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Author of 12 Stories |
Author’s Note: This is my first YuGiOh fiction. It is just a one-shot to get me warmed up for the much longer fiction that I have been planning. I’ll probably do a couple more one-shots, which will all undoubtedly revolve around Seto and Mokuba.
Disclaimer: All that you recognise from the Manga/TV show does not belong to me.
Warnings: Swearing
One Shot
Brown Paper Parcel
Three smart knocks on the door. That could only be Roland; he never used the intercom for some strange reason.
‘Come in, Roland.’
The man never seemed bemused that Seto Kaiba always knew it was him knocking at the door. After all, he was the only one brave enough to make his presence known right outside the entrance to the dragon’s den. Everyone else skittered passed the polished wood as though it was a large bath plug with a fat ugly spider squatting in it, ready to spring out.
‘Well, what is it?’ Seto enquired irritably. Although he knew very well that Roland always had a good reason to disturb him in his office, he couldn’t help but be peeved by the interruption.
Roland did not quaver.
‘A parcel came for you at the front desk, sir –’
There was a choked cough.
‘Is that it?’ barked Seto, spluttering on his black coffee from which he had been delicately sipping. ‘Roland, you know I always pick my post up at the end of the day.’ He flopped back in his plush, leather office chair with an incredulous snort, unable to believe that Roland had done something so dense. Maybe he didn’t get enough sleep last night?
‘Sir, it was delivered by hand, directly from the sender – she insisted that it was to be given to you immediately.’
Seto’s interest was lifted at the revelation of the sender’s gender.
‘A woman?’ He replied languidly. What fool of a secret-admirer could he track down and humiliate this time?
‘What did she look like Roland? Did you see her yourself?’
Roland tilted his sea-green head ever so slightly, obviously in deep thought. He replied in an odd tone, as though choosing his words incredibly carefully.
‘No sir… I didn’t see her myself, but I checked the security footage. She was a mature woman, in her forties I’d say, sir. I searched our database for a profile, in case she was an ex-employee sending a chemical parcel or something of that sort, but I found nothing on her. So far as we know she’s had no previous dealings with Kaiba Corporations… and yet…’ He trailed off, head tilting the other way. Seto raised his thin eyebrows impatiently, feeling a niggling curiosity growing. ‘And yet she seemed so… familiar. Like I ought to know who she is…’
Seto leant back from where he had rested his elbows on his desk, uncurling his spidery fingers and placing a pale hand on each armrest. With a knitted brow he glared at the corner of his laptop.
‘So? Where is this elusive parcel?’
Roland unfolded one arm from behind his back, where Seto had previously assumed he’d merely linked and rested them, in the smart way that body-guards-come-business-associates usually do. Seto frowned deeper. A brown-paper parcel trussed up with string. It looked so very boring.
‘Would you like me to leave it on your desk, sir?’
Seto nodded absently, eyes darting back to his laptop. Roland could see his superior preparing to dive right back into his workload; the way the young man began to lean forward very slowly in his chair, eyes fixed on the screen, nostrils flaring with a deep, steady intake of breath... so he placed the parcel silently on the desk, smiling inwardly at the subtle mannerisms that he was certain that only he and Mokuba were privy to, bowed respectfully and slid smoothly from the office.
Seto was about to attack the keys of his laptop furiously once more, but the stringed, brown-paper parcel was distracting him somehow. The wrapping on the nearest corner was slightly dog-eared, if he pinched it and flicked his wrist he might rip it enough just to see the corner of what was inside, if he slid his fingers over the creases in the paper he might be able to figure out what the object was, if he could just tug at that tasseled string-end… Damn it! His slender hands flew to the parcel, tearing madly at the wrapping, hissing at the impracticality of tying the bloody thing up with a piece of string.
At last the paper and troublesome twine lay messily on the carpet beside his desk. He held the object in his hands, a vague look of uncertainty on his angular face. It appeared to be a thick tome, a spine on the shorter side, so that the pages must be viewed in landscape. With its faded burgundy leather and intricate gold leafing, it looked like it ought to belong in an ancient library or an antique shop at least.
Very carefully Seto took the edge of the cover and began to open the book. His keen ears were met with the staccato sound of plastic sleeves un-sticking from each other and no sooner were the contents of the first page revealed, his pupils had pinpricked in bewilderment.
