Chapter Thirty-Four: Blank Spots Filled

Yugi suspects the truth. I think the whole gang does. But my brother never means to hurt me. I know it! So that's part of the reason I invited them over. I want them to see that Seto isn't really that bad, especially not to me.

Though sometimes, I wonder what I did to make my brother get this way.

What can I do to make him back to the way he was? Back when I was ignored by him all the time, it really hurt. And now I can't decide which hurts worse—before when he ignored me or now when he keeps releasing his anger on me.

Both must mean that I'm not a good brother.

Watching more of the tape grew exceedingly trying. Here I sat, two months and twenty-eight days in the future, unable to help him. But even worse, on the day all the events transpired, I had been unable to help him, too. I had not even stayed with him.

Mokuba screamed in agony for too long of a time. Each second it reverberated and locked itself within my heart where I would never forget the sound of it.

Then, everything went silent. Bakura had stopped calling my brother's name, and my brother had ceased screaming at last.

"Mokuba?"

"Uhhh…Bakura?"

The camera hadn't moved in awhile, not as if much existed to see. But I soon learned why they had remained prone.

"Oh, no…I hope I didn't ruin the glasses…"

"As if it matters that they fell off your face, kiddo," I whispered, seeing once more my brother's dim face as he examined them. A light approached from behind him, too, and the camera dizzily switched view as Mokuba put them back on his face. Then he turned toward the workers coming with flashlights.

"Is everything all right here, Mr. Kaiba? We heard screams."

"I'm just fine. Nothing really happened. This is a haunted house, remember? People ought to be screaming. Bakura, I think you should continue with the game."

"Wh-what are you going to do? What happened?"

That soft voice was definitely Bakura's. My brother, however, never answered him. By the flashlight beams and sounds of steps, the workers left with my brother. Apparently, whatever had happened had left my brother unchanged, unharmed. But I couldn't easily believe that. A boy does not scream as my brother was and then just stand up totally fine. It couldn't be true…

"You look through lenses that tint the world with logic. You see the world only through the perceptions you believe in. But what if what is happening is clearest through the belief in 'fairy tales?'" That was what Shadi had said to me. But how could he know anything?

"You guys can get back to work. I see Yugi up ahead and I want to see how he's doing!"

To me, I could tell my brother feigned how eager he felt, that the trauma had left more residue on my brother's window-glass mood than he let on. But the servants left as he ordered.

"Yugi!"

"Mokuba? Since when did you wear glasses, Mokuba?"

"These? These aren't real glasses. They're camera ones! My brother is letting me wear them and I'm filming my creation."

"Mokuba, was that scream real awhile back?"

"Well…yeah. It was me. But I must have just been having a hallucination or something. Everything's fine now."

"Really. Even there?"

Yugi had just pointed to my brother's chest. I remembered that some wound had rested there…not a burn mark from the dragon pendant, though. A cut and a bruise both, like something had imbedded in him.

Apparently, at my brother's silence, Yugi had to continue.

"Mokuba, I'm so glad to see you wearing that gift I gave to you."

"Are you joking? I've been wanting something like this forever! It's my favorite object!"

I still couldn't believe Mokuba had never told me he had wanted it. And I couldn't believe how long he had hid it from my sight.

Steps approached. They were mine.

"Mokuba! I heard screams—"

"I'm just fine, big brother! The servants came as soon as I screamed, and they'll tell you, I'm not injured!"

"Oh, really? Then what about there?" I, too, pointed at my brother's chest. He had winced when shifting position, hand fluttering to his torso, I remembered.

"…"

"Mokuba?"

"…All right. It hurts a little."

"Why?"

"Something weird happened. I fell down there."

A lie, I could tell. How could I not last time? When I asked to see, he lifted his shirt only as high as his abdomen. The glasses shot a downward angle at my brother's abdomen, and there five red marks decorated his flesh. Not terrible wounds, but enough to hurt someone. And they had gone right through his shirt. What on earth could have caused that? Bakura had to know something more…

Though the video did not show it, I knew Mokuba had lifted his shirt just far enough I caught a glimpse of blue and purple a little higher, though. And that wound he mentioned nothing of.

