Kaiba tells Atem that he would choose him again — through the Memory World, through the separation,
through every last pain, repeated eternally, and call none of it a mistake.
It is the most complete declaration of love he has ever made. It nearly destroys Atem.
Because a king who has failed to save people cannot affirm a life that repeats without correction. And
because the philosophy Kaiba is quoting without knowing he's quoting it has been sitting on a shelf in
his study the whole time, in a thick green book he decided Atem must never touch.
This is a translation of an original work on Pixiv.
Original Title: それを挟んで
Original Author: 葉人(@Hathor₋yuki)
Personal site: https://prideshipping.sakura.ne.jp
The archive of the afterlife was quiet.
There was no smell of paper. What was here were records, and memories, not living books of the kind that existed in the world above. Even so, every time Atem walked between the shelves, he felt something close to nostalgia.
The first time he met Seto Kaiba, he had been reading a book.
The thought came to him without prompting.
There was no reason for it. No meaning either. He had simply remembered.
That the man would become the rival of his lifetime, still less his lover — the self of those days had no way of knowing it.
Neither of them could possibly have known.
Atem let a small laugh escape and ran his hand along the bundles of records lined up on the shelf.
On a day when Seto visited the afterlife, Atem received him in a corner of the archive. Walking side by side, he opened his mouth casually.
"The day we first met — what book were you reading?"
"Book?"
"You know, the green one...... thick......"
Seto's step slowed slightly.
He blinked once, as though tracing back through memory.
"A book......"
The words broke off.
After the briefest silence, Seto steadied his breathing, let out a small breath, and continued.
"I've read more than I could count."
He said nothing beyond that.
At that unchanging kind of line, Atem let out a small huh and laughed.
He didn't press it, didn't dig any deeper, and the subject ended there.
Back in the living world, Seto was in the study of the Kaiba mansion.
Between tasks, his gaze wandered as though unconsciously, and he walked in front of the bookshelves.
In one section of the shelf, a thick green spine caught his eye.
The conversation in the afterlife came back to him, delayed.
What book were you reading?
If he had answered that question. He started to think it, and cut the thought off.
His eyes rested on the green spine for only an instant.
He did not reach for it.
As though there had been nothing there at all, Seto closed the shelf.
The time spent in the afterlife was more peaceful than he'd expected.
Seto was as busy as ever, going back and forth between the living world and the afterlife.
His work was apparently demanding, but on a day he'd decided to come he appeared without fail, and having come, he was thorough for as long as he was there.
The way he touched, the way he drew him in — as though confirming the other's presence, and without hesitation.
In those arms Atem would sometimes let out an exasperated breath, and still lose track of any reason to refuse.
There was, to begin with, no reason to refuse love.
At Seto, who wouldn't let go of him for a moment, Atem let a wry smile show.
"Forceful as always."
At that, Seto laughed through his nose.
"Rather late for that. I've been this way from the start."
No denial, no excuse.
Only a declaration that this was the kind of man he was.
Seto quietly took Atem's hand.
At that light contact alone, each other's heartbeat and breathing carried naturally. A single exchange of glances, and words were unnecessary.
Seto's fingers traced the line of Atem's spine.
With a persistence like the redrawing of a new map.
"......Kaiba, not so hard......"
As though cutting off the words, Seto's lips touched the nape of Atem's neck.
What was engraved there was living heat, and a dominion with nowhere to escape.
Atem drew his shoulders in slightly and held his breath.
Seto too shifted the angle of his body faintly, watching that reaction without missing any of it. The small disorder of breath, the tension in his fingertips. As though responding at once to all of it, he laid on a hand and closed the distance.
Atem did not twist away, did not refuse.
He only entrusted himself to that dense observation and action.
Seto, missing not a single fold of Atem's skin nor a single note of his breathing, quietly went on surveying it as his own territory. It was too arrogant to be called a caress, and yet too laden with heat to be called a prayer.
"......Enough......"
The voice pleading its limit, Seto sealed with a merciless kiss.
