School started that next day quietly. No one spoke a word it seemed. Everyone too shocked at what was before them. Bruises. Bruises covered him from head to toe. Ran rings around his wrists, formed a purple haze on his cheeks. A cut on his lip, blood still fresh. He had been beaten, badly. Kaiba. He had been tied up. He had been tortured, one could only imagine what he had been through. Who could have done this?

Who could have hurt him like this?

That girl wheeled him in, smile still evident on her face. A smile so wide at a time like this. Kaiba, her boyfriend, the one she called dear, had been injured beyond all belief, how could she smile? It must have been a facade, surely it was. She must have been as worried as the rest of us. Just hiding it for his good, wasn't she?

Anyone who has earned Kaiba's, anyone who was capable of breaching his armour, must have been respectable, she must have been worried, if she wasn't then Kaiba wouldn't be with her. Surely she had nothing to hide. That couldn't have been it.

Halfway through class that morning, Kaiba asked for the bathroom, a first in several days. I didn't think he would bring himself to the same level as the rest of us. I didn't think he used the same facilities. Yet he asked. The teacher turned to me. Told me to go along with him, to help him should he need it. His girlfriend volunteered, but was shot down for obvious reasons. When asked why it should have been me, the teacher replied with a snotty, "Because you're not paying attention anyway."

So I escorted Kaiba to the nearest restroom, but he stopped me once we were through the door, told me to check for other people. I responded with, "You don't need this place to yourself to take a shit Kaiba." He merely told me to do as he said. I did.

Once sure that we were alone, he asked for an ear, made me swear to secrecy of what he was about to say. If at first he had told me, I never would have believed, but after this morning, after seeing his condition, I was ready to believe everything.

"I didn't jump," his first words hit me, they filled me with guilt, they made me curious, "That girl, Hideyuki Ane, she pushed me over the edge. She had confessed, I wouldn't have it, but you don't need to know the rest, how it happened is of no concern, but I didn't jump. Now, that same girl is threatening me, my brother, in this state there is nothing I can do, not while she remains at my side. I hate to admit this, Jounouchi, but I need your help."

Everything he said, every last bit of it, I found it to be overwhelming. Of course he hadn't jumped. He was Kaiba Seto, the strongest person I knew, the most emotionally stable, why hadn't I been able to see this? I should have known from the moment I saw that girl up on the roof. Her horror wasn't out of concern for him, it was of shock over what she had just done. Now she was threatening this guy, someone I admired, just to keep it quiet, and who would believe him? She was the daughter of our principal, she was so deeply rooted into this now, that everyone would just believe any plea for help was all for attention.

Kaiba needed help.

I was someone he could trust.

I had to help him one way or another.

I escorted him back to class not three minutes later. We had spent a few minutes loitering around to make his need for the bathroom seem realistic. If she were to grow suspicious she may do worse to him, she may stunt the mending of his bones, she could possibly

kill him with how she was acting. She was a dangerous person, one we needed to keep in the dark of what had just went down. We both understood that.

If it killed me, I would help him from this situation. If not for him, then for his baby sister. However, I had no issues in helping him, I wanted to, I wanted so badly to put that girl out into the open for what she had done, but who would believe me? Once a yakuza, and Kaiba, an attention obsessed guy? No one. We needed proof, for now, until I could figure out how to get that, I could prevent any further harm from happening to him.

Kaiba was a friend, and I had doubted him, I had thought everything done had been him, I betrayed my own knowledge on the person I knew him to be, and I had allowed this to go on for longer than it should have been allowed. I was partially to blame for this.

The least I could do was prevent more harm from coming to his sister and himself.