Taken alive on the field by a White Rose commander who has no loyalty to the White Rose, Henry Yugi Tudor is not chained, not ransomed, not questioned. He is simply looked at. Seto keeps him in a quiet castle, then takes him to a cobblestone town where no one knows either of them, and there — for a handful of days — they are only two men. Both live for a purpose. The purposes are not the same, and both of them know it.
This is a translation of an original work on Pixiv.
Original Title: 分かたれる道（ロゼチュ）
Original Author: 葉人(@Hathor_yuki)
Personal site: https://prideshipping.sakura.ne.jp
01 A Prisoner Without Chains
The sky was white.
Not clouds. Smoke, Yugi understood. Understanding it, he turned aside the blade bearing down on him and knocked the man's sword away with the returning stroke. He had stopped counting how many times the shock of impact had run up his arm.
Since morning the battlefield had been saturated with the smell of blood.
The White Rose held the advantage, the messenger had said. Not in numbers, not in ground — for now, they were being pushed by momentum alone.
The Lancastrian soldiers were holding on with everything they had, but Yugi could see it. Feet giving ground inch by inch, the edge of a formation beginning to waver. A battlefield always takes on a particular shape just before something, somewhere, gives way.
By the book, the enemy would move here without fail. But there was not enough left in hand to meet it.
Joey shouted.
"Prince — the right flank—!"
"I see it."
Yugi answered shortly and brought his horse around. The confusion on the right, struck from the side, was already entering the stage where it could no longer be gathered up.
Hold the centre while rebuilding the right. Simple enough to say. Whether it could be done with the pieces he had was another question.
He would not say it could not be done. He never had.
Yugi reset his grip on his sword. The exhaustion came from the joints of his legs. What was heavy was not the armour but the accumulated weight of hours.
He had been moving since before dawn. When had he last had water?
Even so, none of that was a reason to stop.
Not until the war was ended.
One thing only. That alone was what kept Yugi standing. Not the throne, not honour.
He simply wanted these days of blood and smoke to end. At some point he had come to believe that this was what he had been born for.
The screaming on the right grew louder.
At the centre of the melee, something shifted. Yugi felt it first as sound.
Within the din of the battlefield, something was moving with a stillness that did not belong there. At the centre of a space that many soldiers were unconsciously giving way to.
It bore the emblem of the White Rose, but something was wrong. Even allied soldiers were keeping their distance around this figure.
He narrowed his eyes from horseback.
White armour, near to silver. Tall. Not a wasted motion in the handling of the sword. No — less that there was nothing wasted than that there was nothing but the necessary.
Not battle-fervor, not bloodlust. No temperature was visible at all. A strangely cold way of moving. Not enjoyment, not the drive of duty. Simply the removal of what was in the way. That kind of motion.
Who is that. Surely that man is not—
There was no time to think. The right flank finally broke.
The collapse of the right swept over Yugi's retainers like a wave.
He heard Joey's voice shouting. Prince. That much reached him, and the rest vanished into the noise. Yugi cut, parried, and dodged the White Rose soldiers surging in.
By the time he registered it, neither his horse nor any banner he knew was in sight.
He was cut off.
It took him less than a moment to grasp the situation, but that moment was one he could ill afford. The encirclement tightened. The White Rose soldiers drove him back, drawing a half-circle around him.
Not a cliff, not a trap. A wall of men. Well-disciplined. Not improvised — a movement aimed at from the start.
Before he could wonder whose doing it was, the wall of men parted.
At the centre of the gap, that white armour came into view.
Not mounted. On foot. Walking through the thick of the melee as though out for a stroll. His sword was sheathed. If anything, that raised Yugi's guard further.
"Stop there."
Yugi said it. His voice came out steadier than he expected.
The man did not stop.
The distance closed. Ten paces, seven, five.
Yugi raised his sword. Into his spent arms he forced strength all the same.
He looked at the man's eyes. They were blue. Different from how they had looked at a distance. Up close, there was almost nothing in them that could be called emotion.
No hostility, no contempt, no exhilaration. They were simply eyes that were looking at something.
And for an instant, Yugi thought he saw colour come into them.
Perhaps he imagined it. He glared back, but the man was only looking at him.
They crossed swords three times.
The first, Yugi read the line of the man's blade. He read it. But his arms, his legs, came a beat late. Fatigue had opened a discrepancy the width of a sheet of paper between judgment and body.
The second, his stance was broken. He somehow recovered.
There was no third.
It was strength. Not technique, not speed — he was driven through by pure force. His sword was struck away, the man stepped in, and by the time Yugi understood, his right arm was wrenched up behind his back. Bent close to the ground, a cold blade against his throat.
He could not move.
Yugi clenched his teeth. He thought the end had come. But what came before it was bewilderment.
He does not intend to kill me.
In this position, it was impossible that he could not. And yet the blade simply rested there. As though confirming that Yugi was breathing.
Presently came the sound of a sword being sheathed.
