Caveat Emptor
Genres: Supernatural
Summary: He had such an odd way of phrasing things, jumping so casually from 'I know who you are' to 'are you ready to work' to 'I also happen to be immortal.' / Bayshipping Set x Noa
A/N: Written for the YGO Contest Season 8.5, Tier Five, with the chosen pairing of Bayshipping (Noa x Priest Set). This story takes place pre-canon, with a…few alterations made to get Set there. Italicized scenes are flashbacks.
Dedicated to Azhdarcho! I hope you enjoy it!
Caveat Emptor
For all that he knew the city he called home, Noa Kaiba was pretty sure he had never seen that particular shop before. It was tucked between a hardware store and a lunch spot that always had a line of customers out the door, but somehow the squashed antiques shop with the tall door of washed-out brown wood always escaped his notice. He wondered if it had always been there, but from the sheer amount of dust in its front display windows, he assumed it had to be.
A quick glance as he walked past from the sidewalk told him that there wasn't a bell by the door's edge. It was too dark to see, but he was willing to bet his considerable allowance that there wasn't a single customer in the store. He'd never liked antiques; Gozaburo filled their house with things that were shiny and new, and told him repeatedly that there was no antique that could ever compare to the usability and efficiency of modern conveniences.
He grasped the door's handle and slid inside, staring at racks and shelves to the ceiling filled with everything from tiny knickknacks to larger pieces of furniture and porcelain dishes and figurines. The store's owner stood with his back to Noa, and as he took a second step into the store the floorboards creaked and he turned.
Messy brown hair and particularly dull brown eyes, hidden under glasses, faced him. "Is there something I can help you with?" he asked.
The man probably thought he was some kind of tourist. Noa scoffed, "No. I'd just like to look around, if it's alright with you?"
"Most of my work is carried out by appointment," he said. "Do you have an appointment?"
"Lunch? Twelve-thirty?" Noa Kaiba stared skeptically across the desk, where his father at least had the decency to cover the earpiece of his phone while he talked. "You remember? We had an appointment."
"I don't have the time, son," Gozaburo said. "Reschedule it with my secretary. We'll have lunch together next week."
"Is there a word for when you have to reschedule something a second time?" He raised his head, trying to appear inquiring instead of challenging. Challenging his father was a game he didn't want to play; Gozaburo was the kind of man who would spit at perfection.
"Yes," was the answer, "it's called rescheduling. Do it, and quietly. This call is important."
Noa left, dropping a note by one of Gozaburo's three secretaries to re-reschedule lunch for the following Thursday. As if sensing more than seeing his pessimism, she offered him a stick of candy. Idly, he refused it, remarking that it would spoil his lunch.
The elevator stopped at five floors between the sixtieth and the first. For a trip that he got absolutely nothing out of, he sure had to put a lot into it, and as Noa skipped rocks with his feet against the sidewalk curbs he wondered what to do about his lunch.
He looked up to see an odd little shop across the street, specializing in antiques and antiquities, and wondered how many ways he could find to waste time today.
"No," Noa said, trying to inflect that same ruthless, businesslike tone his father used so frequently in his own voice. "I don't. Will that be a problem?" He arched an eyebrow, half-wishing the store owner would pick up his challenge so he could at least get something amusing out of the day.
"Not at all." The words were delivered so crisply that the storeowner had once again turned his back to Noa before he even realized it had happened. He was bent over something on a workstation behind the cash register, but with his body in the way Noa couldn't see what he was working on, and he sure wasn't going to ask.
He shuffled his feet along the floor as he walked up and down the aisles, contemplating buying something just because he knew his father wouldn't like it. Perhaps he could claim it was a good investment and see how far that got him. Peering closer at a tag on a small wooden box, the hand-written description stated, 'Sixteenth century trinket box, Capri découpage style, made from the very last of the now-extinct Betula Szaferi tree.'
There was no price listed. He moved to the next shelf, flipping the tag on a curious-looking rectangular box to find only the words 'Lemarchand's box' printed in the same antiquated, scrunched-up hand. There looked to be a spot where a price had been listed, but it appeared to have been scratched out.
