Three thousand years of overwork, and the reward for saving the world turns out to be a mountain of paperwork. Atem does the only reasonable thing: he absconds from the Underworld. Unfortunately, the living world has taxes, landlords, washing machines, and a night shift at fifteen hundred and twenty yen an hour — and Domino City belongs, absolutely, to Seto Kaiba. Hauled into the president's office in baggy grey sweats, the King of Duelists is handed a chocolate parfait and asked what he actually wants. The honest answer is not one a proud Duelist should ever say out loud. Kaiba grants it anyway.
This is a translation of an originalArtificial Intelligence work.
Original Title: 01 脱走王
Original Author: Gemini with 葉人(@Hathor_yuki)
Personal site: https://prideshipping.sakura.ne.jp
Not one of them would have dreamed that the man himself was in the living world — on the floor above a game shop in Domino City he knew perfectly well, no less — bundled in a thick duvet and dead to the world.
"…Nnh. That was a good sleep, Aibou."
The next morning. Narrowing his eyes against the sunlight coming in, Atem was savouring his first healthy waking without a battle in three thousand years and some months.
Looking back, his life — and his death — had been a schedule packed tightly enough to make the worst employer on earth turn pale. An elite education in childhood; the instant he took the throne, a world-ending death match with a dark god. Sealed in the Puzzle, just as he thought he might finally rest, he was woken in the modern age with no time to breathe: Shadow Games, Duelist Kingdom, Battle City.
And then, having finally returned to the Underworld, the moment he let out a breath and thought right, time to begin my Reiwa-era NEET life — an official of the Underworld presented him with a mountain of paperwork. "Ah, King of the new administration, we've been expecting you. Three thousand years of outstanding administrative documents and the Underworld's urban development plans are here." The despair of that moment defied description.
Out of the question. I am not working any more!
Making full use of a King's authority and the last light of the God Cards, he had slipped the Underworld's guard, broken through the wall between dimensions, and carried out a literal escape into the living world. That had been last night.
Where he had ended up could only have been here.
Yugi Muto had nearly fallen over at his former partner's sudden trespass, but they were partners who had saved the world together. "For now, just don't let Grandpa find you" — and he had put Atem up in his room for the night.
But over his breakfast toast, Yugi put an entirely reasonable reality to him.
"…So. Atem. What are you going to do from here?"
"Do? What do you mean?"
"I mean, 'what do you mean.' …You can't seriously stay here forever, you know? Escaping from the Underworld I'll let slide, but right now you're — well, look at you. No family register. You're an unemployed illegal resident."
Atem gave a fearless smile and drew himself up.
"Set your mind at ease, Aibou. I am not a man who repays food and lodging with nothing. I shall work at this Kame Game Shop. Minding the till, hauling in stock, serving as the shop's resident Pharaoh and Duelling customers in the back — whichever you like. How about it?"
At the offer, Yugi scratched his cheek awkwardly.
"Mmm… I'm glad you want to, but Grandpa and I have enough hands as it is. And we're an ordinary household, as you can see — covering living costs for one more person indefinitely would be hard on us financially. The place isn't big, either…"
"Wh—?!"
A shock ran through Atem.
I, the King of Duelists, had been cut at the CV screening. By an inside candidate. Family, no less.
"You are telling me I would be no asset to this shop?! If I stood at the till, I could bring about the miracle of the takings balancing to the yen — an event that occurs once in a thousand years!"
"That's just the register reconciling, isn't it?! And if you were at the till the pressure would be so intense the neighbourhood kids would stop coming in for cards."
Yugi's assessment was extremely level-headed.
True enough. However much he had changed into ordinary clothes — borrowed from Yugi — on the grounds that he no longer wished to fight, the aura of a strong man that Atem gave off could not be concealed. There was a real risk of him telling a primary-schooler buying a booster pack to stake your future and draw!
"Tch…"
"So that's the situation, Atem. You can stay in my room for a while, but before long you'll have to find some kind of job — a living-world job — support yourself and move out. …Ah, but what kind of work doesn't get you picked up by the police for illegal residence…"
Beside Yugi, who was holding his head in his hands, Atem folded his arms and thought hard.
