It was earlier than I expected, the time that I arrived home. I came in around 10 pm, not nearly late enough to guarantee an empty house. The whole day crept by slowly until I couldn't bear it anymore. So I left for home with the naïve hope that maybe Mokuba had decided to play nice and take everyone out to dinner rather than entertain at home.

Of course I was wrong. I knew I'd be wrong.

I tried my best to sneak in through the back door. I could hear laughter coming from the main living room.

The main staircase upstairs was located just past the living room and so I had to pass by the doorway to get to it. I was quiet and careful not to squeak my shoes or even let my coat whoosh behind me. Mokuba must have been on the look out for me because as soon as I started to inch by the opening he stopped me.

"Seto!" he exclaimed, and I felt all the eyes of the room turn to look at me. I didn't smile at him. I glared coldly around the room. "Come in and join us" he insisted. I frozenly walked with him into the center of the room. The first person I noticed was Yugi, mostly because of his ridiculous hair. He was standing next to the brown haired girl. Everyone was smiling at me and it felt awful.

Mokuba gently guided me into one of the armchairs as everyone else took their seats again. We were all silent for a few minutes. I dug my fingernails against my palms.

Yugi broke the silence, his voice an annoyingly high register. "So Seto, I see you have kept busy!"

"Running a multi-million dollar company is time consuming." I answered curtly. He smiled feebly at me. Yugi then leaned forward out of his seat towards, the seat across from him. "Joey didn't you mention running into Seto a few days ago?" he asked naively. I cringed. Discreetly, I did my best to glance at the chair. I first noticed the tasteless and ill fitting jeans and scruffy sneakers. I watched him squirm in his chair. His face was red.

"He was at a party I was working at." He stated nonchalantly, only a barely detectable note of panic.

"That's funny Wheeler, I thought you hadn't recognized me. "

He looked over at me now and narrowed his eyes.

"A momentary mistake. You've aged a lot in the last few years,"

I silently fumed at the dig. The grownup inside of me restrained myself. Tempting as it was to throw out a dog comment, I kept it to myself.

The room went quiet again.

This time the brown haired girl spoke. "This is really a beautiful house!"

I realized she was addressing me. I nodded.

"I hired a decorator." I told her.

"Oh", she said.

Another boy, Wheeler's friend spoke up. He was talking to Mokuba.

"You got any more of these cheese thingies?" he said holding up a tiny cube of cheese on a toothpick. Mokuba left the room to get more food, and I was left alone, feeling like I was facing a pack of hungry wolves. They all stared at me intently, with the exception of Wheeler who gazed off at the door Mokuba has walked out of.

I crossed my legs and folded my hands in my lap, easing back into the chair and trying to relax. Although I was rarely at ease, being around these people made me feel even worse. After another moment or so the brown haired girl and Yugi began chatting amongst themselves, while Wheeler turned to the only other girl in the room and said something quietly into her ear. She laughed. For a moment, I thought maybe she was his girlfriend, and then I recalled something about his sister, and realized that was who she was. Wheeler's friend would occasionally make passes at the girl. Mokuba should have been back by now.

Mokuba walked in sheepishly, avoiding my eyes and holding a platter of cheese cubes and pineapples and other things. He set the platter down on the coffee table in the center of the room and slithered back to his seat. Everyone immediately sprang up for food, Wheeler and his friend being the most enthusiastic about it. . I wasn't hungry. I sat back and watched them, not trying particularly hard to hide my contempt.

Socializing with people you do not like is a particularly long and arduous process. I suppose this makes my life especially difficult, considering I do not like most people. If my job were more menial, I'd be more than happy to live my life as an incurable introvert and never attend another ridiculous party or business lunch again. As I recall, I had never bothered treating Yugi's ragtag group of friends with much respect, and old habits die-hard.

I stopped dueling years ago. I thought that if I stopped, I could finally cut the cord between all of that juvenile nonsense that seemed to keep edging it's way into my life. After that, I rarely ran into Yugi Moto, and that was fine with me. But sitting with all of them now made me indescribably uncomfortable. They had all changed, mostly looking older, (with only slightly more sensible haircuts). But there was something distinctly the same about all of them, something that made me squirm and feel like I was back to being a miserable teenager. Yugi looked younger than he should have; He was round faced and bright eyed as ever. Still short as well. Out of all of them he had been my biggest competitor, and I supposed that even now I still owed him some meager form of respect. I wasn't so much interested in any of the others, besides Wheeler that is. Not to say I was interested in him- just that I clearly recall him being a useless scoundrel and well, I was a bit curious about where he was in life, especially after our little run in. The best approach, I thought, would to be snide towards him but not outwardly rude. Now that I was so firmly rooted in my adulthood, I had to be subtler about mistreating people.