He permitted neither stagnation nor hesitation. Atem's fingertips caught at the sheets, and his body dissolved into the sensation given to it and bowed like a drawn bow.
At the throat laid bare, Seto fastened his mouth as though carving in his own correct answer.
Without any need to choose words, it carried in a glance and the movement of fingers alone.
—— To protect, to indulge, to melt.
That intent, Atem accepted.
Breathing unevenly, he laughed faintly.
That alone was enough.
Nothing special was being done at all.
Only that they accepted each other's existence whole, drew close, and overlapped in consciousness. That act alone went on shaking the outline of the world.
This was not a thing aimed at pleasure alone.
Confirming that the other was here — that fact itself was overwhelmingly precious.
The warmth of Seto's hand.
Atem's gaze.
The slight misalignment of their breathing.
All of it was a quiet ritual for confirming understanding and acceptance.
Seto's acts burned away the selflessness of Atem the king, redefining him as nothing more than Seto's lover.
Fingers tangling, breath mixing.
That passion bound Atem's heart to a joy that went by the name of love.
The persistence was not violence. It was only, single-mindedly, sweet.
It was mere expression of affection, matched to a breathing and a distance belonging to the two of them alone.
Which is precisely why he drowned.
The whole of the past was being painted over by the heat of flesh in this present moment.
Every time he was held in Seto's arms, Atem felt his own soul mixing with that man's coloring.
What sweet nectar that was.
That night too, after their bodies had come together, the two of them lay side by side.
For Seto, the act of holding Atem was not the mere release of desire. It was a ritual for dragging a man who was no more than an insubstantial memory back, by force if necessary, into the cage called a body, and binding him to the life — the eros — of this present moment.
Still facing the ceiling, Seto said abruptly:
"I do not err in judgment."
Words inserted abruptly into a sweet afterglow.
Atem blinked just once, then shrugged.
"That again."
"It's fact."
Seto said it through without hesitation.
"Regarding the reality of your being here as well, I have no regret. As a choice, it was optimal."
It was an assertion.
Not consolation, not papering over anything.
Atem rested his forehead against Seto's chest and laughed a little.
"Don't state everything so flatly. Waver a little, humbly, once in a while."
"There's no need to waver."
As he said it, Seto slid his fingers into Atem's hair.
That gesture, contrary to the words, was astonishingly careful.
"Of course...... the judgment to form this relationship was correct as well."
The voice was low, quiet, and sweet.
A certainty that went by the name of affirmation, offered without doubt.
To Atem it sounded like the supreme confession of love. The unhesitating affirmation of a man who had chosen him and torn open dimensions to come and see him.
Atem too repeated the same words inside his heart. He bit down on this moment as good, and felt the depths of his chest fill.
That this relationship had begun, and the warmth here now.
The relationship had been formed on the eve of the Ceremonial Battle.
Wanting at least to say a proper farewell to the rival of his lifetime, he had visited Seto's room after finishing his deck.
"......What do you want. Weren't you and Yugi off licking each other's wounds before the final battle?"
A cold voice. Bathed in the blue light of the display, Seto didn't so much as move his eyes. In that back Atem saw the severe nobility of one who would place himself only at a solitary height.
He'd struggled over where to begin. Only, he couldn't put words of farewell first.
"Ah. I finished building my deck. ......Kaiba, let me thank you. In the Memory World, you helped us. Without you, we would have lost."
"Hmph. Thanks are worthless. It was you who said do as you like. I was merely displeased at having the rival I acknowledged taken by some occult nonsense."
Seto turned his chair slowly. Those eyes were the eyes of a man who had cut away gratitude and sentiment alike. They contained not the slightest weakness.
At the usual less-than-honest words, Atem gave a wry smile.
"......So it was. But it's fact that we were saved."
"I was merely dragged into the occult."
"It isn't occult anymore, though, is it?"
"......Whatever happens at this point......, nothing good comes of involvement with you. How many times do you intend to bring about the end of the world?"
Not long before, the world had come within a breath of being reset by Doma.
