Tristan asks an innocent question: what happens to your arrangement if Kaiba gets married? Atem concludes that the only defensible position is to become the wife himself, and begins a campaign built entirely on magazine techniques. Seto's security system reads every page he has been studying. Three weeks of thinking about nothing but Seto produces a result Atem did not budget for. Meanwhile, in the Underworld, a priest starts running the numbers on a merger.
This is a translation of an Artificial Intelligence work.
Original Title: 06 初恋王
Original Author: Gemini with 葉人(@Hathor_yuki)
Personal site: https://prideshipping.sakura.ne.jp
In front of him stood a tower of a special fruit parfait, ordered without a moment's hesitation on Seto's black card.
"Huh, so these days you actually turn up at Kaiba's company at the same time every day, Atem."
Téa moved her spoon, sounding impressed.
Joey, tossing the cherry from his parfait into his mouth, grinned unpleasantly.
"Yeah, yeah. There was a while there I wondered how it'd end. Reckoned those sweats were gonna fuse with your skin and you'd turn into some kind of sweats spirit that never left the room again. Least you've become a slightly more respectable shut-in NEET."
"Heh, Joey. I told you not to lump me in with your common idlers."
Atem smiled fearlessly, then unhurriedly worked his latest smartphone and displayed the screen to the four of them.
"Look at this. These are the results I have put up this month in KaibaCorp's game development division."
What was displayed on the screen was an array of astonishing figures.
Atem's bug detection rate on the new game he had debugged stood at a staggering 100 percent, and the footage of his superhuman play from test sessions had — confidentially, within the company — improved the development team's productivity by 500 percent as the ultimate strategy data that lets any beginner clear the game.
"Wow… that's incredible! You're on ultra-short hours and you're putting out several times what a normal employee does!"
Yugi's eyes shone as he applauded. "Heh. In the domain of games, there was never any chance of me falling behind," Atem crowed, conveying parfait cream elegantly to his mouth. One day a week of Underworld duties, and highly efficient labour in the living world. He was, at present, brimming with a sense of omnipotence: he had complete command of both the living world's cutting-edge technology and the finest NEET environment available.
But into that perfect life plan of Atem's, a single remark tossed out casually by Tristan poured a bucket of cold water in an instant.
"Yeah, but, Atem. Right now you're enjoying that life off the back of Kaiba's money… but what happens if Kaiba gets himself a wife?"
"…What?"
The spoon scooping Atem's parfait stopped dead.
"I mean, come on."
Tristan folded his arms and laid out a realistic future.
"Kaiba's a man too. Someday he might have a whirlwind marriage with the daughter of some huge international firm and bring a wife into Kaiba Manor. And then, however much Kaiba says it's fine, from the wife's point of view it's why has a bloke in sweats who works a few hours a day taken up permanent residence next door to my husband's room? You'd just get thrown out, wouldn't you?"
"Th-that is…"
"Well, you've got that insane pile of money, so you'd manage. Build Atem Manor or something."
"…"
Inside Atem's head, an unprecedented natural disaster was simulated.
If Seto acquired a wife, that top-grade guest room with its full blackout curtains would be refitted as a children's room or the lady's dressing room. The delivery pizza record that a drone brought daily would be itemised in the household accounts and, with no unnecessary junk food, quite possibly replaced with healthy salads.
If the combo of working a few hours at KaibaCorp and living at Kaiba Manor were broken, there was a possibility that both would vanish.
And if he lost this sanctuary of supreme living-world sloth, what awaited him was the hellish smile of Priest Seto in the Underworld: Welcome home, Predecessor. And here are three thousand years of documents.
Bad… at this rate my Life Points in the living world are going to hit zero…!
Atem swallowed audibly and stared at the parfait with an expression of pure seriousness.
He could not afford to lose it. This beloved shut-in life, full of games and videos and pizza.
"…In that case, there is only one option left to me."
"Eh? What is?" said Yugi, tilting his head.
Atem raised his face and spoke with the eyes of a man who had once commanded gods, with absolute resolve in them.
"I shall win Kaiba. I have only to descend upon the seat of his wife myself."
"""" WHAAAAAAAAAAT?! """"
The single loudest scream of the day rang out across the café.
"Wait — you mean that confession of love to Kaiba the other day was serious?!" said Yugi, going bright red.
