Chapter Twenty-Nine: When You Give a Man His Memory…

A trance like he had never seen it. So Dr. Tseusaki claimed when I came back to myself. He hadn't even reached "three" yet, but I had come out of the hypnotic state. And I had acted more riled up than most people ever become. Usually, the participants' limbs feel heavy and they do movement only on suggestion. But I had struggled to get up and do…something.

"It doesn't matter," I muttered. "I have what I needed." The doctor had handed over all that I said, and when I relearned what I had remembered minutes ago (odd to contemplate), I knew some of the places I had to go.

First, I noted all the things down in my journal, which had, despite myself, grown somewhat into a habit. It organized my mind, at least, and now that my brother was gone, using his gift for something, anything, felt more right.

The dry ice. Maybe that explained why I constantly saw foggy smoke. But dry ice didn't usually smell like wood smoke.

After all I had noted all the new information, I started choosing which place I needed to go next. No question about that existed. I had to go to Yugi's again.

I had blacked out. Someone had removed me from the picture out first, which probably explained why my memory had gone. And after that, Mokuba was gone. And who had been close enough to do something like that to me? Who had been manipulating my brother long before? And Yugi was the only one who had, naturally, a weapon to use to knock me out. Large golden Puzzles worked well for that.

At the gaming shop, my driver pulled to a smooth halt, but I didn't wait for the complete stop. As soon as I could jump out without unnecessary risks, I burst out and yanked open the front door, bells ringing wildly.

"Don't even ask," I said as the older man opened his mouth. Mr. Moto gaped at me as I hastened by, knowing exactly whose countenance I wanted to see in the living room area of the shop and house.

"What makes you think you can just barge into my house without even an explanation? Hey!" Solomon didn't bother following me, however.

My feet came to a sudden halt when I reached the doorway I stood at before, and utterly frozen, their stillness belied how quickly my eyes swept through the room. Empty? Lips curled in a sneering snarl, I whirled around to check every room in the hellhole. They had to be somewhere here. The losers never had anything worthwhile to do besides sit around and wait for others having more important schedules and lives to interrupt them. Why weren't they here?

Finally, as my hand automatically knocked on the door to Yugi's room, simply because I was thrusting it open and the force made the hollow thunk, evidence confronted me: Yugi called out.

"Huh? What do you want? Kaiba?"

"Yugi," I replied automatically, slightly taken aback, enough to stop moving. Then, my body resumed with its rigor. "Where are all your little friends? They have something better to do than be here just waiting to taunt me?"

Yugi ceased trying to write on a sheet of paper and turned his entire attention to me. "The gang was all here a little while ago. But they went home to work on their schoolwork. For once," he added with a small grin. The smile faltered, however, as he continued looking at me. "Why? What's the problem, Kaiba?"

"Everything!" I said darkly, focusing intently on him. "My brother has been gone for two months and twe—for almost three months. And you've been hiding things from me for a long time!"

"Huh? What are you talking about, Kaiba?"

"Don't toy with me! Curse you, tell me why you gave my brother that gift! And where were you when I was knocked out that night? Something smooth connected with my head, and I had just left you!"

Yugi shook his head in disbelief, eyes wide, when a light flickered below my eyesight. The eyes changed their wide-eyed stare and narrowed. Now, the other Yugi was glaring at me.

"Unhand me, Kaiba. And rein in your anger. Yugi honestly doesn't know what you're talking about. I was the one who gave your brother that gift."

Slowly, unaware I had grabbed Yugi's collar, I released him, muttering more curses and debating how best to continue. I never wanted the other Yugi to see me like this. Yami took over deciding how to continue for me.

"Now, what do you want?"

"Answers!" I snarled immediately, pacing three feet away from him. "You gave him a necklace, some pendant that night he vanished! You admitted it! What's the story behind that?"

The other Yugi smirked. "It was just a birthday gift, Kaiba. Can't a friend give another friend a gift?" He leaned back against the wall in his customary pose.

My hands clenched and unclenched as I walked back and forth. "It was a miniature of your puzzle! Why would my brother want something like that?"

"I told you; we were friends."

Scowling, I stopped pacing. "Use the present tense. My brother will be found—and quicker if you'd just cooperate."

"Believe whatever you want. But don't insinuate I'm not cooperating. I'll cooperate more than you want. I'll tell you things you never wanted to know." He crossed his legs, resting his weight completely on his left.

My eyes froze on his smug, serious face.

Then, my mouth spilled the words I forever regretted: "What do you mean?"

"You haven't heard this? You lost your memory? Of course you would have…I'd expect it of weak-willed souls like yourself, unable to deal with the truth of your own actions."

I forced myself to take a deep breath. Keeping my hand from lashing out proved harder, but I managed. "Stop criticizing me, you bastard, and just spit it out already!"

Solomon moved downstairs, and both of us went quiet until the steps faded. Then, the other Yugi continued, "Very well. You claim your brother had no reason to run away. Are you so sure? After all, being abused by a brother would seem reason enough to me."

Breathing seemed difficult, my lungs collapsing and throat constricting, but even so, I'd never moved as fast as I did then. And yet, somehow, he moved just as fast, expecting my lethal blows to rain down on him. When he reached the wall, he swiveled to face me.

Raising the Millennium Puzzle, he asked, "Want to suffer another Penalty Game? Then stay where you are and calm down! I told you this was something you wouldn't want to hear."

"Lies!" I growled a sigh, hating the trembling that set in my bones at the mention of another Penalty Game. "You're right. Why would I want to listen to lies?"

"Maybe you won't listen or believe me, but wouldn't you trust your brother?"

