Chapter Text
They both stopped. Jounouchi’s first thought was that Kaiba was some horrible ghost. Kaiba certainly looked dead: skin glistening with corpse sweat, his hair clumped, and his eyes flat and staring. If he wasn’t dead, then he was at least sick. But that was impossible. Kaiba didn’t get sick the same way normal people did. He wasn’t a human being. He was alien and lizardlike. He wasn’t right on the inside.
‘Jounouchi,’ said Kaiba, and his voice was brimming with something Jounouchi couldn’t identify.
‘Kaiba,’ he said, feeling stupid. The music seethed around them, just like it had when last they met.
Kaiba glanced over Jounouchi’s shoulder. ‘What were you doing in the women’s bathroom?’
Jounouchi turned his head to the sign. There it was, the abstract silhouette of a black figure in a dress that somehow, pointlessly, signified women. He looked back to Kaiba and shrugged. ‘I was with some chick.’
Disgust darkened Kaiba’s features. ‘Of course you were. You’re an animal.’
‘Yeah, I guess.’ Jounouchi shrugged again. ‘We didn’t have sex, if that’s what you mean. We were just doing coke.’
‘Oh, in that case, that makes everything quite acceptable,’ said Kaiba. His rapid speech and rabid eyes were unsettling.
‘Are you here to see Tanner? I think you just missed him. I’m not sure. He was here before. I think I passed out for a bit, though.’ Jounouchi rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Fuck me, I feel like I’m being haunted by him. Or maybe I’m haunting him. Maybe I’m haunting you.’ He laughed and it sounded like a stranger rattling around in his throat. ‘God damn, I cannot stand to face another night with that guy. Takeda was bad enough, but... I mean, fucking hell, is that man even alive? You know what I mean? Is he not just the absolute fucking Devil himself?’
Kaiba ran his tongue over his lower lip. ‘There are worse people.’
‘Yeah,’ said Jounouchi. ‘Like us.’ He passed a hand over his face. ‘Shit, I can’t believe you’re really here. I knew you would be. I just knew it. I said we were in hell, right? The last time we met here? I think I was right.’ He had to raise his voice to shout over the awful throb of the music. ‘I think we died sometime in high school, and we were both bad people, and so we got stuck here. Just doing the same shit again again.’ He shouted louder. ‘What I can’t figure is why we’re both here. You think we’re here to punish each other?’
Kaiba looked at him with disbelief and disgust as Jounouchi poured out his junkie ramblings. And then Kaiba pushed his chest – not hard enough to hurt, but with enough force to push him through the bathroom door. Jounouchi let out a comical yelp as he stumbled, and then he grasped the sink and caught his balance. Kaiba was looking at him with what Jounouchi could only read as fury, but there was something sour and lurid about it.
‘Damn it, man, what are you doing? This is the women’s bathroom. If you want revenge on me breaking your nose, can we at least beat each other up in the men’s? People will think we’re some kind of perverts.’
Kaiba grabbed his wrist with fingers strong and slender like piano wire. Jounouchi tried to twist away. ‘What does it matter,’ Kaiba hissed, his voice strained, his eyes quite frankly insane, ‘if we’re in the women’s bathroom? What could it possibly matter? Why do you care?’
‘God damn, fine, it doesn’t matter!’ Jounouchi wrenched away his wrist. ‘Men’s bathroom, women’s bathroom, who cares so long as we get to beat the shit out of each other, huh?’
‘You really are pathetic,’ said Kaiba. ‘A street brawl is your answer to everything.’
Jounouchi paused, then threw up his hands and laughed horribly. ‘Kaiba! You are the one who wants to solve everything with a fight! Last time we met you the one who hit me first, in case you’d forgotten about that! I’m just trying to descend to your fucking level!’
‘Do you think you’re better than me?’
