The wedding finally takes place. As the guests watch in suspense, Atem walks down the aisle with a smile no one can quite understand. After ten relentless days of preparations orchestrated by Kaiba, the ceremony ends without incident. That night, both of them lie awake in the same bed, expecting something neither of them is quite ready for. Instead, they find themselves sharing silence, a few quiet words, and a distance that becomes just a little smaller.
This is a translation of an original work on Pixiv.
Original Title: 追い込み婚
Original Author: 葉人(@Hathor_yuki)
Personal site: https://prideshipping.sakura.ne.jp
01 Operational Optimisation
"Atem, be wed!"
Having broken through any number of the afterlife's restrictions, Seto closed in on Atem.
He had refused.
On the spot. When he was taken out of the afterlife. When the servants at the Kaiba mansion were changing his clothes. Three times, at least, he had refused.
And yet.
"This is the engagement press conference for Kaiba Seto, president of Kaiba Corporation."
For some reason, Atem was there.
Blinding flashes went off all at once.
Beside him, Seto didn't move a muscle, and spoke.
"As of today, I am engaged. The party in question is here. I'll take questions."
The announcement was too brief, and the room stirred a beat late.
Atem glanced sideways at Seto. It didn't look like a joke. This man had never come equipped with the function for jokes to begin with.
Countless hands went up. Seto pointed at a reporter in the front row.
"May we ask your partner's name?"
"Atem."
"And his occupation?"
"Not disclosed."
"Forgive me — his age?"
"No idea."
While the reporters groped their way towards assembling the next question, Seto played his next move.
"This is very sudden — might we ask how the two of you met?"
"I'm under no obligation to answer."
Every answer came instantly, and none of them connected.
Hadn't he said he would take questions? For a moment, the room went quiet.
The next reporter chose the question carefully before speaking.
"Could you say a word about what led you to decide on marriage?"
Seto narrowed his eyes slightly.
"Operational optimisation."
Again, the question and the answer failed to connect. The room stopped.
"Next."
In the corner of the room, at the far end of the staff seating, Yugi nearly dropped the folder he was holding.
Yugi had a meeting at Kaiba Corporation that day and was in the building. Stepping out of the conference room, he'd been swept up in the flow of people, and by the time he noticed, he was standing in the corner of the president's engagement press conference. No one had invited him, but there was no getting out anymore.
On the stage, beside Seto, was a profile he recognised. Recognised — that was putting it far too mildly.
Yugi pressed the folder to his chest and let out a sound.
"Wait— no way, Kaiba's engagement… his partner is…"
It was at a volume no one could hear.
On the stage, Atem happened to glance over. Their eyes met, and Atem's brows lowered, just slightly.
Seto dropped his eyes to his watch and stood.
"Time's up."
Hands were still up all over the room, but Seto didn't so much as look at it. With the PR officer rushing to the microphone behind him, repeating that they would follow up at a later date, Seto took Atem's arm.
The hand that had been resting there was lifted, and Atem rose without resistance.
Walking down the staff corridor, Atem was thinking.
——This is far worse than I estimated.
It had been Atem's own judgement that showing his face would end it. But the pattern where showing his face got him broadcast nationwide as the fiancé — that, he had not calculated.
A constraint of the living world, of a different kind than the afterlife's. Not a contract, not a sacred law, but the kind where a reported fact simply walks off on its own.
Outside the calculation. The moment that phrase surfaced, he had no choice but to admit how slow his own grasp of things had been.
Yugi tightened his grip on his phone the instant the two of them left the stage.
Joey saw the breaking news in front of the Kame Game Shop less than two minutes later.
"Huh?!"
On the big screen in the street, in the clip from the engagement conference, the one standing beside him was, by any reading, Atem.
Tristan's call came in at almost the same moment.
"Hey. You seeing this?"
"Yeah. I'm looking at it right now."
"What about Yugi?"
"Dunno. I'll try him."
Before he could even end the call, a message from Yugi came up on the screen.
"I'm at Kaiba Corporation. Heading to the president's office."
Joey was already running before the message registered as read.
When the door to the president's office opened, the first thing they felt was the weight of the air.
Seto was at his desk, reading something on a display. Atem sat on the visitors' sofa with his arms folded. There was no conversation between them, and no exchange of glances either.
It did not look like a room holding two people who had just become engaged.
It was, at this point, a wake.
"Um… Kaiba?"
Yugi was the first to speak. Joey and Tristan had stopped just inside the door and stayed there.
Seto didn't lift his eyes from the document.
"I don't recall sending for you."
"You didn't, but…"
Yugi's voice was unusually hard.
Atem didn't move from the sofa. Only his eyes went to the three who had come in.
"It's been a while. I didn't expect us to meet like this."
The voice was low. Angry, or tired — it was hard to tell which.
Joey finally got a word out.
"…Hey, Atem…"
"Mm?"
"Why are you… here?"
Atem thought about it for a moment, then answered.
"I'm not entirely sure myself."
"What do you mean you're not sure?"
Joey couldn't help snapping back. Tristan frowned too.
"It's your own business, isn't it."
"It is. And still, I'm not sure."
Atem's face was perfectly serious. As far as he was concerned, it was an honest answer.
Yugi was looking hard at Atem's face, the first time he'd seen it in so long. There were a hundred things he wanted to ask. What the afterlife was like. How long he'd been in the living world. But the room wasn't for that.
With no other option, he decided to start with confirmation.
"…You did get engaged, right?"
"It has been made so."
"'Made so'?"
"As a matter of fact, it appears to be established. As of a short while ago."
Joey put his head in his hands.
"You got engaged yourself and you're saying 'it appears'?"
"I refused three times."
"Three?"
"I refused three times, and I am here."
Tristan folded his arms against the wall and gave a low groan.
"So he forced you."
"No, I'm not sure of that either. I could hardly start throwing my weight around at servants who'd done nothing wrong."
"Kaiba…"
Joey glared at Seto. Seto didn't look up. It wasn't that he wasn't listening; he simply had no intention of responding.