"Don't resist."
The voice came down from above him. Low, flat, and yet with something faintly amused running under it.
"I won't kill you."
"…Why."
Yugi forced it out. His arm hurt. What hurt more was the thing he could not understand. Kill him, and it was the highest honour of the field. And everything would be over.
But the man did not answer. Instead he eased his grip slightly. Not enough to allow escape.
Yugi was pulled upright, and they came face to face.
Close. At this distance he noticed that the man's features were arranged with a precision unsuited to a battlefield. For some reason, he had not wanted to notice.
"What is your purpose."
Before becoming a prisoner, at the very least he had to ask that.
Information — or else.
The corner of the man's mouth moved, very slightly. Perhaps he had smiled. And if he had, Yugi had no idea what he found funny.
"…Set your mind at ease. It is not, at any rate, the victory of the White Rose."
He murmured it close to Yugi's ear, for Yugi alone.
Yugi looked into his eyes. He searched for something and could read nothing. The blue eyes were quiet, and yet they were unmistakably looking at him. Not at the state of the battle, not at a map, not at a throne. At Yugi.
"I'll have your name."
Now it was Yugi's turn to answer. He hesitated for an instant, then decided there was no reason to.
"Do you need to ask?"
"No. I have a fair idea."
"…Yugi will do."
He did not say prince. There was no need to.
The man narrowed his eyes, amused.
"Seto."
That was the beginning.
The castle was quiet.
It was not what Yugi had imagined.
There was no demand for surrender, no humiliation of being displayed as a prisoner, no cold appraisal as a piece in a negotiation.
Seto's castle was not large, but it was well kept. The room given to Yugi faced south, and in the afternoon the light came in long across the floor.
No chains, no shackles. Only that he could not go outside.
Few served Seto, and those who attended Yugi were the bare minimum.
They did not call Yugi by name. Nor did they call him the prince of the Red Rose.
They did not meet his eyes; they brought his meals quietly and left quietly. He was never asked who he was, and never told who he was.
Perhaps there was no one in this castle who knew who he was.
When he realised it, Yugi felt something strange. It was not liberation. Something more unstable, closer to having no ground beneath him.
Seto usually appeared in the evening.
He came in without knocking, pulled out a chair and sat. He had called it Yugi's room, and yet he entered it as though it were his own.
That irritated Yugi, though he did not know how he was supposed to be irritated.
Perhaps he should have shouted at him as an enemy — but from the beginning Seto had not treated Yugi as one.
"Have you eaten."
On the evening of the second day, Seto checked briefly.
"I have."
"And slept?"
"…Why do you ask that."
Seto did not answer. He looked at Yugi instead. The same eyes as on the battlefield. Eyes that were simply looking at something.
Three days passed.
Every day Seto appeared at evening and left a few short words behind.
Questions that seemed to check on Yugi's physical condition, talk of no consequence, and then a silence that seemed to be waiting for Yugi's answer.
It was that silence Yugi found hardest to handle.
Seven days passed.
That evening, when Seto appeared as always, Yugi spoke first.
"I doubt it, but — do you imagine you are winning me over?"
Having said it, he thought it might have been too direct even for him. But Seto's expression did not change. He looked at Yugi for a moment, then spoke.
"Close, but not quite. …I am courting you."
There was not the slightest hesitation in it.
Yugi lost his reply. He meant to say they were enemies. That Seto was siding with the White Rose.
But Seto had said at the outset that he held no loyalty to the White Rose. Which meant Seto had never had a reason to call Yugi an enemy either.
"…I do not understand. There is nothing in it for you if I turn."
"…Is that so."
"Don't 'is that so' me. You must know there is no chance I would side with the White Rose."
"It's fine. There is time."
Seto said only that, and left for the day.
By the time ten days had passed, Yugi had begun waiting for Seto to come to the room.
Noticing it, he grew angry with himself. There was no reason to wait.
It was because there was no one else to talk to. Nothing more than that, he told himself.
Seto had said he was courting him, but what he actually did was gentle.
One night they simply sat in the same room. Seto was reading something, and Yugi looked out the window.
Without words, it was not uncomfortable. That was what Yugi found strangest of all.
Now and then he took Yugi's hand.
It was never abrupt. Mid-conversation, in a natural motion, Seto's hand would come to rest over Yugi's where it lay on the table. Yugi did not shake it off.
At first, of course, he had. Perhaps he should still have been shaking it off now.
But the hand simply rested there. Warm, and heavy, and saying nothing.
Yugi kept looking out the window and did not move.
"Don't be so tense."
There was no answer to give.
Another night he touched Yugi's hair. From behind, combing it through. Yugi did not turn around. If he turned, he felt, something irreversible would happen. There was no basis for it, but he felt it.
He let out a breath, as though to loosen his stiffened body.
"Why do you tell no one."
One night, Yugi asked.
"Tell them what."
