I finally finished Chapter 5. Aiko and Seto's conversation was originally going to be a lot longer and more revelatory, but then I realized that as young as Seto is, he's still not going to spill his life story to someone he's just met. He'll get to that point eventually, but not now.

Gozaburo continues to lose his mind (yay!). I'm pretty angry (bought Stray on a whim and am stuck on the stupid Sewer level where you rescue Doc) and 'unreasonably angry' is a great headspace for me to be in when writing Gozaburo because he makes me angry anyway, so he'll probably feature a lot more in chapter six.

Five

Gozaburo awoke the next morning in a cold sweat. Looking around his room to get his bearings, he sighed when he saw no immediate threat.

What he had seen in that girl's room… he could only recall one other time he had felt that shaken to the core.

He had been right in his suspicions about that girl - she did hate him. She attempted to kill him! Gozaburo didn't even know how he had survived the lightning strike she had called down and somehow stumbled back to his room. And now, Gozaburo - a staunch antisupernaturalist - was forced to confront the idea that his new daughter-in-law was some… thing that was not only far from human, but actively out for his blood.

However, at breakfast, the girl had greeted him gently, thanking him for the room and accommodations he'd provided. She made no mention of last night, and Gozaburo of course couldn't accuse her of what she had done in front of Seto, the tagalong, and the maids.

Speaking of Seto and that girl…

They had spent almost all of breakfast whispering back and forth, letting their food grow cold, until Gozaburo decided, decorum or not, he had to end it.

"Ahem. Seto, I suggest you eat before you have to begin your studies. Aiko-chan, I assume you were informed of your eye appointment?"

The girl nodded. "Amaya-san informed me as soon as I woke up."

"Eye appointment?" Seto asked.

Aiko nodded. "Before I came here, money was too tight for Father and Mother to afford prescription glasses for me. Gozaburo-sama has agreed to pay for them for me."

Seto gave Gozaburo a searching glance.

"Why wouldn't I accommodate my new daughter-in-law in such a thing if I can afford it? I promised her parents I'd make her transition to this household as comfortable as possible."

Seto frowned, before nodding. "Alright. I'll probably still be in lessons by the time you get back."

"I don't mind that, Seto-sama. I was actually hoping I could get to know Mokuba-kun a little bit."

Seto's confusion mirrored how Gozaburo felt, albeit probably for different reasons. Why was Kamiya Aiko remotely interested in that tagalong brat?

"Mokuba-kun's going to be living under this roof, too. As his sister-in-law, I ought to get to know him as well."

Gozaburo was almost sure - and frankly hoped - that wasn't the case. Eventually he had it in his mind to push Seto into getting rid of that boy. The softness Seto expressed toward him was a liability.

However, again, decorum prevented him from speaking his mind on this issue, and he let the matter drop there with a muttered, "Of course, of course…" and a distasteful glare at the five-year-old who now had the ketchup provided with his omelet drying in unpleasant spots at the corners of his mouth like blood from the mouth of a B-movie vampire. At least the brat had the shame to realize his mistake, his smile wilting as he quietly asked to be excused so he could clean his face.

That earned Gozaburo a disapproving glance from his stepson, which he quickly countered until Seto was forced to back down.

Seto went to lessons right on schedule, and a maid spirited the girl away not long after, with another maid leading the tagalong back to his room and carefully out of the way.

Gozaburo was sure he had felt an oppressive heaviness leave his mind the moment he left the house and thoughts of Kamiya Aiko behind to go to work.

Then he squeezed his fingers around a paperweight on his desk until it bent in his hands, and snarled. Nothing. Not even an inkling of unearthliness around that girl, much less anything like the murderously insane persona she had expressed last night.

Had he dreamt the whole thing? His memories of stumbling back to bed were hazy and dreamlike. Had he invented them whole-cloth to explain how he had gone from lying senseless on the plush carpet floor of his daughter-in-law's room to waking up in bed this morning?

"Yes… that has to be it… That dinner must have stressed me out more than I realized…" Enough to invent a story about his carefully selected, pliant little daughter-in-law being some murderous eldritch spirit.

That had to be it.

Gozaburo oversaw Seto's afternoon lessons and then returned to the mansion. The Kamiya girl had her glasses, as ordered, and had gone back to the mansion for tutoring of her own. Not as rigorous as Seto's of course. She didn't need it. Her tutoring had concluded half an hour before his return, and she had returned to her room, her frail body exhausted from even the brief trip to the eye doctor. Gozaburo was satisfied, his suspicions cemented that the girl wasn't going to be nearly as big a problem as he had worried last night.

