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He saw him again, by the seam of land pulled to fray by the beckoning of waves; gold on gold on gold – the lacquer of his honeysuckle skin framed by wisps of hair seemingly plucked from the sun itself.
Atop the balcony of the villa, the stranger was barely diffused by the light of dawn against the sand, the suggestion of his silhouette oscillating in and out of focus.
Seto leaned his weight into arms crested atop the balcony’s railing, unsure if encouraged to catch the fading wind or to pull himself several insignificant centimetres closer to the stranger. He barely heard the villa staff excuse themselves to set up his breakfast, attention rippling beyond the walls.
“Move it here,” Seto turned and gestured irritably, trying to keep his line of sight as the man of gold drifted further into the expanse of blue.
After dismissing the attendant, Seto barely caught the stranger slipping into the ocean, the glow of gold dissolving just as the day finally broke into awakening.
Seto readjusted his chair so that it framed the area of ocean where the other man had dove under, fingers unsettled as they tapped the ring of his teacup with an unvoiced impatience. Fixated, he lengthened the height of his gaze, food thoroughly ignored and breath partially hitched as he awaited.
When Seto arrived a day ago on his imposed vacation mandated by the Co-Chairman of KaibaCorp – alternatively, his brother – he had a meticulously constructed plan on how to keep productive during his temporary exile. One that culminated in the majority of his days spent exploring a scant five percent of real estate in the luxury villa that was comically large for one – the exact way he had envisioned.
That plan was mostly intact, save for the intrusion of gold that haunted the vignette of his vision, diluting his resolve with each flash of light by the call of the ocean.
Daylight lending to his efforts, Seto caught the shimmer of gold as it glided parallel to the shore, resurfacing momentarily before it was pulled back into the embrace of the water.
It was the day of Seto’s arrival when he had first caught sight of him. During an hour that most would consider healthy for sleep, aggravated into absolute wakefulness by his less than ideal pace at bypassing the locks his brother had very inconsiderately imposed on his latest research during his time away.
Needing to escape the claustrophobia of his own frustrations, Seto donned his robes and threw open the balcony, barely registering the cool midnight air before he found his gaze diverting beyond the ambience of his space.
Against the shroud of the night, a lone figure sat looking at the sprawl of the ocean; a head of gold with a lustre that seemed to emit its own glow under their shared company of the moon.
The beach was dark, holidaymakers having long departed for the warmth of their hotels hours prior. The man’s form was relaxed in his solitude, elbows anchored into the sand, legs outstretched and lightly crossed, unaffected by the way the crease of waves occasionally pressed at his feet.
In this scene of relative mundanity Seto was magnetised by their dichotomies of existences – darkness against light; constraint against freedom; gold against blue; an expanse of self against an expense of self.
Relenting to a force beyond his comprehension, Seto curled into one of the outdoor sofas, watching the mirage of the stranger framed between the balustrades until he was lulled into a dream of gold by the gentle symphony of waves.
When he awoke to the calls of birds, it was daybreak. Halo of gold still persisting in his waking vision, he searched for the man from before his dreams, finding only his echo in the lightening mirror of undisturbed sand.
In this moment of reverie coalesced for a second too long, Seto hurriedly turned his attention back at the span of water where the stranger had last surfaced, only to find the same absence. Resigned to the newfound banality of his waking hours, Seto settled less enthusiastically back into his seat, half questioning if it was the trick of light or the illusion of a mind perennially eluded from rest.
What was meant to be a day folded into precision by the origami of his schedule came undone at the unwarranted preoccupation of his morning. The way the sunlight fell upon the edge of the foyer’s mirror; the sparkle of crystalware that held a drink it was hours too early for; the glistening of the ocean just beyond casting a star field of light above the desk meant for the monopoly of work – the spectres of a siren Seto had fallen under the spell of, haunted by the gilded impressionist brushstrokes that somehow hatched the progress of his day.
Unable to condense his concentration into any decent level of productivity and noting the lengthening hour into the evening, Seto exchanged his slacks for a more location appropriate button-down and Bermuda shorts before exiting his villa for the first time.