"That you have captured me. With me in hand, I am material for negotiation. For the White Rose, and for my own people. More than that—"
With Yugi's head, it would even be possible to end this war.
Seto was silent for a while.
"There is no need."
"It's not that you don't know what I am worth."
"I know."
"Then—"
"Your worth is mine to decide."
It was a quiet voice. But it carried a weight that permitted no argument.
Yugi's words caught. As a prince, he ought to have been angry. But there was no contempt in what Seto said. No appraisal, no calculation. Not that Yugi could feel, at least.
He was simply looking at Yugi.
As Yugi.
02 The Town Where No One Knows Us
One morning, Yugi said it.
"This castle is cramped."
At some point it had become Seto's habit to take breakfast in Yugi's room. Sitting across from him, he heard the words and stopped moving for a moment.
"Cramped?"
"That is what I said."
"Hardly the sort of thing a prisoner says."
For all the content of the words, the voice was amused.
"Have you ever once treated me as one?"
Seto looked at Yugi. Yugi looked back. Neither gave ground. He knew a thing like this would not pass.
By any reasonable measure, a demand that could not possibly be granted.
It was not only that he had tired of the light in this room, but even so he could not keep from saying it.
The corner of Seto's mouth drew a loose arc.
"Interesting. Wait two days."
Two days later, Seto actually took him out.
They left before dawn. On unremarkable horses, in unremarkable clothes. No attendant of Seto's, no soldier to guide them. Only the two of them.
At first Yugi suspected a trap. He thought he might be disposed of on some deserted road.
But Seto only faced forward and rode.
Before long the castle walls passed out of sight.
In the light of dawn, a town appeared.
Not large. But unmistakably a town where people were living. The smell of baking bread, footsteps on cobblestone, someone laughing in the distance.
At some point Yugi had grown distant from such things. Going back and forth between battlefield and castle, he had been forgetting the texture of a place where people simply lived.
"Here?"
"I keep a hideaway. It has no space to speak of, but it will be less 'cramped' than the castle."
It was not sarcasm. Yugi already knew Seto had no habit of sarcasm.
The hideaway was a stone house at the edge of town. Unremarkable. No sign, no ornament, an ordinary house blended into the street. Inside it was small, but clean, and from the window one could see the roofs of the town.
"Is anyone else here?"
"No. No one comes but me."
Yugi decided not to think about what that meant, not right away.
Mornings in the town were different from the castle.
Seto did not stop him from going to the market. Instead he walked beside him. No armour, no emblem — simply two men.
At first Yugi could not get used to the strangeness of it. When someone looked at him, they did not see a prince. When they looked at Seto, they did not see a commander of the White Rose.
They were simply two people.
An old man selling produce spoke to Seto. Asked if he was a traveller. Seto answered shortly that he was. It was not a lie. Seto belonged nowhere, so wherever he was, he was a traveller.
They bought bread. From a stall, still warm. Seto handed it to Yugi with a face that made it seem the most obvious thing.
Yugi took it. With the same obvious face.
They ate it side by side on the cobblestones.
It was time of no consequence. And yet, strangely, Yugi could not find words.
Seto was silent too. The sounds of the town filled the space between them.
Past noon a child came running and collided with Yugi's leg. Yugi caught the child reflexively as it started to fall. The child looked up at him, then ran off. A trivial thing, but Seto had been watching.
"What."
"Nothing."
Seto faced forward again. But his profile had softened, slightly.
An expression Yugi had never seen. Not on the battlefield, not in the castle. A face in which something had come a little loose.
Alike, Yugi thought.
What it was alike to, he did not know. He simply thought it.
In the evening, walking along the river, Yugi asked him.
"Are you searching for something?"
Seto's feet stopped for an instant. Stopped, and started again.
"What makes you think so."
"You said victory in the war is not your purpose. Then your purpose is elsewhere. Watch the way you move and it is obvious. It is how a man searching for something moves."
Seto was silent for a while. Only the sound of the river.
"You won't answer."
"…You see a great deal."
"That is not an answer."
"No, it is not."
That was all. He did not deny it. Since this man said only what was necessary, that came quite close to affirmation.
Searching for something.
He too was fighting for something. End the war, become king. He had lived to this day for that one point.
Seto, too, was living for something.
And what that something was, was not the same.
Yugi felt it while looking at the river. He did not put it into words. But having understood it settled something, decisively.
It was not as though that posed any particular problem. He let out a small breath.
That night, back at the hideaway, Seto lit a fire. The sight of the two of them sitting side by side before the small hearth resembled the nights at the castle, but it was different.
There was no wall. Whatever had remained last inside Yugi had already been dissolving, little by little, in the air of the town.
"Seto."
Seto turned.
"Are we going out into the town tomorrow as well?"
Seto looked at him. Then said, shortly:
"We are. You are coming, aren't you."
Yugi nodded slightly.
It was the night of the third day.
They opened wine bought at the market. Seto held his drink well. Yugi should not have been weak to it either, but perhaps because he was inside an unfamiliar calm, it went to his head quickly.
