a/n: hello dearies… I hope you are enjoying the story so far. Thanks to everyone who let me know what they think of it and others, thanks for stopping by.

I just wanted to add some warnings for this chapter. If anyone is triggered by the topic of suicide, please try to avoid reading this.

Enjoy.

Bows of Promise

Chapter Four

It was an afternoon off. They weren't as rare as they could be, but this one was a bit different from the usual.

He had discovered a tiny little café by the pier in Domino. It was cozy. Not too empty that it made speech sound too loud and not too crowded to leave him suffocated. It was just perfect. It took up an empty corner of the pier, built with a woody-looking structure but mostly made of glass. The tables were generally arranged next to the windows. Clearly, the owners knew that whoever came here wanted a clear view of the sea.

And that was exactly what Yami wanted.

After work, he had changed in the lockers, trading the light blue scrubs with some jeans, a white, long-sleeved t-shirt and a grey cardigan, which he buttoned for extra warmth. It was starting to get colder and he was carefully dressing according to the weather because nothing bothered him more than unexpected bouts of common colds due to inappropriate attire.

He had his laptop on, a couple of papers strewn along the surface of his table in the corner of the café and he was writing down notes from a textbook of general surgery which he recently bought from the library next to the hospital. He was writing down the scientific background for their thesis and found the spot very beautiful.

He paused for a moment and sat back to stare out of the window at the sea beside him. It was cloudy, a chilly breeze moving the trees outside. His fingers, ink-stained and lightly powdered with the remains of the familiar, horrible smelling latex of the inside of the gloves he had taken off after a surgery, some hours ago, had let go of the pen and papers and were now wrapped tightly around a large mug of latte he just ordered.

It tasted like heaven… the milk was foamed just right, the coffee roast used so high-quality and rich… the barista had even swirled in a lovely swan while pouring out the milk, showing off skill that Yami appreciated wherever he was and whenever he had coffee. The dash of brown sugar he had added and the sprinkle of chocolate powder on top were all gently melting into the hot drink and he sipped happily from it.

It was the best way to unwind after a long couple of days. Today had been a bit difficult as well. There had been just two cases on the list but they were complicated. Both patients were obese and there had been post-grad exams carried out on them. He had been part of the examination committee and he had scrubbed up to assist the examinee in one of them. His shoulders had burned with the effort of holding the skin retractors but he did not complain at all. He knew it would cause the kid, who was having his first post-grad exam, to panic and disrupt his otherwise perfect technique. He did not regret not saying anything, the kid did his job quite perfectly, not dallying too long, not a move out of place.

Yami was quite happy with him.

The second examinee, however, it was Jonouchi assisting and Yami was observing. The examinee accidentally cut the inferior mesenteric vein. And that was where all hell broke loose over the operating room.

The examination stopped. The student became the assistant as Jonouchi took over after snapping at Yami and Seto both to scrub up to assist him instead. Yami understood why Seto had already moved so swiftly to the scrubbing areas. Apparently the brunet had seen the sluggish flow of venous blood and anticipated that the whole surgery was going downhill.

It took them three hours to find the two ends of the vein. A vein tearing completely might not be as dramatic as an artery… but if it had a large caliber and was located in a place like the abdominal cavity, then it was fatal. The less muscular wall meant that, once the flow of blood in its lumen was gone, the wall recoiled, both ends escaping amongst organs and intestinal coils and the blood flow—although slow—continued. It took the three of them together to get everything under control while the older staff members hovered at their shoulders for a while, then scolded the examinee for another while. The anesthesiologist was having a fit, trying to calculate the volume losses, yelling for blood and fluids and prepping her emergency drugs to try and counter the shock the patient was getting into.

It was a very thrilling morning. And not in a good way.

He was grateful they had nothing else to do at work today. He had showered, changed and driven here and had been sitting there for two hours, working on the thesis. He had never been this happy that he had a cup of coffee in his hands with a good view and a thankfully focused mind. He was almost halfway through his research for the scientific background he would be using and he was grateful for the sense of accomplishment that seemed to evade him ever since he arrived.

He was just starting his third cup of that delicious coffee when someone stood beside his table. He was writing down notes in one of his notebooks and took a few moments to finish writing the sentence, raising his head when he was done to stare up at the person standing so still beside him.

