To say that the transition from community college to university has been a strained one for me would be a cataclysmic understatement. After classes, reading, "professional obligations," and homework, I often have just enough energy to turn off the light and navigate my way to wherever I might happen to sleep.
I haven't given up on the idea of updating this story regularly, but the sad fact of the matter is that this semester in particular has proven very time-intensive. Next semester, I've opted to focus only on my major, which should loosen up both my schedule and provide me with more time and energy to do what I love.
That said, it's another understatement to say that this chapter's been a long time in the making, and I hope its length—certainly not the longest chapter in this series, but longer than most—will make up at least partially for the immense wait.
I hope you enjoy this glimpse into the Kaibas' lives, from the perspective of another individual that we all should find rather familiar.
It took a long time for anyone to…acclimate to dealing with Seto Kaiba. He seemed utterly fascinated with convincing people to hate him; it was like his body didn't run on oxygen, but controversy.
Yugi Mutou wasn't some saintly pacifist able to see past any flaw to the decent human being underneath the baggage. He, too, had once thought the worst of the man. His friends were of the opinion that he'd always disagreed with them on the subject of the teenage billionaire, when in fact he'd simply been disillusioned first.
He could still remember the tipping point.
It must have been…three years ago? Yugi had been in the park one afternoon, sitting at a bench and trying to study. And failing spectacularly. He'd seen Kaiba across a field of pine shavings at another bench, scratching at a notepad with a fountain pen. Of course, Yugi had been drawn to the sight, and his brain—entirely uninterested in the periodic table—fixated on the question: what would the richest man in the city be doing at a public park?
Then Yugi saw little Mokuba, then eight years old, looking distraught and near tears as he ran up to his brother. "N-Niisama…" he'd mumbled, staring down at the ground. "This…bigger kid. He said…he said that…" He stumbled through a few more failed sentences before fidgeting his way into silence.
Kaiba looked up from his notes and raised an eyebrow. "Think through your sentence and try again," he instructed, quietly but firmly. Looking back now, Yugi knew what the elder Kaiba had been doing. At the time, he'd thought the young executive was just being cruel for the sake of it.
Mokuba took a deep breath and said, "…This other kid…I was playing and…he said to get out of his way. 'Cuz he said he had to practice. I said we could practice together, but…but he said he wasn't gonna. He said real soccer's not a game for nerds. He…said I should get lost."
To say that Kaiba had looked uninterested would have been an understatement. He said, with that same soft, steady tone of voice: "And what about this upsets you, Mokuba?" Paradoxically, he sounded half-sympathetic, half-affronted.
"It's not true!"
"What's not true?"
"…Huh?"
"What's not true?" Kaiba repeated. "That soccer isn't a game for nerds? Or that you're a nerd?"
"Well…both!"
"Does it bother you that he said those things? Or does it bother you that he rejected your offer and bullied you off of the field?"
"Both!"
"So what should you do about it?"
Yugi supposed that he'd been thinking, at the time, of Kaiba as any other big brother. The sort of person who should jump at the chance to protect his little siblings. It hadn't quite come through yet, what was going on.
In response to his brother's latest question, Mokuba looked like he was being confronted by an exam he wasn't prepared to take. Finally, with a fidget and a grimace, he said, "…Stand up for myself."
"That's right." Kaiba nodded curtly.
Mokuba kicked at the concrete, sighed, and slumped away looking dejected.. Yugi, an only child and always fascinated at the idea of having siblings, thought rather grumpily that if Mokuba had been his kid brother, he most certainly wouldn't have sent the poor boy away like that just to get some peace and quiet. He most certainly hadn't expected what had come next.
About fifteen minutes later, Mokuba came back to his brother, shuffling along like he was embarrassed but with a certain gleam in his eyes that said he wasn't…not really. The older boy, who did look embarrassed, stumbled along next to two fuming adults who must have been his parents.
Kaiba didn't even bother to look at them until the boy's father, a burly-looking man with a biker's beard and anger rolling off of him in waves that were palpable enough for Yugi—sitting more than fifteen feet away—to feel uncomfortable, belted out a rather boisterous greeting: "You this brat's father?"
"I am no one's father," Kaiba said smoothly, still not looking up from his paperwork. "I am, however, uninterested in speaking to you if you intend to conduct yourself this way. If you could step away so that your shadow no longer obscures my vision, it would be appreciated."
"He's my…brother," Mokuba said.
"That right, smart-ass?"
"I'm going to have to ask you to lower your voice," Kaiba said, still not acknowledging anyone with his gaze. It struck Yugi at this point that he'd never heard his former rival quite this calm. In stark contrast to the pseudo-biker and his quietly-raging wife/girlfriend, Kaiba was entirely unruffled. But, Yugi noted with some surprise, he didn't sound bored anymore. Just…quiet. Even polite.
Though his personal experience with the man told Yugi that the politeness was probably meant as mockery.
"Don't talk to me like I'm a five-year-old, you son of a bitch!"
Stop acting like one, Yugi thought, and for a moment he knew that Kaiba was going to say it. He had to. The line was right there, so easy, so simple. He had to say it.
Kaiba slipped his paperwork into a briefcase at his side, placed his pen into a pocket, and rose smoothly to his feet. As it turned out, he was a good two inches taller than the biker, and the difference in poise, attitude, and perhaps most pointedly in dress, was striking.
"If you have a concern with my brother's behavior," Kaiba said, so low and nonchalantly threatening that Yugi went as stiff as a cornered rabbit in the presence of a wolf, "then I am extremely interested to hear it. Please, sit here and tell me." He gestured to the bench. "However, if your only interest is to vent, that is another matter entirely. Continue to raise your voice to me, and use profane language in my brother's presence, and we will have a problem. I can assure you quite confidently that you will not enjoy that."