But now was the time for the video. So far, nothing too unusual had occurred. My major memory loss had happened around this time. Maybe, now, answers would find me.

Yugi said, "Well, I'll go on and continue in the game, Mokuba."

My brother didn't answer. After the sound of steps faded in the dimly lit area, the camera focused on my face. It was livid.

"What was that Yugi gave you?" Apparently, I overheard his conversation with Yugi.

"…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!"

"Then why would you want it?"

"Don't you get it, Seto? You may not like that stuff, but I do! Apparently, I know you better than you know me. And even Yugi knows me better than you do!"

I hated seeing this part. My face appeared so incensed…the tone sharp and sarcastic. Someone must have stomped, for the two of us had stopped moving and it sounded like one of us took a step.

"Oh, Yugi knows you better, does he? Was it Yugi who has lived with you all your life? Was it Yugi who protected you from bullies at the orphanage? Yugi who got you out of the orphanage and into a better life?"

"Better life? I hated Gozaburo!"

"Was it Yugi who defeated Gozaburo? Yugi who took over the company and switched it to gaming? Was it Yugi who invented Kaiba Land?"

"It was Yugi who saved me from your 'Experience of Death!' It was Yugi who saved me at Duelist Kingdom! He saved me when you couldn't. He saved me when you locked me away to go insane! Yugi has done plenty for me! He's—"

"Shut up! You want perfect little Yugi again? You want him to be your brother? Fine, then see if he'll bother to save you this time."

I leaned closer to my brother, and though I doubted it was me, I heard a low chuckle. But with the expression on my face, it most certainly could have been me.

"Seto, don't! Don't hurt me again!"

Again? I had never hit my brother…I loved my brother. Why would I have hurt him?

"Please, Seto!"

From the camera view, my brother must have backed up. I continued to approach, my face stony and somewhat…blank. But the eyes were enraged, fire illuminating their depths so that no light seemed needed to pick them out.

The fear in my brother's voice struck me, and I wanted—I wanted to murder myself.

By God…my arms reached out. I was trying to strangle my brother!

Impossible! Never! I refused to accept this. It must have been some kind of joke, some other tease like all the others. I loved my brother…

"B-bro-ther…"

The word, I almost missed it the word sounded so weak.

The camera never showed Mokuba's face, but I could imagine it, the look of betrayal and shock, the look of fear of me. Directly into the camera lens…directly into my brother's eyes—that was where my sadistic eyes remained focused. During the entire thing, I had watched my brother's eyes lose their light, lose their life, had felt his pulse weaken under my very hands, and I had…grinned.

The rest of the video played and I watched it like a mute zombie. The glasses fell off after I had carried my brother's body—my brother's corpse—for a little while. View changing rapidly, they went still and I could still see where I stored the body from the angle they fell.

The casket with the maggots. I buried him under all the worms, and being so small, he fit mostly under the permanently closed section, anyway. When I closed the lid once more, I made sure it fastened securely where someone most likely wouldn't think to look. Then, I had picked up the glasses and just in time.

Obviously, the reason I had put the body there was because someone approached. Yet, whoever came went past without coming into the room.

I scoped out the maze then, glasses still in hand. Where did I go? To the place where I could dispose of the body. The medieval room with the fireplace. The glasses I left near to fireplace.

Minutes passed, then, minutes in which none of these memories ever surfaced in my mind. For a moment, I humored myself that this was someone's idea of a sick joke…but it couldn't be.

From the angle of the glasses, they caught the door on camera. There I saw myself return and leave, return and leave…I brought more wood. Wood and various chemicals to ensure that nothing would remain.

Finally, I returned in the room carrying my brother's body once more. A few maggots rested in his hair and squirmed blissfully on his cooled flesh. Their time had come for their feast. But they'd never get a chance to.