His eyebrows rose up slightly when he found Seto standing next to him, wearing a dark purple shirt and a pair of jeans and a smug little smile.

"Hi!" he said, joyful about one thing or the other.

"Hello," Yami said, eyebrows now knitting together suspiciously, crimson eyes narrowing ever-so-slightly. "How did you know I was here?"

"I didn't," came the smart little reply. To his annoyance, the brunet casually sat down in the seat opposite his and grabbed the menu. He felt his eyebrow twitching in slight irritation when he leafed through it with that same smug smile, "Relax. Our meeting is purely the work of God."

"I find that difficult to believe," Yami countered, still staring suspiciously at him. "Were you following me?"

Seto laughed. "No, I wasn't."

"Really?"

"Seriously, stop it with the paranoia," Seto reassured, catching the waiter's eye to indicate he wanted to order. "I come here a lot. It's a beautiful spot and they make excellent coffee. It's a pure coincident that I found you here sitting all alone, so I am offering my humble company," the smug grin widened.

"Perhaps I want to sit alone," Yami said with a raised eyebrow.

"No you don't," Seto shook his head, turning to the waiter to greet him by name, ask about his sister and his mother, then ordering a latte and a brownie, not letting him reply to that.

"Never thought you had a sweet tooth," Yami remarked, raising his cup to sip his drink, for now letting the invasion of his privacy go.

"Just for chocolate," Seto answered, sitting back and crossing his arms. Yami kept the cup close to his lips, staring at him in silence as he settled down in the comfortable, armchair-style seat, legs crossing and a content little smile settling on slightly tired, but otherwise still gorgeous features. "So what brings you here?"

Yami shrugged. "Working on the scientific background." He too, relaxed back in his seat after setting down the cup on the coaster once more. He suddenly noticed how tense his shoulders were, how much his eyes felt just a bit too heavy. He was tired. He sighed and forced his tense muscles to relax, closing his eyes for a bit. "It's been a really long month…" he remarked, more to himself than to his unanticipated guest.

There was silence from Seto for a while. Then… "So it's tougher here?"

He opened his eyes and he genuinely started laughing. "Hardly! Work here is like a walk in the park considering the working conditions I've had to go through back in Egypt."

"Aren't you being cocky?" Seto asked, narrowing his eyes.

"Not at all… here the longest I've ever worked is twenty-four hours. That is the shortest I've worked there," he shrugged, flipping through the pages of the textbook.

"That's inhuman…"

"You have no idea."

At that moment, Seto's coffee and brownie arrived. He smiled a little at the scoop of chocolate-chip ice-cream piled on top of the dessert, gently melting with its heat. He looked out of the window at the cloudy skies for a while, before shifting his gaze back to the brunet, who started happily eating. He chuckled lightly, shaking his head a bit and sipping his own coffee.

"So medicine in Egypt sucks?"

"Medicine sucks everywhere," Yami countered calmly. "It's all just a matter of whether you have the passion for it or not."

Seto grinned at that. "So you've always wanted to get into med-school?"

Yami snorted, "That couldn't be farther from the truth, actually. I was pushed into it by my parents. They were both doctors. My father was a cardiothoracic surgeon and my mother was a dermatologist. Both were professors and they insisted I got into their alma mater. I started liking it in the last two years of school."

"But your father's not Egyptian, is he?" Seto asked, curious.

Yami shook his head, "No. My grandfather was an archaeologist from Japan and he settled in Egypt with his wife. Dad met mom in school and she is Egyptian."

A part of him noted that he was perhaps talking a bit too comfortably. It was how it was with one Seto Kaiba. Things just flowed so easily around him. The banter, the flirting…the work. Everything was just so mysteriously easy, it amazed him to no end.

Seto was oh-ing silently at his previous admission. Then he grinned with a hint of evilness on his handsome features, "So let me guess…you were the teachers' pet back in school? I mean you must have come with serious recommendation, both parents professors at your college and all that…"

Yami could feel his gaze darken ever-so-slightly.

"Again…hardly. I was treated the worst kind of treatment by both professors and my classmates as a result. They thought anything I did was because my parents pulled strings for me. And I was just not as good as they were, by Egyptian med-school standards. I didn't measure up to their expectations and hence they assumed that I wanted special treatment," he confessed. The amusement faded from Seto's eyes, gradually replaced by some concern. He laughed humorlessly, trying to placate him, "Don't worry it was only for the first four years…then I had to transfer."

