The afterlife's king is bored out of his mind — until Seto shows up with an unusual offer: a job at Kaiba Corporation, testing a new game system. What starts as a way to kill time between two men with too much time (and too little) on their hands turns into something neither of them quite planned for.
Domestic banter, dimension-hopping business trips, and a contract with a title that means more than it first seems.
This is a translation of an original work on Pixiv.
Original Title: 光の底で働け
Original Author: 葉人(@Hathor₋yuki)
Personal site: https://prideshipping.sakura.ne.jp
The afterlife was, as always, wrapped in silence today.
Atem sat with poor posture, elbow propped on the throne, gazing absently at the shimmer of light visible in the distance.
Today, again, there was nothing in particular to do.
The order of the afterlife was fully in place, the flow of souls circulating without a single snag.
His duties as king amounted to little more than formal signatures and ceremonial approvals.
His mind was as sharp as ever today — the problem was, there was nowhere to put that sharpness to use.
"I'm bored..."
He sat on the stone throne, flipping through a report. For the third time now.
Nearly every item read "stable in perpetuity." No meetings needed.
No war, no rebellion.
An ideal state for a king. But there was a limit to how boring things could get.
If only that man would show up. The instant he thought it, the space of the palace flickered with light, just for a moment.
Standing within the beam of light was a man in a needlessly well-tailored suit, carrying himself with his usual, needlessly commanding presence.
A CEO needlessly famous across countless fields in the living world.
And the only person who let Atem feel the passage of time at all — Seto Kaiba.
"Crossing dimensions without permission again, Kaiba?"
His voice lifted. Seto's arrival meant, without fail, that the boredom was over.
"Hmph. Blame your border control for being too lax. That's on your jurisdiction."
At the perfectly ordinary exchange, Atem's expression eased.
"Atem. You're making a strange face. What's wrong."
"Just thinking you came at a good time."
"So, what's the matter?"
There was no particular matter to speak of, formally. As always.
"I was genuinely realizing that boredom can kill a man... If you hadn't shown up, I might've been in real danger."
"Did I mishear that? You almost sound like you're alive. What's the cause of death, then."
"...Fatal boredom. Death by tedium."
"You're claiming to be an unemployed shut-in, and you're a king."
Atem laughed.
There was no one else in the afterlife who joked around like this.
Only Seto, belonging to the living world, was allowed to.
"I work. I maintain the balance of souls."
"Work that runs on autopilot like that — a cat could do it."
Atem's brow furrowed slightly.
"Kaiba, try dispatching a cat. It'll be lost within three days."
Seto laughed lightly and pulled a slim device from inside his coat.
"Well, fine. Atem. You said you were bored."
"Yeah, that's right."
"I've brought you a good offer. A job hiring someone smarter than a cat. You."
Atem's eyes went wide.
"Hire...? You mean make me an employee of Kaiba Corporation?"
"That's right. You looked like you were about to die. Consider this a rescue."
"And what happens if I die of overwork instead?"
Even as he said it, his eyes were shining.
"Better than dying of boredom. Join our project. It's a level that shouldn't bore even an afterlife-spec brain."
Atem narrowed his eyes.
A panel appeared abruptly, projected in the air.
On the pale, glowing screen was a new project proposal for M&W.
"This is..."
"A test of a new deck-building system. Too demanding for players in the living world. Your instincts are suited for it."
"Kaiba... are you seriously trying to hire the king of the afterlife?"
"An outside contractor is fine too. Even our prototype AI can't understand how souls respond. If you can't do it, I'll finish it myself."
Atem thought for a moment, then looked up at the air.
For a room where light couldn't reach, the display screen was oddly bright.
"You think code that understands souls can be written into your game?"
"No reason it can't be. If you supervise it, even the dead of the afterlife will be hooked."
"...That's quite the sales pitch."
For Atem, drowning in idle time, it was an extremely tempting offer.
"You're bored. So work."
"Yeah... and the pay?"
