Chapter Fifteen

Mokuba was in his room when Seto passed his door. He was playing something loud. A video game from the sound of the music and clashing sound effects. The music was faintly familiar. Tinny, with the thumping of midi drums and violin. He shook his head and continued. Only to freeze to a halt outside his office.

The door was open.

Seto peeked inside. For a moment he thought it was empty. Maybe he had left it open the night before when he had been struggling to sleep and paced back and forth between his bedroom and the office in a bid to work himself into blessed unconsciousness. Or, more likely, Mokuba had come in there for something. He was always leaving doors open.

He caught movement and his heart seemed to stop.

Kisa was in his office, standing at one of his bookshelves. Her fingers stroked along the spine of an old leather tome, faded and cracking with age. She wore a faded pair of jeans and an old band t-shirt. Even the casualness of her attire didn't prevent the simmer that ignited at the sight of her. Perhaps his body had gone too long without her. His hands itched to reach out, to touch, to hold. He licked his lips and wanted no more than to taste her. Her scent, her taste, the feel of her skin. There was a sudden and overwhelming fear that he'd forgotten them. He needed them. He needed the high only she could bring.

She sighed, shoulders falling with the weight of her breath, and slid the book back into place on the shelf. There was a sadness to her that he had never seen before, suffering he knew he caused. The knowledge extinguished the flames of his desire. He'd been expecting her to call, or even text. He didn't know if he was ready to see her in person, but it was too late now. There was no way out.

The door clicked as he eased it shut.

Her head whipped up. "Oh! Uh…" She wrapped her arms around herself. "I, uh... I got your text."

"I see." He couldn't keep eye contact. He went to his desk instead and stored the little white pharmacy bag he carried in the top drawer.

"Are you okay?"

"Why wouldn't I be?"

Her hands landed on her hips. "Don't snap at me. You're the one who asked if we could talk."

"Shouldn't you be with your sisters?"

"They flew out today. I was on my way home when I got your text. I called the office, but you weren't there, so I came here. Mokuba said you'd be home soon and said I could wait."

"A call would have sufficed."

"I'm sorry?"

"There was no reason to visit me at my home to report your reassignment." Seto sat in his desk chair. "You should have had your agency call or-"

"You're doing it again."

"Doing what?"

"Jumping to the worst-case scenario." There was a hint of a smile on her lips. "I'm not quitting."

He tried to keep the relief from his voice. "That so?"

"Yeah. I just… I wanted to see you." She crossed the room so she stood on the opposite side of the desk. Not so close that he could touch her, but not so far that he thought she would turn and bolt at any moment. "Look, I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner. It was wrong, but can you blame me? You were right there in front of me. I was so happy that I finally found you, but you looked at me like I was nothing and it hurt."

"Because you were." Seto sagged into his chair and looked away. "At the time, at least. I apologize for not recognizing you, but I don't remember anything from before we were adopted. There were extenuating circumstances that occurred afterward that took precedence."

"You mean made you forget."

"In short."

Her expression softened. "Your 'father', right?"

Seto flexed his fingers. "I'm still forced to call him that. By Hoffmann. By the Press. I would forget his name if I had the option, if it wasn't also mine."

"You know he wasn't your real dad, right? You had one. A good one."

He stared at her as he tried to remember, but nothing came and he shook his head.

She pulled something out of her pocket. It was small, impossible to see under the fold of her fingers. She held it out to him. He hesitated. He could still say 'no', could tell her to leave and forget the whole thing.

He reached out a hand and she dropped the object into his palm. It was a hairpin. Thin and flat, with a crude pink enamel flower glued to the end. It looked as if it'd been repaired dozens of times.

A dull ache made the space behind his eyes feel swollen.

The room was dark, ghostly in the faint white light reflecting off the snow. He could just make out the shape of her bed in the corner, her dresser, a little desk, and a chest overflowing with old toys.

