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If there was one thing that Seto hated most in the world, it was making a mistake. Making a mistake meant that you weren’t careful enough. You missed a detail. You got lazy. You just didn’t have the skills. Making a mistake meant losing, and Seto was not a loser. However, standing there in a lavish, private suite set just off the coast of one of the Maldive islands (it had two floors, the lower of which was underwater and surrounded with glass walls that allowed one to see the fish swimming past) with a less-than-delighted looking Yugi, Seto had to admit: he’d made a mistake.
“You hate it,” he said.
“No, I love it!” Yugi immediately replied, his voice even shriller than usual in an attempt to sound cheerful. “It’s very elegant and…unique. I can’t believe someone thought to build a hotel room underwater.”
This was not the rapturous response that Seto had envisioned when he invited Yugi to vacation with him. It was supposed to be their first date, and Seto didn’t need to check one of those pathetic crowdsourced advice forums to know that it wasn’t going well. Not that he wanted to check; those websites reeked of desperation.
Swallowing offense that Yugi didn’t appreciate his choice of resort (he’d done the research and spared no expense), he said, “We can go to another hotel. If you want.”
“No, no, it’s okay. I already said that I like it here, and besides, wouldn’t that be a lot of trouble?”
This tiptoeing around was completely unnecessary. If Yugi didn’t like the place, the least he could do was be upfront about it. “It is troublesome, but if you don’t like it here then there’s no point in staying, so just tell me the truth, Yugi!”
Yugi sighed. He stared everywhere except at Seto. He hummed. He toed the floor. Seto was ready to shake the words out of him when he finally said, “Don’t be mad, Kaiba-kun, but the truth is…well…the truth is that I didn’t know how to answer when you said that you liked me, but you were so impatient and it made me feel very pressured, so I just sort of blurted out yes!”
“You mean to say that you lied?”
“What? No! Didn’t you hear me say that I felt pressured? If you think about it, Kaiba-kun, it’s not like you gave me much of a choice.”
“I wasn’t holding you hostage.”
Yugi looked sheepish. “Well, no, but you were looming over me, and you just radiated so much—ah—so much…”
“So much what,” Seto said through gritted teeth.
Yugi didn’t look Seto in the eyes as he said, “Desperation. So you can see how awkward that was for me! I didn’t want to make you sad!”
“I’m not a moping dog!”
“And then I wanted to tell you the truth, but you asked me to go on vacation with you and you were spouting off all these exotic-sounding places, so I was dazed! And next thing I knew we were flying out, and now we’re here, and I am so, so sorry, Kaiba-kun. I’ll leave right now if you want me to. But, uh, I’ll still need a lift from you.”
Oh, he’d made a mistake, all right. A grave mistake. He didn’t think he’d ever lost this spectacularly, and that was including the first time that he’d lost a duel to Yugi.
He set his shoulders in a stiff line and folded his hands behind his back, the way he always did whenever he was having a particularly tense showdown with his board of directors and couldn’t afford to show any hesitation. “I’ll charter a sea plane to take you back to the main island. My private jet can take you to Domino City from there.”
“What about you, Kaiba-kun? Aren’t you going back, too?”
Yugi looked genuinely sorry. It made Seto feel a little better, because it meant that he wasn’t the only one here who regretted his foolish actions. He was aware that this did not make him a good person, but luckily, he’d never particularly cared about that.
Looking down his nose at Yugi, a nasty smile curling his lips, he said, “I will return separately. I’d rather not be in close proximity with you for a while, if it’s all the same to you.”
He turned on his heels and went into the master bedroom, closing the door firmly behind him. He had some phone calls to make, and after that…well, it wasn’t as if there wasn’t a lot of work waiting for him at Kaiba Corporation. Maybe this turn of events was for the better, after all. He’d had his reservations about pushing back so many meetings. He vowed to listen to them next time, because now he knew what his mistake had been: trying to impress someone else.
