Yuugi met that scowl with a disarming but shy little smile.

"I don't think it's a waste of time to help a friend. And you can't say we're not."

It took a special kind of man to roll with the punches when it came to Kaiba's prickliness, but when you played games together, you learned about a person.

And he liked what he saw so far.

"We met on the playing field and faced each other head-on. You always said that the strongest connections were formed on the dueling field, after all."

That was during a speech where he also said that his opponents weren't his friends because none were at his level, but Yuugi wasn't going to go into the weeds with that.

Besides. There was a connection.

They were friends now; he just knew it.