Yugi asked the next question carefully.
"Um… how did the two of you…?"
"Ask Kaiba."
Atem, who kept saying he didn't know, apparently had nothing he could actually explain.
Four pairs of eyes turned at once towards the window.
Seto brought up the next page of the document.
"I believe I said: operational optimisation."
"Yeah, that tells us nothing!"
At Joey's voice, Seto finally raised his head, without moving an eyebrow.
"Marriage proposals. Thirty-six a week, on average."
All four people in the room froze, each in whatever position they were in.
"The secretarial division has assigned dedicated staff to processing the paperwork. That personnel is a resource that should properly be allocated to other work."
Seto continued flatly.
"There are currently seventeen templates in operation for the wording of the refusal letters. Discussion of adding new ones is permanently ongoing. As a matter of management judgement, this is not a situation that can be overlooked."
No one could produce a sound.
"The rational solution is the establishment of a married state. From that point, the documents in question will be returned unaccepted. Management resources return to their proper use. That is the background."
Silence fell.
"…Kaiba, and for that, you chose the other me?"
"There is no one else suited to it."
Yugi was lost for words.
Joey forced the words out.
"…That's your reason?"
"It's rational."
As if that concluded the explanation, Seto returned his eyes to the document.
Atem let out one deep breath. It was neither anger nor resignation.
——Suited.
Which meant that other options had been weighed, and he had been chosen. For some reason, that lodged itself, small and sharp, somewhere in his chest.
"Moving on to scheduling."
Seto closed the document and opened a different folder.
"The ceremony is next weekend. The venue, the guest list, the order of proceedings including the rites — all arrangements are complete. The invitations go out by tomorrow."
Atem's eyes went to a calendar.
Next weekend.
Counting from today's date, that was ten days.
"…Kaiba."
"What."
"The date is too close."
"Do you want a betrothal ceremony as well? There's no reason to push it back."
Seto moved his gaze, just like that, to Joey, Tristan, and Yugi.
"Don't worry. It's Atem in his finest. The invitations will reach you."
At that, Joey started to straighten reflexively and stopped himself. Tristan lifted his back off the wall. Yugi's face registered what had been said a beat late.
"You— don't buy off my friends with invitations."
"Sending invitations to a wedding is customary."
Seto's expression didn't change.
Customary. There was a thin barb in the word.
Atem closed his mouth.
He could have said "I refuse" here. And walking out of this office afterwards was, physically, possible. He had refused three times; a fourth would hardly have been strange.
And yet.
The employees they had passed on the way to the office.
In the first corridor, two young women employees walking by had seen Seto, stopped almost simultaneously, and bowed deeply.
Then one of them raised her head, saw Atem beside him, and her eyes widened slightly. After a single blink, she bowed again. There was no stiffness of formality in it.
At the elevator, a middle-aged man stood waiting with documents under his arm. The doors opened, but the moment he recognised the two of them, he stepped back and bowed deeply.
Seto boarded without pausing, and Atem followed. Before the doors closed, the man said, "Congratulations." The voice was small; it fell into the corridor, was caught between the doors, and vanished.
In the corridor of the floor they passed through, several employees were standing — a group on their way back from a meeting. One of them noticed the two and tugged at a colleague's sleeve. The group cleared the way as one and bowed. Among them, a young man said something with his head still down. It sounded like "Congratulations." It was closer to a murmur, but it unmistakably had a shape.
Nowhere in it was the thinness of social courtesy. That voice had been genuine. One voice meant in earnest carries more weight than ten people's worth of ritual.
If he said "I refuse" here and walked out, what those employees would be left looking at afterwards.
Having imagined it, the conclusion came out that refusing on the spot was not, as things stood, an available option.
He would have to think of a way to get through this cleanly.
When he raised his head, his eyes met Seto's.
Seto was expressionless as ever. But deep in those eyes, he thought he caught the faintest shade of something trying to make a determination.
Seto squared the documents and continued flatly, eyes still down.
"The invitations go out by tomorrow. My secretary will contact each of you with the details. That's all."
It was far too administrative. It didn't sound like the end of a conversation about an engagement.
Atem stood up from the sofa.
"Kaiba… are you serious about this?"
The voice was low.
"I announced it at the conference."
"I'm asking if you're in your right mind. I'm the king of the afterlife, you realise."
Seto raised his head.
"I know."
"You know, and this is what you do."
"Your station has no bearing on the rationality of this matter."
Atem drew in a breath and let it out.
Yugi, Joey, and Tristan had stopped short of the door and lost their chance to leave.
Atem put a hand on the desk and looked down at Seto.
"Then make me fall for you."
Seto lifted his eyes.
"Do that, and I'll give you the marriage or anything else you want."
There was the texture of provocation in Atem's voice.
Go on, then — move a heart, with that administrative processing capacity of yours. It was a demand made with deliberate malice.
Seto didn't move for a while.
Then he exhaled shortly and rose, slowly.
Three steps, to stand in front of Atem.
Without turning his eyes towards the three at the door, Seto spoke.
"Get out."
There was the sound of Yugi catching his breath.
Joey started to step forward.
"H-hey, Kaiba! What are you planning to do to Atem?"
For the first time, the corner of Seto's mouth lifted slightly.
"Exactly what he asked for. I'm going to make him fall."
With that, he took Atem's chin in his hand and set his lips to his forehead.
Lightly, and without a trace of hesitation.
All four people in the room went still, each in whatever position they were in.
Atem registered the sensation of that warmth leaving his forehead somewhere far away from himself.
The first to come back to himself was Tristan.
"…Th-then we'll get out of your way!"
No sooner said than he grabbed Joey's collar and Yugi's arm and hauled them towards the door.
"H-hey, Tristan, hold on, you—"
"Just come on!"
Yugi didn't even have time to look back.
The door closed with a sound.
02 Securing the Time
The sound of the door closing deepened the stillness in the air by another degree.