Three thousand years ago in ancient Egypt, a King who had reigned at the summit of a nation.
In modern Domino City, a man of no fixed address and indeterminate age who could not so much as write a CV.
"…A battle, is it."
Atem's sharp eyes glinted.
"Heh. Interesting. This freedom I seized by kicking aside the throne of the Underworld. A new Shadow Game called 'job-hunting' in the living world — I accept!"
"It isn't a Shadow Game, though? Let's start somewhere like the employment office, all right?"
And so the days of Atem's living-world survival — his job hunt — were about to begin. Whether the protection of the gods carried over to a modern part-time interview is another story entirely.
Several weeks passed.
The thing called "a King's majesty" turned out to be astonishingly powerless against the living world's baroque bureaucracy and the merciless Life Point erosion known as rent and utilities.
Atem's current stronghold was a thirty-year-old wooden apartment building tucked into a corner of Domino City. Thirty-two thousand yen a month. Shared bath and toilet.
That a man with no guarantor — and no identity — had been able to rent anything at all was thanks to Yugi, who had desperately talked his grandfather round and somehow arranged for the lease to go in his name.
From there, life was a literal catastrophe.
First came the modern trial known as administrative procedure.
At the council office counter, asked for his current and previous addresses, Atem was on the verge of answering, in complete sincerity, "My previous address was the Underworld. Before that, inside the Millennium Puzzle" — at which point Yugi, who had come along, put him in a headlock and stopped him.
"S-sorry! He's a bit amnesiac! We'd like to start the paperwork for a new family register—!"
Beside a cold-sweating Yugi, Atem could only stand overwhelmed before the clerk, murmuring, "That the law which governs a people should be this convoluted…"
More catastrophic still were his domestic skills.
For three thousand years, priests and handmaidens had seen to everything around him. During his time in the modern age he had been a spirit, so meals and laundry had all been handled by Yugi. And Yugi's mother.
Day one of living alone in a body of his own.
Atem stood before a fully automatic washing machine, folded his arms, and glared at it for thirty minutes.
"…Move. Why do you not move. I have commanded it!"
Lacking even the basic concept that a button must be pressed, he reported to Yugi the following day, in all seriousness, that "the white box is an insolent creature that defies the King's order," and made Yugi stare into the middle distance.
Cooking was worse. The instant he pressed the ignition on the gas hob, flame leapt up and he genuinely stepped back — "What?! A Fire Trap?!" — and what finally emerged was a carbonised something that had returned to the soil of the Underworld. Formerly food.
The job this man eventually found was a night shift at a convenience store. Five nights a week.
He was hired on the strength of a face that was wastefully good and the incantation "Irasshaimase" that Yugi had drilled into him — but what awaited him was a gruelling part-timer's existence.
And now, the present.
Of the noble King who had once fought with the fate of the world at stake, there was no trace.
Two o'clock in the afternoon.
Bathed in the thin sunlight leaking through a gap in the blackout curtains, Atem raised himself sluggishly from a futon that had not been put away in months.
His hair alone was still spiked as sharply as ever. What he had on was a grey top-and-bottom set of sweats that Yugi had bought him at Don Q—te. The knees had gone slightly baggy.
"…Mm. The sun is up already…"
Holding his heavy head, he got unsteadily to his feet.
A body coming off a night shift was heavier than any thousand-year curse. At three in the morning a drunk customer had picked a fight over nothing — "Oi, my change is ten yen short!" — and he had come within an inch of raising a hand and delivering a Penalty Game before the manager bellowed, "Muto! Customer service smile!" He was borrowing Yugi's surname.
The cloak that had once billowed from his shoulders was now a pair of cheap sandals from the hundred-yen shop. The Millennium Puzzle that had shone at his chest had been replaced by a convenience store name badge reading In Training — Muto.
Opening the fridge, he found only the five-pack of instant noodles Yugi had brought round, a hundred and forty yen, and a croquette from the reduced shelf. Thirty percent off.
"Heh… today's draw is salt ramen, then."
