Yugi grinned wildly as he and his grandfather waited for Umi at the airport. It had been a few years since his mother and sister had visited, and even then, the school schedules were so different in America that he usually still had classes while they were visiting. This year was different. Their mother's seasonal work had been postponed until the fall, which meant they could come home later in the summer, when he was also out of school. He had already spoken to Umi about what she wanted to do, and Grandpa had made all of the necessary arrangements. And he was incredibly excited to see her and play tourist. It had been years since he had gone to any of the more populous cities, and now he and Umi were going to explore together. He was sad that he mother was not also able to visit, but she had explained that her preparations were keeping her extremely busy.
All in all, Umi's visit had the makings of a good diversion. Middle school was awful, and he had struggled through the first term this year. He had hoped that most of the teasing would stop after elementary school, but he was wrong. If anything, it only had gotten worse. Everyone now towered over him, it seemed. He could not help it if his body was small, but the other boys ridiculed him for it incessantly. He had always been this way; it was a cruel joke of his genetics. He always said that Umi had gotten all of the good genes—that she somehow stole all the good ones he had while they were in the womb together. He did not mean it of course, but it made him feel a little better knowing his size and delayed maturity were things he could not control. Still, the teasing from the other kids hurt.
He could not wait to hear all about Umi's last year at junior high. She would be starting high school next year. He was jealous that she did not have to take placement exams. It was all anyone talked about at school, at least when they were not teasing him. Even Tea had made other friends and did not have as much time for him, but it was alright. He had things to take his mind off of the torture of school.
He paced the area near the baggage claim.
"Sit down, Yugi." His grandfather called to him from a bank of chairs. Yugi perched on the edge of one for a few minutes before jumping up once more to pace.
"When is she going to get here?" he whined.
"Yugi…" his grandfather pointed to the crowd of people gathering at the baggage carousel. Yugi stopped short when he saw her; she was the spitting image of their mother and had all of her beauty and grace. She had grown taller too, not that she hadn't been taller than him from the beginning. He smiled as he called out to her.
"Umi!"
A few other people in the crowd looked his way, some expectantly, other in annoyance. He did not care. She smiled back at him when she noticed him waving franticly at her. It was not the demure smile that he was familiar with girls using—never given to him, of course, but he was nothing if not observant of the people around him. Her smile was a massive, joyful grin, a sure sign that she had been Americanized. She started to move toward him, but then she stopped to grab her suitcase from the luggage carousel.
"Yugi!" she said breathlessly as she dragged her suitcase to where the pair had been waiting for her. She pulled her brother into a tight embrace, nearly lifting him off of the ground. "It is so good to see you!"
The cold dark place in his soul that he had grown so accustomed to in her long absence warmed as they embraced. He felt the smiling creaping onto her lips as their closeness once again kindled the bond they shared and her voice once again echoed within his mind.
"Come on, now children." Solomon said as he rose from the bench stiffly. "We don't want to miss the train."
Yugi and Umi giggled as they parted. He took the handle of her rolling suitcase as they left the airport.
Yugi found himself talking nervously as the train sped them home. He could not stop telling her all about Duel Monsters, a trading card game that he had just recently fell in love with. He knew that she was not interested in the game, and that she was only listening out of pity, but he could not stop himself. He told her all of the rules and how the cards work with each other in explicit detail. She just listened patiently with a small smile on her face.
"So, who do you play it with?" she asked him when he stopped to take a breath.
"Oh, um… well Grandpa mostly, occasionally someone who comes into the shop." His voice wavered.
"Maybe you can teach me while I'm here. I've never played, but I've heard kids at school talk about it." She offered. Yugi's mouth dropped open in surprise. It had long been their habit that Umi never played games with Yugi. She was not very gracious when the lost, and she always lost to him. He was always ten steps ahead of her in strategy, and it did not help that he could practically read her mind through their bond. Of course, she had gifts of her own that he could never live up to, like how she had fixed Grandpa's bicycle and set up a new computerized register for the shop during her last visit.
"Yeah, we could definitely do that!" He quivered with excitement.
"Yugi, you can teach her with one of the shop's loaner decks." Their grandfather said, his gaze transfixed on the scenery passing outside the window. "Oh, and Umi, what do you know about fixing TVs?"
"It's not what I usually work on, but I could take a look, Grandpa." She replied.
"Good. I'd hate to have to buy a new one."
A silence fell between the three as Yugi looked from his sister to his grandfather and back again. As it dragged on, it grew more and more uncomfortable, until Yugi could no longer stand it.
"So, what have you been doing, Umi?" he said in an effort to fill the void.
"Recently, helping Mom prepare for her expedition."
"What about at school? Anything interesting there?" He asked. Truth be told, he was intrigued by the way American schools were set up. He was not sure he would want to attend one—the long summer break seemed like it could be almost oppressive, but it was interesting. Unfortunately, it also meant that he was usually in school when she was not, so their visits were never as fun as they could be. Still, he held out hope for this trip.
"Well, I was on the school's robotics team this year."
"Robotics team?"
