Future Lover

Seto lay down on his stone bed with a thin line of matress, if that was what it was called. It was the only thing the slaves were given, and of course a thin cotton blanket and a small pillow. He stared up at the ceiling, one hand under his head and the other on his growling stomach. In irritation, he sat up. “Ugh, some billionaire I turned out to be. 3000 years from now I’d be the son of a bastard,”

“Hey, you, you’re not from around here, are you?” he heard a female voice. He was sure that the question was directed to him. Only two slaves were allowed per room, and that room was like the width of two cars.

“I-I’m not,” he said, taking the case of his contact lenses from his pocket, and proceeded to take the contacts off. “I guess that’s easy to tell,”

“What the hell are you doing to your eyes?!” said the girl as she sat down on her own bed, setting two candles down the rock that took the place of a bedside drawer.

“I’m taking my contact lenses off,” he said, “Or to put it simply, I’m changing the colour of my eyes,”

“You can do that?!”

“Yes,”

“Lemme see! Do it! Change the colour of your eyes!” she said, kneeling before Seto’s bed.

He rolled his eyes and took one lens out. “My eyes are cobalt. This is a lighter colour than cobalt,” he put the lens on his right eye, and let the girl see. “OK?” he took it off again, keeping it in its chemical filled case, and set it on the rock beside his bed.

“Awesome,” she went back to her bed. “So, what’s your name? Where are you from? How come you have such pale skin? Are you sick?”

Seto sighed. He didn’t want to answer any of the girl’s questions, but he thought that he might as well get to know the people here if he was go get closer to their king. “My name is Seto. I’m from the east, from a country called Japan. This is the natural colour of my skin, and no, I’m not sick,” he lied down.

“I’m Neema by the way. It’s nice meeting you, Se-”

“Call me Kaiba,” Seto cut her off. Hearing his name from other people other than himself, Mokuba and Yami was unnerving. It made him cringe.

“But you said your name was-”

“Kaiba is my surname. That’s what other people me. Only three people are allowed to call me by my first name.,”

“Okaayyyy….So, I bet a lot of slaves have been picking on you for being different. I mean, you have pale skin, and you have blue eyes.” She started.

“You have white hair, isn’t it rare for Egyptians such as yourself to have white hair?”

She frowned and continued. “Blue eyes are rare here in Egypt. The only person we know with blue eyes Priest Se-” she got cut off with her own thoughts. “Hey…I may be a slave but I’m not stupid. You look exactly like High Priest Seth! Only with fairer skin!”

“If you weren’t that stupid you should have figured that out the moment you saw my face,”

“Hey, if you’re going to be mean to me, I’m going to tell His Excellency about you,” Neema paused. “And about His Majesty,” she smirked.

Seto quickly sat up. “What?!”

“Oh, I know about you and His Majesty. I saw you carrying him in his chambers a few hours ago. You think nobody saw you? I did. I was dusting the artifacts in the hallways and the paintings. Nobody, and I mean nobody is allowed to touch or carry His Majesty that way.” She explained.

“Alright! Alright! I’ll stop being a bastard; just don’t tell any of the priests or advisers or whoever who’s a member of the council or the administration!”

“Tell me why,”

“Why what?”

“Why you were holding him that way,”

“What?!” he said, appalled.

“Come on! I can keep secrets!” she took off a gold necklace that wrapped around her tanned neck. “Here,” she put it around his neck. “This is one of my grandma’s charmed necklaces, and one of the only things she left of me. As long as you have that, I will not tell anyone, but if you lose that, I will tell the High Priest of your existence,”

Seto held the gold pendant in his hand. It was a gold version of the symbol of Monster Reborn. “Alright, I’ll tell you,” she sat back down on her bed. “I swear if you tell anyone I will kill you myself,”

“I won’t! I won’t!”

“He and I met when we were kids.” Seto started. Neema listened intently. “When we met again a year ago, he didn’t remember me, but I remembered him. He considered me a rival in dueling, a passion we both had, and I played along, throwing insults at him and at his friends as time passed. I’m glad he didn’t take those insults seriously. When I finally approached him about meeting a few years back,” he paused, More like a few millennia back he thought, “he said he couldn’t remember, but he said that I was familiar in some way.”

“Oi, you,” two plates of food slid under flap which looked like a dog exit or something. There was porridge, and a few pieces of boiled meat.

“Dinner! Great!” said Neema, taking the two plates and handing one to Seto. The spoons were given to them a few seconds later.

“What the fuck is this?” Seto asked, staring at the food on the rock by his bedside. “It looks like someone ate rice and regurgitated it,”

Neema swallowed. “It’s the only thing you’ve got. To be honest, being a slave here in the palace is better than being a slave in the homes or rich Egyptian people. Here, as long as you do what they say, you don’t get punished. The cook the food just for you, and they give bigger bowls of it, even with meat! We’re not slaves, we’re servants,”

“What do you mean with rich Egyptian people?” he still didn’t touch the food.

She put the bowl down on her bed, and to Seto, it seemed like she was sad. “With them, the female slaves get raped by their sons, multiple times, with multiple men even.” Seto couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “They give us food, yes, but the food that is given to us is the leftovers, sometimes not even good for all of us. Here, they give us space, and a bed, a pillow. There, we sleep in the stables with the horses. If there was a slave one of the Masters or Mistresses didn’t like, they’d have them punished to death just because. Here, the guards don’t even touch us, they flirt with the pretty ones, yes, but they never touched any of us.”

“And you’ve experienced all this? They raped you?”

“Yes.”

“So is that why you ran away, and decided to serve your king?” She nodded. She still didn’t seem relieved even though she had already said everything. “There’s something more, isn’t there?”