‘You know what I think? I think we’re exactly the same. You and me, Kaiba, are scum.’ Jounouchi’s expression faltered. ‘You remember that time down by the harbour? When I was in the water, chained up to that anchor, and you dropped the key down to me? You saved my life that day. You remember? And I thought…’ He laughed again. His voice was a stuck record of someone else’s joy. Nothing was ever really funny anymore. ‘But no. Nothing changed. We’re exactly the same. Same people that we ever were, living in the same world. This place where you’re either fucking someone over or getting fucked, and...’ He suddenly felt very cold. ‘And I thought if I had enough money, then... I wouldn’t be the one getting shit on any more. But this is worse, somehow. Now I hurt people, and I still just get treated like shit. I thought I could escape it, this fucking dog-eat-dog bullshit. But I couldn’t. And you are too. We hurt people, and we get hurt, and none of it changes. None of it gets better. We’re damned.’
Jounouchi was breathing heavily. Kaiba’s expression was utterly placid. For a moment, neither of them said anything. Jounouchi seemed like he had got something off his chest. The music had dropped away completely. Where had it gone? Jounouchi could hear the drip of a tap hitting the ceramic basin. He could hear Kaiba’s breathing. He could see something like light in his eyes. He remembered their duel together at Battle City, the hatred and joy in Kaiba’s face, and how they had almost but not quite made something good together there. It was easy to remember, if you closed your eyes and remembered the sunlight and the sea foam. He let himself forget for a moment where they were and where they came from and how awful and doomed and fucked it all was. There was still time. They were still unfinished. There was all the time in the world to make it good.
And then Kaiba punched him.
It wasn’t the desperate clumsiness that characterised the last time he hit him. This was a trained, precise strike. It caught Jounouchi in the stomach like a bullet and he doubled over, wheezing, the pain transporting him back to being hit as a child by some teenage bully, back behind his apartment complex, spitting up his childhood blood, long before he met Yuugi, before good things started to happen to him.
‘Son of a...’ he managed. He coughed, one hand steadying himself on the sink, then straightened. Kaiba hit out again. This one he dodged out of some primitive instinct he had sharpened on cheekbones and concrete. He leaned back and Kaiba’s punch went wide, and then he struck Kaiba as hard as he could in the throat. Kaiba choked, unbalanced, fell back, and then Jounouchi hit him again, and again, and then Kaiba was on the ground and Jounouchi felt the blood rush hot like falling rocks in his ears. A tiny voice, deep inside of him, told him to stop. But he didn’t stop. Good people stopped, held back, considered their situations. Good people didn’t call their girlfriends bitches. Good people didn’t fuck girls and abandon them. Good people didn’t break Kaiba’s teeth. But he wasn’t a good person.
He dropped himself onto Kaiba’s prone body and straddled him, landing fist after fist, feeling his knuckles burn and peel like raw meat. He hit and hit, and he watched Kaiba’s blood fly out of his mouth and spray across their faces. His own knuckles bled freely. He realised suddenly that this was the same position Katya had been in with him, and that made him want to beat Kaiba all the more. It was all his fault. Kaiba deserved it. Kaiba needed to be ruined. Kaiba needed to be erased from the earth. And then Jounouchi could be a good person again! Then he would be free! Jounouchi hit and he hit, and eventually Kaiba stopped fighting, and then he hit him some more, and then he stopped as well.
Kaiba lay beneath him. His whole body spasmed between Jounouchi’s thighs. Jounouchi felt a distant wave of horror start to climb up his ribcage, but he pressed it back down. That feeling wouldn’t last once he’d got a few drinks in him. Feelings were all temporary. Life was temporary.
He stood. He walked away. And even as he approached the bathroom door, he knew he could have easily stayed. He could have helped. He could have tried to make it better. But he pushed open the bathroom door and glanced back and got one last glimpse of Kaiba on the floor. His body was twitching and his face looked like the inside of a beaten red fruit. The terror threatened him once again, the terror and the guilt and the shame, and this time he let it overwhelm him. This was the end of the line. His anchor had hit the soft, black ocean floor. Now he could wait for the bubbles to disappear.
As Jounouchi left the club and the guilty terror dropped down to a low tide he found a pleasant contentedness in its place. So, he had hit bottom. The cocaine high had completely left him. He was coming down, that was what this feeling was. And where was there to go now?
I think I’m ready, he thought. Yeah, I’m ready now. I’m ready.
The few drunk idlers outside the club ignored him. He was nothing to them. He was nothing to anyone. Jounouchi felt like a bright sunbeam had burst within him. He was warm and quiet and calm.