"Yeah. We built a robot to play a game—it was kind of like a sport—and competed against other teams in the state. It was so much fun, and I got to learn so many new things." She proceeded to tell him all about learning to use a mill and a lathe, as well as learning how to make technical drawings of the parts they were making for the robot. She talked excitedly about assembly and testing code and what it was like to see the robot perform all of its tasks successfully for the first time, and how it felt to drive it during testing. She described the competitions, with all of their fanfare and dramatic flair—the music, the costumes, the excitement of the game as the robots competed with and against each other.
Yugi smile as he listened to her passionate retelling, feeling a warmth in his heart and wondering if this is what she felt when he told her about games. He had never seen her so happy.
"Do you have pictures? I would love to see it." He told her when she stopped to breath.
"I do, but they are in my bag. I will show you at home." She said smiling. "And then you will teach me this.. Duel Monsters, was it?"
He nodded, grinning from ear to ear.
"And then we can figure out what else we can do this summer!"
"Mom said you wanted to do some touristy things."
"I do. It's been so long since we've lived here, and even when we visit, it's not for long. There so much I don't remember or haven't experienced. Kids at school ask me all of the time about festivals, and anime, and geisha, and all of the other things that Americans know as Japanese stereotypes. Because I've lived there so long, I don't know how to answer them."
"So you want to experience them for yourself." He stated, finishing her thought.
"Exactly."
"Well, we will definitely do what we can."
The next day, Yugi struggled to teach his sister Duel Monsters, but she just could not understand the flow of the game.
"Ok, so I draw first… And then I can… hmm…" She thought a long time about what she should do. Yugi tried to be patient, but he was also anxious to get to his own turn. "So I summon a monster, right?" She placed a card down on the mat in front of her. Yugi let go of a breath he had not realized he was holding.
"Yes. You can also play spell cards or set traps."
"And the spell cards are green, right?" She studied her hand intently.
Yugi tried to not roll his eyes.
"Yes. And traps are purple." He said for what felt like the hundredth time that day. And she still tried to activate a trap as a spell. He sighed heavily. She was never going to get this, but she was trying and he appreciated the effort.
"No, you set traps face down. They are traps, you want them to be a surprise."
"Oh, right." She flipped the card face down. He shook his head chuckling. She was clearly a lost cause.
Yugi said a silent prayer of thanks when their grandfather called her.
"Umi, can you see if you can figure out what's wrong with this television?" He called down to her from the top of the stairs at the back of the shop.
"Sure thing, Grandpa." She looked back to Yugi, who was already picking up the cards. "I should…"
"Go, we mustn't keep Grandpa waiting for his TV." He placed the cards back into their boxes and rolled up the mats before putting everything away carefully behind the counter. She turned back to him at the foot of the stairs.
"Thanks for trying to teach me, Yugi. I know I'm not very good at it."
That is the understatement of the year.
"Thanks for letting me. I know these types of games aren't really your thing, so…" He gave her a warm smile, and sent her a wave of appreciation to offset his earlier frustration with his attempt at teaching her. She smiled back before running up the stairs.
When he got to the living room after locking the shop up for the night, he was not at all surprised to find Umi surrounded by wires and various electronic equipment. She was concentrating hard and deep in her element. He watched in awe as she sorted out the problems with the television and put everything back neatly and more organized than it had been before. She was deep in her element as she worked on the technical problem.
"Well, I think I have it figured out." She said as she stepped back to admire her handiwork. She picked up the small remote and turned the system on. "If this doesn't work, then the problem is something that I don't have the tools to fix, like something with the incoming signal. We'll need a technician to figure that one out…" As she turned on the television, it sparked to life. Grandpa's favorite news channel was on, and the reporters were talking about the newest developments in business news. She flipped through a few channels to check the picture, before handing the remote to their grandfather. He quickly returned it to the news channel as she sat next to him.
"And the financial world was rocked today with the news of the sudden death of Gozaburo Kaiba, billion weapons designer and head of Kaiba Corporation. Early reports indicate suicide as cause of death." Neither Yugi nor Umi were paying much attention to the broadcast. The screen changed from the image of a middle aged business man to a boy barely in his teens, not much older than the twins. The shift drew the attention of both kids. His image seemed as serious and cold as the man he replaced, but Yugi thought his eyes were far more intense.
"He seems… familiar." Umi commented as she scrutinized the portrait.
"Prior his death, Mr. Kaiba transferred ownership of Kaiba Corporation to his fourteen-year-old son, Seto Kaiba."
Their grandfather turned off the television in disgust.
"Damn corporate shills and their warmongering. Leaving a company like that to a child, what are they thinking?" he muttered as he wandered to the kitchen.
"What do you mean 'familiar'?" Yugi asked, turning to his sister.
"I don't know. Like I've seen him before, somewhere. I don't think I could ever forget eyes that blue." She sounded a bit awe-struck, even to herself, but she knew she had seen him before, and that he had had a similar effect on her then.
"He seems really intense, though. But then how could he not, what with inheriting a multi-billion dollar corporation and having his father… kill himself…" Yugi said, triggering something in Umi's memory.
"The cemetery."
"What?"
"That's where I've seen him before. When Mom and I went to the cemetery. He was there, at a funeral. Sorry, it just came to me."
Yugi looked skeptically at his sister as the corner of her lips twitched upwards into a small smile.