His villa was centrally located – a one-sided decision from his brother, much to Seto’s chagrin. While it bordered the quieter end of the stretch, most amenities within comfortable distance were catered for the tourist crowd or of a brand of trendy that Seto had an palpable aversion to. The list Mokuba had very charitably texted his way before his flight was no less helpful, with most of the populated options echoing the same locations Seto was adamant in avoiding.
Resigned to his sunk cost fallacy rather than staring at imaginary splashes of gold within the four walls, Seto let himself be carried more by interest than intention. A potpourri of businesses dedicated to the thriving tourist economy: eateries, bars, souvenirs, spas, and the occasional sporting good rental. He let the colours, lights and sounds meld into one, submerging himself in the sensation of activity as he treaded through the sea of faces and lives immersed in their own realities.
When he found himself at a restaurant popular with locals and travellers alike for its generous al fresco dining area and live band, Seto halted, deciding the bordering on garish lights and pseudo-tropicana decor would mark the perfect end of his exploration. Feeling the start of a migraine set in from the deluge of lights and sounds, he circumvented the loose perimeter, regretting the distance he travelled at the realisation his dinner would likely be lukewarm at best upon his return.
As Seto made his way around, he heard a laughter – resonant and bright, rounded without hesitation in the joy it conveyed. He traced its source, curiosity set alight; the pounding in his head interrupted by the whirl of blood in his ears when he saw the man with the head of gold.
There he sat surrounded by others mirrored in the same exuberance; men and women with arms casually slung over each other, drinks loose in the loop of their hands. Even amongst them, he was resplendent in an effervescence for what felt like life itself – the influence of his lopsided grin catching the ends of Seto’s own.
The man glowed like gold and warmth personified.
Seto was not sure when his pace halted, only surfacing back to lucidity when the stranger paused and turned his way. He felt the other’s eyes catching the depths of his own – the clashing of wavelengths magnifying the amplitude of his heartbeat at the contact. There was no ill emotions at his interruption – only a slight surprise in the rising of the other man’s brows. Even that eluded Seto, for all he could see was the way the melted sunlight of the stranger’s hair pooled into a tangible warmth in the amber of his eyes.
Before the other man could react, Seto turned on his heels, ignoring the way his back burnt under the heat of a stare unrequited.
That night, his sleep was restless; coloured in cloy of honeyed amber and gold.
The day after was no more productive.
Between perusing the papers of his latest design draft and calls across the world, Seto discovered his new penchant for fidgeting – the maelstrom building within his abdomen struggling to resist the call of the ocean and its promise of gold.
Rather than let another day drain into futility, Seto left the villa for a run, figuring the change in environment and sun would dissolve the immiscible gold reflected in his blood. Taking a route away from the beach and into the town centre, Seto navigated until his feet found paved roads instead of sand, thankful for the shade of neatly manicured trees that fanned against the unrelenting afternoon sun.
He ran, past leashed heirloom dogs pulling along their inattentive expatriate owners; past a train of children with hands linked and faces plastered in the glass of various ice-cream parlours; past families ringed around picnic blankets in accompaniment of the local radio station; past couples bonded by the strings of gaily coloured kites pulled into the sky – ones that seemed to stretch forever in an endless blue.
The warmth of one’s existence, moments he had always relegated to insignificance, now once again passing him by.
If Seto slowed down, to consider the significance of moments rippled into superimposition of his now, ones courtesy of a him in another universe who had learnt the value of things unquantifiable by rationality, perhaps he could find that which had eluded him all those years. Abstracts of emotions and memories that could have subsisted alongside the pyramids of mathematical matrices and logic chains with whom he spent his days with.
Instead, Seto let his pace drop only to answer a call that was a quarter of an hour late, the crossness of his tone only abating after it had startled a toddler who had wandered into his vicinity, an uncertain finger juxtaposing the gleam of sky between the cover of trees and that steel of his eyes.
All around him the vibrancy of an eternal summer, blinding against his winter; and no matter how much faster he picked up his pace, all he could inhale was his rue in the impression of a gold, always brilliant, passing him by.
It was near evening when Seto approached his villa, having taken several detours to rinse away the taste of yearning for that which was not his. He stopped by a vending machine, thirst only manifesting at the glare of its wares against the waning light. The bottle of Pocari Sweat tumbled onto the floor, a product of a flawed design Seto was aghast was even allowed to see the light of day.