"What?" My mind reached a sudden possibility, and I grabbed at it. "You have him here! Where—"

"Calm down," Yami said, glaring. "I never said Mokuba was here. And I can't say where he is now. So stop believing me guilty. All I can tell you is what Mokuba confided in me. Me and Yugi. He was our friend, Kaiba. And he told us about how you hit him one day. Right on the chest."

What was he talking about? I'd never hurt my brother. Never!

"You must be completely demented, Yugi. I never hit my brother. One day, I admit, I came close, but I stopped myself in time. It was just some dragon pendant messing with my mind." That last line didn't seem as strong as it usually did to me. Instead of being completely strong and infallible, it was the wrong note in the composition that set the rest in an ugly jangle that made a listener uneasy. I remembered the hypnosis where I admitted no dragon pendant existed. But I could see it…

"A dragon pendant?" Yami scoffed. "I've never seen this dragon pendant before. Why don't you tell me what it looks like?"

If Yami refused to believe me, my mind turned against the truth revealed in the hypnosis; no way that punk was right and I was wrong. "Never seen it? My brother wore it all the time! Shows what kind of friend you were if you don't even know what he never took off. And you were the one who told him where to find it." Except that shop no longer existed, I added in my head, feeling a terrible headache welling up between my ears. Everything around me crumbled in a black and red whirl. But I refused to bow to it.

Yami crossed his arms and glanced at the wooden floor. Finally, frowning, he said, "I never told Mokuba where to go for anything. And I certainly don't ever remember seeing Mokuba wear anything besides his card locket. The only thing even close to what you're talking about is the gift I gave him the night he—disappeared."

Disliking how obvious it was that Yami still believed my brother beyond rescue, I tried to stop my mind from spinning out of control. Everything I knew or thought I knew was being displaced and what was real and what was fantasy was getting lost. Like a swirling maelstrom, everything combined and blurred, fact and fiction one and the other. Was Yami just toying with me, appreciating how uncomfortable I felt and unstable? Did he like to see people questioning themselves?

"Stop messing with my mind, Yugi! Just prove to me, somehow, that it wasn't your neck-dangle that knocked me unconscious and…and your aid to the kidnappers in taking away my brother!"

"I don't have to prove anything to you, Kaiba. You're the one who should be proving your innocence. Tell me why I should believe you're innocent when I heard you and your brother arguing as you left me, when I saw the bruise you left on him, when I saw the fear in his eyes when he looked at you in your anger. Tell me something to make me believe you could possibly be innocent of the reason your brother has been gone for nearly three months." The line of his mouth grew so thin it nearly vanished from his face.

I had argued with Mokuba after leaving Yugi? A real fight, not some playful banter? At the mention of the argument, my pounding head seemed to do so harder and echo the strains of a past conversation…

"What was that Yugi gave you?"

"…Nothing."

"Nothing? You looked really excited to have it, and I heard you saying it was something you really wanted."

"…"

"You really wanted it and you'd never even told me about it?"

"You wouldn't've cared."

"You never gave me the chance to care."

"It isn't something you'd be pleased to give me, anyway. It's too close to that 'mumbo-jumbo nonsense' you're always talking about!"

No…surely I hadn't been arguing with my brother over such a foolish fact. I had just found him alive and well; how could I suddenly turn so critical? But even so, I wouldn't have hurt him. Not that far.

When I looked again around the room, it was Yugi who stood here, asking if I had learned anything from the Spirit of the Puzzle.

"Not enough."

"If it's answers you seek, there are a couple who could give them to you, Kaiba." As my shaken eyes returned to Yugi's face, a faint trembling and chill entrapped my bones. He felt sorry for me. "I suppose you wouldn't want to ask Pegasus to see if he would help you. But Shadi, he could enter your soul and tell you the truth." Yugi spoke as if these sorts of ordeals happened as often as people jaywalked.

"Shadi? Who the hell is that? And what kind of goose chase are you leading me on? Just tell me the answers yourself!"

He shook his head, gaze concerned. "I don't know anything more than what I've said. Shadi is the one able to read souls. He is the one you must seek out. But how to find him, I know little of. No doubt, if you started gathering Millennium Items, he'd come find you, as he is the moderator of them." He muttered something that sounded like "Bakura," but I did not pay attention.

Me? Collect the heavy pieces of gold that made such a bad fashion statement?

"Or…" Yugi seemed to have just remembered something as he dug around in a bag. "I have this." He held out something flittering in the light.

Ishizu's necklace. The one that had caused me so many headaches during my tournament. I glared at it.

"This, too, may help you find answers. I'll loan it to you in the hopes it will give you answers or Shadi will come calling to learn why you have it."

I turned my back to Yugi and crossed my arms, heaving a sigh. My eyes focused on the chipped wood of Yugi's bedroom door. "Great…I must be losing my mind. This necklace will either help me see things I don't believe in or it'll bring some guardian down on me in a rage."

"Believe it or not, Kaiba. But if you want to know what happened to your brother, these are the only ways I can think of." He saw me turn to glare at him and added, "What else happened once you and your brother left Yami is buried somewhere in your mind or your brother's, not mine."

Taking the Millennium Necklace with one last ugly glance toward it, I stared at Yugi. He stood there in his awkward stance, arms hanging loosely, and eyes very concerned and pitying. Yet he had tried to help me. And so had that blasted Spirit of the Puzzle. That annoyed me far more than his out-dueling me in a fair competition.

With a last nod, I breezed out of his room and out of the store, ignoring whatever Solomon called after me. My limousine pulled away from the store, and this time, we could go back to the mansion. Not home, but the mansion. During the entire car ride, I replayed what transpired in the room and struggled to hold on to the facts that always seemed to slip from my mind.

No matter what, it seemed whenever I sought answers, I simply found more enigmas.