Chapter Text
Takumi wanders the dark and silent Yukihira palace alone. The servants are all occupied with getting competitors in their respective rooms, and setting up for the competition, so no one really minds him as he traverses the palace corridors, peeking into rooms he shouldn’t and picking up things he shouldn’t. The only time he is stopped is when he tries to walk into the west wing, and a guard solemnly steps out of the shadows. He steps directly into Takumi’s path, tilting a brow. For the most part, these guards have been more statue-esque than the busts standing at the corner of each room. But now all of the ones stationed along the walls of the left wing look alert. They say nothing at all but Takumi gets the message.
The rest of the palace is his to explore however. It’s something to give him something to do.
Now that most of their food is going to be wasted, thanks to the whims of a bratty omega prince who doesn’t know what he’s talking about—no voice of his own? Takumi will show him a voice— he could try to find someone to offer the food to. A poorer competitor perhaps, someone who needs it.
But there aren’t any left.
Isami’s trick earlier means that anyone who couldn’t afford the adequate food supplies to match Aldini over-enthusiasm, have long since been shown the gates. Takumi feels kind of sorry for them. Out of the dismissed alphas, there must have been a decent amount with good intentions, with hopes to catch the eye of this omega prince for the right reasons. Surely. And now they’ve all been unfairly disqualified, before they can even prove themselves.
It’s so… sad and unfair!
Regardless, if there are any left, then they aren’t here. Apart from the guards in the left wing, and the servants running around trying to room the last of the twenty alphas left and their servants, everyone is mostly down at the colosseum. Preparing. Setting up. And Takumi doesn’t yet want to make his way to his seat amongst the commoners, to the spectators. The thought of doing so makes his chest burn.
So, he walks up and down the tiny corridors of the small Yukihira palace. No wonder the prince seized the opportunity to cull the competition. Takumi wonders how the kingdom had been trying to room all the alphas that had shown up.
It is quite big enough to fit the remaining twenty competitors and their servants, but compared to his own family’s kingdom, the palace is small. For one, this is the only palace on the island. Not the ten/twenty or so scattered around the land of Trattoria that Takumi could call home if he so chose to get married and move out of his home until his eventua; coronation.
On top of everything, palace only rules over a handful of small villages, rather than a true kingdom. At best, it is a cozy kingdom. And Takumi was raised to rule over empires. He’s not sure why he keeps reminding himself this, why he’s trying to comfort himself with his priviledge and superficial superiority.
Anyway, he understands why the omega prince might have listened to Isami, and culled the competition. It was a very strategic move, rather than having to humiliate themselves by asking the alphas to go and find shelter in the villages.
But why did Souma have to disqualify Takumi too?
He explores the adequate ballroom, wanders through the tiny library, peeks into the moderately sized palace kitchens. Walking keeps his mind busy. Otherwise, he would be frightfully bored. Seeing as he’s been disqualified, he can’t exactly be on the colosseum preparing his station for cooking. Seeing as he is not an omega, he can’t exactly spend the free period of time they have, plotting to seduce half the competition.
Isami had sighed after the accusation. “You know, brother. When you say things like that, you also insult me.”
“I’m not trying to insult anyone else.” Takumi’d snapped. “What are you doing?”
Isami stopped surveying the two costumes he’d laid down on his bed. Takumi no longer had a room of his own in the palace and would have to find room and board in the nearby village. But as he’d no wish to leave the palace as of just yet, he’d stuck around Isami’s for a little while.
The clothes on Isami’s bed were horribly ostentatious: a frock coat trussed with gold lacework, and an overly embroidered tunic. It is too much finery for the casual opening ceremony. Takumi remembered Prince Souma’s clothing. He looked nothing like his portrait, where he’d worn all the fuss of his royal mantle and jewellery. Souma had come out of the palace looking like a commoner, a servant, in a white tunic that really brought out the colour of his eyes.
“You’ll be sitting next to him. Are you trying to upstage him again, dressed in that?”
Isami went back to his outfits, fingering the lace on a collar. He had glanced at him from the side of his eye. “Concerned, are you?”
“It’s your tactics that got me into all this trouble in the first place.”
Isami’s mouth quirked up. “Trouble?”
“Pardon?”
“I thought you would be pleased that you were out.”
“The food, I mean,” Takumi said, quickly. “Tomatoes rot. And peaches. And kale. There’s over a fortnight’s worth of perishables you’ve overpacked that are no longer useful to anyone, because you got me disqualified! For goodness’s sake, we just got out of a drought.”
“And there are already measures Uncle is taking, to counter that. You’ve worried yourself to death about these things, that you don’t even know how to relax anymore,” Isami’d countered.
“Countermeasures that are going to take years to even see any results.” Takumi griped. “But how could you even know that, when all you ever care about is how pretty you look in the meetings and don’t listen at all?!”
