Note: I will just assume that mistakes of the grammatical nature have been made in this document. I have not updated in a very long time and felt that I needed to just write it out and get it published or it would never happen.

It was late when I finally went to bed, technically into the early morning. I had stayed up later than I had intended to, sitting quietly in the kitchen and chewing on carrot sticks. I was more unnerved than I should have been, and this fact embarrassed me. I felt like a young boy again, freshly scolded by Gozaburo. My mind raced. I thought of buying a smaller house somewhere remote far away from the streets of Domino and far away from my past.

The final crunch of the last carrot stick was what triggered my return to reality. I exhaled with the shaky relief of someone who had narrowly escaped death. My face had become hot again from my own shame. I felt so young, so painfully young and it was in a sharp contrast to the old and feeble feeling that had wracked me hours before. I thought of what Wheeler must think of me, petty and immature. As soon as the thought passed my mind- What would Wheeler think? I froze. I laughed, muted but sincere. I hadn't laughed in some time, not spontaneously anyway. Maybe a well-timed chortle at the calculated joke of an important business partner but that was just a nicety. When did I become this sad man who hid in his big kitchen and was flustered by juvenile acquaintances? The answer was there, sitting sadly in the dark. I had always been this man. The grand ego I had cultivated in my earliest youth was being replaced by a hard and dry film that settled over every facet of my existence, making me musty and subdued.

Self-analysis was a valuable tool in my world of business but in all honesty I tried quite hard to keep it away from the more personal components of my life. I found it foolish and problematic to always be looking in the mirror. If I could see myself I might have to run. But my mind was always has a way of stepping away and staring at itself.

I'd trade all this money to be an ignorant fool any day. Where have a gone, now just another wistful adult?

I pushed away and sat up from the stool that I had jammed into the corner of the island, realizing just now that the corner had jabbed into my stomach. The walk up the staircase, down the corridor and into my bedroom was cathartic. My thoughts were stilled by the movement of my feet and weight of my body moving through the air. I felt more limber now, more aware of my muscles contracting and expanding, more aware of the buzz in my brain. It offered me a quiet helping of sanity that I was so often deprived of. These strange and nonsensical feelings seemed only to exist in the night, during the most sparse and strangled hours. The awareness was growing sharper as I thought about how this would all be a silly blur of emotion and dreaminess in the morning.

I wasn't surprised to be awake well before Mokuba. What really shocked me was to go downstairs to find Wheeler in my kitchen. I assumed he would sleep until late morning. He was sitting in the same stool I had sat in last night. I stopped in the doorway and looked at him quietly, waiting for him to do something. He yawned. I frowned.

"Wheeler."

"Oh," he looked up, "heya".

Something in the air made me feel acutely underdressed. Wheeler looked messy as ever with his straw hair plastered on his forehead. My eyes focused in on the dirt beneath his fingernails. I rested one of my hands against the wall and stared hard at his hands until I felt the pressure build behind my eyes.

"You gonna sit down?"

In hindsight my approach was all wrong, I should have committed, glided over to my seat as if I was one step ahead of him.

I instead stepped cautiously and slowly towards the island stools, guarded like a stray.

I over-think things though. Yes. Yes Mokuba has told me this before.

On my stool, I felt a little tipsy, like I was balancing on top of a narrow point. Wheeler had his knees facing me.

"You been getting enough sleep?" Wheeler grunts when he asks questions.

I didn't expect that. Silly question to entertain.

"Enough," I think about ending my response here, but continue on anyway, trying to loosen the hinges on my mouth until I feel human. "Enough to keep me alive at least. That's what matters." I follow the line of Wheeler's nose with my eyes. "Isn't it?"

I don't really want an answer from him.

He snorts a little. "You've never heard the phrase quality of life, have you, Kaiba?"

I can almost appreciate this, Wheeler's wry little remark. I had designed my life for efficiency. I was not bitter about it. But something in Wheeler's voice made me feel like any other tired man, weary under the pains of life. I think perhaps if we had been in a bar with uneven piano chords playing behind us, I would have smiled.

But I got up. I told him he could eat from the fridge. I left the room.

I had deduced that it was not Wheeler who was unsettling me, but rather some larger force in my life. I wondered if maybe, because my destiny had seemed to be on such an accelerated track, if I was having my mid-life crisis in my twenties. The thought depressed me.

When Mokuba first walked into my home office, chipper as ever, he made a remark about it.

"You seem a little off recently." He said these words right at me but immediately turned his head as if he had actually been addressing the handsome wall clock. It was not a question and I chose not to respond. He waited.