First he bought sake. He chose the first bar he found that was still open, walked in, and ordered the best bottle they had. He slapped his cash down on the counter and waited while an uncertain waitress brought him a mass market daiginjo.
‘Thanks a lot!’ he said, beaming. ‘Keep the change!’
Drinking deeply and lovingly, he walked to the harbour. He took his time. Most of the shops and restaurants were closed, but Jounouchi peered into every lit window he could find, looking for any human face. At one point an older man, just about his father’s age, caught his eye through the window of a cheap fish joint whose neon light still proclaimed its open hours. Jounouchi gave his biggest, happiest grin and two thumbs up. The old man raised a thumb in uncertain recognition, a little smile on his face.
When Jounouchi passed a beggar he stopped and rifled in his pocket for every last bill he had. It must have been twenty thousand yen, but he didn’t count it.
‘Here, you take it,’ he said, pressing it into the beggar’s hands, who looked up at him with distrust. ‘Take it all. Have a good night!’
He clapped his hands together. It was getting real cold out here! But spring was coming! Spring was coming so very soon, and the streets would be alight with cherry blossom trees. That rosy glow that meant the cycle was starting anew and everyone had a fresh chance to be good and pure again.
But not him. No, it was too late for him. And that was alright.
At the harbour, smelling the salt and the fish, Jounouchi gripped the metal chain that formed the border between the shore and the jetty and peered out across the black water. The ships were so far away tonight. It was hard to believe they would ever make it back to the docks. He looked down and saw the tide was still low enough for some of the rough natural bank to be exposed, which was exactly what he wanted. Whistling a tune whose origins he couldn’t place, Jounouchi vaulted the chain and began to turn over the rocks, examining this and that, choosing only the most choice and smoothest specimens. He pocketed them one by one, feeling like he was making a close friend with every addition. He felt better and better with every pick, with every drink of the warm, gentle sake. He started to sing, giving awkward English words to the tune in his head. ‘I wanna be in that number… Oh, when the saints… oh, when the saints…’ There were only so many footsteps left for him to take now and he knew that each would be lovely and golden.
It took some effort to climb back onto the promenade with his heavy pockets and the weighted drunkenness, but he managed in time, after many slips and false starts and fits of laughter at his own ridiculousness. Eventually he was back up, and from there it was less than a minute out along the pier, out into the deep black of the ocean. With every step he put the shore and the city further behind him and brought the ocean closer. No one was here to stop him. Of course there wasn’t, because he was finally on the good and gentle path. Nobody needed to stop him now.
He walked out into the darkness and to the very edge of the pier, where heavy chains protected the walk from the water. He stepped over the chain, one hand on each balustrade, his back to the pier, his chest out to the whipping wind and the heavy, certain beat of the waves on the pillars below. He thought of Mai, and then Yuugi, and then Shizuka, and then Kaiba. He wished him the best. He wished that Kaiba would finally get somewhere good, even if he was taking the long way around. Maybe they would see each other again, one day. Out there, in the glitter of space, where it was safe and quiet. Where they could be good people again.
Jounouchi looked down into the water. It would be cold. But he was so warm inside from the alcohol and the relief. Surely it would feel like a warm bath! Just like his mother used to give him, he and Shizuka, playing in the water. He remembered her happy baby smile with its crooked teeth. He could almost see his own reflection in the water. He could almost see Bakura’s.
Jounouchi blinked. No, not Bakura. There was nothing down here, just weeds and rocks and deep, dark, black water. He was alone out here. He would live out the short little moments of his life alone, first here on this pier, and then down there, at the bottom of the sea. Alone in the dark, where it would be finally over.
He was hesitating. Jounouchi exhaled and shook himself and held the bottle of sake to his lips. He forced himself to gulp it down, mouthful after mouthful, enough to drown him into unconsciousness. He pulled the empty bottle away from his mouth with a wet, woodwind ringing sound, then cast back his arm and threw it into the ocean.
Now it was time. Surely, now it was time.
Perhaps that was what my dream meant, Jounouchi thought idly. Bakura handing him a skull, which meant death, which meant it was time for him to die.
