Sequel to Driven Into Marriage.
A month into the marriage, the world watches them as the couple of the century — but behind closed doors, they haven't gotten past holding hands.
This is a translation of an original work on Pixiv.
Original Title: 社長の奥方
Original Author: 葉人(@Hathor₋yuki)
Personal site: https://prideshipping.sakura.ne.jp
The moment the corridor to the afterlife closed, the staff in the entrance hall bowed as one.
"Welcome home, Consort."
Atem was accustomed to this sort of treatment; the priests had been the same. He answered the rows and the single unified voice with a light greeting.
At the edge of the entrance hall stood a familiar face — Isono, waiting.
"I've come from Master Seto with the schedule for tomorrow's reception."
Isono held out the document and read off the arrangements: the start time, the venue, the matter of accompaniment.
"Tell him last week's outfit will do."
Otherwise there would be no end to it.
"Understood. I will convey it as you say."
Isono bowed deeply and returned to headquarters.
Atem turned to the servant waiting at his side.
"Would you tell the kitchen? Tonight should be light."
"But——"
"He doesn't eat much on the nights he comes home late. If he says it isn't enough, I'll make him rice balls myself. So don't worry about it."
"As you wish."
No one had decided on the title of Consort, and it was not clear who had first used it.
After the ceremony, the people of this estate had, at some point, simply begun calling Atem — who came and went from the afterlife — by that name.
Atem, for his part, had not corrected them.
Being called King and being called Consort amounted to much the same thing.
This, too, was something he was used to. Or so he decided to call it.
The following night, the grand hall of a hotel.
The reception hosted by Kaiba Corporation was filled with heavyweights from politics and finance.
As they entered, Seto offered Atem his arm.
Atem laid his hand on it, lightly, very lightly.
Once the entrance was over, the hands came apart of their own accord and each went his own way.
That was their usual pattern.
In the hall, as expected, they moved separately.
As always, Seto was surrounded by executives from partner firms, and Atem made his rounds among the guests.
Even so, each of them always had some sense of where the other was.
As Atem went about exchanging greetings, he saw an old man standing alone in a corner of the hall.
A familiar face. He pulled the guest list he had been shown beforehand out of memory. The chairman of a partner company, if he recalled correctly.
He remembered Seto saying, as he showed him the list, that merger talks with this man had been stalled for six months.
Atem took a glass from a server and stood beside him.
"How about a drink."
The old man looked down at the small figure beside him, then realized who it was and straightened slightly.
"Ah — the Consort."
"Atem will do."
He handed the old man the fresh glass, took the empty one, and returned it to the server.
Then Atem followed the old man's line of sight.
At the center of the hall, young executives had gathered around Seto.
"Not one for the noise?"
"At my age, I can't keep up with the speed of a circle like that."
The old man gave a wry smile.
"I used to stand in the middle of it myself."
"And now you watch from outside."
"Just so. Even from outside, you see a great many things. You see too much, and you want to say something. Though saying it has its own way of making you unwelcome."
Atem laughed a little.
"I know that feeling."
"…You do, Consort?"
"A throne is much the same."
The old man blinked.
Then, slowly, he began to talk.
It was not about business. How the son he had handed the company to was doing these days, stories from long ago, and how dear his still-small grandchild was. On the subject of the grandchild, the pace of his speech went up a clear notch.
The company and the work never came up, not once, to the end.
Atem was listening not to a chairman, but to a man foolish about his grandchild.
Most of a king's duties consist of listening. Three thousand years ago, and now, that had not much changed.
As the hour for conversation drew to a close, the band's music changed.
It was time to dance.
The wall of people parted, and Seto crossed the hall. He stopped in front of Atem and held out his hand.
Atem laid his own hand over it.
At the center of the floor, the music began.
At the first step, Seto's brow moved slightly. There was no hesitation in Atem's footwork.
"…Who taught you."
"Mokuba."
"Mokuba?"
"You're busy."
Atem answered without turning his head.
After the ceremony, while Seto was out, Mokuba had taught him in the hall of the Kaiba estate. There is only one reason a king of the afterlife would learn the ballroom dancing of the living world. Not that he was going to say it aloud.
Seto asked nothing further, so he had probably understood.
Instead, the hand supporting him through the turns seemed to grow a little more careful.
