Atem poured the words he could not say into the soil.
Seto Kaiba crosses the dimensional wall in the flesh several times a month for one reason only: to Duel the King of the afterlife. When Atem's royal duties start eating into that time, Seto solves the problem the way he solves everything — he opens an account, connects it to a Kaiba Corporation service, and tells Atem to order whatever he needs himself. Paper. Pens. Ink. It is the optimal solution, and Seto stops thinking about it.
What Atem orders next is a seed. A tree that lives two thousand years, that stores water in its own trunk and survives without waiting for rain. He splits the shell, wakes it in hot water, and buries it — and over two years he tends it, pouring into the soil everything he cannot say across a Duel board.
The tree takes root. It will not die now. And that is precisely the problem, because the man Atem wants to give eternity to does not have two thousand years.
This is a translation of an original work.
Original Title: 2000年の木
Original Author: 葉人(@Hathor_yuki)
Personal site: https://prideshipping.sakura.ne.jp
When Seto crossed the dimensions and set down, the light came pouring over him. It was the same light as in Atem's ancient world, and the shadows of the temple columns stretched out straight.
Atem did not turn round straight away.
A priest at his side had a papyrus spread open and was reading from it. Atem answered; the priest nodded, dipped his brush in ink and wrote it down. He wrote a little, then read again, and repeated it. This, apparently, was what the duties of a king consisted of.
Seto took out his tablet and got on with other work while he waited.
He had come here to Duel, not to watch an impression of an interview. Had they any idea what he had stacked up in order to cross the dimensional wall in the flesh? Time could be bought. But for the portion of it discarded here, there was no one to set a price.
So he thought — but the priest's hand was slow, and the brush stopped over the smallest thing. Atem put it another way; the priest asked again. The same exchange was repeated any number of times.
"Atem."
There was an answer, but it was only a hand raised to ask him to wait.
Seto clicked his tongue, put the tablet in his hand into drawing mode and thrust it at Atem.
"Get it done. You can write with that."
Once Atem understood what it was, he took it.
His fingers touched the screen a few times, and then he was setting something down without hesitation. The man who had been taking his ease in front of a brush a moment ago was fast enough to be someone else. Every answer was written out at once, and the tablet went to the priest. The priest began copying it onto the papyrus.
The rate-limiting step had not been the exchange. It had been the tools.
By the time the priest bowed and withdrew, the shadows of the columns had shifted their angle a little.
Atem held the tablet out and returned it.
"That helped. We had nothing like it here."
Seto took it back and put it away. He had done nothing that warranted thanks. He had only wanted to start sooner.
"We Duel."
Atem nodded and raised his Duel Disk.
The next time Seto came, Atem was talking with a priest again.
Seto stood in the shadow of a column and waited. Today the shadow was longer than last time. He was not choosing his timing. Precisely because of that, he simply came when he could come.
Atem kept his eyes down on the papyrus and went on answering something. He glanced over, then went back to the priest.
Then, about a bundle of papyrus later, he finally dismissed the priest.
"I kept you waiting."
"Then don't. My time is worth more."
It was a fact. One minute of Seto Kaiba standing here turned into an outrageous sum in the living world. He came knowing that perfectly well, but he had certainly not come in order to wait.
Atem laughed, unrepentant.
"Understood. In that case, from now on I'll keep my time free for when you come. The priests can wait."
Seto said nothing. It was not a bad offer. Fixing a date and hour would have been ideal, but that was out of the question. There was no hour Seto could promise either. Which meant that Atem being free whenever he arrived was the optimal state.
"But I have duties of my own. I'm putting them off, so I'll take something worth it in return. Does that suit you?"
"How much."
"Not money. Paper and pens will do. Decent ones."
Atem said it as though it had only just occurred to him.
Then he added that a brush was too slow. He must have been remembering the device from the other day. Write, and hand it over. That had certainly been fast.
Ridiculous. That was Seto's assessment. There were any number of such things sitting unused in a warehouse since the switch to paperless.
"Very well."
A set of paper and pens, and Atem would keep his time free for Duels. The terms were so far beyond reasonable that Seto all but forgot on the spot that a deal had been struck.
Atem had already moved into position. He seemed to raise his Duel Disk sooner than usual.
Seto activated his Duel Disk as well.
After that, he was asked for something every time he came.
Paper quickly became a standing order, and replacement ink was added to it. One time he was asked to look into something about the living world before coming.
When he asked what to look into, the answer was: anything. The present that Atem did not know, Atem was looking in on through Seto.
The requests were small each time, and there was proper consideration in return, so they were not the sort of thing to refuse. Only, while he went on not refusing, the number of them grew.
