Disclaimer: I own nothing involved in this story unless I invented it myself. This is written for fun, not for profit. All forms of feedback eagerly accepted. Concrit is loved the most, but everything is welcome.
Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh GX
Title: Enchantment: Chapter 3: Of Names and Dates
Romance: Yubel x Juudai x Johan
Word Count: chapter: 1,672||story: 5,034
Genre: Romance, SupernaturalRated: PG-13
Challenge: Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, section I, #12, a multichap with exactly 10 chapters; Written for the Valentine's to White Day Advent, day 24, write about a brainwashing/trickery.
Summary: On Johan's wedding day, he goes for a breath of fresh air in the forest, and encounters a creature he's never seen before. He will still marry this day. But not who he expected. For who would expect to marry the King of the Fae?

Johan still wasn't certain of what to think as he followed a small fairy – one that looked as if she could've come right out of one of the illustrations in a book of fairy tales – through the twisting, confusing corridors that made up a great deal of the Fae King's castle.

His lips tingled still from those stolen kisses and the tips of his ears burned at the thought of what else Juudai – the Fae King, he still didn't feel comfortable thinking of the other by his name – had hinted would happen later.

This had to be a strange dream. Had he fallen asleep somewhere and fantasized the whole meeting with Sapphire Pegasus and the trip here? He had to have, didn't he? Why would someone like the King of the Fae show any interest in wedding him? He looked unusual, at least by the standards of the village, but that wasn't enough, was it?

Your father promised you to him, memory reminded him, and that set his mind twisting down another corridor of confusion. How could his father have done that? Had his father done that? Could the fae lie? He hadn't read enough about them to know, but a few whispered tales he'd heard over the years made him think that perhaps they couldn't.

He'd caught those tales only when those telling them hadn't known that he was there to hear, he recalled. No one seemed to want to even mention the fae in his hearing. And that itself was unusual, as there were many other children who gobbled up such stories as if their lives depended on them, taking so much glee in hearing about the otherworldly creatures that, according to those very tales, existed in the mere hopes of snatching a child away to live in their land forever.

But his parents made it plain that no one was to tell him those stories. He'd asked once, after one of his playmates had been severely punished for a tale that Johan had never heard the end of.

"You don't need to know foolishness of that sort," his father told him sternly. "Those stories are for babies and you're far too old for that."

Johan had wanted to argue the point, but the look in his father's eyes warned him quite clearly not to. Now he suspected other reasons behind it.

They were trying to keep me from knowing this could happen. A tiny part of Johan resented that. Why couldn't he know? Surely he would've been better prepared if he'd known the Fae King had a claim on him.

The next part of that unfolded itself easily into his mind. They weren't just trying to keep him unaware and innocent. They'd wanted to never keep their bargain in the first place.

Johan set his jaw. He didn't know who he wanted to be angrier at, the Fae King for setting the bargain in the first place, or his parents for agreeing to it, and then trying to worm their way out of it.

The fairy leading the way fluttered down to tap him on his shoulder and gestured to a door. He'd hardly noticed the beauty of the corridors as he'd hurried through them and only now noticed elegant statues in alcoves, a rug underneath his feet that was more costly than everything in the village put together, including his father's jewels, and wall hangings of silk and of velvet. All of that in a set of hallways.

What would the rest of the castle look like, he wondered to himself. And would he have the chance to look at it all?

No. He wanted to go home and he most certainly didn't want to marry the Fae King and stay here. A nice place to visit – and he hoped that he could see Sapphire Pegasus again – but he would not stay there.

But for right now, he found himself urged to open the door. With nothing else to do, he pushed it open and looked inside.

If the corridors had been magnificent, then the library that rose here was even more so. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of shelves stretched out in every direction, lit by globes of shimmering silver. Tables and chairs filled the area where the shelves did not, giving the whole place an air of relaxation and education.

Johan stumbled into the room, trying to look in every direction at once, and not succeeding, and he cared not a whit that he didn't succeed. He didn't know where he would start reading if he had the chance. Could he just grab one and start from there?