Jounouchi frowned. Why had that old dream come back him? After all, it wasn’t his skull. Why would Bakura give him his own skull? And why an apple? That made no sense. It had to be somebody else’s skull. And it didn’t matter anyway, because it was just a stupid dream.
He rocked back and forth on the end of the pier.
He was suddenly irritated. He didn’t want to die irritated. So whose skull was it? He could see it in his hand as clear as day, as clear as it had been in the dream, when it had become a ripe apple in his palm. It wasn’t his skull. He knew this as certainly as he knew that his path had run out and that his next steps were out into the water.
It didn’t matter about the skull. Of course it didn’t matter. What mattered was that he was at the end, at last. He just had to take the next, final step. And then it would be done.
He rocked forward. He rocked back.
‘Oh, god damn it,’ Jounouchi muttered. He hauled himself back over the chain. He took out his cell phone. The rocks in his pockets were suddenly cumbersome. He scrolled down through his contacts for the number he needed but hadn’t ever called. A number that had been there for over a decade. A couple of texts sent here and there. But no close friendship. No real connection. Who was to say the number was even in service? And wasn’t it stupid, anyway? Wasn’t it all an excuse to delay the lovely inevitable?
He placed the call. It rang three times.
A soft voice answered. ‘Jounouchi-kun?’
‘Bakura,’ said Jounouchi. ‘I need to ask you something.’
He had no idea where Bakura was. He didn’t know anything about Bakura’s life since last they met, that final Saturday hang out after graduation. Where had he gone? What had his life turned into? There were no sounds on the other end of the line. There was no background noise, no TV. No shitty boombox playing nostalgic teen hits. Bakura could have been anywhere. He could have been in a mall, he could have been in an open grave, and Jounouchi wouldn’t know the difference.
Bakura’s voice was kind and polite. He sounded utterly unsurprised at the call. ‘Of course, Jounouchi-kun.’
‘You were in my dream. You handed me a skull. Whose skull was it?’
This was an insane question, Jounouchi knew. Absolutely bug-nuts lunacy. Sea foam flecked his face as he waited for an answer he was sure wouldn’t come.
But Bakura answered immediately. ‘Oh, I don’t know, Jounouchi-kun. There are a lot of dead people in my dreams. I can’t remember every skull, you know.’
This was an insane answer. Jounouchi followed it up with another insane question. ‘I... Bakura, have I died?’
‘Oh, no. No, not yet.’ A pause. ‘You’re not in a safe place, but I’m not worried. It’s Kaiba I’m worried about.’ Another pause. A strange sound, a distant warble, something bizarrely like Peking opera. ‘You do understand, don’t you?’ Bakura now sounded gently concerned. ‘You need to go back. You have to help him.’
‘I can’t help anybody. I can’t even fucking help myself.’ Jounouchi heard the words fall out of him messily. He registered vaguely that there were tears streaming down his cheeks.
‘Yes, you can.’ Bakura’s voice was quiet and sure. ‘You don’t need to help yourself. You just need to help him.’ Jounouchi was sure he could hear a smile in Bakura’s voice. ‘Don’t you understand? He can help you, if you only help him.’
Jounouchi stood at the end of the pier and let the wind wrench his hair and his skin, trying to tease him back over the edge where the water writhed beneath him, absolutely endless and black and hungry, the big wet pit he had been falling into for months.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Thank you, Bakura.’
‘Any time,’ came the soft reply.
Jounouchi hung up.
And then he ran. He emptied his pockets as he ran, rocks hitting the ground like bullets behind him, a rain of refusals, a no no no to death hitting the wet slick wood of the pier.
‘You are banned from these premises.’
Jounouchi was facing down three Kaiba Corp personnel at the front desk. There was the front desk secretary – a shrewd, skinny man – and there was the ground floor security man – larger, delighted to have something to do – and there was Kaoru, Kaiba’s personal bodyguard, who had come down to meet him. Kaoru was seven feet and 350 pounds of amused disdain. His beard was immaculate and he smelled of coconut.
‘Kaiba banned me?’
‘I banned you,’ said Kaoru.
‘Are you sure you have the power to do that? I mean, it’s Kaiba’s company. Shouldn’t that be up to him?’