"Oi oi oi! Don't marry your own rival for the sake of your living costs! Your motive's too filthy!" said Joey, clutching his head.
But his friends' retorts no longer reached Atem's ears.
All of it to make the slack life of the living world eternal. Atem's Shadow Game — the most impure and most desperate of all, by the name of capturing Seto — had begun.
Several days later, at Kaiba Manor.
On the sofa, Atem was working his way in deadly earnest through magazines that had no business being in a King's room — The Psychology of Adult Romance, Gestures That Captivate a Man in an Instant — quietly obtained via the KC Net.
Hm, I see… First, it is effective to display a gap. I, who am normally in sweats, present him with coffee the instant he comes home, perfectly turned out… that will shake his heart!
That evening. When Seto came up the great staircase on his return from the company, there was Atem waiting for him, wearing the leather jacket flawlessly, a mug in one hand.
Atem produced the bewitching yet fearless smile he had learned from the magazine and murmured in a low voice.
"Welcome back, Kaiba. You must be tired. I shall make you a special blend—"
Seto walked past him without a millimetre of hesitation and delivered a single cold line.
"Hmph. Don't behave suspiciously. The data showing that you have spent the past three days poring over a page titled The Alluring Coffee Break That Wins a Man Over is all synced to my tablet via the smart security cameras in this house. Spare me the worthless scheming and submit a bug report on the game instead."
"Wh—?!"
Atem froze, still holding the coffee. Before KC's omniscient security, the King's romantic strategy had been an entirely open hand.
Atem's attempts continued after that.
Next, the upward glance and the request. This will carve into his Life Points of protective instinct!
At dinner in the dining hall, Atem deliberately held his spoon to his lips, tilted his head slightly and looked up at Seto from below.
"Kaiba. About tomorrow's dessert — I should like that limited-edition premium pudding. Would that be… no?"
Cutting his steak with elegance, Seto answered evenly without so much as meeting his eyes.
"The angle of that gaze of yours is twenty-three degrees. Precisely the golden tilt that drives a man wild as given on page forty-five of the magazine Little Devil Relations. Do not underestimate our image analysis systems. And stop making your eyes water unnaturally. If it is conjunctivitis I shall call in an ophthalmologist."
"Ngh… guh…!!"
All of it, read.
Before Seto's overwhelming information network and a rational faculty that did not bend by a millimetre, Atem's slapdash plans to attract attention were nullified without exception, and he went on suffering total defeat.
But the truly terrible development came afterwards.
In order to make the plan succeed, Atem was now compelled to spend every waking hour, all day and every day, thinking about how do I attract Kaiba's attention and how do I set Kaiba's chest burning.
Watching videos in bed, he found himself thinking what would he make of this if we watched it together; eating pizza, he found himself imagining what face would he pull if I brought this to his mouth.
And then, one night three weeks in.
In bed, blanket pulled up over his head, Atem noticed that his heart was hammering violently.
…This is strange. Why am I thinking of nothing but him…?
Seto's cold, arrogant profile. The keen-edged line of his lips when he snorted. And that blue-eyed look of childlike delight he showed only when he found a bug in a game—
Surely… surely I am not…
Under the blanket, Atem became aware that his face had gone red enough to detonate.
At the start it had only been an impure capture, meant to protect his current comfortable NEET life. A game to attract Seto's attention and make his position in this house unassailable.
And yet.
The result of being conscious of the man called Seto, of observing him, of struggling to shake his heart — the one caught in the trap had not been Seto. It had been Atem himself.
"…Heh, so this is it. I have… lost this Duel completely…"
In the hush of the room, Atem laid a hand on his own chest and could only accept, blankly, that the living world's true love — a Shadow Game far too intense for him — was boning him now all the way through to the heart. What face he was supposed to wear tomorrow while doing core time at Seto's side, he had no idea; Atem's shift tomorrow was heading for unprecedented chaos.
There was no chance of Seto failing to notice that Atem had abandoned the plan entirely, and that the eyes looking at him had begun to carry genuine heat.
"Hmph. Your cards were sent to the Graveyard a long time ago, Atem."
Having grasped the whole of it, Seto showed not the slightest sign of panic; he wore a smile of unfathomable composure. And then the cold man who commanded the living world's most advanced technology moved into his own battle phase and began a merciless campaign of pressure.