"Ahem. You are Johan Andersen, I presume?" The voice didn't have the fae tones to it that Juudai and Yubel possessed. It sounded...mortal, for lack of a better term. Johan turned to see a young man about his own age, or at least looking so, dressed in golden yellow scholar's robes. His features didn't have the fae look either and Johan tilted his head a bit.

"That's right, I am." He hesitated only for a second. "Are you...human?"

The other blinked, then laughed a little self-consciously. "I was born that way. But I've been here for about a thousand years now, so I don't think I qualify anymore."

"A what?" Johan would not have been surprised at all to see his jaw on the floor. "A thousand … how?" Shouldn't he have turned to dust or something after that long?

The scholar beckoned him along and Johan followed. "That's part of what His Majesty wants me to instruct you on. I am Misawa Daichi. You can call me Misawa." There was something odd in the pronunciation, nothing Johan could identify – but he'd encountered several things in the last couple of hours that he couldn't identify.

"Can we begin with why they don't want me to tell anyone my name, but you know it anyway?" Johan asked, slicing the other a sharp look.

Misawa coughed for a moment, a faint flicker of red slipping over his cheeks. "Ah. Yes. That's a good enough place to begin. You see, names are magical identifiers of a being, place, or object. If a mage or fae knows the true name of something, it can be used in magic against them, or to help them."

Johan processed that. "So he doesn't want anyone else knowing my real name so they can't do that to me." That was almost … sweet. Cautious, at the least.

"Yes. Right." Misawa's eyes flicked away for a moment, then he looked back. "But it isn't just knowing the name. The name has to be given freely by the person who it belongs to, where living creatures are concerned. I could tell your name to anyone and it wouldn't do any good. But if you told someone your name, they would know it."

That got Johan fidgeting again. He really wanted some answers to the things the Fae King had told him, and Misawa at least seemed to know things. That was a starting point. "So why would it be all right after…" He was not going to say 'the wedding', he would not! "After tomorrow?"

Misawa gestured for them to take two of the comfortable seats. "Because once you, he, and Yubel are married, then you'll be under the protection of the royal fae magic. Name-magic works differently once that gets involved. And as I'm sure His Majesty told you, if anyone did try that on you, then he'd do worse than kill them."

"What would be worse thank killing?"

The smile Misawa smiled looked more like a grimace. "Pray that you never have to find out."

Johan mentally gulped. Then something else Misawa had said clicked into full awareness in his mind. "Wait, you said married to both of them?"

"Of course. They both want you and they're already married to each other. You're going to complete the set." Misawa said it in much the same tone that Johan had heard people speak of the rise and set of the sun. "Multiple marriages happen among the fae, especially the royal family."

Johan didn't think he could have said a single coherent word if his life depended on it. He sat there listening to Misawa as the other spoke of other things, of how once they were married, Johan would live as long as Juudai and Yubel did, and there was no need to worry about offspring, as Juudai was still considered new on his throne, scarcely there for a century.

"So, you're older than he is?" Johan grasped onto that as something he could get his head wrapped around. All of this multiple marriages and extended lifespans and the fact they all expected him to be happy about marrying someone he'd actually met less than a day earlier, only a few hours earlier, made his head spin.

Misawa tilted his head a fraction. "Yes. I came here during his father's reign." He rested one hand on the table, revealing a bracelet of shimmering gold, set with a single tiger's tooth. "I met the Captain of the Guard, Taniya, and fell in love with her when I still lived in the mortal lands. It took some effort, but I came here to be with her, and I've never been happier." He looked more seriously at Johan. "I know that you don't know His Majesty very well yet, but you will. He cares about you very much. He's waited for you to be of age to bring you here. He didn't have to. He could've taken you when you were a baby and chose to let you live with your human family until then."

Johan opened his mouth and closed it again. He didn't know what he would've said anyway. Before he could think about it, Misawa cleared his throat.

"There's a lot more you need to know, but we can take our time on it." He smiled, a bit more of a pleased look now. "And we do have time."

To Be Continued