‘I’m head of security, kid. I have the power to take your head off and kick it down the corridor if I want to.’
Jounouchi considered Kaoru’s hands: T-bone steaks, neat fingernails, a wedding ring. Could those hands take his head off? Those weren’t odds he wanted to play.
‘So if Kaiba wants to let me in, you get to overrule him? Doesn’t he pay your salary?’
The other two men were watching this play out like it was the finale of their favourite sitcom.
‘What makes you think Kaiba wants to see you, kid?’ This time, Kaoru sounded pitying. ‘You beat the shit out of him. For the second time. And you’re drunk.’
‘Hey, he started it!’ Jounouchi tilted up his chin and showed Kaoru where Kaiba had struck him. ‘There, you see the bruise? He’s, what, a black belt in karate? Don’t I get to claim self-defence?’
Kaoru assessed him through unassailable dark eyes. ‘I just spent an hour cleaning him up. Six stitches. You wanna claim self-defence? Take a pop at me and then I’ll give you cause for six stitches, or a dozen.’
Jounouchi stuck his hands in his pockets and exhaled. He felt a tiny pebble between his fingers, small and dusty in the damp pockets of his jeans. ‘Yeah, that’s fair. Look, I know I fucked up. I’m not trying to excuse what I did. I just want to talk to him. Can you call him? If he wants me to leave, then I’ll go.’
‘I’m making an executive decision, kid. You can leave or I can throw you out. You’ve had enough chances.’
‘No,’ said Jounouchi, as firmly as he had ever said anything in his life. ‘No, I haven’t had enough chances. And neither has Kaiba.’ He turned his body around wildly, eyes roving the ceiling, until he found a black camera pointed curiously in his direction. ‘Hey, Kaiba! You big asshole! Let me up!’ He waved his hands. ‘I know you’re watching. Let me—’
Three things happened at once. Kaoru grabbed the scruff of his neck like he was a kitten, Jounouchi twisted his body so violently his snakeskin jacket ripped, and the front desk phone rang. They both froze. The phone rang several more times. Kaoru looked slowly at the front desk secretary, who jolted as he realised it was his job to answer. He grabbed the phone.
‘Yes? Uh, hello, Kaiba-sama—’ The secretary trailed into silence as he listened to the other end of the phone. He then withdrew the phone from his face, looked at it reproachfully, and hung up. ‘Kaiba-sama says to let him up,’ he said apologetically.
Kaoru rested his free hand on the front desk. He drummed his fingernails. It sounded like a hailstorm.
‘Okay,’ he said, in high, exasperated pitch. He loosened his grip and smoothed down the mess he had made of Jounouchi’s jacket. It might have been a friendly motion if it didn’t feel like an avalanche. With Jounouchi grinning like an idiot child who had just won a stuffed animal at a funfair, Kaoru steered him to the old elevator they had taken together so many months ago. Jounouchi bounded in. That was the night – or was it the day before? – that had ended with Kaiba bleeding on the same bathroom floor. Time had been out of joint for some while. Jounouchi felt was as though he was going in reverse, gently pressing his thumb against the rewind button, hardly daring to believe change was possible.
‘What happened to Isono?’ Jounouchi said suddenly, as the elevator slid upwards. He wasn’t sure where the thought had come from.
‘Boss fired him after he got married.’
‘Why?’
Kaoru rolled his eyes. ‘He married a woman.’
This was, apparently, sufficient explanation as far as Kaoru was concerned, but it meant nothing to Jounouchi. Kaoru did not seem to be in the same chatty mood as the first time they met. Jounouchi looked the man up and down. The man hated him a little bit, and that filled him with such joy. This was a good, honest man, and he hated Jounouchi because he had hurt his employer – an employer that he cared about. Kaiba had people who cared about him! This thought made him feel the happiest he had in years.
The elevator dinged politely and opened its doors. Jounouchi flashed a grin that the familiar face who manned the desk in front of Kaiba’s office, that same soft-faced, handsome secretary. He looked extremely annoyed.
‘Him again?’ said the secretary.
‘Him again,’ said Kaoru, as though sharing a private joke.