That time too, Seto had lent Atem his strength, however uncooperative his words had been.
"Let me correct that — I wasn't the one trying to bring about the end."
"......No argument."
They had faced each other. They had fought together.
The rival of his lifetime.
But the one he would fight tomorrow was not this man. And it might no longer be possible to fight at all.
"I'm glad I got to talk with you like this, at leisure."
Atem gave a wry smile and stepped closer. The distance between the two closed as though crossing the boundary line of fate.
"But tomorrow...... I fight my aibou. Win or lose, I'm certain I can no longer remain here. The door leading to the afterlife will open."
At Atem's words, a sharp crease came between Seto's brows. For Seto, Atem ceasing to be meant the disappearance of the absolute summit he was to defeat. It was a void that must not be permitted, one that could shake even his own reason for existing.
"You. You intend to lose to a duelist other than me?"
Not a matter of returning or not returning; he simply made his displeasure plain.
Seto stood. His imposing presence was that of one who would trample over even the gods.
Naturally, Atem had no intention of losing either. But returning to the afterlife someday was also something fated.
"I don't intend to lose. Even so, the day of returning will come. That's why——"
"Then I'll drive in a new stake. The peace of the afterlife doesn't suit you. I'll bind that soul with a sturdy chain."
"......What do you intend to do."
At the very edge of the lips of a bewildered Atem, Seto smiled — fearlessly, and beyond all measure beautifully.
"I love you."
Silence.
It was as though the sounds inside the ship had vanished.
He forgot to breathe. Atem's eyes went wide.
Those words were not a courtship but a declaration of dominion. A vow to possess for eternity the existence called Atem, by his own will to power.
"......And you should be the same. Your soul, having known the height that I am, cannot possibly be satisfied with a mediocre death."
Atem lost his words. Behind the fierce rejection, an affirmation almost maddening in its intensity.
What Seto sought was not a peaceful love. It was the supreme brilliance of life that could be tasted only inside a struggle where they raised each other up, destroyed each other, and repeated it eternally.
Seto continued.
"I do not err in judgment. I chose you."
He couldn't deny it. At some point, Seto had become for Atem an existence that produced feelings which rival alone could not process.
To be told he was loved by such a man, and be told not to be shaken — that was asking too much.
"Kaiba...... You really are...... an arrogant man."
Atem let out a small breath and returned a faint smile. In those eyes dwelt a deep respect and resonance for a man who would defy destiny.
"Survive, Atem. The one who defeats you and takes that soul completely is me."
Seto's arm drew Atem in.
Even if the world should be divided tomorrow. The contract of souls exchanged in that moment became an eternity binding the two of them, beyond any and all reason.
The days spent as king in the afterlife had at some point changed from duty to the everyday.
Judging, commanding, seeing things through.
The laments of the dead, and their prayers, no longer gouged at his chest.
Even so, in certain moments alone, the past would abruptly rise up.
—— That time.
Beside the throne, Atem's hand stopped without warning.
At the end of his gaze were souls lined up as they had been once before.
The only difference was that these were already the dead.
Could he not have saved more.
The thought crept up quietly.
Not a voice of blame. Not a scream.
Only a flat, level question.
Three thousand years ago, the choices he had gone on making as king.
Judgments he was supposed to have made to the best of his ability.
Even so, there had certainly been things lost.
Next time, then.
Letting no one hear it, Atem decided that inside his heart.
If there is a next time, I'll protect them.
That resolve was less a vow than something like a habit.
A circuit of thought that one who had been king had naturally acquired.
After that day, Seto visited the afterlife.
Still carrying a faint trace of the living world's scent, Seto spoke in his usual tone.
"Same as ever, this place."
"I've gotten used to it by now."
When he returned it briefly, Seto raised the corner of his mouth with satisfaction.
But then his eyes narrowed sharply.
"......Your color is poor."
"You really do watch closely. ......I had things to do late into last night, and I have a bit of a headache."
Seto took out a blister sheet of medicine and pressed it into Atem's hand.
