Yu-Gi-Oh is the intellectual property of Kazuki Takahashi and Konami, and is being used in this fanfiction for fan purposes only. No infringement or disrespect is intended by this fanfiction.
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House of Three
by Animom
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The tiny waiting room was empty when they arrived, and they sat without speaking, listening the whisper of over-chilled air sifting down from tiny grilles in the ceiling. After several minutes there were faint sounds echoing in the hallway a chiming bell laughter the almost inaudible sound of a door slamming.
Finally the door to the waiting room was opened by the –
Why hadn't Mokuba hadn't mentioned that it was Ishizu? No ... on second glance it wasn't mistaken nothing there don't go back.
"Hello Mr. Kaiba, please come in."
It wasn't Ishizu, but he still didn't want to talk to her.
Her office was larger than he'd expected it would be. A third of the way into the room, parallel to the windows, two upholstered club chairs faced each other, while against the far wall a third chair bookended the stereotypical black leather reclining couch.
"Please, take a seat," she said, standing in front of one of the chairs. "May I call you Seto?"
"I don't care," he said. Three chairs sit sit sit.
Mokuba had said that not only was this American supposedly one of the best in the world, she reputedly also was fluent in Japanese. Clearly Mokuba hadn't checked to make sure that she understood rules of proper address. He wondered if he should mention it – there was probably a check-box for it on that idiotic form. No, he wasn't going to do her job for her, not for what they were paying. Still, it was just another sign of how much Mokuba had changed ever since he'd started spending time with – that person error of judgment wasn't a child living his own life.
Mokuba had as much admitted that he was planning to make mistakes. What reasonable person would willingly announce the intent to make mistakes? Clearly, moving in with – that person – had clouded Mokuba's judgment, even disrupted his mental processes.
And thus brought Seto here.
"Okay, Seto, you can call me Alex if you like."
She hadn't yet acknowledged the untidy contents of the manilla folder on the small table next to her chair: the questionnaire form filled out by Mokuba, no doubt, poking out in an acute sliver. Next to the folder was a square box of tissues. The sight annoyed him, so he folded his arms and looked down at the carpet, forcing himself to fix his attention on the hazy ranks of dots from the holes in the half-lowered blinds triangle square circle circle circle.
She apparently was happy to sit and do nothing, letting the silent minutes tick by. "So this is it?" he asked at last. "I'm paying to sit in this chair?"
"I was wondering if you could tell me what brings you here today?"
He would give this ridiculous question the answer it deserved. "A car."
"I'm sensing some hostility. Is there something bothering you?"
"No." Looking at the carpet had become boring, and so he supposed it was time to look up, wither whatever sappy share-your-pain-with-me face she was wearing. "My brother asked me to come. I'm here for him."
"Do you have any idea why he wanted you to come here?"
"Isn't it obvious? He's projecting whatever's wrong with him onto me." He could see that she was surprised that he knew the terminology. "Probably – " He stopped himself. It seemed that he had underestimated her slightly. "I see. That's a good trick." Thick prick mockery suck it suck it suck it.
"I don't understand. I'm not here to trick you. What is it that you think I'm doing?"
He laughed. He'd seen that expression before, the Mask of False Confusion. Enemies pretended to be stupid in order to lull him into underestimating them. "You're trying to lure me into some scandalous disclosure." He wasn't falling for it in love into hell.
"Why would I be trying to do that?"
"Oh, so you want to keep playing, even though I know what your game is?" He nodded. "Talk talk talk, tell the dreams, spill the guts … then you spout Freudian mumbo-jumbo before you take the check."
She laughed. "No, I don't believe in dream analysis."
"So you're not a complete idiot." But ninety-nine bar percent curvilinear asymptote approaching infinity.
"Thank you." When she smiled he was almost ready to offer her whatever she needed to help Mokuba, but then she ruined it. "You're here because Mokuba asked you to see me. Why do you think he is worried about you?"
"Shouldn't you be asking him that?" Tearful fearful across the shimmering sphere.
"Would you prefer that?"
"He seems to believe that you have a magic wand to fix problems, so I'm humoring him. Though if you do have a wand, maybe you could wave it and get me a competent assistant instead of the morons that the agencies keep sending over. If I had one I could spend more time helping my brother."
"What is the problem that a competent assistant would be able to handle?"
It was obvious that she was going to run out the hour with frivolous chat, but it was the most reasonable question she'd asked so far he decided to answer. "Is it so much to ask, for the kind of money we pay, for someone who knows when to schedule meetings?" He looked away, remembering the latest fiasco. "That last one was completely wrong. Entirely out of phase. I mean, seriously, 11:30! Who the fuck schedules a meeting at 11:30?" North south east west fuck the hole in the middle it's the best.
