Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ Seto Kaiba's Perfect Match ❯ Deep Thoughts ( Chapter 4 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

True to Kaiba's request, I quickly made my way to KaibaCorp's main office. I was admittedly a bit nervous. What could he want to talk to me about, other than, well, the obvious?
I walked into the building and approached the front desk. The secretary looked up from her typing. "May I help you?"
"Uh---yes. Mr. Kaiba wanted to see me. I'm the duelist that he requested to come by today." I felt very awkward, but I guess I handled myself pretty well.
"All right." She hit a couple of buttons on the phone. "The duelist you requested has arrived, Mr. Kaiba. Should I send her up?"
His voice came back through the speaker. "Yes."
"All right, I'm sending her to you right now." She turned to me. "Go down the hall----at the end and to the right, you'll see an elevator. Take it up to the sixth floor---you can't miss his office." She smiled at me. "You must be very important to Mr. Kaiba----he asked for you personally."

I was trembling a bit as I approached the door of Kaiba's office. I now knew how to handle him in the dueling arena, but I've never been too good at being a polished, professional lady. "Heck with it----I'll just be my ol' hick self, and maybe my unique brand of charm will get me through," I said to myself, and bravely knocked at the door.
"Come in," Kaiba said in his sexy deep voice. I turned the knob and walked in.
"Hi," I said softly, my shyness taking over my voice completely. He swiveled around in his chair.
"Oh, it's you," he said. I thought I heard a little excitement lift the pitch of his voice slightly.
"Yeah---you asked me to come by, so, um, I'm here," I said, instinctively bowing my head a little, most likely in deference----I tend to do that a lot. He looked at me strangely, and I realized with embarrassment that my hands were shaking involuntarily.
"Are you all right?"
"Yeah, just---" I struggled to get myself under control. "I guess I'm just a bit nervous," I said honestly. No use for pretense anyway----Kaiba could see right through it.
"I'm glad you came by, Robin," he said, standing up from his chair and walking in front of his desk. "I wanted to talk to you." I had to stop my smile from spreading ear to ear.
"Cool," I said cheerfully. "Well, what about?"
He paused a second before answering, leaning against the front of the desk slightly and crossing his arms. "My defeat at your hands yesterday came as a shock. As you might have guessed, I was shaken up by both your dueling strategy and your words afterwards---they gave me quite a bit to think about." I could tell that Kaiba's words were genuine, and were not said lightly. "Your perspective---it's so different from mine, yet I understood you. You confessed your own inability to accept defeat sometimes, and that was something I'd never heard any duelist say before."
"Well, I'm not your typical duelist," I said, quite honestly. "I have my own ways, and sometimes they're a little strange. The best ones are always a bit strange, don't you think?" I looked at him kindly, indicating he was one of the "best ones" I referred to. He seemed to appreciate my mild flattery, and smiled.
"I had actually hoped I would be able to face you in a duel during this tournament, Kaiba," I said brightly. "You being such a great duelist, I figured I could see how much progress I had made more clearly if I dueled you. I didn't expect to win, however!" I laughed a bit, then paused. "But I saw something within you, from the first time I met you. Like I said, I sensed this deep sadness, which you may have been able to hide from the rest of the world, but not from me. I think it's because your sadness seemed to echo my own."
"And that brings us to the matter I wanted to discuss," Kaiba said, going back behind his desk and sitting down. He motioned for me to sit as well, and I did. "I spent most of last night thinking about what you said."
"I heard you were working in your lab practically all night," I said, with a touch of sympathy. "I had trouble getting to sleep myself."
"You probably heard that from my brother," he said. "I told Mokuba that I was going to work in my lab for a while, but I really stayed up thinking about myself, my strengths, my weaknesses---and of course, you." I felt a little flattered that he had thought about me even a little bit. "Your last words before----" He trailed off, and I knew he meant the kiss. "Your last words made me wonder and think much of the night. You seemed to say them so sincerely, as if they were very true to you, but nobody else has ever expressed any sort of that emotion towards me before."
"I didn't initially intend to call you 'sweetheart,' but I think I thought it so hard that it slipped out without me thinking about it. As for the kiss," I said gently, "that was me letting my heart guide me for a second. I just saw you----the true you----in your eyes when we made eye contact, and that's why I called you sweetheart and kissed youbecause you were sweet. Heck, I was trying to keep from having a major squealing fit the whole time we were dueling!" I said jovially.
Kaiba looked a little confused. "Really?"
"Yeah," I said honestly. "Yugi and them could tell you----you remember night before last when you were on the TV screens in Domino Square?"
"Yes," he said.
"Well," I said, starting to giggle, "I was, as they described me, fixated on the screen the whole time you were talking. I was like, 'I am not missing an opportunity to hear Sexy Man talk.'" I almost stopped myself, realizing I had revealed my private nickname for him, but he didn't seem to mind. Actually, he seemed interested.
"You were?" he asked me, a little taken aback.
"Heck, yeah," I said, my odd brand of charm beginning to weave its way into my words. "Honestly, Kaiba? I think you're the sexiest man in this tournament, and believe me, I've checked out every other piece of merchandise----I ought to know." My honest confession was a little shocking to him----his eyes went a little wider. I laughed at his reaction. "Hey, at least I'm honest!" I said brightly, and he smiled slightly.