Around the floor, the murmur gradually thinned. Hands holding glasses stopped, and the gathering lines of sight all pointed toward the center of the hall.
The tall president and his small consort. In motion, the two figures with the difference in height resolved into a single shape.
Somewhere, a shutter clicked.
It was not just one.
In the car on the way home, Seto asked.
"What were you talking about with that chairman."
"His grandchild."
"…That's all?"
"That's all."
Seto asked nothing more.
A week later, Isono came to deliver word that the talks stalled for six months had begun to move.
Within days, the photograph from the reception was on the cover of a business magazine.
One from the dance.
Between the two of them, facing each other, there was no gap left to cut away.
The headline read: The Marriage of the Century.
Comments in foreign languages lined up on social media. Even in letters he couldn't read, the admiration came through.
The world was watching the two of them, enraptured.
A few days later, at midday, Atem was at Kaiba Corporation headquarters.
The company's charitable foundation apparently needed the Consort's name, so he had come to sign the papers.
Business done, he had reached the elevators when a voice came from behind.
"Atem!"
It was Mokuba, a tablet tucked under one arm, hurrying over.
"You were here? You should've told me."
"It was only a signature. I'm going back right away."
"Huh. …Oh, right."
Mokuba lowered his voice a little.
"Inside the company, the Consort's reputation is unbelievable."
"Is it."
"PR is at a loss what to do with the reception photos. Every one of them is too good a picture — they can't pick which one to release."
"One of them made a cover."
"That one they ran on their own. …Looks like you danced it properly."
"I had a good teacher."
Mokuba laughed.
"If they want photos, they should use Kaiba's."
"In my brother's, he's only ever glaring."
Mokuba said it with a completely straight face, and this time it was Atem who burst out laughing.
The elevator arrived.
Before the doors closed, Mokuba said one last thing.
"Take care of my brother."
"I will."
Atem nodded as if it were obvious.
Then, looking at himself in the mirrored surface of the closed doors, he wavered for an instant over whether he could really call it obvious.
The Kaiba estate at night was quiet.
They ate dinner together, cleared away their respective work, and went to the bedroom.
Up to that point, no problem at all.
The conversation held up, too. Affairs of state in the afterlife, the company, Mokuba. None of it was anything you would call romantic, as married talk went, but it worked well enough.
The problem came after the lights went out.
The bed in the master bedroom was quite wide; even with two people in it, there was room to keep some distance.
Within all that space, the two of them slept drawn to the middle.
More precisely, in the middle, holding hands.
Precisely or otherwise, that was all of it.
Two men who had made the cover and filled the world with sighs. And this was the reality of it.
A month had passed since they became husbands. And still, far from a wedding night or a honeymoon, this was where they stood.
Now and then, Seto tried to go further.
Before the lights went out, a kiss to Atem's forehead. This always passed without incident.
The lips lifted, then fell to his cheek. This, too, still passed.
The problem was what came after.
In the slight interval as the lips left his cheek, Atem's body went rigid.
His shoulders rose a little, his chin drew in, and his fingers tightened on the edge of the bedding.
So Seto stopped there.
The man who had forced an entire marriage through in ten days had spent a month on the few centimeters past the cheek, and was still waiting, still not across them.
There was also the fact that it was not a thing to be crossed by force.
Atem himself could not account for how his body reacted.
In the afterlife he was King. In the living world he was Consort. Both faces he could operate flawlessly.
The only place he could not was on this bed.
The forehead was fine. The cheek he was used to by now.
But when the sense of anything beyond it drew near, his body braced on its own.
In a Duel, no crisis had ever disturbed his breathing.
He had stood against an evil god. He had fought the darkness.
The few centimeters past his cheek were, far more than any of those, beyond his ability to conquer.
Seto did not rush him.
Seeing Atem go rigid, he neither sighed nor laughed; he only took his hand again and put out the light.
"Sleep."
That was all he said before closing his eyes.
Only the warmth of the held hand stayed there, all night.
One night, the fingers of their joined hands were laced deeper than usual. By morning, which of them had done it first was no longer clear.
Another night, he woke to find their hands come apart and their shoulders touching instead.
Atem did not move. If he moved, the touching would stop being an accident.
