Small Favors

A.N.: Hey, look, a nifty disclaimer
has already been added! Useful. I don't really like this chapter,
but this is all first draft stuff anyway. Maybe if I just finish it,
I'll be able to revise it all into something decent. I've added an
Alternate Universe warning because there are so many original
characters now, and this was meant to be set after Yu-Gi-Oh ends. It
has ended now, but I haven't seen the show or read the books up to
that point, and now there's that GX series about which I know even
less. Chapter four has been added to chapter three, and the chapter numbers have been changed. All comments will be valued and possibly used during revision,
if it ever happens.

Shojun studied the stones at his feet.
Father had never brought him along on business, so Shojun did not
know why he had done so today. Father had been so unusually nice to
him all morning. With Mother no longer around to protect him, Shojun
assumed Father would send him to live with relatives any day now.
Maybe Father valued him more than he thought. Shojun looked up
quickly when he heard his name. “Sixteen, you say?”

Shojun stood up straight and smiled as
the man look him over. Toyoshima,
Shojun thought. I wonder when he's going to invite us in.
From what little Shojun had heard, the men were making some kind of
trade. It seemed a little strange to conduct business on a porch,
even if it was outside a mansion. “He's small for sixteen.”

Father nodded.

“Yes, he has
his mother's build.”

Toyoshima
chuckled.

“But not her
spirit, I hope.”

“Oh, no,
Shojun is very submissive. With proper motivation, he could be made
to do anything.”

Shojun forced
himself not to cower when Toyoshima looked at him again. He felt
oddly like a fish in the market. Toyoshima smiled and handed a check
to Father.

“Welcome to
my household, Shojun.”

“Wh-what?”

Shojun looked
around, but Father was already leaving. “I don't understand.”

Toyoshima put his
arm around Shojun's shoulders.

“Come along
and I'll explain it to you.”

Toyoshima opened the door. All Shojun could see was hands. Hands
in the darkness, grabbing at him. When Toyoshima pushed him in, he
screamed.

* * *

Shojun,
Toyoshima's right hand man for much of nineteen years since Shojun
had been sold to him, awoke in a chair outside of Toyoshima's
bedroom. The only sounds were Toyoshima's grunts and the bed's
rhythmic groans. The new boy could be dead for all anyone in the
mansion knew or cared. Toyoshima would finish up his evening fuck
regardless. When the noises stopped, Shojun stood and prepared to
grab the doorknob. “Shojun!”

Shojun
entered the room, eyes lowered.

“Yes,
sir?”

Toyoshima
rolled off the bed and walked toward the bathroom.

“Get
him dressed and send him home.”

“Yes,
sir.”

Shojun
swept his eyes over the boy on the bed. Jounouchi had been quite
handsome. Now, he was only another empty shell soon to be discarded.
Someone like that could be desperate. There should have been guards
posted nearby. There would have been, a few years ago. Shojun filed
the thought away for later. “Sit up, Jounouchi. Time to go.”

Shojun
grasped Jounouchi's shoulders and pulled him up. “Come on, go
find your clothes.”

Jounouchi
blinked.

“My—?
Oh.”

He
pushed himself off the bed, grimacing, and began to collect his
clothes from around the room. Shojun allowed Jounouchi to lean on
him for support as he dressed, then led him through the labyrinth of
hallways to a plain car waiting for them outside. Shojun handed
Jounouchi's address to the driver and leaned against the window.
Jounouchi followed, curling up in the opposite corner when the door
was shut. He stared out the window, silently, until the car turned
onto his street. “Why?” Jounouchi murmured. “Why
do you help him? How much do you get paid to do this?”

Shojun
looked at him and sighed.

“He
doesn't pay me. He owns me.”

Jounouchi
sat up a little.

“No.
That's—he can't do that.”

“Why
not? There's a thriving international slave trade funded by people
like Toyoshima. They're taken right off the streets every day to be
chained to a farm or a bed.”

“But
that's illegal!”

Shojun
smiled.

“What,
like murder and rape?”

Jounouchi
leaned back in his seat.

“So
you were kidnapped and sold to Toyoshima.”

Shojun
shook his head.

“One
of those businessmen who flock around him is my father. He sold me
to Toyoshima. He probably thought I'd be passed around and used to
an early death like most sex slaves.”

“How
come you weren't?”

Shojun
looked away.

“He
liked me. Said he saw himself in me. I got my own bedroom when he
was tired of fucking me. I have a business degree. I'm his heir
now, so long as he dies of natural causes.”

The car
stopped in front of Jounouchi's building.

“Do
you think he'll die soon?”

Shojun
thought of Toyoshima's creaking joints, weakening heart, and cabinet
full of medications. His fatty diet of western foods, his increasing
forgetfulness. Carelessness. If no one else had noticed, they would
soon, and this world was harsh. Heir or not, Shojun had to take his
place before someone else did. He leaned over Jounouchi and opened
his door.

“No,
not him. He's invincible.”