"I'm hungry," Mokuba whined, stretching his arms across the granite countertop and resting his cheek on one of the stove grates. "Can't you make something?"
Kisara sighed. Why Mokuba had never learned to cook for himself, or at least make himself a quesedilla in the microwave, astounded her more than it should, considering that he was a fifteen-year-old rich kid.
"What would you do when it was just you and Seto?" She asked, frowning and folding her arms across her chest. It wasn't just Mokuba's immaturity that was getting to her. It was that she was in the Kaiba's kitchen at seven-fifty-three in the evening, there was no food to be found, Mokuba was whining at her when he was more than old enough to forage for himself, and Seto had disappeared mid-afternoon without a trace—also, it was Thanksgiving.
Kisara would have forgotten about Thanksgiving if Seto hadn't reminded her the night before.:
"We're out of the vanilla espressos," Kisara had commented offhandedly to Seto as he wandered into the kitchen and towards his very expensive, very nifty instant espresso machines. She was seated at the kitchen table, with a book called SQL in Five Minutes or Less on her lap, her laptop perched on a white linen placemat, and the last vanilla espresso in a silver mug in her hand.
Seto grunted noncommitally at her, rifling through the drawer for a kind of espresso pod. "You're the only one who drinks that stuff," he snarked. "I think that package of vanilla espresso came with the machine."
Kisara rolled her eyes. "Whatever, I know what I like. I'll go pick some more up at the store tomorrow."
Seto removed a blown glass coffee cup from a cabinet, set it on the counter with a musical clink of glass on granite, and looked at her. "I wouldn't do that.."
"Why, though?" Kisara had asked, genuinely confused.
Seto's lips curled into a thin half-smile.. "Kisara, you know what day it is tomorrow, correct?" he asked her.
"Thursday? You don't have class tomorrow? I have back-to-back lectures on data structures and predictive analytics?" Kisara bit her lip. "I don't get it."
"You don't have any classes tomorrow, Kisara. Tomorrow's Thanksgiving." With that, Seto smirked smugly at her, and turned his attention to the coffee machine.
A million questions started playing through Kisara's head. How had she forgotten about Thanksgiving? How did the Kaibas celebrate? Was there going to be a banquet? Did she need to find an appropriate outfit? Her heart thumped. She hated being caught off-guard.
Seto grabbed his coffee cup from the espresso machine, and took a long sip. "We don't observe the holiday, Kisara. Don't give yourself a stroke." He pulled out a chair so he could sit opposite her at the table. Watery November sunlight bounced from the glass top of the table and onto Seto's face, making him look like impossibly pale and angular.
"Nothing?" Kisara asked gently, tilting her head and glancing into Seto's face. Her boyfriend's experssion was duly unreadable; Kisara wasn't sure whether to expect a traumatic Thanksgiving story or a cynical tirade about the needless extravagance of a nonsense holiday.
Seto shrugged. "The employees get the day off to spend time with their families, and we send them home with turkeys. It's good enough for me."
"For Mokuba?" Kisara inquired gently. Halloween had been the first 'holiday' that she had spent with the Kaiba brothers, and she had found the experience genuinely heartwarming. It struck her as surprising that the brothers didn't have a similar tradition for each holiday.
Seto rolled his eyes. 'Thanksgiving is about family, and thankfulness, Kisara," he said shortly. His voice had a sharp edge that strongly suggested that he found the conversation trifling.
Kisara sighed. "So you object, because"-
"Sentimental holidays are designed for consumers to spend in excess trying to relive romanticized childhood memories," he said shortly.
"And you don't have any." Kisara wasn't sure whether to feel sympathetic or annoyed—a feeling that she was becoming quite accustomed to as she spent more time with Seto Kaiba.
"Yes, that's right."
Mokuba pouted. "Seto would tell me to order something," he conceded gloomily. "Some pizza, or some takeout Chinese."
"I won't stop you from doing that," Kisara responded.
Mokuba stomped his foot on the tile. "But Seto's not here," he pointed out in a voice that was gratingly whiny. "And if I order food then I'm goiing to have to wait for it to get here.."
Kisara huffed impatiently. "With your point being...?" she snipped, already fully aware of what Mokuba's point was.
"That you're here, and so that's faster."
Grumpily, Kisara strode over to the refrigerator and flung the door open. There were several cans of cold soda, a gallon jug of apple juice, and some staples-otherwise, the refrigerator was pretty bare. She located a carton of eggs and a bag of preshredded cheddar cheese, and set them on the counter. "Fine," she grumbled.
Instantly cheered, Mokuba grabbed a can of soda from the fridge, and sat at the kitchen table, watching Kisara as she slid a hunk of butter into a frying pan.. "You're too old for this, you know," Kisara lectured, annoyed at herself for letting Mokuba off the hook so easily.