Isami sucked his teeth. “Careful.”
”How could you possibly care about the clothes you are wearing when we have an actual crisis?”
“The only reason you are insulting me right now is because you know, that we both know, you got yourself disqualified. You were quiet and awkward.”
“I was not!”
“You waved,” Isami said, incredulously. “At the most important second.”
Takumi flushed. “What was I supposed to do?”
“Use your words? Like you should have done, when the head guard hinted you to?”
“I did!”
Isami shook his head. “You are horribly hopeless. No offence.”
“Should I have begged? Gone down on my knees? For an omega I have no desire of winning?” Takumi flushed, seconds after it had come out.
But instead of grabbing the opportunity like he usually would, Isami frowned and balled his hands into fists. He turned to Takumi, and Takumi got the oddest sensation that his brother was maybe quite upset with him. “I know you better than you do yourself, fratello. I saw your face when he walked out. Don’t stand there and talk about winning, like this is still just a political game to you.”
Takumi felt seen from the inside out. And he didn’t like it. His throat was dry. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”
Isami rolled his eyes. “You are impossible. You have to be the stupidest person I have the misfortune of knowing.” He waved a hand to the door, and turned back to going through the advantages and disadvantages of either outfits. “If you are that concerned about the food, find someone to “trade” with and I’ll stick to my clothing. It’s all you think we are good at, anyway.”
Takumi had waited several minutes staring at nothing in the room, before getting out.
And this is why he is mostly walking around listlessly around. His brother, the sweetest omega in the world, raised his voice at him. He’d even rolled his eyes.
But Takumi is at a loss about what Isami wants from him. What anyone wants from him.
He walks down the corridors of the Yukihira palace, observing the portraits that line the wall. The royal side of the family is generations and generations of unruly hair and cheeky smirks. He stares a little too long at the last family portrait, the deceased omega queen and the alpha father. In the queen’s arms is a toddler, with a striking pair of golden eyes. The toddler grins as if he has no worries in the world.
“They grow up too fast,” a voice says out of nowhere, almost scaring him to death. Takumi controls his shoulders enough to stay relaxed, and pretends his soul is still in his own body. “It feels like yesterday when he could barely wear his crown, without it falling into his neck.”
Takumi stares mutedly at King Joichiro, who sidles to a stop next to him. The weeks after getting the invitation, everyone had tried informing him in some way about the prince he was going to compete for, and his kingdom and his family, but Takumi had dodged them all, hoping that by ignoring the affair entirely, it would never happen. So he was quite vaguely educated. He suddenly wishes he’d tried to know more about these two other than the fact that they look like royals in their pictures. Though, where the prince doesn’t live up to expectation, King Saiba Joichiro is even more kingly-ish in person. He is magnficent.
Takumi remembers himself finally at last, and bows. “Your Majesty.”
The King smiles. He gestures a curious hand behind him, to the large window displaying servants and competitors hurrying to and fro. “I’m surprised that you aren’t down there, preparing with the others. The games are about to start.”
Takumi suddenly feels too embarrassed to explain why he isn’t. It is all at once more than just a failure to him. It is the feeling of being left out, being uninivited, being unwanted. Rejection does not bode well with alphas, but with alpha princes, it is almost the starting point of murderous intent.
He grits his teeth and finds he cannot admit it. “I’ve finished my preparation.”
“Already?” King Joichiro regards him suspiciously for a minute. “You wouldn’t happen to know what happened downstairs, would you? I’ve only heard bits and pieces but no one will tell me what’s going on.”
Takumi can’t help it. “Your son happened.” He quickly flushes when the king only raises his brows as a reply, but he continues on. It’s not as if the king wouldn’t find out in a few minutes. “He’s trimmed the competition to a mere handful of suitors.”
“Whatever for?”
Takumi hurries through the events of the afternoon, skipping over his own specific role in the events. “I assume that it was only strategic to save face after the other omega’s disrespect, as well as to keep the limits of your country’s resources in mind.” His eye twitches. “If there were any other personal reasons to exclude anyone, then I would not know.”
However, Takumi almost wants to slay himself with his own kitchen knife as soon as he finishes speaking. King Joichiro has been studying his face with interest as he talks, but his mouth quirks to the side after Takumi essentially calls his kingdom poor. Takumi expects a brutal counterargument, there’s just something in the king’s eyes that says he’s witty enough to destroy Takumi with words alone. But when King Joichiro opens up to speak, his words are nothing like what Takumi expected.
“I know who you are. You are one of the Aldini nephews. Takumi Aldini.”
Takumi raises his brows. The Aldini kingdom is quite fairly big, and well known. But he’d assumed that since he didn’t know this little kingdom well, that they would be just as poorly educated about his own too. “Yes, that would be me.”
“You are also the heir.”
Takumi nods again, unsurely.