Hands shoved in the pockets of his sweats, he waited blankly for the electric kettle — also Yugi's charity — to boil.
In the eyes watching the steam there was none of the sharpness of the man who had once commanded the three Egyptian Gods. There was only a single, deeply worldly and deeply urgent hope: please let there be a leftover bento to take home tonight.
If Seto Kaiba, his old rival, had seen him, he would have flown into a rage and blown the entire apartment building away with Blue-Eyes. Atem's majesty had gone thoroughly dull, roughened and grubbied by the swell of the living world.
And yet the man himself, slurping instant noodles with a plastic fork, glanced out of the window and murmured:
"…Still. Not bad. No one is after my life, and no one is forcing the fate of a nation on me. So long as I survive this battle they call a 'shift,' I am free."
He wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his sweats, and Atem smirked — something close to the old fearless smile.
"Now then. Two more hours of sleep before the night shift. …Turn end."
He dived back into the fluffy futon. His true battle in the living world would begin again tonight, with the start of the ten o'clock shift.
Atem's living-world survival had entered a further phase of despair.
Under the dim light of his apartment, Atem was staring at what should have been his first full month's payslip. Ranged across it were merciless figures, carving directly into his Life Points.
"Wh—?! Taxation… residents' tax, income tax…?! Wait. What is this Trap Card called tax? The crystallisation of my labour — my rent money and my instant noodle money — why must it be plundered on this scale!"
Three thousand years ago he had been the one collecting tax from the people. Faced with modern Japan's merciless withholding system, the blood drained out of him. His balance was already guttering. A crisis was arriving in which he would survive on thirty-yen packs of udon.
But the true despair came the following day, just before his shift began.
"Muto, could I have a word…"
Called into the back room, he found the usually mild-mannered manager white as a sheet and shaking. In his hand was an electronic document with the KaibaCorp logo glaring off it.
"Manager. What is it? Your colour is that of a dead man."
"Muto… don't tell me you haven't done your Deck Registration—?!"
"Deck… registration…?"
The instant Atem tilted his head, the manager hammered the desk.
"Every resident of Domino City is legally obliged to register the Deck they own with KC's database, linked to their My Number! There's been a spot audit, and somebody reported that this branch has an unregistered suspicious individual working here—! Please, quit right now! If KaibaCorp takes against us, a franchise like this gets crushed in a heartbeat!"
"Wh-what did you say?!"
Dismissed with no argument permitted and his apron stripped from him, Atem trudged back to the apartment — where the elderly landlord was waiting for him, wearing the face of a man about to go into cardiac arrest.
"Muto! Your Deck's unregistered, is it?! KC's men in black came all the way here and threatened that any building housing an unregistered person will be excluded from future land development — physically! Please, just move out! When President Kaiba gets serious there's no telling what the man will do—!"
Manager and landlord alike were terrified of the shadow of Seto Kaiba, absolute ruler of Domino City.
Neither of them knew, of course, that the young man standing in front of them in baggy-kneed sweats was the very legendary Duelist that Kaiba was pursuing so relentlessly.
"Wait, landlord!"
For the first time in his existence, Atem attempted desperate negotiation — begging, really — with one of the common people.
"I have circumstances of my own! If I am cast into the street this instant, I shall literally dry out and be sent straight back to the Underworld! At least give me some grace, some small grace, until I find my next dwelling—!"
"Don't ask the impossible! I'm attached to my life as well!"
Perhaps pushed back by the desperate force in the King's eyes, the landlord, still trembling, extended a single thread of spider silk.
"…Two days! I'll wait two days! In that time, go to the council's Citizens' Welfare Consultation desk or somewhere and get it sorted! Not one second more than that!"
The door slammed. Atem stood rooted in front of it.
Two days' grace. In hand, the few coins the taxman had left him.
A proud King had, through the modern system known as Deck Registration — or rather, through Seto Kaiba's harassment — finally come face to face with total homelessness, stripped of both home and work.
"Wh… what in the world…"
Alone in the empty room, Atem raked a hand through his fringe and let out a dry laugh.