She looked at him. “I was fourteen when I got here, and I was pregnant.” She paused. Seto couldn’t believe it. A fourteen year old getting pregnant. Last time he heard of a teenage pregnancy around the Domino campus was 16. “They wouldn’t believe me, so they used Priestess Ishizu. She’s a kind woman.” She smiled at her name. “She confirmed of my pregnancy, and I told them that I’d give up my baby to His Majesty’s Defense to let me serve him as a slave.”

“Wait, your king right now?”

“No, His Majesty’s father was the ruler when I first came,”

“So how old are you now?”

“35,”

“So your son is 21 years old…”

“Yeah,” she nodded. “But I don’t know which of the soldiers he is. I never saw him. I don’t know who raised him.”

Someone knocked down the door. “So it’s true.” The guard smirked. “You’re coming with us,” he grabbed Seto by his hair.

“H-hey!” Seto managed to say, and Neema went after him, but the guards slammed the door in her face.

“Kaiba! Kaiba!” Seto heard her voice fading.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Yami knew a good amount of healing techniques, as what Ishizu had taught him these past few days. And one of them was to relieve pains. It hurt to walk, but he could manage. He got in the tub full of warm water with soap and perfume, and said a little spell which made the water glow. “Mmmm…” he closed his eyes, feeling the pain slowly fade away and feeling the spell slowly work its way through his aching muscles and his spent insides.

He wondered what Seto might be doing. Maybe he was already asleep, and then he realized that he hadn’t eaten dinner yet. He’ll eat dinner after he finished this bath and healing session. He also thought that he won’t be doing it again with Seto anytime soon. He had a country to run.

He had already spent around maybe half an hour before a voice broke the silence of his bathroom. “YOUR MAJESTY! YOUR MAJESTY!”

Yami snapped his eyes open. An unfamiliar voice ran through his ears. He quickly got out of tub, and felt that the spell did its work. He got a robe on, and proceeded to his room. “You’re not allowed in there! His Majesty is resting! Shut your mouth!”

He opened his door. “Yes?”

“Your Majesty!” a white haired girl threw herself at his feet, crying.

“Do I know you?” he asked, “Stand up, I want to see your face,”

The girl did as he said. “Please, Your Majesty! I must talk with you!”

“Shut up slave!”

“No!” Yami stopped the guard from dragging her from him. “Stop! I’m not done with her!”

“Forgive us, Your Majesty,” both of them kneeled.

“Yeah, whatever.” He said, scowling at them. “A girl never did anything to you and you hurt you, you should be ashamed of yourselves,” he took the girl’s arm, pulled her in his room, and closed the door. “So, you need to talk?” he smiled.

She knelt quickly. “Your Majesty, your loved one, His Excellency, High Priest Seth knows of it. He’s been taken to the throne room for you!”

Yami gasped. “He’s got Seto?” he dressed up quickly, and instead of putting on only a tunic and his pencil skirt, and didn’t forget his puzzle. “Come with me,” he took her arm and ran out the room, ignoring the guards’ calls.

When they got to the throne room, Seto was already on the floor, his back smeared in his own blood.

“Well, well, well,” Seth spoke first. “Where have you been, Cousin?”

Yami didn’t answer him and ran to the body on the floor. “Seto…gomen ne…” he cradled him on the floor. The water from the fountain outside the throne room came to him as he commanded, and said a spell. The water placed itself on Seto’s back, beginning the healing.

Seto didn’t respond, or move. Yami could hear his breathing, and it was disturbed. He was drenched in sweat, his hands were dirty with soil and dust, his tunic was torn and ragged, his hair was messy and a gold necklace hung around his neck.

“Who is the slave, Cousin, that you allowed him to touch you as if you were some slave yourself? Look at him, he is pale. He does not belong with us!” Seth asked. Clearly he was the one who was most angry. If Akunadin was here, his anger would overpower Seth’s. “Answer me!”

Yami didn’t answer him, and the puzzle started to envelop his frame with a black and purple entity. The priests stepped back. They knew better than getting the pharaoh angry. “You want to know who he is? Huh?” he said. “He’s a friend. He was the one who kept me up. He was the one who made me who I am. He was the one I considered a rival, but I was wrong. For years he hid his knowledge of who I really was.” He paused. “What about the colour of his skin? I’ve lived in a country where every single person I see has pale skin, and I’ve lived in a body with pale skin, and I can tell you that I’d rather live in a pale coloured body than in this tanned one.”

“Lived in another country? For years?” Seth gave a mocking laugh. “You haven’t left Egypt since you were born, Cousin!”

“Ishizu, look into my brain and let them see,”

And they’ve seen it all. But Yami didn’t let them see this afternoon’s events. “How could this commoner be of importance to you?!” Seth demanded. “And how could you control the monsters of the realm with ease?! Even those who are not of royal blood can do with them as they please!”

“Commoner?” Yami repeated. “He is no commoner.” He stood up, putting Seto’s arm over his shoulders. Seto was almost over 50 pounds heavier than he was. “From where Seto comes from, I rule as the Game King, a king who could defeat anyone in a game.”

Mahaado, whom Yami believed was his Dark Magician, helped him carry the limp body. “I believe His Majesty needs assistance,” he said, and the guards took Seto off of his back. He led Neema out of the throne room.

Yami’s dark aura faded. “Seth,” he faced him. “I love you and all…you’re my cousin. You’re older than me, I know. But sometimes, it’s better to break the rules if I want to get what I want.” He turned around. “Ishizu, call a healer. Rishido, have your staff calm the slaves in their rooms. Shimon, please come with me. Shada, please accompany His Excellency to his room.” He left.