Seto's breathing was deep. He seemed to be asleep. If he was asleep, the shoulders could go on being an accident.
Atem closed his eyes where he was.
In the morning, Seto, who had risen first, said nothing about the shoulders that had been touching.
An accident may as well stay an accident. Acknowledge it, and it has already become deliberate.
Midday, Kaiba Corporation headquarters.
There was one more page to sign, so Atem had been called in to headquarters again.
Business done, walking the corridor, he caught the conversation of two young employees ahead of him.
"Come to think of it, today's the twenty-second."
"What about the twenty-second?"
"It's Married Couples' Day. The twenty-second of every month."
"Isn't that the one in November?"
"November twenty-second is Good Married Couples' Day. The twenty-second of every month is apparently just plain Married Couples' Day."
"What's a plain Married Couples' Day supposed to be?"
"Who knows. …The everyday kind, maybe."
"What does that even mean."
The two of them turned the corner, laughing.
Atem's pace did not change, but in his head he was checking today's date.
July twenty-second.
The everyday kind.
That use for it stayed with him, oddly.
In the car back, Atem watched the world outside the window.
Married Couples' Day, the everyday kind.
Not a special day. It came every month.
Which meant that if he were to attempt something and it did not go well, there was next month.
A king's decisions begin with confirming the line of retreat.
——No. Wait.
Atem called a halt on his own train of thought.
Did not go well — what did that mean? What was he intending to attempt?
A clean piece of self-correction. He had raised the question, but the answer had already been decided.
Outside the window, the streets of the living world, a little changed from before, flowed past.
Atem closed his eyes and let his back rest against the seat.
Steeling himself was taking longer than it had against an evil god.
That night.
Dinner was as always. The conversation was as always.
Into the bedroom, into nightclothes, up onto the bed. As always, up to here.
Seto reached for the light.
Normally the kiss to the forehead came after that.
Tonight, Atem moved first, before it could.
Bracing a hand on the bed, he leaned in and laid his own lips briefly over Seto's.
From touch to parting was less than a countable number of seconds, but Seto went still.
The hand reaching for the light had stopped halfway.
The man who had forced a marriage through in ten days, rebuilt the structure of the afterlife, and never moved an eyebrow at any press conference, had been brought to a halt by a single kiss.
Atem drew back and sat down again in his usual place.
His heart was racing. So he made sure that at least his voice came out level.
"It's… Married Couples' Day, apparently."
"……"
"The twenty-second of every month, it seems."
"…I see."
Seto's voice was a little slower than usual.
Atem did not miss the pause.
Got him. The heart that had been made to race felt a little vindicated. That he was the one who had made it race, he set aside.
There was a short pause, and then Seto put out the light.
In the dark, an arm came toward him.
It went around his back and drew him in.
It was not the usual hand-holding distance. It was the distance at which shoulders touched and his forehead came to rest at Seto's throat.
Got me, he thought, but he did not resist, and let himself be held close.
Seto's heartbeat was fast, so he decided that hearing it made them even.
Because his own was running at about the same speed.
"…Kaiba."
"What."
"Your heart's loud."
"Yours, you mean."
Neither of them denied it.
About a month since they became husbands. Still far from even a wedding night.
Tonight, what they joined was not hands.
In the dark, their heartbeats did not align for some time. Both were too fast.
Still unaligned, they slowed, little by little.
By the time they had slowed, sleep came to them both, neither one first.
Until morning, the arm did not come loose.
The next morning, Isono brought the car around to the entrance as always and waited for his employer.
The two of them came out of the entrance hall.
The Consort seeing him off was the usual thing — "if he was on this side." It was presumably not a separation, but there were a fair number of days when he was not to be seen.
Isono, however, did not concern himself with that.
What was different was the distance.
The space between the two of them, stopped at the door, was about half a step closer than usual.
No particular words were exchanged, and their hands did not touch. Only that something seemed, by a very small margin, nearer than usual.
What, exactly, was nearer, he could not have said.
Nor was it a thing worth saying. As always, he opened the rear door.
The mouth of his employer, getting in, looked somehow calmer than usual.
That too he could not have named, and it was not a thing worth saying.
The car pulled away.
In the rearview mirror, his employer's consort stood at the door until the car had passed the gate.
The way he stood there was, as ever, that of a perfect consort.
