Turned away at the gate of the Underworld, Atem is recruited by a goddess wearing Seto Kaiba's face and handed a job at KaibaCorp.
Kaiba doesn't believe a word about tangled souls, but agrees to treat it as a game with one rule: Atem doesn't die.
He also notices something else — Atem has become defenceless.
This is a translation of an original work on Pixiv.
Original Title: 門前払いの王
Original Author: 葉人(@Hathor_yuki)
Personal site: https://prideshipping.sakura.ne.jp
"Atem. We cannot allow you into the afterlife."
The Ceremonial Duel was over. He had laid down his sword. He had even had his moving farewell.
And yet.
Atem had been turned away at the gate of the Underworld.
"Wait. That can't be right, can it?"
After a farewell like that, going back was hardly something he could do. Well — being allowed back was something to be grateful for, but the feeling was a complicated one.
The Underworld, however, had no interest in hearing him out.
Await the verdict in the world of the living. Leaving behind words to that effect, it vanished.
The Kame Game Shop. Yugi's home.
Unusually, the visitor was a woman.
"Yugi Muto. Ah—I've found you at last."
One way or another, Atem had been drawn back into the Puzzle and bound once more to the world of the living.
Since his return he had lived in a kind of haze, deep in the room within Yugi's heart. Now and then the two of them traded off minding the shop, but today the counter was Yugi's.
"Yes? May I ask who you are?"
He was famous as the King of Games, and in certain circles people approached him often. There were times he was asked for an autograph or a handshake.
Yugi had more or less grown used to being sought out like this.
Of course, if someone challenged him to a Duel he would sometimes take it, and there were people who came for advice.
Both Yugi and Atem dealt with visitors, each within the limits of not neglecting the shop (they had neglected it once, and Solomon had given them an earful for it).
Guessing today was more of the same, Yugi turned to face the woman.
Tall for a woman, brown hair, sharp blue eyes. The longer he looked, the more the details arrived carrying the weight of something already seen.
But she was, without question, a woman.
The source of that familiarity — Seto Kaiba's only blood relative was Mokuba. That was how it was supposed to be, and yet she resembled Seto far too closely.
But the company pin on her clothes was what made the question impossible to hold back.
"Are you… by any chance, someone Kaiba knows?"
The woman did not react to the name.
Instead, she showed him a way of smiling he had seen before. That fearless grin, identical to Seto's. And still smiling, she spoke.
"Bring out the King for me, would you?"
That Yugi and Atem were two souls sharing one body, and who Atem truly was, were things known only to those connected to the Millennium Items.
The two of them exchanged a nod, and Atem came to the surface at once.
"So. You're the verdict, are you?"
"That provoking manner of yours. I rather like it, Atem."
"……!"
Only a handful of his friends were supposed to know that name.
Atem turned a sharp look on her.
"No need for the frightening face. I've only brought you what you must do in order to return to the afterlife."
With that, the woman held out an envelope.
He opened it. Inside was a letter of employment from KaibaCorp.
"A letter of employment?"
Ignoring the tilt of Atem's head, the woman went on.
"You're due to be called soon, aren't you?"
"…You aren't wrong."
She wasn't wrong, but there was such a thing as how one phrased it. Atem's brow drew faintly together.
"As you can see, I'm doing a stint as a KaibaCorp employee — and it seems our CEO is about to be called himself."
"…Kaiba is?"
At the abruptness of it he searched her words for a lie. But instinct told him there was nothing behind them.
"That's right. Seto's soul has got far too tangled up with yours. So when you're called, you'll take him along with you."
It was not a story he could easily believe, but the bond between them was real. If it were true, then no matter that it was for the sake of returning to the afterlife, he could not take his rival with him.
"And if it is true — what is it you want me to do?"
"It helps that you're quick on the uptake."
A glint came into the woman's eyes.
"You…"
She laughed, delighted at his reaction.
"You're a god."
"Correct. I'm the goddess who watched over Seto when he was a priest. And over him as king, as well. So I've manifested here in order to protect that soul."
That gentle smile was an attribute suiting neither Seto Kaiba nor Priest Seto.
"Save the soul of Seto in this life — which is to say, the Seto Kaiba you know. Do that, and I'll let you through the gates of the Underworld."
"That is…"
"A game with a life on the line. How you save him is up to you, but if you need anything, I'll provide it."
Saying this, she drew doves and other things one after another out of empty air like a stage magician, and made them vanish again.
Except that there was surely no trick to it, and nothing up her sleeve.
