There is a protocol in the throne room of the afterlife. Whoever stands before the King puts the left foot forward, because the heart lies on the left. It has been so for three thousand years. The priests keep it. The people keep it. The dead keep it.
Not long after Atem becomes King of the Underworld, a man breaks through the wall between dimensions, walks the length of the throne room, and puts his right foot forward.
The priests assume he does not know any better and offer to instruct him. Atem tells them to leave it. Atem knows what kind of man this is: one who has excavated, read, analysed, and long since learned every protocol this country has. He knows, and he is choosing.
After that, the doors open at regular intervals. The device gets smaller. The coat changes. The Duel Disk changes. What does not change is the speed of the footsteps, and the right foot.
This is a translation of an Artificial Intelligence work.
Original Title: 右足から
Original Author: Gemini with 葉人(@Hathor_yuki)
Personal site: https://prideshipping.sakura.ne.jp
Whoever stands before the King puts the left foot forward.
The heart lies on the left.
It means offering the heart to the King.
The protocol dates from three thousand years ago, and has not changed in the afterlife.
The priests keep it.
The people keep it.
The dead keep it.
The protocol was first broken not long after Atem became King of the Underworld.
The doors of the throne room opened from outside.
The guard had been broken through.
Dust in the air, and an engine sound no one recognised.
The sound of shoes from the living world struck the stone floor.
While the priests stirred, the man stopped before the throne,
and put his right foot forward.
A Duel Disk on his arm.
"——I've come to settle this."
Seto Kaiba.
The man who had broken through the wall between dimensions to declare war on a king who had returned to the afterlife without a word.
Atem rose from the throne.
No anger came.
What came was something else.
Before he could confirm what it was, the Duel had already begun.
Some days later, one of the priests made a representation.
"That one puts his right foot forward in the presence of the King. Being a foreigner, he must not know the protocol. Perhaps we might instruct him on the next occasion."
Atem shook his head.
"Leave it."
"But——"
"It is fine as it is."
He explained nothing further.
Atem knows.
Seto Kaiba is not a man who can leave a thing unknown.
Excavation. Documents. Analysis.
That man has long since researched the protocols of this country down to the last of them.
He knows, and he is choosing.
To put his right foot forward before the King.
——You are not a king. Nor a god.
That is what the right foot says.
Every time, ahead of the mouth, it says it.
For a king who for three thousand years had seen nothing but left feet before the throne,
what that means.
That man has probably not even considered it.
That he has not considered it — that is the good part.
After that, the doors began to open at regular intervals.
The doors open.
The engine sound.
The sound of shoes.
The right foot goes first.
"Duel me."
"Right."
That was the shape of the beginning.
The transfer device grew smaller with each generation.
The engine sound grew quieter.
The cut of the coat changed several times.
The Duel Disk changed several times.
What did not change was the speed of the footsteps, and the right foot.
"Next time."
On the days he won and the days he lost, Seto said the same thing.
"Next time we settle it."
"How many times has that been now."
"There are records. Shall I check them for you."
"I'll pass."
It never was settled.
That the two of them were arranging it so that it never would be — neither of them said.
Seto began to stay over in the afterlife more often around the time white began to show in his hair.
"The living world is tiresome."
That was always the reason.
The company had long since passed to the next generation.
Even so, what is tiresome is tiresome, apparently.
On the nights after a Duel, Atem sits beside Seto in a room with the lights turned half down.
Sometimes they talk, sometimes they do not.
Either way, there was no problem.
At some point, Atem had begun to wake at that sound of shoes.
He knows before the doors, from the far end of the corridor.
Stride. Speed. Balance.
The ear that three thousand years of solitude had drawn taut is now there for one man's footsteps.
Around the time his voice grew low and hoarse, the speed of the Duels dropped a little.
Atem did not match it.
Ease off, and that man would never come again.
He won with everything he had, and lost with everything he had.
"Next time."
The hoarse voice says it.
"Right."
Atem answers.
As long as there is a next time, the doors open.