She was already returning to the corner, where a pile of blankets had been set up. She wrapped them around her shoulders before picking up the old matted brown bear she must have been hugging before he so rudely interrupted her mourning.

"Seto?" Kisa rounded the desk. "What is it?"

Seto closed his eyes, put a hand to his head, and tried to concentrate on the thin thread of memory that was already slipping away.

It was cold.

His breath puffed out in clouds of white steam as he ran across the street. He hadn't bothered with his jacket. It wasn't like he was going that far. His dad would give him a stern talking to about it if he ended up sick in a couple days.

He didn't care. She might not have wanted a party anymore, but he'd worked on her present all last weekend and he wasn't going to let the day pass without giving it to her.

He rounded the house, with its three floors and blue shingles, and stood before the trellis that spanned from the ground to her bedroom window. He spared the hairpin in his hand a look before stuffing it in his pocket and starting to climb.

Seto cursed under his breath the whole way up. Cursed the splinters digging into his fingers. Cursed the cold that nipped at his ears. Most of all, he cursed the accident that ruined everything.

Kisa's hand rubbed a comforting path back and forth along his shoulders.

Seto was breathing hard and rapid. Cold sweat covered his face. He covered his mouth, feeling sick.

"Are you back?" She asked.

He nodded, swallowed, and looked down at the hairpin. "It had been… three days… since the accident." Seto looked up at her and saw not a woman in a tattered t-shirt, but a little girl in pink flower pajamas. "You told me to go away, but I…"

There were tears in her eyes, but she was smiling. "I told you you could be so hard-headed. You must've knocked two dozen times before I let you in."

"Your father… died in a boat accident."

"Hypothermia." Her voice hitched. "His engine caught fire while he was harvesting oysters. Electrical malfunction. Had to bail, but he was too far offshore."

"Three days before your birthday."

Tears streamed from her eyes. She backed up, tried to wipe them away. He followed, getting to his feet and enveloping her in his arms. Her head tucked under his chin, her hands grasped at his shirt, balling the cotton in her fists as she cried. He held her tight, pressed his lips into her hair.

That day seemed to come out of the fog. Not completely clear, but recognizable. Her birthday, Christmas Eve, the hard climb up the trellis, the consistent knocking at her window. He'd thought she'd let him sit out there and freeze, but she'd let him in. She let him climb into her pile of blankets in the corner of her room and they sat there in silence for a long time before he finally pulled the pin out of his pocket and gave it to her. She hadn't wanted it, told him to give it to someone else.

"I didn't make it for someone else," Seto said as he affixed the pin to her head. "I made it for you."

"It was me, wasn't it?" Seto asked. "I'm the friend from all those stories."

Kisa nodded against his chest.

"I attacked that boy for pushing you. I was the one you used to make play Mortal Kombat with you."

She choked out a laugh. "You hated that game. Said it was stupid and I was a filthy cheater."

"You hoped hearing them would help me remember."

"Yeah." She pushed back, but not out of the circle of his arms. "Do you remember anything at all?"

"Bits and pieces. A bonfire in… November? A boat on a river."

She shrugged. "It's a start. There were a lot of bonfires and we spent a lot of time on dad's workboat before-" She shook her head, pressed her face back into Seto's chest. "I'm not gonna cry again."

He hugged her tight. He could feel more memories trying to come to the surface, trying to break through. Like a leak in a dam, like a crack in the foundation, it would all come tumbling down eventually. He'd been calm when Dr. Angevin had told him it would start to happen. It was terrifying now that it was. His past was coming back to haunt him and he would finally have to face it, whether he wanted to or not.

He took her shoulders and pushed her back, just far enough so he could frame her face with his hands and look into those shimmering aquamarine depths. He brushed away her tears with his thumbs, rubbed them across the apples of her cheeks, slow and gentle. When he kissed her he tasted salt on her lips. Her arms wrapped around his neck, pulled him down, pulled him deeper.

