Chapter Text
This was what came of not checking every new hire personally. Seto Kaiba re-read the characters of the name of Kaiba Corp's newest game designer in case he'd read them wrong the first time, but no: that name was unmistakably that of his old classmate, Ryou Bakura.
Of all people to turn up now...Seto hadn't kept tabs on his old acquaintances, exactly, but he had noticed when their names cropped up in the news or in conversation. Yugi Mutou was the rising star of the duelling circuit; Katsuya Jounouchi had been working in some trade for a year already; Anzu Mazaki had gone abroad on a scholarship to a prestigious dance school in New York; Ryuuji Otogi was still running the Black Crown game shop; and Ishizu Ishtar had been hired again as head curator of the Egyptian gallery at Domino Museum. Seto thought he might have seen her younger brother in the city once, which was an uncomfortable thought.
But there were others whose current whereabouts had barely crossed his mind, and Ryou Bakura was one of them. He'd been quiet as a teenager, always on the edge of any group. The only time he'd drawn Seto's attention was when the Spirit of the Ring had possessed him. Seto could remember well how the Spirit's rough manners and speech had seemed to deform Bakura's gentle features. But outside the circle of bizarre events that seemed to centre on Yugi Mutou, he drew little attention; girls found him attractive, with his polite manner and pretty face, but he'd never reciprocated that interest that Seto had seen. He'd been into tabletop RPGs, hadn't he?
And now he was here, working at Kaiba Corp. The only other person aside from Seto himself with the power to approve new hires was Mokuba, and Seto thought he detected his brother's schemes at work here. Mokuba still enjoyed spending time with Yugi and his friends, despite the age difference, and it would be just like him to engineer a meeting between Bakura and Seto.
But curbing Mokuba's apparently irrepressible urge to meddle in Seto's personal life could wait. Right now, Seto had to interview the newest employee of Kaiba Corp. It was normal practice: he met every employee face-to-face at least once, right down to the cleaners. He considered himself a good judge, if not of character, then of competence.
Bakura, when he arrived at the CEO's office, had changed little in the intervening years. His hair was shorter, but still long and unruly. He'd switched from a t-shirt to one with buttons, in deference to Kaiba Corp's minimal dress code, but kept his jeans and trainers. His face - pale skin, big eyes - seemed little changed from the slightly effeminate prettiness Seto remembered from high school. Put him back in uniform, and he'd pass quite comfortably for a second-year.
"Company Head," said Bakura respectfully, bowing. Seto waved him impatiently to a chair in front of his intimidatingly-sized desk. Bakura didn't look intimidated, which could be good - Seto preferred them with some spine - or very, very bad.
"My brother hired you," he announced, scrutinising Bakura further. "You're here so that I can decide whether I want to keep you."
"Of course, Kaiba-san," Bakura murmured. He didn't seem shocked or displeased by Seto's rudeness; he'd just kept to the appropriate level of formality.
"You have a degree in Game Design." From a respectable university, too. "Why did you apply to Kaiba Corp?"
"It's the biggest and best company in the industry." That was a sop to his ego - Industrial Illusions was Kaiba Corp's major competitor, and had some claim to both those titles. "I prefer the game design here to that of other companies, especially how it's turning tabletop games into online RPGs. There's space for creative expression in Kaiba Corp games."
It was a good answer. It fit with what he knew of Bakura, too. But was it too good? Seto gave him a hard stare across the desk.
"Did you think that you'd have an easier time getting a job here because we already knew each other?" he pressed. There was little he hated more than people who thought they could presume on their acquaintance to get favours.
A faint smile flitted across Bakura's delicate features.
"Company head, if anything, I would have thought that might make you less likely to hire me."
Seto let him go. Specifically, he told him to,
"Get out of my sight and start doing what I hired you to do."
So Bakura left, after bowing at exactly the right depth to his new boss. Seto settled back in his seat - intimidatingly large, like the desk, and extremely comfortable - and typed a note to himself on Bakura's employee profile: ONE WEEK. That should be long enough for a trial run. A week of immersion in Kaiba Corp's game design department should reveal just what the enigmatic Bakura was made of.
~*~*~
Seto went home at eight. He'd been known to pull much longer hours, but Mokuba demanded him home for dinner at a 'reasonable time' on weeknights unless there was a true emergency, so home he went. Gozaburo had been of the same mind as Seto in his work habits, and had stopped shy of actually living at the office only to lessen the chance of bomb threats. Therefore the Kaibas lived in an upmarket residential area of Domino, with grounds and fences for privacy, only a few minutes from the corporate district that housed Kaiba Corp.
They did not, however, live in the same house as they had with Gozaburo. Shortly after his adoptive father's timely demise, Seto had arranged for the entire complex to be demolished, then rebuilt to his own specifications. In contrast to Gozaburo's Western-style crenellated and pillared edifice, Seto had chosen something more in keeping with the area, in the traditional style but from modern materials. He didn't entertain clients or investors at home, as Gozaburo had done; it could be designed entirely to suit himself and his brother.
"I'm home," he announced, tossing his shoes into a cubby. The thunder of footsteps on the stairs announced Mokuba's entrance.
"Welcome back! I've done my homework, I finished the accounts you told me to in Chemistry, and dinner's on the table so let's eat!"