"If it hurts, say so sooner."
"......Thank you."
Atem thanked him quietly, and swallowed two tablets.
Walking side by side, Seto spoke of what he'd done in order to come to the afterlife, as though delivering a business report.
Dimensional theory. Quantum interference. The occult.
Things an ordinary person would laugh off, Seto had carried out as reality.
"They must have thought it was reckless."
When Atem said it, Seto denied it at once.
"It isn't reckless. It's a necessary procedure."
No hesitation.
"I do things my way, that's all. Those who can't understand have no need to understand."
The words were calm and level.
But at their foundation was an unshakable certainty.
"Kaiba."
Atem called to him.
Seto didn't turn around. Facing forward, he said briefly:
"The past is unnecessary to the blueprint of my future."
That back was as it always was — straight, solitary, and dazzling.
"I do not err in judgment."
Hearing those words, Atem felt, for some reason, the depths of his chest go quiet.
It wasn't that he wanted to deny it.
It wasn't unpleasant either.
If anything——
Strong.
At having thought so, he felt a faint surprise.
A person who does not speak of regret.
A person who does not say if only.
Seto chooses, decides, and moves forward.
He does not look back at the past.
—— Ideal.
That impression was close to envy.
Atem recalled the countless branchings he had gone on choosing as king.
If, at that time, he had done thus.
If he had chosen this side instead.
And still he understood.
That what if exists nowhere at all.
Which was precisely why Seto's way of being appeared dazzling.
It simply dissolved, quietly, into his blood.
The palace of the afterlife was too quiet to be called night.
In a corridor that neither moon nor stars reached, only time was settling out.
Alone, Atem hooked his fingertips over the edge of the throne and traced back through the memories of three thousand years ago, and the memory war.
What surfaced ahead of victory were the backs of fallen priests.
The prayers of a people he had failed to protect.
A destroyed country.
Countless possibilities chosen as king, and cast aside as king.
"If only——"
The words stopped at the back of his throat.
Because Atem himself understood better than anyone.
There is no if only.
A king is an existence that lives carrying the futures he did not choose.
That resolve, Atem was supposed to have taken on three thousand years ago.
Even so.
At his side now was a man who stepped over that principle far too easily.
Seto Kaiba.
A man who does not hesitate in judgment, does not falter in decision, and never once looks back at the road he has chosen.
"I do not err in judgment."
Seto speaks those words without display, simply as fact.
As though the concept of regret did not exist in Seto's dictionary.
For Atem, that was salvation.
Every time Seto affirmed the now, Atem's own existence was affirmed unconditionally as well.
The past isn't questioned.
His choices aren't blamed.
Being here at all is treated as the correct answer.
If only I could live like that.
Seto's philosophy is far too lucid, and far too strong.
It permits no what if, and discards no now.
It takes the results of choice entirely as its own and moves forward.
Atem knows.
He cannot think the same way.
He cannot say of the battle three thousand years ago, it was fine as it was.
He cannot pronounce the sacrifices optimal either.
Even so, every time he gazes at Seto's figure, something grates deep in his chest.
Envy.
Ideal.
And a slight self-loathing.
Seto's unshakability quietly digs up the remorse Atem had sunk inside himself.
The regret as king he'd pretended to forget grows cloudy like mud and begins to take shape.
Am I weak.
Seto's almost fastidious self-affirmation carries not a single word of blame.
Which is precisely why Atem had nowhere to escape.
He is supposed to be permitted, and yet feels he is not absolved.
He is affirmed, and yet he alone is judging himself.
That night, for the first time, Atem dreams of three thousand years ago.
A dark god he might have defeated.
Priests he might have saved.
Countless worlds not chosen.
Seto does not appear in the dream.
But his voice alone remains, clearly.
—— There is no what if.
In the palace of the afterlife, a single footstep tore the silence.
"......What are you thinking about."
At the voice thrown from behind him, Atem was hauled up from the bottom of his thoughts.
He turned, and Seto was there.
