Atem announces to his friends that the wife problem is solved: he has a boyfriend, and it is Seto Kaiba. Nobody knows whether to congratulate him or to offer Kaiba condolences. Meanwhile Priest Seto, having collected every last drop of Atem's gushing, suggests that the Underworld might benefit from a network connection. Atem thinks this means online games. What the Underworld gets is nuclear power, a cloud-managed Book of the Dead, and censored social media. Three men, three different senses of having been had.
This is a translation of an Artificial Intelligence work.
Original Title: 09 人質王
Original Author: Gemini with 葉人(@Hathor_yuki)
Personal site: https://prideshipping.sakura.ne.jp
At work Seto was as cold as a war god, but where Atem was concerned he displayed a frightening capacity for adaptation. Even in the complicated adult manoeuvres of the living world that Atem could not follow, and in scenes where embarrassment froze him solid, Seto never once left him behind; he adjusted the pace to Atem's breathing.
When Atem occasionally panicked at an excessive lead, Seto would give a wry laugh — "I am matching your soul's capacity" — and never force anything. Thanks to which Atem was beginning, little by little, to grow accustomed to the man called Seto Kaiba, and to contact of the sort lovers have.
…Though however much experience he accumulated, that particular newness — going scarlet at a single glance from Seto — showed no sign whatsoever of being cured.
And then one day, an occasion was arranged to spend time with Yugi and Joey and the rest of the gang for the first time in a while.
The venue was, naturally, the vast lounge of Kaiba Manor.
Atem, wrapped as ever in his favourite logo sweats, was gripping a games controller and stuffing crisps into his cheeks with a thoroughly vacant expression. Wherever the dignity of a three-thousand-year-old King had gone, he was enjoying a NEET's day off to absolute perfection.
"Ahh, Duelling with friends really is soothing…"
Seeing Atem in this state, Joey came over grinning unpleasantly.
"Yo, Atem! You've been shut up in Kaiba Manor this whole time lately. What happened with that if Kaiba gets a wife my NEET life is under threat problem?"
Téa looked into his face too, sounding worried.
"That's right! Everyone was worried that if Kaiba married someone you'd get thrown out of here, Atem."
At his friends' questions, Atem swallowed his crisps, drew himself up and grinned.
It was the innocent, proud smile he had once shown on the field of battle.
"Ah, that matter is resolved!"
"Eh? Resolved… you mean somebody else came in as the wife?"
While his friends caught their breath, Atem announced it with an air of total triumph.
"Not at all! I have got myself a boyfriend. …Seto Kaiba!"
Several seconds of silence descended on the lounge.
…Seto, as in that Kaiba?
…Going out? With Seto Kaiba?
Into his friends' minds flashed Seto's recent overprotectiveness towards Atem.
But they knew.
They knew the exceedingly regrettable underside of it: that the motive that had brought Atem to this decision to go out with him had been an impure and self-centred lock-in operation, mounted to maintain a top-grade NEET life.
"…Ah. Right."
Joey scratched his head with a strained smile.
"…That's, well, cause for celebration, is it…? No, if you're happy that's fine, but… there's just an awful lot to pick at here…"
Téa clapped Atem on the shoulder with a complicated expression.
"…Atem, if it really is going out with him out of pure love, then that's very welcome, but… you know. Your living arrangements and so on aren't the objective, are they?"
At everyone's delicate reaction, Atem blinked and tilted his head.
"Pure love? Ah, of course! Without Kaiba I am no good at all any more. …But the living arrangements and the parfaits matter too, you know?"
In the end, faced with a declaration in which the boundary between NEET instinct and serious infatuation with Seto remained ambiguous to the last, his friends were left seriously wondering whether the correct response was an honest "congratulations!" or, out of pity for Seto, a "bad luck."
"Well, better than a kept man, I suppose."
"A kept man?! That is a slanderous way to put it, Joey!"
Registering the delicate atmosphere among his friends, Atem took his phone out of his sweats pocket in a sulk. And then, without haste, presented the screen. Displayed on it was Atem's personal performance dashboard, wired directly into KaibaCorp's internal network.
