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Yuri leaned back in his chair and stretched, not being shy about the loud groan he let out as he did so. Then, he stood and made his way to the window, leaning against the cool stone wall and peering outside.
Gwendal ignored all this and continued perusing the document in front of him so he could explain it properly to the king whenever he decided to sit back down. Yuri did this every day, around the same time. He got antsy and bored and needed a break from paperwork. Usually, he’d stand at the window until he spotted something interesting to comment on, Conrad would politely humor his random conversation of the day, and he would finally sit back down eventually. Gwendal had long since learned that there was no point in arguing about it. If he tried to force Yuri to pay attention, things only ended up taking twice as long as the king would be completely unable to focus without his self-appointed break.
He wasn’t expecting to be the target of the Maoh’s distraction that day.
“Hey, Gwendal.”
“Hm?”
“Knock knock.”
Gwendal paused when that was all the Maoh said. He slowly turned to him, his expression blank. Yuri was smiling lightly at him. “What?”
“Knock knock,” Yuri repeated a little more clearly, but it was, again, all he said.
Gwendal could feel the irritation rising in his gut as Yuri looked at him expectantly. He could not put together how he was supposed to respond at all. He glanced back at Conrad who simply looked as bewildered as him and shrugged. He turned back fully to the king with a raised eyebrow, but Yuri seemed to catch on quickly to the confusion now.
“Oh!” He glanced between the two brothers and stood up a little straighter. “Right, of course. Maybe you don’t have that here.” Gwendal gave him a little credit – he was much better these days about remembering that he was NOT on Earth anymore. A lot of little things he took for granted, were completely foreign concepts in Shin Makoku. The young king went into explanation mode. “It’s a type of joke format, called a Knock Knock Joke. So, it goes like this – The first person,” he gestured to himself. “ – says, ‘Knock knock,’ and then the second person,” he gestured to Gwendal in turn. “ – says ‘Who’s there?’ And then the first person says… ‘something,” and the second person says, ‘something who?' And then there’s some type of punchline based on whatever the first thing was. Get it?”
Gwendal had no idea why he was being subjected to this lecture in the middle of the work day. But Yuri was waiting for an answer. “Simple enough, I suppose.”
“Great! Let’s try.”
Gwendal sighed. This was such a waste of time. “Your Majesty – “
“Knock knock.”
Gwendal went silent at the interruption. Yuri was staring expectantly at him again. He sighed once more. Fine. He would just get this over with so they could get back to what they were doing. “Who’s there?”
“Tish.”
Gwendal blinked.
Yuri leaned forward a little and whispered, “Tish who,” with a prompting hand gesture.
“Er… Tish who?”
“Oh yes, a tissue would be great. I just sneezed.”
Conrad snorted, which should have been expected considering the other man’s already awful sense of humor. Gwendal merely looked confused. He hadn’t heard the king sneeze. “I’m sorry, Your Majesty. Did you need a tissue?” Conrad fell sideways into the wall, shaking with silent laughter, his brother’s reaction apparently far funnier than the joke itself.
“What? No. Gwendal… It’s the punchline.” Gwendal continued to stare at him, the crease between his eyebrows deepening. “Because ‘Tish who’ sounds like ‘tissue…’”
“Yes… I suppose it does,” he finally agreed.
Yuri stared at him for a moment longer. “Soo… you get it?”
“I guess,” the general grunted, covering his confusion with blatant annoyance.
Yuri frowned at the lack of reaction to what he obviously thought was supposed to be funny. “Ok, admittedly that wasn’t my best one. Let’s see…” He tilted his head back to think of another joke, but Gwendal cut across him.
“Can we please get back to work?” he snapped. The way he turned back to the desk and refused to look at his king anymore made it clear he really didn’t want to receive a negative answer. Yuri made a small noise of disappointment, but he returned to his side.
Gwendal attempted to put the strange interlude from his mind, sure it wasn’t going to be something he ever had to worry about again.
~*~
The next day found them in the same routine. Right around the same lazy time in the afternoon, the king pushed back his chair with a groan and went to stare out the window. He broke the silence a few moments later. “Hey, Gwendal.”
“Hm?”
“Knock knock.”
Gwendal closed his eyes. He could already hear Conrad’s quiet laughter behind him. He should just get it over with… “Who’s there?”