The gaze was sharp, but its focus was precise, and it let none of the wavering inside Atem escape.
"It's nothing."
He started to answer reflexively, and stopped his breath.
He couldn't find a reason to lie.
"......No. Let me be honest."
Atem let out a small breath and lifted the corner of his mouth self-mockingly.
"I was thinking about what if. That if I'd handled things better three thousand years ago——"
Seto's brow moved, slightly but distinctly.
Not revulsion. Not rejection either.
It was the look directed at something incomprehensible.
He took a step forward and put an arm gently around Atem's shoulders.
Not strong, and not so much that he couldn't get away.
Even so, strength enough not to let Atem go.
"A meaningless hypothesis."
It was immediate.
A tone that seemed to cut it away, and yet was not a condemnation.
"But I'll answer you anyway."
Seto looked down at Atem.
What was there was unshakable certainty.
"Supposing this life — that battle in your Memory World, this separation, every last pain included——"
Breaking off, Seto continued.
"Even if it were repeated any number of times, eternally, I would go on choosing you."
And then he said it through, without hesitation.
"I can call all of it not a mistake."
Atem's chest gave a heavy beat.
They were, beyond any doubt, words of love.
Without condition, without reservation.
A declaration that embraced everything — past, future, even the results of choice.
"......I see...... thank you."
The words he returned were certainly sincere. Color came to his cheeks, and a faint smile even rose to his lips.
Seto's words were ardent and sweet.
No — rather than sweet, strong.
So strong that he could mistake it for being enveloped.
But.
When Seto had returned to the living world, and he was alone in the palace again.
Atem sat down in a chair in the archive and, unconsciously, repeated the same habit.
If only——
The thought stops there.
He cannot say it was not a mistake.
There is a self within him who cannot affirm Seto's words.
That carnage.
The lives he couldn't save.
The countless futures chosen and cast aside as king.
That all of it may be repeated once more, eternally — he cannot bring himself to think it, no matter what.
His fingertips begin to tremble.
To affirm everything means——
to accept that hell with no correction, no salvation, and no starting over.
That is——
Atem finally understands.
Seto's words were a blessing. They were love.
But at the same time, they were a blade that cut open, completely, the self that was king.
Atem as an individual was saved.
But Atem as king had his breath taken by those words.
Seto is not wrong.
The love is real.
Only —— their values differ, fatally.
That night, trembling, Atem wishes for the first time.
If only I could be a king who affirms, the way Seto does.
That very wish was quietly, but certainly, cutting Atem open.
The air of the afterlife felt heavier than usual.
The instant Seto crossed dimensions and came down, there was a wrongness.
The palace was quiet.
But it was not an orderly quiet.
It was the blank left after something had dropped out.
"Atem."
He called, and there was no answer.
Seto moved forward, and at the back of the archive he finally found him.
What was there was not the king of the afterlife wearing a crown.
Sitting slumped as though propped against the shelves, gaze lowered,
a boy who looked as though he were being crushed by gravity itself.
"......Atem?"
The instant he called, lowering his voice.
Seto's thoughts leapt at once into the past.
—— The conversation days before.
—— The voice that spoke what if.
—— And the words he himself had said through.
Even if it were repeated eternally, I can call it not a mistake.
He froze.
The understanding was instantaneous.
He'd let him touch it.
That had been designated a forbidden text inside Seto.
Something he had decided he would absolutely never let Atem touch.
Which is why he had deflected the question about what book he'd been reading.
That book, too, was left sitting in the study of the Kaiba mansion. Precisely so it could never be touched.
Because against Atem's past and Atem's nature, it was the worst possible combination.
To Seto, someone else's philosophy was neither poison nor medicine.
But to Atem, it could only be poison.
Against a king who takes on responsibility, holds his regrets, and goes on thinking could I not have saved more — the affirmation offered by that is not salvation.
It is——
an order that says deny the self who regrets.
Seto realizes it for the first time.
What he had given was not words of love.
Behind the words of love, something had been lurking.