A series of rolled-up maps in a bin caught his eye, and he spent more than a few minutes looking at a display of canopic jars. He didn't check the tags on any of them, not wanting to know if there really were pieces of a person inside, and what person that might have been. Trying not to feel impressed with the shop's offerings so far, Noa moved towards the farthest shelves before making his way back to the front of the store.
On an impulse, he grabbed a set of mottled spectacles off a shelf and stuffed them into his pocket. Walking around the edge of the shelf, he saw that the shop-owner still didn't seem to be paying any attention to him, and as Noa headed for the door he heard a sigh and the simplest of four words.
"What are you doing?" The words were spoken so dryly that at first he didn't even realize they were being directed at him. Noa swiveled his head to see the shopkeeper leaning over the counter, one outstretched arm pointed straight at him.
A second sigh, punctuated by a wave of his arm. "If you won't answer to me, perhaps you'll answer to the police?"
Silently he was shocked, uncertain just how the man could have possibly known. "What are you talking about?"
"Those spectacles in your pocket—they're quite nice, they have the ability to let its wearer see ghosts and spirits." He clicked his own glasses together with his free hand and placed them into the pocket of his dress shirt. "And they do not belong to you."
"I–was going to…"
"Spare me," he said. "I wouldn't have sold them to you anyway. My shop has standards."
Now enraged, Noa slammed his fist on the counter, deeply considering breaking his precious spectacles but knowing that would probably make things even worse. "Excuse me?"
"I could call the police, but if you do a small personal favor for me I'll consider us even." He grinned at Noa, as if all wrongs between them could be righted with something so simple.
"Prove to me—"
"I have cameras," he said plainly, as if pre-empting his argument.
Noa refused to lower his chin, instead raising it higher to keep eye contact between them as he placed the spectacles on the counter. The next moment they were in the shop-owner's hands and tucked away in the same pocket. "What kind of favor?"
"Nothing too taxing," he said. "I find myself in need of assistance…cataloguing things, serving customers, and the like. For the next month, you will help me in the shop." He paused, his voice colored by amusement. "Call it community service, if you will."
He nodded once, repeating the gesture again more forcefully. "Fine. Can I know the name of my new employer?" The second he was back at his house and in front of a computer he would be running every background check he knew of—he'd find something of his own on this guy, this was a game not limited to just one player.
"You may call me Set," he said.
"Set? Like the-?"
"Yes," he answered. "I'm glad you're familiar with the name's legacy."
"Whatever. When do you want me here?"
"Hmm. A few days a week should do it. Tuesdays and Thursdays, then?" Set stroked his chin with a thumb; the motion suggested laxity, but he knew it to be anything but. It was just another illusion, and Noa was beginning to think that this entire store was the same—a pair of glasses that could see ghosts? Maps of places he'd never seen, whole worlds that never existed? Things so impressively rare that the very fact that they were here inside a narrow store all but abandoned by the city that housed them smacked of incredulity.
He supposed he would find out the next time he found himself there.
His searches yielded nothing. He hardly expected the shop to have a website, purely by judging its primitive business methods and paraphernalia storage. Searching the street address in the city files surrendered nothing but an old contract for the land and construction made out to a contractor by the name of Konran Typhon. That name again provided no further answers other than the obvious.
He had to credit Set for his subtlety—Typhon was the name of the jackal-like creature depicted as Set in so much of the Egyptian art. Noa knew that even if he searched for another hour, all he would do is go around in more circles. He thought briefly about trying to track the man through his artifacts, but realized that questioning dealers about a pair of glasses that could see the dead would end very quickly with his humiliation. There was nothing he could do but ask the man himself.
Before he went to sleep, he made one last search of the name. He found only one other result—a death certificate for the one named Konran Typhon, dated thirty-five years prior.
It hadn't been difficult for Noa to contact his tutors and rearrange his lessons to free up his time. Gozaburo might notice, although it was Noa himself who dealt with his tutors as equals, with economics and business being the only subjects his father took a deeper interest in teaching his own son. Languages, mathematics, and literature were at Noa's prerogative, and now he would learn them in the mornings on his off days.
He hated rising early, but if he was going to do it he would do it properly, so when he elbowed open the door of the antiques shop he clutched two large coffees and a paper bag of pastries in his hands. From a dull sticker in the window, he knew the shop opened at nine, so he planned to arrive by the second.
