"Don't say if I were you,

Or tell me what to do,

How things would be if you were in my shoes,

'Cause you're not me."

You're Not Me by Marty Bags

VIII

It was a few days short of two months since Kisara's big move to Japan and by then, things had finally become routine for her. Kisara had adjusted to the time zone, her wrist had fully healed, and she had managed to adapt to her school and work life at the same time. In doing so, she no longer longed to be with her family and friends living in Egypt. In fact, within the many business days she had spent working at Kaiba Corp. for countless hours of the day, she had also developed an understanding of her boss, Seto Kaiba—the closest thing to a friend Kisara had since her move. Sure, she had more acquaintances than she could count, but because her work sucked up the majority of her time, she never saw the point in developing friendships.

It was fine, she thought. She had Seto, and to some extent, she had Mokuba to entertain her and keep her from completely alienating herself socially. Besides, it wasn't like there was a need for friends or family when Kisara had everything under control. Within those two months, she had learned the basic tricks of the trade to working at Kaiba Corp. and living alone on her salary. Yes, Kisara felt she was prepared for anything with her close to two months of work experience at Kaiba Corp. No matter what situation life threw her way, she felt she could handle anything. All of those situations and more… except for this one.

"It's Nii-sama's birthday on the 25th. I just thought you should know because my brother is extra cranky on that day and since his birthday falls on a business day, I might suggest avoiding him as much as possible," Mokuba informed Kisara. Kisara stared at him with bewildered eyes.

"Why is your brother cranky on his birthday? Does he have a problem with getting old? Because he's only going to be turning eighteen…"

"No, it has nothing to do with age. It has to do with the date. Some bad stuff happened on my brother's birthday and he hasn't exactly gotten over it so it would be best if you don't make a big deal. Things will run smoother that way." Kisara pondered whether or not she should ask the next question that popped into her head. It was clearly a personal matter—personal matters being the matters her and Mokuba didn't usually discuss. Still, she couldn't resist trying to get answers.

"I hope it's not wildly inappropriate to ask, but what happened on his birthday?" Mokuba shrugged his shoulders and sighed.

"Listen Kisara, I like you. I think you're really nice and you're really good at what you do. I would even go as far to say that I consider you my friend," Kisara smiled as Mokuba continued, "But my brother feels that personal affairs should remain out of the workplace. I could even get in trouble if my brother ever found out I told you about his birthday so do me a favor: keep this to yourself and give my brother space, okay?" Kisara nodded, touched to know that Mokuba saw her as a friend.

"You got it. I won't let Seto know about this."

"Know about what?" Kisara and Mokuba froze at the same time. Mokuba was fully prepared to have his brother scold him harshly for the next half hour as he twirled around to apologize.

"I'm sorry, Nii-sama!" Mokuba blurted out before opening his eyes. The moment he did, he laughed. "Oh, it's just you Isono! You had me worried there for a second." Mokuba smiled and turned back around, "I don't think you two have met yet... Kisara, this is Isono. He was Nii-sama's assistant before you came along. He's also a long time family friend." Kisara observed the tall, lean man. His eyes were hidden behind shades, his hair was spiked, and he wore a plain black suit with a black tie and button-up shirt. He looked like an average forty year old man and yet there was a certain warm energy that accompanied him as he shook Kisara's hand. There was more to him than he appeared, Kisara sensed.

"It's a pleasure to meet you. I hope Mr. Kaiba hasn't been giving you too much work." Kisara laughed.

"Only enough to keep me busy, I guess." Isono didn't laugh, but he gave Kisara a smile of approval instead before turning back to Mokuba.

"Are you ready to go home, Master Mokuba?" Mokuba nodded. "I hope whatever you said to Kisara wasn't anything Seto wouldn't want her knowing about."

"Know about what?" Now Kisara twisted around and was startled to find Seto standing a few feet away.

"Nothing Nii-sama! Isono and I were just on our way out. See you later, Kisara!" Mokuba grabbed Isono and the two of them rushed down the hallway to the elevator, leaving Kisara and Seto alone. Seto looked to Kisara.

"What was that about?" Kisara had about five seconds to decide the ethics behind lying to Seto's face about what Mokuba had told her or telling the truth before Seto suspected it was something she wasn't supposed to know. Kisara went with lying to his face.

