Souvenir

Disclaimer: Just own the words, not the folks.

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He’s toying with me.

I’ve been here for five days, eating his food, sleeping in that warm bed, using his shower, wearing the new clothes he’s bought me, and he hasn’t asked for payment yet.

The larger man, Raphael, comes by often and is always looking at me oddly. Maybe Raphael is the one actually funding all of this and Yami plans to give me to him as payment.

“Seto,” he calls from the front room.

I follow his voice. Maybe he’s ready for me to pay him.

“What?”

“Seto, I’m off for the next few days, so we’ll be going back to my house instead of staying here.”

I frown at him and take a step back. Why would I follow him home?

I look up at the sound of the suite door opening. Raphael. I frown at Yami again. Why is Raphael here? Insurance that I don’t run away when he tries to make me follow him home?

“Seto? What’s wrong?”

There’s that concerned face again, but it’s too late. I’ve figure out why he never asked for payment. He needed me indebted so that he could take me back to his house. And I fell for it.

Stupid.

“When do we leave?” I ask calmly.

“Tomorrow morning. I’ll get you a suitcase for your things. Raphael is driving us.”

Of course he is.

I can’t believe I didn’t see this coming. Yami just seemed so nice...Maybe it won’t be that bad. Yami shouldn’t be a problem and I think I could handle Raphael if I needed to. I just hope there are no more “houseguests.”

“Seto?”

I turn away from those “concerned” eyes and go back into my room.

Hn. “My room.” I should have left that first day after I woke up. I could have stolen some clothes from somewhere before I left the hotel. But I got comfortable with having a bed and clothes and food and a shower and I forgot.

Forgot that this isn’t my life. Forgot that I don’t have a home. Yami made me forget. On purpose. And now I owe him.

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I didn’t eat dinner with them last night or breakfast this morning.

I’ll have to keep careful track of my debt from now on if I don’t want to wind up staying with him (them?) forever. Eventually I’ll need to get away and find Mokuba. I’ll be 18 this fall. Maybe I could get a job that pays well enough for me to go to Egypt.

As Raphael drives, Yami keeps looking at me and frowning. And asking me if I’m all right.

“I’m fine,” I answer again.

“You don’t look fine, Seto.”

‘How should a sex slave look, Yami?’ I want to ask. Instead I turn away to the window. I feel his eyes on me periodically during the rest of the hour long ride.

We pull up to the house and I feel sick. It’s so picture-perfect homey that it has to be a fake. A beautiful, warm blue paint covers its two-story frame; the silver chain-link fence enclosing a small yard, a koi pond near the side of the house just before the small, but lush garden.

Raphael takes our bags inside. He doesn’t even bother to hide that he’s brought one too and will be “staying with us”.

Yami puts me in the room next to his. Raphael will be on the king-sized sleeper sofa.

“Make yourself at home,” Yami smiles at me as I put my small suitcase on the bed.

I skip lunch and eat very little dinner. My food intake is the only thing I can regulate since the clothes and toiletries are already bought and paid for. I’ll just do one meal a day and that should keep my debt from escalating too far.

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After three days, Yami says he and Raphael have to go back to the hotel for work, suggesting I stay at his house until he returns in a few days.

“Sure,” I agree readily.

As soon as he and Raphael drive off, I stuff some clothes into a shoulder bag I find in a closet and head out. I don’t like running out on a debt, but he gave me the opportunity. Maybe once I’ve gotten a job and a place to stay, I could pay him back over time.

Reaching the end of his street, I realize that Yami’s house is farther away from the city than I thought. Deciding to take a chance anyway, I pick a direction and start walking. Checking the watch I slipped off of Yami’s dresser, I figure it shouldn’t take more than four hours to get back to an area I’m familiar with.

Eight hours later, I find myself back at Yami’s door, having walked in a wide circle without finding a way out of the neighborhood. It’s no use. I can’t get away. That’s why he brought me out here. And why he suggested I stay in the house. He knew I wouldn’t be able to go anywhere.

Since I’m here, I may as well go back inside. I stand in the dark for a few minutes staring at the front door since I don’t have a key. Maybe there’s a loose screen or one of the windows is unlocked. After checking both front windows and trampling the garden over the side window, I find a loose screen and an unlocked window in the back. Tossing the bag inside, I start to pull myself through when I hear a command to ‘Stay right where you are’ behind me. Over my shoulder I see two police officers carefully advancing.

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“Yami couldn’t come, so you’re being released into my custody.”

I look up through the bars to find Raphael’s angry scowl. The officer unlocks the cell door and I follow them silently. I suppose there will be some sort of punishment for my trying to escape, which is probably why Raphael is here and not Yami. The ride back to Yami’s house is completely silent, allowing me time to prepare myself.