"This body of mine, for instance. This job title. The way other people perceive me. All of it is fabricated. And all of it is also true."
"I see. The power of a god."
His expression stayed provoking, but for the briefest instant Atem's gaze probed at what lay behind the goddess.
The goddess was aware of the probing.
"So. Is there anything you need?"
"For now, myself and nothing else. Nothing begins until I have seen how things stand."
At his provoking manner she smiled, narrowing her eyes for just a moment. Then, by the time she laid a hand on top of Atem's head, her expression had returned to what it was.
"Good boy."
As the goddess stroked his head, Yugi's body split in two, the way a shadow slips out of alignment.
Atem and Yugi stood side by side.
Atem checked what he was wearing and fixed the goddess with a half-lidded stare.
"The ancient wardrobe, exactly as it was."
"Have you been in the world of the living too long? Would you have preferred silver to gold?"
"That is not what I meant."
Once again the goddess drew a large cloth from somewhere.
She threw it over Atem in one sweep, and when she pulled it away he stood in a neat, well-cut suit.
Checking in the mirror beside him, he found the KaibaCorp pin on his lapel.
"So you have tampered with my very identity."
"Convenient, isn't it? That puts the game on easy mode."
"I see. It is certainly convenient for getting close to him."
"My other self…"
Yugi spoke up, worried.
"There's nothing to worry about. As long as I'm here, Kaiba should be safe as well. Isn't that right, Goddess?"
"That's right. You have several victory conditions, but as long as his soul is safe, you cannot lose. So—what's your first move?"
"To Kaiba."
"Reading the board, then. Let's go."
There was no hesitation. Led by the goddess, Atem set out for KaibaCorp's American branch.
Whether it was the goddess's doing or not, Atem walked a floor of the building he somehow already knew. He had come to see Seto.
To force his way into the CEO's office he took the elevator between floors, and while walking the corridor he ran into the man he was looking for.
The instant their eyes met, Atem felt as though time had come slightly to a stop.
He remembered the goddess's words about their souls being tangled.
They were rivals, certainly. But it was not as though they were close. For souls said to be tangled, the distance between them was the sort that might be crossed by a hand, or might not.
Seto too looked at Atem's face for a while, then spoke the name no one should have taught him, his expression unsatisfied.
"…Atem?"
"Yes. That is my name."
A man closely resembling the man on the stone tablet who commanded the magician. Brown skin, red eyes, the bearing of a rival through and through. Looking at this Atem, Seto tilted his head slightly.
"Yugi… no. Atem. I have no memory of hiring you, and yet I know for a fact that you are hired. What is this? More of the occult?"
To Atem's eyes, the Seto Kaiba standing here now looked perfectly healthy.
There was no sign anywhere of a man about to be called.
"Kaiba. You may not believe it, but you are dying."
There was no chance that this Seto would believe him, but Atem decided to explain what was happening.
"If you cannot believe it, think of it as a game. The rules are simple: you must not die. As things stand, your soul and mine must remain in the same world. The event that will occur is my soul returning to the afterlife. That is all."
"…Simple enough."
At the difficult problem laid before him, Seto laughed. That fearless grin, the same as the goddess's. He looked nothing at all like a man on the verge of death.
And at precisely the moment Atem was to return to the afterlife.
"Do you understand what I am telling you? If I return, you will die."
"If that is a fact, then you need only remain alive until my own lifespan runs out. That satisfies the victory condition."
Hearing it, he realised he had never been told the game's time limit.
The goddess was presumably watching from wherever he happened to be. Atem addressed the empty air.
"Goddess of Seto. What is the time limit?"
"I've no objection to the CEO's way of satisfying the victory condition."
Out of nowhere, the goddess appeared like a Solid Vision projection.
Seto blinked twice at the sight, then merely frowned and let out a small sigh.
Occult incidents, one after another — and this was the second employee today he had no memory of.
"So you are an employee as well."
"That's right. The occult you so dislike, but I can manage most things."
"Then here is your assignment. You will protect Atem. Atem, you will submit to being protected. No ordinary duties are required."
Seto arranged the situation without inflection.
"An employee acting as bodyguard to an employee. How amusing."
Just as she had devoted herself to Priest Seto, the goddess appeared willing to obey Seto.
But for Atem, leaving it at this was no different from wandering the world of the living without ever returning to the afterlife.
"Hold on, Goddess of Seto. There are others, aren't there. Other ways to satisfy the victory condition."
"Fufu. Strategy guides are prohibited, Your Majesty. You'll have to find the victory conditions yourself."