"I know," Mokuba chirped. The sound of crackling egg whites and the smell of sizzling butter filled the air as Kisara began to crack eggs, one by one (four in total—she did Mokuba ever have an appetite), into the frying pan, and Mokuba drained his soda, dispassionately watching Kisara cook
"Where is Seto now, anyways?" Mokuba asked. The question was more or less rhetorical—Kisara had been the one who arrived from her apartment in the mid-afternoon to find Mokuba at the door, reporting to her that Seto had been gone since the morning ("He does that sometimes," Mokuba had said, looking gloomily at the ground. He then asked Kisara if she wanted to come inside anyways and test out Seto's new virtual reality sandbox game with him, to which she happily obliged).
Kisara added a handful of cheese to the frying pan, folding the gooey mess in on itself into a blob of eggscramblenonsense. "He was gone when I got here, Mokuba," she reminded him, scraping the egg-and-cheese mixture onto a plate and adding salt and pepper. She grabbed a fork from a drawer and extracted a corner of the egg dish. It was salty and buttery—she probably wouldn't have been as liberal with the butter and cheese if she had been cooking for herself—and simple, but good. She took another bite, rearranged the eggs so the plate looked full again, and set it in front of Mokuba, pulling out a chair so she could sit next to him.
"He's not answering his texts?" Mokuba asked around a mouthful of eggs and cheese. His big grey eyes were round, and Kisara forgot her annoyance with both of the Kaiba brothers as she realized that Mokuba was genuinely concerned.
Kisara removed her phone from her sweatshirt pocket. "No, sorry," she said. Mokuba. The boy was staring at his eggs, looking dejected. "Is everything okay?"
Mokuba didn't answer right away, but shrugged his shoulders slowly, keeping them tensed and close to his ears. "I just don't like it when Seto leaves like this," he said finally. "I get scared."
Hesitantly, Kisara reached her hand around Mokuba's back, tugging him a little closer to her. "I'm sure he's okay," she said, gritting her teeth. In all honesty, she had only known Seto for a few months. Although it didn't seem out of character for him to disappear without letting anyone know, hehad been gone for hours, and she was starting to grow concerned as well. Looking into Mokuba's eyes, though, she knew this wasn't the moment to divulge her own concerns. "Come on, finish up. Maybe we can watch a movie while we wait for him to get back."
Kisara: Hey, are you coming home soon? We're getting worried. Can you please let me know where you are or when you'll be back? (10:32PM)
"Did he text you back yet?" Mokuba whined. The boy was curled up in a corner of the sofa, sunken into a new of pillows and blankets. The credits for a movie played in the background, along with the grating guitars of the movie's title track.
Watching an action movie had distracted Mokuba for a little while, but halfway through the movie, during the canned requisite romance scenes, Kisara had started to notice him glancing at her phone on the coffee table more and more, and then compulsively checking his own phone; it wasn't hard to imake the connection that he was looking for signs of Seto. By the end of the movie, Mokuba was curled in the fetal position on the sofa, not even watching the movie at all. Kisara's heart ached with worry.
She shook her head apologetically. "We could look for him, maybe," she suggested, scooting closer to Mokuba's pillow-blanket-nest. "Do you know of any places he would go?"
Mokuba shook his head. "I don't know. I want him to come home."
Kisara sighed, ruffling the boy's dark hair before instantly regretting her heion—Mokuba was visibly distraught, but he was fiften, not five. "Let's give him another half an hour," she suggested. "If we haven't heard from Seto by eleven, then we can go see if we can find him. Maybe he's just caught up in something at work."
"He's not active on the KaibaCorp messenger," Mokuba reported dully. "He hasn't been all day long. I checked." He pouted. "I checked lots of times."
Kisara felt helpless. "I know. But maybe let's jut ve him a little more time. Do you want to watch something else while we wait? I can find a TV show with twenty-minute episodes..."
Mokuba shook his head vehemently. "I want Seto to come home," he insisted.
Kisara sighed, leaning heavily into the sofa, and unlocked her phone again. Her text message history with Seto was just a long chain of worried, inquisitive texts from her today, and no response from Seto. She had tried calling him too, hoping that the urgency of his ringing phone would prompt him to pick up, but her past dozen calls had gone unanswered, too. Where could he possibly be? She glanced at Mokuba, who was huddled in a corner of the sofa, the lblue light of his phone illuminating his face, and grabbed a pillow from the other side of the couch, hugging it to her chest.
She couldn't quite pinpoint exactly what she was worried about—after all, Seto was a grown twenty-three year old, who was perfectly capable of taking care of himself for an hour or a dozen. He was highly intelligent, not to mention physically capable. So why, then, were her palms still tingling, and her stomach aching? What about Seto, especially the image of Seto alone in the night, made her feel so protective? What about him could possibly make him seem...vulnerable? Kisara yawned. The lights around her swam momentarily, and she rubbed her eyes. The movie she'd put on for Mokuba wasn't exactly to her taste, and it had been difficult for her to keep her eyes open for parts of it.