King Joichiro leans in. “Don’t you find it strange that it is you your uncle will be handing everything over to, instead of his own sons and daughters?”
The question takes him aback. Takumi flinches, but his lips move without thought. “I am the only alpha. My cousins are all betas, and my brother is an omega. It is the tradition in our kingdom.”
The head monarch smiles as if he said the right answer. “It is the only tradition.” King Joichiro stands up straight, and looks into the potrait. Takumi mimicks him, looking back at the toddler in the picture. “But I happen to know people who would disagree.”
Takumi stares between the two red heads. “Do you mean your son, your Majesty?”
The king looks at him from the corner of his eyes, and only smiles a secretive smile. After a long and painful silence, he finally speaks.
“After his eighteenth birthday, my only son approached me and asked me what it would take for me to announce him the heir. I told him that it was never an option. He’s an omega. I have no siblings, nor do I have any other children, much less alphas. He would have to marry and sire my heir.” The king sucked his teeth. “Now, of course Souma wasn’t very pleased about it, about any of it. He spent the next three years of his life trying to convince me otherwise. But one cannot simply change tradition. So on his twenty first birthday, he came up to me and said he wouldn’t keep trying to argue with me. But he would do what his mother, my late wife did. He would throw a competition to find the best alpha. The richest? The strongest and the boldest? The only one who could keep up with any challenge Souma threw at them? Only he knows the definition of that. But after he found them, he would marry them.”
Takumi is in awe when the king finishes. His mouth is too dry, and he is at a loss for words.
King Joichiro scratches his chin. “Though, I must admit, I don’t really know what a cooking competition has to do with anything. It was not my idea, you understand. I’ve been merely instructed to sit back and observe. That’s why no one tells me anything.” He shrugs. “I suppose I’ll have to wait and see. May the best alpha win.”
With that, he bids Takumi adieu with a bow and walks off. Takumi looks back at the portrait, a fire in his heart burning as bright as the red flames of the toddler’s hair. Suddenly, he knows exactly what he has to do.
*
“I want to speak to Prince Souma,” he says to the guard standing in his path.
“Prince Souma is getting ready for the competition. He is not available for a private audience with contestants until after the first round.”
That will be too late. He can’t exactly enter the competition, when the game is already halfway. He needs to start with the others, to be judged with the others. Takumi peeks over the guard’s shoulder, into the left wing, wondering which room the prince is in. “It will only be a minute.”
“He is not available.”
Just as well, the head guard from earlier slips out of what Takumi concludes is Souma’s room. Their eyes meet, and the head makes his way over, already frowning.
“Alpha Aldini. Is there a problem?”
“Yes,” Takumi says, with a grumble. He does not want to admit defeat to this guy of all things. “I figured out where I went wrong earlier. And I would like to argue my way back into the competition.”
“I’m afraid that’s a little bit too late. The Prince will be heading down in a minute.” The head guard gestured the other way. “I was about to come and guide your brother over to his seat. Walk with me, and maybe I can hear you out.”
It’s better than nothing.
Takumi follows the head, and explains himself.
All this time, he’d been wondering what he had personally done to the prince, enough to be singled out and disqualified for something he’d clearly not been a part of. But he realised now that he was not reasoning with a rational mind.
He was dealing with the result of raising an only child, who happened to be a prince, who happened to be an omega too. Triple homicide.
He was dealing with an ego.
Absolutely. That’s what it was. How could he have missed this?
None of this had been personal to Takumi. Of course not. Clearly, Isami’s actions had hurt Souma’s feelings in some way, and that was really who he was punishing. Imagine that, a whole competition you’d planned for yourself, only for some random omega to walk in and grab the attention of the people that came for you. Perhaps Isami had opened Souma’s eyes to the fact that not everyone present in the competition was purely dedicated to him, and his arrogant omega mind hadn’t been able to accept this truth just yet.There had been of course only one way to react. Going directly against Isami’s wishes of seeing Takumi succeed was throwing everything Isami had done in their face. The ultimate vengeance.
It’s what makes sense. It’s what he tells himself.
But Takumi doesn’t say any of this to the head guard, of course. Instead, he appeals to the enemies that be and speaks directly to Souma’s ego. This is what Isami had been hinting at, right? This is what he meant when he told Takumi to use his words.
“I have to enter the competition, because I want to win it,” Takumi begins.
“Because your kingdom has gone through a drought, whilst the gods that looked down on you for a year, have smiled down at ours instead.” The head guard adopts an easy smile on his face as if he finds it amusing that Takumi is begging. “Yukihira is flourishing, we’ve never been more productive. Why do you think so many alphas showed up, if not for what our newfound wealth has attracted all over the world?
“No!” He is quick to deny this for some reason. Takumi swallows the discomfort this brings him, and continues. “I don’t want to win for my people, nor my king. This is for myself.”
“You can barely even say that without swallowing,” the head guard snorts.