The fire in the hearth had burned low.
Yugi watched the fire. Seto said nothing. This man always waited until Yugi spoke. Once he understood that, the silence had stopped being difficult.
"It is strange."
Yugi said. In a voice like talking to himself.
"What is."
"The war feels far away."
It really was far. The din of the battlefield, the red and white banners, Joey's voice — none of it reached here. In the cobblestones and the sound of the river and the smell of wine, there was no shadow of war.
"Do you want to forget it?"
"I do not imagine I can."
Yugi looked at Seto.
"It is only far away right now. That is all."
Seto was looking at him. The usual eyes. But tonight there was something different in them. Something he had never seen on the battlefield or in the castle, something that lay much nearer.
He felt he had seen this colour somewhere before.
Seto reached out.
He touched Yugi's cheek.
He had been touched in the castle too. His hair, his hand. But this was different.
Different, Yugi thought. There was no distance in it.
In the light of the hearth, Seto's face was right there.
He did not push the hand away.
He could find no reason in himself to push it away.
Seto moved slowly. He always did. This man hurried at nothing. At his own pace, as though confirming something. He came closer in a way that made it clear he would stop if Yugi said he did not want it.
Yugi did not close his eyes.
He kept looking into Seto's eyes and did not move.
The colour in those eyes the first time they met — perhaps he had not been mistaken after all. He was thinking that.
Lips touched.
Soft. That was all he thought. Somewhere far off he thought that a man whose hands cut people down on a battlefield could touch like this.
And then they parted.
He dimly remembered being told that he was being courted.
Seto moved only after Yugi had taken hold of his collar.
Seto did not mistake the meaning of the hand that pulled him in. Slowly, but unmistakably, he answered it.
After a while Seto drew back a little and looked at Yugi. Eyes that were asking.
Yugi did not nod, but neither did he look away.
That, it seemed, was enough.
Seto's lips met his again. Deeper this time, and slower.
His tongue slid into Yugi's mouth, searching, winding. Their breath mingled; heat passed between them.
Yugi reached out without thinking and dug his fingers into Seto's shoulder. He had not known this man's warmth could feel so good.
Without breaking the kiss, Seto moved his hands, as though checking Yugi's reactions.
Beneath the cloak, he slid a hand up from the hem of Yugi's clothes to bare skin. His fingertips traced Yugi's stomach, then moved slowly upward.
Reaching Yugi's chest, he brushed lightly across it. Yugi's body jerked. A sweet ache spread through him and his breathing broke.
"Mm…"
A small sound escaped. Seto did not miss it and repeated the motion gently, drawing circles with his thumb, pinching lightly.
Yugi's body grew hot and his hips lifted of their own accord. Seto's eyes narrowed, watching him with satisfaction. There were no words, as ever. Instead, the hands touching him said everything.
Seto guided Yugi's body gently to the bed and sat him down. The light in the room was soft, drawing their shadows long.
Seto's eyes held Yugi, asking permission without words.
When Yugi nodded slightly, Seto's hands began to move. Everything was slow, as though he were handling something precious.
Seto knelt quietly in front of him. The eyes looking up at him were different from those on the battlefield and from those in the castle. Eyes concentrated on something. Eyes with nothing in them but Yugi.
A hand touched Yugi's leg.
He loosened the front lacing of the doublet. The cloth eased and the front opened. Seto's fingers traced the edge.
That alone changed Yugi's breathing.
Next he undid the points.
One by one he untied the laces joining hose to doublet, working around Yugi's waist. Each time Seto's fingers touched his hip, the warmth carried through.
The instant the last one came free, Yugi turned his face away.
Then he drew the doublet off.
The cloth slid away. Seto laid it on the floor and turned his eyes to Yugi's skin.
Being looked at was unsettling. Not appraisal — something else entirely. As if drawn to it, Seto's lips touched Yugi's shoulder.
Yugi's throat moved slightly in spite of himself.
Seto's fingers went to the laces of the codpiece.
He undid the knots one at a time. Checking Yugi's reactions, pausing, continuing again.
As though peeling away a shell, one layer at a time.
When the cloth came away, Yugi meant to close his eyes. He could not. At that exact moment Seto looked up at him.
Their eyes met, without warning.
Seto said nothing. He only laid a hand against Yugi's hip. It was warm, and something inside Yugi came a little loose.
He reached for the garters.
His fingers touched the back of Yugi's knee. Yugi's body trembled faintly. Seto stopped his hand. He waited, without hurrying, for the trembling to subside. Then he slowly untied the cords.
He hooked his fingers into the hose.
Starting with the right leg, he drew the cloth slowly down. His fingers slid along the line of the leg. Yugi tried to steady his breathing and could not. The left leg the same way, carefully, and laid it on the floor.
Last, he removed the braies.
Seto's hands stopped. Stopped, and looked at Yugi. Looked at all of him.
