This is a shorter chapter, because the idea it's meant to convey is a simple one. It's a common ritual among friends, especially when you're young, to spend time at each other's homes. I've shown Mokuba at the Brinkleys' often enough, but I've never had other people come to the Kaiba mansion.
I started wondering why, then discovered that the answer was deceptively simple.
"Can Connor come over sometime?"
Seto didn't flinch; it wasn't quite fair to call his infinitesimal spasm of surprise a flinch. But his brain did a double-take at the asking of this seemingly innocuous question, and he felt a sudden urge to cough, to clear his throat, to do something that would hide the thoroughly awkward moment of silence as he scrambled to come up with an answer.
But he knew better than to think that would work. Mokuba had always had a quick mind, even as a toddler, and he had always been able to read the minutiae of his brother's moods without conscious thought. So, Seto simply raised an eyebrow and banked on the most longstanding and most loyal trick in his social repertoire—sarcasm—and said, "No. Absolutely not. I don't allow peasants on my proper—of course he can. Did you finish the make-up work your English teacher gave you?"
It worked, at least it seemed to work, but nonetheless the surprised delight on the black-haired boy's face was like a knife stabbing straight through Seto's ribs. "Uh-huh! It's in my backpack. Want to see it?"
"No, that's fine."
"Can he come on Saturday?"
"If your room is presentable by then, yes."
"'Kay!" And he rushed over to the other side of the dining room table, where Seto was currently seated, and hugged him. "Thanks, Niisama!" Mokuba all but skipped out of the room, humming a tuneless little song to himself, and Seto slumped back into his chair and brooded.
He'd meant it to be a joke—or, at least, whatever the microcosm of half-baked optimism that served him for a sense of humor provided him in place of jokes—but some part of him had been thinking it was the truth; some part of him didn't want Connor Brinkley in his home.
And then there was the fact that Mokuba seemed to have known that, and expected him to say no.
When this preoccupation with his own antisocial stupidity didn't leave him the next day, he called Roland into his office and mentioned it, wondering if another perspective might help. After all, it wasn't as though Seto was any kind of expert on how to be normal.
"It seems a rather cut-and-dry case to me, sir," Roland said, not even bothering to hide the amusement on his face or in his voice. "It's become a rule over the years. Yugi Mutou, Tristan Taylor, Joseph Wheeler…his friends up to now have never been permitted onto the grounds. He's convinced himself that the rule is: 'When I want to visit my friends, I go to their homes.' I think he's forgotten that you don't hate Young Master Brinkley."
Darren's opinion, which he pursued next, was similar: "The first time you met him, he'd just gotten caught cheating on an assignment, and he implicated Mokuba in it. He didn't make the best impression on you. And I think everyone in this city knows what it means when you don't have a good impression on somebody."
Joey Wheeler (why Seto asked after his input, he wasn't sure and didn't want to examine further) put it in much simpler terms: "What, Mister Perfect Brain don't have an answer for somethin'? C'mon, man. Excuses, explanations, promises, compromises. None o' that flies with you. Moku-man prob'ly figured you wouldn't let Connor in 'cuz he fucked up straight outta the gate. Most people get a one-strike-you're-out policy with you. How's the kid s'posed to know that wasn't the case this time? You don't talk."
Once faced with this new information, Seto eventually realized that it all boiled down to a single, irrevocable piece of advice:
Lighten the fuck up.
