Chapter Three: The Ties That Bind Us.
With a headache of mixed emotions, and his fingers clenched into fists, Joey left the room hastily, feeling more perplexed and more aggravated than before; but he couldn't stay there another minute. Fleeing down the stairs at speeds that made the floorboards ache and cry, it was a wonder he even managed to breathe. Every inch of the ground was pushed down and back by the constant rhythm of his feet; a rhythm that didn't break until he was left gasping for air, his feet grounded into the pavement, unable to persist.
His chest heaved in and out against the wind of the lakefront ripping through his hair. Hunching over and placing his palms against his knees for support, Joey finally looked up to meet the atmosphere around him. In the horizon lay an infinite body of water, swallowing the skyline calmly as the sun scintillated off it softly. Joey stared longingly; the tangibility of how vastly I separated him was incredible. A sudden panic pulsated through him at an alarming rate, yet against the rush of actuality around him, his features stood in a standstill. Instantaneously, he'd calmly collected his composure on top of the concrete, pouring his eyes into the picturesque; the lake was so perfect that Joey could have sworn it was painted.
The small patch of grass in front of his feet, with the tagged up, turquoise colored bench, became permanently fixed in his peripherals. It became a place where he felt the relief of a personal sanctuary potentiating, alleviating his troubling symptoms. His perceptions reconstructed as the fast pace pounding of his heart became time times more tolerable. Here, the anxiety was willingly welcomed in opposition to the excruciating twisting that Joey felt inside when left standing in the middle of his memories.
"You're not from around here, are you?"
Juxtaposing itself against Seto, the lake reflected the blinding disdain that wavered back and forth in Kaiba's crystallized, cobalt eyes. Sauntering along the exact same lakefront that eased Joey's suffering, the over privileged orphan felt the waves crash against his conscience, shattering Seto's bluffing insincerity, wearing away, and revealing the true vastness of his vulnerabilities. Although, unable to properly express himself, even to himself, Seto's joints locked, and the emotional indecision rendered him immobile. The mysteriously Jurassic jungle of this strange city, slaughtered any sound sense of security. Prehistoric methods of survival distorted the idea of concrete, coming of age facts. Truths strangled Seto's subconscious, and the infinitely unknown water stretched farther than he could calculate. He felt trapped, and the hypnotizing hold slowly summoned him backward in time, Milwaukee began to metaphase, mirroring his memories of Duelist Kingdom. As hard as he hesitated, this was inescapable. Alone in this island-like isolation, Mokuba's eager and perceptually incapable face shot through him, and Kaiba's fingers crept involuntarily towards the locket that he wore religiously.
"Why are you doing this!"
The sound of his little brother was ear shattering, and Kaiba's footsteps frantically searched for what his heart already knew he couldn't find. For the first time, notions of his selfishness surfaced. Did I really just leave him like that? Did I just…just get up and walk away that easily? Like my promises meant nothing? Tears that his eyes refused to shed mocked Kaiba resentfully, and he spent the entire night staring into the face of the silent screams of his subconscious, he shifted restlessly.
The promise of his paternal protectiveness over his younger brother disintegrated upon admitting the consequence of his action. After a lifetime of dedication, and unchallenged loyalty, Seto has thoughtlessly shot down the innocent aura of optimism that guided him, so faithfully, through his darkest hours. Blindly trying to navigate, Kaiba's instinctual sense of direction betrayed him, unable to re-trace his way back to the externally compelling forces of uncertainty that once excited him, the situation symbolically swallowed him into senseless sea of shifting realities. Trying desperately to tether the ties he had forcibly severed, the only person in his life that ever mattered became a ghost; leaving the locket hanging heavily, like an albatross, around his neck.
"You're not from around here, are you?"
Joey laughed hesitantly, his vacant eyes temporarily regaining their once transfixing vibrancy, "It's that obvious, huh?"
A gentle smile played across the delicate lips of the girl who had mysteriously appeared at his side. "Oh, no, of course not," she rolled her lilac, gray eyes sarcastically, a pair Joey painfully recognized.