“Cash.”
“Cash who?”
“Oh, no thanks. I actually prefer peanuts.”
Conrad barked out a laugh, because of course he did. Gwendal rolled his eyes.
Yuri waited for a beat but received no other reaction. “… Do you get it?”
“Yes, Your Majesty, I get it.” And this time wasn’t a lie.
After another moment of silence, Yuri slumped back into his seat, a small pout stretched across his lips.
~*~
“Hey, Gwendal.”
The king was at the window, Conrad was already smiling, and Gwendal could feel an impending headache. “Your Majesty…” He hated how pleading his voice sounded, but he wasn’t really in the mood.
“Knock knock.”
Gwendal turned enough to grace the young man with an annoyed scowl. He did not respond.
“Knock knock, Gwendal,” Yuri repeated insistently, completely unfazed by the dirty look.
They stared each other down for a full half minute.
“………Who’s there?”
“Boo.”
“……Boo who?”
“Oh, don’t cry Gwendal. It’s just a joke.”
Conrad doubled over in laughter this time, but Gwendal looked more unimpressed than ever. He simply gave a very deep sigh and turned back to the desk.
Yuri’s grin turned into an indignant frown. “Aw, c’mon! That was a good one!” he whined.
Gwendal ignored him.
~*~
“Hey, Gwendal.”
The general counted to three in his head before responding. It had been a week of this now. At least Conrad was busy with something else that day. “Yes, Your Majesty?” he asked through gritted teeth.
“Knock knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Interrupting cow.”
“Interrupting cow wh- ?”
“MOOOO!” Yuri shouted. Gwendal actually jumped and turned to him, the shock evident on his face. Yuri looked like he might explode with the laughter he was trying to contain.
Gwendal’s brows furrowed. “What was that?”
It was Yuri’s turn to look affronted. “A cow!”
“That’s not what a cow sounds like.”
“What!?” the king squawked. “That was a perfect cow!”
“It sounded nothing like a cow.” Gwendal was very aware of how stupid this argument was, but he couldn’t help himself.
Yuri glared at him. “What do YOU think a cow sounds like, then?”
“Cows say ‘Ba-oh,’” Gwendal insisted dryly.
The king looked more offended than ever. “…Ba-oh?” He repeated. “Cows do NOT say ‘Ba-oh.’”
“Well, they certainly don’t say ‘Moo.’” Gwendal didn’t feel like reminding him, yet again, that Shin Makoku animals and Earth creatures weren’t the same. He personally could not even picture a cow saying ‘Moo.’
The king went quiet and resumed his staring out the window. Gwendal returned to his work, letting the young man pout and contemplate cows. When he finally sat down again, silently pulling a document from the pile, Gwendal wondered if maybe he was done with these silly call-and-response jokes.
~*~
That proved to be a ridiculous hope, however, because Yuri still sucked him into a Knock Knock joke every afternoon. Gwendal, resigned to his fate, continued going along with it. He knew it was only a few moments out of his day to entertain the childish king. Yuri probably would have had an attitude the rest of the day if his retainer had refused to play his silly game. At any rate, he figured Yuri could only know so many of these jokes and would run out eventually. Or get bored of not getting any reaction out of the generally stoic mazoku.
Two months later, that still hadn’t happened.
One particular blustery autumn day, Gwendal had appointed Gunter to accompany Yuri in his administrative duties. He needed to run his troops through some drills. Josak had reported that they’d been slacking off under the premise that their current, anti-war Maoh would not be sending them into battle any time soon.
Gwendal wanted to see to it personally that they disabused themselves of that stupid notion. He would not settle for his troops being anything but the best at all times, no matter what was going on with the politics of the country at the moment.
He was honestly thoroughly enjoying himself as he watched them struggle and pant for air through another tortuous training exercise. The young voice hit his ears from behind. “Hey, Gwendal.”
He turned in surprise to find Yuri looking up at him. “Yes, Your Majesty?”
Yuri’s face split into a grin. “Knock knock.”
Gwendal blinked once, then his face dropped into exhausted annoyance. It wasn’t the first time Yuri had tracked him down on a day when they had not worked together. But he had never expected him to go so far as to trek all the way out to the training grounds to tell him a stupid joke.
“Can we do this later?” But he knew, deep down, that his request would be completely ignored.