He growled, pacing furiously around his spacious bed chamber. What a fool! How hard could it be to remember a simple promise made to a most loved one? His pale eyes grew downcast. Too hard for the mighty Seto Kaiba, so it seemed. If it hadn’t been for that damned parcel he wouldn’t have become so distracted…
His eyes darted to the pillows of his four-poster bed, under which he had hastily stuffed the object, out of prying eyes sight. He didn’t quite know why he had hidden it really. He had no security cameras in his chamber, and nobody but himself ever entered, not even the cleaners or Mokuba.
Mokuba…
He strolled through the first few ground floor rooms and corridors of the darkened Kaiba Manor in search for the kid. Thinking about it, he would have fully expected to be bowled over by a mop of black hair as soon as he had set foot through the front door, but he couldn’t even hear the kid bustling about as he impatiently waited for his nii-sama. Having reached the kitchen he noticed a small figure slumped over the bar, short legs curled smartly under the tall stool. Soft snores floated through the dimness. Seto crept over and saw a dirty dinner plate with cutlery beside his brother’s sleeping head, and next to him a place had been set with a generous serving of some creamy pasta dish, which was now stone cold. He smiled sadly at Mokuba’s display of hopeful expectancy, and was pained by the fact that he, honourable big brother, nearly always let him down.
A long white hand stretched out and lost itself in Mokuba’s black tresses, caressing tenderly. Seto shimmied onto one of the bar stools and slouched over the counter, his other hand being rested on by his pointed chin. He continued to idly play with Mokuba’s hair as his eyes blindly roamed the kitchen. Jars of pasta in every shape, a vast rack of spices, a sizable collection of used coffee mugs on the counter by the dishwasher… Seto sighed, suffering from the rare curiosity of what it was all for. What was it all for? Why go to work in the morning, run a company, build an empire – why do all that when a simple, plainly wrapped package can bring a person tumbling down the mountain that he had previously stood so proudly at the summit of, waving his flag of victory?
‘I dunno, eh Mokie?’ he murmured nonchalantly to the darkness. Mokuba stirred, shifting slightly. Seto gazed at him fondly, not able to control the light tug at the corners of his mouth. By god that kid was so cute when he was asleep. Seto allowed himself to display a full, tooth-bearing smile of genuine affection before heaving himself to his feet. He took Mokuba in his sinewy arms and carried him up to bed, remembering to leave the door open the exact distance that he knew the kid preferred.
A single blue eye peered through the slim gap as Mokuba rolled over in his sleep. No need to worry him about that parcel too soon…
‘What now, Roland?’
Roland slid into the room. Seto was always a little bemused, or perhaps even a little amused by the man’s obvious confidence when stepping into his office.
‘Well?’
‘Sir, the woman who sent the brown-paper parcel –’
Seto stood up abruptly, shooting around his desk with great haste to stand directly in front of Roland, eyes revealing an unbeknownst imploring.
‘Yes? Did you find out who she is? Where did she come from? Did you file up a report on her background…?’
Roland seemed a little unnerved by his boss’s breathless torrent of questions; there must have been something really rather interesting in that boring looking parcel.
‘Uh, no sir – she’s here to see you. Now.’
Seto blinked. ‘Now?’
‘Yes sir, she’s waiting just outside –’
Roland quickly cut himself off at the look on Seto’s face, who just stood there, wide-eyed and obviously aghast.
‘She’s out there now?’
Roland nodded, suddenly sheepish under the CEO’s death glare.
‘Roland, I’ve never known you to act so unofficially! So unprofessionally! I’m supposed to be informed of every visitor who wants to see me before they even leave the Atrium! I know you don’t like using the intercom Roland, but bloody Hell…’
Imitating a goldfish for a fleeting moment, Roland gathered himself and ploughed onwards. ‘But sir, she told me who she is; I really think you should speak with her while she’s in the frame of mind to do so –’
‘Say what?’ Seto screeched, eyes flashing with a dangerous steely glint. ‘Roland what the fuck is wrong with you? Have you been popping some I’m-not-going-to-do-my-job-properly pills or something? I’ve never known such –’
His voice died. A woman, undoubtedly the woman, had just stepped through the door. She was tall and slender, with hard grey eyes and thick black hair that had been pulled back in a smart up-do that Seto didn’t recognise from the current fashions in Domino. She had a stern look to her, as though she was certainly not one to be crossed. She must have been of great feminine beauty and elegance when she was younger, but now she stood like an unchallengeable monolith of striking majesty in the doorway of Seto Kaiba’s office.
