Chapter 19

Weeks had passed at the Kaiba mansion and Joey had shown everyone his stubbornness and exceptional rate of healing by arguing his way into moving around the house after just one week of bed rest. Mokuba was revelling in having someone to play with at home and together he and Joey had even managed to drag Seto into joining in with some games and a horror movie marathon.

Joey friends visited at least once a week. The CEO may stay for a while but he refused to stay in the room with Tristan. The other brunette was still showing open hostility to Seto and everyone agreed that it was best to keep the two teens apart.

Joey had sometime during the first week officially declared Seto as a friend, the brunette hadn't said anything to that but he didn't protest either so life continued. The young CEO discovered that his blonde guest was not as stupid as he had believed. He and Joey often found themselves sharing conversations about books, movies, ideas for duel monsters and school work. The blonde had definitely changed things around Kaiba mansion for both brothers.

It was a week before school started up again and the gang, including Joey, were not looking forward to it. Many of them were working to finish their homework at the last minute. Seto was quietly laughing his head off at them until Joey attacked him with a pillow for being mean. To everyone's surprise the brunette didn't kill him immediately.

So, it was one week before they returned to hell -I mean school- that Joey declared during breakfast that, "I want to go somewhere."

Looking over the top of his normal morning coffee, Seto frowned at him. "Why?"

Sighing in exasperation Joey placed his still cast arm on the table, Mokuba too was frowning at him over his bowl of sugar coated cereal and Joey took the opportunity to giggle slightly at the site that both Kaiba brothers made.

"Seto, I've been coped up indoors for what, three-four weeks? I want to go outside," he finished, unleashing the dreaded puppy eyes upon the older Kaiba.

Seto tried to resist, he really did, unfortunately he didn't have the ability to resist Mokuba's puppy eyes and Joey had an extra six years of practice. He was doomed.

"Ok, ok, I'll go with you in the limo, stop doing that!" The blonde grinned at him and stopped making his eyes water. "Are you coming with us Mokuba?" Seto asked his younger brother.

"Nah, I'm going with a few friends to the park today."

Seto turned his ice blue eyes to the raven haired kid. "And when were you planning on telling me this?" he asked, raising an elegant eyebrow.

Mokuba had the decency to look sheepish, "Ummm, right now."

"I don't want you going out by yourself. Do I know any of these friends of yours?"

"But Seto, they're just kids from my class. Please let me go, I haven't seen them in ages, please?" Mokuba pleaded, releasing his own puppy eyes.

The brunette continued to frown "I don't know…"

"Oh, let him go Seto, he needs kids his own age," said Joey from across the table, tucking into his third bowl of cereal.

The CEO turned his frown to his blonde friend. "May I remind you what happened last time he went out alone?" As soon as the words were out of his mouth Seto regretted them.

They had all carefully avoided the subject of the kidnapping and what happened to Joey, giving him time to heal and get comfortable again before opening up. It was obvious to both Kaiba brothers that the blonde still needed time, from the far away glazed look his eyes got. Mokuba sent a worried look to his older brother and the brunette reached across the table to squeeze the blondes hand on the table.

"Joey, Joey?" he said in a gentle voice, not wishing to spook the teen. "Joey can you hear me? You there? I'm…sorry for saying that. I'll send Rowland to keep an eye on Mokuba and we can go out to where ever you want, ok?...Joey?" the blonde seemed to snap out of it and gave the brunette a forced smile, squeezing his hand in return.

"It's ok, you didn't mean it." Sato nodded once and withdrew his hand.

"Is there anywhere you want to go?"

Another smile from the blonde, this one less forced told the CEO that he was forgiven,

"You'll see…" said Joey "…though you might want to bring earplugs." That was the last thing the blonde would say on the matter, leaving both Kaiba brothers utterly confused.

The limo ride was conducted in silence; Joey had given the driver the address of where he wanted to go but refused to say anything about it to Seto. The blonde had also convinced him to leave behind his laptop for the day and stop working for a few hours.

What's happening to me? Thought the CEO, I never stopped working before, and suddenly along comes the blonde puppy and I'm following his every whim…wait a minute, puppy!

The brunette had no further time to examine his slightly troubling thoughts as the limo stopped and the driver opened the door for them to exit.

Seto took his time to help Joey shuffle to the door and exit with his cast ankle first, handing him his stick to use as a support with his good hand. His cast hand was being held up in a sling.