Each word was meticulously chosen, smoothly delivered, and sharp. But not a single one felt out of place.
"Listen to you, all high and mighty 'cuz you're in a fancy suit!" the woman all but screeched, seemingly unable to contain herself anymore. "That little monster of yours assaulted our son!"
"Ma'am," said Kaiba, as sickeningly sweet and condescending as he would have been speaking to a four-year-old, "please. Lower your voice. I can hear you quite well." Kaiba glanced at his brother, raising a thin eyebrow. "Mokuba," he snapped, suddenly stern and commanding. The black-haired boy flinched. "What happened here?"
"Ronnie was just minding his own business!" the woman snarled, cutting Mokuba off before he could begin to reply. "And this little delin—"
"Ma'am." Kaiba's voice now was a whip-crack in the dry Autumn air. "I would be most appreciative of your point of view on this matter. At this specific point in time, however, I am more concerned with my brother's behavior as he views it. If you would be so kind, allow him to speak."
It should have sounded like a threat. The part of Yugi that still thought badly of Seto Kaiba thought it sounded like a threat. But it wasn't. It really wasn't. It was firm, and it was unwavering. But it wasn't a threat. Nonetheless, Ronnie's mother seemed to take it as one, as she bristled and seemed to bloat up like a bullfrog.
"You implied I should stand up for myself," Mokuba said slowly, carefully. "I stood up for myself. I went back to the playground, told him I would share the field with him but I wasn't gonna leave. He tried to threaten me, grabbed my shirt. I don't like people touching me. I…made him let go."
Kaiba didn't react. Yugi wondered what he was thinking; he thought Mokuba's behavior sounded perfectly reasonable, but the stone-faced glare that Kaiba was leveling on the boy made it look as though he were entirely unimpressed.
Yugi noticed with a blink that Mokuba's language now mirrored his brother's: meticulous, careful, and smooth. A far cry from how he'd looked when he'd come to his brother fifteen minutes earlier. It was like…like when he thought he might be protected, Mokuba was mousy and embarrassed; but when it was clear that he was on his own, he was cool and collected.
Yugi wondered if that was the whole point.
Kaiba blatantly ignored Ronnie's parents, turning instead to the boy himself. "…Did you touch my brother?" he asked, and again...it sounded like it should have been a threat, but it wasn't.
"Hey! Smart guy! Leave my son out of—"
"Be quiet, sir," Kaiba commanded.
"Don't you tell me to be quiet!" The biker reeled back and sent his fist cracking against Kaiba's face. The impact of the blow echoed in the air, and time stopped for a long moment as Kaiba slowly, so slowly, turned his head back to regard the man with the same cold, steel-flinted glare that Yugi had seen far too often. He felt his entire body go stiff again as he waited for the storm. He was sure that Kaiba was about to break the man's wrist, or pull a gun, or start making phone calls.
He didn't.
"Come with me, Mokuba," Kaiba said slowly. "We're leaving."
Mokuba, pale and wide-eyed, stared at his brother. "N-Niisama…?"
Kaiba turned on a heel. "Now."
The young executive stalked away, his polished dress shoes clicking on the concrete. The biker, clearly having expected a fight, was so flabbergasted by the lack of confrontation that he simply stared.
"H-Hey…" Ronnie's mother called weakly. "Where…?"
Kaiba stopped walking, as Mokuba picked the man's briefcase off the bench and started trotting up to him. Without turning, Kaiba said, "I have given you both multiple chances to have an adult conversation with me about this confrontation. You both have chosen to squander them. You are no longer my problem."
"Don't you…write me off…you arrogant son of a…" Ronnie's father breathed, sounding winded with surprise.
"Goodbye."
The grim finality of that last word sounded like a door being slammed, more damning than any curse. Yugi watched the Kaiba brothers as they left the park, unable to fully reconcile what he'd just seen, and why it conflicted with every notion of behavior he'd ever had about his rival.
Kaiba had a hand on his brother's shoulder now, and was whispering to him. His entire demeanor had changed; he was no longer stern and irate. He was calm and friendly.
Yugi realized, at that precise moment, that when it came to interacting with Seto Kaiba…it was never arrogance. It was a simple case of high standards, and whether or not you could meet them. Ronnie and his parents, left dejected and offended with no idea what to do with themselves, could not.
Mokuba could.
And that…pretty much summed it all up.
Every so often, Seto actually manages to act like a brother. More often than not in my work, he's acting in his capacity as a maternal figure; nurturing, and guiding. This chapter encompasses neither of these roles. This chapter is perhaps one of the first times I've worked with him acting in the capacity of a father.
I've perhaps opted for a rather theatrical way to encompass this. A lot of the parental figures in my work fill one of two facets: in short, they're either good parents or horrible ones. I don't often go down the murky road in between. Is this a failing on my part? Yes. But it shapes my work. Any parent I write who is not a "good" one, ends up looking something like a caricature of the worst kind imaginable.
That said, there's a reason for this. We all know, I think, that Seto hates to be touched. Why is this? Based on the core series, I don't think there's any real indication that he would. But it's a natural conclusion considering his history, I think, and here it comes into play. With Seto's confrontational, competitive nature, it stands to reason that if anyone challenges him physically, as happened here, he would retaliate rather violently.
So why didn't he?
Because he was acting like a father. He had to teach Mokuba something. Most pointedly: standing up for yourself doesn't mean punching and kicking and screaming when someone attacks you. It means refusing to let people treat you like garbage. Seto could have easily knocked the guy flat. He didn't, because he didn't have to.
But he did have to prove a point. And in that, I think he succeeded.