For the first time Yugi understood what it meant to be looked at. It was not embarrassment. Something with deeper roots, a sensation of being shaken somewhere far down.
Seto brought his body close.
As if to hold him. As if to cover him. Low and quiet, at his ear, he whispered.
"Beautiful."
That was all.
It was a plain word with no ornament to it, but Yugi already knew this man did not lie. And so the word reached him straight through.
Yugi closed his eyes.
Seto's warmth was everything. The fire in the hearth burned low. The night of the town went quietly on.
From here on, it was not words.
Seto's hand touched Yugi's chin and tipped his face up.
As though to remove any escape, and yet without force. Yugi did not flee.
Again their lips met.
Deeper than the first time. He could leave it to Seto. It was the movement of a man who knew where he was going. Yugi followed it naturally.
Weight came over him, and his back met the bed.
The fire in the hearth burned quietly.
Seto did not hurry.
He never did. On the battlefield, in the castle, in this town. This man had his own pace and did not adjust it to anyone.
But tonight was different. He was matching Yugi. Listening to Yugi's breath, waiting for the tension in Yugi's body to ease, he went on.
With each touch, Yugi learned the outline of himself.
There was sensation in places he never usually felt. Only where Seto's hand had been took on heat. That heat spread, little by little.
He was not afraid.
That surprised him slightly. From the night of his capture onward he had never feared this man to begin with.
But he had thought tonight might be frightening in a different sense. He did not know why. Yet from beginning to end, the way Seto touched him never left him behind.
Yugi had not known there was a way of touching that did not leave you behind.
Seto whispered something.
It was not words. A low voice that did not form into words. But it reached Yugi. Not as meaning — as sound. He learned for the first time that this man's voice could become like that.
Yugi shivered faintly and closed his eyes.
Seto's warmth was the whole of the present. There was weight. A definite weight. His body knew this was not a dream.
In the night of a cobblestone town, by the light of a hearth fire, Seto and Yugi were there. That alone was the whole of the present.
They resembled each other somewhere. He thought that.
Living for a purpose. That alone was the same. The purposes differed. When the war ended, Yugi would put down roots here. Seto would go somewhere. He knew that. Knowing it, he was here tonight.
And so all of it was real.
Seto touched the bared lower half of him. Stroking the inner thigh, moving gradually toward the centre. Yugi was already heated there, and faintly damp.
"May I touch you?"
Seto's voice was low, close to a whisper.
You already are, he thought, but there was nothing to do but nod. Seto's fingers closed gently around him. They moved slowly, up and down, fingertips brushing the tip.
"Nn…"
Yugi trembled, feeling a sweet sensation race through his whole body. His breath broke, and his fingers clutched at Seto's hair as though for support.
Seto moved his fingers further.
He spread Yugi's legs, stroking gently around him, easing the tension.
"Ah… nn…"
Seto felt Yugi's body go rigid. Nipping softly at his earlobe, he whispered.
"Let go. I won't hurt you."
He coated his fingertips with oil and pressed slowly in. Feeling Yugi's warmth tighten around him, Seto waited quietly.
As Yugi's breathing steadied, the intrusion deepened by degrees.
His body melted with heat and sounds escaped him. Each time Seto's fingers traced a sensitive place, his hips shook.
When he stole a glance, Seto's expression was somehow soft, and Yugi looked away.
Seto's fingers searched gently inside him, striking each sensitive point with precision. Another finger joined them, moving to spread him open gently.
Yugi's body burned; he thought it was too hot.
Without his knowing, he answered by tightening around the fingers. At the same time, Seto's other hand closed around him. Warm.
From inside and out, those fingers raised Yugi's senses to something vivid.
"Ha… ah…"
Yugi's voice shook and his hips moved without meaning to. His breathing broke; his vision blurred. Seto did not stop, but continued gently, driving Yugi's body to its limit.
The two sensations overlapped and finally reached their peak. Yugi's body shuddered and white heat spilled from him. In the aftermath he breathed from his shoulders, his chest rising and falling hard.
Seto drew his fingers slowly out and stroked Yugi's body gently. He put his lips to the sweat-damp forehead, combing back the hair. Looking into Yugi's eyes, he whispered low.
"It would be inconvenient if you gave out already."
At that, Yugi felt the heat rise in his cheeks. He had not known this man's voice could sound so sweet.
The stroking hand slid down his back and supported his hips. Yugi let out a breath and released the tension.
Not missing the moment, Seto brought his body over him. He pressed his own heat slowly toward the deepest part of Yugi.
Seto's heat was hotter than he had expected.
"Haa… ah…!"
Yugi's insides took him in and tightened around him as though enfolding him. Seto's movements were careful, checking Yugi's reactions as he buried himself deep.
Fully seated, Seto held still for a moment. Feeling the hot pulse of Yugi around him, even his breathing faltered slightly.
Holding Yugi's eyes, he drew slowly back and worked into him again. The movement was calm but sure, and Yugi shook with it.