His mood had improved significantly - until he heard voices coming from the girl's room.

He had opened the door to find her and the tagalong lying on the floor coloring, using books as makeshift tables.

"Otou-sama?" the boy asked, freezing up when he saw Gozaburo standing there.

"Aiko-chan? I was informed you weren't feeling well."

"Oh, I was just a bit tired, Gozaburo-sama. So Mokuba-kun and I decided to do something quiet," the Kamiya girl said, adjusting her glasses.

"Oneechan's a good drawer!" the boy chimed in unhelpfully, holding up a drawing of a woman with bird wings neatly crayoned in with shades of blue and green.

Gozaburo forced himself to stay composed as he thought up a reason - even an unfounded one - for the girl to get away from the tagalong brat in short order. It wouldn't be a threat if she somehow infected the younger boy with her brand of rebellion that he had glimpsed at last night's dinner, but it would be annoying to have to retrain him all over again, and it would take time better spent grooming Seto.

"I don't want you to push yourself, Aiko-chan. And the plan was to keep this room as sanitized as possible for your sake."

The Kamiya girl smiled. "I appreciate your concern, Gozaburo-sama. Come on, Mokuba-kun, let's go into the parlor to draw. Didn't you say you were going to show me the mountain view from that window?"

"Yeah!" the boy cheered, gathering up his crayons and paper in a messy bundle. The Kamiya girl was a bit neater in gathering up her own sheaf of paper. They both walked past him toward the parlor, completely oblivious to Gozaburo's growing fury that his ploy to separate the two had unceremoniously failed.

::::::::::::::::::::::::

Seto staggered out of tutoring, nursing several new painful marks that he was careful to conceal under his shirt. His mind had been occupied with Gozaburo's state the night before, and his behavior that day, and although he'd tried to pay attention, Hobson had noticed his lack of investment and punished him for it like usual.

His dark thoughts were interrupted hearing something that was always welcome and he hardly ever heard anymore - the sound of Mokuba laughing.

Seto, his curiosity sufficiently piqued, turned and followed the sound toward the parlor.

The Kaiba family parlor was a room hardly ever touched. Apparently it was for entertaining guests, but Gozaburo hardly ever had the guests to entertain. The man was hardly the type to have friends, and when he had to meet with someone over business it would be conducted in his home office or at KaibaCorp tower.

Seto wasn't exactly sure where the room stood on what he internally called "the forbidden room scale" - something he had come up with to quickly gauge rooms in terms of danger - that danger being the level of punishment meted out if either he or Mokuba wandered in there. Top of the list in terms of restriction were Gozaburo's own bedroom (for obvious reasons) and the southernmost hall on the right-hand side (more inexplicably), both of which were always safe behind locked doors anyway. Next were rooms one only entered if they were invited: Gozaburo's home office, his extensive armory room and weapon collection, and the tutoring room. Third down were rooms they were technically allowed to be in, but Gozaburo would get suspicious if either one of them were hanging around in that room without a valid excuse. Quite a few rooms, such as the kitchens, the dining room, the library, any of the many empty, unused rooms in the mansion, and someone else's bedroom, were classed there. Last of all were rooms that they could remain in freely for as long as they wanted without being scrutinized. The only ones on that list were the bathrooms and their own rooms.

Seto had never figured out where the parlor fell on that list, though. Gozaburo had told Mokuba not to play there on the first day living at the mansion, and he always seemed to be in a bad mood when someone brought it up. However, he never stopped Mokuba from playing in there - although he'd threatened Seto with giving the five-year-old a "proper" punishment for it - and in fact seemed to look the other way so long as Mokuba was a) being quiet, b) not breaking something, and most imperatively c) keeping out of his sight and out of his way.

Given this was the man who dedicated himself to making one's life Hell if they disobeyed him to the point he had raised the craft to an art form, this out-of-character passing-over of the parlor had confused and worried Seto. Seto had told Mokuba it was alright if he played in the parlor occasionally, and only if it was something quiet and not likely to break something expensive.

We're already living with him until he keels over from a stroke or something, the last thing Mokuba and I need is to owe him a debt, too.