"I'm curious, what exactly have all of you been doing these years?" I asked to the room. People seemed a little surprised since I had been almost completely silent up until this point. The brown haired girl, who I really could have cared less about, was of course the first to answer.

"Well I teach a dance class for children," she offered. I nodded as if I was actually absorbing the information. Yugi was the next to speak up.

"Well I'm still dueling quite a bit-" he began. I bit down on my tongue a bit. Of course I had seen him all over the news, "and also I've taken over the card shop." I nodded to this too. It was a predictable route for him to take. No one else responded for some time, which annoyed me because I really I was interested in what Wheeler was going to say. I looked at him, expecting something. He was staring away from me. Finally the curiosity got the best of me.

"You're not sharing with us Wheeler?"

He jerked a little and looked at me sharply. "Well you know," he said "some odd jobs here and there. Saving up some money to hopefully go back to school" I smiled a little. There was a forced note of pride in his voice that I was all too familiar with.

The rest of the evening passed faster, mostly because instead of long silence there was amicable chat between everyone excluding me. I was fine with that. This went on until the clock showed that it was well past midnight. People began to push themselves up out of their chairs and say their goodbyes.

"Hey thanks for having us over Mokuba!" Wheeler's friend said cheerfully. The brown haired girl and Yugi followed suit as they were guided out the back door Wheeler and his sister stood awkwardly in the room with me. I had stood up along with everyone else, giving small, curt waves to them as they left. The two of them were talking quietly to each other and I took the opportunity to listen in.

"Are you going home with Tristan?" Wheeler asked her forcefully.

"Well I was going to just stay there for the night…"

He said something low that I didn't quite catch and the sister smiled a little bit before leaving through the back door past Mokuba. I wasn't sure why Wheeler was still here.

We both stood, about five feet apart, trying not to look at each other. Suddenly Wheeler spoke out to me.

"Hey listen Kaiba," he began, earnestly "I'm sorry about being a dick earlier. I guess after all these years I really don't know how to talk to you. " He laughed nervously. I glanced over to him. He was talking more to the floor than to me. The space between us for far enough for the conversation to be awkward, but I didn't dare move closer. I realized that it was my turn to say something. I was caught off-guard and on the brink of saying something dismissive. For some reason though, I held my tongue.

"It's…fine. Let's just…" I paused, "agree to put the past behind us".

I didn't mean to but I ended up making eye contact with Wheeler and he smiled at me. He had the warm and genuine smile of a good friend, the kind that I never had. The smile made me uncomfortable because it was the kind of smile that expected to be reciprocated. Although I am good at most things, but smiling is not one of them.

He held that smile for a long time, waiting for me to respond. I finally settled for moving half of my mouth. I don't know exactly what facial expression I made, but it seemed to do the trick because he finally stopped. There was another stretch of him jus standing there, doing nothing. I wondered if Mokuba was still waiting for him by the door, to usher him away like a good host. I was about to ask if he was leaving soon when Mokuba walked back in. I could feel him look back and forth between the two of us, and then searching my face for some sign of a confrontation. He stood near Joey.

"There's a room ready for you upstairs, I'll show you the way," said Mokuba as he gestured for Wheeler to follow him. I looked up and saw Mokuba looking at me defiantly, waiting for me to say something. I blinked at him. For the second time that night, I held my tongue, and waited for five minutes until Mokuba had come back without Wheeler.

"I thought I had a strict no pets policy," I said casually. He glared at me.

"So much for putting the past behind you, " he muttered. I didn't usually get angry with my brother but this was one of those times. I took a few long, quick steps over to him to hiss in his ear.

"You purposely bring him into our home, give me no warning and expect me to be happy about it!"

Mokuba looked at me calmly, pulling his face back from mine. "Had I given you warning you would have thrown a hissy fit. I decided to save myself the anguish."

My face was hot and I felt strangely embarrassed. My younger brother was calling me out and I really, really hated that. Mokuba looked at me sympathetically.

"Seto, he really needs a place to stay and you need to-"

I cut him off. "Need to? I need to what?" I spat out furiously.

Mokuba moved his chin to his neck and looked at me sternly. "You need to take a fucking chill pill for starters," he raised an eye brow at me, "and stop taking my inviting a friend into our house as a personal attack."

Mokuba cocked his head to the side, the way he used to all the time when he was a little boy. It didn't make him seem young now, it made him seem old. But I was the one feeling old. I felt old and tired and I just wanted my house to myself.