Flickering back and forth between vacant and aware, the angle in Joey's smile turned down. Motionless lips found themselves struggling to return the girls playful energy. He realized how stupid he probably must've looked to her, but he could only find enough energy to revert his gaze, despondently, in the other direction.
"Oh," the playful tone in her smile softened sensitively, piecing together Joey's declining expressions and detached body language, "I'm sorry, I didn't realize this was a bad time."
He felt badly about his off-standish reaction though, because she hadn't offended him in the slightest; and her ability to perceive his mood so naturally, had actually caught him off guard, causing his eyes to widen in surprise, "No, it's okay. It's nothing."
"Well it's obviously something," she addressed him so openly and so genuinely for someone who she didn't even know.
Another attribute drew his thoughts backward to the person he'd tried his hardest to forget, yet even still, the girls persistence, similarly, provoked his response and held his attention. "It's really nothing," Joey shrugged, as the excuse rolled off his tongue with little conviction, "I was uhm, just…y'know, sightseeing. Trying to acquaint myself with the place, that's all."
"Oh, come on, don't even try to tell me that you've been standing here for the last ten minutes staring because you found the view of Lake Michigan soo breathtaking."
Joey didn't know what to stay, but took unexpected comfort in the strangers confident composure, a quality that he himself was once known to emit.
"Y'know?" she sighed, "Your English is pretty good, but your lying is for shit."
Joey's body seemed to float back to his new apartment on autopilot, knowing not how to process exactly how he felt about the unusual circumstances of this new acquaintance. Although, he stopped to think, I guess she did say were friends. Despite the actuality that the necessity of friendship had seemingly lost all meaning to Joey, he certainly wasn't going to deny the opportunity now.
Double checking first that the door was locked, Joey picked the three, sanctified Duel Monster cards up, and carried them back over towards his air mattress, collecting a sense of courage with every step. Then, sitting cross-legged on top of the disorderly bed set, he cautiously placed them face up. Even though they were all physically visible, Joey couldn't physically bring himself to look at them; instead, he sat staring absently at the cracked creases of the mental photograph of the friends he kept so close to him, images that, until now, had worn away from frequent familiarity. It was almost chilling how easily he'd forgotten their faces, and even more plaguing how readily he turned his back to them.
Closing his eyes, Joey fell back against his pillow and drifted into another dimension of thought, but both his mind and his body swore they were still awake, because everything seemed so tangible—so real. An icy whisper rolled around the room, sweeping under the bed and through the shades. The temperature on the thermostat dropped significantly, and even Joey's blood was growing slightly colder as the unfamiliar shifts in surroundings continued to encase him.
A mysterious breeze, an actual breeze, that shook the cheap crystals on his ceiling light, was making its way down to the bed. The intricate images that personalized the playing cards seemed to jump to life, distorting and fluttering back and forth in the air, until they stopped suddenly and surely on the blank spaces hidden throughout the cores of their caricatures. Golden glowing auras began to curl and curve around like cursive, and illuminating features began to appear, formulating a familiar face. It was as if she'd always been there. A soft breathe nipped at his ear, and a voice began to softly speak to him, imitating Mai flawlessly, as if she was still apart of him; but even in delusion, Joey had accepted that the last time they were every together, they stood against one another. Despite the division, his heart continued to break, yet still his hungry ears continued to listen to the sensation of her expression.
Affectionately, a soft giggle, tickled his eardrums, and the whistling wind gave the illusion she was laughing, but Joey could only hear the shrieking pain and desperation that the Orichalcos had calloused into her. The image began to melt away as she lost luminosity, her voice turning into static as Joey began to drift in and out of consciousness.
As a shrill alarm reverberated his dreams back into reality, Joey's entire body lurched violently forward, arms reaching out, trying to grab hold of something that wasn't there, "Mai!" he shouted repeatedly. Yelling her name at the top of his lungs, over and over again—but the voice that had lulled him into such a delusionary state had disappeared, and the three cards beneath his palm were lifeless.