Seto stopped outside the parlor door, recognizing that Mokuba wasn't alone. Aiko's quiet voice, sounding on the verge of giggling herself, filtered through the parlor door.

"Oh, and we should definitely give him a hat," Aiko was saying. "What color, red or blue?"

"Both!" Mokuba decided.

"Red and blue? Now, let me see…"

Seto opened the door to find Aiko and Mokuba sitting on the floor at the parlor coffee table, poised over a shared sheet of paper. Aiko was in the process of alternating dabs of red and blue on it, coloring in a doodle of a bear wearing a baseball cap. She was now wearing a pair of cat-eye glasses - clear plastic decorated with little white hearts on the frames - which she quickly adjusted as she looked up from the drawing.

"Hi, Nii-sama!" Mokuba greeted him cheerfully.

"Good afternoon, Seto-sama," Aiko said. "How were your lessons?"

"Same as usual," Seto said vaguely. "The eye appointment went well, then?"

Aiko had immediately identified that Gozaburo wasn't afraid of beating him last night, and he decided there was no going back on that. However, he had always been told to keep what happened in tutoring a secret from everyone.

Even - no, especially - Mokuba. The kid had enough to worry about without knowing his brother got whipped almost every day, and Seto knew it was within Gozaburo's wheelhouse to punish Mokuba for knowing.

If his own little brother couldn't know, then neither could the fiancee he'd barely met - if he could help it.

"Depending on how you define 'well'," Aiko replied. "It's as we suspected and I need glasses, if that's what you're asking."

"That style looks good on you," Seto said, surprised that he meant it.

Aiko scratched her head in embarrassment. "Amaya-san was trying to talk me into something more… professional-looking, I guess? I decided I could change to something more businesslike when I get older."

"That's your call," Seto replied. "So what are you two doing?"

"Coloring. We were in my room, but Gozaburo-sama said Mokuba shouldn't be in my room because he's trying to keep it sanitized for me," Aiko said.

Seto was willing to bet that was not why Gozaburo had kicked Mokuba out of Aiko's room, but he didn't say so.

"Oneechan's really good, look!" Mokuba piped up, holding up another drawing, this one of a little brown cat. It was pretty good, Seto decided.

"Thank you, Mokuba-kun," Aiko said, flushing pink at the compliment. "But you're a good artist yourself." To Seto, she said, "I hope it wasn't a problem that we chose the parlor. Gozaburo-sama seemed displeased when we left."

Seto waved his hand in a "so-so" gesture. "He doesn't like people playing in here. Wants to keep it looking nice for guests. He looks the other way if we aren't breaking anything, though."

"That's good," Aiko replied in relief. "Thank you."

"You're welcome. Um… Aiko-chan, do you mind if I talk to Mokuba for a minute?"

"In private, I assume?" Aiko asked. "No, I don't mind." Her gaze became more mischievous. "Unless you two are gossipping about me."

Seto felt his face burn. "Um…"

"It's alright, Seto-sama, I'm just teasing you," Aiko replied. She stood up, bowed, and exited the parlor.

Seto released the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. Once again, he was taken aback by how nice Aiko was, and left unsure of how to respond.

"So… Oneechan?" he asked Mokuba, deciding to address the use of that honorific first.

"You're gonna marry her, right?" Mokuba asked.

"When we're eighteen," Seto replied.

"So she's gonna be my sister, right?" '

"... Sister-in-law, yeah."

"So I'm calling her Oneechan!" Mokuba said cheerfully. His face sobered. "Is that bad?"

Seto shook his head. "I mean, she didn't seem to take offense to it…" He pulled himself out of his thoughts. "How was today? I'm sorry I didn't talk to you before tutoring started."

"Good! It was fun having Oneechan to draw with, and Otou-sama only got mad at me once!"

"When you were in Aiko-chan's room?" Seto confirmed.

Mokuba nodded. "He said nobody was allowed in there because he had to keep it san'tized for Oneechan." The five-year-old frowned. "Nii-sama, what does san'tized mean?"

"It means really clean, so there's no germs. Roland told me Aiko-chan gets sick a lot. Gozaburo wants to keep her room extra clean to help her not get sick as much."

"Could I make her sick?" Mokuba asked, eyes wide in horror.

"I don't think so," Seto reassured him. "Gozaburo's just making sure."

Mokuba sighed in relief. "I was worried you were gonna say I couldn't play with her anymore."