Seto's concerned gaze, if possible intensified, "Four years cannot be referred to as 'only', Yami."

"It's really fine," he soothed. "Only the fourth year was really horrible that I had to transfer. Otherwise it was all bearable."

"Why? What happened?" Seto asked, the concern still visible on his features.

Yami kept staring for a while longer, taking in the white skin, the faultless features and the brown locks that fell into those gorgeous blue eyes. He averted his eyes, murmuring, "Nothing…it was my fault, really."

"Somehow I don't believe you."

The comment had him turn once again to look at the brunet who had a determined look on his face.

He looked away once more. "I was going through a major depressive episode. A suicidal student."

There was silence for a while, in which he raised his cup to his mouth to take a slow, languid sip, glancing briefly at the other side of the table to watch the expected, shocked expression that sprung on Seto's face.

"I do believe that should have made people back off, instead of making things worse."

Yami laughed. He set down the mug on the coaster again and leaned forward a bit to cross his fingers together while leaning his elbows on the edge of the table. "It wasn't like that at all. I never got any preferential treatment because of it. Suicide, or poor mental health in general, is a stigmata in Egypt that not a single one of its cases ever escaped. To take one's life is so unimaginable to people. My parents did not have a choice at that time, however. Part of me knows for sure that if it wasn't for the fact that my bones could be seen, they would have either dealt with it themselves or left me to stop bleeding on my own, if I ever stopped…"

He sat back, grabbing his coffee once more. He sipped calmly from his cup, his eyes set with strange fascination on the breakwater. He could feel the blue eyes fixed firmly on him but did not have the bravery to meet them and find out what sort of expression was swimming in their depths exactly.

"I was extremely unlucky that day," he resumed, then paused a little, chuckling slightly, before adding, "Or lucky, depending on how I am looking at it right now. Now that I look back on it, my luck really was on my side even back then. I was supposed to have the whole house to myself that day. Yugi was in school and my parents were both working; my mother in her clinic and my father traveling to a conference in the USA. The house was supposed to be empty for at least several hours. I even prepared a painkiller to take in advance… Opioids are prescription grade drugs but I managed to get a hold of some tramadol pills and took them an hour before I did anything, just in case it was too painful to cut to the right depth. I had everything calculated perfectly, according to the average blood flow in the radial and ulnar arteries, and I determined how deep I should cut to sever them. I was just so good at anatomy back then."

The words were coming out with a vague sense of detachment. He was still watching the artificial breakwater with an odd fascination, crimson eyes fixed on the dark grey, uneven rocks piled up together to form a long structure that did its job perfectly. The winter waters were hurling themselves angrily at it, breaking on the rocks in a flurry of dark blue liquid, white foam and invisible spray too fine for the naked eye to see.

"Yugi had a half-day at school, it turned out. I didn't know. Not only that, my father had his flight cancelled due to bad weather in New York and returned after just one hour of leaving…" he continued, tearing his eyes away from the water to focus on his coffee. He raised it to his mouth to sip gently from it, fingers wrapped tightly around the cup to try and transmit its warmth to the rest of his body. "I was already well into the far edge of first degree shock… my father didn't call the ambulance. He knew they would arrive too late and we lived near the hospital anyway. He drove me himself to the emergency room and he called the head of the vascular surgery department, who contacted one of my older classmates and one of my mentors at that time to tell her about my condition in advance and have her ready to meet them in an emergency operating room."

He smiled and nodded slightly to himself, recalling her.

"Her name was Ishizu Ishtar. She was the only female in the surgery department and she was the very best of them. She got in against the will of everyone in the department and she shut all of them up with how great she was. She was a senior resident at that time, almost an assistant lecturer. Overworked, with dark circles under her eyes and rarely leaving the hospital. I remember once seeing her at the supermarket and joking that I didn't recognize her out of her scrubs and without the Doppler bag slung on her shoulder."