Inside, Set was straightening the objects displayed on a higher shelf, and Noa took out a jam-filled pastry and tossed the bag on the counter. "Help yourself."
"Thank you, Noa." At the sound of his name, Noa froze.
"How did you…?"
Set rifled through the bag, pulling out the plainest croissant. "It wasn't a grand leap of reasoning—green hair, arrogant to a fault—you could only be the Noa Kaiba. There were enough pictures of you in the Domino Daily to corroborate this. Now, are you ready to get to work?"
"Sure. And I'm glad you're familiar with the name's legacy." He grinned as sharply as he could manage and set his coffee down, rolling up his sleeves to both elbows. "Where do I start?"
He had dusted every surface within reach—and Set had so generously provided a stepladder for the places he couldn't naturally reach—and cleaned the windows, all before lunchtime. Set remained behind the counter, fiddling with something he still couldn't ever get a clear view of, or absently sipping his coffee. He never offered to lend a hand, and Noa couldn't really blame him. He was probably getting the biggest kick out of having someone freely working for him, and from the looks of the shop it hadn't been this clean in years. He dreaded the possibility that Set would tell him the floors were next.
"What are you doing, anyway?" he asked, his path at the closest window bringing him too close to Set to render not making conversation awkward.
"Do you believe in magic, Noa?"
"What does that have to do with anything?" There was a spot on the glass; he scrubbed harder. He'd make sure there wasn't a single fault with any of his work, not since his sloppy care of a series of jade figurines and Set had asked him in that same, straight-faced disdain, to do it over.
"There's no point in telling you if you don't." He shrugged his shoulders, leaning one arm against the counter again to converse more easily with Noa. From that angle, he noticed Set's dark blue jacket, open at the neck to reveal an odd-looking amulet worn on a thin leather rope around his neck.
"I don't believe it isn't possible," he offered slowly, "but I believe in what the mind produces—science, technology—and what the mind hasn't produced yet. I believe that anything is possible and obtainable with enough effort."
"Ah." And now Noa could get a clear view of the thing sitting on a piece of leather on the counter, a triangular, uneven piece of obsidian glass, set in an odd gold casing. Even as he stared at it the surface appeared to ripple and move, drawing him in and repelling him in equal force. He drew his gaze back to the dappled glass of the shop window. "I suppose that's enough," Set continued.
"Enough for what?" He frowned, moving to a different windowpane.
"I'm certain you've spent enough time here to notice that most of my shop's…wares have supernatural applications." He gestured towards the pyramidal glass. "This, when repaired, is a looking-glass which shows glimpses of the future."
"Impossible." The word was out of Noa's mouth before he can even think about it. Natural reactions were telling, and Set stared disapprovingly at him before continuing.
"I would prove it to you, but it is not currently working." He pulled a second piece of leather to cover it, hiding the rippled glass from view.
"Prove something else, then," he insisted. "How am I to believe that you've got a box that seals souls or a flower floating in some viscous gel that's supposedly hundreds of years old and still growing?"
"That's an Asphodel flower," he interjected, but Noa was not placated.
"Prove to me that this isn't a shop of frauds, and I'll believe you. Just one—that's all it will take."
"If you insist," he said, lifting a hand to slide the amulet around his neck into full view, holding it out as far as the cord would allow. "Because of this amulet, I am immortal."
The expression on his face was so serious that Noa swallowed the impulse to laugh in his face, taking the time to consider the track record of the man before him together with his sanity. "That's not something you can prove."
"Is it?" From the leading nature of the question, Noa pulled his trump card.
"Who is Konran Typhon?" he asked.
"Ah." And this time Set's expression turned indulgent. "I am not surprised you've uncovered that particular alias."
"Explain."
"It becomes necessary as the years go by to reinvent myself—create a new identity—to be able to continue living and working across the globe. Most of these artifacts I collected myself," he said. "Typhon was the most recent…before my current name, of course."
"I'd like to see you prove that. And why even tell me?"
"Who would possibly believe you?"