During core time at the office, when Atem went to hand over a bug report, Seto did not avoid it. He took it at a position where their fingertips brushed slowly against each other.
"…!"
As Atem sucked in a breath and jolted, Seto brought his face in to point-blank range and looked straight into that agitation with those keen-edged eyes.
"What is it, Atem. Do you imagine a test player for this company can be run on defence of that quality?"
Another day, at dinner. Seto laid a hand on the back of Atem's chair without warning and let his low voice slide into his ear from behind.
"I saw today's pizza payment record. …Take in something healthy occasionally, something that will not damage you."
A distance close enough for breath to touch; the arrogant, honeyed, refined scent of a grown man's cologne.
Each time, the heart of the Atem who had once commanded gods hammered violently, as though his Life Points were being carved down to the limit.
He was being played with entirely. And yet, every time he came into contact with the calculated — and overwhelmingly masculine — allure Seto displayed, Atem's feelings accelerated further and fell deeper into a bottomless abyss.
"…That's just self-destructive suicide bombing at this point."
At a café on one of their days off, Joey took one look at Atem and let out an enormous sigh with something like pity in it.
By now the fact that Atem was insanely into Seto was, among his friends, an entirely open card, concealed by not one millimetre.
He would grip his smartphone, and a single curt line of message from Seto — understood — was enough to make the spiky-haired Atem go bright red and squirm softly in place, murmuring "Heh… that man…". There was no concealing it.
"You started out saying it was for your living costs, and now you're the one who's been won over completely… but you know, you look really happy at the moment."
Yugi turned a warm look on him, wry as it was.
"Happy isn't the word — that's the face of a maiden in love. How you manage to be that pure with Kaiba of all people…"
Téa murmured it half in exasperation, half in admiration.
"It isn't like that! It is his — that arrogance, and the way he sometimes shows—!"
Atem tried desperately to defend himself, but the more he spoke the more his love for Seto overflowed, until Tristan cut him off with a spoon: "Thanks for the meal. Sweeter than the parfait."
And the ferocious knock-on effects bared their teeth on the weekly day of Underworld duties as well.
"My King. Regarding the matter of guiding these souls, your signature of approval—"
"Y-yes…"
The instant Atem, seated on the throne, looked directly at the face of Seto in his priest's robes, he went scarlet and dropped the stylus he was holding on the floor.
"My King?"
"S-sorry, Seto! It's only, the, the angle of your face…"
Atem hurriedly turned away and fanned frantically at his chest.
Priest Seto's face shared not a millimetre of difference in bone structure with Seto in the living world.
He was normally dealt with as a dignified priest, but to an Atem currently in maiden-in-love mode, Priest Seto approaching with a serious expression was enough to trigger a forced activation of flashbacks in his brain — of that night in the living world when Seto had murmured at point-blank range.
"Is there something on my face? …Do not tell me you are thinking of the modern-day whelp and blushing at the sight of me."
Priest Seto, possessed of three thousand years of wisdom, worked out the cause of his lord's entirely finished behaviour in an instant.
"N-no! Absolutely not! You and Kaiba are different people—"
"I have no idea what indecent pressure that petty modern-day whelp has been applying to you, but… to be conscious of my face, to look at me during official business, is a desecration of the sacred throne! Now cast the impure thoughts aside and approve these documents!"
"Ngh, ugh… Seto, your face is too close! Too close…! Don't deliver perfectly correct arguments in Kaiba's voice!"
Even in the Underworld's austere office, the erratic behaviour of an Atem poisoned by modern love would not stop.
One day a week of a King's duties, and the beloved remaining days in the living world.
On the palm of Seto's perfect control, Atem's soul, travelling back and forth between ancient and modern, was having a combo landed on it more thoroughly than ever before — one hotter, sweeter, and more heart-pounding than anything he had known.
"…Atem. This data is still here."
In the middle of his two hours of core time in the president's office, Seto reached a hand smoothly past Atem from behind and pointed at a spot on the tablet screen.
In that instant the distance between them dropped to zero, close enough for Seto's chest to touch Atem's back. Seto's expensive oud cologne, and the man's own body heat, transmitted themselves directly to Atem's skin.
"A-ah… sorry, I'll fix it at once…!"