Joey gave him a smile and thanked the driver. Once the limo had driven off Seto found himself in a middle-lower class shopping district. The street was narrow and had few cars going on the road with shops and houses on either side. Few people were wondering around at the early hour, but Seto could imagine the street swarming with shoppers during the afternoon. It was overall a nice, clean place with small family run businesses. There was just one question, why on earth would Joey come here?

"Here we are!" cried Joey enthusiastically from beside him.

"And where, if I may ask, is here?" said Seto, still not seeing why the blonde would want to come to a shopping district.

"Well I figured they would all want to know that I'm still alive, if a little worse for wear. Besides I haven't been home in a while" said the blonde, and then began hopping oddly to the shop in front of them, using his cane to support his damaged foot.

The shop he was heading for was a small store in-between two larger buildings. It appeared to have two storeys, the bottom one being a book store. Walking with Joey and still not understanding what he meant by 'home' -did Joey live around here- he helped the blonde through the door, where he immediately shouted so that the whole store could hear.

"I'M HOME! No need to panic, I'm not dead!"

"What are you doing?" hissed Seto, embarrassed to have the younger teen shouting out nonsense in the store. It was decorated tastefully, with enough light for people to read by and well thought out displays of all kinds of books. Shelves lined two of the walls with a cashier desk on the right, containing a chair, a computer and a single register for people to pay by. It was currently unmanned. The wall behind them was all windows, letting in as much natural light as possible. Dark woods were used for the shelves with other earth colours and greens used to decorate the walls and ceiling. A door could be seen leading off to a back room behind the desk. Other selves and displays were in the middle of the room, lined with more books.

The far wall had a seating area for people to read by and on the other side of the room a flight of stairs could be seen leading to the upper floor. Overall, it looked like a well run, clean and friendly book store.

Joey didn't seem to mind that he was embarrassing the brunette and just replied with a grin on his face, "just telling them I'm home."

"Home? You live here?"

Joey's reply was cut off by someone shouting his name and launching themselves at the blonde.

"Joey!"

There was a blur of black hair and suddenly Joey was gripping desperately to the door frame to keep from falling over as some wrapped themselves around him in apparent happiness.

"Joey! Joey, I'm so glad to see you. I was so worried about you…" the babbling women stopped suddenly and detached herself from the blonde, pulling back to look at him at arm's length, anger and annoyance plastered across her face.

"JOSHEPH NETHANIAL WHEELER!" she screeched. Seto took a step back at the sheer force of her cry and suddenly felt very sorry for Joey…and extremely confused.

Said blonde only let out an undignified squeak of "Opps", before submitting to his fate. Now Seto could see why they should have brought ear plugs.

"WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?" continued to screech the raven haired women. "I've been so worried. Why the hell haven't you called? Why haven't you come to work? Do you realise how worried I've been. I'm going to kill you! I've been working my butt off and you come back shouting for the world to hear that your home. You ungrateful basterd!" The women appeared to finish her rant, breathing heavily and holding onto Joey for support.

Removing her hands the teen give her a few moments to calm down. Seto looked from one to the other, not knowing what to do and feeling, for once, rather out of his depth.

"Calm down Michiko, breathe," said Joey in calming voice as he moved further into the store. The young CEO followed him, not knowing what else to do. The women named Michiko took a few more moments to compose herself. Seto saw that she was a pleasing to look at person; her long black hair fell in ripples down her back, she had a pair of half moon spectacles placed upon her nose, with a pale face and slanted almond eyes. She looked to around 20, maybe slightly older, and her smart clothes showed she was a worker in the store.

So why was she shouting at Joey?

Seeming for the first time to notice that Joey was using a stick to walk and had two of his limbs in casts, she frowned at him.

"What happened to you?"

The blonde looked down at himself, and sheepishly grinned as he ran his good hand through his unruly hair. "I…got into a bit of an accident."

Michiko simply raised one elegant eyebrow and looked at him disbelievingly. "Do you really expect me to believe that? I'm not as dumb as you look, you know."

Seto decided he could quite like this person, though he still had no idea who she was or how she knew Joey.

The blonde gave a defeated sigh, "ok, something big happened, but I really don't want to talk about it. This," he said, waving a hand at his battered body "was the end result. So I've been staying at Seto's house for a while and haven't been able to come to work. I know I should have called and I'm sorry, but I'm here now, ok?"

Michiko looked to Joey's side and seemed to notice Seto standing there for the first time, which was strange considering his impressive height and billowing trench coat, she met his glare with one of his own.

