Souvenir

Disclaimer: Just own the words, not the folks.


The Photographs

When Yami leaves for work this time, he leaves me with a key. A key. As if I am a welcomed guest instead of an indebted sex slave. I wait a day to see if either he or Raphael will return sooner than the four days he’d told me that he’d be gone, and then I leave. Now that it’s warmer and I don’t look like a starving street kid, maybe I can find a job of some kind in the city.

I have to get away from Yami.

The neighbor down the street sometimes talks to me when I step out for some air or to help Yami in his garden or he and Raphael with groceries. In exchange for a few hours weeding his garden, the balding, middle-aged man drives me back into the city after I’ve showered and grabbed my full backpack.

The first thing I do after being dropped off is try to find a job. I try everyplace I can, from one of the big hotels downtown, to the restaurants whose garbage I used to eat, to a motel like the one where Mokuba and I lived, to the hospital that treated me, and even to one of the homeless shelters that threw me out.

Unfortunately, whether it’s because I don’t fit the profile of the person they’re looking to hire, or that I don’t have any job references, or just bad timing, there’s nothing available.

After three days and half of those nights looking, I realize that my quest for employment has become a futile one and I’ll have to fall back on my earlier skills.

Or at least I try to.

The slim blonde is just like the others whose requests I’d filled to keep from sleeping on the streets. I haven’t eaten anything in nearly three days and have only slept an hour of two each night when he approaches me outside of a small café. I bargain with him for six meals and three days and two nights in his apartment in exchange for spending the two nights in his bed. We have a fairly large vegetarian meal for dinner and I follow him home to pay my debt; a debt that I can manage, not like the one I owe to Yami.

At the slightly taller man’s urgings, I shed my clothes, take a shower, and slip my clean body under the covers of his bed. I lie there in compliance to our arrangement, but when he touches me, I feel repulsed by the thought of giving myself to him.

“W-wait,” I stutter, pulling away and climbing from the unbelievably soft bed. Violet eyes narrow in annoyance as I back further away from his grasp.

“Are you attempting to back out of our deal?” He sneers.

“No,” I answer with finality.

I step back into his embrace, allowing him to do whatever he wants to my body. At the end, I find myself violently ill in his small bathroom.

“What’s wrong with you?” He demands through the door.

“You assured me that you were clean. You better not have been lying.” He threatens.

It’s a little too late to say that now, since, like most, he didn’t want to use a condom.

“S-something I ate,” I manage before dry heaving into the toilet again.

“Hn. Probably some animal or animal by-product,” he scoffs. “I’m going to sleep. Don’t disturb me.”

I hear him move away from the door. Eventually, I’m able to pull up from the bathroom floor, wash my face and hands and rinse my mouth with mouthwash from his medicine cabinet. Catching sight of my face in the mirror, I stare at the person reflected there. It’s not the pale, sickly skin that stops me cold; it’s the confusion and fear present in my eyes that disturb me. I didn’t look like this before Yami took me in. Before him, I never cared what I looked like in the mirror. But now…

I don’t recognize myself anymore.

Stepping from the bathroom, I find the blonde lying on his back asleep. Gathering my clothes, I get dressed and leave.

I can’t do this anymore. I can’t live on the streets eating garbage and bargaining for a place to sleep at night. Yami took that away from me. He knew that once I got used to a warm bed and regular meals that I wouldn’t be able to come back.

He tricked me again.

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It takes another day for me to get back to Yami’s house, the night spent on the street in between one I hope to soon forget. Absently, I lick at my busted lip. That albino and his brown-haired accomplice tried to roll me for my shoes and backpack. It cost me a busted lip and a quite few bruises, but I got them off of me and out of the park.

I hitch about two miles out of the city, but since I can’t find anyone else to give me a ride, I have to walk most of the way. The sun is setting when I finally reach my quaint, blue prison.

Using the key Yami gave me, I open the door and step in, meaning to go straight to my assigned room. Instead, I find myself painfully slammed back into the closed door behind me.

“Where the hell have you been?” Raphael growls. “Don’t you know Yami has been worried sick? He’s out in the streets right now looking for you!”

‘Probably to make sure no one else picks up his property,’ I think to myself, keeping silent in the face of Raphael’s rage.

Obviously angered by my lack of response, Raphael drags me up to my assigned room and shoves me inside. I’m surprised to hear a lock engage after he slams the door behind me. Did he really lock me in here? Testing the doorknob, I find it locked from the outside. Stunned by his action, I slowly sink onto my bed.

Maybe Raphael will actually demand payment this time.

Maybe he will actually hurt me.

I swallow in fear at that prospect.