"That I, who once commanded the three Egyptian Gods, should live to be told to go and consult the council…"
In the pocket of his sweats, the few thousand-yen notes given to him by Yugi, the partner who had saved the world, rustled forlornly. The Shadow Games of the living world were far more grinding, and far less merciful, than any death match in the Underworld.
The next day. With heavy feet, Atem presented himself at the Citizens' Welfare Consultation desk of Domino City Hall.
Sitting on a folding chair in his sweats, watching the sleepy face of the clerk in charge, he turned over yesterday's disasters. Fired from the shop, on the verge of eviction from the apartment — all of it because of this so-called Deck Registration.
"…In short, if I complete this Deck Registration, I may go on living here?"
"Yes, well, it is a civic obligation in Domino City. Please scan all the cards you have into this machine here."
What he was handed was a latest-model slot-in terminal with the KaibaCorp logo on it.
From inside his jacket Atem took the minimal Deck that Yugi had pressed on him just in case something happens. The cards he had fought through with, soul and all. Dark Magician and the rest of the faces that stood for him.
"Ha. I have only to pass these through the box, then."
Casually, he slid the stack of cards into the terminal.
At that moment.
The council terminal lit up with a red error warning of a kind no one there had ever seen.
[ALERT] Registration pattern: 99.9% match with code name "PHARAOH". Highest-level alert issued immediately. Subject data being transmitted directly to the KC mainframe.
"Er? Uh — what's this, a bug…?"
The clerk began frantically tapping at the terminal, but it was already too late.
Within minutes the council's automatic doors flew open and heavily built men in black suits and sunglasses — KaibaCorp's men in black — surged into the consultation section in a torrent.
"What is this?!"
Before Atem could even get to his feet, the leader of the men in black informed him coldly:
"Atem Muto. Our database has registered an extremely singular response. President's orders. You will come with us."
With no opening to resist, Atem was bundled into a top-of-the-range black limousine.
Their destination was that vast and infuriating fortress rising at the centre of Domino City. KaibaCorp headquarters.
The top floor. The president's office.
The heavy door opened onto a vast glass-walled space, and beyond it a man stood with his back turned.
His long white coat stirring in the faint indoor draught, Seto had been looking down over the streets of Domino City. He turned, slowly. Those sharp blue eyes scrutinised the man in the grey sweats from the top of his head to his feet.
Silence.
At length, a fearless smile with a touch of madness in it came to Seto's mouth.
"…Hmph. So you really did prise open that door of the Underworld and come back. Your dress sense appears to have regressed to its worst possible state, but — those eyes. That wavelength of soul. There's no mistaking it. It's you, Atem."
"Kaiba…"
Atem folded his arms and spoke his old rival's name. Unfortunately, thanks to the baggy knees of the sweats, the King's dignity came off roughly thirty percent slacker than usual.
Seto indicated the expensive leather sofa in the middle of the room with his chin.
"Sit."
Atem sat down deep in the sofa without a word. Seto took the seat opposite.
And from there began a silence long enough to suffocate in.
Atem said nothing.
He had lost his home, lost his work, and was running out of money to live on — and the fact that this man, of all the proud men alive, might already know it was making him sweat internally without pause.
Seto also said nothing.
Elbow on the knee of his crossed leg, fingers laced, he sat gazing steadily at Atem. The look was partly that of a scholar observing the habits of a specimen, and partly that of a man who had gone past anger and out the other side into sheer exasperation.
Only the second hand of the clock ticked out into the luxurious space.
It was Seto who broke the silence.
He woke the tablet at his hand and, in a voice of absolute cold, began to read the data off the screen.
"…Atem Muto. Age indeterminate. Appeared in Domino City several weeks ago."
"!"
"Subsequent movements. One night's illegal lodging at the residence of Yugi Muto. The following day, urged towards independence, vacated. Moved into a thirty-year-old dilapidated apartment building. Rent, thirty-two thousand yen."
At the raw figures coming out of Seto's mouth, the space between Atem's brows twitched.