"Nn… nnh…"
Sounds escaped him. Each time Seto's heat pushed slowly in, a prickling pleasure ran up his spine, and in the moment of withdrawal a sweet sense of loss mixed into it, only to be filled again.
The pleasure never broke, and Yugi's body grew hot enough to melt.
His hips moved on their own. As though they knew how to receive him.
Seto kept the rhythm, sometimes changing the angle to aim at a sensitive place. His eyes were strange — tender, and at the same time enjoying the reactions.
Yugi's breath came in pieces; his fingers dug into Seto's back and his nails left marks. Their sweat mingled, and wet sounds carried in the room. Yugi's body neared its limit, the pleasure stacking toward its peak.
Before long Yugi's body shuddered. Heat spilled over, and he reached his second peak.
He could not hold his voice back; a sweet cry spilled from his throat. Seto did not stop moving, following gently after the aftershocks.
"…May I?"
A low voice, mixed with breath.
Yugi opened his eyes and nodded once. That was enough to convey it.
Seto's movements quickened. A few deep thrusts, and he released himself.
Something hot spread deep inside him.
Seto's body came down over Yugi's. Steadying his breath, Seto stroked Yugi's hair gently and let himself sink into the quiet afterglow.
How much time passed, he did not know.
Yugi was in Seto's arms. He could see the ceiling. The fire in the hearth had burned low. The sounds of the town came from far off. Someone laughing, the sound of the wind, the running of the river. The world went on. As though nothing had happened.
But inside Yugi, something had changed.
It was not the sensation of change. Rather, of something finally settling. Something that had wavered for a long time had gone quiet for the first time tonight.
He had come to know that something.
For the first time he held it as his own. He had not been searching for it. The time he had spent uncertain may have been long. But now he simply knew. He had come to know.
Seto's hand moved. Combing through his hair. The same motion as in the castle. But tonight there was nothing in between.
It was strange. Thinking it strange, he could not put into words what was strange about it.
A prisoner lay in the arms of the man who had captured him. Perhaps that was what was strange. But Yugi no longer had any sense of being a prisoner.
Nor did Seto wear the face of a man who had taken a captive. He never had.
He had only been beside him.
"Seto."
He called, and there was no answer. But the hand did not stop. Which meant he had been heard.
"You——"
He began, and stopped.
"What."
"…Nothing."
There were no words to continue with. Simply calling the name had been enough. That on this night he had been able to call this man's name. That alone.
The hearth fire flared with its last brightness.
The night of the town deepened.
The chest of a man who resembled him somewhere.
Knowing their purposes differed, still, for tonight alone, he was simply here.
In the morning he woke first.
Light came in at the window. The morning sun of the town was softer than the castle's. He did not know why. They should have been under the same sky, and yet here the quality of the light seemed different.
Seto was still asleep.
For a while Yugi looked at his face. With the eyes that were always looking at something closed, it seemed a very different face. Just a man's face, the age it actually was.
To think that at this moment he alone knew this face gave him a feeling he could not name. So he made himself think nothing at all.
He got up and opened the window a little. A baker's boy ran across the cobblestones. He had seen the boy yesterday too; perhaps he ran every morning.
So this was what an ordinary morning was.
It was far removed from him. For as long as he could remember he had lived within the atmosphere of war. Before he learned how to hold a sword, he learned to carry the name of Lancaster.
He had never had time to look at an ordinary morning from a window like this.
And so this was real.
A real morning, real light, a real quiet. And the man in this room was, to Yugi, real as well.
Only.
His reason told him quietly.
You cannot leave England. Until you are king, you must keep your roots in this land. That is your purpose, and the reason you are who you are.
And this man will go.
Where, he did not know. For what, he did not know either. He knew only that Seto was not a man who would stay.
So he would not touch on it. Touching on it would change nothing. Nothing could be changed. Better, then, to leave it alone.
Seto did not touch on it either.
He understood that. That man knew as well. Knowing it, he was still here.
On the fourth day, Seto stopped in the market.
It was in front of a shop selling spices. Seto exchanged a few words with the shopkeeper and bought a small paper packet.
"What is that?"
"Where I was born, they make a simple medicine from it."
He did not say where that was. Yugi did not ask.
He only thought that even this man had a homeland.
An obvious thing. But from the first time he saw him on the battlefield, Seto had looked like a man without a place.
A man who put down roots nowhere, who could go anywhere. And now he walked beside him carrying a small paper packet.
"Do you know anything good to eat in this town?"
Seto asked.
"I would like to ask you that. It is your hideaway, isn't it."
"I was always alone."
That was all. That was all, but it sat heavily with Yugi. That he had said he was alone.
"How about there?"
Yugi pointed at a small place along the river. It had smelled good when they passed it yesterday.
"If you are the one choosing, that will do."
They went in together and ate together. The mistress of the house spoke to them amiably. Half-joking, she asked if they were husband and wife.
