Given the run of the Kaiba mansion and a tablet wired into the KC Net, Atem discovers delivery pizza, streaming services, and a Yogibo with its own gravitational field. Seto, who could stop any of this at any moment, instead orders a larger Yogibo. When Atem complains of boredom, Seto hands him a strategy game — which is, in fact, a live brokerage account. Meanwhile Yugi and the others are combing Domino City in tears, convinced their King is sleeping rough.
This is a translation of an originalArtificial Intelligence work.
Original Title: 02 堕落王
Original Author: Gemini with 葉人(@Hathor_yuki)
Personal site: https://prideshipping.sakura.ne.jp
Atem chose the sweats without hesitation. That familiar grey texture carried within it the peace of soul he had cultivated on a permanently unmade futon in an apartment.
He showered in a bathroom broad enough to be mistaken for a heated pool, towelled his hair dry with something spotless, and dived into the King of Beds. A sleep deeper than any desert night, softer than the throne of the Underworld. His consciousness was drawn away into the dark in an instant.
The three days that followed were the life of a man sprinting up the stairway to total ruin. Tumbling down it, rather.
Waking in the middle of the night from hunger, he would cram in a full course prepared by the Kaiba mansion's resident chef, murmuring "…good," and go back to bed. Whether the sun rose or set was no concern of his. By the time he noticed, Atem's body clock had collapsed entirely.
And then, past noon on the third day. Finally beaten by hunger, Atem shuffled down to the dining hall and ran into Seto, who was unusually taking an early lunch.
"…Yo."
Atem's complexion had improved astonishingly over those three days.
The crown of his head, however, had detonated into spectacular bed hair, and wherever the glare of the champion who had once saved the world might have gone, the man sitting there now had the face of a happy-go-lucky freeloader who had got up in the early afternoon, having set down every battle and every tension.
Seto stopped his spoon and studied that vacant face with a coldly observational eye.
"…There is not a fragment of anything resembling drive left in you."
"Ahh… you think so? The food's good and the bed is perfect. What could I possibly have to complain about."
Atem sank deep into his chair and let his back go slack against it.
The Kaiba mansion came fully equipped with the latest games consoles, a vast library, and a couch of optimal fluffiness for couch-potato purposes. Days with no need to fight, and no need to wrestle with paperwork. The man who had once carried the fate of the world was now soaking thoroughly in the poison called entertainment.
"Is there anything you lack."
At Seto's question, Atem made a show of thinking it over, failed to come up with anything, and shook his head.
"Nothing in particular. This house has entertainment by the mountain. …If I had to say, I'm at the point of thinking it wouldn't be so bad to go on like this, doing nothing, until I die."
Hearing that indolent answer, Seto let out a short laugh. It was a fearless smile with something distinctly scheming in it. Without a word, he slid the cutting-edge slimline tablet lying on the table across to Atem.
"What is this…?"
"An access key to the KC Net. A terminal designed to give perfect support to this I don't want to do anything of yours."
Seto took a mouthful of coffee and explained its use in a level tone.
"An e-commerce site wired directly into our network. Daily necessities, food, up to and including the newest game titles — order here and it comes to your room immediately. …Listen carefully, Atem. I spare no expense. Anything you require, anything you want, any implement that will accelerate your idleness — use it freely."
Peering into the tablet screen, he found listed not merely every shop in Domino City but luxury goods from all over the world.
"With this, I can obtain everything I want… without moving a finger?"
Something in Atem's eyes wavered with the curiosity of a thoroughly modern child.
"Correct. So that you may lead a NEET life of greater density in this house."
That this magic slab Seto had held out — and the man from an age of stone tablets meant the word quite literally — was the ultimate weapon, one that would lure him into deeper abysses of sloth still, was something Atem did not notice at the time.
The first purchase chosen by Atem, now in possession of the modern magic called a tablet, was something thoroughly plebeian: delivery pizza.
Back when he had lived inside Yugi's body, he had seen it any number of times on television adverts and late-night programmes, and had been secretly captivated by its junk-food allure. But the Muto household ran on home cooking, so he had missed his chance to order any and returned to the Underworld with the matter unresolved.