"Domestic skills, nil. Unable to work out how to use a washing machine, left it for thirty minutes. Attempted to cook, was frightened by the flame of a gas hob, and converted his ingredients into blackened charcoal. …Further, began work at a nearby convenience store on the night shift at fifteen hundred and twenty yen an hour. Principal staple foods: instant noodles at a hundred and forty yen, and croquettes from the reduced shelf at thirty percent off."
"Y-you — you looked into all of that—?!"
Atem nearly came off the sofa.
Seto tossed the tablet aside, leaned back deep into the sofa, and glared at Atem with the eyes of a man looking at something he could not believe.
"How much technology and how much budget do you imagine I poured into finding you? And the legendary Duelist I reached out as far as space itself to pursue — the first battle he takes up on returning to the living world is working a convenience store till? Don't make me laugh!"
Seto's roar rang around the office.
Atem, however, shoved his hands into the pockets of his sweats and looked away.
"Hmph. Do you have the faintest idea how terrifying the trap called tax is in the living world, Kaiba? However late at night I work, they strip my Life Points away without mercy. And on top of that — because of that unreasonable rule you invented, Deck Registration, I lost my home and my job yesterday. In two days I shall be out on the street."
Atem dumped his weight against the back of the expensive sofa, pulled his hands out of his pockets, and levelled an index finger squarely at Seto.
"So you will find me work. That is only right and proper. And while you are at it, have a word with that landlord and arrange for me to go on living in that apartment. I have two days."
A King who had once gathered the wealth of ancient Egypt to himself and led a people was now demanding job placement and a forced tenancy renewal from his opponent.
Negotiation of unsurpassable cheek, and unsurpassable pettiness.
For a moment, Seto lost his words.
Where had the godlike nobility of their old Duels gone? The transcendent strength? The man in front of him in grey sweats had the face of a part-timer being run down by the cost of living.
"…"
A small sigh escaped Seto — a rare one, and deep. Past anger, it was the exhalation of a man let down to the point of a headache.
"Atem. Why does a man like you cling to the living world to this extent. Come to that — why did you come back from the Underworld at all? On that day you severed every last bond and departed for eternal rest, as a King. Did you not."
Seto's blue eyes went through him, dead straight.
There was pure enquiry in them. Why had the rival he had chased into outer space and across dimensions abandoned the land of rest in order to slurp instant noodles?
Put on the spot, Atem pulled a distinctly awkward face and let his eyes wander.
The fact of having escaped from the Underworld was, for a proud King, deeply shameful. But if he did not throw his pride away now, he would be sleeping rough on a Domino City street in two days' time. Needs must.
Atem steeled himself and began, gravely, to relate the tragedy that had befallen him.
"…Hear me, Kaiba. On that day, when I returned beyond the golden doors. The instant all my battles were finally over and I thought I could sleep in peace, the officials of the Underworld closed in around me. And this is what they said. King of the new administration, we have been awaiting you. Here are three thousand years of outstanding administrative documents, and the Underworld's future urban development plans."
Atem clenched his fist and hurled out the cry of his soul.
"My life has been nothing but a death match, before death and after it! I take the throne and I am fighting a dark god; I am revived in the modern age and it is Shadow Games! And even in the land of rest I finally returned to, what awaited me was an endless mountain of paperwork! I… I only wanted to be released from the weight of being King, and live quietly—!"
Having laid out his tragedy of overwork with maximum pathos, Atem leaned forward off the sofa.
"So hire me at your company, Kaiba. I ask for no luxuries. Sorting documents in the living world, or the front desk at head office! Day rates — no, hourly, if you like—"
He had, with a desperate expression, just declared that he would work reception.
But the look on Seto's face when he had heard all of it was pure ice. He gave a short snort through his nose and smiled, keen-edged.
"…A tragedy? Don't make me laugh, Atem. That is simple desertion in the face of the enemy. …No — abandonment of your post. You absconded from the Underworld."
"Wh—!"
"And for so shabby a reason you have been wandering about Domino City, sacred ground of the Duel, in sweats. I'm too disgusted to speak."
Seen through, comprehensively, Atem had not one syllable to offer.
Seto stood and returned his gaze to the streets beyond the glass.
