Gozaburo Kaiba is a strange subject for me.
Don't get me wrong. He's a piece of shit. But I don't think he's as mustache-twirling evil as I used to, when I was a kid. Real evil is mundane, and I think that's the part of Gozaburo that really makes him dangerous.
He's mundane.
He's just a rich man trying to secure a legacy.
And that's always a dangerous thing.
.
"We went on a trip once. Just Hahaue and me. Lake Tahoe, you know, on the border." Seto nodded. "I'd just learned to swim, and she wanted to show me . . . well, she said it was one of the most important places in the country. She said I needed to see it, so that I could truly appreciate nature."
Seto looked thoughtful. He gestured for his brother to continue.
Noa went on: "I guess I just figure . . . you know, since she was so insistent about that, I feel like she would have found a place like that, somewhere out in nature, away from the modern world, to live. Or, if not, then she'd go somewhere that's the precise opposite of that, so as to trick Chichiue into searching in all the wrong places."
Seto had a little notebook in front of him, on his desk. He was flipping a pen through his fingers. Every once in a while, he would jot something down. He hadn't said much; he would ask questions at certain intervals, while Noa waxed poetic on the various exploits of his mother. It wasn't so much a conversation as it was an interview, and Noa could only hope that his brother was learning more from this interaction than he was.
Noa felt like he was rambling.
"Do you know if your father did look for her?" Seto asked, after a long stretch of silence.
Noa frowned. "I . . . do not. He seemed . . . well, I mean, distracted, I guess is how I'd put it. Especially after the first few months. I noticed because he stopped visiting me. Eventually, I realized it was because he was on the lookout for a new heir. My replacement. You. If I'm being honest, I think he realized after those months that the whole project was a bust. Total botch job. There was no way I was going to be useful to him anymore."
"I wouldn't be so sure about that," Seto said softly. "I think he was seeking me out, yes, but it wasn't to replace you. It was to give you a new body to inhabit." He gestured to himself. "The fact that you and I look . . . identical, frankly, wasn't a mistake. I think I could have done literally anything that day at the Children's Home, said anything to him or nothing at all, and he still would have taken me."
"You think . . . Chichiue chose you so that I could become you?"
"I do."
Noa grimaced. "That is . . . so much worse than my idea. I still had it in my head that he intended to pit us against each other. He was always going on about competition and how important it was to raise a proper warrior. I figured he intended for us to compete with each other. To fight for the right to stand at his right hand. But . . . the idea that he was going to sacrifice you . . ."
"Consider everything you know about that man," Seto said. "Does it honestly sound out of character for him?"
Noa didn't take as long to answer as he would have liked. "No. No, it doesn't."
"It may be that your mother saw the writing on the wall," Seto said, "and knew your father was losing his grip on morality. On ethics. On everything that made him human, if anything was left. She may not have put quite as much work into disappearing as you think. It's possible, but given the trajectory of my predecessor's life after she left . . . I'm not entirely sure he cared all that much where she went. I think he gave up on her as soon as she gave up on him."