"Interesting man... does a king even concern himself with that?"
"A king hates boredom. If there's a reason to work, money or fun, either's fine by me."
He said it, laughing.
Seeing that smile, the corner of Seto's mouth eased slightly too.
"Then I'll pay accordingly. I'll open an account at Yumeno Bank and transfer it. In living-world currency, though."
"What am I supposed to use that for in the afterlife?"
"Use it for travel expenses, when you come see me."
A small burst of laughter filled the silent palace.
Seto stayed composed, as ever, but there was a certain warmth clearly held in his eyes.
"Come to think of it... it wouldn't be so bad for me to go to the living world instead, for once."
"Your immigration screening won't pass. Security concerns."
"What do you think the travel budget's for. And you're one to talk, after all your dimension-shifting."
The air of the afterlife softened, just slightly.
Between the two of them, formality and title meant nothing.
There was only an intellectual game meant to shoot down boredom, and each other's presence — nothing more, and nothing less.
Atem laughed, looking pleased.
"You won't take no for an answer either way, will you? Bring out the contract. I'll work officially, as king."
"Naturally. Even the king of the afterlife has a duty to work."
A contract appeared, floating in the air. Written, with excessive care, in hieroglyphs.
"'Work in the Depths of Light'?"
"Should I fix it to read 'Afterlife Employment'?"
"No, leave it as is."
Atem read through the contract.
"Is this okay? It says joint venture."
"That's fine."
"You're going pretty big again."
"Obviously. Neither subordinate nor superior suits you."
"...I see. So this, too, is a kind of balance."
Atem laughed softly and approved the contract.
He watched as Seto began verifying the data link.
The connection speed was faster than Atem had expected.
It seemed even the afterlife's network couldn't withstand the sheer force of Kaiba Corporation.
"Then let's get to work, President."
Light and darkness, the living world and the afterlife. At that boundary, an oddly stylish "business partnership" had been formed.
Atem touched the terminal's screen.
His fingertip, resting on the cold stone, trembled just faintly.
Somehow, he thought he could feel the warmth of the living world in it.
The boredom from moments before was nowhere to be found now.
Work. The word, given as an order, seemed to warm the air of the afterlife, just a little.
Day One of Afterlife Employment, and a Visit from the Auditor
A corner of the palace.
Atem sat at a gold-adorned desk, fingers gliding across a tablet.
On the screen: game code, and a structural diagram of the world settings.
Just glancing through it made clear how meticulously Seto had designed everything.
"This algorithm resembles the circulation of souls... I see. Well suited, then."
Atem laughed softly and added something to the notes.
Seto's design left no room for error. But precisely because it left no room for error, there was space for Atem's kind of "otherworldly thinking" to slot in, interestingly.
At that moment, the space flickered with light again.
"An audit, on the first day of employment?"
"I came to check you weren't slacking off from day one."
Seto appeared, wearing his usual composed expression. But Atem didn't miss the faint trace of relief in the depths of his eyes.
"It hasn't even been three hours by living-world time, has it?"
"Three hours is enough. Knowing you, you've either broken something or built something."
"That's quite the vote of confidence."
Seto set a hand on the desk and leaned in to look at Atem's screen.
The distance between them was close.
The air of the afterlife shifted, quietly, just for a moment.
"That code isn't bad."
"Is that a compliment?"
"Only that it's 'close to a passing grade,' still."
"Tough boss. My pay doesn't match the workload."
"You seemed dissatisfied with the pay earlier."
Atem blinked.
"Are you giving me something else, then?"
"Rejoice — the reward is me."
At that line, impossible to tell whether it was a joke or entirely serious, a laugh slipped out of him before he could stop it.
"You're the same, even in the afterlife."
"If anything, the afterlife suits me better."
Seto's eyes settled on Atem, and he added, quietly.
"Here, no one takes you away."
Silence.
For just a moment, the air between them loosened.
It wasn't quite a conversation between a king and a businessman anymore. It was something softer than that.