The reply bursts out of him surprisingly too truthfully. “It is hard!”
And it is difficult, Takumi realises. Even as he tries to tell himself that he is doing it to get ahead, something about the words he is uttering is pulling at his chest, at his heartstrings.
“I have never had feelings for an omega before. I have never felt any connection similar to the one I felt when I first laid eyes on your prince. When I saw him for the first time, I was struck not by his beauty, but by something bigger than me.” After he says this, he realises why it so hard. Everything coming out of his mouth sounds so sincere. But it is as if a dam is broken, and he cannot stop this. “I am ashamed that I once held his gaze, amd I did not whatever it was necessary to make sure he kept looking at me. I want to prove myself. I want a second chance.”
The head guard still squints at him. He stops at Isami’s door and knocks. “Anyone can say pretty words. I am not so easily convinced.”
A great cheer comes from somewhere behind them, but the corridor they are in is hidden from the noise. When they look behind, they can’t see the cause but Takumi understands that Prince Souma has descended from his west wing and is making his way to the festivities.
The only one who will help him does not believe him. Takumi looks back at the guard’s squinting face, hears the cheering behind him grow quieter with distance as the prince makes his way to the colosseum.
The same desperation from earlier hits Takumi again. Time is running out.
He grabs the head guard’s shoulder. He startles himself with the suddenness of his own confession. “Do you have any idea what it feels like to look at someone, and lose your breath, knowing that you’ll never be able to breath correctly again until you knew they were yours forever?”
Takumi’s head swims. The words had just bubbled from out of him, without thought. But before he can understand them, understand himself, the door opens.
Isami stands there, looking very miserable in a plain tunic and trousers. His lips are almost pushed to a pout. He pulls at his shirt disdainfully, holding it out with two fingers.
“In a world where your only power is your beauty, one tends to look at clothes as weapons. But what would you alphas understand about that?” he mutters under his breath, then smiles a completely fake smile at them both. “I suppoooooose I’m ready to go,” he drawls sarcastically.
There’s a brief moment of silence before the head guard says: “I think I might understand.”
Isami’s brows crinkle at the awkward phrasing, but all it takes is looking at the stunned look at the head guard’s face for Takumi to know that the head guard is really replying to him.
Takumi’s mind slaps into functioning somewhat again. He straightens up and squares his shoulders, smiling brilliantly. “Isami! You look perfect.”
“One of these days, gemello, I’ll throttle you.” Isami’s eyes flash. “Consider that your final warning.”
“No!” Takumi subtly jerks his head to the side, gesturing to the guard. He clenches his teeth. “I only mean to say, thank you for listening to my advice. Regardless, you look beautiful.” He suddenly slaps the guard hard at the back. “Don’t you agree?”
The guard jerks forward and out of his trance. He scowls at him briefly, before looking up at Isami again and faltering. “Uh. You look absolutely…” His face blooms bright red. “… fine.”
Fine? For a brief moment, Takumi thinks he can understand what his brother felt in the morning. Goodness. Words. Did this guard know them?
Isami frowns at the two of them for a while, before his face blanks in understanding. “Brother. A word.”
He gestures Takumi inside and then slowly closes the door in the guard’s face.
“Let me explain,” Takumi says hurriedly.
“How it is perfectly fine for you to use me for your own purposes, but when I do it, I’m just a silly, egotistical omega who only ever thinks about seducing half the competition?” Isami demands. “Oh, I’m listening.”
Takumi feels chastened. “I apologise. I have been such an ass.”
“You have been more than an ass. And you have no excuse of it.”
“I was angry,” Takumi admits, ashamed. “And I lashed out at the only person who understood why. I’m sorry.”
“Why?”
“What?”
“Why were you angry?”
“Because—You know—” Takumi flares up again, because Isami already knows but the look that Isami gives him tells him he isn’t going to get away with not saying it.
Fine. When will he ever know how to stop feeling like this, how to thoroughly tackle it and find a way to destroy, to go back to the impetrenable alpha he knew if he didn’t confront these new emotions head on?
He sighs. “Because I want to win. And I can’t do that, unless I’m allowed to participate.”
Isami regards him for a long moment. Then he narrows his eyes. “Do you want it enough to lose everything for it?”
Takumi opens his mouth to say what Isami wants him to say. But he can’t. The words clump in his throat.
Isami rolls his eyes. “Then you will never win.” He sighs and fixes his shirt, runs his hands through his hair. “You owe me everything, do you understand. Whether you like it or not.”
He throws the door open, and throws a somewhat enthusiastic smile at the head guard, who looks somewhat put together now.
“I’m sorry. I don’t think I caught your name.”
The guard regards him with half-lidded eyes, before smiling and holding out his arm. “Satoshi Isshiki.”
Isami links arms with him. “Whisk me away, Satoshi-san.”