"Like Mokuba said, it was nothing. Are you looking for me?" Seto didn't give Kisara's response a second thought.

"I am, actually, and I'd much appreciate it if you didn't spend your time at the office socializing with Mokuba. There's a lot of work to be done and the day has only begun," Seto said as he began walking, leading Kisara to his office as he explained the to-do list for the day, "Now, first things first, I need you to fix the scheduling problem. There are too many employees that want to take days off at the same time, so I need you to make sure we still have enough people in each department for the company to manage alright for the next couple of days, okay? I've already forwarded all the e-mails I've received about it. Reply and deal with them as you see fit. Make sure to come up with a list before hand of everyone who wants to take time off and for how long. Are you getting all this down?"

Kisara was busy furiously writing down every word Seto was saying. Another skill she had developed in the duration of her time working was that she was able to write efficient notes while keeping up with Seto's fast walking pace. She had nearly perfected the art, but there were still a couple mishaps here and there, including the fact that her note-taking took up all her attention when she was doing it.

"Oh, and you should probably watch where you're going." Kisara looked up just in time to see herself trip and fall forward. Just before she plummeted to the ground, she swung her leg forward and caught herself mid-fall and brought herself back into regular upright position. Learning to walk and write wasn't the only skill she had perfected whilst working at Kaiba Corp. She now knew how to stand on her own two feet… and occasionally pick herself back up when she fell. Seto only directed a disapproving look her way as they both entered into his office.

"You really need to get a handle on writing and walking. You've mastered being able to do it, but the tripping is simply unprofessional."

"I'll work on it, I promise," Kisara stated before going to her tiny desk in the corner and opening her computer. It was then that there was a knock on the door and an employee walked in.

"Mr. Kaiba, you wanted to see me?" Seto twisted his chair around to see the man standing in the doorway.

"Ah yes, Mr. Katsu. Please, sit down. I need to talk to you about the next upcoming work days… days I simply cannot let you miss." Mr. Katsu became frantic immediately.

"But Mr. Kaiba, please. I need to take that time off. My wife just gave birth to our third child and—" Seto cut him off before he could explain any further.

"Mr. Katsu, I'm assuming you got the memo about taking off days. Right now, I need you here at work. You're the head of the Public Relations department. Business is slow and I need you to be on top of assigning people with what little leads we have right now."

"You don't understand, my wife is still recovering from the birth and we didn't have the money to keep her in the hospital for more than a couple days. She already has two very small children to take care of. I just need to be there for a bit to help her get back on her feet. If you would allow it, I could work from home and follow leads from there." Kisara couldn't help but look up from her computer and stare at Mr. Katsu as he laid his heart out in front of Seto, just begging for sympathy. Judging from Seto's face, Kisara could tell her felt none for the man.

"Working from home? I won't allow it. No one in this company works from home. It's not efficient, you'll be distracted and most important; people will get lazy. I need you here to make sure people follow through with their jobs. Now-a-days, Industrial Illusions is the company with all the clients, OUR clients, and slandering our name while they do it. I won't be made a fool of." It was then that Mr. Katsu's attitude made a switch.

"Mr. Kaiba, I know all you care about is this company but this company means nothing in comparison to my family. My wife needs me at home to take care of my children and that's exactly what I'm going to do, whether you like it or not. I'll continue to do my job but I won't leave my home to do it." Seto leaned back in his chair and folded his hands in his lap. He sighed.

"If that is your demand, then maybe you won't have a job by the end of the day. Then you can stay at home for as long as you want." Mr. Katsu's face went completely pale. Kisara stopped everything she was doing and rose from her seat.

"But Mr. Kaiba… I…"

"I run a business, Mr. Katsu, a very important one at that. I require your complete and utter dedication to do it. This company works as a unit and if you can't commit the time to do that, then I'll have to let you go."

"Please don't do this. I need this job!" Seto shook his head.

"I'm sorry Mr. Katsu… but I'm afraid you're no longer needed here at Kaiba Corp." Kisara walked past Mr. Katsu and over to Seto's desk.

"You need to stop this right now! He needs this job to support his family." Seto turned his head.

"Then maybe he should've put his work before his family."

"You're being unreasonable about this. You can't force him to choose between his work and his family in a situation like this. It's wrong!" Seto turned back to Mr. Katsu.