To make the long-held wish come true, Atem waited for Seto's next mealtime and called out to him.
"Kaiba. Would you come to my room at dinner this evening. There is something I want to show you."
The face Atem wore at that moment was so peaceful, wrapped in such a soft and fluffy air, that it was impossible to associate with the razor-edged wielder of the three Egyptian Gods. Seto snorted — "Hmph. It had better not be some peculiar scheme" — but as it happened he had only remote work within the company that day, and his evening was due to be free.
In the evening, as announced, Seto opened the door of Atem's room.
"Atem. I'm coming in—"
The instant he set one foot inside, Seto's brow twisted to a depth it had never previously achieved.
Thanks to the Kaiba mansion's staff coming in to clean every day, the room had been reset to something like a minimally human dwelling over the past several days — but today's clean, apparently, was still to come.
The room's current condition could only be described as a catastrophe.
On the king-size bed lay any number of KC sweats, stripped off and scattered. Cushions were piled anyhow on the expensive sofa, and across the entire floor the pieces and cards of modern board games — Ark Nova, Wingspan — were strewn about as violently as a minefield. The man responsible sat at the centre of the chaos, his spiked head detonated further still by bed hair.
The room's intercom chimed with perfect timing, and the extra-large box of KC Delivery Pizza that had been carried up passed into Atem's hands.
"It really came! The technology of this age is astonishing!"
Atem came back cradling the box in delight, then swept his eyes around the room and froze.
"…Ah. Kaiba. There is nowhere to put it."
"You — you invite me here and intend to make me eat off the floor?!"
Seto let out a magnificent sigh, then personally shoved aside the early-edition cards and half-eaten snack packets scattered over the expensive low table, forcing a space clear for the pizza box.
The lid came open with a pop, and the rich smell of melting cheese and pepperoni spread through the whole room.
"So this… is the pizza of the living world…!"
Atem's eyes shone as he lifted a slice. Moved by the cheese stretching out in a long string, he took an enormous bite.
"Delicious…! The heavy cheese, entwined with this junk of a sauce… a perfect combo!"
Seto, too, picked up a slice with visible reluctance and conveyed it to his mouth with elegance. It was pizza from KaibaCorp's food services division, so of course it tasted good.
The two of them consumed the pizza in silence, but steadily. In his sweats, drinking cola and stuffing his cheeks, Atem was enjoying the living world's shut-in lifestyle to the full.
"Heh. I have now completely mastered the use of mail order."
Polishing off the last slice and licking the cheese from his fingers, Atem laughed with an air of supreme satisfaction.
"…Is that so."
Wiping his mouth gracefully with a paper napkin, Seto let his gaze drop to the mountain of board games that showed no sign whatsoever of being tidied away.
He deliberately did not put it into words.
But that cutting-edge brain of his could predict this room's future several weeks out, without the slightest margin of error.
In this state, within a month this vast guest room will be buried under dubious mail-order goods, arcade cabinets and discarded sweats, and become a King of Chaos with nowhere left to set a foot down.
Even so, Seto did not reject that future.
Better to let him drown in the swamp of material desire as much as he liked, within reach of his own hand, than to let him grow dull and grubby out in the swell of the living world.
"If there is anything you want, order it in whatever quantity you like. Our servers are designed to withstand the processing of any worthless craving of yours."
"That is reassuring, Kaiba."
Behind Atem, wearing his soft and fluffy smile, a board game die that had rolled onto the floor lay quietly with snake eyes turned upward, as though confirming that this NEET life would continue.
More than a month went by after that.
Deep inside the Kaiba mansion, in Atem's room, where blackout curtains shut out the light of the outside world entirely, the very concept of time had been sent to the Graveyard.
Not merely a reversal of day and night — a lifestyle in the terminal stage, awake for thirty hours and asleep for twenty. The daily login bonus in a game was his sole index of time, and Atem himself had no idea whatsoever what month, what date or what day of the week it was.
"Heh… this bottomless swamp they call a streaming service… it's like an infinite loop combo."