Only Seto and Atem were left in the room.
The warmth that had touched his forehead was already gone, but the sensation of it stayed where it had been. Atem started to press a hand to the spot and held himself back.
"Make you fall, was it."
"You have no objection to those terms, I take it."
Atem lifted his hand from the desk and straightened. The lowness was gone from his voice now.
"Do you think you can?"
"You think I can't?"
The short exchange resembled the back-and-forth of a Duel. A tacit declaration of war was established.
That night, in a guest room of the Kaiba mansion, Atem made the decision to return to the afterlife.
He couldn't stay long in the living world. He'd assumed from the start that showing his face briefly would be the end of it. Being absent for nearly a full day, the palace would by now have classified the situation as an outright emergency.
He was partway through opening the corridor to the afterlife when a voice came from behind him.
"Running away?"
He turned to find Seto standing in the doorway.
Atem looked at him, leaving the mouth of the corridor open.
"You're the one who brought this to me. …If you have business with me, you come."
The provocation was reflex. Running was out of the question.
Without moving an eyebrow, Seto went to fetch his coat.
When he came back, he had an attaché case in his hand.
When the two of them set down in front of the afterlife's palace, the bell announcing the king's absence was still ringing.
The instant Atem appeared, a visible wave of relief ran through the guards, and then every head lowered at once. Next, a priest came running.
"My king, you're unharmed! Where on earth—"
"My apologies. There were circumstances."
"Circumstances…"
The priest's gaze caught on the man standing beside Atem. In that instant, every sound drained out of his expression.
A man from the living world, standing at the front of the palace, having come by way of the king's private corridor. This was an incident.
Atem saw the priest go rigid, and made a judgement.
"I'm returning to my duties. This man is my… guest. Prepare a room for him."
"Y-yes, but—"
"Explanations later. First I'll clear the backlog. Bring me the highest-priority matters first."
The priest looked at Seto once, bowed deeply, and ran off. He ran faster going than he had coming.
When Atem reached the royal study, the documents awaiting his decision were stacked on the desk at an unnatural height.
A short absence, and this is the result.
Atem let out a single sigh and sat down. Seto, rather than going to the guest room, had installed himself uninvited on the couch in the corner of the study, taken a tablet from his attaché case, and begun reading.
"I had a room prepared for you."
"Not interested."
Nothing connected.
Atem gave up and lowered his eyes to the first document.
Approval for a change in the schedule of the rites. A petition from the provinces. A council report on procedures for receiving new souls. Water allocation. A review of the procurement route for ceremonial oil. Each one small on its own, and a great many of them requiring the king's decision.
About two hours of concentrated work later, Atem lifted his head.
The couch in the corner of the room was empty.
At that hour, Seto was knocking on the door of the department that governed the afterlife's finances.
The young official who answered found himself faced with a tall man in living-world clothing, and lost his words for a while.
"Kaiba Seto."
Everyone knew who he was — the king's guest. No introduction was necessary. Seto continued as though it were self-evident.
"I'm here as the king's fiancé to assess the current state of the afterlife's finances. Fetch me whoever is responsible."
The word fiancé was dropped into the air of an afterlife government office for the first time.
The young official ran.
After that, Seto went through the departments in order.
At the department of rites, he asked about the calendar of annual observances and the flow of the goods they required. At the department of law, he confirmed which matters required the king's decision and which did not. At the department of military affairs, he asked about current personnel assignments and the state of the guard.
At every department, Seto introduced himself.
At every department, confusion came first, and then the explanations began.
Not one person managed to hold on to the absurdity of explaining the afterlife's internal administration to a man from the living world for longer than the first thirty seconds. Seto's questions were too specific, too precisely aimed.
He asked only what needed asking, and made not one word of small talk.
When Seto returned to the royal study, in his hands was a bundle of materials handed over by the various departments of the afterlife.
Atem raised his head from his documents, looked at the bundle, and then at Seto's face.
"…What have you been doing."
"Assessing the current state."
As though it were self-evident, Seto settled back onto the couch and began organising the materials.
The afternoon passed in much the same way.
Atem went on clearing the backlog of state business, and Seto went on making his rounds of the afterlife's departments.
They saw each other only twice: in the evening, when Seto returned to the couch in the study, and at night, when they parted as Atem went back to the royal chambers.
At parting, Seto would remove Atem's crown and set his lips to his forehead.
The same motion as in the living world, the same warmth, the same brevity. He did nothing beyond that.
Watching Seto's back as he walked away, Atem stood rooted in the corridor.
That night, Atem couldn't fall asleep.
He held himself ready to respond whenever the man might come. He kept his senses half-woken to catch any sign of presence, and closed his eyes.
Seto didn't come.
Towards dawn, he finally slept a little.
The second night was the same. The kiss to the forehead, and nothing beyond it. Atem spent another night half awake.
On the morning of the third day, sitting at the desk in the study, Atem noticed he was short on sleep.
He had skipped two lines of a document, and had read the same paragraph three times.
That man doesn't care about anyone else's circumstances when he has an objective.
That was what Atem kept coming back to.
He'd abandoned his work in the living world to come to the afterlife — and the usual version of this man would have forced his way into Atem's study and dragged everything onto his own pace. There was every chance he'd start by establishing facts on the ground. That was who Seto was.
That reckless straight line, the one he'd come at him with when he demanded the marriage — that was Seto's standard.
Now, it was different.
He didn't interfere with the state business. He didn't come to the private chambers. He left only the kiss to the forehead, placed there with total efficiency.
What he intended to do next — saying it didn't concern him would have been a lie.
Atem rubbed his sleep-short eyes and set down his brush.
The fact that it concerned him at all meant he was being pushed back a little.
That night, Atem watched Seto going through his materials on the study's couch.
The smell of lamp oil filled the room thinly.
"Kaiba."
Without looking up from his documents, Seto answered.
"What."
"What are you thinking about."
Seto's hand stopped mid-turn of a page.
He raised his head and looked at Atem.