"Why isn't 11:30 a good time to schedule a meeting?"
He smelled smoke. Points deducted because he'd cursed? Was she genuinely curious? "You don't know?"
"No, I'm really not that familiar with your business."
"Due diligence. Make sure the contract is solid." Atem just Atem enough Atem never Atem enough.
"Can you remember a time when you had someone who was competent at scheduling meetings?"
Now he knew. She was humoring him, like a cat with a mouse, before she hit him. Hands shoulders seat of the pants don't make me turn around.
The glowing, arrogant rhombii on the carpet mocked him, their distorted sides undulating in the cold, cold room.
"Seto, is the sunlight bothering you?"
He didn't need to put up with it: he had paid an outrageous amount of money for this not-even-an-hour, and so he got up, went to the window, and pulled the cords to close the blinds. When they were down he lifted one end experimentally, but then decided that standing at the window holding it that way wasn't in the manual.
"Seto?"
He let the blind fall back into place. "How much longer is this going to take?" This close, the blinds were dusty, gritty with fine sand.
"We have about 20 minutes more." She folded her hands. "Why do you think that Mokuba is so worried about you?"
"Is this technique what made you famous?" he asked as he went back to his chair. "Ask the same question over and over?" He sat. "Interrogators do it. Torturers. Wear people down with repetition." Re-petition tits close the door leave.
"I'm sorry if it's made you uncomfortable. Let me see if I understand what you've told me so far.… Your brother, Mokuba, asked you to see me, and despite your belief it's a waste of time, you're here. You think that the problem is incompetent assistants and you're angry at me for asking questions to try and understand why you would come here. Is that right?"
He wondered … "Did you take math in school?"
"Why do you ask?"
"Because I want to know." Why, aren't you?
"Why is that important to you?"
A tennis game. A stupid, expensive, tennis game. He steepled his fingers. He might as well serve. "Because if you didn't, there's no point in what I was going to tell you."
"Ah, I see."
"Unless your teachers were completely incompetent, you should have been taught that the angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees. Always." As she didn't glaze over like most people did when anything remotely mathematical was mentioned, he went on. "But that's not true in spherical trigonometry. In spherical trigonometry, they add up to more. The curvature distorts the trilateral." He moved his hand in the air, over an invisible sphere. "Like this, see?"
"I'm not sure, but I'm trying to. Could you tell me any other certainties you've experienced that have turned out to be lies?"
Lies? Why? Mathematics didn't lie. "I'll try to make it simple enough. In two dimensions - a flat surface – it's 180. On a sphere – which exists in three dimensions – it adds up to more, as much as 270. Which, by the way, is what the angles of a quadrilateral - a shape with four sides - on a two-dimensional surface sum to. So what's true in one dimension isn't true in the other." He paused, as always the beauty of it calming: in one sense, mathematically speaking, on a sphere a polygon could be both a square and a triangle at once.
"Yes, I understand that. But aren't they two separate forms?"
"No ... clearly you don't understand. Straight lines in two dimensions aren't enough. You need three." He folded his arms. "Really, it was pointless to think you'd understand, when Mokuba didn't. The line segment has to be removed."
"Why is it important to you that Mokuba understands this?"
"Because if he understood he wouldn't have made me come here! He'd be at home helping me find people that would schedule meetings at noon. Big hand, little hand, together at the top!" Since she had the intellect of a child, he clapped his hands together to illustrate.
"Seto, how did Mokuba make you come here?"
Useless. If she couldn't see for herself what a mess Mokuba was, he wasn't going to help her. First he needed to finish with this charlatan, get what they came here for, so that they could go home. Then he'd get rid of that person. And then he'd do what he had always done, take care of Mokuba himself. "He said that the Board is planning some legal action against me, and that this would counter it."
"It seems that there are a lot of people in your life who are concerned about you."
"Concerned?" He laughed. "No, it's the usual power grab." He smiled what he knew was his charming smile. "You'll help us out a lot by writing up that report and signing the affidavit. Once I have those, they can't remove me."
"Running a company is both quite an accomplishment and a tremendous responsibility!"
"Well of course it is," he said, irritated. "It's my company. I've built it. I plan to hold on to it." out the window out the window out the window
"If I understand correctly, then, the Board is not acting in your best interests, but rather to undermine your position?"
"Did Mokuba pay extra to have you patronize me, or is that part of the normal fee?"