He had such an odd way of phrasing things, jumping so casually from I know who you are to are you ready to work to I also happen to be immortal. Next, he supposed Set would tell him that he happened to prefer human flesh to croissants or that he kept a coffin in the back. Not that he'd actually seen the rest of the shop—Set emerged and disappeared through a door covered only by a curtain of sheer purple fabric in the back, and he'd made only a passing mention to the 'storage room' and that it contained some of the larger or more dangerous items.
"Follow me," Set said, beckoning with a single hand as he walked through the curtain to the stockroom. As Noa followed, he saw a high shelf filled with small, inscribed stone rectangles.
In an old desk he pulled a series of files from a drawer, opening a folder to show Noa a sequence of grainy photos, from old newsprint to the odd, single daguerreotype. Each one showed the same man, distanced by the times—wearing glasses, his hair long, his clothes always impressively formal—and as he studied them Noa knew without a doubt that what he was seeing and what he had been told were true.
"Sabaku Bōfū," he said, pointing at the photo on top. "Gaijin Nanbu." He gestured at the next. "Now do you believe me?"
"I have only one question for you," Noa said, tearing his eyes away from a Collodion photo of Set in an imperial, military costume, his arms crossed and his chin tilted.
"If you're immortal, what are you doing working as an antiques dealer?"
"I know I could have chosen something with more glamour…like perhaps a weapons dealer," he commented, a wry smile tugging at the corners of his lips, "but I prefer my relative obscurity for my work. My real work. I have been traveling the world, waiting for someone, a person whose service I have never left, who has spent the time since our parting sealed away. When he returns, I intend to be waiting and ready to serve him once more."
"That's…" Noa searched for the proper word, trying his best not to just say weird. "…dedication."
"Very few actually notice my shop. At first I thought it might be you, but then you disproved that with your actions." He paused. "Opening your mouth didn't help, either."
Sullen, Noa kept his own closed then, wondering what he himself would do if faced with the prospect of an immortal life. If Set had his way, he'd spent it dusting and re-organizing shelves for the customers that would never come.
Noa himself preferred looking forward to reflecting on the past, and so when faced with a dilemma of any kind he turned to his computer.
He typed the names Set had given him into a simple internet search, and found very little worth mentioning. The one alias had indeed served as a high-ranking military official in the First Sino-Japanese War, while the other name had turned up as a minor consul between Japan and Great Britain in the late nineteenth century. He had never had a good reason to stretch his research skills before, and wondered just what he would find if he had access to even greater resources.
Thoughts of the strange, remarkable shop and its reticent shopkeeper kept his mind occupied, until everything he studied was associated with either of the two, and whenever he thought of nothing at all his mind would invariably drift back again. His was a challenge Noa was more than eager to unravel. And strangest of all, he found the thoughts not unwelcome.
That day, Noa brought only the jam-filled pastries, just to watch Set suffer through it out of combination of politeness and hunger.
Set remarked that he had an eye for design, so Noa was put to work further organizing and cataloguing the objects in the windows and on the shelves by the walls. It was good work—busy work, but slow. He yawned into his elbow as he was working on arranging a series of old brooches and hat-pins, and Set remarked on that too.
"Tired?" he asked.
"Haven't been getting much sleep lately," he admitted.
"Really?" Set raised an eyebrow, and Noa wished briefly that he hadn't said a thing. "I might have something that can help you with that."
"That won't be necessary." Now he really wished he had kept quiet. The last thing he needed was some home remedy or exotic token that would wake him up but bring on a host of other problems, the least of which was becoming further indebted towards the shop-owner.
"It's nothing," he continued, "but if you have some work that's a little more challenging…?"
"If it's a challenge you want," Set said, "follow me."
He led Noa to the stockroom, where the two stood before the large, ornate cabinet. Now that he could finally devote his attention to it fully, Noa realized just how massive it was. It reached clear to the ceiling, with ten shelves reaching from the height of his ankles to well above his head. The cabinet itself was a work of art, made of a dark wood with carved scrollwork along the corners of each shelf and on the top and sides of the cabinet itself. On each shelf rested what must have been hundreds of small stone rectangles no larger than his palm, each inscribed with different complex drawings of animals and letters in a script he didn't recognize.
