I'll freely admit I kind of cheated with the prompt this time.
Given that my Domino City is set in California, I could have easily invoked the Pacific.
I did not.
I am chaos.
.
Noa learned, over the course of the handful of months he'd spent sharing a home with Seto, that the best time to approach him with a request was when he was drowning in an ocean of paperwork. Either he would agree to the request just to get back to his business, or he would jump at the chance to do literally anything but his business; bureaucracy was the part of his day that he loathed most passionately.
So it was that Noa stepped into his brother's office one Saturday morning, to find Seto already swamped with prep for the next week.
It was as golden an opportunity as he was likely to get.
"Ah . . . Aniki. Can I talk to you about something?"
Seto looked up from his private torment. He set down the folder he'd been trying to glare into submission, and he turned his chair so that he was looking directly at the young man who might as well have been his twin. "What's up?"
It was clear that Seto was looking for a distraction today, and Noa was pretty sure that was his best-case scenario. Some part of him had been hoping for the short option, but he knew it was better to lay out his case to the man when he was actually, actively, listening.
Noa drew in a deep breath.
"Have you ever . . . done any searching, by chance . . . for my mother?"
It was, quite possibly, the single most awkward thing he'd ever asked. But he found that thinking about Amaya Kaiba threw Noa off his game so much that he couldn't help but be pleased with himself just for finishing the question.
Seto frowned. "I have not," he admitted. "In all honesty, it has never occurred to me to wonder if my predecessor ever had a wife, ex or otherwise. I now realize that he must have; for all the fuckery he involved himself in, almost all of it to buck societal expectations, I can't imagine him having a child out of wedlock."
"Too much press," Noa said. "He'd have been dealing with the same questions from tabloid journalists for the rest of linear time. Can't give those jackals that clean a shot at your throat." He gesticulated randomly. "Or whatever he would have said. I used to be better at that."
"You want to find your mother?" Seto asked.
Noa flinched. "I just . . . well. Ryo mentioned it, and . . . I haven't been able to stop thinking about it." He rubbed his hands on his pants. "She left Chichiue after he harvested my brain. To save it. You know? And so, by the time I woke up," he made quotes with his fingers, "she was already gone. I tried to find her, tried to track down some indication of where she might be, but . . ." He trailed off. "I just. I want to know if Hahaue is okay."
Seto's expression was soft. "Noa. You know that every resource we have is open to you."
"I do. I . . . I know that. But. It's just . . . well, Ryo said. He said she probably hid herself to keep away from Chichiue. So that she'd never have to deal with him again. And, well, the only person I know who's ever beaten him is . . . is you."