"So you're the one who's been looking after Joey for me?"

"Yes." She gave him another hard look and seemed to realise something.

"Hay, aren't you that guy? You know, the teenage millionaire with the fancy gaming company?"

"Kaiba corp. and yes, I am the CEO"

"How do you know Joey?" she asked, scowling again.

"He's in my class. May I ask how you happen to know Joey and what this place is?" his questions obviously surprised her as she blinked owlishly at him.

"You mean you don't know? I'm Joey's employee and this Somnium Books with included café."

"Wait!" said Seto, not sure he was hearing correctly, "You said you were Joeys employee, don't you mean you're his employer?"

The raven haired women blinked once before waving his question off. "No, Joey's my employer, it's his store."

"It is?" asked the brunette blinking owlishly himself, a huge show of emotion from the normally cold teen.

"Yeah, just ask Joey…Joey? Joey where are you" Michiko asked. Looking around Seto saw that the blonde was no where to be seen, but a voice called out from the room behind the counter.

"I'm in here Michi'." Both the women and the tall teen walked into the back of the store to find Joey sitting down awkwardly in a large chair, his stick lent up against the desk he was sitting at and going through several accounts and stock takes for the store.

"You've not been keeping very organised Michi'."

A look of annoyance passed over the pleasing features of the raven haired women, making her a fierce to behold. "Not organised, not organised. I'll have you know I've been running this shop, during the holiday season, for weeks. I've had to close the café because I couldn't cope. I haven't had time to organise everything."

Joey once again had the decency to look sheepish, "sorry, the stocks look alright and the numbers seem to add up. Having the café closed has impacted of the profits but not too much. Where's Will anyway?" Joey said, referring to his other, part time employee.

"Will is on holiday, remember?" Michiko replied with a sigh, she seemed tired.

The blonde looked at her with concern and motioned for her to sit down on the couch behind him. She did so with another exhausted sigh.

"Sorry about running you into the ground like this," said the blonde. Seto moved to sit on the other side of the couch, dying to ask Joey if it was true that he owned the store, but feeling he shouldn't interrupt.

Michiko merely waved off the smaller teen's apology.

"I can't man the desk, but I can get around now so I should be able to work in the back here and sort out the accounts and do a stock take. We'll open the café up when term starts up; I should be almost healed by then and Will should be back."

The raven haired women nodded her ascent and Seto felt it was a good opportunity to speak. "Joey?"

"Hmm, what do you want Seto?"

"Do you really own this store," he asked, getting to the point.

"What? Oh, yeah. I had a bit of money left over from Duelist Kingdom, after paying for my sister operation."

Operation? What operation? Another thing to ask about, though Seto.

"Of course the place was a right dump when I bought it, so it was cheap. Did it up a bit to make it liveable. Anyway, at first I didn't realise that I got both storeys, so I ended up doing the whole thing up. Everything was working fine and stuff, just needed a lick of paint and a few new furnishings really," continued Joey.

"Anyway, to cut a long story short, a friend of mine new this old second hand store that was closing and had a lot of books. They knew I liked reading and asked if I would take them. I did and began selling them, eventually someone asked if I sold new books as well, so I got some ordered and put a proper sign up above the store and Somnium Books was born."

Seto sat staring at the blonde in shock, had he really done all that. Beside him Michiko rose from her seat and went back into the shop, but the brunette didn't notice.

"'Course once school started I knew I couldn't keep it up so I put a 'help wanted' sign up in the window and Michiko came along. She's cool, hard working and doesn't mind that I'm still at school so she's a pleasure to work with. To be honest she's more like an older sister than a colleague. She's doing a course in literature with an online university and has her own debts to pay so she works almost full time. She's the one that suggested opening a café upstairs. By now we were in the green, the businesses had been running for almost a year and I had bought a nearby apartment, so I wasn't above the store. The café was a great hit, we have a section of revision books and often get people coming it to use them, chat with their friends and have a piece of cake as they revise. Others come into have a quiet read and afternoon tea." The brunette could do nothing but blink in astonishment at the blonde accomplishments. "Michiko couldn't run the store and café by herself while I was at school so we had to hire a part-timer, Will. He's cool if a bit quiet, but he balances us out. We're more like family than anything else. So you can see why I wanted to come here?"

The CEO nodded, affection showing in his blue eyes as he looked upon the grinning blonde teen in front of him.

"I certainly can."