After unlocking the door and roughly drawing me inside, Raphael heads into the kitchen and starts whipping up a stir-fry of chicken and bean sprouts.

“I assume you haven’t eaten,” he states, gruffly.

“No.”

“Yami wouldn’t want me to leave you hungry,” he grumbles a few minutes later while dipping the finished meal onto two plates.

Deciding to eat since this would be my one meal for the day, I slip into the chair across from him at the small kitchen table and dig in.

Raphael breaks the tense silence after I’ve finished my meal.

“You should be grateful,” he snaps as I stand. “Instead of trying to run away, you should be grateful that Yami took you in.”

‘Gratitude from a sex slave? That seems a bit ridiculous to me,’ I think to myself as I watch him from the sink where I’ve placed my empty plate. I can’t help but hold my breath as he comes my way after glaring at me for a few moments. Now that I’m well fed, it must be time to pay him.

His plate dropping in the sink startles me. I’m further at a loss when he heads for the front door afterward. I follow a moment later, confused by his actions.

“Yami’s always been more soft-hearted than he should be,” Raphael sighs, placing his hand on the doorknob. “That’s why you should be glad that he’s the one who found you.”

What is he talking about? How is keeping me here for his personal use soft-hearted? Is he saying that Yami doesn’t expect any payment?

“If Yami hadn’t asked me to help, I’d have left you there,” he sneers over his shoulder, stepping out into the late night and closing the door behind him.

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After four more days trapped in the empty house, Yami comes back.

I hear the front door open and close as I sit at the desk in my assigned room. There’s a fairly extensive library of books on the living room shelves and I’d lost myself in a few historical novels in my solitude. I enjoy being able to read without worrying about the building closing or having to steal something.

“Seto?” Yami calls from the bottom of the stairs.

I mark my place and head down, unsure of what to expect. Raphael’s actions and his words about Yami still have me confused as to what’s going on.

“Are you alright?” he questions with that concerned face.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” I scoff. Seeing that face again I know he has something planned. Raphael must be wrong.

“Well, you were in jail for almost 30 hours,” he smirks.

I shrug and turn to go back upstairs. At least I got to sleep indoors, which is something I never take for granted.

“Are you hungry?” he yells as I re-enter my room. No, it’s not my room. It’s my ‘assigned room’. I don’t want to forget again.

“No!” I yell down.

“Good! Dinner will be ready in about an hour!” he yells back. I shake my head in disbelief and close the door.

I’m in the middle of a paragraph when Yami interrupts me. He’s singing. At the top of his lungs. And not very well. Realizing that I’ll never be able to go back to my book with that racket, I head downstairs to get him to stop singing, or at least sing quieter. By the time I step into the kitchen, Yami has turned the radio down and stopped singing. Instead I catch him poking holes into the side of a half-dozen medium-sized pastries.

“Where did you buy those,” I ask about the delicious looking treats, slipping into a chair at the table.

“Buy?” he replies indignantly. “I made these. I would never buy a pastry.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m a master chef. It would be ridiculous for me to buy pastries or tarts when I can make them better than anyone else,” he scoffs, putting the pan of goodies back into the oven and leaving the door open a crack.

“Is that what you do at the hotel?”

“Yes,” he smiles, “I’m the top master chef of this prefecture and one of the best in the country.”

“Is that why they let you have that room?” I don’t know why I’m asking all of these questions. It’s not as though I’ll need to know this information once I’ve paid him and left.

“It’s one of the perks they give me for staying with their hotel and not going somewhere else or opening my own shop,” he replies, pulling out some instant ramen for both of us.

“Is that all you know how to cook,” I smirk at the ramen.

He starts, and then laughs.

“Basically, yes!” he snickers. “So if you want something more, you’d better cook it yourself. Or call Raphael.”

At the mention of his name, the words he said about Yami return to me.

“Instead of trying to run away, you should be grateful that Yami took you in.”

“Yami’s always been more soft-hearted than he should be...”

“...you should be glad that he’s the one who found you.”

Yami did say that he didn’t want payment when I first met him. And after he took me in this time he said that he didn’t want that from me. And he hasn’t tried to anything the whole time I’ve been around, either here or at the hotel.

Maybe...

“Seto? What’s wrong?” his concerned voice and face interrupt my thoughts. I’m trying to come up with a response when he touches my hand, lightly running his thumb across the top. I snatch it away and glare at him.

Nice try, Yami, seduction instead of coercion or force. I storm up to my assigned room, slamming the door behind me.