As long as the doors open, the right foot goes forward.
That alone was what he was confirming.
That day, the sound of the doors opening was later than usual.
Mixed into the sound of shoes, the sound of a stick.
His right leg was bad, it seemed.
Modern medicine, mechanical assistance — that man could have had any of it he wanted.
The result of his choosing was, apparently, a single stick.
Seto advanced slowly through the throne room and stopped at the usual place.
And shifted the stick to his left hand.
Atem could tell that the priests drew breath.
The right foot,
one beat late,
but certainly, went forward.
Atem gripped the arm of the throne.
To bind himself there, against standing up.
To run to him, to support him, would be to deny this man's seventy years.
"……Duel me."
The hoarse voice says it.
"Right."
Atem answered.
That his voice did not waver was, that day, the whole of the king's victory.
The Duel was made.
The speed had dropped, but the reading had not.
If anything, it had deepened.
"Next time."
On his way out, Seto said it.
The usual words.
The usual shape.
Atem nodded and saw him as far as the usual place.
He watched that back until the light of the transfer had gone.
The sound of the stick vanished beyond the light.
That was the last day the doors opened.
The doors stopped opening.
Atem waited.
He handled the affairs of state, kept his Duelling from going dull, and left the usual place in the throne room empty.
The priests said nothing.
That they said nothing was the answer.
Time in the living world runs at the same speed as in the afterlife.
It was that man who had taught him so.
So he could not help but know.
How many days had passed by now.
He was good at counting.
He had been made good at it three thousand years ago.
This time he could count without folding down his fingers.
That alone was the difference from those days.
——The King of the Underworld knows.
When a new soul passes through the Western Gate.
When that name is a name the King ought to know.
In that moment, Atem stood up in the middle of the affairs of state.
The papyrus fell to the floor.
A priest said something.
He did not hear it.
The King ran.
It was the first time the people of the afterlife had seen their King run.
The Western Gate.
The dead come from the west.
With the setting sun behind him, in the backlight, a single figure.
No engine sound.
No sound of a stick.
Only the sound of shoes from the living world, coming straight towards him.
He was young.
It was the form he had at the time his Duelling was fastest.
A soul takes the form of the time it was most itself.
Which meant that, for that man, the time he was most himself was——
Before he could finish thinking it, the man stopped in front of him,
and put his right foot forward.
"……You came without a word."
Atem's voice was slightly hoarse.
"You did it first."
An immediate answer.
Payback, seventy years in coming.
Atem laughed.
Laughing, he could not stop his vision from blurring.
"I've come to settle this."
Seto says.
The setting sun edges his outline.
"This time there's no running out of time."
Atem drew one deep breath.
"Kaiba."
"What is it."
"Before a king, one puts the left foot forward — did you know that."
"I knew it."
There was no hesitation in the answer.
"You knew, and for seventy years you kept putting the right foot forward."
"……Obviously."
Seto draws his brows together with a look that says, what of it, now.
"You are not a king and not a god. You are my rival. Not someone to offer a heart to."
One beat.
"There is nothing to offer to an equal. ——Only to stake."
Atem looked down.
Not to hide what was falling.
He was only choosing where it fell.
"……When the doors opened."
His voice shook.
This time he did not hide it.
"Every time that right foot came forward, I was not a king and not a god — I could be your rival."
He raised his face.
"To me, who had only ever seen left feet, you kept showing me your right foot for seventy years."
"I don't need thanks."
"I don't intend to give any."
Atem laughed, still wet.
"Instead, I'll win."
Seto said nothing.
He only raised his right hand.
The hand sign from that day — the one exchanged at the end of Battle City.
The road of battle runs on past all sight.
Atem answered in the same shape.
The promise had taken seventy years to reach here.
From here on, there is no time limit.
The two of them walk out from the Western Gate.
To the throne room.
To the place of the Duel.
The setting sun cast two long shadows, side by side.
Their strides differ.
But that the right foot goes first was the same for both of them.
