I didn't necessarily start this chapter, or this project, expecting to refine my own personal philosophy on how life works. But that's kinda how it goes sometimes. As you learn about your characters, you learn about yourself.

It's all a journey of self-discovery, or some such nonsense.


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"Do you know the absolute dumbest thing Chichiue ever said to me?"

Ryo looked surprised, and suspiciously happy—even delighted—when Noa asked him this question. He turned to watch his companion closely, leaning in and waiting expectantly. "I'm listening," he prompted, when Noa didn't continue on his own.

Noa cleared his throat, squared his shoulders, and spoke in a deep and lumbering voice which Ryo didn't recognize as an uncanny mimicry of Gozaburo Kaiba, as he'd never heard the man speak before. If Seto, Mokuba, Roland, or indeed anyone who'd ever worked for the old demon had been in the room, they would have gone pale in the face.

Noa said: "We call it capital because it is the single most important element to anything we do. It is first. It is largest. It ought be respected. Remember this well, boy."

"Capital as in . . . money." Noa nodded. "But also capital as in . . . ?"

"Letters," Noa said. He shook his head. "I have no idea which one of his flunkies fed him that line, but it didn't even work on me when I was six. I knew, even then, that it was a ridiculous thing to say. I've lost a great deal of the respect I once had for my father, but that was still beneath him, and I think part of him knew that because he never said it again."

"I mean," Ryo said, "they do say money is the root of all evil. And your father has never struck me as a particularly good man." He waited to see if Noa might take offense to this proclamation; Noa did not. "They also say money makes the world go round, and your father does strike me as having been a—mover and a shaker, so to speak."

Noa waved a hand with something like disgust. "Money isn't the root of all evil," he said. "Capital isn't the driving force of evil. It's a tool. It's a facet. The real source of evil is fear." He held up a finger. "Specifically, fear of inadequacy. It's what drove Chichiue. It's what drove me. It's what drove Aniki. When we were all at our lowest. At our worst. We feared our own futility, our own mortality, and so we tried to force our worth into the world. Carve it into history. Whether we had capital or not wasn't what determined that. It facilitated it, sure, but that's not the same."

Ryo looked interested, but skeptical. "Are you so sure?" he asked.

"Sure enough to say it," Noa said. "Money is the driving force behind any capitalist society. That's true enough. It's what gives anyone . . . anything. But that doesn't make it important, it just means you can't avoid it. Chichiue was always going on about the world being what we make it. Even when I was a toddler, just learning how to speak, he was saying that. I would have expected him to understand that money is just a tool. I would have expected him, of all people, to advocate for its mundanity."

". . . If I didn't know better, I'd accuse you of being a communist."

Noa laughed. "No," he said. "I don't trust my community nearly enough for that. But I've spent more than enough time around capitalists, and I've seen what they make. The monuments they build for themselves. I know that capital is just as much a false idol as any other cult fetish that ever forced its followers into a suicide pact. Defining your existence on any one thing doesn't prove that thing's importance. It only proves how shortsighted you are."

"Aha." Ryo looked like he'd just learned something. "You're one of those ideas, not labels people."

Noa shook his head. "I'm not. I promise I'm not that clever. It's just that I'm not arrogant enough to think I know all the answers. I've already seen, more closely and intimately than anyone, the limits of that kind of arrogance. I'm not impressed."