He kept it to himself that she had blue eyes their shade so much like Seto's but, on remembering them, he finally raised his eyes to look at the brunet and swallowed thickly, only now realizing what he was doing and what exactly he was telling this…this supposedly complete stranger. The expression in those blue eyes jolted him back to reality. The shock and worry. There was no pity there, he was grateful to see. But it was so much like Ishizu's expressions back then after he made it—because of her—that it made him realize that he never said this out loud to anyone else before.

He looked away, suddenly aware of himself and what he was doing and exactly what he was saying and to who. He could feel himself flushing fiercely and he was embarrassed to feel his ears and his face reddening at gossiping so much about a topic that was one of the most taboo subjects that he didn't even like thinking about to himself, never mind saying so much about it to someone else. Someone like Seto. He felt naked suddenly. He had talked too much and now he was just vulnerable and he hated that feeling. He clenched his fist on the table, feeling his heart racing and starting to hyperventilate with fear and complete mortification.

"Don't…"

He blinked at the single, monosyllabic outburst coming from Seto. The expression changed in those blue eyes. Shock turned into determination…worry became a whole new shade of concerned pleading. The perfect eyebrows, previously partly raised now knitting together ever-so-slightly. He was surprised when Seto's hand crossed the distance across the small table, catching on the edge of the large textbook for one moment, but continued its path towards his side of the table to rest on his clenched hand.

Yami stared at it in silence, a part of him noting that his breath was coming short for entirely different causes now. He then shifted his eyes up to stare at the brunet once again.

"Don't stop…please tell me, I want to know," he said, a determined note dancing along his words. There was a tiny plea there as well, he could hear it.

He cleared his throat gently. He withdrew his hand and turned to look at the waters once again. "I blabbed too much," he muttered softly.

"Don't worry… I swear I won't tell anyone," Seto quickly rushed out. Yami laughed slightly, nervously at his zeal. "I won't!"

"I know you won't," he reassured. He laughed slightly, adding, "What are we, five? I know you won't…" he then shrugged, shaking his head slightly, and explained, "I just never speak of this to anyone."

"Maybe you should…"

"There is nothing more to say, really," he lamely said, staring down at his hands as his fingers knotted together in his lap.

There was silence for a while. Then Seto asked, careful, "What happened then?"

"Well… nothing really… she was on call that day. She is the reason I am anything in my field right now. She repaired the arteries so perfectly, making sure no ischemia happened at all. She noticed that I had nicked my ulnar nerve while slashing the artery open. If it wasn't for her insisting on getting the neurosurgeon on call to take a look, my ring and little fingers wouldn't be working at all now…" he smiled once again. "I wasn't too happy with her when I woke up later, but… again, this just depends on which time I am looking back on the situation."

He was dreading 'the' question. The why. It was the reason he was so horrified he had said so much. He wasn't prepared for the answer. It was too much information. Already, this was too much information. He fought to keep his breathing under control again, and looked away, once more choosing to focus on the soothing sight of the waves breaking, waiting for the feared question.

It never came…

"What happened after that?"

He shifted his eyes back to Seto's. He looked genuinely interested. There was nothing to indicate that he was about to ask why he did it. There was just pure curiosity on his features. He looked away once more, raising his now just-warm cup to sip the coffee which he had forgotten all about for the past few minutes.

"Nothing… the news spread way too quickly. Not because of Ishizu, but the neurosurgeon was also one of our older classmates. He told someone, and someone told another someone and within three days everyone knew what happened."

His tone was flat. He didn't particularly feel like recalling that part. The first few tentative phone calls… the religious advice that meant absolutely nothing to him. Then the harsh comments that followed. That it was all a cry for attention, that he really should man up a bit. That perhaps he couldn't handle the stress. Maybe he was ashamed he wasn't among the top ten students like his father and mother had been…

He sighed, closing his eyes for a moment and leaning back in his seat again. When he opened them again, he made sure he was looking outside the window once again.

"I transferred to another school the year after it," he resumed. "I went ahead and got the transfer papers done. My grandfather lived alone in one of Egypt's smaller towns, by the Suez Canal. He ran a game shop there." He smiled once more. "I love him and consider him a parent-figure more than both my parents combined. Someone his age would never have accepted someone like me to live with him, never mind offer the emotional and material support he offered me."

There was complete silence settling over them for a few minutes, in which he sipped the rest of his coffee. He even flipped through the book absentmindedly, vaguely placing a note here and there to reread later, because his thoughts were in too much of a frenzy to focus on properly penning down any important pieces of information.

