#background is from the ibisPaint X gallery btw

[ssjumi]

It's been literally 20 years since I wrote the YGO fic that to some regard still defines how I view my favorite OC babygirl Aileen to this day 💕✨

So this is a gift for teenage me, who would've probably pretended to be too cool to care, but would have absolutely lost her shit seeing our girl in the style of the show (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

For those curious, here's a little (updated) character profile of Aileen:

Aileen Noda

18yo (half a year older than Seto, so a class ahead of him)

🇯🇵 (dad), 🇮🇹 (mom)

her dad got sole custody after her parents (never married) split; she's not close to her mom but they're on friendly speaking terms

—

heiress to a multimillion dollar software company that was in business negotiations with the Kaiba Corporation at some point when it was still headed by Gozaburo

moved around a lot as a kid before spending her tweens and most of her teenage years in South England, when business took them there

fluent in English and Japanese (although a bit rusty when it comes to not sounding too direct/impolite with latter) - had one year of German and almost three years of Mandarin before moving schools - knows just enough Italian to survive as a casual tourist

not rly interested in daddy's business at the time/shortly before our story, but figures she still has many years to live her own life and find her passions before she has to step up anyway

(spoiler alert: nope, she does not)

—

has a driver's license and drives just well enough to not get it revoked but not so well that it's a joy to sit next to her

pretty pragmatic with a dry humor

comes off as very confident and independent

loses her dad tho shortly after they've moved to Domino and went into new negotiations with the KC, which rly fucks her up since she hasn't made any friends there yet and her dad was basically her entire support system, which she never realized until he was gone

develops a socially encouraged kind of unhealthy relationship to food and working out, which is not helped by the smaller sizes considered standard in Japan

—

for some reason falls for Seto Kaiba of all people and even ends up with him unaware that she could do a lot better but alas, who am i to tell my daughter No

A while ago I gave rewriting the earlier mentioned fanfic a try, but since YGO isn't my active main fandom anymore, I'll probably never finish it and if I do, it will have a very different format than the original story.

But since we're already in Long As Fuck Read More territory, I've included the prologue and another tiny snippet here, for those who are curious:

Surprising as it may seem, given how his face is plastered all over the city they live in, Yugi and his friends don't really think much about Seto Kaiba in their everyday lives.

They're doing their thing and he does his. … Whatever his thing is.

Building theme parks probably? Yugi remembers him mentioning something like this the last time they spoke but he's not sure anymore. The fact that Kaiba's been gracing class with his presence for the past few days probably means that things are going well enough for him to have the spare time. Although he's spending most of that time on his laptop anyway, not participating in class at all and left alone by the teachers as well.

No, really. Neither Yugi nor his friends know what Kaiba's thing actually is.

So they're a little surprised when after class, during cleaning duty, a girl in another school's uniform slips through the door and makes a beeline for the desk in the far corner of the room where Kaiba, true to his famous team spirit, is still fully focused on his personal work instead of helping his classmates.

One of her long, black pigtails slips over her shoulder as she snatches a glance at his laptop screen. To which Kaiba just reacts by closing said laptop and shoving it into his schoolbag. Which in turn puts a slightly too sweet, almost teasing smile onto her lips. "Want me to give you a ride home?" He sighs and mumbles something that sounds a lot like "There are worse ways to die, I guess" before getting up and following her outside.

It finally becomes apparent why a few of the guys in the class have spent the past couple minutes at the window - the car Kaiba follows that stranger to is a red Porsche cabriolet that looks like right out of a Hollywood movie.

Jounouchi doesn't know what to be more scandalized about - that Kaiba of all people is getting picked up by a cute girl while he doesn't or that some of his female classmates seem completely unimpressed by all of this because "everyone knows he has a girlfriend, duh". He and his friends exchange confused glances.

Seto Kaiba is weird in occasionally dangerous but usually just a little annoying ways and overall just not that interesting. And, as far as they're aware, he's also completely uninterested in making friends or even just understanding the basic concept of friendship - or interpersonal relationships in general.

And yet.

Seto Kaiba has a girlfriend.

It went like this:

A girl had a friend who wasn't allowed to have friends, who wasn't even allowed to have a brother. But allowing him to spend time with her made her father more agreeable in business negotiations which in turn worked in favor of her friend's father. So he grudgingly allowed it for the duration of their business meetings.

Truth be told, it was a pretty one-sided friendship.

Her friend had already started to shut himself off from the world by the time she met him. He didn't start or even push forward conversations on his own accord, didn't answer most of her questions and didn't seem to have many, well, any hobbies. He was easy to taunt though, almost always falling for her dares, never willing to accept defeat and pretty blind to the fact that she usually didn't care who won - that ultimately, by the virtue of having gotten him to interact with her, she was the actual winner anyway.

It was a short friendship, lasting only a couple of weeks, and as soon as the grownups had concluded their business it was over again.

If you're still here: Congrats! You earned yourself the secret knowledge that this fic by the way isn't just Seto/OC but also YamiYugi/Seto, as in: Seto is gonna cheat on her with Atem, as soon as he finds out that he can not just play intense card games with the guy but also have sex with him - which never even occured to him until he already had Ati's hand between his legs.

Aileen will break up with him over it.

In the timeline of the original fic from 20 years ago they did end up back together and even marrying though and it wasn't even too bad for a while but became a very unhappy relationship over time, during which she fell for (and had one passionate night with) Seto's assistant Isono. She got pregnant from him and Seto is kind of aware that it is likely not his child and she knows that he probably knows... while Isono tries very hard to tell himself that this kid surely can't be his, nope, no evidence of this one night means it never happened and he never wavered in his loyalty to his Kaiba-sama, it's fine, he's fine, they're all fine.

(It's still mostly him raising the child since Aileen soon realizes she has no idea where exactly to fit a child into her life and Seto... to his credit did manage to not have Mokuba die on him while responsible for him in his teen years, but if we're all honest here that was not by virtue of him being a responsible and trustworthy parental figure.)

I haven't made up my mind yet if Aileen and Seto would also end up married in/after the rewritten fic tho.

Who knows.

Not me.

... Ah, yeah, and I also ship her with Ryou Bakura's dead sister Amane :D so there's that as well.

Anyway.

YAY @ drawing of her I'm very very very satisfied with （￣︶￣）✨💖