Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ Juliet Kaiba ❯ Reality Bites ( Chapter 6 )

Part 6 - Reality Bites

I honestly didn't mean there to be so much food in this chapter - it just sort of happened, lol.

 

 

Conflict in the Kaiba Mansion was usually about as rare as Seto signing autographs, but for some reason the morning after the argument at KaibaCorp, the entire mansion was filled with an unpleasant chilly atmosphere. It was a relief at breakfast time when Seto would be at work and the brothers did not have to see each other. Or so they thought.

Mokuba woke up at his usual time and travelled down to the Mansion dining room in his Pj's for some breakfast, still rubbing his eyes. As he opened the door to the dining room, he got the shock of his life. Seto was sitting at the table, a plate of vegan pancakes in front of him and a neatly folded newspaper to his left. Mokuba stopped rubbing his eye for a moment to check he wasn't daydreaming.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, “you're supposed to be at work - Aldara'll kill you!”

Seto sighed deeply.

“Mokuba, I run the company,” he said, “the only killing will be done by me…”

Mokuba walked over to his usual chair, the one directly across from Seto. He never took his eyes off Seto as he moved, a little suspicious.

“So what are you doing here?” he asked.

Seto looked up at Mokuba and cleared his throat, leaving him no uncertainty of his brother's true motives for catching him at breakfast.

“Yesterday a lot was left unsaid. I know Juliet was close to you and I shouldn't always react this way, but you have to understand things from my point of view,” he explained, “Juliet made me human, helped me see that there was hope left…when she left us…I really saw.”

Mokuba folded his arms as a chef entered the room with a bowl of steaming hot porridge. He usually had porridge with chocolate chips on a Saturday morning, but on this particular day it didn't seem such a treat.

“We don't know why she left, Seto,” he argued, “there could've been all kinds of reasons. Juliet wouldn't just leave us without having a good explanation!”

Seto sighed and gazed out of one of the mansion windows.

“I wish I had your faith at times like these Mokuba,” he said, “but the fact of the matter is…I don't…and Juliet isn't here anymore to tell me otherwise.”

 

o0o

 

“Sawdust tapping at your window

Go to sleep,

Voices whisper `Will you come and play…'

Not for all the tea in China

All the corn in Carolina,

Never, never ever,

They're running after you…”

When Mokuba had been growing up, Juliet had taken on the role of Mother, and she did it quite well. She read him stories, looked after him when he was sick and cuddled him when he was sad. Orphanage rules made it a little more difficult for Juliet to look after him, and indeed see him, but Juliet was never one to follow the rules. This particular night, Juliet had crept onto the boy's dormitory to sing her brother to sleep, as she often did. Mokuba was lying in bed with the covers tucked around him and Juliet was sitting on the edge of the bed, singing a lullaby.

“Run for the sun little one,

You're an outlaw once again,

Time to change,

Superman will be with us when he can,

The land of make believe…”

As Juliet sang, Mokuba smiled and yawned. After a few minutes, he interrupted her.

“Juliet,” he said, in a forlorn, quiet little voice.

Juliet stopped singing and looked at him. He sat there with a sad expression across his face, looking as though he might cry.

“Yes Mokie?” asked Juliet; curious as to why he looked so sad. She didn't have long to wait.

“Do you think we'll ever get adopted?” he asked, “all of us, I mean?”

So that was it. That morning at the orphanage, prospective parents had arrived looking for a child. They'd all wanted Seto because of his brains or Juliet because of her looks, but nobody had looked twice at little Mokie. Neither Seto nor Juliet had agreed to go unless the other two went with them, but it did cause a number of issues. No adoptive parent would want to adopt three children at once, but the three of them would not agree to be separated. Juliet smiled at Mokuba to hide her own worries. “Of course we will,” she said, “Seto'll make sure of it, you see.”

Mokuba gave her a weak smile and she knew that he was still worried.

“But Juliet,” he said, “you saw what happened today…they all wanted to adopt you or Seto…he'll never get them to adopt me too.”

Juliet sighed and sat closer to him. She stroked his hair and he leaned on her slightly.

“Now you see here,” she said, “you need to have faith in Seto. We're family, Mokuba, and family sticks together. We entered this orphanage together and that's how we'll leave it, kay?”