"Look at this. I do indeed rise at one o'clock, but from two until four — core time — I am firmly engaged in debugging work. My bug detection efficiency last month recorded 140 percent of my own previous month's figure, and the results here show that I pre-emptively avoided approximately a hundred and twenty million yen of the loss risk projected by the systems division!"
"R-right… so you've got even better at it, is that it?"
Presented out of nowhere with hard numbers and logical contribution, Joey was overwhelmed and took a step back.
Atem was deploying his speed of thought to the full here — though this was the second time he had made this particular boast.
"Besides, what I buy on the black card amounts to new game titles, parfaits from the café down the road, and these sweats at the outside. That is fundamentally different from the malicious sort of freeloader who wheedles for imported sports cars and jewellery. I have won this supreme paradise from Kaiba legitimately, as the reward for my own labour!"
When Atem folded his arms proudly, Yugi and the others had to concede: "That's true…" Measured against living-world prices, Atem's sense of money was unexpectedly modest and ordinary. The understanding that he was not a complete kept man but a hyper-efficient part-time worker was duly shared.
"And that is not all. Look at this score attack— no, what is it? At any rate, I am a man of wealth!"
The score on the Kaiba Securities account had by now reached a figure past comprehension.
But that, of course, was not the issue.
"…Still, though, Atem."
Yugi put in the retort with a wry smile.
"The fact that your working hours are ultra-short hasn't changed, and it's a fact that your motive for catching Kaiba was to defend a life of idling, isn't it? And it doesn't look like you've any intention of stopping the idling either…"
"Naturally! A life of rising at one o'clock is bound up with the very foundations of my soul!"
At that declaration, delivered without a shred of remorse, his friends exchanged complicated looks: it really is impure, and Kaiba might be slightly to be pitied…
Several days later.
To produce a prototype of the new game he was planning, Yugi had come to the KaibaCorp head office building, whose technical cooperation he had requested.
His meeting concluded, he was walking down a connecting corridor when Seto Kaiba himself happened to pass by, men in black trailing behind him.
"…Yugi, is it."
"Ah, Kaiba! Good to see you. Thanks as always for the development support on the game."
Seto stopped and let his gaze sharpen.
"Hmph. I am not incapable of acknowledging your obsession with games. …More to the point, that NEET squatting in my house — he has not been saying anything superfluous, I trust?"
The business of Atem proudly broadcasting I have got a boyfriend to his friends crossed Yugi's mind, and though he faltered slightly, he took the plunge and asked.
"A-ahaha… Yes, I did hear about it, actually. The two of you. …Erm, Kaiba. You may have heard this from Atem already, but at the start he seems to have targeted you in order to defend his life of idling… I'm really sorry."
Yugi apologised for his former partner's excessively impure motive as family might, looking thoroughly sheepish.
But Seto's reaction was unexpected. He gave a snort and folded his arms with his usual arrogance.
"Hmph. Initial settings of that kind are not, at this stage, even a spark capable of threatening our security."
"Eh…? You knew?"
"Obviously. That the shut-in was desperately devising schemes to defend his indolent paradise and attempting to dive into my pocket — I saw through every part of it from the beginning."
In Seto's blue eyes there was cold calculation, and beneath it a deeper pleasure.
"But it is also a fact that, somewhere in the middle of that idiotic honey trap, he was overcome by the heat of the trap he had set himself, went blind over me and fell completely."
"Ah — so you had grasped that far as well…"
Yugi gave a wry smile. All of it had been on the palm of the King of the living world.
"Listen, Yugi. However many parfaits that NEET devours in my house, however many games he taps for, measured against KaibaCorp's total assets it is a negligible margin of error. It costs me nothing at all."
"Then making him work core time every day is…?"
At Yugi's question, Seto pulled up the corner of his mouth.
"A countermeasure against being a shut-in, nothing more. To let a brain of that quality rot in bed all day would be a loss to the nation. Two hours to make him breathe outside air and maintain a point of contact with society — call it husbandry."