"You can. Just be careful and don't play in her room and you should be fine. So you're going to keep playing with her while I'm at lessons?"

Mokuba nodded. "Yep!" Then he frowned and leaned against Seto's shoulder. "Playing with Oneechan's fun, but I miss you."

"I know, buddy. I…" Seto trailed off as any excuse he had for his constant absences evaporated on his tongue.

A five-year-old shouldn't have to consider a day where he only got yelled at once a victory. A five-year-old shouldn't feel like they had to worry about making their future sister-in-law deathly ill just by playing with her. A five-year-old shouldn't have to be left alone for hours at a time while his brother went to lessons he had a limited grasp on what they were even for.

He knew what Gozaburo was doing to them, and he hated it.

But what choice do I have?

Seto had occasionally thought of running away. At least once he had seriously considered it, made a plan for it, even. However, then logic had set in. Where would they go? The orphanage? They would just send them back to Gozaburo. So would the police, any random citizen they tried to hide out with, or the relatives Seto barely remembered who had raised him from ages five to eight.

Gozaburo had the money, the power, and the influence to drag them back to his side no matter where they tried to run.

And… a part of Seto - the darkest, most insidious part that sounded suspiciously like their stepfather himself - decided running away from all of it felt too much like quitting. He had worked hard to earn the privilege to change his last name from Yasuragi-Ryuunosuke to Kaiba, and after suffering so much for that privilege, he didn't want to throw it away.

And now he had someone else to consider - Aiko.

If he took off, Aiko would be left with no reason to stay under the Kaiba roof. Not to mention, Gozaburo wasn't above punishing other people for the crimes of the people who cared about them. She could just as easily be made an example of as soon as Seto was gone.

A deeper instinct - the same one that had taken over last night at dinner - told him that he could never let that happen.

There was the possibility of taking her with him, but how would he raise that subject with her?

"I'll try to be around more," Seto said, lying to his brother once again.

When Aiko re-entered the room, she glanced between the two of them. "I hope I'm not intruding on something."

"No," Seto replied. "Mokuba missed me."

Mokuba nodded. "I like playing with you, Nee-chan, but I wish we could all play together."

Aiko looked surprised, then smiled. "Why don't we all play together right now? Seto-sama, do you have any more lessons you have to attend?"

Seto scowled. "In half an hour I have evening tutoring."

"Do you want to join us in coloring until then?" Aiko asked.

Seto wasn't nearly as invested in art as his brother was, but he had just been internally asking for ways to spend more time with Mokuba, and now Aiko had just presented him with one on a silver plate. "Sure. I don't draw much, but I could help."

Mokuba grinned and scooted over to make room for Seto at the coffee table.

Seto looked over the drawing of the bear they were working on. The drawing was simple and cartoony, but the two of them had gone out of their way to define individual clumps of fur, and the blue and red dots in the hat blended together to create an unusually vivid purple.

"That's an interesting trick you did with the hat," Seto said.

"It's blue and red!" Mokuba piped up. "I couldn't decide which one I liked more!"

"Pointillism. Invented by two French artists in the nineteenth century," Aiko said, picking up the blue and red crayons to finish the hat. "The idea is that your eyes blend the colors together as you're looking at it, like an optical illusion."

"It reminds me of how pixel art looks on a computer," Seto said. "You like art, then?"

"I do," Aiko said with a smile. "I always thought that images carry a kind of life of their own, especially when the artist cares about the subject. A sort of soul."

Seto frowned, confused. "I guess that's why I'm not an artist," he muttered.

"You have things you're passionate about, right?" Aiko asked.

Seto hesitated for much too long trying to come up with a satisfactory answer.

Aiko frowned in concern. "Don't you have something you're passionate about, Seto-sama? Something that drives you? Brings you joy?"

"...Of course I do, I-" Seto began, only for anything he might have listed to evaporate on his tongue.

Gozaburo didn't teach him to have passion for things. As a matter of fact, the man seemed dead set on removing every source of passion Seto'd ever had for anything.

Seto remembered loving to read and study when he was a kid. A memorable incident when he was seven, when his babysitter had tried to help with his math homework, had ended with him helping her with hers.

Any curiosity and drive to learn that had taught him about high school algebra had been bled out of him the minute it was study, study, study all the time, enforced with whips, chains, and the not so infrequent switch to the face.