Mokuba lifted up a hand.

“Do you promise?” he asked. Juliet linked her little finger in his.

“Yeah,” she said, “I promise.”

Mokuba smiled, this time broadly, and laid back down.

“Thanks Juliet,” he said, closing his eyes. Juliet rose from the bed.

“What are big sisters for?” she said, heading for the door, “night.”

 

o0o

 

The KaibaCorp publicist turned out to be a grey haired woman, wearing a perfectly ironed business suit. She arrived at the apartment at a minute to twelve, taking everybody by surprise and promptly ordering everybody to assemble their instruments in the sitting room so she could get an idea of the band's persona.

Trey, who had been true to his word and filled the biggest room with his collection of drums, met Juliet as she emerged from her room, her guitar under one arm. She was at complete opposites to Trey, who was looking about ready to implode from the effort of shifting drum equipment.

“So what do you think of this publicist woman?” Juliet asked, closing her door and stepping aside so he could scurry past.

“At the moment I'm thinking hernia,” was the reply.

She rolled her eyes and followed him down the corridor, emerging into the sitting room, where Harley relieved Trey of his load. Trey sat on the couch and rubbed his shoulder. Juliet leaned her guitar against the couch and joined him.

“Do you think she can help us get a record deal?” she asked, “I mean…this has to be the biggest concert we've ever done.”

“I hope so,” he said, “all this had better be worth it.”

Harley, who had fixed up the band's speakers, keyboard and drum kit while everyone else dawdled in their rooms was looking extremely frustrated. The publicist was walking around the room with Marnie, who had offered to give her a grand tour in order to kill some time.

“And this is a mural of the Blue Eyes White Dragon,” She heard her saying, “it was in the apartment when we got here…we may call it Derek.”

Juliet watched as the publicist gazed at the mural, the boredom oh-so-clear, while Marnie turned towards the couch, shooting everyone `hurry up' stares. Harley took Juliet's electric guitar from against the couch and started to fiddle with it's wiring. A triumphant grunt told everyone that he had finished his job.

The publicist had swooped over before Juliet could catch her breath. Marnie followed, looking a little hurt that she hadn't pretended to look interested in her tour. Juliet stared up at the woman who (she hoped) was going to make them famous and felt a chill from the base of her spine. She would have looked more at home in an accountant's office.

“Well,” said the publicist, knitting a set of skeletal fingers together, “thank you so much for that 15 minute delay.”

A scheming look took precedence across her face and all of a sudden, the entire room went dead silent.

“Now,” she said, “here's how things are going to work…I'm going to ask each of you to perform individually to get an idea of who I'm to publicise the most. Looks are one thing, but talent, you'll understand is another entirely. We'll have you perform in age order, oldest first…”

Juliet breathed a sigh of relief. She was the youngest in the band and that therefore meant she was performing last. She was normally the least nervous when it came to performing, but this woman gave her the creeps. Glancing across at Harley, she noticed that he looked just as nervous as she felt.

“Good luck,” she murmured.

 

o0o

 

As Harley buckled up his nerves to play for the publicist, Tea was heading for the local sandwich store. A few weeks before, Tea had applied for a job at the Domino Music Department, a shop that sold records to everyone worth knowing - all of the cool kids in school referred to it as the `Hive'. Somehow she had managed to get the job and it was currently her lunch hour.

Tea pulled her purse out of her jacket pocket and rifled through her spare change. That morning had been hectic; her boss had asked her to reorganise their classical selection, which had taken forever. An hour of bliss… she thought to herself as she passed the arcade.

Out of habit, she glanced inside to check if Joey and Yugi were inside. Sometimes on a Saturday morning they met up in the arcade and stayed there for hours. Tea scanned the arcade, her eyes carefully brushing past everyone inside. There was no Yugi or Joey, but a short dark haired boy did catch her eye.

“Hey Mokuba!” she greeted enthusiastically, stepping inside the arcade and being all but deafened by the loud background noise. Mokuba was playing on what appeared to be a wrestling game and was so deeply immersed in thrashing his opponent that he didn't notice her. Tea walked over to him and cleared her throat loudly.

“Uh…Mokuba?” she said.

At first there was no reply and Tea thought he was ignoring her. However, suddenly, Mokuba slammed his hands down on the arcade machine and turned to look at her - a dangerous expression across his face.