Wearing KC sweats stained with crisp grease, Atem lay buried in the sofa in front of an enormous monitor. The fingertips that had once commanded the God Cards now displayed astonishing speed for the sole purpose of tapping next video. A shut-in NEET, boned entirely by the civilisation of the living world, was complete.
Atem's room in the Kaiba mansion had by now become a perfect King's cocoon.
Enthroned at the centre of the room was an extra-large Yogibo, which Seto had sent his men in black running out to have made to order.
Atem was, quite literally, being sucked down into that sea of cushioning softened to its absolute limit. The body of the man who had once carried the fate of the world and held his back straight on the throne of the Underworld had been comprehensively ruined by the technology of the living world. The two-tone hair was submerged in cushion.
"…Kaiba. This object is terrifying. My fighting spirit is being physically prevented from getting out of me…"
Seto, dropping by to check on him and confirm he was still alive, looked down at his rival, who had fused with the cushion and was melting like a liquid.
An ordinary man would have barked have you gone soft?! here. Seto merely snorted, and did not laugh at all. If anything, in the depths of his chest he felt an exquisite satisfaction at the fact that this man — worn to pieces by black overtime in the Underworld and night shifts in the living world — had let his guard down this completely and gone this thoroughly slack.
"You have moved too much until now, Atem. Prostrate yourself before that relaxation and go on sleeping like the dead."
Several days later. Atem, having barely managed to extract his head from Yogibo's gravity, called out to Seto on one of his visits.
"Kaiba. Merely sleeping has become a little dull. …Is there no game? A living-world one. Something that uses the mind."
"A game, you say?"
Seto stopped what he was doing and rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
He is only just recovered; I can't have him holding a Duel Disk and burning through his stamina. And a commercially available video game would be reduced to a walkover in seconds by that miraculous intuition of his…
Seto's brilliant mind derived, in an instant, a single optimal entertainment.
"Very well. Atem, I shall give you a terminal for the living world's finest strategy simulation game."
Seto immediately summoned his men in black and had a premium large-lot account opened with Kaiba Securities, in Atem's own name, at ludicrous speed. Then he dropped in a suitable starting fund from his personal assets — a figure in the hundreds of millions that would make an ordinary person's eyes leave their sockets — with a cheerful thump, and handed Atem the newest, highest-grade tablet.
"This is… the numbers on the screen are constantly moving. What sort of game is it, Kaiba?"
What was displayed on the screen were real-time charts of share prices, currencies and futures markets from around the world.
"The rules are simple. Assess the value of the cards lined up on the screen. If you believe one will rise, select draw. If you believe it will fall, send it to the Graveyard. If your Life Points run out, it's game over. If they increase, you win. …Dominate the field known as the world economy with that intuition of yours."
"I see. A game of deck construction and situational judgement, then. I like it, Kaiba!"
Buried deep in the Yogibo, Atem began to run his fingers across the tablet screen, his eyes sparkling.
For some time after that, Atem could be found still not having moved a single step from the Yogibo, tapping at the screen at a terrifying rate.
"…Hm. This wave on the Colombian coffee futures chart… it's coming. Here I stake everything — direct attack!"
To Atem, this was nothing but an advanced game of the mind.
The weight of the tens and hundreds of billions of yen in real electronic money moving behind it was not something he was aware of by so much as a millimetre. He believed it was a game score. Which was precisely why there was no noise in him at all — no fear, no hesitation.
To that was added Atem's innate power to draw fate towards him.
"Nii-sama… you need to see this…!"
Mokuba burst into the president's office and thrust a tablet management screen at Seto. Displayed on it was a history of Atem's account assets exploding upward from the initial stake by an astronomical multiple.
"Atem's making complete mugs of every hedge fund on the planet! He predicted the American employment figures exactly, bought dollars at the bottom with everything he had, and turned it into a one-turn kill!"
Seto looked at the data he had been handed and could not help a low laugh. "Fuhaha."
"Hmph. Naturally. There was never any chance of that man's intuition falling behind the algorithms of mere living-world investors."
When Seto looked in on Atem's room, Atem was still buried in the Yogibo, picking at snacks and smiling at the screen with satisfaction.