*
After arranging Yugi’s trip home, Seto checked his emails and made a few phone calls. His engineers had sent him revised blueprints for the new Duel Disk model, but the phone screen was too small to view them; he would have to get his laptop. The jet wouldn’t be back for another few hours anyway, so he might as well get some work done.
He opened the door and saw that far from being empty, the living room was still occupied by one short, annoying duelist with gravity-defying hair. Yugi was kneeling on the sofa with his back to Seto, hands on the glass wall as he stared at the fish.
“What are you still doing here?” Seto barked.
Yugi jumped and turned around. “Kaiba-kun! I was beginning to worry that you would never leave the room.”
Seto narrowed his eyes. “I had every intention of doing so. What did you think, that I was hiding in there?”
“…no, of course not!”
“More to the point, why haven’t you left? Has the plane not arrived?”
“Ah, well, about that…I decided to stay. I feel really bad for not being honest with you sooner and for making you go through all this trouble. I thought that since we’re already here, why not make the most of this vacation? As friends, I mean.”
“I believe I told you that I’d rather not be in close proximity to you for a while. Are you losing your ability to retain information?”
Yugi frowned. “Yeah, I remember that. But what about after we get back to Domino City? Are you gonna avoid me there, too?”
Seto sneered, the retort coming to him easily: “I don’t need to avoid you. We hardly move in the same circles.”
Of all the things he expected, it was not for Yugi to point a finger at him, frustration sparking in his eyes. “See, this is exactly the problem!”
Seto rubbed his forehead. He could feel a migraine coming on. “What is the problem? What in the world are you talking about?”
“First of all, you’re being mean because your feelings are hurt.”
“My feelings are not—”
“But it’s not like what you’re saying isn’t true, which is the second problem: even though we’re friends, we don’t spend a lot of time together.”
Was Seto destined to have Mutou Yugi running circles around him for the rest of his life? Why did talking to him make Seto feel like he was a small child again, working day and night to keep up with the grueling curriculum that Gozaburo set for him?
He clenched his fist. “Explain to me how any of what you’re saying is related to the situation at hand.”
“Well, how am I supposed to accept your confession when sometimes I’m not even sure whether you consider us friends?”
Seto wanted to protest; just because he didn’t go around spouting cheesy lines about loyalty didn’t mean that he didn’t make it plenty clear where Yugi stood with him! But the words died in his throat. There was an uncomfortable feeling building in his gut that he thought he’d gotten rid of long ago.
“Kaiba-kun.” Yugi jumped off the sofa and came to stand in front of him. He had to crane his neck to make eye contact, but there wasn’t a shred of embarrassment in his expression. He stood his ground, exactly as he was, and said, “Right now, I don’t know how to respond to your confession. But I do know that our friendship is important to me, and I wouldn’t want to lose it. I think we can agree on that much, right?”
Seto’s fingernails dug into his palm as he resisted the urge to contradict Yugi and show him that he found this little rhetorical game pointless. That would most definitely be a mistake, and he was tired of making those.
He settled for biting out, “Yes. You’re a duelist whom I acknowledge, and…someone whose friendship I value.”
Yugi smiled, and Seto was reminded of why he’d gone through all of this trouble in the first place and made such a fool out of himself.
“All right! Then, what should we do first?”
*
“You brought…games.”
“What, now all of a sudden you don’t like games?”
They were sitting in front of the big-screen TV. After eating dinner, they’d agreed that it was too late to do anything extravagant and gone back to the living room, where Seto showed Yugi the array of games that he’d brought. The sun had set, turning the water outside the glass walls dark blue and the fish nothing more than shadows drifting past.
Rather than looking disappointed, like he had when they’d first arrived at the resort, Yugi looked amused. The wagyu beef hamburger at dinner probably had something to do with it; even after chastising Seto for trying to elevate fast food, he’d cleared his plate.
“No! It’s just…Kaiba-kun, you’re not really good at going outside of your comfort zone, are you?”
“Not true,” Seto barked, offended at the implication that he wasn’t good at something.