Mokuba's suddenly snapped to attention, his head jolting upright moments before Kisara heard the soft turning of keys in a door. By the time she stood up to make her way downstairs to the front room, Mokuba was halfway down the stairs.
The unmistakably lanky, thin silhouette of Seto Kaiba stood in the doorway, a negative image against a glow of silver moonlight from outside. He was wearing a dark trench coat, and holding something in his arms. Lit from behind, it was utterly impossible to make out his expression. Kisara froze on the stairwell, a mixed wave of confusion and relief crashing down on her.
"Seto!" Mokuba barrelled towards his big brother. "Where were you?"
"Whoa, kid." Seto side-stepped Mokuba's flying approach; Mokuba skitterdede a at the doorway, using the door frame to halt his momentum..
Mokuba struggled to regain his balance, wobbling his way upright to stand toe-to-toe with Seto, his arms crossed over his chest. "You promised!" he exclaimed. His voice had an acerbic tone. "You promised you weren't going to do that anymore!"
The shadowy Seto-figure in the still-open doorway set something down on the porch, then stood straight, facing Mokuba, motionless. "I'm sorry, Mokuba," he said. His voice was uncharacteristically soft and tired, and she watched as he leaned in closer to Mokuba, pulling him into a tight hug. For a moment, the Mokuba-silhouette seemed to resist, before he wrapped his arms tightly around his brother's waist.
"You promised," she heard Mokuba mumble, hugging Seto even tighter.
Kisara realized she was holding her breath in her attempts not to disrupt their moment. After what felt like a long, heartwarming eternity, Seto and Mokuba broke apart, and Seto retrieved the object he had been holding from the porch. "I brought a pumpkin pie," he said.
Mokuba snatched the pie box from his brother's arms and fled towards the kitchen. "I'll get plates!" he shouted.
Seto lingered, and Kisara stepped off the stair landing, approaching him slowly and hesitantly. His coat was damp, as if he had been walking through the rain, and his hair was tousled, but his expression was warm.
"I was worried," she whispered, grabbing his forearm. "We didn't know where you went."
Seto paused for a moment, then reached forward and put his hand under her chin, lifting it gently so she was staring at him. He leaned forward, giving her a long, deep kiss. He smelled like rain and leaves and Autumn, and his skin was freezing cold. Kisara wrapped her arms aroundh his neck, pulling him in closer to her.
His lips grazed her cheek. "I love you," he whispered into her ear.
It was the first time Kisara could recall hearing him say the words out loud.
"What happened?" Kisara lay on her back, staring up at the ceiling from Seto's bed. A freshly-showered Seto was sitting in bed next to her, his characteristic spicy Boy Shampoo smell replacing the smell of rain and fallen leaves.
Seto was silent, and Kisara rolled towards him, narrowing her eyes. "You owe it to me," she insisted firmly. "Mokie and I were worried sick."
Seto sighed. His face was directed towards the window, and his long arms were wrapped around his knees. "I don't know, Kisara," he said finally. His voice sounded wistful and distant.
Wordlessly, Kisara drew herself into a sitting position so she was shoulder-to-shoulder with Seto. She could regocnize that he was in an unusually vulnerable mood, and she didn't want to ruin the moment.
"Family, belonging, togetherness. I never wanted to have those things. I wanted to believe that those were the things that make someone weak, that attachment only stands to get in the way of going where you want to go. If I could see myself now, when I was sixteen, I would think I was so pathetic, to be cozying up to a woman at night, and buying pies for my little brother."
Kisara knew better than to interrupt him.
"Attachments...they change people. Where you want to be, suddenly has to align with where they want to be. Humans have an infinite number of desires, some of them contradictory...to care about the wants and the dreams of another individual is to make one's life infinitely more complicated."
He was quiet for a moment. "And to want that...is difficult to accept," he pondered, still staring musingly out the window. Kisara lost herself in staring at the sharp lines of Seto's face, and was surprised when she felt his hand reach for hers, clasping it gently on top of the covers.
"I love Mokuba. And I love you. But learning how to reconcile that with my visions for the future...that is a difficult, possibly indefinitely ngoing, task"
Kisara lifted their entwined hands, giving the top of his hand a gentle kiss. "That's okay. I still love you Seto," she murmured, resting her head on his shoulder.
"I love you, too," he said gently. They were quiet for a moment, him still staring out the window at the bare branches waving in the wind and the ice-cold starlight, and her staring into nothing, feeling the gentle rise and fall of their synchronized synchronized breaths.
"You're supposed to say you're thankful today," she said suddenly.
Seto's stare finally tore away from the window, and he stared at her with gennuine confusion. "Come again?"
Kisara smiled. "Love is for the other three-hundred sixty-four days of the year. Today is about being thankful. So I'm thankful for you, and for Mokuba, and I'm thankful to be a part of your life."
Seto sighed, chuckling to himself. "Fine. I'm thankful for you, too."