When more than an hour passes and he doesn’t come back I relax a bit.

After tossing the dirty clothes from my backpack into the hamper by the closet, I drop the empty bag on the floor next to the door. Grabbing a half-read book from the shelf next to the window and sit back down on the bed. Until Raphael decides to let me out, I guess I’ll read.

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I awaken on my back from a light doze, to find the book open across my chest and Yami standing over me, an array of emotions flitting across his face. I study him for several moments before he notices I’m awake. His eyes widen in surprise upon catching mine and he takes a step back.

“You’re awake,” he comments with a fake smile.

I look away and don’t respond, wondering at his calm. As angry as Raphael was, there’s no way that Yami can be this rational. He must be waiting for me to let my guard down to show his true feelings.

“I’m sure that you’re hungry,” Yami begins, heading toward the open bedroom door, “so, after your shower, come down to the kitchen and get something to eat.”

Accepting my role as Yami’s possession, I do as he subtly commands; shower, change and go down to the kitchen.

I’m not surprised to find a scowling Raphael at the stove, nor Yami standing nearby, but I am surprised by their vehement argument.

“Yami, you’re crazy for letting him stay here!” Raphael yells.

“I can’t just throw him out in the streets, Raphael!” Yami snaps back.

“Why not? That’s where he came from! He’s trash, Yami! You can’t fix him! You need to let him go!”

“He’s not trash! And he’s not from the streets! I know that’s where I found him, but he’s not really a street kid. I can tell. He just needs a friend! That’s why he came back. Why can’t you see that?”

“He needs a meal ticket, you mean,” Raphael scoffs. “When are you going to face facts, Yami? Your soft heart is allowing you to be taken advantage of again. Just like with Otogi.”

“Otogi!” Yami exclaims, eyes wide with shock. “How the hell can you compare… That’s not even the same!”

“You took him in and look how he repaid you!” Raphael yells.

“Took him in? We moved in together! That’s nothing like what I’m doing with Seto!” Yami sputters indignantly.

“Isn’t it?” Raphael hisses angrily, causing Yami to step back with a frown.

“What are you talking about?!” Yami blinks back at him.

“I’ve seen you watching him, Yami,” he growls dangerously.

Yami gasps in surprise and steps away from Raphael.

At Yami’s stunned retreat to the dining room table, I decide to make my presence known. Stepping into the now deathly silent room, I nod a cursory greeting to Raphael’s furious gaze and slip into the chair across from Yami.

“I’m glad you came back,” he looks up from the tabletop, offering me another fake smile, which for some reason really bothers me, not that I say so.

I don’t say anything.

Yami pins me with the same odd gaze from earlier for a minute or two before getting up to talk quietly with Raphael.

Dinner is devoid of any conversation. Any verbal conversation, that is. Raphael’s face and eyes scream contempt and distaste at me the entire time, while Yami’s eyes and face alternate between admonishing Raphael and assuring me. I’m very glad when I can go back to my assigned room.

I’ve gotten ready for bed and am about to turn off the lamp when a quiet knock comes to my door.

“Seto?” Yami calls.

“It’s open.”

He comes in and closes the door behind him.

I know what he wants to talk about.

“There’s no need for you to run anymore, Seto. I told you that you can stay here as long as you want,” he asserts, sitting on the bed beside me.

“I can’t pay you, Yami. I shouldn’t stay here if I can’t pay you back.”

“We’ll work something out, Seto. I don’t want you going back to the streets. That’s no way to live and you don’t have to anymore.”

“But, I can’t pay you, Yami,” I repeat. “I owe you so much, but…”

I have to explain better. He has to know that I won’t be able to give my body to him as payment like I’d expected and planned. I can’t now.

“You don’t owe my anything, Seto. I’m just glad that I was able to help you,” he smiles, this time genuinely.

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The next day, Yami acts as though nothing had happened and we go back to our routine of me sitting around the house, occasionally helping Yami in the garden and waiting for him to come home from work.

Raphael doesn’t make an appearance for several weeks, which concerns me as Yami’s bright spirit begins drooping noticeably. I offer to leave so that Raphael will come back, but he dismisses my suggestion with a wave. I’m about to find Raphael’s number and ask him to come back myself, when he finally shows up. It’s been over a month and Yami looks happier than I’ve seen him in quite a while.

The first time Raphael comes over after his long absence, he barely looks my way and pointedly avoids me for the entire two days that he’s here. He even goes so far as to cook only enough food for he and Yami to eat, forcing Yami to share some of his with me. Yami behaves as though Raphael isn’t treating me like something he scraped off of his shoe, making it a point to include me when they eat and baking extra treats.