"I'm sorry." He looked up, crimson eyes questioning. Seto sighed, picking at the half-eaten brownie for a while and making little swirly patterns in the melted ice-cream. "I made assumptions. I shouldn't have."

"That's alright. Everyone jumped to that conclusion and that was why everything was so horrible for a while," Yami reassured. Obviously, this was not what Seto wanted to hear, so he insisted, "Really, I did not tell you this so you would upset yourself about it. I am way over it. The incident itself and the horrible first few years. The rest of it was a lot of fun. It was too late by then to change careers and I was too stubborn to leave something unfinished, so I had decided to continue med-school and the last two years were so much fun, I ended up loving the field. So it all turned out to be okay in the end."

There was silence for a while longer.

"Oh god, please don't do this," Yami groaned.

"What!" Seto indignantly asked.

Yami waved a hand around, "Get all awkward. I said it is fine. It's been over ten years since and I don't even know why I brought it up. So please just let it go and don't make things unnecessarily uncomfortable."

Once again, there was silence for a while, "I wasn't making things awkward…" Seto defensively said. Yami raised an eyebrow at him, cocking his to the side with an 'oh really?' kind of look so he sheepishly smiled, "I was just wondering if I will be a complete ass if this doesn't stop me from calling you uptight."

Yami giggled nervously, grateful for the diversion from the morbid topic he had unintentionally opened. He took the long-handled, coffee-stirring spoon that came with his latte and reached for the brownie to take a piece and taste it.

"You could order one for yourself, instead of eating mine," Seto looked indignant.

Yami grinned, "I'll get fat. One spoon from your dish is more than enough."

"You don't look like you can get fat."

"Oh I can. And I am not the physically fit type. The only exercise I ever get is running in a hospital's corridors. So I watch my food closely, because if I breathe one extra breath, I gain weight…" Seto was just staring at him so he shrugged, setting down the spoon and picking up his coffee once more and enviously said, "I've always been that way. Not all of us are born models."

Seto laughed at that. "I will consider that a compliment," he said, the evil gleam returning to his eyes. Yami watched in fascinated silence the little, fine wrinkles that appeared beside the soft pink lips. There were just so many perfect details about Seto, he couldn't help staring. It didn't help at all that Seto was aware of how gorgeous he really was, using his best features to his advantage, smiling haughtily, pushing a stray strand of his chocolate-brown hair away from his eyes and adding, "It takes effort to look this good, though. It's not as easy as you think it is."

Yami scoffed at that, "Seriously, don't tell me it's hard work to be able to eat all of this brownie and still look like da Vinci's Vitruvian Man…"

"Envy doesn't become you," Seto pointed with the spoon, a mock admonishment on his features. Yami shook his head in skepticism and picked up his cup again, as Seto added, "And it is hard work. I cexercise in my swimming pool every day. It's why I can eat all of this without guilt." Yami placed the cup back on the table with more force than necessary, making Seto jump slightly and raise an eyebrow. "So violent, Motou…"

"How much do you exactly make a year? Two limos, a swimming pool… what else, do you own a private jet and a yacht?" Seto pursed his lips and shrugged. Yami's eyes widened. "You do, don't you?"

"The jet belongs to Kaiba Corporation, to be completely honest," Seto laughed. Yami blinked, not understanding. "Your expression is priceless, though. No, the limos and the jet and yacht and pool are not from my wages as an angel of mercy," he closed his eyes in a mock peaceful expression. "We've always had them. The business is going great and all that…"

Realization dawned on Yami. "Seto Kaiba… KaibaCorp Kaiba," he exclaimed in recognition. Suddenly, an entirely different kind of awe dawned on him. "Oh my God, I didn't even make the connection."

Seto grinned, pushing away the now empty plate and holding his coffee. "Yeah… don't get too excited, our current job doesn't pay that much."

"It must be so awesome, growing up with so much power at your fingertips," he remarked absentmindedly.

Seto's eyes misted over for a few seconds, then he blinked and sheepishly smiled, "Yeah, it was awesome. Just a bit."

Yami laughed. "For a while, I thought you were some kind of child prodigy who skipped grades and graduated early from med-school and that is why you have more money than the rest of us."