Between the woman who stood before him now and the woman he had seen in the photos of the picture album she’d sent him yesterday in that brown-paper parcel, there was a vast difference in her visible disposition.
‘Roland please leave us…’
Roland hurriedly obliged, out the door still halfway through his bow.
A thick silence suddenly made the office unbearably stifling. Whilst Seto struggled internally with the unfurling event, the woman seemed perfectly unphased. Not an inkling of emotion on that divine, angular face. Regaining his trademark composition, Seto stood to his full height and peered down his nose at the person who had suddenly sent unwanted waves crashing through his generally controllable life.
‘Who are you?’ he asked coldly. Her stormy eyes glittered strangely.
‘I suppose you recognise me from the photos I sent you yesterday…’
Seto growled. ‘That is not the answer to my question.’ Of course he recognised her. She appeared in every other photo of the first few pages of the album, sometimes just her and his mother, her and both his parents, her holding what suspiciously looked like a baby version of himself…
‘I’ll ask you once more, who are you?’
Her eyes blazed dangerously and she retorted with blinding swiftness and aggression to match his own.
‘I’m your aunt, Seto Haxby.’
Silence.
‘What did you say?’
‘Mokuba, yeah, hi – yeah I know I don’t usually ring during the day – no, what? No – listen listen listen, I need you to do something – what are you on about? Shh! Listen! Right I need you to go into my room – no I didn’t forget my mobile, no, I just need you to go into my room and look under my pillow for something okay? What? Mokuba, I lost my last milk tooth years ago…’
Mokuba fidgeted with his sleeve as he headed up the second flight of stairs to Seto’s bed chamber. He never went in there, he never really had any reason too because Seto spent very little time in there. He wondered what on earth nii-sama could possibly want him to look at that he kept under his pillow. He bit his lip nervously as he reached the landing.
‘Yeah, I know you never go in there, I’m promise you’re allowed in there – stop interrupting! No! Everything is fine Mokie – what? Yeah well maybe I want to start calling you that again… No, just look under my pillows, you’ll find it and I just want you to have a good look at the first few pages – what do you mean you don’t like books? It’s not, ugh, just do it! And then I want you to be here in my office in an hour, I’m sending Roland over…’
He was at the door, turning the brass handle, stepping into unfamiliar territory. He glanced about, Seto had neither opened his curtains that morning nor had he made his bed. Then again, Mokuba wasn’t sure if Seto ever did those things anyway. He shuffled over to the large four-poster bed, scrambled onto it and burrowed a hand under the large, feather pillows. He felt the corner of something, and dragged it out. It looks boring, he though dejectedly, as he flipped it open, not taking any care to have it on the first page.
A loud gasped escaped his lips at the sight before him, just as Roland let himself in through the front door two levels down. He had known who the woman was even before Seto, and had recognised the urgency in the CEO’s voice when he had ordered him to fetch Mokuba and bring him to the office in precisely an hour’s time. Roland knew exactly what Seto wanted those sixty minutes for.
Aunt Muhoshi had seated herself on one of the office sofas by the wall, her back strictly rigid, steel eyes never leaving him. Seto was beginning to realise that he must have inherited his severe nature from his mother’s side of the family, where this woman had come from.
‘My younger sister was so pleased to have borne a son. She hated little girls…’
Seto glanced up at the mention of his mother, only to quickly direct his eyes somewhere else when he realised that that she was still drilling him with her hard glare.
‘Yes,’ she continued, a slight drawl in her voice. ‘She was ecstatic over you. I can’t imagine her joy after having a second boy. Had I known I would have sent her my congratulations… Mokie, did I hear you call him?’
‘Mokuba,’ Seto corrected in a dead tone, slipping in and out of his daze. Suddenly his eyes hardened and stared fiercely at the woman on his couch.
‘So why are you here then, dearest Aunt? Come to wheedle your way into our lives now that you’ve spent all our inheritance, now that you’ve heard we’ve come into the big money?’
Seto was positively snarling. Aunt Muhoshi displayed her first expression of genuine emotion; she looked horrified.
‘How dare you!’ She breathed. ‘I mean, I don’t really expect you to know much about your true relatives but, my dear boy if I had known what had happened to you… such… I mean, I never –’
She stopped herself right there, suddenly appearing to be quite overcome by emotion. Seto scowled.
‘You never what?’ he demanded harshly. She glanced over at him. Seto blinked. He could see the rawest pain in her eyes, and something beyond the pain, deep and stagnant and untouched.