“You took me to the Maldives and one of your planned activities was playing games?”
“Because you like games!”
“And we couldn’t do that in Domino City?”
“No, because—wait a minute, are you teasing me right now?”
“Oh, did you finally figure that out?”
Yugi laughed—laughed!—at Seto’s outraged growl, and looked through the games. “Wow, you brought a whole store’s worth…oh! Mario Kart! Let’s play this!”
Seto had never lost at Mario Kart, even after he hacked into the game system and re-programmed the CPUs to near-human intelligence. He crossed his arms and smirked at Yugi. “Heh, all right. But prepare to lose, Yugi!”
Ten rounds later, seven of which Yugi won, Seto exclaimed, “There must be something wrong with my controller. You were using Princess Peach!”
Yugi propped his chin in his hand and grinned. “Just because she can’t knock everyone over like Bowser doesn’t mean she’s weak. You know, Kaiba-kun, it’s not dignified to make excuses when you lose.”
“It’s not an excuse!”
Yugi raised an eyebrow.
“All right, fine,” Seto grumbled. “You won fair and square. Honestly. Is there anything you’re not good at?”
“I’ll have to think about it,” Yugi said gravely.
Seto snorted. Looking at Yugi now, it was hard to remember how he’d been before: stuttering, uncertain, always shrinking in on himself. But even in the beginning, he’d had the courage to chase after Seto and demand that he give back his grandfather’s card. It shouldn’t have been surprising that that courage had carried him all the way to where he was today.
“Kaiba-kun?”
Seto grunted and turned his gaze from Yugi’s concerned expression to the TV screen, annoyed at himself for getting lost in thoughts of the past. “Do you want to keep playing?”
“Yes, but are you sure you’re okay? You spaced out for a moment there.”
“I’m perfectly fine.”
“Okay…”
Yugi fiddled with his controller, clearly not satisfied with the answer. Silence fell between them, and in it Seto came to a resolution.
“You were right,” he declared.
“Um…right about what, Kaiba-kun?”
“About me not being good at going outside of my comfort zone. I’m good at almost everything, but the things I’m not good at…I avoid them, or I try to change the situation so that I’m at an advantage.”
It felt like taking pliers to his own teeth and pulling them out to admit this to himself, let alone out loud. But Seto would be damned if he let Yugi beat him at yet another thing without Seto giving it his all first.
“I’m not good at being friends…no, I don’t know how to be friends, but I thought that if I impressed you enough, it wouldn’t matter. Obviously, I now realize that it was overwhelming for you. I will try to be more considerate of your feelings in the future.”
There was another long silence, during which Seto kept his gaze firmly on the TV screen. At last, Yugi said in a tone of disbelief, “Kaiba-kun…are you apologizing to me right now?”
“No!” Seto said reflexively, before correcting himself. “I mean, yes. Yes, I am apologizing. Now I believe this is the part where you accept it and we can move on.”
“Apologies don’t necessarily have to be accepted, Kaiba-kun.”
“What—!“
“But I do accept this apology, and…I’m happy.” Yugi laid a hand on his arm, and Seto flicked a glance at him. He was smiling so widely. Seto had no idea why. It was just an apology. “It’s okay if you don’t know how to be friends. You can always learn. I think you’re doing that even now!”
Seto cleared his throat, shrugging Yugi’s hand off. Yugi’s smile didn’t disappear; the genuine affection in it was starting to make Seto feel uncomfortable. “All right. Well. As long as you don’t try to hug me,” he muttered.
“We can take baby steps,” Yugi said, smile turning mischiveous. “So…are you up for another round of Mario Kart?”
“Yes. But first—”
Yugi cocked his head to the side, waiting.
“We’re switching controllers.”
“Oh, no we’re not. What did I say about making excuses?”
They bickered until Seto finally took his controller apart to make sure that there was, in fact, nothing wrong with it—and then, at last, they resumed playing, the living room growing bighter and warmer in the gloom of the ocean.