Atem's voice went up half a tone and he hastily returned his eyes to the screen. His heart was pounding as violently as in the closing turns of a Shadow Game with a life at stake.
Glancing sideways at Seto, he found the man snorting with an air of complete innocence, returning to his own desk with his usual haughty manner.
…He has noticed. Kaiba must be beginning to waver under my perfect approach.
Atem hammered at the keyboard desperately, hiding the redness of his own face. He continued to process the fluttering of his own heart as tension from the strain of the operation, with a cognitive distortion of quite staggering power.
But Seto's pressure did not stop at that.
One night, just before eleven. Atem was in his room in his sweats, browsing the shopping site for a new board game, when a short message arrived from Seto on his phone: Come to my room. Test play of a board game in development.
"Right, a summons from Seto. This is my chance!"
Wanting to look at least a little like a capable spouse, Atem gave the bed hair a quick correction and headed for Seto's private rooms.
The instant he opened the door, Atem nearly took a step backwards.
"You're late, Atem. Sit down."
What was there was Seto fresh from the bath, hair not yet fully dry.
Not the usual impregnable suit, but a black shirt of fine silk thrown carelessly over him. Through the open front showed a well-trained torso, and from the wet hair drifted a faint steam and the scent of shampoo. Standing there was a Seto leaking enough allure to drive the entire human population of the living world out of its mind.
"K-Kaiba… what are you wearing…"
"Hmph. What I wear in my own house is my own affair. More to the point — look at this card layout."
Seated opposite him, the game began. But Atem's eyes could not focus on the board at all.
Every time Seto moved a card, his gaze went, helplessly, to those long fingers, or to the collarbone just visible. In the quiet of the night Seto's low voice resonated absurdly against his eardrums, and his heart leapt loudly enough to be a nuisance.
This is strange… If I'm not at this man's side, my Eden cannot be defended. And yet, being at his side like this… why is my heart too busy to relax at all…!
Atem had been caught, comprehensively, by a trap card called the emotion of love in the living world.
The next day. Atem had gone through the Interdimensional Elevator to the palace of the Underworld to complete his quota — the few minutes of document checking that came with his two days off a week.
"My King. Confirmation of today's business—"
Priest Seto entered the room as always, his priest's robes worn immaculately, his expression cold.
"WAAAAAAAAAAAH?!"
The instant he saw Priest Seto's face, Atem leapt up hard enough to fall off his chair.
Priest Seto's appearance, identical to Seto's; those sharp eyes; that low voice — every part of it explosively summoned the memory of Seto fresh from the bath the night before.
Atem's face went crimson, and he began to shake, looking away.
"S-Seto…! Please, don't come so close! And if at all possible, could you wear something that covers your chest?!"
"…I beg your pardon?"
Priest Seto looked down at the collar of his priest's robes, fastened perfectly closed at the front, and then glared at his obviously erratic superior with the face of a wrathful deity.
He strode over to Atem with heavy footfalls, slammed both hands down on the desk and leaned in.
"…Predecessor. This unsightly display of agitation. What, precisely, do you intend by it. What was done to you by that thing in the living world — or what did you set in motion. Confess."
"Eep…!"
Priest Seto's flat, utterly genuine menace admitted no lie whatsoever.
Atem's eyes brimmed with tears of pure fear, and at last he began to confess everything — with the one fatal truth, because I want to laze about, neatly omitted.
"Th-that's not it, Seto! I am simply making a flawless approach in order to secure the position of Kaiba's future spouse! And yet lately Kaiba has been strangely close to me… when he summoned me to his room at night he had his hair down and he was wearing the most extraordinary garment, and, and the chest of it was, like this—!"
Having got it all out in one breath, Atem collapsed onto the desk, gasping.
"…"
Having heard the whole thing, Priest Seto looked down at his pitiable Predecessor with eyes of unbelievable coldness.
"…In other words. You have fallen for that thing's seduction so completely, and so unconsciously, that you are on the verge of drowning in it. Is that correct?"
"Seduction?! Kaiba, of me?! No — I am supposed to be the one doing the seducing—"
"That will do. Be silent."
Priest Seto sighed, deeply and then more deeply, and could not help an inward shudder at the sheer ruthlessness of his modern self's plan to capture a rival.
"Predecessor. Whether you become the modern-day whelp's future spouse is no concern of mine, but the next time you return from the living world, I suggest you cool that boiled head of yours a little first."