"Mr. Katsu, if you would, I need a couple minutes with my assistant in private. Please wait outside my office for my final decision." Mr. Katsu broke away from staring at Kisara with complete awe and admiration right before leaving the office. He shut the door behind him, leaving Seto and Kisara alone to settle the whole ordeal, boss to assistant. Seto rose from his chair and glared at her.

"You do not get to tell me what I can and can't do, especially not in front of an employee. I'm your boss, dammit, what the hell do you think you're doing?"

"I'm doing the right thing, that's what I'm doing. You can't possibly act like you feel no empathy for that man out there. I know you would do anything for your brother in any given situation. I can tell. You try to hide it because you don't want people to see your soft side but I know it and you know it, so stop acting like someone who puts work before family. It's hypocritical and it doesn't make you a good leader." Seto said nothing in response to everything Kisara had said, and it was the silence that made her realize she had just accused the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company of not knowing how to do his job properly.

Flashbacks of similar feelings from her meeting with Mr. Kazuko arose and it was the first time since then that she realized she really could lose her job for saying such things. Her heart was pounding in her chest and all she could think about was how she was going to keep herself from crying in front of Seto when he did finally say she was fired. She tried to take a deep breath to keep herself from falling completely apart as Seto opened his mouth to speak.

"Kisara, you do realize you've only been working for almost two months, correct?" Kisara nodded. She didn't trust herself to ever speak again. "You've got a lot of nerve for an assistant who's suggesting I don't know what it means to run a company I've been in charge of since I was sixteen years old. There have never been an assistant to say anything like that to my face." Kisara shut her eyes. She was positive Seto's next words were going to be that she was as good as fired as Mr. Katsu was.

"But I think I like that about you." Kisara opened her eyes.

"What?"

"Mr. Kazuko told me on the first day you started working here that you had a spunk that I pay attention to. Although I am not one who listens to anyone's advice often, I cannot help but take into account what he told me, considering he is one of the most successful business men in Japan. With that being said, I'll do something out of the ordinary, and keep Mr. Katsu around." Kisara was speechless. There were no words she could say to express the relief or the gratitude she felt for Seto not firing her right on the spot for what she said and even agreeing with what she said to a certain extent.

"Wow, do you really mean that?" Kisara asked without realizing how elementary and silly it must've sounded to Seto. Seto sat back into her chair and turned away from Kisara, re-opening his laptop and acting nonchalant about the whole thing.

"Sure. It's not like I have the time to train someone else to take his job anyway, so go tell Mr. Katsu he can keep his job and get back to work." Kisara nodded and did as she was asked, trying to hide her smile as she went to tell Mr. Katsu the great news. Seto began re-opening all of the latest documents and graphs he had been looking at but found it hard to concentrate on any of them. The truth was Seto had meant what he said. Even though he hardly heard anyone's words aside from his own when it came to business decisions, he couldn't help but see a bit of himself in Kisara.

Kisara's fearless fire that came through in certain situations reminded Seto of himself when he was lad, trying to get the previous CEO, his step father, to listen to his brilliant ideas. Seto could never forget the way his step father would shoot each and every one of them down, never even taking a second to consider whether they were good ideas or not. Not only had Seto known his ideas were good but he also wanted nothing more than to never be like his step father in any way possible. This gave him enough validation to follow through with Kisara's idea without giving his decision a second thought.

Though Kisara hadn't been working long for Seto, she had proven herself to be intelligent, possibly even brilliant. Not only that, but whatever strange feelings Kisara invoked within Seto had only seemed to grow more intensely the more time he spent with her. While Seto wasn't completely sure what it is he was feeling towards Kisara, the only conclusion he had come to in the last two months was that he had never experienced it before… and he liked it.

A/N: Hey everyone! Kari here, updating a couple days shy of a month from when I last updated… reminding me that this might be the first story where I actually include seasons and months in a story. Hopefully that won't be too hard of a task to follow through with. It's been a crazy though and with the semester over, I'm happy to finally have time to do some writing and updating. Now if any of you have been following me on Twitter, you'll know that I would really like to post the next chapter before the end of the year. I don't have any of it written now but because the next chapter is directly related to this chapter, I'm thinking I'll be able to do it. No promises though! You may even find me updating the day of New Year's Eve, but we'll see! Thank you all for reading and reviewing. Happy holidays!