"I was a child prodigy who graduated early… but not from med-school," Seto remarked and Yami stared. "I was CEO of the company for exactly three years. I was nineteen when I left it to my brother, who was sixteen at that time." Yami's eyebrows drew together in confusion. "Yes, I was like… two years behind everyone else in med-school in my generation."

Yami stayed silent for a few moments, then asked, "How come both of you could take control of an empire like Kaiba Corporation when you're both so young?"

"We were both child prodigies…" Seto showed off. Yami cocked his head sideways and gave him the 'I am serious' look, so he explained, "Our stepfather shot himself in the head because I had voted him out of the board of directors, leaving the company in my hands."

Yami almost choked. "Your stepfather?"

Seto nodded calmly, "We were adopted into the Kaiba family when I was ten. Gozaburo had a child called Noah, but he died in a car accident. I took advantage of his visit to our orphanage and challenged him to a game of chess. I told him if I won, he had to adopt me and my brother both."

He looked very mellow about it, Yami noted. As if it was a perfectly normal thing for a ten year old to challenge someone four times his age to a game of strategy and tactics and win.

"He had been home-schooling us ever since. He focused on me more than my brother, but only because I was older," he resumed, shrugging and looking indifferent still. But Yami could see the normally easy expression on his features hardening, the blue eyes losing the glint of passion that normally burnt there. "I was not given a choice on which career I would have liked to pursue. I knew I had to change that for Mokuba…"

"Your brother?" Yami interrupted with interest.

Seto smiled. Yami's heart raced a little when the little laughter wrinkles appeared once more beside the blue eyes, warmth and happiness filling them once more as he replied, "Yes… he's just an amazing kid… he took over KaibaCorp and let me do whatever the hell I wanted."

Yami paused for a moment, "And did he always want to run KaibaCorp?"

"Oh yes… he is way, way better than I ever was. Because he really loves what he's doing," Seto reassured. "Don't worry, I am not doing to him what was done to me."

Yami blushed to the roots of his hair. "That's not what I meant," he defensively said.

Seto laughed, "Relax. I know. It's just he spent six months convincing me that I am not."

Yami kept silent at that and the silence persisted for a while, Seto just helping himself to Yami's notes and flipping through them, grabbing his pencil to circle this or underline that. Yami was not at all paying attention to what he was doing, staring long and hard at the sun setting, mind going over what Seto told him.

He sighed.

"What?" the brunet asked, pausing what he had been doing.

Yami's head shook a little bit, a small smile tugging on the corner of his mouth. "I guess I went ahead and made assumptions as well. the moment I heard you were the heir to the KaibaCorp empire, I immediately presumed you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth."

"It's okay," Seto said, eyes scanning the textbook. "Everyone assumes that. It is not very common knowledge and it's only because Gozaburo had been a bit of a loser, to be honest. The corporation started getting so famous and making headlines after he had been voted out and he had to go out with some drama."

"I have no knowledge whatsoever about the business world, but I am guessing it wasn't easy to do that to him?" he was curious to know. He was very curious to know. Clearly, there was more to Seto Kaiba, M.D. than the shallow-minded playboy who called him uptight and hassled him openly in front of colleagues and students.

Fascinated, he watched him penning down useful notes from the book in his loopy, slanting script, nonchalantly shrugging, "It wasn't easy, no. but I was motivated by years of hate for him to be honest. He was an asshole and there was no hope of him ever changing. He couldn't stomach the fact that a ten year old beat him at a game of chess and I spent years and years paying for his hurt pride. I was stuck with only two options; either he wins and I just cave under the stress or prove him wrong that I can take whatever he dished out at me. It made him angrier of course, that no matter what he did, I just adapted. If it wasn't for Mokuba during those years, I would have been driven mad. In a way, back then I would have envied you for your suicide attempt. I didn't have that choice, even, because I knew Mokuba would have no one."

Yami's fist clenched at the achingly honest admission. It was painful to listen to and he wasn't sure if he wanted to know any more details than that. He stayed silent, however, respectfully remembering that the brunet had let him say what he had to say without interrupting with silly questions or misplaced comments.