Everything seemed to ease. The anxiety. The fear. He'd been burned and she was the balm. Sweet aloe and cooling cream.

She pressed their foreheads together. "Not tonight. I just don't have the energy. This whole week's been exhausting."

"Safe to assume you're unpacked?"

"It was the most aggressive unpacking I've ever done. I was so pissed off. Had to put that energy somewhere."

He couldn't stop the smile that came to his lips. "Glad I could help."

She laughed. "Just don't make a habit of it. I don't think we'll last if you piss me off every other week."

"I'll keep that in mind." He smoothed the hair away from her cheeks and behind her ears. "Have you eaten?"

Kisa slipped into a sly grin. "Mr. Kaiba, are asking me on a date? An actual date? Not a quick in and out, takeout, sorta deal like last time?"

His hands fell away. "How can you be crude at a time like this?"

"It's a gift, but you're no saint either." She winked. "I remember Sunday."

Seto cleared his throat, resisted the urge to loosen his tie. "No, not a date. I don't think anywhere I take you would let us in with your attire."

"Rude!" Kisa flicked her hair over her shoulder. "I am the peak of femininity."

"In jeans and a tee shirt."

"I clean up good."

"I'm sure." Seto filed that away for another day. "No, I'm offering to call down to the kitchen. I can have food brought up and we can eat here."

"How romantic."

"I also have correspondence from Hoffmann from this week that I can't read without you."

Her eyes rose to the ceiling. "Always a catch isn't there? You're lucky I like you."

Seto picked up his desk phone, that warmth spreading through his insides again. It was a simple phrase, one they both had used in jest before. Now, knowing what he knew, it had weight. Meaning. Or perhaps he just hoped it did.

"What were you doing all this time?" Kisa asked.

She plucked a grape off the charcuterie board and popped it in her mouth. She had one foot up on her chair, its sneaker kicked off so she didn't mess up the nice upholstery.

"Not much more than I'm doing now," Seto said.

His fingers flew across the keyboard as he typed a response to Hoffmann's emails. An apology for not responding promptly and an assurance that Seto would have the first blueprints of his ideas sent over within the next week.

"Ten years is a long time to do nothing but work," she said. "Did you keep playing soccer? What about clubs? You join anything especially nerdy while I wasn't around?"

"Unfortunately not."

"What, you didn't go to school?"

"Only for a few years. My father-" he stopped, fingers freezing over the keyboard.

It was strange to have to readjust his thinking. The man he'd been calling his father for nearly a decade wasn't his father. He'd always known that. It seemed wrong to keep doing so, especially with Kisa sitting next to him.

"Gozaburo, had me homeschooled until he died," Seto said. " I'll admit, it was a good team. A well-educated one, but I had been trapped in this house for so long. Once I had the freedom to choose, I decided to spend the last few years of my education at a proper school."

"How did that go?"

He eased back in his chair. "About as well as I expected. I was at the top of my class, intelligent enough to graduate early, but I found it lacking."

"How so?"

"It was too easy. Nothing was challenging. Nothing was-"

"Stimulating?" She grinned around another grape.

He chuckled, shook his head.

"What about that bimbo you told me about?" She asked. "How'd you get involved with her?"

He spooned caviar onto a cracker. "She'd come onto me at every corporate party after Gozaburo died. She'd been a bit more… subtle about it for the first three years since I was underage, but after I turned eighteen there was nothing subtle about her. She was twenty-four when I let her convince me to sleep with her." He offered Kisa the cracker.

She grimaced. "Gross." She flicked a finger at his offer. "That, and the cougar."

"You forced me to eat takeout Chinese food. I believe I'm owed some recompense for my bowels."

"Drama queen."

He raised a brow, but remained silent until Kisa let him put the cracker in her mouth. "I wish I'd had the forethought to think so too." He prepared a cracker for himself. "I thought myself invincible, more mature than other boys my age. I had the highest test scores out of my graduating class. I could be accepted into any college I desired, into any program. All I had to do was demand it. I was the youngest President and CEO at the time." He dropped the spoon back into the dish with a heavy breath. "I suppose that's why a woman like her was attracted to me. It was foolish to think otherwise."