"Kaiba, look at this. My Life Points have finally reached 999,999,999. This game is fairly difficult, but it is no match for my tactics!"
"Fuf… fuhahaha! Well done, Atem! That strategy of yours is perfect!"
Seto laughed out loud.
He did not tell Atem that he was, in the spirit of play, stripping several hundred billion yen out of the world's markets. But for Seto, nothing could be more entertaining: Atem was idling away in a good mood, treating it as a game, and increasing his own spending money without limit while he did it.
"Kaiba, is the next stage not unlocked yet? I would like to smash this boss called crude oil futures before long."
"Very well — I shall lift the restriction on the next field, the European markets, at once! Rampage to your heart's content, Atem!"
A man who demanded nothing, and a King ruined to the ultimate degree who shook the world economy as though it were a game.
Atem's NEET life, held captive by Yogibo's gravity, was being elevated by Seto's flawless concealment into the strongest entertainment on earth — one that no one could interrupt.
Atem's game knew no limits after that, achieving complete conquest of the European markets, the Asian markets, and every field of cryptocurrency there was.
Net profit, excluding the original stake, had already comfortably surpassed the national budget of a mid-sized country. The man himself, however, still believed it to be a well-made score-attack game.
Naturally, he had not once gone a single step beyond Yogibo's gravity.
Occasionally he moved his head alone, sipping through a straw at the coffee the staff brought him and tossing the finest available snacks into his mouth. He had become the perfect noble liquid.
Meanwhile, Yugi Muto was seriously at his wits' end.
"How can this be… Atem, where have you gone…"
Several weeks earlier, he had gone round to the apartment with some food and been told by the landlord that "Mr Muto was taken away by KaibaCorp's men in black at the council office, and the room's been terminated." The convenience store had let him go long before that.
He had contacted Joey and Téa and Tristan at once, and they had all searched frantically across Domino City, but the leads were absolutely nil. Since Atem was an illegal resident out of the Underworld, going to the police was not an option either.
After agonising over it at length, Yugi decided to stake everything on one thin hope.
He went to KaibaCorp's headquarters, where he currently had a working relationship through development cooperation on a new game.
"Please! I need you to put me through to the President — to Kaiba!"
Yugi pressed his case desperately at reception. Seto, who controlled everything in Domino City, might have some information. Faced with the evident distress of Yugi Muto, King of Duelists, a secretary contacted the upper floors, and by some miracle he was granted admission to the president's office at the top of the building.
Yugi threw the door open and hurried across to Seto at his desk.
"Kaiba! Sorry to come out of nowhere, but there's something I have to ask you!"
"Hmph. You're noisy, Yugi. If it's a bug report on the new Solid Vision, the development division—"
"That's not it! Atem — Atem's gone missing!"
Yugi's voice was anguished.
"His apartment's been terminated, he's got no job, we've all been out looking in case he's sleeping rough somewhere and we can't find him anywhere…! Please, use KaibaCorp's information network — use its reach across Domino City to search for Atem!"
He and Joey and the others must have been combing the streets all night; there were faint shadows under Yugi's eyes.
Seto regarded his former partner's desperate appeal with an utterly cool gaze. Then he set his coffee cup down slowly and delivered, with unbelievable flatness:
"…And here I wondered what all the noise was about. Atem is at my mansion. Is there a problem?"
"…Eh?"
Yugi's thought processes froze completely. A rather foolish "…huh?" escaped him.
"The Kaiba m— at your house?! Then the part about him being taken away by the men in black…"
"I took him into custody. The man was spouting spineless nonsense about not wanting to fight any more, wanting to rest. I merely provided him, under my name, with a top-grade NEET environment in which all labour is prohibited."
Seto snorted, operated his tablet, and put a certain piece of footage up on the office's main monitor.
What was on it—
The hairstyle was familiar, at least. Beyond that: bed hair detonated, a crumpled KC sweatshirt, crumbs of crisps at the corner of his mouth, and total absorption in a fighting-game stream — "Go on! Right straight, there!" — a former other self entirely drained of vitality, whose complexion was nonetheless magnificent.
"A-Atem…?!"