He would use the condition Seto had laid out as a stopgap, and satisfy the one that let him return to the afterlife.
And the goddess knew it.
The tangle of their souls.
"Kaiba."
"What is it."
"I intend to untangle your soul from mine."
"And how do you propose to handle a variable that cannot be seen and cannot be touched."
Seto's words were provoking.
But Atem was not about to abandon a game he had already boarded.
The man himself did not believe a word of it, yet in truth his life was on the line.
"I will think about that later. Keep me at your side."
"Denied. Go and be protected somewhere out of my way."
"Have you no intention of clearing the game?"
"The clearing is done. So long as you are unharmed, that settles it. Furthermore, the area around me is the most dangerous place there is."
"That part is true. There are plenty of people who bear a grudge against KaibaCorp. Though they generally get turned away at the door."
The goddess added her footnote.
"Precisely. If you loiter around me, put yourself in danger, and die before I do — I am dragged along with you, am I not?"
"That is… Goddess of Seto. What happens to me now if I die?"
"If you two can't undo the tangle, you'll both be swept to the same place."
The goddess gave a light shrug. With a weight that was not nearly as light as her words.
"I have my orders to protect the King, but I won't bend the laws of the world themselves."
Turning her back, she let a single line of honesty fall at the very end.
"Whether you survive or whether you're called — that's for the two of you to choose."
Leaving those words behind, the goddess began to fade from sight.
"Goddess of Seto!"
The hand Atem stretched out only passed through a shadow.
"…Atem."
He turned around to find Seto looking down at him, arms crossed.
"What is it?"
"Seto. Souls. Tangling. That Seto is not referring to me. What is this about."
For Seto, an occult matter already resolved held no interest.
And yet for some reason he was demanding the details.
"…It's an occult story, you know."
"I will hear it."
Led by Seto, they entered the CEO's office.
While Atem sat on the sofa, Seto brewed the coffee himself.
"You're making it yourself?"
"If you are killed, it is game over, is it not. Poison would be the end of it."
The aroma drifted out, and a quiet air settled over the room.
Atem set a hand on the desk and leaned forward slightly.
The posture drew Seto's gaze without either of them intending it.
"Kaiba. I hardly think it possible, but—did you believe me?"
"There is no disadvantage to believing. There is a disadvantage to not believing."
At the realism that had not changed in the slightest, the tension went out of Atem's shoulders.
"You really are…"
"Never mind that. What do you mean, return?"
"What do I— ah…"
To return to the afterlife meant that the road of battles stretching on past the horizon would be cut short.
Seto was watching him with a look that said, only now you notice?
"I'm sorry."
"Tell me everything. No gaps. No omissions. Everything."
Pressed firmly on the point, Atem began at the Egyptian exhibition and worked forward in order.
That he had been a king of ancient Egypt.
That three thousand years of sleep had blown his memories away.
That he had taken on the Memory War.
That he had recovered his name and his memories, ended the battle, and had nothing left to do but return.
Until he had finished telling all of it, Seto listened without once interrupting.
"And this Seto?"
"The man on the stone tablet of memory. He is your past life. The priest to whom I entrusted the throne at the moment of my death, my cousin, and… serious-minded…?"
"That priest was staging a rebellion in that vision, was he not?"
"That was… a misunderstanding, of a sort. But Priest Seto was a man beyond reproach as a king."
"…Were it not for that man, I would not be on the brink of death."
Seto sighed and brought the coffee to his lips.
"You have it backwards. Without Priest Seto, you would not be alive here."
"Suppose that is so. How do you intend to tamper with a soul. I will not lend my hand to occult experiments."
Seto set down the coffee and took a breath.
Atem's eyes lit up.
"Rest easy."
"About what."
"The occult items you hate are buried deep beneath the desert."
"That is not what I meant."
Seto was gazing out the window, somewhere far away.
He had no sense of being a man who was dying.
He did not believe it, but he would prepare countermeasures on the assumption that it was true.
He need only keep Atem protected.
That was Seto's victory condition.
It was considerably more realistic than Atem's plan of doing something about a tangle of souls.
"I know you don't believe in souls and the like, Kaiba. But from where I stand, the bond between us is anything but shallow. At that moment, the one who stayed beside me was Priest Seto."
"…Tell that man to change his name. It is confusing."
"Don't ask the impossible. I thought the same thing myself. If only he had his memories, you and he might get along—"
"We would not."
"…Perhaps not."