He popped the cracker into his mouth. He could feel her eyes on the side of his head, but he did not look, not until she started speaking.

"You're allowed to be young and stupid, you know." She wrapped her arms around her knee and let her chin rest on it. "Lord knows I've done some pretty stupid things since you left."

"Not in my line of work. A boy doesn't inherit a multimillion-dollar company and is allowed to live 'young and stupid'. There are eyes always watching me, waiting for me to mess up. If I make one wrong move, the share prices of my company fall, and my employees suffer the consequences."

"Like that bitch's father." Her snarl made talking about it worth the pain of recollection.

"Exactly. Let's not forget the fiasco our relationship has caused in the tabloids. If I were to make a serious mistake, well, I'm sure you can imagine the consequences."

"Good to know I'm not a 'serious mistake'."

"More of a force of nature."

She laughed. "I almost like that more than, what was it you said? Slithered?"

"It was."

"What else? There must've been something you did in your free time. Can't imagine you sitting around playing the good boy for ten whole years." She plucked a slice of cheese from the board and started nibbling on it.

"Is there a misdemeanor from my childhood I'm forgetting?" he asked.

"Nothing that bad. You just always seemed to be doing something you know? If it wasn't soccer or chess you were fiddling around with your dad's computer or playing some boring RPG or something."

"After the adoption was finalized I was forced to study constantly. Every waking hour was dedicated to economics, history, business science, philosophy, math. After he was gone, not only did I have my studies, but a company to rebuild as well. You get the picture."

"Sounds boring."

"In all honesty, it was. The first year was difficult, but I learned to adapt."

"You didn't have any friends? You know, after you started going to school."

"I couldn't stand the other children. They were nothing but a bunch of flighty, moronic kids who couldn't see any further than the next weekend. They had no vision for the future."

"You realize how pompous that makes you sound, right?"

His head whipped around, mouth open and ready with a biting remark. She was looking at him with such patience, cheek resting on her knee as she watched him flounder for words. He deflated under her scrutiny.

"I suppose it does," he said. "No. I didn't have friends in the traditional sense."

"What do you mean?"

He motioned to the lines of shelves that bordered the room. "I was allowed to take a book to bed with me every night. They became my escape. My 'friends'."

At least fictional people could never hurt him.

"What about Mokuba?" Kisa asked. "How'd he handle all this?"

Seto picked a grape off the vine and rolled it in his fingers. "He was spared. That was the deal, Gozaburo's and mine. If I dedicated my life to being his heir, Mokuba would be allowed to have a normal childhood. He would go to school, have friends, hobbies. It was the best I could do, for both of us."

She nudged his knee with her foot. "You were always sticking your neck out like that."

"You're talking about that boy from the playground."

"Not just him." She put her chin back on her knee, eyes glazing, as if she were trying to look into the past. "Mom told me this story once. After your mom died, you'd get up with your dad whenever Mokuba woke up crying in the middle of the night. You'd be falling asleep in kindergarten cause you'd been up four or five times the night before."

"Mokuba had colic. I had to-"

The grape dropped from his fingers. He covered his mouth.

Seto stood on his tiptoes to see over the side of the bassinet. The little bundle inside was so small. So frail. Thin arms and legs, wrinkled like an old man's, with a head covered in thin black downy hair.

The noise was the worst. High sharp cries that wailed on and on without end.

Someone was sitting on the other side of the cot, rocking it back and forth with a calm shushing sound. Their hand seemed so big compared to his own, compared to the little wrinkled fingers clenched tight as they flailed.

The person on the other side said something, but it was far away and garbled.

Seto reached a hand into the bassinet and eased a finger into one tiny fist.