"Seto, are you bullying me as well…!"
Written off in exasperation even by the loyal retainer of the Underworld, Atem pulled the hood of his sweats down hard over his still-scarlet face and muttered, "The Seto in the living world and the Seto in the Underworld — both of them are far too bad for my heart…!"
"—And that is the situation. The Predecessor has been boiled through by this… seduction of yours. It is beneath contempt."
Late at night in the Underworld's office. On the far side of a holographic transmission, Priest Seto was glaring at Seto with eyes of unbelievable coldness.
Seto, drinking late-night coffee in the president's office at KaibaCorp, heard the report out and snorted.
"Seduction? Nonsense. I summoned him to a test play in the middle of the night, that is all. Show me the man who dries his hair and puts a suit back on after a bath. He has self-destructed and gone to pieces entirely on his own."
"…What?"
Priest Seto's sharp brow twitched.
"Do not misunderstand me. I have not once said that I intend to capture that NEET. He came at me with a shoddy operation he calls a honey trap, devised with the brain of a primary-schooler, to defend his position as a freeloader in my house. So I got on board with the game and have been shaking the board a little. Nothing more."
Seto's aim was not to win Atem over romantically. He was simply enjoying — to the utmost — the ridiculous reactions of a rival who put on a performance of the perfect Atem only in front of him, and who went scarlet and froze every time the distance closed. It was in appalling taste.
But watching his modern self declare flatly that this was merely entertainment in appalling taste, Priest Seto's mind computed, in an instant, an entirely different calculation.
Wait… The modern-day whelp has that most unmanageable of men, the Predecessor, under complete control in the palm of his hand…
The Underworld's current systems had been dramatically streamlined by KaibaCorp's DX reforms. But the risk remained, permanently, that the Predecessor — that uncertain variable — might at any moment declare himself bored or announce that the living world's shopping is better and abscond again.
But suppose.
Suppose the Predecessor were to enter into a marriage with this Seto, or into a partnership equivalent to one. What then?
The Predecessor coupling with the modern-day whelp would be, in substance, identical to permanently installing KaibaCorp's total assets and its super-science as the backing behind the Underworld…?
Priest Seto's eyes gave off the sharp glint of a politician.
To press Atem upon the living world — no, to settle him there permanently, and let Seto hold the reins — was precisely what would lead to the Underworld's eternal security.
Priest Seto's expression softened, and across the hologram he directed at Seto the smile of a man opening negotiations, with something distinctly dubious about it.
"…I see. Your intent is understood. However, modern-day whelp. If you have tamed the Predecessor to that degree, why not take my lord off my hands formally, as your spouse?"
"…What did you say?"
Seto's fine brow lifted in displeasure. But Priest Seto's sales pitch did not stop.
"Viewed objectively, the Predecessor is by no means a poor property. To begin with, the visuals are excellent. Put that face in living-world dress and station it beside the president's office, and your corporate brand image alone will improve further. And from my own observation, he is genuinely of a small build, and slight."
Calling up memories of supporting Atem in ancient times, Priest Seto continued with an entirely straight face.
"With a physique such as yours, a mass of that order should be lifted with ease, which is really rather charming. What the living world calls the princess carry would present no difficulty. Well? Have you any interest in taking one of our Kings into permanent employment beside your desk?"
"…You—!"
Subjected to a hard sell of his own relative from three thousand years ago, delivered from the astonishing angle of easy to pick up and charming, even Seto was struck speechless.
"You would sell your own lord to a man in the living world for the security of the Underworld, ancient ghost."
"This is a rational business partnership. …I shall drop a suggestion to the Predecessor myself, along the lines of Seto Kaiba is waiting for you to come to his room at night, so kindly manage the rest."
"Try any such superfluous manoeuvre and I will physically detonate your Underworld's servers!"
Seto's roar rang out, and Priest Seto cut the transmission unilaterally with a "Then — a good night to you."
Left alone, Seto drained his coffee with a violent headache coming on.
Princess carry? Absurd…
Irritated as he was, there rose unbidden into Seto's mind the silhouette of Atem in that room at night, red-faced and flustered — a body that was, certainly, a good two sizes smaller than his own.
"…Tch. Not a single one of them has a head with any discipline in it."
Seto returned his eyes to his documents, bitterly.