Three thousand years ago, Atem and Priest Seto had not been close the way friends are close.
Even had both of them kept their memories, they almost certainly would not have grown close. If anything, the odds were entirely that Atem's sacrifice would have earned him a severe scolding.
"I can satisfy my victory condition. How do you intend to satisfy yours?"
"For now, by staying at your side — and looking there for a thread to start unravelling the tangle."
"That, I have already denied."
At the attitude that had not changed in the slightest, Atem's impatience mounted.
"Then I cannot return. A soul that must return has no business remaining here."
"Assume your account is true. Set against three thousand years, a human lifespan is a rounding error."
"That may be so, but there is a possibility my soul wanders too long and can no longer return."
Seto's fingertips touched Atem's wrist.
Warm. The temperature of something real.
"…You can be touched. You have a temperature. You are alive."
Atem's eyes widened, but he could not shake the hand off.
In that instant of contact, he felt the tangle of their souls resonate as far down as the skin.
"If we are tangled…"
Prefacing it that way, Seto looked at Atem straight on.
"—then I need only take you with me when I die."
For some reason, Atem felt the bottom of his heart stir.
"Kaiba…"
"I do not mind being tangled in the least. There is no actual harm."
"So it comes back to that…"
Faced with Seto's realism, Atem could only be exasperated.
A tangle that could not be seen, could not be touched, and carried no sensation might as well not exist at all.
Perhaps there were others in the world carrying a fate like this one.
At this stage, so long as Atem remained alive nothing would happen to Seto, and Atem was to be given a goddess for a bodyguard.
If the man himself was a dead end, Atem had no choice but to change his approach.
"Understood. I will look from another direction."
"From where."
"Egypt. I will trace Priest Seto's path."
Seto caught the arm of Atem as he began to rise. And then, without meeting his eyes, said one thing.
"……Permission granted."
"Hm?"
"I grant you the area around me. Do as you like."
"What's this, all of a sudden."
"Research souls to your heart's content. If you require a facility, I will build one."
Seto's sudden cooperativeness raised questions, but Atem did not hesitate.
"Then I'll be counting on you."
When Atem smiled, Seto released the arm he had been holding.
Then he laughed, as though enjoying himself.
"Still — Atem, is it."
"What is it…"
"Nothing. Only that you have become a great deal more defenceless than before, I think."
At the words, Atem's eyes widened before he could stop them.
"Defenceless?"
"Defenceless."
Seto repeated it. His voice was calm, but behind it there was the air of something being calculated.
Atem only tilted his head slightly, the provoking composure as unbroken as ever.
Ordinarily that attitude would have set him alight. But not now.
Something failed to mesh.
Without putting it into words, Seto took the measure of the Atem standing before him all over again.
The nuisance who had forced his way in, and an argument that explained nothing. A man who stood before him carrying nothing but an incomprehensible certainty.
"If you are unaware of it, that makes it all the more troublesome."
Not clashing, not drawing closer. For a moment there was only a silence in which they went on measuring each other.
In the depths of Seto's chest, a faint thorn of wrongness remained.
——Something is different from before
But it was too early to grasp what it was. Seto went no further, and only let his gaze slide slightly aside.
"On top of that, there is your manner. Your wariness is gone."
Seto's gaze roamed without mercy, as though passing straight through the whole of Atem — and yet there was something amused in it after all.
"Wariness?"
Atem looked at his own hands, then up at the ceiling.
"…I don't mean to be."
"Meaning has nothing to do with it. It is a fact."
Seto's voice was quiet, but it was presumably the truth. He was not a man who made jokes.
Atem's heart jumped.
"The threat is gone. That is likely why…"
As Atem faltered, Seto set down his cup and rose from the sofa.
"Hmph. You have become quite endearing."
The remark had the shape of a joke, and was by no means a joke.
Atem looked away in spite of himself, but Seto closed the distance until there was no escaping.
"…What?"
"It is simply a fact. Accept it honestly."
He had no idea what to say in return.
"No, that is really rather…"
Seto's mouth loosened faintly, but his gaze stayed sharp.
"Rest easy. It is not an insult."
"…Kaiba."
"What is it."
"…You seem somehow…"
The two of them talking with coffee in hand. Just like ordinary friends.
The words broke off, and Atem turned his face away.
"…There is no need for concern. I will protect you, for the sake of us both."
At that one line, the tension in Atem's heart loosened a little.
"…I-Is that so."
"So. What's your first move?"
Seto smiled as he said it, and the expression was, after all, near identical to the goddess's fearless grin.