A philosophy.
And one whose formulation had been mistaken.
The thing that carried it into the afterlife had been Seto's own actions and his own words.
He knew by instinct that at this rate the man would break.
There was no hesitation.
It was already past the stage of explaining with words.
"Atem!"
Seto ran to him and pulled the collapsing body toward him by force.
He didn't consider the possibility of being refused.
What was needed now was neither understanding nor acceptance.
It was body heat.
In his arms, he could tell that Atem's body was faintly trembling.
His thinking was frozen.
There wasn't even the strength left to chew through words.
Watching the trembling back in his arms, Seto turned over the phrasing of the green spine he had read once and thrown aside.
It matched completely.
It was a shudder. The confessions of love he had given Atem, the obsession with his soul — all of it was laid out in orderly rows on the pages of that book.
The fact that the palm he had laid over Atem's wound to close it had in truth been a corrosive that widened it further.
Seto's arrogant self-affirmation was precisely what had driven Atem — a king trying to die a martyr to his remorse — into a corner where he could not breathe.
"......It's all right."
What is all right, he doesn't explain.
He can't.
So he only holds him.
As though blocking off the escape, but without breaking him.
Physically and mentally both, as the very intent of I won't let go.
Seto comprehends.
To speak here would be to make a blade again.
To hand over philosophy here would be to circulate more poison.
So he teaches nothing.
Affirms nothing.
Cuts nothing away.
He is only here.
"......You're mine."
Not a declaration of possession.
Not management, not dominion.
—— They are words of responsibility.
It was he who gave him the forbidden text.
Then until the side effects have cleared, holding him is his role as well.
Seto puts strength into his arms.
If he killed with philosophy, then he can only bind him back with flesh.
Seto closed his own lips as though biting down on them. If he whispered anything now, it would become an incantation that denied Atem eternally.
So he turns all of his philosophy into the strength of his arms, and shuts Atem in.
Body heat alone was the one fact carrying no meaning, the one not written anywhere in that damnable green book.
If he broke him with philosophy, then he has to stop it without using philosophy.
That night, in the archive of the afterlife, the king thought nothing at all, and simply, in someone's arms, got his breathing back.
His duties as king of the afterlife were being carried out without disruption.
Judgment, arbitration, command.
As king, Atem was as precise as ever.
To anyone's eye, no wavering was visible.
But the instant the crown came off, his thoughts wore another face.
—— Affirm it.
It is not a voice.
It isn't even an order.
At some point it had come to be there, as the precondition of thought.
A people he couldn't save.
Retainers he lost.
Countless branchings where he couldn't choose another hand.
Having been king, he must not settle those with it couldn't be helped.
To affirm everything is to pardon the carnage. He cannot pardon the blood on his own hands.
To wish that next time he should choose the better road — that is the existence called Atem.
But that very wish is put on trial.
—— Affirm it even so.
—— Including the past that cannot be corrected, do not choose again.
A life cannot be repeated.
Which is exactly why, if this life were to be repeated, he thinks: at that moment I would make a different choice.
Because it cannot be repeated, he is not absolved by himself, of himself.
God is silent.
No salvation is prepared.
No correct answer is granted either.
Live even so.
Affirm even so.
A circuit of thought with nowhere to escape.
It is not a hell where someone punishes him.
It is a hell where he himself goes on judging himself.
Atem could not put it into words.
If he put it into words, it would become philosophy again.
If it became philosophy, he would be entangled further.
So Atem chooses.
To think nothing,
to choose nothing,
and only to entrust himself to the temperature that is there.
Inside Seto's arms.
An embrace neither strong nor gentle, with no way out.
Less protection than an emergency bandage to keep his thinking from collapsing any further.
And at the same time, in Seto's arms, Atem has his own thinness thrust at him.
The pressure of life that Seto gives off is a wordless interrogation directed at the dead.
Atem closes his eyes.
That he isn't absolved, that he cannot affirm — for now, he sets them aside.
Not because he can't think.
Because he knows that if he goes on thinking, he'll break.
