Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ Final Distance ❯ Declarative, Procedural, Episodic, and Semantic ( Chapter 4 )

Disclaimer: Still do not own YuGiOh, wish I did, cuz then Kaiba will be a bigger ball of angst than he is now. Also, Toudo Naoya (and now Sonomura Maki as well) don't belong to me, they belong to Persona, which belongs to ATLUS. Again, here only for medical reasons, not for subplot reasons. I hate lots of subplots unless they're done in a good way, which is really rare, and I know I can't do them well enough to pull it off. This fic is now turning very AU, please forgive me. Once again, thank you to all who have reviewed!

Chapter Four--Declarative, Procedural, Episodic, and Semantic

Making a turn that opened yet another set of automatic doors, Yami stepped into what he hoped to be the right hallway after several vain attempts at getting to the correct ward in the hospitals. Damn maze-like places, he thought. Before he could throw around a few more Egyptian curses in his head, he heard a sound that affirmed to him that this was the right ward, as much as he wished that he didn't heard that sound.

It was the sound of Mokuba's sobbing.

"What happened here?" Yami demanded, advancing towards Mokuba and Toudo, who was trying to comfort the boy. Upon seeing Yami, Mokuba jumped up and ran towards Yami, collapsing into a sobbing heap in the Pharaoh's arms. Toudo got off his haunches and walked towards the two of them, his expression grim. "It's Kaiba-san," Toudo explained as he saw that Mokuba was in no condition to form coherent sentences with his bawling. "He acted as we thought he would with his memory now stuck in short terms phase. He forgot what he said within three minutes." Fingers tightening on Mokuba's shoulders, Yami clenched his teeth and stared at the young doctor.

"What?"

"He can't remember things beyond a certain amount of time, Sir," Toudo repeated in simpler terms for the monarch of the past.

"What do you mean he can't remember?!" Yami retorted, his tone angry from disbelief and denial.

"Sir," Toudo pressed, his face showing no expression except for those golden eyes, "We already have a patient in denial. Please don't make his guardian in denial as well." His hand motioned towards Mokuba, who was still pressed against Yami, crying into a hard embrace.

"Did I come at a bad time?" a female voice asked behind the three. Toudo picked his head up as Yami turned to see where the source of the voice came from. Walking towards them from the other end of the pristine white hallway was a young woman with short brown hair, dressed in a very monochromic dress of pale beige, gray and brown with dark brown tights and white ankle boots. She did not don the doctor's robe, but she had a clipboard in her one hand. For some reason Yami felt at peace when she entered, as though a goddess had just graced the place. But it was certainly not the sort of comfort a person feels when a lover enters the room, more like a mother. Her face was pretty, but not exotic except for the small mole under her mouth and her expressive eyes of an orange-brown color. Yami continued to stare at her as she approached the three and smiled at Toudo, then at Mokuba, and finally Yami.

Toudo gave her a slight bow before going to her side and leading her in front of Yami, who couldn't turn or move that much due to the attached Mokuba, who seemed to cling onto him for comfort. "This is Sonomura Maki, a friend of mine from high school," Toudo introduced, motioning towards the woman. "She is a psychotherapist." Maki bowed and stretched her hand out towards Yami, who took it before he could retort anything about his lack of knowledge about a "psychotherapist."

"I'm here about Kaiba Seto," Maki announced, "I got a call from Naoya-kun last night and I figured that it's best that I examine him before we let him home with you." Her orange-brown eyes looked at Yami's, the gravity of her tone emphasized by her gaze. "I suppose I shall have to break it to him again…" she sighed, looking at her watch and her clipboard before going into Kaiba's room.

Kaiba was sitting up in the bed now, his sapphire gaze out the window, studying at something and nothing at the same time. At the sound of Maki's boots clicking on the tile floor, he turned his bandaged head to look at her.

"Who are you?" he questioned, his tone testing.

"Sonomura Maki," Maki introduced herself with that same smile she used in the hallway that pacified Yami.

"You don't look like a doctor…or a nurse," Kaiba commented, his eyes scanning Maki, his tone suspicious and criticizing.

"I don't like the lab coats," Maki answered, not at all phased by the cold razor sharp words thrown at her. "Enough small talk," she said when Kaiba gave her a surprised look at the fact that she wasn't cringing under his critiques. "I'm here to ask you a few questions. It's a procedure thing." With those words, she plopped herself down on the folding chair that Toudo dragged in for her. "Did anyone come in to see you today, Kaiba-kun?" she asked.

"Why is that important?" Kaiba responded with his own question, his eyes floating back to the nothingness he was focusing on outside the window.

"To see if anyone's done any tests on you yet. And look at me when I'm talking to you." Her hand waved to motion that Kaiba turn his head back thisaway. And look at her he did, but it was a look of complete disbelief; disbelief that someone was actually brave or stupid enough to not waver in his verbal attacks and daring to order him around. Yami himself was surprised that she had not burned to a pile of crisp French-fries under Kaiba's gaze, which has now grown into a fiery murderous look. Mokuba was more surprised at the fact that his brother had not thrown this woman out yet.

Kaiba growled when he saw that Maki was still looking him square in the eye with a gaze that made him feel like he was nothing but a child in her mind. She was quite steadfast in her stature.

"No," he answered despite himself. "This is the first time I saw anyone today. No one has come in before." She nodded and jotted down something on her clipboard as Yami and Toudo exchanged glances behind her and Mokuba looked as though he was going to break down in tears again.

"Uh-huh, now tell me, what is your name?"

"Aren't you supposed to know that?" A tone that said "what are you, stupid?"

"Procedure stuff."

A sigh. "Kaiba Seto."

"When's your birthday?"

"October the twenty-fifth. I fail to see what importance is in this."

