"Are you going to be long?"

"Well, I want to make sure I'm at least a little ahead of anyone else who's going to compete."

To this, Kaiba looked sullen.

"U-Uh… No, I don't think so," she corrected. "It should only take me an hour or two."

"Then you'll be able to join me after work?"

"Yes, I think so," Anzu affirmed, but she was a bit unsure. She definitely wanted to practice for longer than just an hour or two today, and was hoping for maybe three, or better yet, four. With breaks, of course.

But it was so hard to spend quality time with him. He never pressured her to do it, but she found herself consistently changing her plans by an hour here, a day there, to make sure she could fit into the gaps in his schedule. After the hour at the arcade – where he stayed upstairs the whole time anyway – and the two hours at the movies, he had had to go back to work to "fix some bugs in a build" he "deployed". Anzu wasn't entirely certain what he meant by that, but she knew he had to work very hard, sometimes late into the night when the day renewed itself. An hour here and there is all she could really ask for, and she guessed that that was all she really wanted.

It did frustrate her a little that he was leaving now, since his work didn't start for at least another hour. He had enough time to watch her for a short while, but said he had to "prepare" for work. Anzu sighed. He had already changed into his work clothes the minute school ended, what more could he do to prepare when he didn't bring his laptop from the office today?

Kaiba gave her a smirk. "Then I'll see you later," he said, turning to leave. When he did, however, he suddenly spotted a flash of color a little bit off from the center of his vision.

"Yugi?" he called to it.

Yugi tried to hide in the shadows of the school building, pretending he was just passing by. "Oh, hi Kaiba," he said, keeping his voice as even as possible.

When she heard his voice, she was startled. She had the inclination to fold her arms and glare at him to underline how afraid of her he should be right now, but when Kaiba took another step and moved out of her field of vision, she saw him for herself.

Nervous. Hiding. His face wet from...

…Crying?

The sight rammed a stake through Anzu's heart, and brought her back to her senses. "Yugi!" she shouted, her arms uncrossing as she ran over to him as fast as possible to assess the damage.

Yugi desperately tried to hide his face from her, her worried persona making him remember how terrible and runny it looked right now.

Kaiba stayed back and watched the two of them with a careful eye from a distance. At his rival's obvious, faltering countenance, he allowed himself a smirk.

"Looks like you've been crying," he said plainly.

"Seto!" Anzu scolded. "There's no need to be mean-spirited," she said as she caught up to Yugi. "What happened, Yugi?"

"Anzu," he started. "I just…wanted to ask if I could still…you know, watch you today," he said quietly, keeping his voice down so Kaiba couldn't hear.

"Oh, Yugi...I don't think that's a good idea," she said softly. "I'm sorry."

Well, there was his answer.

Yugi nodded, his heart contracting. "It's okay. I understand. I figured I'd ask anyway."

When his voice got even quieter than before, Anzu's eyebrows knit in painful sympathy. "Yugi… I really appreciate you coming to ask, though."

To this, Yugi forced a small smile. In the corner of his eye, he saw Kaiba start to move again. "I suppose he's going to work again, huh?"

"No," Anzu answered. Yugi looked confused. "He doesn't go in for another hour. He has some…other business to take care of before then, I guess." The expression on her face as she said this was not lost on her best friend.

"'Other business'?" Yugi repeated, his own face mirroring her confusion.

Just then, Kaiba shouted, "You two can stop whispering," he said, hostility coating his voice. "I'm leaving now." He was confident that snot-nosed Yugi in that moment couldn't muster doing anything that he wouldn't like, not with tear trails still apparent on his cheeks.

But Kaiba was stopped by a sudden shout, "You're not going to watch Anzu dance?"

It was Yugi.

He turned to the tricolor-haired boy and said nothing, daring him to continue.

"Aren't you going to watch…Anzu dance?" Yugi said, his voice growing quieter, but his astonishment only grew when he perceived the look in Kaiba's eyes.

He didn't even seem to care.

"I'm busy," Kaiba said simply through semi-pursed lips.

What Kaiba couldn't see is how his reply had torn through Anzu's chest. Her eyes began to well up with tears.

Yugi looked up into her face. With a hand, he started to reach out to wipe her first tear away, but stopped himself. It pained him.

No, his brain stated firmly. There was no wavering in its sudden inclination.

He can't do this to her.

He wanted to yell, "Kaiba!" To have a showdown right then and there and call him out for the inconsiderate miser he was. But looking into Anzu's face, his far deeper desire was to do anything to stop her tears. For that end, he reined himself in. Getting into a shouting match with her boyfriend was hardly the way to make her feel better right now.

"I'm going," Kaiba said after the prolonged silence lingered. He hadn't seen Anzu's face, so there was nothing bogging down his mind as he walked away and left the two of them alone.

When Kaiba was out of earshot, Anzu sucked in a sharp breath, which startled Yugi. Then, she fell forward onto his shoulders and began crying in earnest.

"Yugi-i," she cried inelegantly, her face buried in his shoulder.

"Anzu…" he said softly. Before he could stop it, he had put his hand on top of her hair. "Anzu, please…" he pleaded.

When she didn't show any sign of stopping, he felt like crying again himself. His heart was broken because hers was.

"Please don't cry…"

"It's just…" Anzu attempted to explain, but her choked-up and phlegmy voice prevented her from uttering anything else.

"Don't talk, shh…" Yugi said gently, patting her hair with an almost butterfly-light touch.

He wanted so desperately to pull her into her arms and hug her close to him again, to comfort her with his whole body and the warmth he could provide her rather than just a few, awkward touches on her head. But he couldn't bring himself to risk any disrespect she might perceive toward her, his shining star.

Before Yugi knew it, he felt a tugging at his mind.

Anzu sniffled into his shoulder a little while longer. But when she finally opened her eyes once more, she almost jumped a little.

"Anzu…would you mind if I held you again?"

In front of her, replacing the person into whom she had just buried her tear-stained face, stood the pharaoh.