"I haven't cleaned these in ages," he said, and Noa had to wonder just what someone like him meant by ages. "You'll dust each of them by hand—these are incredibly valuable and far more delicate than you realize, so you must not try to cut corners. Clean the cabinet, too, while you're at it."
Noa nodded, already realizing the sheer amount of time the task would take. "What even are they, anyway?"
"Not your concern," was the reply, and Set left him alone with a clap to the shoulder. "Have fun."
He started with the rows closest to the bottom, cleaning each slab slowly and methodically, taking the time to observe the strange creatures emblazoned on the stone. He saw stylized insects, rodents, even dragons—things with a vaguely mythological air, something archaic and solemn.
By the third row he started to get tired of the whole process, so he swept the dust from the shells with less enthusiasm, ignoring the inscriptions, and grabbing them two at a time when his elbow started to cramp up.
By the seventh row, he was so uninterested in the process that he thought it a good idea to finish as quickly as he could, and dusted across the whole row. At the end, he accidentally knocked the last stone from the shelf, and as it fell he flung himself towards it, catching it with both hands and breathing the deepest sigh of relief.
He clutched the stone closer, and as he turned to set it back into place he saw how wobbly the rest of that row had become, and as the next stone tipped over the edge he plunked the one in his hands down on the shelf before diving for the fallen stone. The extra vibrations tipped the closest stones over the edge, and with alarm Noa knew he was never going to be able to catch them all.
One by one, a small mountain of stones crashed into the floor by Noa's feet. Thankfully, a few seemed to be unbroken, but at least a half-dozen of the small stones had cracked neatly in half. He shivered, feeling like the room had suddenly grown much colder, and grabbed the halves closest to him and tried to put them back together.
He didn't expect it to work, but he also didn't expect how utterly dejected he felt by it.
"I heard a crash! Is everything…" Set appeared in the doorway, and Noa fought back a wince as he dropped the pieces in his hands and stood.
"What have you done?"
He had expected it, but hearing the harshness of disappointment from someone other than his father stung deeply. "It wasn't my fault," he claimed, knowing full well that it was.
"You don't even realize what you've done, do you?" Set joined him by the stones, assessing the broken ones and stacking the ones that remained unbroken. He glanced up, sharply, his head swiveling around the room to the light swish of the curtain as it moved.
"Look, I'm sorry I broke them. I'll pay for it, don't worry—"
"No, there is definite cause to worry," Set bit out. "Sealed inside each of these tablets is a spirit monster! By breaking the stones, you've released them into the city! Some of them are notoriously dangerous—it was difficult enough sealing them for the first time."
The idea that each of the stones contained a creature didn't seem to faze him after everything else he'd learned, and Noa shrugged. "If you did it once you can do it again, right?"
"Not I, Noa," Set said. "We will be resealing the monsters together. Now."
A quick glance at his watch and his stomach sunk even further. "I can't. I've got an appointment for lunch with my father, and I'm not missing it."
Set's expression turned frosty, and he stared at Noa as if not understanding. "You're saying that you can't assist me—containing a problem that you caused—because you want to take a lunch break?"
"Err, yes, that's the general idea," Noa said. "I'll help you when I get back, but right now I have to go. This is…important to me." He had the courage to actually look at Set when he said it, but the sound of his footsteps sounded oddly hollow as he walked away. This time, he didn't skip any rocks as he walked.
After Noa left, Set spent a few seconds just staring at the pile of broken stones before removing one from the top shelf and breaking it in his hands. He turned towards the blue monster just shimmering into existence with the slightest of smiles.
"Well, Duos," he said, "it looks like you'll be the one to help me."
He returned to the old desk in the store-room and pulled open the top drawer, lifting out a series of familiar-looking, rectangular stones, except that each one was completely blank. He couldn't reseal the creatures within the broken tablets, so he would have to use blank ones instead. He pocketed the bunch and walked out of the store, confident that no one would even notice his absence.
The elevator only stopped at three floors this time between the first and the sixtieth, and the entire process took less than two minutes. Gozaburo had clearly been waiting for him, but Noa had arrived by the second.
"I've arranged to have lunch delivered," he said. "We'll eat in the conference room."