Mid-bend to gather his bottle, a glint of yellow half-buried in the sand caught his eye.
In a transgression of habits the usual him would never fathom committing, Seto retrieved the item, rubbing away the dust of sand to reveal a frosted cover of canary yellow. A sea glass, weathered to smoothness from the turbulence of a lifetime that arced it across the Earth – a metamorphosis manifested, delivered into the palm of his hand. It was light and of light, holding brightly to the warmth of the day’s sun; he turned it in his fingers, feeling the invisible nodes and dips as he traced its outline from its bulbous base to its slanted point.
It was a thing of no purpose and consequence, chemically coloured to an unusual hue to strike the flint of one’s attention once upon a time on a shelf somewhere. Yet, there was an unwillingness in his wrist defying the gravity of its disposal. In his second exception of the day, and one he gladly attributed to fancies emboldened by circumstances categorised as unusual, Seto pocketed the sea glass.
Drink nearly emptied, the thumb of his left hand occasionally brushing the weight of glass in his shorts, Seto paused to watch a group of surfers running into the waves. Amidst the foam and sepals of flamboyant boards swelling atop the water, he thought he saw a whisper of the same gold against the flare of the setting sun before it disappeared beneath the blue once again.
Deciding it was definitely the trick of light, Seto headed back into the villa, resolutely filling the spaces of his distraction with ruminations of the new augmented reality design he was refining.
It was past the halfway mark of his vacation-of-sorts, and Seto was once more folded back into his usual environment – hunched behind the artificial glare of his laptop, surrounded by a moat of haphazardly strewn schematics and handwritten codes, peppered with the occasional obstacle of half-finished cups of coffee and tea. The only spot of colour in his kingdom of blues and greys the lone yellow sea glass perched by the hard edge of his laptop, the shifting lights of his screen pulsing an illusion of breath within.
When he finally stood up, he felt his spine crack a waterfall of resistance at the sudden motion. Hand anchored to his hip for support – only when in the privacy of one – he manoeuvred to where his lunch sat waiting since hours prior, pulling apart the cloches from their dishes to peruse their conditions. Deciding his appetite was too delicate to hazard soggy noodles and room temperature soups, Seto scooped up the fruit salad and bread basket, and made his way to the balcony.
The weather was exceptionally good – an easy encouragement for the entourage of last-minute holidaymakers to take to the beach for activities. Seto switched his attention from carefree windsurfers to playful swimmers to excited jetskiers – boisterous rather than cacophonous, the ebb and flow of people enjoying the company of one another; a tributary of them in the present filtered to the eventual oceans of their future. Even in the absence of the radiance he sought, in this moment of borrowed energisation, warmed by strangers whose lives an imagined paradise his was an asymptote of into the same glow, Seto was starting to finally understand why he felt so displaced by that brilliant gold.
Dissatisfied with the way the taste of bread now withered to dust upon his tongue, Seto discarded the remainder of his meal and retreated to cover, mind already trained on the simulations necessary to amend his prototype from.
When Seto next extracted himself from his laptop, the beach had mostly emptied out. Deciding it was his turn to enjoy the weather, he claimed the yellow sea glass in the heart of his palm and retraced his path from two days before. This time, deliberately contracting the aperture of his senses until the oscillations of his environment came into focus.
He meandered, through the undulations of smooth jazz and house that thrummed under his skin; through mazes of carelessly strewn string lights and unevenly placed planters that necessitated an attention previously rebuffed; through the conversations of communities reverberating from their respective choices of eatery or bar – words foreign and familiar that inked upon him a nostalgia inherited from his own lack.
Spills of violet and navy had inundated most of the golden sky when Seto found his way back to the familiar stretch of beach. He subconsciously thumbed the smooth surface of the yellow glass as he watched the dissipating blooms of amber, pressing the pad of his digit into the faded history of a self reclaimed, vision still hued in gold even after twilight swallowed the remnants of the day.
His eyes followed the precipice of landscape into infinity, where the sky and ocean could only meet in the illusion of their embrace. Whose comfort was it for, for a him aspired or subsisting, that the constellations could be laid to rest under the undulating depths of their respective seas?