"Just a bit dazed. Less um controlled."

I blinked and tensed my fingers up at my keyboard. I experienced a brief and indulgent vision of my control physically slipping out of my fingers.

"Are you feeling alright?"

"Fine."

"Yes but are you alright?"

I knew I owed Mokuba some substantial answer. I am so rich but I always feel like I am clawing my way out of debt.

"I think, Mokuba, I need some more sleep."

And he knows this doesn't mean I will go upstairs and take a nap. But I need a nap. But this is just another need floating over my head and out into the wind.

I had gotten so little work done. I was doing something akin to daydreaming, although it was rather involuntary on my part. I thought about myself as I had been a decade or so ago. In many ways I was just an image assigned to that vague idea called the future. Companies latched onto myself and Kaiba Corp hoping we'd drag them along into the light.

I had an impressive reputation as a duelist. I remember hating Yugi, hating him with an intensity that is only earned by your equals or superiors. I was more of a media figure then than now. Despite being a genius and powerful CEO, my role as a public figure had more to do with my looks and status as a duelist than any other accomplishments. I didn't dwell on it at the time.

I had a particular distaste for people like Wheeler- the born-to be hero types. Stupid and brave with a brashy sort of swagger that seems larger than life, and the pitiful origins keeping the whole package grounded. Wheeler rode that fine line between being an annoyance and being captivating. I tried to trace my deep distain for him back to its source but I had distained so many people in my short lifetime that all of it is melded together now. But he's calmed down now. Easily recognizable as the adult version of his teenage self. I've calmed down too.

After I stopped dueling the company expanded into some other industries as well. I stopped caring about the blue eyes white dragon. I remember that., the morning I woke up and realized I just didn't care about it anymore. I marked it in a calendar. I thought for a moment (and I still am embarrassed by this) that maybe it meant that I had become an adult- not caring anymore. The first time I had thought I was an adult was when Gozaboro died. The second was when Mokuba asked me about the sex. The blue eyes was the third.

I was not working. I was not functioning. I was mulling over little threads that had held my life together for years now, combing through each one like I was looking for gold. And maybe I was, looking for gold that is. Always in search of profit, how like me that sounds.

Wheeler opened my office door. I snapped at him. I used some insult after he replied indignantly. He is a ghost. I believe in ghosts, yes. I am by all means a fool in my beliefs. I am haunted. I suspect, knowing what I know about ghosts, that one way or another, Wheeler will not leave me be.

As he walked away I called out and asked him what he had needed. He came back in, red in the face. I had my chair swiveled to face him as he reentered the room, my hands folded silently in my lap. He laughed upon seeing me, shaking his head.

"God Kaiba, when are we gonna grow up?"

I can feel myself smile.

"You know, I came in here because I was about to leave, and I thought I should come back, you know, say something about why we never got along, make peace, admit my deepest darkest secrets, yadda yadda," Wheeler itches his knuckles and speaks to everything in the room but me. "But then, then I realized, as I was walking away and you were insulting me, it aint ever gonna be like that Kaiba, you know? It's always gonna be the dumb petty shit."

I don't say anything for moments. Wheeler looks at me, expecting.

"I never found out why you needed a place to stay."

He is visibly surprised. I know I have disappointed him.

"Oh. Split with a girl. Shared an apartment. You know." Wheeler speaks in short sentences punctuated by shrugs.

"What you find a place already?"

"Just gonna stay with my sister and mom for a while. Haven't seen them in so long. Maybe even look for a place up where they are, you know, get out of Domino."

"Oh." Wheeler shrugs again. "You get work a lot?"

"Christ Kaiba," he exclaims with a dismay that surprises me. "Look I know you don't think much of my, but I'm not just some lowly catering boy okay? I got...things…going on for me. Okay?"

And I say okay. Because I know it's okay. Wheeler is the hero, he is always okay.

Wheeler turned again to leave. "You know Wheeler," I am back facing my screen but felt his eyes on my head, "We were almost just cordial to each other."

There was silence from him for a moment and I wondered if that was how I made people feel, always holding back my words and information.

He laughed then, suddenly and richly.

"Damnit Kaiba!" He said through the laughs "Sometimes I don't get you, and sometimes I'm glad for it".

"Well, you wouldn't.

"You're an asshole" he said. I kept typing. "Hey Kaiba". I craned my neck backwards, looking at Wheeler through my reading glasses. "I didn't ever hate you."

"Hating a person is a waste of energy, you're better off to maximize your time."

We looked at each other again.

"Hey look, I'll see you around, okay?"

He's hopeful.

I let my neck sink into the back of my chair as he left the room.