Encased in a cold sweat, his trembling fingers fumbled to flick the wheel on the lighter until a red glow appeared and singed the tip of the cigarette Joey had extended forward. Grasping the fowl creation between his lips, he inhaled uneasily, contrastingly, exhaling smoke smoothly into a cloud that, unlike his thoughts, disappeared.
He looked around uncomfortably, lighting another cigarette, trying, in vain, to smother his overactive imagination that had taken over where his dreams left off, his eyes still shifting and refocusing uncertainly on areas around him.
Yet, the emptiness was more disappointing, and more terrifying, than anything else he'd imagined. There was no longer anyone here for him to project his desperation of belonging onto, in hopes of counteracting their own, nor was their anyone left to help him cope with his own; this time, Joey had to rely solely on himself, a strategy that in the past, had always failed him. There was a sudden convulsion deep within the hollowed core of the lifestyle he'd long since revisited, and the nerves alone were enough to make him vomit.
6:00 AM flashed across the screen, on the nightstand, in bright red, causing Kaiba, in a state of exhaustion, to come to terms with the fact that sleep was unattainable. Groggily, all six foot, three inches of his lanky, yet impressively muscular frame, sat upright, rubbing swollen eyes with his fists. After routinely washing up and gathering his things, tired legs carried his body towards the staircase, when he was struck with a baffling and almost surreal realization.
Mokuba! He suddenly remembered his brother with urgency and guilt. Reaching inside his jacket, he felt around until his fingertips creased a small, platinum, encased locket. Taking the memento from the safety spot against his breast, Kaiba just stared down in amazement. How could I have done this to you?
Seto's sentimental state was insensitively broken though, by another tenant coming from the opposite direction, "Hey buddy, why don't you move out of the way, there's a whole lobby downstairs for you to stand in."
Instantly, eye contact with the keepsake was broken, zeroing in on the cocky, twenty-something year old standing below, and this time, Seto burst into a fit of rage, unable, and unwilling, to turn the other cheek, "How dare you," his voice boomed, echoing through the narrow stairwell, "Do you know who you're talking to, you ignorant piece of shit!"
What was more shocking to Kaiba than the stranger's insubordination though, was the blank expression accompanying his response, "No?"
No progress, and half a pack later, Joey crumpled up the Classifieds, and threw it to the floor groaning in frustration. Seriously, what am I supposed to say qualifies me as a potential employee? 'Oh, hello sir! I think you'll find my experience with card games to be a promising attribute! …What's that? Never heard of Duel Monsters? How odd…Education? Oh, no! Duelists don't have time for school! We're too busy dabbling in the dark powers of Ancient Egypt! Yes, I'm very worldly; in fact, my best-friend just happens to wear a dead, reincarnated pharaoh around his neck that occasionally inhabits his body. Surely you can relate?'
Submerged into the real world, the circumstances Joey once discerned as a normalcy, shattered into a series of irregularities. Everything he'd accomplished was transient, but it had taken up so much of his life that he never dreamed of things like school to be such a decisive factor. Suddenly his whole life became a joke. Nothing about him, or what he'd done, meant anything, his title, as an established Duelist, didn't translate into anything substantial. Sinking even more deeply into himself, Joey felt ashamed, wishing so desperately to disappear.
Even standing in his own apartment, he didn't feel like it was his; instead, someone else just let him stay there out of pity, as an act of charity towards someone so pathetic, like an animal that was so domesticated, it lost all instinct, becoming defenseless and dependent. He's right…he's always been right, Joey's own tears became a source of weakness that belittled him further as he choked on them, All this time and I never saw it, but how could I not? How could I expect any sound person to take me seriously? It's exactly like Kaiba always said…" The name rang mercilessly in Joey's ears, it burned, and echoed, and crawled everywhere underneath his skin.
*lol well, I guess I don't have too much new to say about this chapter, because it's pretty much exactly what I've said before. I'm pretty into developing stories somewhat realistically, so they unfold gradually. Also, I've never written from the alternating perspective of two characters like this where the majority is more so a narration. Regardless, I hope you enjoy the chp. and thanks for the reviews :) for you patience i'll give you somewhat of a spoiler, that being, these two angsty young men are going to have quiet the run in next chapter ;)*