Seto couldn't argue with that. The housekeeper - the same one who had taken care of household tasks ever since Seto had inherited - had made oyakodon. They were mostly silent while they ate, if only because Mokuba was stuffing food into his mouth at too fast a rate to talk. Seto knew that, logically, he must have done much the same during his own growth spurt; but it was still a repulsive spectacle, and Seto politely waited until it was over before asking Mokuba about their unexpected new hire.
"I always liked Bakura," said Mokuba, unrepentant.
"He was probably the least objectionable of that whole group," Seto admitted. He didn't ask Even after the Spirit of the Ring kidnapped you? Mokuba was remarkably forgiving of things like that. "But what makes him a good fit for Kaiba Corp?"
"You interviewed him this morning and I saw he was still around this afternoon, so I'm guessing he convinced you." Mokuba could be so sly at times. Seto gave him a look over his coffee jelly. Mokuba looked innocent - too innocent. "Besides, weren't you interested to see Bakura again?" Mokuba asked, his dish already clean.
"No."
But he had been, just a little. More than interested - attracted. He'd noticed things about Bakura that he'd noticed briefly back in school, except without the teenaged erotically-charged all-consuming fixation on beating the Spirit of the Puzzle in a card game distracting him. He noticed and appreciated the graceful curve of Bakura's cheek, his long lashes, the suggestion of his narrow body underneath his clothes.
But that was just him being ridiculous. He'd decided to put such thoughts out of his mind years ago: he had higher concerns than adolescent attractions. So he found Bakura attractive: so what? It pained him to admit it, but he also found Jounouchi Katsuya physically appealing - at least, until he opened his mouth. It didn't have the slightest bearing on how he treated him, and it wouldn't change his opinion of Bakura. Bakura was valuable in his role as employee; nothing more.
Mokuba was looking at him skeptically across the table. Seto took the high road and pretended not to see.
"Still, it's good for you to spend time with him," Mokuba said decisively.
"Mokuba, he works for me," Seto reminded him. "We're not going to be meeting up for coffee and a friendly chat." He left out that he didn't do friendly chats with anybody except Mokuba himself. Mokuba still looked unconscionably pleased at the notion of Seto being forced to interact with those people who were nominally his peers, so Seto added,
"Let me see those accounts."
"Already sent them to your inbox," Mokuba chirped, confirming the origin of the ping from his phone just as they sat down to dinner. Seto had kept to Mokuba's strictures that dinner at home was technology-free. He understood that commonly it was the older members of the family imposing this rule on the younger ones; that didn't mean that he appreciated the irony. Seto rarely appreciated irony unless it was in his favour. Outmanoeuvered, he grunted in acknowledgement and returned his attention to his rice.
Anyway, he had more important things to be thinking about than his newest employee, no matter how good-looking he might be. Kaiba Corp was about to launch a new mechanic for the Duel Monsters game that should shake up the playing field. Seto had grown tired of always seeing the same handful of names ranking at tournaments, and the same metagame strategies being talked about and employed. It was time to introduce something truly new and exciting.
The whole thing was done with legal permission of Industrial Illusions, of course: no matter how much Seto would enjoy wresting control of the game from Pegasus' over-perfumed clutches, a legal wrangle between their companies would be very unpleasant and nobody would come out of it well. Pegasus and Seto had simply reached an agreement that allowed Kaiba Corp to use Duel Monsters trademarks in their products, to release the occasional booster pack as a joint effort, and now, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the game's release, to officially launch a new game mechanic that Seto had designed: Synchro Summoning.
Relations between the two company heads were therefore maintained at 'cordial'. Mokuba liked to refer to Pegasus as Seto's 'friend', but that was just Mokuba trying to tease him. Seto cautiously respected Pegasus, which was more than he would have accorded to most people.
He was still wary, therefore, of Pegasus' motives. For all Pegasus despised cheating in others, it was only because he himself was the ultimate cheat. Theirs was a good partnership, and it would go exceedingly badly for Pegasus if Kaiba Corp were to suffer a loss. However, to Pegasus, taking over Kaiba Corp (as what he would no doubt regard as a benevolent dictatorship) surely counted as 'acting in the best interests of Kaiba Corp'. He had admitted as much to Seto at a duel last year. So Seto, for all he did business with Pegasus and challenged him to duels and treated him as a worthy rival, was always watching for the sting in the tail. The last attempt Pegasus had made at a company takeover had been more than five years ago; but Seto knew well how good Pegasus was at biding his time.
Across the table, Mokuba had finished his coffee jelly - possibly without chewing - and was now watching Seto.
"Something on your mind?" he asked.
"Pegasus."
"He hasn't tried to have me kidnapped lately," Mokuba offered. "I'm sure he hasn't forgotten about you, though. Maybe he just wants to hang out with you in some way that doesn't involve a duel?" He put on an expression of total innocence as Seto looked at him askance.
"I certainly hope not." Pegasus and he were not friends who hung out together: they were business partners and rivals. If Pegasus ever forgot that, Seto would be happy to remind him.
"Mm-hm. Well, I'm glad we got Bakura to work for us." This was a blatant subject change, but Seto took it.
"We'll see," he said, noncommittally. "We'll see."