Closer to a wordless understanding, shared between two people who each knew what it was to be alone.
Atem stood and moved to stand beside Seto.
"So does that mean it's my turn to worry about someone taking you away from me?"
"Who could take me. If you're worried, take a day off and keep hold of me for a full day."
He hadn't taken the day off yet, but Atem's hand had already, promptly, taken hold of Seto.
"Day off..."
"Don't you have those?"
Their fingers intertwined.
"No, we do. I set up a paid leave system. But the priests never use theirs, ever."
"That kind of exploitative work culture doesn't exist at my company. You'll lose people to other jobs."
"Not likely. We're the land of the dead. Obviously no one's going to quit for a better offer."
Their eyes met, and laughter spilled out between them.
"If you were useful, I'd scout you myself."
"Ah... so I've been scouted? Then I suppose my work in the afterlife isn't so bad after all."
"To a degree. Even work in the living world gets more interesting when you're involved."
For Seto, as it happened, most things got more interesting whenever Atem got tangled up in them.
"Just say it plainly, that you're praising me."
Atem leaned in a little, glancing up at him. And when their eyes met, he gave him a wink for good measure.
Seto joined him, and the work progressed with surprising smoothness after that.
Atem's reaction speed outpaced any AI, and his grasp of applied game theory was abnormally sharp.
Seto, for his part, refused to compromise on even the smallest details of the design philosophy.
"What if we reversed the probability control on this card effect?"
"You believe in luck?"
"Luck is part of the logic too."
"...Hmph. As tiresome a piece of logic as ever."
Seto let a smile rise at the corner of his mouth.
"But if your 'intuition' can be explained with data, I'll find as much logic to back it as needed."
"Can you?"
"I'll manage it, however long it takes."
The exchange felt, somehow, like a duel.
Neither side could claim the upper hand — they simply clashed their thoughts against each other, and in the sparks of that friction alone, felt something like being alive.
Atem said, almost to himself,
"Doing this reminds me of when we used to fight."
Seto looked up.
"This isn't a fight. It's creation."
"True. But..."
He trailed off, then laughed.
"Creation resembles a fight too, in its own way. Especially with you."
"Not bad, is it."
"Not bad."
Seto closed the device and let a quiet smile show in the dim light.
"Next meeting's in three days. Afterlife time."
"Coming again?"
"The audit continues. Besides, this is a contract to keep you from getting bored, isn't it."
Atem laughed.
It wasn't the laugh of a king. Just the laugh of one man.
Grains of light drifted through the sky of the afterlife.
The device controlling the flow of communications — the "transfer node" Seto had designed — was, subtly, unstable.
"A malfunction?"
Seto frowned at the display on his tablet, and Atem crossed his arms and peered down at it.
"The signal, sometimes, can't cross the river of the afterlife."
"Bandwidth issue. Set up Cerberus as a router."
"You expect me to ask a dog to do that? And besides, this isn't the afterlife to begin with — Cerberus doesn't exist here. ...Probably."
Seto's fingers swept quickly across the tablet.
"Hmph. In other words, the connection to the living world is bottlenecked."
"So your technology isn't fully compatible with the afterlife after all. Apparently that river swallows data too."
"...A signal that can't cross the river of the afterlife, huh."
"You like that, don't you."
Atem laughed. Seto huffed back a laugh of his own.
"It's not a laughing matter. I won't be able to go back for a while, it seems."
"Then you're on afterlife duty too. Work in the depths of light."
"Can't be helped."
And so, Seto's "extended stay" began.
A week later, by the afterlife's own reckoning.
The town was strangely abuzz.
"Whoa, the king from the living world made another bridge!"
"That 'Circuit King' guy built a tower of light — it's amazing!"
The people of the afterlife murmured among themselves.
Atem, half in disbelief, went out into the town.
There he found a massive energy bridge built from materials of the afterlife, an automated platform for transporting light, and Seto himself, terminal in hand, explaining something.
"...There he is. The Civilization Accelerator."