A long silence, or at least one that felt really long, passed between us.
"Kaiba." I spoke softly, breaking the ice at last. "Was I right about the sadness?"
He cast his eyes down. "Yes, you were."
I nodded. "That's why you got a little----riled up in the duel, then. You were trying to protect yourself again." I was trying not to piss him off again, so I was tiptoeing on eggshells. I studied him carefully, looking for any sign that I should shut up and quit while I was ahead. There was none, so I continued.
"Sometimes my sadness is so painful that I have a hard time talking about it until many years after it's happened," I said gently. "That's why I produce art, I guess----artists can't be artists until they've known true pain and sorrow."
He looked at me, surprised. "You're an artist as well?"
"Yes, I am," I said. "But I don't draw----I write. I write poetry and music, and have done so for most of my life. Heck, I don't know where I'd be if I hadn't started." I leaned in a little towards him. "I, too, have felt the pain of being alone in life. You, in a way, were luckier than me, and I was luckier than you in another." I paused. "You were lucky in that you had a younger brother to trust in. Me? I had me, myself, and I for siblings, ya know? I had very little interaction with my classmates at school, so I was alone there, and then came home and felt kind of distant there, too, for a time." I felt my voice start to shudder in my throat with emotion at the end of my sentence. "But I was luckier than you in a way, too. Everyone finally accepted me and actually felt loved after a while. You have yet to experience that, and frankly, I think that's pretty dumb of people. I mean, you're Seto Kaiba; you're incredibly smart, wonderfully innovative, and really clever to come up with all the technological devices you do. If people can't love a person like you unconditionally, then that's just gay." He laughed at my creative word usage.
"Well, I've certainly never heard myself described that way before," he said, smiling at me a little.
"You're going to hear it more and more," I assured him. "Trust me, I'm like the frickin' queen of forgiveness and unconditional love. Talk about 'A stranger's a friend you haven't met yet;' my phrase is 'An enemy's a friend you have to work to make.'" I laughed at myself a bit. "Sometimes my soft heart has gotten me nothing but sorrow, because I devote myself so deeply to people and they aren't always able to do the same for me. I've learned to just keep giving and keep being sweet, and that one day it'll work for me."
"I have to say that I've never met anyone like you before," Kaiba said simply, showing his talent for concise speech. "I've grown up believing only in my power, and that power comes from being the best at whatever I do." He paused for a second. "When our parents died, I suddenly had control of my life and was responsible for Mokuba's safety and well-being. I swore I'd never let anything happen to him, but I haven't always kept that promise." Now, this was something I hadn't heard before.
"When did your parents die?" I asked, gently, for fear of striking a psychological nerve.
"I was very young," he replied. "But I was old enough to take charge. And when Mokuba and I were at the orphanage, we were almost separated a few times. I didn't let it happen, though."
"You grew up having to be the strong one," I said empathetically. "No wonder." I trailed off, letting Kaiba speak.
"When we finally were adopted, my adoptive father was the head of Kaiba Corporation----I played a game of chess against him and won, and that meant Mokuba and I were then his adopted sons. But I suppose I wasn't good enough for him at first. He constantly told me that, among other things." He looked away for a second, and my heart reached out to him spiritually, seeing the overwhelming pain in his eyes. When he had regained his composure, he continued. "I learned under his guidance that being the best is all that matters. When Yugi defeated me for the first time, it was----devastating."
"You felt like you were then worth nothing to the people you cared about because you failed." My words seemed to speak themselves, of their own accord. Kaiba looked at me a little funny.
"Exactly," he said softly, and I could tell I had just gained a whole lot of his respect then. "So, you do understand."
"I certainly do, Seto," I said without thinking, not realizing at first that I had just called him by his first name. In retrospect, it seemed only natural for me to do so. He didn't seem shocked, so I kept on going.
"Heck, you'd think we were kindred spirits or something," I said with a smile. "We turned out so similar even though we went through very different events. We both grew up trying to be the best, because we felt that's the only way we were loved." I paused for a second. "It's the oddest thinghave you ever talked to anyone about your life like this before?"
"No, actually," Kaiba replied, looking thoughtful. "Now that you mention it, I've always kept it to myself," he said thoughtfully. "I don't know why I chose now to talk about it, but it seemed---"
"Only natural, right?" I said. He nodded, showing that I had finished his sentence perfectly, and smiled his slight smile again. I returned the favor with my warmest grin. "I told you that someone could indeed love you," I said softly. "You just had to sift through a bunch of people to find her."