Yugi had no answer ready. He was certainly not dressed as a woman.
Seto answered first.
"Travelling companions."
The woman laughed, said then you must be close, and went away.
Yugi looked at Seto. Seto was looking at the food.
Travelling companions.
Not a lie. Not accurate either, but not a lie. At this moment that was what they were. Not headed anywhere, not come from anywhere, only two people who were here.
And that was permitted, for now only.
On the night of the fifth day, Seto called his name.
"Yugi."
That was all. Not to continue with anything — he simply called it.
"What is it?"
Seto did not answer. He only drew Yugi to him.
Yugi did not resist. He rested his head on Seto's shoulder and watched the hearth fire. Watched it dwindle, in silence.
This is what happiness is, Yugi thought.
He hesitated over whether he was allowed to give the feeling that name, but there was no other word for it. It was happiness. That was all it was. There was no need to line up reasons. It was warm, it was quiet, and this man was beside him. That alone.
He knew it was enough, and wanted nothing beyond it.
So tonight he simply was here.
Simply, from the bottom of his heart, here.
03 Dressed for Travel
Seven days had passed since they returned to the castle.
The feel of the town was still in his hands. The hardness of the cobblestones, the warmth of the bread, the sound of the river, the weight of Seto's cloak. When he closed his eyes he felt he could go back. Even knowing he could not.
Seto did not change in the castle either. He appeared at evening, sat beside him, touched him. But something was gradually different.
He did not put it into words. But he understood. Seto's eyes sometimes looked into the distance. Either the searching eyes were closing on something, or they had learned it lay somewhere out of reach. One of the two.
Either way, the meaning was the same.
This man would leave soon.
Yugi said nothing. There was nothing he could say. He had no words to hold him back. Nor any right to.
He had known from the start. He had been told at that very first meeting that their purposes differed.
Seto's purpose was not the end of the war. Which meant Seto's destination lay somewhere other than Yugi's.
A single trivial difference weighed terribly in the light of dawn.
On the morning of the eighth day, the door opened.
Seto never came in the morning except for breakfast. So Yugi looked up.
Seto was standing there. He wore a cloak. He was dressed for travel.
Yugi understood at once.
He asked nothing. There was no need. The instant he saw Seto's face he understood all of it. That the purpose could not be fulfilled in this land.
So Seto would leave. That was all it was. The reason would not be told. Or perhaps not that it would not be — perhaps this man simply did not have the words with which to tell it.
Seto came to stand in front of Yugi.
Closer than usual. Or perhaps it was the same distance as always. Only today that distance carried a different weight.
Yugi looked at Seto.
Seto looked at Yugi.
Those eyes. The eyes he had first seen on the battlefield. Eyes that were simply looking at something. But now they wavered. Faintly, and unmistakably. For the first time, Yugi saw Seto's eyes waver.
Seto spoke.
"Yugi. It is time to return to the fight."
——Henry Yugi Tudor.
He did not say it aloud, but the words were there. Unmistakably there. The name that had not once been spoken since the night of his capture was, on this morning alone, in the air.
Yugi tried to say something.
There were no words.
He meant to ask why he had been captured. Why he had been treated like this. Why he had been taken out into the town. Why his name had been called. Why——
And if he asked why.
And if an answer came back.
Would anything change?
It would not. Their destinations had differed from the start.
Seto would go somewhere, and Yugi would go on fighting here.
Until he was king, he would not leave this land. That was what Yugi had chosen. Not a role given to him by anyone, but a purpose Yugi had chosen himself.
So he would not hold him back. To do so would be to deny the very way this man lived for his purpose. That, above all, he did not want to do.
Seto spoke once more.
"May there be light in your future."
Yugi's throat would not move.
He had been prayed over — may there be light. In that future, this man would not be. And Seto said it knowing that himself.
Seto's hand touched Yugi's cheek, once.
The same way he had touched him that night in the town. As though confirming something — but this time, a touch that knew it would withdraw once the confirming was done.
It withdrew.
Seto turned on his heel.
Yugi watched his back.
Seto, he tried to call. But it did not become sound. If he made it sound, he felt something would collapse.
A back moving away, its eyes fixed on something. He did not want to break that time, that figure.
A single sound rang out at Yugi's feet. Beyond the foot he had put forward, the door was already closed.
There was no sound of a lock.
For a while Yugi stood looking at the door.
Why he had been captured, he did not know. Why he had been released, he did not know either. What Seto's purpose had been, he never learned.
Even so, there was something he did know.
The mornings in that town had been real. The cobblestones, the warmth of the bread, the sound of the river. The weight of Seto's hand, the lips that had touched his, his name being called. That night he had thought was happiness.
All of it had been a true ——.
No one could take it away.
Wherever Seto went, whatever he searched for, however he lived for a purpose Yugi did not know, that time had unmistakably existed.
Yugi took up the sword Seto had brought.
He put on his armour.
When he opened the door, light fell across the castle corridor. Morning light. Harder than the light of the town, light that carried the smell of war.