The lamplight was sunk deep in his eyes.
"You."
There was no irony in the voice, no mockery, no shade of manoeuvring.
Atem forgot, for a moment, to blink.
At parting, as always, he set his lips to Atem's forehead.
Atem spoke.
"That's a gentle touch, coming from you."
Half mockery in the voice, and half something else.
Seto stopped. He gave only a glance back over his shoulder. The corner of his mouth had lifted slightly.
"Would you have preferred to be taken?"
He didn't wait for an answer. The door closed.
Atem put his elbows on the desk and covered his eyes with one hand.
Beneath it, he decided not to notice that his cheeks had taken on a little heat.
The next day, the stack of documents on the study desk was visibly lower.
The reports had been reduced to essentials. The audience schedule had been rearranged. The council reports coming up from the priesthood had changed format, with the conclusion written on the first page.
The decisions took half the time.
In the evening, while the sun was still high, Atem finished sealing the last document. When he raised his head, Seto had finished his own reading on the couch and was looking at him.
He had tea brought. The finest leaf, reserved for the king, was set steaming between them.
After one mouthful, Atem let out a sigh.
"It's been a long time since I've had this much ease. …Assuming you weren't here, that is."
Seto tilted his cup without changing expression.
"Be glad. At minimum, this state of affairs will hold."
Atem stopped the cup at his lips and looked at Seto, dubious.
Something had caught.
Seto finished his tea and stood.
They left the study and walked the corridor side by side.
The usual route, as far as the royal chambers.
Around a corner, two priests came walking with books in their arms. They bowed deeply to Atem, then saw Seto, and bowed to him as well.
"Lord Kaiba."
The elder of the two addressed him.
"We revised the format of the council reports as of today. The scribes have sent word of their thanks — decisions are faster, and their own burden is lighter."
"It's a matter of putting the conclusion first."
"A point no one had raised, in all the years of custom."
The priests bowed deeply once more and departed.
Atem didn't stop walking.
He didn't stop, but his pace dropped by the smallest margin.
Several steps on, he finally spoke.
"You…"
"What."
"While you were going around the afterlife's departments, you took it upon yourself to make them efficient."
"Be glad."
Seto nodded without the slightest attempt to hide it.
"You said you were assessing the current state."
"I assessed it, and improved what could be improved. I obtained the agreement of the departments concerned."
"Agreement…"
Atem narrowed his eyes, facing forward.
He could imagine well enough what had gone through the minds of the afterlife officials on the other side of that agreement, dealing with a man from the living world.
Asked for an explanation by a man calling himself the king's fiancé; in the course of explaining, having the waste in their own work pointed out; and nodding at the accuracy of the observation. The moment they nodded, the improvements had begun moving towards implementation.
At minimum, this state of affairs will hold.
I see, Atem understood.
Seto had structurally shortened the hours of Atem's official duties. By reworking the afterlife's organisation, he had cut into the working hours of the king himself.
When they reached the door of the royal chambers, Atem turned to Seto before putting a hand to it.
"Kaiba."
"What."
"Do you think a thing like this will win my heart?"
It was a voice trying to hold on to the colour of provocation.
Seto closed the distance in front of Atem by one step.
It was close. Close enough that Atem's eyes wouldn't meet his without lifting his face.
"I secured the time for it."
The voice was quiet.
Atem felt the strength go out of the hand he had on the door handle.
Deep in his chest, something stirred and made a small sound again. This time it was too large to ignore.
Seto slowly bent down.
As always, the crown was removed, and lips fell to his forehead.
They left.
And in the instant he thought they had left, Seto's arm came around Atem's back and drew him in.
Held close, Seto's body heat came through.
In that position, Seto's lips came down once more.
This time, to his cheek.
Atem's breath caught.
While it was caught, Seto's arm loosened, he straightened, and walked away down the corridor.
Atem stood alone in front of the door.
The warmth left on his cheek lasted far longer than the one on his forehead.
The feel of the arm around his back lasted longer still.
In the morning, Atem walked towards the study.
As he walked, he was thinking.
Tonight, would the parting kiss stop at the cheek? Or would it go one step further? Forehead, cheek, and then the next — what expression was he supposed to be standing there with? Should he answer with provocation, or would it be better to say nothing?
He was aware that the very fact of thinking it through meant he was already half inside Seto's hand.
But he couldn't stop the thinking.
In the end, he'd barely slept again that night. The warmth on his forehead and cheek surfaced every time he closed his eyes. The harder he tried to consciously drive it out, the sharper it became.
The morning light, on no sleep, was brighter than usual.
He opened the study door.
The couch was empty, and he thought: not here yet.
But today's documents awaiting decision were already stacked neatly on the desk. Business had begun.
Atem sat down and reached for the papers.
Several hours passed, and the couch stayed empty.
Before noon, a priest came with the routine report.
Without lifting his head from the documents, Atem asked.
"Is Kaiba off at some department again?"
The priest tilted his head slightly.
"Lord Kaiba departed early this morning, saying he would return home for a time."
Atem's brush stopped.
"…Return home?"
"He said he had duties in the living world. We are given to understand he will be back again later."
The priest delivered that, bowed deeply, and left.
Atem looked at the documents for a while.
He took the brush up again, went to write the next line, and stopped where he was.
He could have said one word before he went.
That was the first thing that surfaced.
The second was a correction: that isn't a line I have any business saying.
The third was a question to himself: why am I going as far as correcting it?
He returned his eyes to the documents.
He wrote one line.
His concentration came back.
But through the afternoon, his gaze drifted to the couch several times. The instant it drifted, he pulled it back himself. The instant he registered pulling it back, it drifted again.
He kept that up until evening.
In the evening, he finished sealing the last document.
Streamlined business did, in fact, finish quickly.
He didn't say to have tea brought.
Today there was no reason to prepare two cups.
Atem looked out the study window. The afterlife's setting sun was staining the palace walls red.
Normally this was the point where Seto would stand and their walk down the corridor together would begin.