"Work I can hand you in any quantity, with the power I hold. With KaibaCorp's capital behind it, setting you up to live in idleness for the rest of your existence would be nothing at all."
He broke off there and turned back to Atem. In his eyes was a cold, complete understanding.
"But — document sorting, Atem? A man who couldn't manage a convenience store till competently, who was dismissed for being unregistered, is not going to withstand precision desk work at KaibaCorp. That a man as broad-brush as you is unsuited to grinding away at small tasks — that, I know better than anyone."
"Unsuited, you say…?"
Seto's assessment was accurate enough to leave him nothing to answer with.
A King was one who surveyed the whole board and handed down decisions. Steady work of the sort that involved tapping through a stack of receipts on a calculator would inflict stress on him at roughly Burst Stream of Destruction level.
Under Seto's merciless presentation of reality, Atem produced, on that sofa, the single most tragic expression available to him.
The man who had overturned any number of hopeless Duels now looked, having had his lack of aptitude pointed out to him, like a player whose Life Points had dropped below ten percent of their starting value.
Just then the heavy door of the office opened quietly, and a secretary of polished bearing came in pushing a trolley.
Set out on the table with brisk efficiency were two freshly poured black coffees.
And, clashing conspicuously with them, an oversized chocolate parfait, cornflakes and whipped cream and fruit and chocolate sauce towering up out of the glass in defiance of all proportion.
The vast parfait was set down in front of Atem with a soft thunk.
While Atem sat there dumbfounded, Seto picked up his own coffee and gave a snort.
"According to our research, you have not taken in any decent sugar since returning to the living world. …Consume that, and use it to think properly about what it is you actually want to do — with what remains of that brain of yours."
"Kaiba, you—"
For one instant Atem's eyes widened at his rival's clumsy consideration; but hunger and the seductive sweet in front of him were beyond resisting.
"…I shall accept."
He took up the spoon and lifted the vanilla ice cream and whipped cream from the top to his mouth first.
"…!"
The refined technique of a modern pâtissier struck squarely at the palate of a King who had known nothing but honey cakes three thousand years ago. It was so good that his spiked fringe trembled for a moment.
Atem worked his way through the parfait, in silence, chewing steadily.
What is it that I actually want to do…?
Cheeks full of cream, he thought.
Did he want to Duel again? No — the fight to save the living world had been brought to a clean finish by his partner. This was hardly the moment to come pushing back onto the stage.
Then did he want to master the convenience store night shift? Last night's drunk flashed back and the sweetness of the cream turned briefly bitter. No, thank you.
Then aim for promotion at this company? He had just been told flatly that he was unsuited, and in any case he was shaky on how to switch a computer on.
Chew, chew.
The spoon crunched satisfyingly through the cornflakes at the bottom of the glass.
But the more he thought, the less anything came to him.
Or rather — strictly speaking, the one answer that kept surfacing ran so violently counter to a King's pride that the words stuck in his throat.
The parfait was entirely empty, and he had scraped up the last of the chocolate sauce with a certain reluctance, when Atem's hand stopped.
His face now wore something different from the earlier pathos: the utterly stumped expression of a lost child.
Seto glanced at the empty glass and returned his coffee cup to its saucer.
"The glass is empty, Atem. If you have your answer, say it."
"That is…"
Atem's eyes wandered and he gripped the knees of his sweats tight. His mouth worked, and no words would come.
Unable to watch his rival's unprecedented hesitation any longer, Seto folded his arms and prompted him, his voice softening very slightly.
"What is there left to be ashamed of now. A man who abandoned his post in the Underworld and has been drinking muddy water in sweats has no need to stand on ceremony. …Say it honestly. What is it you want."
Before that straight, and somehow all-accepting, statement, Atem finally surrendered.
He let out a small breath and forced out the truth he could no longer hide.
"…The fact is, Kaiba."
"Hmph."
"I… want to do nothing."
"…"
Atem spread his hands a little and confessed the cry of his soul with pathetic honesty.