“I thought I told you to…” he snapped and then noticed who he was talking to. “Oh. Sorry Tea; I thought you were someone else.”

Tea was confused. She hadn't seen the Kaiba brothers since Mokuba had appeared in Mr Mutou's game shop begging for help stopping the Big 5. Had something worse happened in the time since then?

“Who did you think I was, Mokuba?” she asked.

Mokuba glanced up at her and chewed his lip.

 

o0o

 

Rehearsals at the apartment were not going very well. The publicist was just as frightening as she was authoritarian and as soon as Harley had picked up his bass, she'd fixed him with such a frightful glare that he had been unable to play a single note. Trey, Marnie and Juliet had watched the entire thing from the kitchen.

Trey's audition wasn't much better. He positioned himself at his drum kit and straight away the publicist said that the way he sat reminded her of an elderly gentleman she knew with arthritis. He risked it and played a complicated rock ballad, but kept turning round to check she wasn't looking and ended up hitting himself over the knuckles.

Playing their instruments was the only kind of success Harley and Trey knew, so inevitably this kind of failure hit them painfully. As Marnie played for her life in the sitting room, Juliet bandaged up Trey's bruised knuckles and glanced over her shoulder at Harley. He was sitting at the kitchen table and hadn't said a word since his audition. Trey on the other hand had all but refused to shut up.

“What an evil witch,” he moaned, stuffing his face with an apple. “How are we supposed to play when all she does is sneer at us?”

Juliet finished bandaging his knuckles and he flexed them painfully.

“I mean, look at how she's intimidating Marne!” he stated, pointing through the kitchen door.

Juliet peeped through, to see Marnie desperately trying to play a lively keyboard piece while the publicist leaned over her shoulder to watch that she didn't press the automated music button.

“That woman makes me sooo mad!” Trey snarled and for a moment she thought he was going to leap out into the sitting room shouting `hoogabooga!'.

He didn't. As soon as Trey moved, Harley turned his head from the kitchen window.

“Madness will solve nothing here,” he said softly.

Trey watched him for a few seconds and Juliet saw the hatred ebb from his face. He sank to the floor and resumed eating his apple. Harley turned back to the kitchen window and recommenced staring into space. The only noise in the entire room was Trey's teeth on the apple flesh and the faded keyboard piece drifting in through the kitchen door.

Softly, gently, the music faded away and everyone turned in the direction of the sitting room. The kitchen door creaked open and Marnie slipped inside, her face reminiscent of a strawberry bonbon. She threw herself down across from Harley at the table and exhaled noisily. Silence resumed for a second as nobody dared ask her what was wrong. Eventually, Trey got bored.

“So…how was it?” he asked, through a mouthful of apple.

Marnie whispered something under her breath that they wouldn't have had the guts to repeat in the kitchen.

“I played G!” she hissed. “G! I was supposed to play C, but that, that demon put me off!”

Marnie's bonbon face had gone a shade of pear drop crimson. Juliet had never seen her that mad before and it scared her immensely. She turned towards the kitchen room door, unable to comprehend what horrors lay within.

“I guess it's my turn…” she said, trying to hide how desperately scared she felt.

Everyone turned to her, the same fear fixed across their faces. Juliet walked over to the door and clenched her hand around the handle.

“Knock her dead!” said Trey, “literally!”

Juliet smiled and stepped into the sitting room to face her fate.

 

o0o

 

Tea had taken Mokuba to a café she knew. Forgetting all about her lunch, she ordered a mocha latté and some cocoa for Mokuba. Whether he liked it or not was anyone's guess, due to the fact that as they sat down with their drinks he simply stirred his spoon round and round.

“So,” said Tea, hoping to start off some conversation. “How's your brother these days?”

Mokuba stared at his cocoa and stirred his spoon round the cup.

“He's fine,” was the monotone reply. “Same jerk as always.”

Tea froze, her mug about an inch from her lips. She had never heard Mokuba refer to his brother as a `jerk' before. In fact, coming from Mokuba the very word seemed shocking. Noticing the lapse in conversation, he looked up and noticed her stunned expression.

“Well that's what you were thinking,” he muttered.

Sadly, he turned towards the café window and stared out at the numerous people walking outside. At one point, Tea thought she saw a tear trickle onto the table.