Yugi was struck dumb. While they had been combing the city with tears in their eyes, his other self had been perfecting the ultimate slack lifestyle in the house of the richest man in the world.
"I can't believe it… not one word to us, all this time…"
"Naturally. That man is currently drowning in an infinite loop of videos, games and mail order without setting foot outside his room. His fighting spirit for contact with the outside world has been entirely extinguished."
As Seto said, there was not a millimetre of malice in Atem — no avoiding his friends. It was simply that the pleasure of the living world's shut-in content was so overwhelming that the task called keeping in touch with my friends in the living world had dropped clean out of his brain.
Watching Atem on the screen swigging cola straight from the bottle — "Fuhaha, this pizza thing never gets old!" — Yugi let out a deep, truly deep sigh.
"…I'm glad. I know he's safe now, but… I'd quite like our tears back, honestly…"
The two strongest Duelists who had saved the world had now, in an entirely different sense, completed an ultimate combo that no one could get near: one a hopelessly overprotective keeper, the other a severe shut-in NEET.
"…Kaiba. Would it be all right if I went to see Atem?"
Managing somehow to look away from his other self's finished lifestyle on the monitor, Yugi asked permission timidly.
Seto snorted and dropped his eyes to his paperwork, uninterested.
"Whether he sees you or not is up to Atem. How that man spends his time is no concern of mine. …Do as you like."
Having effectively received permission, Yugi immediately got in touch with Joey and the others.
A few days later. Yugi, Joey, Téa and Tristan were assembled in front of the heavy guest room door of the Kaiba mansion.
"Oi, oi, is Atem seriously in this house? Kaiba's place, that looks like a duke lives here?"
"And a shut-in, on top of that… Atem? I don't believe it."
With Joey and the others still half-doubting, Yugi turned the handle and stepped into the room.
"Excuse us…"
The moment Yugi looked round the door, dubious, time stopped throughout his entire body.
At the centre of the room, sunk deep into a sea of enormous custom-made Yogibo, crisps in one hand, was a man buying crude oil futures in bulk on a latest-model tablet.
"Ah… ah…?!"
A sound came out of Yugi that was not quite a word and not quite a scream.
The two-tone hair, those sharp eyes, and the one who had been nobler than anyone, connected to him in the deepest place in the soul — the other—
"The other… me…"
Astonishment, joy, confusion, and tears. Every emotion arrived at once, and Yugi's capacity reached its limit in a heartbeat.
The man in question, however—
"Mm…? You're being noisy, Kaiba… I'm in the middle of the soybean futures boss fight… …ah."
Turning round without a care, Atem's eyes took in Yugi and, behind him, his friends. All four of his former companions.
At that instant, a freezing silence dropped over the room.
Atem was in a KC sweatshirt liberally powdered with snack dust. His head was still detonated with bed hair, and around his feet lay a suspicious mail-order ab roller and a scatter of game packaging.
Joey and the others, faced with footage this catastrophic, could not get their mouths shut.
"…Atem, mate… are you serious…"
"…It's been a while, everyone. Would you like to sit on this Yogibo? It pulls the soul right out of you."
"Hang on a second!! That's your opening line at a reunion?! Also — those crisps you're holding, aren't they the top-grade ones that cost about three thousand yen a bag?!"
The tears of a moving reunion retracted instantly.
The person in front of them was certainly Atem, but his divinity had suffered total gestalt collapse under the living world's outrageously cushy shut-in conditions.
Joey was struck speechless, Téa covered her mouth with both hands, and Tristan was staring into the middle distance. Of the noble King who had saved the world and returned in a blaze of light, not a millimetre remained. What sat there was a severe shut-in NEET who had lost comprehensively to the pleasures of the living world.
The next moment, however, Joey grabbed Atem's shoulder and shook him violently.
"You absolute— !! Do you know how much you worried us?!"
"Wah— hold on a moment, Joey…!"
"We heard you'd vanished from the apartment and do you have any idea how much running around Domino City we did?! You'd been fired from the shop too, and we thought you'd got caught up in something, everyone was properly close to crying! Why didn't you get in touch, not one word?!"