The escape route he had been taught was in his head. Yugi began to walk.
It was time to return to the fight.
The back of that man who had resembled him somewhere, kept inside his chest.
04 A Precious Season
Yugi became king.
It was a long war. Even after Seto left, the fighting with the White Rose went on.
The White Rose, having lost the anomalous weight that was Seto, was strong nonetheless. Yugi fought, lost, recovered, and fought again. Joey was beside him. His comrades were there. And still, in the solitary hours before dawn, Yugi always returned to the same place.
A town of cobblestones. The sound of the river. The smell of bread.
Just a little more, Yugi thought.
Fight a little more, and it would end. Endure a little more, and dawn would come. Yugi kept that "a little more" in his chest as though it were Seto's words.
Seto had never said it. But for some reason he thought that man would. That a man who lived for his purpose would say "a little more" and keep walking.
So he walked.
There was something like grief, something like loss. He had not forgotten. He had not looked away either.
Only, standing alone in the morning sun, even that parting came to seem beautiful.
Because it seemed beautiful, the sorrow receded.
And as far as it receded, he could go forward.
He decided to believe that this must be how people grow strong. Not by forgetting, but by putting it away deep in the chest, still beautiful, and carrying it.
The seasons turned. Winter would come before long.
Not the smoke of war, not the white of the White Rose. Ordinary snow would dye the world quietly. Before it came, he would go a little further.
And so Yugi became king.
Some months after the coronation.
Yugi went on a tour of inspection. A tour as king. To see how his people lived, to look over the towns. An obvious duty.
With his retinue, he went round several towns.
They reached that town past noon.
An unremarkable town. Neither large nor small. Rows of stone houses, a river running, a market.
His retinue went ahead, and Yugi dismounted.
It was the moment his foot met the cobblestones.
For some reason, more than he expected, he could not move.
It was not that he had come unprepared. He had held it in his head as one town of the tour, as a point on a map.
He had known it was that town.
And he had come knowing it. He had thought he could. As king, as duty, as nothing more than that.
Yugi let out the breath he had been holding. Nothing had changed.
Nothing had changed. The cobblestones were the same.
Obviously. Stone does not change.
But this hardness was the same hardness as that morning.
Up through the soles of his feet, all of it came back like a torrent.
They bought bread. They walked side by side. A child came running and collided with his leg. He heard the sound of the river.
He had asked what the man was searching for. No answer came back.
Travelling companions, Seto had said. The woman had laughed.
The hearth fire had burned low. And then, and then——
All of it flooded in.
"Your Majesty."
One of the retinue spoke, and he raised his head.
"It is nothing. Let us go on."
Yugi took a step forward. As king, straight ahead.
But the feel of cobblestone striking the soles of his feet resonated through him, and his eyes were looking at the town in spite of himself.
They passed the market.
There was a spice shop, but whether it was the one Seto had stopped at he could no longer tell.
But a shop like it was certainly there. That alone moved something in his chest.
They came out along the river.
There was the sound of water. The same sound. The season was different, and still the river ran with the same sound. Yugi looked at it for a while. He had his retinue wait a little way off.
He was waiting. He understood that plainly.
It was a sensation that would not become words. He had not known he had been longing for it this much.
It was not that he thought Seto would return.
He did not know where he was. He did not know whether he lived. Whether he had found what he sought, or was searching still.
He knew nothing, and knew all of it.
It was this town Yugi had been waiting for.
This town, entire, had been a precious season.
Those few days of being no one at all; the cobblestones, the wine, the hearth fire, Seto's warmth; the time before he was king, when Yugi was only Yugi — the whole of it.
Yugi looked up at the sky and narrowed his eyes. He felt it with his whole body. It was already overflowing, everywhere he turned.
——He was there.
In the whole of the town, Seto was there.
He was not there, and he was there.
Yugi returned his eyes to the river, and then closed them for a moment.
May there be light in your future, Seto had said.
There had been light. He had become king within it.
He had ended the war. And now his people lived ordinary mornings. A baker's boy was running. A woman was laughing. These were unmistakably the future Yugi had chosen.
Perhaps Seto's prayer had reached him. If a prayer was light, then light was——
He thought that far and let out a small breath. When he opened his eyes, a clear autumn sky.
The river was running. The sky was high. Winter would come soon.
He caught himself thinking: just a little more.
He wanted to stay here a little longer.
But a king has duties. His retinue was waiting. His people, the towns, this country were waiting for Yugi.
That was the destination Yugi had chosen.
It was not Seto's.
It had differed from the start. And still there had been a time when they crossed, and the crossing had been real, and because it was real it overflowed here even now.
Yugi turned on his heel.
And took the first step again. As king, straight ahead.
His feelings for that man who had resembled him somewhere left gently there, in the light of a precious season.
The title is taken from a GLAY song. It's borrowed from a fanwork I read over twenty years ago and have never been able to find again.