Frankly, Yami worries me a lot more than Raphael. I understand Raphael. To him, I’m a lying, conniving piece of street trash who will eventually turn on Yami and hurt him badly. And I can’t offer him any proof that I won’t.

Because I’m not completely sure that his assessment is wrong.

But Yami confuses me. I don’t know what he wants or why I’m still here in his house. The only thing I contribute is to the size of his food bill! Maybe if I did some work around the house, cleaned, washed dishes, cooked something. Then maybe I wouldn’t feel like I’m going deeper into debt with him. Then maybe Raphael will stop harassing Yami about me.

After his first visit following the month-long absence, Raphael has spent nearly every day here when Yami isn’t at work. And nearly everyday they get into a fight, which somehow involves my staying here. I can tell that it’s straining their friendship, which is another reason that I don’t understand Yami’s actions.

Listening to them argue, I learn that he and Raphael have been close friends since they were children. I also learn about Otogi Ryuuji and why Raphael hates him so much.

And why he sees him in me.

Yami helped Otogi to get back on his feet after suffering the loss of his home and family in a house fire. The fire had also destroyed the hair salon that Otogi ran in his basement, effectively costing him his only means of support as well. Yami met him on the street near the end of his apprenticeship with a master chef in Tokyo. Otogi wasn’t homeless then, but just barely as his shoeshine job didn’t provide much. Yami found him a job and a place, and in Yami’s words “his lost dignity.”

Raphael and Yami’s arguments never disclose the full story, but I do find out that Yami fell in love, while Otogi had only been using him to finance the re-building of his hairdressing career. They’d moved in together, and at some point Otogi started bringing home strange women, claiming they were clients. It had been Raphael who’d found out the truth. Raphael who’d had to explain why Otogi moved out unexpectedly. Raphael who’d had to help Yami piece himself and his career back together after Otogi’s betrayal had shattered both.

Yes, I understand Raphael’s contempt for me; why all he can see in my presence was Yami being hurt again.

Knowing all of that, Yami’s actions make even less sense to me. At least when I thought he wanted me for sex, I understood him, but now…

Why the hell am I here?

“Seto!” Yami’s yell up the stairs intrudes into my thoughts.

“What?” I snap, loudly.

“Come on! It’s time to go meet Raphael for lunch and buy groceries!” He yells back.

Even after a month of regularly fighting with Raphael, Yami has still refused to change his routine concerning their time together. Every other Tuesday, he drags me out to lunch with him and the huge angry blonde and then grocery shopping with both of them. I suppose I could simply stay in the house and avoid the whole situation, but I find Yami’s standing up for me makes me feel…good.

We pull up in Yami’s car at the regular café’ and Raphael is standing there glaring, as usual.

“Why the hell do you have to always bring him, Yami?” he snips as we all take a seat outside for a change.

I tune out Yami’s response and their subsequent quietly heated argument as I look around, enjoying the sights of a pleasant summer afternoon. I also realize that sitting outside the café is much nicer than sitting in. I’m glad that it has cooled enough for us to do so today.

Across the street, I see a family of four enjoying lunch at another café. There’s a mom, a dad, and two sons who look about 5 and 10 years old. I catch myself staring as I wonder if Mokuba is having outings like that with the Ishtars. I hope so. I continue to gaze at the family while they smile and laugh and obviously enjoy their time together. My mind drifts as I wonder what it would have been like to have that kind of childhood. After another few minutes, I tear my gaze away and watch cars go by instead.

I’ve tried not to think too much about Mokuba because it hurts so badly not to have him near me. But seeing that family reminds me of how well the Ishtars took care of Mokuba and how happy he was with them. I wish I could talk to him. Tell him that I love him. Tell him that I miss him. Yami has a computer. Maybe I could use it to…

A flash out of the corner of my eye and loud chattering pulls me from my musings.

“Chef Yami, do you and Chef Raphael still deny that you are a couple?” A slim brown haired woman with bright green eyes and a mini-recorder prods.

“Chef Yami, is it true that you two have a little love nest outside of the city where you escape to when you’re off duty?” A scary looking blonde with black chopsticks to match her black suit intones.

“Chef Raphael, is it true that you and Chef Yami are planning nuptials in the near future?” The green-eyed woman insinuates, sticking her recorder up to Raphael’s face.

“Get away from us!” Raphael bellows.

His outburst only seems to encourage them as more questions about their relationship are thrown before the tide turns on the words of a tanned, black-haired woman with bright red lipstick.

“And who’s this handsome addition? Is there perhaps a love triangle in play?” She purrs at me.

Her question incites the others and they move as one toward me. I see the camera’s flash a moment too late to put up my hands.