The ring on his left hand is heavy. He looks at it with annoyance on his face. 

His wife. His soon to be ex-wife. 

Things started well enough. He has never loved her, but there was fondness in the beginning. He had needed an heir, and she was the daughter of a fellow businessman.

He’d never touched her. He couldn’t. The intimacies of a husband and wife required some amount of trust. He trusted no one. 

She had her own room. She hated it. She hated him.

They had still managed, and a child was conceived with the help of science. Producing an heir was in their marriage contract. She seemed fine with it, so long as she had a say in the name and gender. 

He closes his eyes. He can’t think about her miscarriage. Despite his uncertainty on the subject of being a true father he had known he could do at least that. Mokuba proved it. 

That happiness that comes from holding your first child was never to be his. He still fears she did it on purpose. 

Now, over a year later, he’s caught her sleeping with other men. Not that he’s surprised. If he hadn’t caught her, if she hadn’t been so stupid, he might even have been fine with it.

She wasn’t that intelligent. If he could catch her with just her cellphone the tabloids would be all over it soon enough. The day after tomorrow he will have papers served on her.

Why then? Because tomorrow is their anniversary. He will confess that he still has positive feelings for her. He doesn’t want to ruin the surprise. 

Nothing of his brings him pride. Nothing but his brother. For so many years the boy was a waist high reminder of why he did everything, why he made each choice, and exactly why he was ready to sacrifice everything. Mokuba is his world. His son, his brother, his student. The boy looked up to him for so long that he isn’t sure he has any other idols. 

He feels that is wrong. He is nothing to idolize. Just a mind of grand expectations and even more amazing failures. Everything he touches turns to ash, and yet this one little boy continues to try to save him from himself. 

Now in college, Mokuba is a fine young man and grooming himself to be his brother’s equal. He’s done it without having to endure the tortures of the elder brother’s childhood. He had been protected from it almost entirely. Its one of the few things that makes him smile now; his brother’s progress. Despite his own shortcomings he has managed to raise a respectable youth who will one day take this company from him. 

He both anticipates and dreads that day.  

Blue Eyes White Dragons. Three. His Blue Eyes.

He still has them, still has his whole deck, but he hasn’t played it in years. The cards are looking worn now; one Blue Eyes is faded at the edges and starting to tear. Fiercely the beast looks at him from its little square but it will never be able to break free without the aid of hologram. 

The programs for his holograms don’t recognize his cards anymore. They’re too old. The new versions of cards have a special chip that allows for more realistic actions. Many of the newer ones can even speak through headsets worn by the players.  It’s an amazing piece of technology that he wishes he could take pride in.

Maybe he could have if it hadn’t killed his dragons. Industrial Illusions had offered to reprint his beloved Blue Eyes with the new chips. He can’t do it. Not even now, months after the offer, does the idea fail to make him uncomfortable.

They wouldn’t be his dragons anymore. They would be copies. Imposters. It makes him sick.

Even if he no longer plays the game he still has his pride as a duelist.  

He turns thirty-one this year. 

He’s too old for card games. His time passed so much more quickly than he will admit. The young ones that run around now remind him of his teen years, of tournaments around the world and recklessness he now regrets, and it makes him sigh. Holed up in this office he feels like he barely understands the outside world anymore.

Not that he ever did in the first place.

The computer screen illuminates him slightly in the darkening day, the sun leaving the office, and it casts harsh shadows over his face. The angle of his nose deepens, the line of his lips thins; even his deep blue eyes shine differently at the change of light source. Its almost a transformation. 

The computer isn’t his priority. Fingers thread between one another and he rests his mouth against the line of his crossed forefingers. Its almost time to leave this office and head home. If he can call that place home anymore. 

His office is large, taking up one corner of the building’s twenty-fifth floor, and as he surveys it he comes to a realization: Nothing is personal. In all the time he spends working behind this mahogany desk not one thing is showing that proves who the room belongs to. 

Perhaps he should put a picture of his brother on his desk, and one of his wife? No. He doesn’t want the questions. There will be people constantly asking after them, and he couldn’t answer. It isn’t worth it.

The leather couches, the ornamentation on the walls, and even the mini bar across the far wall. He didn’t choose any of it. He doesn’t even drink. A designer chose all of this without his input. It makes him look like every other businessman with an office. Hadn’t that been the point?