"Hush." That answer drew gasps from Yami and Mokuba who simultaneously thought that this woman must have a very strong death wish.

"Are you mocking me?"

"No. Just writing. And you're acting very childish if not rude."

"I am n-"

"Where are your parents?"

A brief pause before a deadly cold monotone answered with: "Dead. The adoptive father is dead, too." Maki raised her head and gave him a look that seemed very much like sympathy, if there were a way to explain the face she was wearing. With that look, the tension in the room seemed to disappear altogether.

"What is it that you do?"

"I'm the CEO of Kaiba Corporations." Yami had expected him to make a smart remark here about how everyone should know about Kaiba Seto and his work, but he didn't.

"All right…" Maki wrote down a few more notes before looking at her watch and then at the clock. "My watch seems to be off, Kaiba-kun," she said, pulling off her watch. "Can you please help me set it to the right time? I can never seem to set the time on these digital watches."

"If you can't understand the mechanism of these things, then maybe you shouldn't wear them," Kaiba replied. Yet his words did not drip with the usual stinging malice they always wore, and he took the watch from Maki, helping her reset it without another complaint before handing it back to her.

"Thank you. That is all I need," Maki said, smiling as she took the watch and placed it around her wrist again. She then looked at Toudo, Yami and Mokuba, signaling for them to leave the room before she stood up and walked out as well, Kaiba's eyes following them before they blinked and he forgot everything that was said. He then returned to focusing on the sky outside.

Once they were out of Kaiba's earshot, Maki sighed and bit her lip. But before she could open her mouth to report her findings, Yami opened his mouth, the words being: "Are you mad, Dr. Sonomura? Talking to him like that…I'm surprised he didn't jump out of his bed and strangle you!" Mokuba nodded his agreement, afraid that if he talked to Maki, he would perhaps fall under the same stupor his brother did.

"Oh, she has her ways," Toudo stated, a broad smile across his face. He chuckled for a while before the smile faded and he glanced at Maki. "So, what did you find out?"

Maki flipped the pages on her clipboard for a second before sitting down, a sign that Yami and Mokuba should sit as well. She heaved a sigh before she looked intently at Yami, and then at Mokuba. "I asked him those questions to see exactly how much he still remembers about himself. It seems that his declarative memories are still in tact."

Mokuba raised his hand as though he were in a classroom waiting to submit a question to the teacher. "What are declarative memories?" he asked when Maki glanced at him with a smile.

"They're memories of facts, rules, concepts, and events…they include memories of personally experienced memories, which are called episodic memories, and memories of general knowledge, which are semantic memories," she explained while connecting it to her report. "That means that he still remembers who he is, what he does, what happened to him before. There won't be a sign of amnesia except for maybe mundane things that he forgot… He also still has his procedural memories, it seems, since he remembers how to reset a G-Shock Frogman watch. He'll know how to do things on his own."

"Then what's the big problem? Why would he need to go home with me since that's what you've been hinting for the longest time?" Yami interrupted. He couldn't understand the point behind all this explaining, all this worry, if Kaiba was going to come back normal but just unable to remember things for a few minutes. So what?

What he said seemed to be the wrong question for Maki suddenly stood up and pull the Pharaoh to his feet, a move that shocked in not only in the strength of such a petite woman, but the sheer anger in her eyes. "Come here," she ordered. Suddenly she seemed like the devil and its entire wrath. Yami could not help but follow her to Kaiba's room once again, stumbling in as she gave him a small push into the room.

"Yami. What are you doing here?" Kaiba asked, turning his head to examine his rival as Yami approached him in awkward steps due to the push.

"What…?" Yami asked, bewildered, not truly knowing the severity of Kaiba's condition. "I was just in here…with Dr. Sonomura…" He pointed at Maki, who walked up behind Yami.

"I've never seen that woman in my life," Kaiba replied, "This is the first time I've seen anyone today. Where is Mokuba? I need to know what in the world I'm doing in the hospital."

Yami raised his hand and pointed at Kaiba, his mouth opening and closing like a dying fish on dry land before Maki pulled him out the room. "You see?" she sounded like she was whispering and hissing at the same time. Yami realized that she was trying to hold back tears of anguish. "You see?" she repeated, gathering herself now. "You can't just leave him alone…It's not a 'so what' situation now. Can you imagine if one day he decided to take a walk...and in the middle of the streets he forgot where he was and the lights turn green?"

"He will be killed…" Yuugi whispered, his knees almost buckling as his dark side hid away in the soul room, unable to confront such a truth.

"Yes," Maki concluded, not at all shocked by the sudden switch of minds. "Yes, he will die if you leave him alone. That's why he needs your help. He didn't put you down on his list of emergency contacts for you to let him go off." She stepped back and looked at the tips of her own boots, suddenly ashamed at her own actions. "I-I'm sorry. I got too emotional." She sighed. "But will you please help him? Now that you've understood the situation?"

A mute nod was the only answer she got.

To be continued…

I had at first wanted a lot more to happen in this chapter, but I guess all the medical/psychological stuff got way too long and I had to split the ideas into two different chapters. Maybe that's for the better, anyway. Because after this, most of the stuff that happens with Kaiba's condition will be my own thing based on my meager knowledge of medicine and psychology. And I can also build more on the dreams that haunt Kaiba… So much to write…I am also planning a prequel to this that I will work on after this whole thing is finished (not sure if anyone would want to read it though). Also, don't worry about Maki…no one's falling in love with her in this fic. The only reason why people are acting so strangely around her is because of her "presence." You would probably have to play Persona to understand the thing behind her "ways."　　Oh, and I realized that the hiragana of Yuugi's name has two u's in it instead of one, so it's a correction on my part, not a typo.