Atem walked the corridor alone, with no one to walk beside.
He stopped in front of the door to his chambers.
Before putting a hand to it, for the briefest moment, he checked with himself whether he was going to turn around.
He didn't turn around.
He opened the door, went in, and closed it.
A day in which nothing had touched his forehead or his cheek came to an end.
03 A Benefit to the Afterlife
The living world. Kaiba Corporation headquarters, the president's office.
Seto came in at his usual hour.
Whether it was after an engagement press conference or after a trip back from the afterlife, the hour Seto arrived never changed.
The schedule his secretary had prepared for the day had returned to ordinary business. Inquiries following the conference had been taken over by the PR division, the marriage proposal documents had stopped being accepted, and, exactly as projected, the workload had gone one degree quieter.
The door opened without a knock.
"Big brother."
Mokuba came in with a tablet in his hand. On the screen was a still from the engagement conference footage.
Seto didn't lift his eyes from his documents.
"What."
"Don't 'what' me."
Mokuba stood in front of the desk and held the tablet up a little.
"What is this? When did this happen?"
"It's as I said at the conference."
"I saw that, but."
"There's no other explanation."
Mokuba looked at his brother for a while.
Normally he'd have pressed a little harder here. But Mokuba closed his mouth once, and opened it again.
"It's Atem, right."
"It is."
"You thought this through properly, right."
Seto raised his eyes for the first time.
"Do you think I make decisions I haven't thought through."
Mokuba let out a breath. Short — less an exhale of being convinced than a signal of withdrawal.
Mokuba knew. Between his brother and Atem there was a territory neither he nor anyone else could enter. What it was made of, Mokuba couldn't put into words either. But he knew it was there.
He knew, too, that asking anything further here would only produce a rephrasing of "it's as I said at the conference."
"…Got it."
Mokuba lowered the tablet.
"Invite me properly, okay."
"The invitation will have reached you."
Mokuba nodded and left the office.
Once he heard the door close, Seto pressed the intercom to the secretary's desk.
"Send for Yugi Mutou."
"Mr. Mutou, sir. He's visiting the software development division today. I'll confirm and—"
"Show him to my office."
He cut the line.
Yugi knocked on the office door shortly afterwards.
When the door opened, Yugi still had a dubious look on his face — the face of someone with the scene he'd witnessed from the corner of that conference, and the wake-like state of those two, still sitting in his head.
"Kaiba…?"
"Come."
Seto was already on his feet with his coat in hand.
"Wh— hang on, where are we—"
"I'm getting involved in your game development."
Seto continued as he passed by Yugi towards the door.
"The project you have running now — there's waste in reconciling the specifications. If I look at it directly, that time gets cut. Come."
Yugi hurried after Seto's back as he left the office.
"N-no, Kaiba, I mean, that's great and all, but what is this all of a sudden?"
"The car's waiting."
In the parking garage, Seto opened the rear door of a black car and put Yugi in first. He got in himself and closed the door.
Once the car was moving, Yugi looked out the window.
The car was on roads he recognised. But the destination was unclear.
"…Kaiba, where is this going?"
"A fitting."
"…Huh?"
"A fitting for the ceremony attire. Your build is the closest to Atem's. I'm taking you as a stand-in."
Yugi looked at Seto's profile with his mouth half open.
Seto faced forward, and his expression didn't change.
In the fitting room, an elderly tailor and several assistants were waiting.
Over the course of that day, Yugi was put into several kinds of formal attire, turned this way and that, had his sleeve length measured and his collar angle corrected. In the mirror, the outline of someone he knew — not himself, but close to himself in height — gradually took shape.
Seto sat in a chair and exchanged brief remarks with the tailor. Collar height, whether the cuffs took embroidery, the width of the sash, the shoes. The judgements were fast, and there was no hesitation in them.
Several hours later, Seto stood.
"I have the general picture. You can stand down."
The tailors bowed deeply and withdrew from the room.
The assistants stripped the garments off Yugi's body. The last one came off, and Yugi was back in his own clothes.
His whole body was tired.
Drinking water in the waiting room, Yugi finally asked what he'd wanted to ask.
"Kaiba."
"What."
"This really is for Atem, isn't it?"
Seto's hand stopped where it had been checking the fitting records.
"What else would it be for."
The answer was short.
Yugi turned that shortness over for a while.
The words themselves were an affirmation. He was acknowledging that it was for Atem. But there was no temperature at all in the way he affirmed it. Administrative was the only word for it.
At the conference he'd answered "operational optimisation." In the office he'd explained "the rational solution." Here, he returned "what else would it be for."
All of it, the same temperature.
There is something between those two that no one else can enter.
Yugi knew that too.
And that man was now shoring up everything around himself with nothing but administrative language.
Maybe, just maybe, he really was choosing Atem as a piece of paperwork and nothing more. Maybe "operational optimisation" meant exactly what it said.
Yugi couldn't entirely rule the possibility out.
"…I see. Understood."
Yugi drank the rest of the water.
Seto said nothing further.
The next day, Seto returned to the afterlife as planned.
At the sound of the study door opening, Atem raised his eyes from his documents.
The couch had been empty the whole time. He remembered that in the instant the empty seat was filled.
Atem pushed the self that had noticed the empty seat under the surface, instantly.
"You're back."
The voice came out in its usual register.
"I am."
Seto had a tablet in his hand. He set it on the low table in front of the couch and brought up the screen.
"Look."
Formal attire was laid out on the screen.
Traditional afterlife royal dress with the structure of living-world formal wear worked into it — variations in colour, in ornament, in the shape of the collar. A list of photographs taken at the basted-fitting stage.
There were many of them. And wearing every single one was Yugi.
Atem's hand stopped scrolling.
"…Kaiba."
"What."
"What is this."
"Attire."
"No. I'm asking about my partner."
"His build is the closest to yours. A stand-in."
Atem lifted his eyes from the screen.
"You made my partner do this."
The voice was low.
Seto's expression didn't change.