My brother's body made a lot of black smoke as it sizzled and slowly lit on fire. I had nearly emptied the lighter fluid on the blaze to make my brother's body burn completely away to ash.

Hot…so hot and large the fire had to be. It didn't stay in the fireplace. But I made certain nothing else caught, and I probably put everything exactly back to rights as well. But there's no proof of that. The glasses had to burn, too, after all.

The tape turned black once more, as black as the memories that I couldn't recall and yet had to believe.

During all the two months and twenty-eight days, I had never opened my brother's journal. It was his private book. I had no right to look into it.

The diary had sat on one of my brother's stacks of things, probably because he had given no thought to hiding it. Or maybe, he had given thought and knew that people tended to overlook obvious places in plain view when searching for things. But he had never had to fear I'd look at it.

Even if the thoughts there might have showed some evidence of the "bully" who had beaten up my brother, even thinking that Mokuba might have had some glimpse or idea of "who could have kidnapped him," I could not breach the respect.

To read my brother's journal was to break the promise and bond between us. Doing so was as good as saying he was dead, for only then would I break a promise to Mokuba.

Except I learned twenty minutes ago that I had broken far more promises to my brother than merely those ones. Now, I had to see what other promises I had broken to my brother before I had broken his body. Now that my brother was dead and I had murdered him, no secrets remained to keep.

My brother has been acting really strange lately. He gets mad so easily, and so I tried to avoid him a lot recently.

I can't do anything right anymore.

Sometimes I wonder if my brother likes me much at all anymore.

He wouldn't stop trying to get the answers out of me, and I never said a word. I just came up here and locked the door.
I've never locked my brother out before.
But how could he not know he was the one who had clutched my arm so tightly it had bruised that badly?

Why, Seto?

I know he didn't mean it. But, well, my brother did something I can't forget or just ignore.
He hit me.

So that's part of the reason I invited them over. I want them to see that Seto isn't really that bad, especially not to me.

And now I can't decide which hurts worse—before when he ignored me or now when he keeps releasing his anger on me.
Both must mean that I'm not a good brother.

The truth in my brother's journal solidified all the memories I had newly gotten back, and the truth also vanquished all the untrue memories. It assured me that I truly had sunk into insanity. My jealousy of Yugi had grown far too potent.

I had never given my brother a birthday present as a deal for not being there for his birthday. Yugi had given my brother that gift, and Mokuba had never told me who had given it to him. My mind had created the belief in the dragon pendant, as well as the curse, to give my violent attitude excuses or to see a real reason I would ever bruise him or hit him. And it was no coincidence that I had hit my brother right where that amulet lay, right where the proof sat that Yugi had grown closer to my brother than I had. And hitting that necklace had only hurt my brother more, digging in its sharp edges.

Plus, I had had a habit of getting angry whenever I heard Mokuba talk about Yugi or if Yugi came over for any reason, mostly to just visit Mokuba. Only whenever Yugi had been here would I grow, occasionally, violent. Something minor, something petty, some comment Mokuba let slip about what a good duelist Yugi was or how nice Yugi was, and I would snap back. And once, I had grabbed his arm and dragged him away so he couldn't wave farewell to Yugi, not even noticing how tightly I had held his wrist. And the next day, when I noticed the bruising…I couldn't even remember doing it.

The day I had discovered the necklace Yugi had given him, when I learned who it was from…that had been the day I had hit him.

Surely, I had been going mad for months. It hadn't started just when my brother "disappeared." And he had never disappeared.

I had…

…murdered him.

I knew it as true as I knew anything. For once, not a doubt existed in my mind that this was a false memory. Not only was there proof, but I had been carrying the guilt with me for two months and twenty-eight days. The vision of worms eating my brother…that had come from the guilt of secreting my brother's body in the casket as I waited to move to where I could dispose of it. And the wood smoke plus the extra nasty tang had been when I burned my brother's body, burned it as long as I had to so nothing would be left.

And nothing was left.

I had nothing to live for anymore.

Lighter fluid was always kept next to the fireplace…