The secretary made a great show of rolling his eyes and pressing the intercom button as though it took incredible energy to do so. ‘Kaiba-sama? A certain—’
‘Let him in.’ Kaiba’s voice. It sounded thick through the intercom.
The secretary looked at Jounouchi with great disdain. ‘You can go in,’ he said unnecessarily.
‘Okay, listen up,’ said Kaoru, his fist tightening on Jounouchi’s shoulder like a vice of meat and bone. ‘I hear anything in there I don’t like and I’m gonna bounce you around the room like a god damn basketball, you understand?’
Jounouchi smiled sheepishly. ‘Yeah, I got it.’ He wanted to hug this man, but he restrained himself.
Unsatisfied and unmollified, Kaoru yanked open the door to Kaiba’s office. Jounouchi walked inside. The door was shut behind him.
And there was Kaiba, sat at his desk, just as he had been the first time Jounouchi had entered this room. Seto Kaiba, the same person he had known in high school, all grown up. In profile, Kaiba looked dreadful. His face was puffy and red and swollen, a tomato on the verge of bursting, dried blood in his hair, his lips lopsided and cut open. He was, absurdly, smoking a cigarette. Even from across the room Jounouchi would smell that it was menthol, a kind Jounouchi had always shunned in his youth for being a girl’s choice of smoke.
‘How’s your face?’ said Jounouchi.
Kaiba’s words came a little thick. ‘Wonderful. Did you come back to apologise?’
‘Nah.’ Jounouchi dropped on the couch again. It felt good to be here on the soft, weirdly familiar white suede expanse. ‘I’m just here to save your life, y’know.’
‘Oh, fabulous,’ said Kaiba, the sarcasm a little blunted by his swollen face. ‘I’m glad to hear it. You’ve done so much for me already, how could I refuse more?’
Jounouchi flashed a grin. ‘Hey, you’re the one that let me up here. You’re the one who keeps giving me a second chance.’
Kaiba exhaled uneven smoke through the mess of his mouth. ‘You think you deserve a second chance?’
‘Oh, fuck no,’ Jounouchi said immediately, with conviction. ‘I don’t deserve shit. I probably deserve to rot in hell for what I did to your face. And everything else I’ve done. And you know what, you deserve just as bad, I’d bet. You and I are bad people.’
Kaiba looked at him with tired, unhumoring eyes. ‘Your point?’
Jounouchi shrugged. ‘I don’t have a point, man. We’re bad people and we don’t deserve shit, but I came back. And you let me back in. You always let me back. You never invite me, I always have to invite myself. But you let me in. That’s the most I guess I can hope for from you. So now we’re here, getting a second chance. Or a third chance, or a fourth… I mean, who’s counting?’
Kaiba said nothing to this. His eyes were not on Jounouchi; they were elsewhere, as they so often were. Jounouchi had some idea now what they were seeing.
‘But if you let me in, I gotta come back, I guess. Because if I don’t, you’re going to go off and get yourself fucking destroyed. You’re gonna keep going back to... well, all of them. That whole rotten shithole crowd. Tanner, that fucking...’ Jounouchi grasped for the right phrase. ‘Reaper man. He’s got his finger hooking your coat, yknow? And that man... the boss, Daichi, he…’ He shook his head. ‘If you go back there, that’s it. You won’t come back. There’s nothing good there, Kaiba. Trust me, I know. Please believe me when I tell you I know exactly what lies at the bottom of that slipslide. It’s all...’ He scrunched up his face. ‘It’s corpses and broken teeth and rot and slime and bugs and shit. It’s human shit down there, and nothing else.’
Again, Kaiba said nothing. And then, slowly, he bent over his desk and spat a mouthful of blood into the bin.
‘I know, Jounouchi,’ he said. His voice came quiet and eerie. It was the voice of someone who had seen the open throat of the leviathan. ‘I know what’s down there.’
For a long time, or perhaps a few seconds, they sat there in silence, the both of them breathing, neither of them speaking. They existed together in the same room. It was not so much unlike high school, the two of them in the same classroom, neither of them listening to the teacher; Jounouchi because he didn’t care and would flunk the class anyway, and Kaiba because he knew it all already. They would both be lost in their little worlds, insensible to one another’s presence, but sharing in it all the same. And now they sat together again, as though on a ship sailing slowly away from the shore of a terrible country.