"I presented compensation."
"Compensation?"
"I get directly involved in game development with Kaiba Corporation. There are places in Yugi's project where reconciling the specifications is producing waste. If I look at it, that gets shortened. And in exchange, standing in at the fitting. An equivalent trade."
"Did my partner consent to it."
"He consented, which is why he's wearing them."
Atem let out a long breath.
He knew what Yugi was like.
Seto's offer was, certainly, a trade that benefited Yugi as well — but whether he had nodded to it that readily was another question.
That much was clear. Yugi had become a dress-up doll in his place. And separate from all of that, a feeling remained that wouldn't settle.
"My partner…"
"Think of him as a mannequin."
Of course. Explaining this feeling to Seto would only get it returned as "rational processing."
"…So you're saying you haven't treated him badly."
"I haven't."
"Understood."
Atem returned his eyes to the tablet.
The Yugi on the screen stood there with a perfectly earnest face in every single garment.
"Several are already being made. Which do you want."
Atem went through the screen in order.
Afterlife white with gold embroidery. Living-world black with deep indigo accents. Ones with a standing collar, ones with broad shoulders, ones with long trailing sleeves.
Partway through choosing by eye, something else occurred to him.
"You said 'being made.'"
"I did."
"What about the size? However close he is, my partner and I are separate beings."
Atem lifted his eyes from the screen and looked at Seto.
"I checked it the other day."
Seto answered shortly.
Atem blinked once, sharply.
The other day. Checked.
Atem worked backward through what that covered in a matter of seconds.
Since coming to the afterlife, the moments Seto had touched Atem's body were limited. The kiss to the forehead. The kiss to the cheek. And, between them, the arm that had gone around his back.
That embrace.
In that instant — where on his back Seto's arm had gone, and over what length.
Atem remembered it, without meaning to.
The feel of being drawn in to the distance where they touched. The body heat coming through. The faint pressure left behind as the arm came loose. Lips falling to his forehead, leaving, and then the warmth falling once more to his cheek.
That had been processed as "checking the size." The fact he had no choice but to acknowledge was laid out there on the tablet.
"…Kaiba…"
Atem got the pitch of his voice wrong. He tried to lower it, and it didn't lower all the way.
Seto did not miss the sound.
He lifted his eyes from the tablet and looked at Atem. Their eyes met.
Seto said nothing.
He said nothing, but the corner of his mouth rose, by the smallest margin.
It wasn't a victor's smile. Something thinner, and more certain — a smile that seemed to say: so you've noticed.
Atem returned his eyes to the tablet.
He pointed to the one at the top of the screen.
"This one."
He had barely looked at it.
Seto nodded: that will do.
The following evening, Seto was on the couch again.
This time, instead of the tablet, he had set a rectangular wooden box beside him. A glossy box, with no ornament on it.
Atem sealed his documents with the box caught at the edge of his vision.
Only after clearing the last one did he speak.
"What is that."
"Rings."
Seto stood with the box in hand and walked to the front of the desk.
He set it down on the desk.
"I need your ring. It has to be decided before the ceremony."
Atem set down his brush.
"You're asking my opinion."
"I am."
"That's unexpected."
There was still a faint texture of mockery in the voice.
"The attire, the guest list, the order of proceedings — you decided all of it on your own. I'd have thought the ring would go the same way."
Seto put a hand to the box's clasp, and stopped. Then he looked at Atem.
"Your ornaments aren't merely ornaments, are they."
It wasn't a question. Atem forgot to blink.
The ornaments of a king of the afterlife were contract before they were form. Earrings, necklaces, rings. They took on meaning the moment they were put on.
Not a matter of Atem's personal taste — one chose what carried meaning in being worn by a king as a king.
There was no way a man from the living world should understand that system.
And yet the man in front of him had, in a single sentence, shot straight through it.
Seto opened the clasp.
Inside the box, on a lining of black velvet, rings were laid out.
There were many of them.
In the nearest row were the basic ones, with all ornament stripped away. A single line of platinum, a thin band of gold, black metal in matte finish. Living-world design, taken to the extreme of simplicity.
Behind those were the lightly casual ones. A single small stone set in; fine engraving worked across the surface; two materials braided together.
And in the row further back were ones plainly of a different rank.
The kind one could tell at a glance would hold their own even among a king of the afterlife's regalia. Heavy settings, deep-coloured gems, shapes designed to carry meaning on a king's hand. Stones of many colours. Every one of them a stone with the power to declare something.
There was no hesitation in the choice of stones, and none in the design of the forms.
Atem stayed still for a while, his eyes down on the box.
Couldn't move would have been more accurate.
Living-world rings, and the ornamental culture of the afterlife. A set of options prepared with an understanding of both, weighted towards neither.
He had assembled all of it.
"…Kaiba."
"Yes."
"When did you prepare this."
"The day before last. The day I went back to the living world."
Atem raised his head.
Work, the fitting, the travel. That day in the living world should have been full.
And in the gaps of it, he had put this together.
"…Which of them do you intend to have me choose."
Atem's voice was a little low. It didn't go all the way low. It was the same voice he had heard from himself that day in the office.
Seto didn't answer.
He didn't point out the ring at the very back of the box, at the centre of the highest-ranking row, either.
He simply left the lid open where it lay.
All the options laid out before Atem, equally.
"You choose."
The voice was quiet.
Atem went slowly through the rings in the box.
The more he looked, the more clearly he understood that every stone, every shape, had been selected for him.
Deep in his chest, something made a sound again.
This time it was the largest of all of them.
Without raising his eyes, Atem spoke.
"…Kaiba."
"Yes."
"You're—"
Atem swallowed the words he had started.
"I'll think about it. I need a little time."
"Fine. I'll have the size adjusted immediately."
Seto left the box where it was on the desk and went back to the couch.
He didn't rush him.
That night, Atem returned to his chambers, closed the door, and let out a long breath.
He changed into nightclothes and sat on the edge of the bed.
It was still early to sleep.