There he waited, enshrouded by the evening wind and ocean spray – not sure for whom; not sure for when – just waiting; yellow sea glass rubbed into warmth within the absence of the palm it occupied. When Seto finally returned to the shelter of his villa, drenched in cold blue, the hollows of his chest were still aglow in the warmth of gold.
It was the final night of Seto’s stay, a revelation unwelcome at the swifter propagation of time than his perception. Suitcase packed; travel clothes unfolded in preparation; and ample time to spare – a quick affair, given his frugal use of space in the villa.
The teardrop of sea glass sat alone, atop the wooden table meant for many more. Its yellow a stark contrast against the muted neutrals of the space – a focal from which the rest of the room seemed to contract into.
His flight was early the morning after, and the rational side of him urged the prudence of a retirement to bed. Instead, he relented to the rebellion of sensibility, likely spurred by the impending departure from a paradise he was an intruder of. Grabbing the sea glass from its makeshift pedestal more from compulsion than intent, Seto exited into the roar of the ocean, seeking the curtain call of a siren who did not know he existed.
Opting out of his loafers, Seto pushed his feet into the sand – an imprint of self in the now – and inhaled deeply the fresh ocean air. Happy for the humidity and warmth in exchange for the winter back home, he loosened the top two buttons of his shirt and rolled his sleeves up, finding equilibrium against the gusts that caressed relaxation into the tensity of his form. Alone against the elements, the insignificance of his dominion was magnified. Unmooring, he pushed into the wind, feeling it whistle a longing into caverns he refused to acknowledged, for a dilation of the moment when perhaps for the first time in his life, Kaiba Seto felt free.
Skin thoroughly chilled, Seto pulled himself into a tentative crouch before lightly sitting on the bed of sand. Unlike the solid foundation of deck chairs and lounges he had the luxury of access to, the sand offered only support to those with surety of self, compressing in pliant submission only after he had committed to his decision.
It did not feel like anything he had imagined; he ran his fingers through the silk of land, a clasp from the earth within his own, committing to memory the sensation of sediments and pebbles and corals and shells – ghosts of lives he would never witness now indelible to the creation of his own.
Seto pulled out the yellow sea glass, rotating it from its base, feeling the same longing flicker in his throat as he carefully observed its subdued gold glimmer under the moonlight. He paused, before pressing it into the sand, watching as the land caverned around its luminance – like an oyster around a pearl. The deliverance of gold from blue: reclaimed by the ocean or the hands of another, a fitting farewell— No, a gift, perhaps, for another whose light needed kindling by the brilliance of gold.
So mired in his thoughts was Seto that he missed the pattering of footsteps until they stopped by him.
"Din expect ta see someone else out here at this hour," the voice pleasantly commented before its owner took his position in symmetry beside Seto.
“Mind if I join ya?" The lilt of his cadence more rhetorical than awaiting an answer. The man with the head of gold kicked off his flip-flops and settled into the sand, chin lifted and eyes partly closed as a pull of wind sprayed a gentle cascade of mist on them.
Seto blinked away the spray and hummed an acknowledgement, fingers rounding into the cover of sand in harmony with the eddies forming somewhere behind his ribs when he realised who his new companion was.
They were close. Close enough for him to trace the rising of the stranger’s chest into his own’s harmony. Unfiltered under the moonlight, in a vision that was surely of celestial genesis given a nature so ethereal – chains of reflected starlight ringed into halos from the beads of water bequeathed by the waves to hair in deeper gold than he remembered. Seto wanted nothing more than to thumb the light of their strands, wondering if they emanated the same warmth as the easy smile that always seemed to find home on the other man’s lips.
Seto instinctively pulled back his hand when he felt the other man shift, pretending not to notice when the stranger's hand found rest in the space that just held his own.
Somehow, in this peculiar stillness of time, seated at the seam of halcyon where the calm of the ocean breathed its history into the resting of land, the unexpected company of the man of gold felt like a familiarity from days forgotten. The anticipation of a new beginning; the exhilaration of mutual creation – emotions lost in time returned to life.
If he noticed Seto staring, he made no sign of it.