Before he noticed it, the first thing he did after passing through the dimensional wall was not to Duel but to take an order. Paper and ink, and news of the world as it was now.
That was not, of course, what Seto was coming for.
One day, around the point where Atem had voiced several small requests, Seto cut him off.
"I see. Understood."
Atem closed his mouth. He had not finished asking.
Seto produced the tablet. The device from before. He worked it with his fingertips, created an account and connected it to a Kaiba Corporation service.
"Place an order and it arrives here."
Seto was the only man in the world with any precedent for carrying something into the afterlife. But all Seto wanted was to Duel. That was why he had built this system. For the sake of the Duel.
"What is this?"
"Search for what you need and place the orders yourself. I am not a courier."
He pressed the tablet into Atem's hands.
"And payment?"
"Not required."
The charges fell to Seto. It was his own company's service, so he could check them if he chose, but given what had been requested up to now, there was no need to look at the figures.
A man who came as far as the afterlife was hardly going to trouble himself over an invoice for paper and ink. This way Seto did not have to take orders, and Atem would still keep his time free. The optimal solution.
That was what he thought.
"Now there will be nothing holding us up before a Duel."
Atem held the tablet in both hands and was silent for a moment, then nodded with his usual face.
"That helps."
That day's Duel began from the beginning, for the first time in a while.
Glancing back as he left, Seto saw Atem still looking at the tablet. Checking how to place an order, presumably. Seto thought that, and returned to the living world.
What he intended to order. That was of no consequence at all.
The first thing Atem ordered was, after all, paper and pens.
The goods exactly as agreed arrived the next day, beside the tablet. By what logic they arrived, he did not know. That fell within Seto's jurisdiction, the man who crossed the dimensions, and not within Atem's.
After testing the paper, he ordered something else.
It had nothing whatever to do with their arrangement, or with his duties. Finding it on the screen took him a little time. He was not himself clear on what he was looking for.
A tree that lives long. Its seed.
He had done a certain amount of looking into it. He had heard that there was a tree that lives two thousand years. In land with almost no water, it stores water in its own trunk, so that it can live without waiting for rain.
He chose that. Even as he pressed the button to buy it, the reason would not become words.
The seed arrived on the usual schedule.
It was no bigger than a pearl. Rolled across his palm it was rough, and dry, and hard. He picked it up between his fingers, and could not believe that this became two thousand years.
While he was occupied with such things, Seto came all the same.
As always, Atem kept his time free, and the Duel began at once and ended at once.
Seto came, he Duelled, he left. He was a man who did that and nothing else.
He was never asked what he had bought.
What Atem did with his time appeared to lie outside Seto's interest.
That was only natural, given that when he had asked about the outside world before, it had been dealt with standing up, in a one-line news item.
It was not as though he had been waiting to be asked about what he had bought.
After Seto had gone, Atem returned to his private rooms and picked the seed up between his fingers.
Some time later, he ordered a pot.
After a further interval, he ordered soil.
He had looked up how to raise it well enough.
Obtain the seed, decide where to keep it, then prepare the soil. That was all.
The day the soil arrived, he set about breaking the seed's dormancy at once.
This hard seed would not sprout as it was. Unless the shell was cut and it was woken in hot water, the life inside could not come out.
He held the seed between his fingers and spent a while deciding where to put the cut. Damage the side where the root lay, and he would kill it. The rounded back, then. Thinly.
He set the point of a small knife against it, measured his strength, and drew it slowly. A shallow line across the rough surface. Too deep would not do, and neither would too shallow. Checking as he went, turning it with his fingers again and again, he cut thinly.
He had never handled anything so small in such a way.
Putting a single cut into it took him a considerable time. To make it live, wound it first. He had meant to do that as carefully as it could possibly be done.
Dropped into hot water, the seed sank to the bottom. Sinking, apparently, was proof that it was alive.
He left it overnight, buried the seed — swollen a little on the cut side — in the soil, and set the pot in a bright place. The same light as in the ancient world would fall on it.
After that there was nothing to do but wait for it to sprout.
Waiting was not something he was particularly good at.
The sprout came up in about ten days.
Splitting the shell where it had been cut, something green rose straight up, trying to come out from inside the seed. Life had been breathed in through the wound that was meant to make it live. Atem watched it for a while in silence.
After that, tending it became part of his day.
He moved it so that the direct sun would not fall on it too long. He checked the dryness of the soil with a finger and gave it water. When the sun went down and the air cooled, he brought it indoors.
Once he confirmed that the leaves had increased and the roots had come round, he moved it into a pot a size larger.
The orders continued, at intervals. A small quantity of fertiliser once a month; now and then, a pot a size larger, and soil. The traces of those things accumulated in the tablet's history and nowhere else.