When he closed his eyes, he saw the box lying open on the desk. It might have been better to have it closed before coming back, he thought for a moment. But he was the one who'd asked for it to be left open. He was the one who'd said he would think about it.
He was thinking about the ring, and while he thought about it, he was thinking about something else.
Seto would come tomorrow as well. And when he did, where would Atem be standing?
The ring is what you should be thinking about, he told himself. Telling himself didn't stop his thoughts from returning to the same place.
The next day, working through documents in the study, Atem had a portion of his attention given over to the sound of the door.
The documents were being processed steadily. His hand didn't stop. But each time the door made a sound, his eyes went to it for an instant.
A priest's visit. A dispatch being delivered. An attendant bringing tea.
None of them were Seto.
Each time, Atem returned his eyes to the documents. And as he returned them, he was waiting for the next sound at the door. There was never a moment when he admitted to waiting. But the tip of the brush sliding across the paper came a beat late every time he did.
In the evening, with the sound of the door, Seto came in.
The usual hour. The same pace as always.
Keeping his eyes fixed on the documents, Atem sealed the line he had just finished.
And then, for the first time, he raised his head.
The way he raised it was, even to himself, not what anyone would call natural. Not too early, not too late — it was the result of having calculated it several times over.
Seto sat on the couch and opened his materials as usual.
The usual evening hour passed between them.
He had tea brought, and they drank it together.
Atem savored the warmth of the tea longer than usual.
They left the study and walked the corridor side by side.
As he walked, Atem didn't speak.
Normally this was where he'd have put in a word of mockery or provocation. Tonight he didn't.
He walked without it, matching Seto's pace.
Seto said nothing either.
They reached the door of the royal chambers.
Before putting a hand to it, Atem turned around.
His body moved as though turning around were simply the natural flow of things. Their eyes met.
Seto was standing at the usual distance.
Tonight, Atem moved half a step closer to him.
Having moved, he noticed that he had moved — and even so, he didn't move back.
Seto's eyes narrowed slightly.
It was that motion again, the one that seemed to say: so you've noticed.
Seto bent down.
As always, the crown was removed, and lips fell to his forehead.
They left.
Seto's arm came around his back.
Tonight, Atem's body moved with it. He didn't resist.
Seto's lips fell to his cheek.
The lips on his cheek stayed, by the smallest margin, longer than usual.
As they left, Atem's breath didn't catch.
He only lowered his eyes.
Seto's arm loosened, and he straightened.
Normally this was where he'd turn on his heel — but tonight, before that, Seto stopped, and looked at Atem as though confirming something.
With his eyes still lowered, Atem spoke.
"…Come tomorrow. I'll have decided."
The voice was low.
It was low, but the kind of lowness had changed from before.
It was neither provocation nor refusal.
Seto listened to that lowness for a while.
"Understood."
That was all he said before walking away down the corridor.
He went inside and closed the door. Atem leaned his back against it.
He stayed there, not moving, for a while.
Deciding on the ring is a matter of preparing for contingencies, he told himself, by way of excuse.
On his cheek and his back and his forehead, the outline of Seto's warmth still remained.
Tonight, he didn't try to erase it.
The following evening, Seto came to the study at his usual hour.
On the low table in front of the couch, yesterday's box was still sitting. The lid was closed.
Atem finished sealing the last document and set down his brush.
He drew the box over and opened the lid with his own hand.
He looked again at the rows of rings.
In the time he'd spent thinking alone the night before, the choice had already been made. He had rephrased his reason for choosing it several times over, to himself. He had the most convincing answer prepared.
The back row of the box. From among the highest-ranking designs, he chose one and pointed to it.
A heavy setting, with a deep-coloured stone set in it.
"This one."
Seto looked into the box. He confirmed where Atem's finger was pointing.
He nodded.
"Understood. I'll send it for adjustment."
That should have been the end of the conversation.
The usual Seto would have ended it there.
Atem put a hand to the lid of the box.
And, with his hand on it, stopped.
If he closed the lid here without saying anything, tonight would end quietly. And tomorrow, and after the ceremony, the same evening would repeat. And he would get through it without putting the thing in his hands into words.
And yet.
Atem lowered the hand on the lid, just as it was.
He didn't raise his face.
With his eyes still down on the rings in the box, he spoke.
"Kaiba."
"Yes."
"With you here…"
He left one beat.
"…the afterlife will be better for it."
Seto didn't move from the couch, but at the edge of his lowered vision Atem could tell that the angle of his gaze had shifted, by the smallest margin.
"Restructuring the organisation. Streamlining operations. Reviewing how the departments coordinate. Everywhere you went, without exception, improved. I've heard it from the people responsible. Not one or two of them."
Atem continued, his eyes still down on the rings.
"The running of this country has long been excessively dependent on the king's capacity for decisions. You took that apart."
The words came out smoothly.
They were the words he had prepared the day before.
Here, for the first time, Atem raised his face and looked at Seto.
"Entering into marriage with you is, for the afterlife, greatly to its benefit."
The voice was level.
Seto stayed still for a while, looking into Atem's eyes.
That gaze was searching for something in Atem's expression. And as it searched, it was visible that he already had the answer.
Even so, Atem had decided to say it through to the end.
To keep from saying the part he wasn't saying, he would say every part he could.
"So I accept. On the day of the ceremony, I won't run. I'll wear the ring. A marriage with you, as a benefit to the afterlife, is a great help to me."
The word help came out of his mouth.
The moment it did, Atem measured for himself how transparent the word he'd chosen was.
Having measured, he understood that there was no cloth left to cover it with.
Seto still didn't move.
Before long, he rose slowly from the couch.
Two steps, to the front of the desk.
The same distance as the day before.
Seto bent slightly, bringing himself level with Atem's eyes.
It was close. At that distance, Seto spoke.
"Understood."
It was short, and inside that shortness there was, plainly, information he had not included.
Atem looked into Seto's eyes.
Seto was looking into his.