If this hell were to be given a name, it would be curse.
And the owner of the philosophy that produced that curse is here even now, not leaving.
That alone was the one fact standing outside the circuit.
Seto loosened the strength of his encircling arms, only very slightly.
Not in order to let him go.
In order to let words reach him.
"Atem. Remember one thing."
The voice was low, but distinct.
Neither an order nor a consolation.
"That is my philosophy. It isn't yours to carry."
Atem's body went slightly rigid.
Only belatedly did he notice that something which had gone on tangling deep in his chest had been pointed at with precision.
A curse he had never put into words.
A precondition of thought he hadn't even been able to name.
Seto had seen through all of it.
"You, as king, have no obligation of affirmation. What you hold is the right to regret."
It was an assertion.
Not a denial. Not an overwrite either.
"Don't throw away regretting that you couldn't save them. You are not me. So long as you are you, there's no need to let go of that pain."
Atem couldn't answer anything.
He could neither object nor agree.
Only, deep in his chest, there was the sound of something grating.
"You don't have to think." A beat, and Seto continued. "You may think."
It seemed contradictory, and it was precise.
"Even so, I'll come here."
Not a promise.
Not a guarantee of the future either.
A presentation of fact.
Just as those words said, Seto came.
Not once or twice.
Every time his thinking sank,
and remorse surfaced,
and the curse began taking shape again.
To not think right away is not something anyone can do.
That weight is not so conveniently let go of.
Even so.
Thinking on the verge of collapse,
a body on the verge of shattering,
if Seto was there, would take shape again.
It isn't that he's saved.
It isn't that he's absolved either.
Only that he can go on existing without breaking completely.
He doesn't carry the same philosophy.
He doesn't hold the same answer.
Even so, he stands beside him.
That was Seto's choice, and the one margin granted to Atem.
Seto went on coming.
Without stating any special reason, without setting any fixed hour, he simply appeared when he ought to.
To the palace of the afterlife, to the archive, to the quiet corridors.
Whether Atem was silent or sunk in thought, it didn't change.
At one point Seto opened his mouth abruptly.
"Don't misunderstand."
It wasn't a reproach.
It was a confirmation.
"There's no correct answer to that. No pardon, and no salvation."
The words were lucid to the point of coldness, carrying not a single unnecessary ornament.
"But meaning can be made."
Seto didn't look at Atem.
As though to show that these words were neither persuasion nor consolation.
"It isn't something someone gives you. It isn't something I give you either. It's something you make yourself."
A beat, and silence fell.
Atem found himself waiting for what came next.
—— Live even so.
—— Affirm even so.
But Seto said nothing.
In that silence, Atem understood.
The meaning of what was not said.
Neither live,
nor affirm.
Seto never commands.
Because that part alone belongs to each of them.
The core of the curse had been Seto's philosophy from the start, and something Seto himself ought to shoulder.
"......That's fairly rough of you."
Atem finally opened his mouth.
Told to make meaning, by what and from where was he supposed to begin.
But Seto only shrugged.
"Not my concern."
Seto turned his eyes slightly away.
He followed the light falling in the corridor of the afterlife, for no reason at all.
In truth, he had no intention of touching that any further.
Pile on words again, and he'd hand over something unnecessary again.
Even so——
"......That book I was reading, the day we first met. ......You wanted to know about it."
"......Book......? Didn't you not remember——"
"I've read more than I could count. But I remember."
Seto doesn't meet his eyes.
Atem's voice trembles.
"What was written...... in that?"
Why Seto had hidden it, and why he was speaking of it only now — Atem dimly understood.
"......To me, that was nothing more than a string of letters."
Atem couldn't return words immediately.
His gaze wavered, and he let out a single breath, still having failed to grasp something.
—— That can't be.
He wasn't sorted out enough inside to say it through.
"......To you, then......? To me——"
The instant he voiced it, he realized how terribly heavy the words were.
If he connected what followed, he had a premonition that something would break decisively.
He watched and waited for more, but Seto did not speak the contents.