The eyes of the shouting Joey held less anger than relief that he was safe; they were slightly damp. Téa was fuming too — "That's right! It's not like you to shut us out!"
Touched by his friends' genuine anger, and by the still deeper kindness underneath it, even Atem felt a pang in his chest. It was a fact that games and videos in the living world had been so entertaining that the task of getting in touch had been sent straight from his brain to the Graveyard.
His bed hair remained as it was, but Atem straightened the collar of his sweatshirt and faced his friends with a solemn expression.
"…I'm sorry, everyone. I didn't consider you enough. I never meant to worry you like that. Truly, I was in the wrong."
A former King bowed his head honestly, in sweats.
Seeing it, Joey heaved an enormous sigh and scratched hard at his head.
"Honestly… well, if you're safe, that's what matters. Never thought I'd see you settle into life as Kaiba's kept man, though."
"I am not a kept man! This is a rest period, produced by Kaiba!"
As Atem defended himself desperately, Yugi laughed under his breath.
"All right, all right. We've all come out here, so let's just enjoy today. Atem, let us have a go on that game too."
"Of course, Aibou! There's a new fighting game. Joey — I'll take you on first."
From there, the old boisterous hours came flooding back at once.
Atem immediately worked the tablet and ordered his beloved KC Delivery Pizza in extra-large, in quantity. They gathered round the piping-hot pizzas a drone had brought and toasted with cola.
The floor, which had had nowhere to set a foot down, was forcibly cleared by Tristan and Téa, and everyone sat down in front of the television for a games tournament.
"Argh! Lost to Atem again! Don't tell me being a NEET made you better at games!"
"Fufun. I told you I had your movements read, Joey!"
Joey mortified at his losses, Atem triumphant with his old fearless smile recovered. His clothes were sweats, but for the first time in a long while there was a bright, enjoying light in his eyes — the light of a Duelist.
The enjoyable hours went by in no time, and when it had gone properly dark outside the window, Yugi and the others got to their feet.
"Right, we're gonna head off. Be a pain if Kaiba caught us here."
Joey pulled on his jacket with a wry smile.
Téa turned back to Atem, smiling.
"Atem, we'll come and hang out again. Next time, actually get in touch!"
"I will. You're welcome any time. …I really was glad you came today."
As Atem saw them off at the door, Yugi looked back one last time and smiled gently.
"See you, Atem. Let's all get together and play games again."
"Yeah. See you, Aibou."
The door closed with a soft click, and quiet returned to the room.
But it was not the same as the quiet from before; the room now was full of something warm.
Atem tossed the leftover pizza crusts into his mouth and rolled over onto the fluffy bed.
"…Play again, is it."
Gazing up at the ceiling, Atem laughed a little.
There were friends who would say let's get together again — not for a battle, simply to enjoy themselves. Time in the living world spent with his friends, inside this indolent sanctuary protected by Seto's fortune.
"Not bad. …No. The best."
Rumpling his bed hair still further, Atem reached another happy turn end tonight and fell away into a deep sleep.
The heavy marble entrance hall of the Kaiba mansion.
Yugi and the other three were walking quietly out from Atem's room when Seto came towards them from the front, his long white coat sweeping behind him. He had presumably just come back from the company.
Joey and the others braced themselves for a moment, but Yugi took a step forward and looked at Seto.
"Kaiba."
"Hmph, Yugi. Did you get your fill of gazing at that spineless face of his?"
Faced with the usual tone, Yugi produced a calm, wry smile — the smile of someone who had understood everything.
"Yeah. …So that's what it was, Kaiba."
There were several meanings folded into Yugi's words. How exhausted Atem had been. And who it was who had seen through to that faster than anyone, and prepared a sanctuary in which he could rest completely, as nothing but a NEET, without a scratch on his pride.
Seto turned his face away as though avoiding Yugi's gaze, and snorted.
"…That is what it was. Spare me the pointless prying."
That said, Seto went up the great staircase to his own rooms, the hem of his long coat swaying.
"Still as bad at being honest as ever," Joey muttered — but Yugi smiled and said, "No. That's Kaiba's own way of being kind," and left the Kaiba mansion with his friends.