“No, I came all the way out here.” Gwendal wistfully remembered the days when Yuri used to be scared of him. “Knock knock.”
He could feel the eyes of some of his soldiers on them now, watching the exchange with intense curiosity. Conrad simply smirked behind his master.
He closed his eyes and tried to ignore the others’ stares. “Who’s there?” he muttered.
“Bear.”
Oh god, was this about to be another animal sound argument? “Bear who?” he asked tentatively.
“Bear with me, these jokes are just gettin’ started!” Yuri struck a ridiculous pose as he said it. His bodyguard, as usual, dissolved into chuckles behind him, though he kept far more of a composure than normal in front of his fellow warriors.
Gwendal heard a small chorus of laughter behind him and snapped around to glare at the lingering soldiers. “FIFTY MORE LAPS!” They scurried off.
He heard Yuri’s concerned whispers to Conrad that he hadn’t meant to get anyone in trouble as well as his younger brother’s insistence that the men would be fine. He refused to turn around again.
Finally, two sets of footsteps retreated to the castle.
~*~
The punchline of that day’s joke appeared to be more of a promise than anything, as Yuri only seemed to ramp up his Knock Knock jokes after that. He now subjected Gwendal to two or three a day, at random, rather than just the one at the same time every afternoon. He strongly suspected that Conrad was helping him come up with new ones, because he could not imagine the admittedly somewhat dim-witted king having this many puns in his arsenal.
One afternoon, he had just returned from a couple weeks at Voltaire estate – the only place Yuri could not follow him just to tell him a joke – and the king had met him outside, apparently deciding he needed to make up for lost time immediately.
After the fourth ridiculous punchline in a row, Gwendal interrupted as Yuri opened his mouth again. “Hey, Your Majesty.”
Yuri snapped his mouth shut, blinked, then cocked his head. “What?”
“Knock knock.”
Yuri looked baffled. “Um… who’s there?”
“Don’t you think it’s about time you got back to work?”
Yuri stared at him blankly for a moment. Then, his face simply crinkled into disappointment. “That was a terrible punchline, Gwendal. You didn’t even do it right. You need to practice more.”
Gwendal rolled his eyes. His younger brother tried to hide his amusement behind a fake cough. He turned away to keep talking with Gunter.
~*~
Finally, one day, the jokes stopped.
There was no fanfare to the cessation of the ritual. Gwendal simply realized at the end of the snowy winter day that Yuri hadn’t made him sit through any jokes. He dwelled on it only a moment, decided that the ruler had seemed in perfectly fine health and spirits, and dismissed the thought again.
The rest of the week passed without a single joke. The general decided that Yuri had either finally run out or else grown bored. Their routine continued as normal, but the king simply resumed his random conversations with Conrad during his mid-afternoon break rather than subjecting Gwendal to his corny punchlines.
One night, Yuri placed the last document of the day firmly upon the completed pile and stood up with a self-satisfied stretch. “Well, I’m heading to bed. Thanks for your hard work today, Gwendal.”
“Goodnight, Your Majesty,” Gwendal replied. He turned his attention now upon his own estate’s paperwork, which he always saved for the end of the day.
Yuri made it all the way to the door before he paused and turned back. “Hey, Gwendal.”
“Hm?”
“Knock knock.”
Gwendal paused in his reading. The tense silence filled the room for an exaggerated moment.
He sighed.
“Who’s there?”
“Orange.”
“Orange who?”
“Orange you glad I went all week without telling any stupid Knock Knock jokes?”
Silence.
A moment later, a single, halting laugh filled the room.
He didn’t look directly at him, but he saw Yuri’s eyes go wide and his jaw drop. The pale hand shot back and grabbed Conrad’s forearm at his side and held tight and still. He was obviously trying to contain his excitement.
Gwendal refused to acknowledge this. “Goodnight, Your Majesty,” he repeated pointedly. But the small smile remained on his face.
“Goodnight, Gwendal,” Yuri rushed out, clearly eager not to ruin the moment. He pulled Conrad out the door. But the latch didn’t click and the elder mazoku could still hear the joyful squeal. “I made him laugh!”
"Yes, Yuri,” Conrad agreed in a congratulatory voice.
The elated giggles disappeared down the hallway. And Gwendal, in spite of himself, broke into another round of soft chuckles.