"Leaving things inefficient is bad practice."
"Is that really the issue here?"
"Obviously. I'm simply optimizing the working environment."
Calling it "optimizing the working environment" while he'd already begun restructuring the entire economic framework of the afterlife — that was exactly the kind of thing that made him dangerous.
And what's more—
"Master Seto! Please give today's lesson again!"
"The kids are looking forward to the new game!"
Children of the afterlife had gathered around Seto, laughing.
Atem, both as king on his throne and as one man, felt a little thrown.
Why would a man who kept such distance from others, he wondered.
The question resolved itself quickly.
Seto had a soft spot for children. His voice, answering their questions, was just a little gentler.
"Anyone can win if they follow the rules. But winning isn't the only point of playing."
"Then what is the point?"
"Thinking."
Hearing that, Atem smiled faintly to himself.
Seto, it seemed, didn't change even in the afterlife.
That night.
They stood side by side on the palace balcony.
The afterlife's nights were quiet, without wind.
"Those kids were calling you the 'Sage of the Living World.'"
"That's a mistranslation. I'm a 'developer.'"
"Close enough, aren't they."
Atem laughed softly, and Seto looked away, just slightly.
Still composed as ever on the surface, but leaving behind, for just an instant, something like embarrassment.
"I'm just making sure you don't get bored."
"That helps. A king's work is far too quiet."
A faint light passed between them.
That light was soft, as if the afterlife itself were welcoming the two of them.
"Even in the afterlife, I might not get bored, as long as you're here."
"That's a breach of contract."
"What kind?"
"The 'Work in the Depths of Light' contract. Planning to just play, are you?"
Atem narrowed his eyes slightly and answered in a near-whisper.
"Then I'll pretend to be working."
At the afterlife king's answer, Seto let out the smallest laugh.
Eventually, the prototype was complete.
Seeing the name displayed on the title screen, Atem's eyes narrowed.
"'Work in the Depths of Light'... huh."
"I'm the first one to bring light into the afterlife. Be grateful, at least a little."
"Before gratitude, I think I'll propose a contract extension."
"Hmph. What kind of work are you taking on next?"
"...Watching over the future you're building."
Seto fell silent for a moment, and let just a little of the tension ease from his shoulders.
"So now you're the one paying me. That'll cost you."
"Fine by me. A king hates boredom, after all."
The wind of the afterlife blew.
The terminal glowed faintly, shadows overlapping.
In the soundless world, only the low sound of laughter echoed.
The two of them, working "in the depths of light," sat at the same table even across the boundary between death and life.
And together, they shared the boredom between them.
That night, a single terminal remained in the study of the king of the afterlife.
A pale light pulsed quietly. As if it were the beating of that man's heart.
The night was filled with a faint, diffuse light.
Different from the moon above the living world. A soft glow given off by souls illuminated the sky itself.
Atem sat down on the steps of the throne room and slowly let out a breath.
The grains of light scattered at his feet flickered faintly, like fragments of memory, each time they stirred.
"...You're leaving, then."
Seto approached.
Over afterlife robes, he'd thrown on a living-world jacket.
An outfit that shouldn't have suited each other, and yet somehow felt no strangeness at all. If anything, he wore it well.
He had, uselessly, a good sense of style too.
"The communications optimization is finished. This line's stable now too. No reason left to stay."
"I see."
Atem answered briefly and lowered his eyes slightly.
Silence.
But it wasn't an uncomfortable one — time simply flowed quietly, like breathing they'd both grown used to.
"...This afterlife has gotten remarkably lively since you came."
"Call it improvement."
"Or civilization's awakening."
"Stop that. I'm no reformer, no savior."
"You prefer 'engineer,' don't you."
Seto raised an eyebrow slightly, a smile touching only the corner of his mouth.
Seeing it, something in Atem's chest softened, just a little.
Every time he saw that smile, the distance between the living world and the afterlife seemed to shrink, just a bit.
"You'll be busy once you're back, won't you?"