Seto chose to draw the signifiers of his unvoiced questions into the sand around him: "who are you”, "where did you come from”, “why now” – each dissolving into an invisible boundary of self-consciousness from a tongue untrained in all but the cessation of conversations. The space a fragility he lacked the finesse to hold; so, he allowed the roar of water and the howl of the wind to fill the conversation that punctuated their presence.
Seto did not know how long they sat together, only that the stars and moon had rotated past the zenith of their vision, light igniting trails of imagined future paths that Seto did not possess the courage to take.
"It was ya who looked at us a few days ago." What seemed like a question, spoken with a conviction that suggested otherwise, directed at him and him alike.
Seto chose not to respond.
"'Ave never seen eyes that blue," the man of gold laughed easily, reaching into the pocket of his broad shorts. “’Tis like starin' inta the ocean." He held something in the pit of his palm, rotating it seemingly from habit before he shifted to properly look at Seto for the first time. "Catch."
Seto easily received the item in the prayer of his hands, unfurling them to reveal a pebble of sea glass in vibrant turquoise that coated the ambient light sitting atop his skin in a tranquil blue.
“'Tis kinda terrifyin', but also kinda mesmerisin',” the man admitted with a wink. He returned to a recline, the amber of his own eyes reflecting the constellation of unnamed possibilities scattered across the night.
The piece of sea glass gifted to Seto was smaller than the one he had just relinquished, surface polished into a neat frosted sphere. It fell easily into his hand, still slightly warm from the other man's contact. Seto rolled it between his fingers and lifted it to the sky, watching the way the moonlight diffused past it into a soft blue resting in the curl of his hand. Could eyes like his that found refuge in the drowning weight of responsibility and duty ever lens that blue?
Seto searched as surreptitiously as he could, sieving his wishful intentions between his fingers as he sought for the now familiar weight of glass he had pressed back into the earth moments before. When it rolled back into his grasp, he lightly tossed it to the side of his new companion, half regretting not dusting off the errant coat of sand that had since encased most of the glass’ lustre.
The other man raised a brow at the offering, amber eyes almost glowing as they held Seto’s in deliberation. Seto shrugged, unsure why he had even proffered the item.
It was a moment of weakness – a vulnerability absurd in its association with a debris cast into the disregard of nature’s hold, only for it to return under the disguise of beauty meant to captivate those who had initially abandoned it.
Then again, the glass comfortably nestled in the bud of his own hand was likely from a similar sentimentality.
"It's gold," Seto finally said, too absorbed by a decision irrevocable to notice how ludicrous he sounded. "Like your hair."
His reply was greeted with a full-bodied laughter, sonorous in the genuine mirth it belied as it rang between the cadence of wind and water.
How could being in the presence of his laughter colour him the same gold?
"That ain't the first time someone's said that ta me.” The man of gold picked up the yellow sea glass, wiping it against his shorts before he held it up in admiration at its saturation. He whistled appreciatively at the way the glass seemed to illuminate a light of its own, even in the overhang of the clouds above. Seto could not help but notice the dusting of gold from the glass melding into the smooth of the other man’s tanned cheek – an echo of sunlight before dawn, held in the lightness of another he wanted to impart tomorrow’s mornings to.
"Just like how I'm sure that ain't the first time ya heard that 'bout ya eyes." The other man set aside the drop of glass with a carefulness that curled Seto’s throat into dryness, the same easy smile still cresting contentment across his features.
"Thanks, stranger.”
Seto nodded imperceptibly, watching as the other man rotated the glass between the levels of his fingers, musing at how the brilliance of his gold only seemed to intensify as the hour waxed closer to dawn. Gold on gold on gold — an evocation of summers from a childhood lost; of immured careless youth and innocent awe Seto thought he had long rusted to decay.
When Seto spoke, it was an exhalation of gold.
“Who—“ Seto started before trying again, “Kaiba Seto.”
Seto let the distance between them percolate, hoping the earnestness of a gesture unvoiced found consonance in the wavelength of the other’s.
When his companion eventually looked to Seto in response, it was with amber eyes hooded in the same brilliant gold. Within them a warmth, that made the rapids of Seto’s chest swell into a new crescendo.
"Jounouchi Katsuya. Ya can call me Katsuya."