“She was the first one to say it,” he eventually murmured, in a tone that was only just legible. “It was the last time I ever saw her…”

Tea put down her coffee and stared into his eyes.

“Mokuba,” she said, “I don't understand…have you fallen out with Kaiba?”

Mokuba shook his head slowly and turned his head away from the window.

“How much do you know about me and Seto, Tea?” he asked.

It was a bizarre question and one that completely threw her off guard, simply because the more she thought about it, the more she realised that she knew nothing about the Kaibas.

“I-I know your brother is the President of KaibaCorp,” she stammered. “And you're closer than anyone else I know…”

At this remark, Mokuba made a sound under his breath that sounded remarkably sarcastic.

“We were once,” he said quietly.

He sighed, took a sip of his bitterly cold cocoa and continued.

“Big brother is all I have, but it hasn't always been so. There used to be three of us,” he said.

Tea wasn't sure if she followed.

“Three?” she repeated. “You mean you have another brother somewhere out there?”

Mokuba smiled for the first time that afternoon and shook his head slowly.

“It would have been simpler that way, I guess,” he admitted. “She'd still be here…”

Tea slowly began to realise what he meant.

“A sister?” she said. “But…that doesn't make sense…this the first time I've heard about her…”

Mokuba picked up his spoon again and resumed his original task of stirring the cocoa.

“Her name was Juliet,” he said. “She left a long time ago and Seto won't forgive her for it…he says that she abandoned us. He's forbidden anyone from ever talking about her, even me.”

Things were starting to make sense. Well, some of them.

“That explains why I've never heard about her,” said Tea. “But it doesn't explain why you snapped at me in the arcade.”

Mokuba blushed at these words and turned towards the window again. What is he looking at? Tea pondered, gazing through the glass.

“I saw her yesterday,” was the eventual response. “I haven't seen her for years, Tea, but I know it was her…”

Tea wasn't sure what to say. Luckily, she didn't have to because Mokuba carried on.

“She was a little taller than I remember but apart from that she hadn't changed at all,” he said.

“I spoke to her and she looked at me like I was someone she'd never seen before in her life!”

He stared down at his shoes after this remark, looking extremely miserable.

“Did you tell your brother?” suggested Tea, feeling very awkward all of a sudden.

“Yeah,” was the reply, “but he just passed it off as a look-alike. He refuses to believe that Juliet would come anywhere near us now.”

Tea smiled and reached across the table to put a hand on his shoulder.

“Mokuba,” she said. “If the girl you saw was your sister then I'm sure she'll speak to you in good time - after all, coming back after all these years isn't exactly going to be easy is it?”

Mokuba smiled in gratitude.

“Thanks Tea,” he said.

 

o0o

 

Time passed. Juliet, Seto and Mokuba all stayed at the orphanage, but on the plus side they didn't get separated. Seto spent most of his time playing chess, and Juliet spent most of her time thinking of inventive ways of escaping (and also singing, though she did it when no one was listening). Mokuba spent all of his time watching them both. One such afternoon, Seto was playing chess as usual and Juliet was sitting in a chair, gazing out of a window.

`'Seto,'' she eventually said, `'I've just had a brainwave.''

Seto sighed and moved a chess piece.

`'Please don't say it involves jumping out of windows,'' he said, gazing up at her.

Mokuba sniggered at this remark and Juliet folded her arms.

`'Well excuse me for trying to find a way out of this place,'' she snapped.

Seto rolled his eyes.

`'For your information Juliet, I've figured out a way to get us all out of here,'' he said, `'and it's logical, too.''

Juliet was interested. Seto didn't voice his plans very often, but when he did they were always good. She folded her arms.

`'Go on then,'' she said, `'what's this plan?''

Seto pointed at a TV screen, which was playing for itself nearby. A news broadcast was on, and the newsreader was interviewing a fat, grumpy looking man with hairy eyebrows and a handlebar moustache. He was quite ugly. Juliet winced.

`'Ew, who's that?'' she asked. Seto grinned.

`'He's our ticket out of here,'' he said, `'that's Gozaburo Kaiba…a Chess champion. He's just won lots of money in a championship and he's donating it all to our orphanage.''

Juliet didn't see where Seto was going with it.