The time their eyes stayed on each other was longer than usual.
In the length of that time, Atem saw through to the fact that Seto had seen through all of it.
Which meant that Seto, too, had accepted what Atem was covering over while leaving it covered.
And that the moment he chose the option of covering it over, Seto too was carrying something that needed covering.
I see. He'd been carrying it.
In his own mind, Atem finally used the word.
From the very beginning, he'd been carrying it.
From when he said "operational optimisation" at the conference, to when he opened the whole box of rings and said "you choose."
All of it, covered. Now, it was visible.
The moment it became visible, Atem couldn't stop the corner of his mouth from loosening, by the smallest margin.
The corner of Seto's mouth loosened by exactly as much.
Neither of them loosened any further than that.
An agreement not to put it into words was established in the meeting of their eyes.
Knowing that, they said nothing.
Seto straightened.
"I'll send it for adjustment."
He was back to his usual administrative voice.
"Do that."
Atem was back to his usual voice as well.
He closed the box on the table, carefully. The sound of it closing fell small into the room.
Once the box was put away, Seto would head for the living world. The day of the ceremony was already close at hand.
04 No Better Than I Am
The living world. The ceremony hall.
From the second-floor balcony, Joey, Tristan, and Yugi looked down at the aisle below.
Guests were taking their seats one after another. Kaiba Corporation executives, overseas business partners, names from politics and finance. The air was that of everyone coming to witness the resolution of the engagement uproar that had run since the conference, each with a little tension in them.
Joey let out another in a series of sighs.
"…They're really doing this, huh."
Tristan folded his arms.
"The way Atem looked, you can't call it till the end."
Yugi didn't answer. He was unconsciously rubbing the program in his hands.
Atem's face in that office. The mirror he'd been made to stand in front of at the fitting. Those hadn't fully connected yet. It would have been a relief if they did.
"I've been called for, so I'm heading down."
Yugi left the two of them and made for the waiting room. Whether Atem would be there, he didn't know.
The hour came.
The hall went quiet.
The doors opened.
Escorted by Yugi, Atem entered.
The ceremonial dress, a reconciliation of living world and afterlife, was more complete on its wearer than any of the forms he'd seen at the basted stage. The height of the collar, the fall of the sleeves, the width of the sash, the angle at the hip — all of it fit against Atem's frame and against the way a king stands, without a hair's breadth of error.
Walking beside him, Yugi quietly took in Atem's profile.
At the corner of Atem's mouth there was the smallest loosening.
Not anger, not resolve, not resignation.
If he had to name it, it was closer to being entertained.
Watching from the balcony, Joey elbowed Tristan in the side without meaning to.
"…Hey, Tristan. Look at that face."
"I'm looking."
"That's him falling for the guy, isn't it?"
The voice was a whisper. The two of them looked at each other.
When Yugi finished the escort and returned to his seat, Joey pressed him under his breath.
"Yugi, you were walking right next to him. Well?"
Yugi thought about it for a while as he sat down.
"I'm not really sure, but…"
He looked at Atem on the dais again.
He looked at the way he stood there, beside Seto.
"He looks like he's enjoying himself."
Yugi's voice was quiet.
Joey looked at Tristan with his mouth half open.
Tristan laughed.
"…Well, if that's how the man feels, then it's fine, isn't it."
"Guess so."
They said nothing further.
The ceremony proceeded without a hitch.
The vows, the exchange of rings, all of it. Without a single delay, without a single interruption, the ceremony ended.
At the corner of Atem's mouth as he left, the loosening had increased, by the smallest margin, from when he'd entered.
That night, the Kaiba mansion.
The bedroom ceiling was high. The bed was wide.
Atem changed into nightclothes and lay down on his side of the bed. Beside him, Seto lay down as well.
Today had been the day of the ceremony. Which is to say, tonight was the night people call the wedding night.
Atem lay with his eyes open, looking at the ceiling.
This time he really should prepare himself, he judged. He judged it, but what exactly he was supposed to prepare, he had no concrete idea. All he could do was settle a few of his senses in advance so that when something came, he wouldn't be excessively shaken.
Time passed.
Beside him, Seto didn't move.
Far from moving, he already seemed to be intending to put out the light.
Atem looked sideways at him.
Seto was in his usual mode. Straightening the bedding, adjusting the position of his own pillow.
There was no sign at all of him making a move.
Atem re-gripped the edge of the bedding and spoke.
"Kaiba."
"What."
"I did think tonight of all nights I'd be taken by force."
Seto's hand stopped where it was reaching for the light.
He turned his face towards Atem.
"Do you want to be."
Atem couldn't answer immediately.
That fact was, oddly, a little irritating even to himself.
After a few beats, he carefully composed his voice.
"No."
"…Is that so."
"I'm tired. And being taken here would be… a great inconvenience to me."
"A great one, is it."
The choice hadn't been unconscious.
The instant Seto heard it, the corner of his mouth lifted slightly — visible even in the dark.
Seto pursued it no further, and put out the light.
"Then go to sleep already."
He said it almost in a whisper, and closed his eyes.
Atem didn't close his.
He looked at the dark ceiling for a while.
He was thinking.
He went back through, in order, everything Seto had moved in these ten days.
The afterlife's organisation and its working hours, the arrangement of the attire, the selection of the rings, the running of the ceremony. All of it, Seto had loaded onto a forced schedule of ten days and carried through.
——You're no better than I am.
Atem murmured it inwardly, and looked beside him.
Seto's breathing had already gone deep.
Atem watched that for a while.
Inside the bed, he shifted himself towards Seto, just slightly.
Drew close would be nearer the truth.
Between shoulder and shoulder, half a body's worth of air remained.
He closed his eyes.
"You're no better than I am."
This time, he said it aloud.
At a volume that wouldn't wake the sleeping Seto.
Atem felt, with his eyes closed, Seto's breathing change for a single beat.
He had been awake, apparently.
But neither of them said anything.
In the dark, only the intervals of their breathing slowly came into alignment.