And then Jounouchi stretched his arms. ‘You wanna play Duel Monsters?’
Kaiba watched him like a wary cat. There was mistrust and resentment in his eyes, and he looked exhausted, and Jounouchi could see the tiny neat knots where Kaoru had tied the stitches. Then he stubbed out the cigarette on an uneven pile ofpapers.
‘Okay.’
And so, the both of them sitting on the carpet, each with their legs crossed, began to play Duel Monsters. Kaiba lent Jounouchi enough of his own cards to make a deck, although he wouldn’t let Jounouchi even touch any of his rarer cards. Jounouchi cracked jokes as they played. He was out of practice and very bad, but Kaiba was as sharp as ever. Jounouchi cooed and laughed and made sounds of mock horror whenever his monsters were defeated. He grinned and played his cards and Kaiba said nothing outside of calling his cards, but at some point Jounouchi became aware that Kaiba’s left knee was pressed against his own.
‘You win,’ said Jounouchi, as Kaiba easily defeated his Little Winguard.
‘Hardly a challenge,’ said Kaiba.
‘Hey, I’ll get better. We keep playing and I’ll get better. And then it’ll be a challenge.’
‘That’s going to take a very long time.’
‘Then we’ll have to keep playing for a really long time, said Jounouchi. ‘I’ll stick with you if you stick with me.’
Kaiba looked at him through unreadable eyes. ‘You might not want to,’ he said. ‘There are things about me you might not like.’ Jounouchi could see the shape of the leviathan in his words, that great maw that had threatened to swallow him.
Jounouchi shrugged. ‘That’s fine. I’ll get over it. You’ve seen the worst of me. Besides, what’s the worst you can do? Hit me again? I kick your ass every time.’
‘I let you “kick my ass”, Jounouchi,’ said Kaiba, wearily.
‘Yeah,’ murmured Jounouchi. ‘Yeah, I know.’
‘Aren’t you going to ask why?’
‘Nah. I don’t need to know. You had your reasons. It doesn’t matter why we do awful things. It just matters that we stop doing them, right?’ Jounouchi moved his fingertips over the cards of Kaiba’s deck. They shone like fish scales. He suddenly groaned. ‘God, I’m gonna have to get a real job. I’m not going back to that racket. You think you can get me something? Maybe in PR. I’m good with people. You can be my reference.’
Kaiba rolled his eyes. ‘You can’t just give yourself a job at my company. We have extremely rigorous hiring standards.’
Jounouchi pulled a face at Kaiba and folded his hands behind his head. ‘Oh come on! You let your ten-year-old brother be vice president! I’m sure you can get me something in human relations.’ He paused. ‘Where is Mokuba, anyway?’
‘Vancouver.’
‘Van… Is that in Europe?’
Kaiba gave him a withering look. ‘Canada. He’s at university there.’
‘Oh, cool. What’s he studying?’
‘I…’ Kaiba’s eyes widened and he blinked. ‘I don’t know. It was economics for a while, and then political science, and then art history. I’m not sure what he’s interested in right now.’ He frowned. ‘He doesn’t know how to settle on something. Which is good. I’m glad for him. I never had any choice at all.’
Jounouchi watched the low light play on Kaiba’s face. A drop of blood had collected at the edge of his mouth. He was going to have scars, and it was Jounouchi’s fault. The guilt rose up big within him, swelled, and burst. Jounouchi let it seep into him. He would sit with it. Guilt was something he had to make friends with.
‘Do you guys speak much?’ Jounouchi said.
‘No. Never.’
‘Why?’
Kaiba looked to the corner of the room and evaluated whatever he saw there. Then he seemed to dismiss it. ‘Because I never call.’
‘So call him. Seems easy.’
‘It’s—’ Kaiba considered making an excuse, and then he decided not to. ‘Yes,’ he said. Yes, you’re right.’ He frowned at the phone on his desk. ‘It will be late afternoon there. I could catch him now.’
Jounouchi sprung up from the floor. ‘You know what? That’s a good idea. Call him now. I have to run an errand, okay? I’ll be back in half an hour, and then I’m going to sleep.’ He patted the suede couch. ‘Mind if I take old faithful here?’