Seto came as ever.
He came, he Duelled, he left. His style did not change. Several times a month he crossed the dimensional wall and came to the land of the dead in the flesh. Atem was not incapable of understanding what that must cost him. But Seto grudged nothing where a Duel was concerned.
For the sake of the Duel, Seto would have said.
Atem tried to think of it that way.
But he could not quite finish thinking that it was only that. The frequency with which he came here, the boards that ran long, the fact that he remembered past plays in detail.
What he was doing was the same as what Atem was doing. And so, was he not simply calling it by another name?
But that, too, he did not say. Seto would surely deny it, and this connection might break. And besides, it might only be that he wanted to think so.
So Atem watered the tree in silence.
There had always been a surplus of what he could not say in a Duel. He did not put it into words; he poured it into the soil. What he swallowed in front of the cards came close to overflowing at night. He gave it to the tree, and so the tree grew.
For the tree to grow took a certain amount of time.
A great tree that lives two thousand years grew no more than the length of a palm in a month, and above all it was unreliably thin.
Grow faster, he found himself thinking. Because Seto's time was finite. The one who was supposed to possess eternity was the one who was in a hurry.
Would it be in time — no, in time for what? Pretending to understand none of it, Atem went on looking down into the pot.
In due course the tree reached the height of his knee. The trunk was beginning to grow a little woody, but it had nothing yet of that thickness, no glimpse of two thousand years. Even so, it had taken root like this. Which meant that it would not die easily now.
This tree would live its two thousand years to come, and not only the part Atem had put his hands to. Perhaps for ever. He had that assurance.
He had the assurance, but it was a quiet thing.
The tree would not die. It had taken root. For two thousand years to come it would stand under the sun. Atem crouched in front of the pot and spent a while checking on it.
The care he had put in had been worth it. He had seen it through. He ought to have been able to think so.
And yet it grew heavier, little by little.
——Two thousand years.
He rolled it round his mouth. Too long to picture at all.
He himself could see it through to the end. The dead have all the time there is. The problem was that the one he wanted to spend that time with did not have two thousand years.
Seto was flesh and blood, and alive. Which meant that he would end. A few decades more at the outside, and that could not even be set beside the life of the tree.
The eternity Atem had secured in the land of the dead did not reach the one he wanted to share eternity with.
This tree would stand in the wrong place, for the wrong forever.
The right one was the man who crossed the dimensional wall several times a month, Duelled, and went home. And each time he did, he would be adding a little more age.
His way of speaking seemed to have changed, and his build seemed to have changed as well.
A very little more than the last time he came. Seeming not to change, and changing. The eyes of the dead, it appeared, were sensitive to the time of the living. From the side that had stopped, it seemed one could see what was changing very clearly.
Until now, it had been all right.
What he could not say in a Duel, he could pour into the soil. Because the tree had been drinking all of it.
The sprout came up, the leaves spread, and when it grew he changed the pot. That way there had been tending to do and somewhere to pour it.
Once it had grown to a certain size, the tree no longer needed so much water. Giving it some when it dried was enough.
A tree that has put down roots comes to hold its own water. So he even changed the soil deliberately for one that drained well.
Even then, the tree did prefer dryness, as he had read. There was nothing to do but keep it on the dry side and leave it. And then his hands were free of the tending. What could not be poured had lost anywhere to go.
And what was left over pressed somewhere inside him.
He remembered that hard seed. Unless it was cut, what was inside could not come out. Choose the place, and to make it live, wound it first. He had looked it up and done exactly that.
Now something like it seemed to be happening to him.
What had become certain was like a blade. The place could not be chosen, and it was not gentle. A shallow cut would not be the end of it; it went deeper, little by little.
And so, from the depth of the wound, what he had held for two years was trying to come out.
To make it live, wound it first. He had not thought it would come back to him in this form. Though a wound guarantees nothing about being made to live.
At night, the time Atem spent sitting in front of the pot grew longer.
There was almost nothing left to do. The soil was damp, the leaves were taut, and he had already turned it for tomorrow morning. Even so he could not leave, and he looked at the leaves one by one. That way he could still pretend to be doing something.
That, too, was a matter of time. The pretending was ceasing to work.
Once, in the middle of a Duel, his hand stopped.
He was on the field, and the next move would not come out. It was not that he could not see it. He could see it. And yet something else forced its way into his head.
A few more decades. One thousandth of it, so far. This man would one day stop coming. And after he stopped coming, Atem would still remember the shape of this board. What, exactly, would be the meaning of that?
"Atem."
Being called brought him back. Seto was looking at him steadily.
"What is it."
"Nothing."