Noa followed him, once again feeling a sudden chill settle over the room. He glanced up, expecting to see an air-conditioning vent, but there was nothing out of the ordinary, just Gozaburo and a staff member arranging food on the central conference table.
Suddenly, it felt like a great pressure had descended over the room, and he fell against the table, bracing his arms to keep from collapsing. Across the room, Gozaburo stumbled backward, his back to the huge windows facing Domino's downtown, and threw his hands over his face, fingers scrabbling at his hairline.
"Sir? Are you—"
Gozaburo backhanded the aide, sending him to the floor before he turned towards the cart still half-full with food, tipping it over until it crashed against the wall.
"How dare you feed my son this swill! You have been late on your reports for three days, Daimon. In my day, such an act would not go unpunished!"
His right arm bent backwards while his left pointed towards Daimon, the motion jerky, compromised by the shaking in the rest of his body. He could barely get one foot in front of the other, fueled by temper or pain, Noa couldn't tell. All he knew was that something was desperately wrong, and as he began to hear a strange hissing noise coming from the far wall he struggled to stand, reaching out a hand towards his father.
The sound of splintering glass drew his attention as something impacted with the far window, blowing inside and slamming against the wall. Noa threw himself backwards—he could see the broken glass, and the gaping hole in the window, but whenever he looked by the wall his vision turned blurred and indistinct, giving him no clear idea of what he was looking at.
"In my day, in my day—"
Gozaburo had finally crossed the room when a thud landed on the floor inside the window, another hazy blur until Set was by Noa's side, standing in sharp focus in contrast to the rest of the room.
"I forgot—you can't see them, can you?" he asked, his voice low. He reached into his shirt pocket and wordlessly pulled out a pair of spectacles and handed them to Noa. As he slid them on, the four monsters in the room came into immediate and stark focus. A strange creature with large, leathery wings was slumped against the wall, while a tall, vaguely humanoid blue monster stood above it. A green monster with sharp claws stood half-sunken into the far wall, hissing as it submerged itself into the plaster.
Noa didn't concern himself with either of those, instead focusing on the dark, misshapen thing covering Gozaburo's face. The mask's bright yellow eyes were hauntingly empty, while its face protruded with pins; with every word Gozaburo spoke its mouth moved in turn, framed by thick blue lips. It was more than a mask, it was a vehicle for destruction.
"What is that?" he asked as the blue monster darted towards the green one, which disappeared fully as the monster's fist cracked only into the empty wall.
"That is your first introduction with a spirit monster," Set said. "Duos!" A hiss struck up from the ceiling, and Set rolled and dived out of the way as the monster fell towards him, lashing out with its claws. Duos was ready, and delivered a punch to what passed for its face as Set fumbled in his pocket for an empty tablet.
With one clenched in his hand, he pressed it against the monster's forehead, and it immediately begin to vanish, disappearing in a swirl of vapor that seemed to direct itself towards the center of the stone. By the time it was completely gone, Noa could see an imprint on the surface that perfectly resembled the now-resealed creature.
The marked tablet was placed into his other pocket while he searched for a second clean one. "Next, the mask," he said. "Then we'll finish Ryu-kishin."
Neither noticed the monster behind them rising, until it unfolded its wings with a forceful jolt, settling its claws firmly into Noa's shoulders and dragging him towards the window. He tried to pry at the claws with his hands, but it was useless, and as the monster jumped out the window and took flight Noa clenched his jaw and tried not to be sick or scream.
"Noa!" The voice was very clearly Set's and not Gozaburo's, and as the Ryu-kishin monster spun and flapped its wings to gain height he saw Set slam one of the tablets against the mask, which was drawn into the stone.
Noa wished he had been given one of those so he could seal the creature now carrying him, although he thought falling through the air was only a mildly worse situation than the one he currently found himself in. The monster was dangerous, this much he knew, and the claws tightened painfully around his shoulders as Ryu-kishin let out a low growl.
While the gargoyle-creature hovered in the air, wings beating, Duos crept over the top of the roof of the closest building. Without hesitation it leapt towards them, and Ryu-kishin dropped him to meet the monster with his claws.