"I don't want to fight any more! Carrying anyone's expectations, staking the fate of the world, sorting the Underworld's paperwork, being yelled at by drunks on a night till — I've had enough of all of it! I only want… I only want to rest! Undisturbed by anyone, sleeping through the day, passing the night quietly — that kind of rest, the kind that produces nothing, is what I need—!"
Having said it, Atem dropped his shoulders and sank deep into the sofa.
This was the King of Duelists' unvarnished truth. He was exhausted to the bone. Three thousand years of accumulated overwork had, just now, burst its banks completely under the sweetness of a chocolate parfait.
"…Very well."
Having heard out the cry of Atem's soul — of his soul as a part-timer at the end of his rope — Seto consented as though it were nothing at all.
"Eh…?"
Atem looked up blankly. What exactly was very well? His understanding could not catch up. Summarised, his confession had been the declaration I want to work not at all and rest snugly as a NEET — a statement unfit to stand upwind of a proud Duelist. Why had a man who tolerated no compromise accepted it this readily?
Seto stood, and as he made for the internal intercom on his desk, delivered the arrangements in a flatly administrative, coldly merciless tone.
"That thirty-year-old wooden apartment you live in will be terminated immediately under our authority. Naturally, you will not be given anything so elevated as work — not for one minute. Document sorting, reception, convenience store tills: all prohibited."
"Wh-what did you say—?!"
Despair spread across Atem's face in the space of a blink.
"Wait, Kaiba! That's not what we agreed! I went to the council and registered my Deck under the rules you made! And now you strip away both my home and my work and turn me out into the street entirely? You fiend!"
"Be quiet, Atem. Hear me out to the end."
Seto brushed aside the protest with a snort and pressed the intercom button.
"Mokuba. Come to the president's office."
The heavy door of the office flew open within seconds. "Nii-sama!" came a bright voice, and in walked Mokuba — vice-president of KaibaCorp, and Seto's beloved younger brother.
"What's up, Nii-sama? Calling me up all of a sudden— …wait, huh?! A-Atem?!"
Mokuba took in the young man in grey sweats sitting on the sofa and his eyes went round as saucers.
"You really did come back?! And — what is that outfit…!"
"Mokuba."
Ignoring his brother's confusion, Seto issued his instructions in a voice both cold and absolute.
"Take this man back to the Kaiba mansion immediately. Prepare the room in the house with the worst sunlight, fully fitted with blackout curtains. His living costs, his food, every other burden he incurs, we cover permanently. Notify the staff that all labour is forbidden to him and that he is to be rested completely."
"Huh? Huuuuh?!"
Mokuba looked back and forth between his brother and Atem, mouth hanging open at an order so far outside all standard measures.
Atem, for his part, could not get his own mouth shut either.
"K-Kaiba… what did you just—?"
Seto smiled, fearless and filled to the brim with a most exquisite pleasure, and looked down at his rival in the sweats.
"I told you, Atem. If you say you don't want to fight, that you want to rest, I will grant that wish perfectly. You will be sealed away deep in my mansion, insulated from every worldly hardship, sleep like the dead as much as you like, devour parfaits as much as you like, and do nothing but build your strength back up."
Seto swept his coat around and turned his eyes once more to the streets beyond the glass. His back was that of an absolute ruler.
"I have no intention of letting you wear yourself down as one of the common herd, ground away by the absurdities of living-world life. Until your soul has been dragged back to that summit and you Duel me perfectly. Your food, your clothing, your shelter, and your very life — all of it, Seto Kaiba will produce."
"Nii-sama… that basically means keeping Atem in our house as a top-grade NEET, doesn't it…?"
Mokuba's entirely reasonable objection rang out into the office and died there.
Atem, however, no longer had the energy left even to argue back.
No rent to worry about. No tax procedures to fear. No drunks yelling at him on a night shift, and the ability to sleep in a top-of-the-range bed, in broad daylight, in full view of the world.
"…Heh. A Forged Prison, is it."
Hands in the pockets of his sweats, Atem wore a distant look and a complicated smile with unmistakable relief mixed into it.
At the end of the living world's Shadow Games, what Atem had obtained was a sanctuary of the most extravagant kind: total NEET life, funded by his rival's fortune.
