Okay, so here’s the thing. I’m going to keep this relatively short and sweet. At least, I hope I am. I mean, shit, I don’t want to wind up as one of those thirty year olds that is always bitching about ‘the one that got away’, right? I’m only nineteen, but when I look at my brother sometimes I get horrible visions of my future.

A future where I take out all my piercings, get all my hair chopped off, exchange boots for suits – here’s the part where if this were an anime, I’d swipe my hand through my hair and be all suddenly made over and grown up, and my eyes would twinkle and little roses would fly in the air behind me and all the girls would scream and faint.

BUT because I’m just a billionaire sitting in my bedroom staring into my mirror, all that happens is I sweep my hand through my hair in an attempt to look mature and soulful, I get a spikey bracelet caught in it, violently wiggle my arm around trying to get it loose and then knock about five bottles of hair product off my table, stand up and THEN step on one of those fallen tubes, when I finally slide across the room to land face down onto the floor. Hand still stuck in my own hair.

Me, Kaiba Mokuba, slipping around in hair gel like this is some kind of remedial ballet class. Oh tabloids, snap me now, please!

I’ll be all suited up and attending board meetings and helping Seto actually run the company because he’s busy with the little woman and the family.

My little woman. My family, damnit!

Maybe I’m getting things slightly out of order here.

They’re crazy visions, anyway. For starters, the reason I can afford to run around looking like little boy loli-goth because Seto IS the businessman. He’s busy running our mega-empire, and I help him attain just a little of the peace and quiet he wants from the media by acting like... Well, like me.

A very rich, very eccentric, very marketable celebrity.

What did I do to become famous? Pretty much nothing. Like you need to try hard these days, right? I did have a career as a popstar once (“once”, I say, like I’m already an old man telling this story – oh geez I really am doomed, huh?) and let’s not be falsely modest here: I was an instant mega-hit. But I wasn’t really that into the music, and it was kind of boring once I was on all the top charts. I mean, it was so easy. So then I just quit.

My agent cried.

Sometimes I do game shows.

I’m getting way off track, here. What I want to say this is. At the age of nineteen, I, Kaiba Mokuba, still have amazing long Sonic the Hedgehog hair, bangs still in my face, but it’s now dyed a dark blue colour. My eyebrow is pierced, so is my lip, I’ve got four holes in one of my ears (none in the other), and I have my own fashion line but since Seto settled down into pretty much boring grown up clothes, I still frequently raid his wardrobe from his old duelling days. My favourite thing is his boots – the massive black ones, buckles galore.

I’m a has-been popstar already, I fall all over the place all the time (probably because my hair is always in my eyes), I can get into any bar in the city and pick up any woman instantly, my favourite snack is takoyaki, I owe my brother everything in life and my best friend is Kawai Shizuka.

I am also completely in love with my brother’s girlfriend.

Who happens, incidentally, to be Kawai Shizuka.

In short: I’m fucking screwed. It’s my own fault, too. I was always bitching at Seto for spending too much time at work and not enough at play. It usually went something like this:

“Good morning, o-nii-san!”

He doesn't look up from his computer. “...It’s afternoon, Mokuba. But hello.”

“It’s morning to me, o-nii-san. You should try sleeping some time! I’m sure you’d love it and take it up as a hobby right away!”

“Sleep is a waste of time. Not to be blunt, but... Why are you in my office, Mokuba?”

“I’m here to brighten your day, o-nii-san!”

“That’s wonderful to hear.” Mind you, at this point, Kaiba still hasn’t looked up from his computer. “Consider it eminently sunnier.”

“I bought you the latest People magazine.” I wave it around in front of him, trying to catch his eye.

“Thank you. I’ll have my secretary throw it away later if you’ll put it in my Out tray.”

I lean on Kaiba's desk, sounding slightly scornful. I'd opt for pouty, but with Seto, you have to save the pouting for the really terminal cases. Like getting him to celebrate his own birthday. “You’re not curious?”

“...About what?”

“Who your latest fiancée is, o-nii-san!”

Around about here, he finally sighs and looks up from the screen. I smile at him. Winningly, I imagine, although who knows how Seto interprets that?

“Who is it this week? Ayumi? Megan Fox? Dakota Fanning?”

“Nope.”

“Mokuba...” and there goes that warning tone which means that I'd better just spit it out.

“Robert Pattinson!”

Seto blinks slowly, then says, “That’s lovely. I hope he wants a summer wedding three years from now, because that’s the next time I won’t be busy.”

“You know, o-nii-san, if you actually dated a real girl once in a while, they’d have something else to do all day.”

“Yes, like stalk her.”

“What if she’d like that? I just love papparazi. So does the manager at KaibaKiss – our clothes sell out the day after they hit the front page.”

Seto seems to repress a sigh. “I really wish you hadn’t named it that.”

“It was a poll! The shoppers decided, Seto. They want to kiss a Kaiba! And what the shoppers want, the shoppers get!”

“Well, right now they really want a new model of the duel disk that comes without the malfunction where their monsters accidentally vanish and leave life points wide open if the shopper accidentally hits the mystery key sequence. And that’s not going to happen unless I can get some work done.”

“Okay o-nii-san, well, have a good day! I’ve ordered your dinner for you. It’ll be here in two hours, okay?”

“Thank you, Mokuba.”

I turn to leave, but the, dramatically pause in the doorway, my head half-turned back towards Kaiba, half lost in my own poignant thoughts. “O-nii-san?”

He's back to staring at his computer. "...Yes, Mokuba?"

“If I find a girl who doesn’t mind the papparazi, will you date her?”

“If she’s beautiful, a genius, and not after our money... Yes.”

“I’ll find her, o-nii-san!”

“Goodbye, Mokuba.”

I know what you’re thinking. It’s that I’m super irritating, right? Well, I can’t help it. That’s what happens when you’re an eleven year old executive whom no one listens to. You find other ways to get their attention – ways that piss them off about as much as they piss off you.

I can also tell you that the five minutes I was there was absolutely the only break time Kaiba would have taken that day, that he never would have remembered his dinner if I hadn’t been there, and before I went to see him I also dropped off my designs for a new line of magic cards based on medieval alchemy, so it’s not like I was just there to piss about.

I’m just really, really good at making it look like that’s all I do. The best defence is a good offence, right? People are never expecting me to actually do anything brilliant, which is why it’s so easy to do.

It is my own fault, though. I was always telling Kaiba to get a girlfriend. And, I was the one who encouraged Shizuka to lie next to the pool in her bikini. If he hadn’t seen that, well... I might have been okay.

Now there’s something I will happily describe for you. At length.