The crying dampened. Until all there were, were hiccups and whimpers. Little grey eyes cracked open, looked at him.

"It's okay, Moki," Seto said. "It's gonna be okay."

"It's okay." Kisa grabbed his other hand in both of hers, held their palms together while one hand stroked up and down his wrist.

Seto's eyes burned. "Mokuba had colic. I remember. I-" His voice hitched, gasped.

She pulled him into a tight embrace, his head cradled on her shoulder. He leaned against her and focused on breathing, long deep shaky breaths. He refused to cry. Not now. Not in front of her.

He closed his eyes and tried to remember their faces. His mother, his father, either would do. All he could find were shadows, blurry figures standing like dolls in his consciousness with no shape or reason.

"Which one was your favorite?" Kisa asked.

"Which what?"

"The books."

"You're trying to distract me."

She smoothed back his hair. "Is it working?"

He made a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat, then scanned the shelves. He'd read them all more times than he cared to count.

"The Count of Monte Cristo," he answered.

"Nice." Her fingers rubbed calming circles into his shoulders. "Never really like reading myself."

"You never had much patience." He took her wrists and pulled them down. "I don't-"

"No, you're right." She twisted her hands so she held his. "Aunt Moriko says I have a habit of counting my chickens before they hatch. First to walk. First to talk. I was eager to call Europe home after only a couple months."

They sat in silence, her thumbs rubbing into his palms.

"That's an idea," she said.

"What is?"

Her eyes seemed to sparkle, bright and passionate. "Come home with me."

He raised a brow. "I thought you said you weren't in the mood."

"Not home here. Home, home. Where we grew up. We can visit the old playground, our old school. Aunt Moriko'll be floored to see you. It could be a surprise. We could even-"

He jerked his hands away. "No."

"Oh, come on. You haven't seen the county in years. You won't believe how much has-"

"I'm not arguing this." He pushed from his chair, rolled it aside so he could walk away.

She was right behind him. Her hand grabbed at his wrist like it had the last time, stopping him before he could stride out the door.

"I'm not trying to argue," she said. "You're starting to remember. If you come back you might-"

"I can't go back." He rounded on her, motioned to the room. "This is my home. Have you considered that there are things from back then I may not want to remember? I didn't put myself through years of suffering for you to open up old wounds."

She stared at him, eyes darting to a fro. Her head tilted to the side. "You're scared."

It would have been better if she'd hit him. He turned to leave, flinging open the door and striding into the hall.

She pushed around him and blocked his path. "You're not walking away from me again. We're gonna stand here and work this shit out. Now. Not four days from now."

Dr. Angevin's words came back to him.

Seto set his jaw, but made no move to go past her. "Fine."

Kisa took his face in her hands, gentle fingers easing the tension. "I'm not asking you to go alone. I would never, ever ask you to. I'll be with you. Mokuba too, if you want."

Movement over her shoulder caught his eye. Mokuba was halfway out of his bedroom, staring at them, features tight, brows knit together.

Kisa's fingers stroked down Seto's neck to his collar, where she fidgeted with it. Straightened it, laid it flat. "Let me help you."

He let out a long breath. "Alright."

He tried to back away, to return to his office so they could work out when the trip would happen. He would have to move appointments around, reschedule some things.

She held tight to his collar, stopping his movement. "No. Pick. Right here, right now. I'm not giving you time to think of an excuse."

He took her wrists and pushed them away. "Fine. The end of October. Satisfied?"

Her brows shot up. "Really?"

"Let me guess, you have a family visit scheduled for that week too."

"Nope. Can I pick the dates?"

"I suppose."

She rose to her toes and kissed his lips. "Everything will be okay. I promise."

He wasn't so sure of that. He watched her as she walked around him, humming a familiar tune, and returned to his office.

Mokuba leaned against his door frame and crossed his arms. "Where're we going, exactly?"

"Home," Seto said, "apparently."

Mokuba's brows disappeared behind his bangs. "What?"