``Sooo?'' she asked. Seto rolled his eyes.

`'Sooo, I can challenge him to a game and if I win he has to adopt us,'' he explained. Juliet frowned.

`'I don't like it,'' she said. Seto sighed.

`'Don't like what?'' he asked.

`'I don't want to be adopted by that guy,'' said Juliet, indicating the TV screen, where Gozaburo Kaiba was grinning and talking to the news reporter, `'I have standards, Seto!'' Seto rolled his eyes.

`'Standards or no standards, I don't want to grow up in an orphanage,'' he said, `'and besides, this guy is rich…do you know what that means?''

She didn't, so she shook her head.

`'Well, he could easily pay for singing lessons for you,'' explained Seto.

That was below the belt and he knew it. Juliet still dreamed of singing, and religiously hogged the TV whenever one of her numerous favourite programmes happened to be on. Juliet gazed at the TV set and sighed. Gozaburo Kaiba was still talking to the news reporter, giving her a false smile. Juliet didn't want to grow up in an orphanage either, and she supposed that looks could be deceiving.

`'All right,'' she murmured. Seto smiled and hugged her.

`'It won't be forever, Juliet,'' he said, `'and we'll still be together.''

Juliet gave him a lop-sided smile.

`'Yeah,'' she said, `'together…''

 

o0o

 

The KaibaCorp publicist's expectations of the band she had been sent to see were drifting lower and lower by the second. With every member came a gallon of mistakes and the notebook that she had filled with her observations was stacked to the brim. What was Mr Kaiba thinking?

When the kitchen door opened for the final time, the publicist breathed a sigh of relief and glanced up to see what had emerged this time. A skinny brunette had stepped into the kitchen.

“You must be Juliet,” she said. “Might I inquire as to your instrument?”

The girl was slightly tall for her age and her eyes were a faded shade of blue. She wasn't grotesque to look at by any means, and any oddity in her appearance was nothing tinted moisturiser wouldn't fix.

“I play the guitar,” was the reply. “I sing too…that's my main part in the band.”

“How sentimental,” commented the publicist. “Only thing missing was the life story and flashback sequence…”

The girl blinked slowly and picked up her guitar, all the time the publicist watching her closely from behind her clipboard.

“I'm going to sing a song called `Dead to me',” she explained, starting to play a few metallic sounding notes. The publicist remained silent, so she carried on. After a couple of seconds of playing the opening, she began to sing:

“I sit in the graveyard

I'm haunted by the past

My hair is long and tousled

My eyes are bleak as glass.

I trample on the roses

Of tortured souls set free

For though your heart is drumming still

It doesn't beat for me.

Your heart became cold as ice

The day I set you free

A part of you can never live

You are dead to me.”

The publicist feverishly scribbled on her clipboard as the girl sang. Her voice was certainly powerful, but her guitar talents were faded. It was obviously one and not the other that had gained her a place in the band. Her voice had a cold edge to it, and though to the trained ear it was plain she occasionally missed notes, there was also a mesmeric quality to her singing that glossed everything over. She didn't carry on to sing the second verse and instead glanced up at the publicist in curiosity, who sighed pointedly.

“Whoever taught you to play the guitar ought to be shot right now,” she said. “You're supposed to play it, not torment it!”

For the first time, the girl, Juliet, raised her eyes to look up at the publicist.

“And you're supposed to be assessing our good points, not attacking us,” she snapped back.

The publicist sat back in her chair, raising her eyebrows slightly.

“Ah, so there is life in you, Miss…” she trailed off, before flicking through her clipboard notes and finally looking back up at Juliet herself. “Miss?”

The girl folded her arms.

“Juliet,” she said. “There is no surname.”

The publicist sighed deeply.

“You really are a bundle of laughs, aren't you?” she said. “Never mind, as I was saying, your guitar playing is really quite mediocre but your vocals aren't that bad.”

Juliet glared at the publicist suspiciously, as though waiting for some kind of trap. However, none seemed to arrive so she put down her guitar and turned towards the kitchen door. As she was reaching for the handle, the publicist put down her pen.

“Oh, Juliet,” she said. “Who did you say it was that taught you to sing?”

The girl turned towards her, a mystified expression across her face.

“I didn't,” she said, before stepping into the kitchen.