murderer, not much had been learned.
This time, I felt prepared to force out the answers however I needed to. He had to know something. I knew that. It hadn't been the entire story. And I would learn it soon.
Bakura would talk. Hell, they would all talk. I could be very…persuading.
The driver halted at the corner of the street, but it wasn't the best parking job he had ever done. Being yelled at and belittled might do that to a person, but I hardly cared about the emotional well-being and self-esteem of my workers right then.
The shop wasn't here.
This had been exactly where Mokuba and I had gone to get that dragon pendant. The rundown shack had been right before where I was standing. Now?
Nothing of value to me whatsoever. Some place to trade bikes stood there now.
Just to make certain there had been no mistake, just to make certain I wasn't going senile along with losing my memory, I walked around the entire area. But the shop that we had gone into wasn't there. Anywhere. And I remembered it being here. A flashbulb memory of what the shop looked like placed it right where my limo had parked.
"What happened to the store that used to be here before you came here?" I asked the manager of the bike shop.
"Excuse me? You must be mistaken. We've been at this present location for nearly thirty-seven years now."
The damned shop was older than I was, but I was the one who felt like I was getting Alzheimer's.
"You're sure?" What an idiotic question. I was losing my mind.
"Yes, sir, I'm sorry. But I'm quite sure we've been here for that long."
Of course they had…how else would they have been so rundown they would fall over with one well-placed kick?
Without another word, I shoved through the door, housing a brief, flitting thought that maybe my strong exit would be the one movement needed to send the building crashing down forever.
"Let's get out of here."
"Back to your estate, sir?" the driver asked nervously, already starting to pull out the instant my command had been barked.
"No. We're going to Moto's." Bakura could most likely be found there. And Yugi himself. Yugi had been the one to mention where the store was. Someone there would give me answers.
On the drive over, I opened my locket and looked at my brother's youthful, happy face. No one had a right to dim the light in my brother's eyes. I would find out who had taken him away from me and get my answers.
Mokuba would soon be back with me. Two months and twenty-five days later or not, I knew my brother would be found.
No other option existed.