"Why did you think I was patronizing you?"
No, she would not cooperate. Staying any longer would be pointless. They all knew it. "Our time must be up." He wanted to leave this icy, noisy country and go home.
"We have a few more minutes. Usually at this time we wind down the session and talk about scheduling another appointment. Is that something you might be interested in?"
"No."
"I can tell you that I would not be able to write a report for you based on one meeting."
"How many meetings would it take?" he asked knowing she couldn't answer. "Two? Six? A hundred?" He stood. "I knew it. You won't? I'll find one that will."
"Please feel free to call me if you change your mind," she said, in that calmly smug voice that they all had bitches and bastards ram missiles up down split open and bleed.
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He pretended to sleep the entire flight, partly because everyone's pinched, pale face made him angry.
He worried for a minute that Mokuba would insist on coming upstairs, but fortunately he seemed eager – he wasn't disguising it at all – to get back to his apartment. To that person.
Seto shrugged as he closed the front door. It didn't matter. He'd free him soon.
He locked the door and turned out the lights as he went, up the stairs and down the hallway, unbuttoning his shirt as the slow swirl of anticipation began to pool and surge, blurring the doctor and the board and Mokuba's lover words on the sand blood on the floor washed washed washed.
He stepped out of his clothes and stretched out on the bed, watching the shadows, holding his breath, waiting for the dark priest and the pale woman. So many years now, ever since … whatever it had been, mass delusion or VR snare.
At first they had been pushed from him by the distractions of the empty years that followed, and he had almost forgotten them when the dreams began. He hadn't ever dreamed before, and so at first it was unsettling; the flashes of faces, lips moving mutely ... he'd wake to feel as though he had forgotten so much, castigate himself for not staying longer, for not paying more attention.
So he'd trained himself to dream lucidly, to control the dream, to stay and watch the two as they sat in a sunny courtyard sharing a meal or walked hand in hand under palm trees surrounded by golden light. They smiled at each other, and talked, and although he could never remember if he was able to hear what they were saying or not he knew that the words were sweet deaf blind figs dates no one ever wanted more.
Then a dream came where the priest touched her hair and kissed her as she melted against him. Embarrassed, he forced himself to wake. He was so thrown by it that he let Mokuba talk him into flying to Cairo, which had been a huge, humiliating mistake. When he came home from that trip he dreamed that the priest and the woman were in a tent, naked on a bed layered with fur, making love while he stood outside watching them through a tear. He couldn't look away: the dark man worshiped her, reverently caressing her face, throat, breasts, belly … she twined and writhed under his hands and lips, blue eyes wide with passion, pale fingers digging into his skin, urging him not to hold back ...
When he awoke, he had been so aroused that it was painful. Shaking with shame at his voyeurism, he vowed to stay awake as much as possible after that, locking his door and reading at night, unwilling to be an unwanted intruder.
And as it turned out, he needn't have worried, because he wasn't unwanted.
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When they came out of the shadows and stood by his bed, smiling down at him, she blew him a kiss that meant Be patient, my love, only a moment now. First the priest helped her undress; her pale nude body shimmered in the darkness as she in turn pulled away the dark priest's robes. She watched as the priest climbed onto the bed and lie down, aligning his perfectly congruent body with Seto's: legs, arms, chest, shoulders, cock.
She smiled, and then knelt astride them. When she leaned down to kiss them her pale hair fell into their chest, and they lifted one hand up to caress the perfect sphere of her breast, a blurred hand following along like an afterimage. They touched her so gently they could barely feel it, but she bloomed nevertheless; and just when they couldn't hold back any longer she sat up and nodded, making sure they held themselves steady as she eased down on top of them, moaning …
Later, he had a dream: he was in a cold, dark, empty place that suddenly filled with noise and blinding cold lights and faces. A young boy with dark hair, crying and angry, stood near, moving his mouth soundlessly. He thought fleetingly that he knew the boy but then decided that no, he must be mistaken, he didn't know him at all. People in blue jackets approached, held him down with a strong grip, strapped him to the bed. Behind them, someone wearing glasses held up a hypodermic needle.
Seto made himself wake from this dream and ran across the golden sand to where the other two stood, waiting for him with open arms.
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~ The end ~
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A larger than normal thank you to Rroselavy, who brought crucial expertise and a willingness to RP to the first part of the story, and to Ziven, my special beta.
More author's notes are at my Dreamwidth journal, animom DOT dreamwidth DOT org.
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(concept) 23 July 2010
(06) 15 July 2011 ~ edit tense of final scene, edit author's notes.