Kaiba, standing, regarded him with an exhausted bemusement. ‘You want to sleep in my office?’
‘Sure, why not? Best night of sleep I’ve had in months was on this couch. Anyway, I’m sure as shit not going back to my apartment. Maybe once, to collect my deck. The rest they can keep. I’m done.’
Jounouchi yawned massively. He hadn’t slept a full night in so long. God, he was so tired! He had been tired for so long that it had settled into his bones. He needed a hot shower and then twelve hours of unconsciousness. But he had one thing left to do first.
‘You don’t have to come back,’ said Kaiba, just as Jounouchi reached the door. ‘I don’t care.’
Jounouchi turned. Kaiba’s face was an awful, repugnant mess. He had done that. And he could walk away if he wanted to. There was always a way back. Always a road leading back to the water.
Jounouchi smiled. ‘Yeah, you do care, Kaiba. I’m coming back. I promise you right now: I’ll always come back.’ He caressed that pebble in his pocket. It felt like a tiny beating heart. ‘You and me are gonna live a better life. We’re gonna make a home.’
And Jounouchi left, and then Kaiba was alone again. He didn’t mind, of course. Alone had always been his normal way of being. People were interruptions. Alone was the possibility of progress and perfection, domination and brilliance. To be alone was to be free of desire and destruction. Alone was private violence. Alone allowed for the luxury of ruin.
He watched the closed door. It did not matter if Jounouchi came back.
And yet he would.
What peculiar faith, to believe in friendship! When had he ever deserved anything so common?
His lips hurt, and Kaiba realised he was smiling.
With a quiet resolution, he lifted the phone receiver and dialled the number he had memorised long ago. It rang five times before the familiar voice answered. How had he left it so long? There were better ways to live than alone. Oh, there were better ways indeed.
‘Hello, Mokuba.’
Jounouchi's destination wasn’t far from Kaiba’s office. Indeed, you could see the Kaiba Corp tower reaching tall over the buildings as you walked down the street. He used to often look up at it on his visits here, way back when, that constant reminder that he would never be good enough, that he didn’t deserve his life. Now, he looked up at it with humoured affection. Kaiba was up there, the weird crazy bastard. His new and only friend.
When he reached the apartment block the front door was thankfully unlocked, so Jounouchi was able to slip inside and retrace the familiar route. He remembered it as though it was yesterday, but it had been two years now. Four floors up, nine doors along on the left. He remembered it like he had walked the route a thousand times in a dream. And then there he was, at that same door with the same name plate that had been there the first time he came here. It could have been yesterday. He had been so excited that first time. It had been one of the best days of his life.
He knocked. The door opened.
There was no surprise in Mai’s face. She wore a bathrobe woven from layers of pink lace. Her face, clear of make-up, was the face of the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Her expression was cold.
‘I swear, I’ll be gone in thirty seconds. You don’t have to say anything. I just… I had to come by to tell you something. I had to come by to tell you that I’m sorry. Not just about the phone call, which I am so sorry about, but all of it. I’m sorry I was petty and weird and jealous when we were dating. I’m sorry I never thought I was good enough for you. I’m sorry I disrespected you and treated you bad. I’m not here to ask for forgiveness. I just wanted you know that I’m sorry. I’m trying to be a better person.’ He paused. ‘You’re an amazing woman, Mai. I’m just glad I got to be with you for a little while.’
Mai watched him. Her face was quite blank, and it remained that way. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Are you done?’
‘Yeah. I’m done.’
She closed the door.
Outside, the sun was rising. Mai wondered for a moment if she regretted wasting her time with Jounouchi, and then stopped thinking about that. She stopped thinking about him entirely. During those final days in the dregs of her twenties she met with so many people, saw so many things, felt herself clinging to the tiny shining diamond that had been the ripe promise of youth. It had slipped through her fingers somewhere along the way. And it didn’t matter. She looked into the future without optimism or hope, only willingness and resolve. Okay, this was what came next. Here was adulthood and life and eventual death, and a million golden moments between here and now, between the sands and the sea, out to the brim of the spitting waves.