Seto's next obsession was chess. Mokuba had adamantly insisted he could be one of the chess pros on TV, and Seto had seriously considered it for a good while - at least as something to do on the side.

Chess was Gozaburo's game now. Seto couldn't bring himself to enjoy the pastime that had unwittingly gotten them both into this Hell.

His possessions? They couldn't matter all that much - not when Gozaburo could take them away at a moment's notice.

Mokuba? He saw his brother less and less, to the point that a quiet half hour to draw pictures with him (and also the fiancee he barely knew) was practically a gift from God.

His dream theme park and his desire to share the unexplainable happiness he found playing games with all the people he could? Just days ago Gozaburo had as good as stomped on the sand castle model he'd envisioned when he was eight and then laughed in his face.

Actually, scratch that: Gozaburo did seem invested in Seto gaining passion for something, and that was Gozaburo's own precious legacy.

"Gozaburo-sama said you had a bright future in mind for KaibaCorp? What did he mean?"

Seto scowled. "What else could he mean? I'm smart and ambitious - of course I'll give KaibaCorp a bright future."

Aiko shrank back. "I'm sorry."

Seto immediately felt guilty upon seeing the scared look on her face. "Look, I - it's not your fault," he said.

Mokuba had looked up from his own drawing, frowning. He leaned his head against Seto's shoulder.

Aiko frowned. "It… wasn't under the best circumstances. But I saw you play Duel Monsters last night. You're really good at it."

Mokuba beamed, eager for an excuse to brag about Seto's skill. "Yeah! Nii-sama's the best!"

Aiko smiled at the five-year-old, but her expression then sobered as she looked back at Seto. "Do you not enjoy playing Duel Monsters? Of course, last night's Duel was very different from the norm, but you seemed to enjoy yourself then."

Seto thought back. He didn't think he'd been enjoying himself - mostly, he'd been trying very hard not to die.

But then, a memory rose up in the back of his mind. How accomplished he'd felt when he'd won that card back. Like he'd done something that actually mattered. And the exhilaration he'd felt when the spectral, maybe-a-hallucination Blue-Eyes White Dragon had appeared on the field.

"I guess…" Seto said. He frowned. "But why do you care?"

Aiko bit her lip. "I want to get to know you, Seto-sama. I've found you can discover a lot about a person by knowing what makes them happy. Drawing makes you happy, right, Mokuba-kun?"

Mokuba perked up. "Yeah! When I'm sad, I like to draw the things that make me happy, an' then I'm not sad anymore!"

"And? What makes me happy, then?" Seto asked, folding his arms.

Aiko looked straight into his eyes, her expression like she was boring into his brain and wasn't guessing. "Giving people joy. Giving people hope. Standing for something. Isn't that what you've always done?"

Seto gave her a sardonic look. "You act like I'm some kind of superhero."

"And what's wrong with that?" Aiko asked.

"That I'm not. Gozaburo said-" Seto scowled. "I was taught it's pointless to fight for something like justice or hope."

Aiko smiled slightly. "It didn't seem pointless to you yesterday."

Seto fidgeted with his pencil, not sure whether he should be irritated, touched, or something in between the two. What is she getting at?

"You were happy then. When you got my treasure back." Aiko narrowed her eyes, and Seto got the impression of something very powerful and slightly unnerving there. It felt like she was looking straight through him. "Has following Gozaburo-sama's teachings ever made you feel happy, Seto-sama?"

Seto opened his mouth to retort, then closed it and looked away.

"Don't think about what pleases Gozaburo-sama, Seto-sama. What makes you happy? What do you want?"

Seto shifted his grip on the pencil in his hand. The first answers he thought of - triumphing over Gozaburo, securing a solid future just to rub in the man's face that he hadn't broken him yet, becoming the name everyone in the world knew - felt too much like things Gozaburo was always telling him. Winning was fun, but stomping his enemies under his heel didn't give him the same happiness he remembered.

A sharp knock startled Seto out of his thoughts.

"Bocchama," Hobson said in his usual monotone.

Seto stood up, instinctively putting his body in between the stooped old butler and Aiko and Mokuba. "Yes, Hobson?"

"It's time for your evening lessons. I expect you to be more attentive than you were earlier today."

Seto swallowed down his anger. "Of course. I'm coming."

He gave Mokuba and Aiko a regretful look as Hobson led him out the door.