‘I never knew what happened to you… you were still a baby when it happened, that’s probably why you didn’t recognise that I was your aunt from the pictures I sent you –’
‘When what happened?’
‘Well,’ she said, taking a deep breath, evidently pulling herself together for something. ‘I was… disconnected – and by that I suppose I mean disowned...’ She trailed off, eyes fixed unseeingly on some random point in the office. Seto cleared his throat, bringing her back to reality. ‘Yes, well, I was disowned from the family here in Japan, completely ostracized beyond logical reasoning… to put it in a nutshell dear, I though ‘fuck it’ and I buggered off to live in another country... Never heard a single word from anyone after that, not even your mother – I always thought it was due to the fact that she never wanted to talk to me again, or, as I sometimes allowed myself to fantasize, because the rest of the family would not allow her to contact me…’ Aunt Muhoshi visibly shuddered. ‘I never once imagined that it was death which kept her silent.’
A muscle in Seto’s jaw ticked insanely. His teeth were clenched and he was sure that if he had laser vision, half of his office floor would be gone by now. He didn’t know what to think. If she was disowned, if she hadn’t even known about Mokuba, or that her sister, his mother, had died, then she can’t have possibly been one of those demons that had stolen all of his inheritance and left him and little Mokie at that godforsaken orphanage. He tried to outweigh his emotion with this coherent reasoning, but his mind was still reeling from the revelation that he and his brothers were not the only ones left.
‘What did you call me earlier?’ he asked.
‘Hmm?’
‘You called me a funny name –’
‘A funny name, dear? I just referred to you by the name on your birth certificate…’ Aunt Muhoshi looked somewhat perplexed, until she lifted her eyes around, looked at his collar, his belt buckle, remembered the large, pompous sign on the side of the building.
KC…
‘I heard that Kaiba bastard adopted you from the orphanage,’ she stated casually. ‘I suppose that’s how you managed to end up at the head of his empire.’ She cast him a viscous glare. ‘You seem not to remember your true name, however.’
Seto frowned at her. ‘So are you going to remind me again?’
Her eyes narrowed to grey slits. ‘Your name is Seto Haxby, my dear.’
Seto’s eyebrows disappeared into his fringe.
‘Haxby?’
‘Yes,’ his aunt confirmed, obviously slightly confused by his apparent skepticism of the name. ‘I cannot believe that you don’t remember your own name, Seto! And that you use his name instead!’
Seto looked away.
‘He forbade us to use our real surname.’ He bluntly declared. ‘We were both very little; young minds are quick to forget…’
That horrid, stifling silence filled the office again.
‘But - Haxby?’
‘Yes!’ cried Aunt Muhoshi, quite exasperated by now. ‘What’s wrong with that?’
Seto shook his head a little, a funny, baffled expression on his face.
‘It’s a very bizarre name…’
‘Oh yes, well it comes from Britain – your father had roots there. I think he may have even been British himself, or was half-British, I forget now… Where do you think that hair colour comes from? I’ll bet it goes red in the sun!’
Seto ground his teeth as he felt his cheeks heat up. His hair did obtain a strange, reddish tint if he stayed out in the sun too long. Mokie’s hair stayed black no matter what!
‘So I’m part British?’
She nodded and he could not stop his mind from flitting through images of a pathetic little dolt with white mullet-y hair, tagging along after Yugi, wearing that silly necklace and spouting off strange phrases in an even stranger accent. He noticed that she had a similar twang in her own accent.
‘Is that where you went when you were disowned? To Britain?’
Aunt Muhoshi smiled at him. She was leaning comfortably into the sofa now, quite at ease. ‘Yes, I’ve been living on that dank island. Don’t ask me why, it’s quite miserable really. I suppose I love it there though, something to do with the way the hills smell in the rain I think…’ Her eyes glazed over as she appeared to drift away into a daydream, a small smile quivering on her dark lips.
Seto gazed at her, leaning his elbows on his desk. She really did look very similar to his mother. Seeing her, sprawled contentedly on his sofa like a giant Siamese cat made him feel oddly… comforted. He kept suffering from bouts of old memories, strange scenes that he had completely forgotten, swimming to the forefront of his mind. He remembered losing his first tooth, the bad flu where he couldn’t stop hallucinating that all the pictures on his Duel Monsters cards were moving, watching a stray dog get hit by a car in the street by their house… his bottom lip quivered. Everything he had so diligently locked away for safekeeping was now exploding right before him, like the over-spilling guts of a knife-victim. No matter how much he tried to stuff it all back where it came from, it just wouldn’t fit; it just spilled back out as if there was more than before, making a vile oozing mess everywhere.