Just a single book. And yet, for himself, something fatal.
"Correct. Only, having touched something of that kind...... whether you make meaning from it is your own freedom."
He doesn't urge understanding.
He doesn't grant an escape route either.
Atem started to look for an answer, and stopped.
For now, simply holding that question was all he could manage.
Seto's words seem to push him away, and yet they are not abandonment.
They are returning the subject of the sentence.
Atem felt a faint change deep in his chest.
The loop of thought that had been coiled around him hadn't come off completely.
But while the affirm it at its center remains, it no longer commands.
He understood that Seto had taken it away.
A part of the curse.
He doesn't think he's been saved.
He can't think he's been absolved either.
Even so.
The place where meaning is made had finally returned to his own inside.
Seto returns to the living world again.
He gives no notice of whether he'll come next time either.
But the certainty alone that he will come remains.
That was enough.
There is no correct answer.
There is no salvation.
Even so, the room to make meaning is certainly here.
Atem gazed at that margin quietly, for the first time, as his own.
The night of the afterlife was quiet, unchanged.
But there was no oppression of the kind there had been before.
The proposition that had gone on circling and circling inside his thinking was gone.
He is neither commanded nor refused.
Atem was beside Seto at the back of the archive.
"......Even so."
Slowly, he chose his words.
"Even so, I think about what if."
Seto doesn't cut him off.
"Three thousand years ago, in the same scene, whether I could have chosen a different hand. Whether next time I could save more."
Having finished, Atem looked at Seto.
He no longer feared being rejected, or being corrected.
Seto placed a pause, as though thinking a little.
"......I see."
That was all.
"If that has meaning for you, then it must be so."
Neither denial nor consolation.
Only acceptance.
"You and I are not equal."
Seto said it flatly.
"I cut away what if. And you carry what if. That's all there is to it."
There's no need to measure which is correct.
Atem let out a quiet breath.
"There is."
Brief, but in a certain voice.
"There is meaning. Now...... because I'm king of the afterlife."
So long as he is king, standing in the same scene, he will go on considering the possibility of a different choice.
That is not remorse.
It is duty.
At that answer, Seto let the corner of his mouth ease, only very slightly.
"Then that's fine."
Atem smiled.
Words were no longer needed.
They only held each other.
Not dependence, not protection.
As though confirming that they were standing, each remaining different.
Before long, Seto returns to the living world.
The study was orderly as always.
At the back of the shelf, the green spine is still there.
Seto turned his gaze to it for only an instant.
To Seto, someone else's philosophy written in that green book was nothing more than a string of letters.
But he'd known by instinct that it would become a potent drug burning Atem away from the inside. That's why he hid it.
And even so Atem found that, and touched it.
The fact that it wasn't that Seto had tried to be that — he himself was the prototype of that.
He takes it in his hand, but it is not opened.
The book is thrown into the fireplace.
Paper burns, and philosophy becomes ash.
Not denial, not rejection.
Only because there's no need for it.
Watching the flames, Seto murmured.
"......That is my philosophy."
The poison that circulated through Atem is not the philosophy written inside the book.
The ash quietly crumbles.
What became ash in the fireplace is nothing more than symbols of ink printed on paper.
In the afterlife, Atem walks as king.
In order to go on choosing, still carrying his what if.
The living world and the afterlife.
Philosophy and way of being.
The two of them are not equal.
But they can stand side by side.
That alone was enough.
Notes:
The green book Kaiba is reading in this story is the one he's shown reading in Duel Monsters: Nietzsche's Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra).
The book is never named in the text, and the idea at the center of the story — eternal recurrence, and the demand that one affirm a life repeated infinitely, exactly as it was — is never named either. If you're curious, the original is worth reading. It's the source of everything Kaiba says without knowing he's quoting anyone.
Though — he isn't a man who takes instruction from anybody. He was probably just brushing up on his German.
(※ To be clear: Seto ≠ Nietzsche. He didn't learn it from the book. That's rather the problem.)