He moved his hand and made his next play. That it had been an outright bad move he realised only after setting it down. He had never once made a mistake like it.
The cut in the shell had reached as far as this.
There was no recovering it, and he lost that day as he was.
Losing was not the problem; he had lost several times before. The problem was that Seto appeared to be analysing why he had lost — why he had put out a move like that.
As he was leaving, Seto turned round.
He began to say something, then went back the way he had come.
Atem could not move for a while, but when he noticed it he was heading for the pot as always. The tree stood straight, unchanged. The tree that was to stand here for two thousand years to come.
There was no need to water it.
He did it all the same.
He wanted his hands to be moving.
That Duel would not leave Seto's head.
Not because Atem had lost. Because the man had not put out a move he could see. On the field, the card that ought to be set down had been decided. Atem had almost certainly been looking at it. And he had put out a bad move regardless.
Nothing like it had happened before.
Seto took no interest in other people's private affairs. Whatever Atem was doing in the afterlife was of no consequence.
But an irregularity inside a Duel was the one exception. A flaw that surfaced on the field could not be treated as unseen. That was the single circumstance of another person's that Seto could not let pass.
What had happened.
Thinking about it produced no material. Seto knew almost nothing about Atem. He had never tried to. Even so, there was exactly one hint to hand.
Atem's account on the KC Net.
He opened the tablet's history. It was his own company's service, and originally his own device; that much would have been kept, and could be traced.
It was the first time he had opened Atem's order records. He had issued no receipts, and until now had felt no need to look. The history would hold nothing but paper and pens, but there might be something in it if it were analysed.
What was lined up in the purchase history was, as expected, what he had imagined.
Paper. Pens. Ink. This far, he recognised. Things he had in fact carried over by hand.
Below that, a run of entries he did not know continued.
A seed.
A small seedling pot.
A pot.
Soil.
Fertiliser.
From there on the same goods repeated at intervals. Fertiliser regularly; the pot twice as well. The later ones larger and deeper. Checking the dates, it appeared to be continuing even now.
Seto traced the screen from top to bottom once more.
Something had been growing, little by little, over these two years. The pots had grown deeper; it had put down roots. Fertiliser once a month meant that in that month, too, there had been someone putting his hands to it.
The two years Atem had spent with his hands in the soil overlapped with the two years Seto had spent crossing the dimensions to come here.
Seto now knew what Atem had been doing.
And what he himself had been doing was written in the same history. Going to the land of the dead in the flesh. Several times a month, for the sake of the Duel.
——For the sake of the Duel.
He shut off the screen.
The answer to the question had been in the history. To confirm it, there was nothing for it but to go.
The cube activated in his hand.
Today was not for the sake of a Duel.
From the morning, Atem had been about to water it.
He had set the pot out where the sun fell and was crouched in front of it, looking at the sheen of the leaves. The soil was not dry yet, and he knew it was not needed, and still he was about to tip the vessel. He had wanted his hands to be moving.
And there, a shadow fell.
A long shadow lay across the pot. Atem knew whose it was before he raised his head.
He raised his head, and Seto was standing there.
Not where they always Duelled. He had never come at such an hour of the morning either.
There was no way Seto could have known that Atem was here in front of the pot every morning. And yet Seto had come straight here.
Holding the vessel, Atem could not move. At the rim he had begun to tip, the water had stopped just short of falling.
Seto's eyes went to the tree. A single thin thing, from Atem's knee to his chest. A frail young tree, without that thickness of trunk yet. The thing Atem had put his hands to every day.
Seen, he thought.
What he had hidden had been seen, by the one person he had wanted to hide it from, in a state he had not wanted to be seen in.
Holding the vessel, about to give water that was not needed — seen down to the way his hands were set.
Seto had looked at the history. That was why he was here. That was why he had come.
He had to say something, and he searched for words.
I love you would not come out.
Stay would not come out either.
What he had failed to say for two years was hardly going to appear at a moment like this.
The silence was long.
In the end, Atem decided to talk about the tree.
"…This lives two thousand years."
Even so, this was all that came out.
It holds its own water, and it stands whoever goes away. And when you are gone one day, it will live two thousand years — that, of course, was not going to come out conveniently either.
Seto did not answer.
Instead he took the vessel from Atem's hand.
What Atem had done for two years with his own hands and no other, Seto did with his own hand. He tipped the vessel and let the water fall at the foot of the tree. The soil was damp and the water was not needed, and he let it overflow all the same.
The soil darkened with wet again.
Atem watched it. He could say nothing. This time it was not because the words could not be found.
When he had finished watering, Seto returned the empty vessel to Atem.
The hand returning it stopped, once.
That was all. And it was enough.
Atem touched those fingers, gently.