"I think I was so obsessed at that time proving that I could take it all that I would have gladly carried on without even thinking of anything to do to change what was happening. When I was fifteen, I was given ten million dollars, and I was told I could spend it whichever way I wanted. But the catch was, I had exactly one year to return it ten-fold," Yami blinked and stared blankly, so Seto chuckled lightly. "Yes… it was supposedly the epitome of all challenges and I was so willing to prove I could do it, I took him on. I bought a small company with the ten million dollars. Insignificant, really, but its workplace was very tight-knit together. They were practically family." He grinned, pausing for a second, then added, "I then told its president I was going to dissolve it. Make everyone go their separate ways, cutting down costs and making workers redundant."

"That was cruel," Yami remarked, raising his eyebrows and not even trying to hide his dismay.

"I was…" Seto agreed with a little laugh. "But there was no room for mercy in business, Yami. I absolutely had to gain back the money, especially since he had one of his right-hand men watching exactly how I will do it and report everything back to him."

Yami wondered just what kind of strength Seto had to be able to live with such a man who obviously took a challenge with a fifteen year old so seriously, he gave him such a large sum of money and had his best man watch him. "What an overkill," he said, shaking his head in disgust.

"Well, it was his downfall anyway," Seto grinned. "When I told Mokuba that I was being observed, however, he suggested how to shut him up for good. It turned out Mokuba could outwit both of us and I was so grateful to have him on my side."

"How so?" Yami urged him, interest piquing more and more.

"At that time, Gozaburo owned forty-nine-percent of KaibaCorp's shares. That was the controlling interest, which meant that he was the person owning the largest number of shares. The rest was owned by normal shareholders from all over the world. Mokuba suggested that I propose buying out these shares by going to the current board of directors and suggesting voting him out." He paused for a second, playing around with the empty wrapper of brown sugar, fondly smiling and adding, "I didn't know back then that Gozaburo had given Mokuba two-percent of Kaiba Corporation's shares. I had convinced the board and we did manage to buy forty-nine-percent of the shares, but it was useless, of course. We had to have more than him. And that was where Mokuba stepped in and announced that he was selling his two-percent to me."

Yami's oh-ed, eyes glinting with a new kind of amazement altogether.

"Yeah, it was quite a dramatic scene," Seto said, chuckling at his expression. "Gozaburo really could not handle that blow to his pride. Shot himself in the head three days after we gracefully told him to evacuate his office."

Yami laughed nervously at that, unsure if he really should be laughing or not.

"It's okay, you can laugh. He was quite a ghastly, appalling man, as you would probably describe him," Seto teased, easily understanding his dilemma.

His tense laughter turned into an open snicker at that and the brunet joined him.

By now, the sun had set completely and the café had switched on the lanterns that hung from the ceiling, casting yellow hues over its customers in a calm and chic way that had Yami falling in love with this place even more.

"I can't believe it's been that long…" Seto remarked, glancing at his watch. Yami mirrored his action, noting that he had been here for four hours already and that they had been talking for a little under two hours. "See time flew by so quickly while we talked…" something in Seto's speech made Yami look up. He was a little alarmed to see the usual, lecherous look back in the blue eyes. "Time will fly by even quicker in my bed…"

Yami rolled his eyes. "Do you ever stop?"

"I'm just saying…" Seto innocently shrugged, pushing back from the table slightly and straightening his impossibly long arms. He looked like a little kid with the glint brightening up his eyes.

"Well don't," Yami shook his head.

He was collecting all the papers that were now haphazardly strewn across the surface of the table, shaking his head at the little notes made there in handwriting different from his when Seto spoke again after a few minutes of comfortable silence.

"Aren't you going to tell me why calling you beautiful made you flip out?"

He froze.

He gazed up, holding the blue eyes, a million thoughts rushing through his mind all at once and as many feelings leaving him wordless. He kept his mouth shut for the time being, knowing that if he opened it, he would probably embarrass himself, either by making an unintelligent sound, or blabbing unintentionally like he did earlier. Granted, it didn't turn out to be such a horror to voice out loud an incident that had a great role in shaping the man he was today, but he wasn't exactly very comfortable talking about moments of vulnerability like that. His pride did not allow him to appear anything but composed and collected at all times. The fact that he had said so much, bared his weaknesses to the brunet so much…

He wasn't going to do more of that, right now.

He smiled, returning back to the task of gathering his things.

"Not today, Seto…"

tbc...