"Obviously. I'll work enough for the both of us."
"I'm a king, you know."
"Afterlife-exclusive, though."
Atem's shoulders shook with laughter.
Seto's eyes narrowed slightly too, at the sound of it.
"...I'll come again."
The words sounded almost like a declaration.
"Come anytime. The afterlife's immigration screening only goes easy on you."
"Naturally."
A short silence.
Seto slowly reached out and touched Atem's cheek.
Not cold, not too warm either — a temperature that fit, as if by some small miracle.
"I'll come work here again."
"You're welcome to. As the depths of light's top employee."
Seto huffed a laugh, and brushed his fingers through Atem's hair.
Then, briefly, their lips touched.
A greeting simple and certain enough to mean the same thing, in the afterlife or the living world alike.
"...Next time you call me, don't call me because you're bored. Call me when you actually need me."
"Then it sounds like I'll be calling you again very soon."
"You should learn a little more independence, as a king."
"I can."
Atem smiled quietly.
"But until you leave, at least — I wanted to just be an ordinary man."
Seto said nothing, only pressed his lips to Atem's forehead.
The light of the afterlife passed between them and faded, leaving behind a faint afterglow.
Atem watched his back as he left.
The man who worked in the depths of light was returning, once more, to the surface above it.
Even after his figure disappeared, the wind of the afterlife swayed, soft, for a while longer.
Three days after his return.
The sky above Domino Town was without a single cloud.
Seto sat in the study of the Kaiba mansion.
On the desk, a terminal brought back from the afterlife — a single "experimental unit" he and Atem had calibrated together.
Even powered on, the screen showed nothing.
The mechanism to connect "the other side" and the living world was, in theory, sound. Data exchange was possible.
Real-time conversation, though, kept becoming unstable for some reason.
But Seto had a certainty.
Atem would find a way to connect, somehow, without fail.
A quiet electronic tone.
The screen flickered faintly.
Amid the noise-laced footage, grains of light began to take shape.
The figure of the afterlife's king rose, faint and glowing, into view.
"Oh, test transmission."
"I can hear you."
Seto answered without moving, still seated in his chair.
His voice carried just a touch more softness than usual.
"So it connected after all."
"Finally stable on this end too. That circuit you built is solid work."
"Obviously. I built it."
Atem laughed.
Every few seconds, as the noise flickered through, that smile wavered along with it.
"The people of the afterlife talk about you a lot."
"If it's complaints, I've heard enough of those already."
"Praise. Apparently you redrew the capital's blueprints."
"...I was bored."
"You're the only one who spends boredom like that."
Seto let out a small laugh.
The light on the screen flickered faintly.
It seemed the wind of the afterlife had reached even there.
"How's your end?"
"Same as ever. But the wind's changed. ...Probably because of when you were here."
"Then next time, I'll stay a while longer."
"What about your company?"
"I'll leave it to Mokuba. No problem."
A short silence.
Worlds' worth of distance separated them.
And yet, that distance felt, somehow, strangely close right now.
"...Kaiba."
"What."
"I used to hate believing in the words 'we'll meet again.'"
"Different now?"
"Now, it's less 'believing' and more 'knowing.'"
Seto's fingers tapped lightly at the edge of the desk.
His usual habit, for keeping emotion in check.
"...You've turned out to be quite the king."
"Your influence."
The noise in the transmission surged again, and the image began to break apart.
Atem's figure dissolved faintly into light, his voice growing distant.
"Again..."
"...I'll be waiting for your next report."
The screen went dark.
Seto stared at that black screen for a while.
Eventually, the terminal's sleep chime sounded quietly.
Outside the window, wind swept through the gap between buildings.
Within that current, unmistakably, was the faint touch of the wind of the afterlife.
Seto stood and opened the window.
He looked up at the sky and murmured, briefly.
"...Work in the depths of light. Don't slack off, King."
The reply from the afterlife, carried on the wind, felt like it reached him — faint, but certain.