Noa had only the slightest sensation of falling, staring up at the sunny, cloudless sky as he dropped past a skyscraper, glancing at the shining plates of glass that reflected his every movement. Suddenly, Duos was barreling towards him, catching him in its arms and alighting against the side of the closest building, kicking off in a second flurry of broken glass to soar back to the Kaiba Corporation Tower, landing on the roof deck instead of inside the broken conference room. Set stood waiting, waving them down.
Noa didn't realize how much his arms and legs had been shaking, but he watched in disbelief as Set took his place, grasping Duos's arm and pointing to where Ryu-kishin had flown.
"You're not seriously still going after that thing, are you?" he asked.
"I have to," he answered. "All of those creatures are under my protection. I'm not going to loose something on the city that the city can't see."
Properly chastised, he paused. "Is there anything I can…?"
"Damage control. Make up something to explain what happened. Finish your lunch break." With that they were gone, leaping through the air after the single remaining monster.
Noa slumped to the ground, his legs still unsteady, unable to shake the feeling that he was still plummeting through the air. He suddenly, desperately wanted to be on the ground. Instead, he picked himself up, headed for the stairwell, and climbed down a few flights of stairs to reach his father's office and the conference room.
Inside the storeroom, Set extended a tablet towards Duos, who vanished obediently within the stone. He placed it back on the shelf in its proper place, straightening a few of the rows while he was at it. Noa really had done a terrible job cleaning them, but good help was so hard to find these days.
He heard the sound of the front door opening and closing, and wondered who it might be. He hadn't had a real customer in so long, but his question was answered as Noa ducked his head into the storeroom, giving him an offhand, "Oh, there you are."
He sighed. "Go home, Noa."
"We had a deal, didn't we?" He entered the storeroom fully, allowing the curtain to fall back into place behind him.
"You've done enough. Go home."
When Noa refused to move, Set resorted to the ultimate offense. "You know, there was never any point to it," he said. "This shop has no cameras. I never could have proved a thing."
Noa met his eyes. "I know." At Set's surprise, he continued. "The family company has a surveillance department and I cleaned every inch of this shop. I would have found something if there had been something to find."
"Then why…?"
"I…like it here," he finally said. "I find this shop fascinating. I want to learn more…I want you to teach me more. So I'm going to stay here. I'm going to come back, day after day, just like we agreed. What, you've been taking care of these items for hundreds of years? You shouldn't have to do it alone."
"Will anything I say change your mind?" Set asked.
"No. You're stuck with me." Noa grinned, crossing his arms over his chest, trying to emulate the posture of Set as a soldier. The weariness on Set's face now spoke more than years alone ever could, and for just that moment Noa wanted to ask him if he'd ever wanted to die.
"And…I also came back to return these," he said, sliding the glasses from his face and folding them back before setting them down on the desk.
Set had finished repairing the looking-glass, and when he held it to his eyes Noa asked him what he'd seen.
"Nothing," he replied. "It's nothing."
That evening, as he was leaving Noa thought about what Set had told them earlier, at their second meeting. He was trying to find this one person, and Noa had been told that it was not him. Never before had he actually wanted to be.
End.
Epilogue
The following Thursday, if they had stuck to the initial contract it would have been their last day working together. Noa never showed. With an air of finality Set allowed his shoulders to slump, resting his arms against the counter.
He removed a pair of spectacles from his shirt pocket, and placed them on his face.
Notes:
1) Caveat Emptor is Latin for 'Buyer Beware.' xD I love my sense of humor.
2) The small tablets that house the Spirit Monsters are a reference to my other story Slash and Burn. The Monsters in this story include Shadow Ghoul, Duos, Ryu-kishin, and Mask of the Accursed.
3) As far as the different supernatural things mentioned goes: The Lemarchand's Box is a reference to the works of Clive Barker (recognizable in the Hellraiser movies xD), and the Asphodel Meadows are part of the Ancient Greek underworld, where the eponymous flowers grow. The Betula Szaferi tree is extinct, but it happened after the sixteenth century.
4) As far as the different named aliases of Set's go, the original Set was the god of deserts, storms, chaos, and foreigners; each of the names are translations of these. 'Typhon,' in addition, was the name of the jackal-like creature associated with Set.
5) Thank you for reading! I would very much appreciate and value your reviews!
~Jess