A new heart even if it was artificial, as artificial as life was without Mokuba at his side: he was nothing more than a contraption composed of gears that worked by a motor system or a code command, not because there was an essence of his own in it.

Nanotechnology seemed to be his ultimate ally in accomplishing that goal if he considered the exposures of those he hired, but Seto didn't care about the means or the procedure, only the heartbeat. But that heartbeat, which technology promised to deliver to the palm of his hand, slipped through his fingers like a handful of sand.

He cannot beat death.

The failure led to the loss of millions of yen in the search for other alternatives that in the end did not return his brother either, amounts that Seto no longer prioritized recovering with the development of new projects. Contracts and documents stamped with the seal of closure filled his former desk, and the imbalance they brought with them caused the Corporation's once solvent monetary system to falter, Isono seemed the true owner as he sought stability by recalling the pattern of orders that his years of service had seen it stand on its own feet.

Along with Mokuba, Seto had lost everything, even the will to live.

At the wrong time, he came to understand that Mokuba was the starting point of every success he had achieved in his life: he had challenged Gozaburo to a chess match to give him a better life, he had worked his ass off at work so that he wouldn't have to do it in his place, he had made himself a transcendental figure, someone who commanded respect and admiration because he wanted him to feel proud to have an older brother like him, and he had tried to follow a meticulous system of control in his life so that nothing and no one would disturb the daily life they had built together. But he let it all absorb him to the point of forgetting what was and should always be the true epicenter of everything: Mokuba. His little Mokuba, his beloved Mokuba.

Mokuba had been the starting point and, now that he was no longer by his side, it was the end.

Now it was he who had an artificial heart.

A heart that beat not because of its own essence, but because it was so disposed by the system of gears that his organism became, or by the language in codes that was then his brain.

Sitting in his study, silent and cold, he pressed the secret compartment located in the desk drawer, there the presence of the gun became visible, years waiting to be touched, as did the incipient beard and the brown hair that he never again kept neat. With closed eyes, he took the gun in his hands, fitting it to his hand, placing the nozzle on his temple with his index finger on the trigger, and...

He stopped.

He returned the gun to its place and allowed the tears to once again come to his face.

Why had he stopped, because he was a coward, because taking his life required more courage than living it?

No.

But because, perhaps, the best punishment for having let Mokuba die was to have to live life without him by his side. And, again, without Mokuba, there was only that.

The uncertainty of a "maybe".

THE END