He found himself rising to his feet, moving around his desk and sitting carefully on the sofa beside his aunt. Their eyes locked, equally pale, equally scorching, equally matched. Seto didn’t know what to do; he barely remembered why he had come to sit on the sofa in the first place. She was hanging on her own tenterhooks, her long nostrils quivering, her strong jaw visibly clenched. She too, seemed not to know what to do next. Seto wondered what she must be thinking, looking into the face of a fierce young man that had somehow once been the happy, dribbling butterball he’d seen her holding and crooning over in the photos she’d sent. How strange he must look, with his chiseled features in place of the fat cheeks and the evidence of a shaved beard in place of the peachy velvet, his smart suit in place of the bulky nappy.
Then quite suddenly she made a start, or maybe just twitched badly, Seto couldn’t be sure, but if she had decided to do something she had very quickly changed her mind about it. He gulped. He wondered how his mouth could be so dry when his cheeks felt so very wet.
Aunt Muhoshi’s eyes were at a quiver to match his lower lip now. He realised that he had clutched her upper arm with both hands at some point, staring fixedly at her face. He felt a strange childish desperation, for what he couldn’t be sure. He didn’t quite like the feeling, he seemed lost, he seemed to be falling, tumbling down. Businessmen didn’t have time to feel lost, they couldn’t afford to tumble, but there he was, the mighty Seto Kaiba, clinging urgently as though his very life were at stake onto the arm of a woman who he had only known about for twenty-four hours.
Seto’s eyes were prickling and blurring worse than before, they felt hot and his head felt as though someone was trying to squeeze it through a small pipe. Then something trickled down his chin and fell onto his lap. His nose began to leak too. How undignified, he thought wryly. I’m crying like a little school girl.
He sniffed and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, ready to draw back and compose himself properly when something hit him and clutched him tightly. Aunt Muhoshi had flung herself at him, wrapping her arms around him and hugging him tightly. The sensation felt peculiar coming from someone who wasn’t half his height and called Mokuba, but nonetheless it wasn’t unpleasant. He gave into the embrace, wrapping his long arms around her thin back, burying his face in her shoulder. Seto was used to giving the kind of hug that was intended to comfort the receiver, but now he was the one being comforted. Aunt Muhoshi had one tender hand on the back of his head, softly stroking his chocolate hair, rocking him gently and uttering soothing hushing sounds. A bizarre turn of events to say the least. Seto blinked fresh tears into the fabric that donned her shoulder, allowing himself to completely melt into her, letting her hold him like a oversized ragdoll.
Over their heads on the wall the clock turned to three in the afternoon, exactly an hour after Seto had sent Roland to fetch Mokuba.
What could this all mean? He wondered frantically. Why does Seto want to see me so urgently? Why did I have to look at these photos and why the heck is Roland so on edge?
The lift emitted a smart ding and the doors parted graciously for them. Mokuba was gone in a flash, already at the door to Seto’s office before Roland had come hurtling round the corner, startling the receptionist, who in her shock promptly scattered a pile of paper she’d been shuffling. Mokuba didn’t bother to buzz in or knock, he never did. He rushed through, briefly mystified by the lack of Seto sitting at his usual place behind his desk, and then he spotted them.
The jolly, dark-haired woman Mokuba had seen beside his parents in those first couple of photos was reclining on a squishy, leather office couch to the side of the room, with another figure huddled on his side next to her, his head resting in her lap. Mokuba blinked. Roland came in, gasping lightly at the scene before him. The woman merely smiled, never taking her slender hand from Seto’s hair where she was lovingly massaging his scalp. His hands were curled up under chin and his knees were bent so that he could fit his long frame on the sofa beside her. His light snores were the only sound in the room, but Mokuba felt sure that half of Domino could hear his thundering heartbeat, pounding madly against his ribcage like the hooves of a tethered wild horse against a stable door.
The album had fallen from his hands to the floor, and he might have keeled over from incomprehension if Roland hadn’t placed a firm hand on his shoulder. The woman smiled wider yet, tilting her handsome head to the side as she took in the sight of the young boy standing in front of her, looking so uncannily similar to his mother.
‘Hello Mokuba,’ she said softly. ‘I’m your Aunt Muhoshi.’
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