The words were arrogant to their very last syllable, but the tone of that voice was overflowing with a capacity so far outside standard measures that it would take even Atem's selfish, idling life and love the whole of it, inside his own arms.
Kaiba really is a good man after all… Almost too good for Atem.
Yugi confirmed it inwardly, and with a feeling something like relief, smiled and said, "Please go on looking after Atem."
The country of eternal dark; the Underworld.
This austere palace, where Atem occasionally appeared for a few hours of core time, had by now become Priest Seto's intelligence-gathering station, where every last drop of Atem's living-world gushing was collected.
"—And so, you see, Kaiba says husbandry with his mouth, but the moment he saw I was tired he held me and put me to bed. This thing the living world calls a boyfriend really is a splendid institution, Seto!"
"Indeed. Is that so."
Clearing away the papyrus heaped on the desk, Priest Seto was watching Atem with the eyes of a comprehensively dead fish. Taking full advantage of Atem being giddy at having got a boyfriend, Priest Seto had used skilful interjections to bring his guard entirely down, and had been carrying away every piece of information there was — from the progress of his nights to KaibaCorp's latest movements — quite literally, every last drop.
But Priest Seto was not a man who would merely sit and be gushed at. His cold brain cells had already computed the next profit for the Underworld.
"Incidentally, my King."
Priest Seto dropped the tone of his voice and stepped closer to Atem.
"The modern-day whelp — Seto Kaiba. This technology and IT infrastructure of the living world that he possesses. Would it not be possible to connect it directly to the Underworld's terminals?"
"Eh? Connect?"
"Indeed. Were that to become possible, then without leaving this tedious Underworld, the King might enjoy these online games of the living world at will, or download fresh entertainments from the living world's databases as he pleased. And even while the King is in the living world, the two could remain connected online without limit."
"Wh-what did you say…?! You are telling me that from within the Underworld I could Duel online and shop on the internet…?!"
Priest Seto's skilful incitement struck the vital point of Atem the NEET with perfect precision. To Atem, the establishment of a communications environment in the Underworld was an offer of unsurpassable appeal: an expansion of the living world's supreme paradise itself.
That night, in the master bedroom of Kaiba Manor.
The moment he got into bed, Atem started tugging insistently at the sleeve of the Seto beside him.
"Kaiba! There is something I absolutely must — I have a particular favour to ask of you!"
"Hmph. What is it. Do you intend to try another ridiculous combo out of that romance magazine?"
"No! My office in the Underworld — the environment there. Could you refit it with this living-world IT infrastructure of yours!"
Seto raised his eyes from the computer and glared at Atem with the eyes of a man looking at something he could not believe.
"You… You go to the Underworld for barely one or two hours a week. What are you talking about. You intend, as a NEET, to construct a gaming environment in the Underworld as well?"
"Not only games! According to Seto, once communications are connected I can maintain contact with the Underworld even while I am in the living world, and above all your company's newest technology can be introduced into the palace. …Please, Kaiba! Show me the power of your super-science!"
Atem asked it desperately, eyes wet.
Seto gave a snort.
"…No matter. That Underworld is, for me, a garden I can enter whenever I please in any case. Building our dimensional network in as the Underworld's infrastructure is a matter of the work of a moment."
His words held him coldly at arm's length, but he had never had the slightest intention of refusing Atem's request. If anything, the idea of bringing even the Underworld under KaibaCorp's jurisdiction stimulated the possessiveness of the King of the living world enormously.
Several days later, on the day of Atem's next Underworld duty.
What emerged from the Interdimensional Elevator was not Atem alone, but Seto Kaiba himself, white coat sweeping behind him.
"My King — and the modern-day whelp…! You have actually come?"
The eyes of Priest Seto, come to meet them, flashed in an instant.
"Hmph. Sorry to keep you, ancient ghost. We shall bypass the occultism of the Underworld's stone tablets with our dimensional communications satellite. I intend to finish the work at once."
Seto opened a large KaibaCorp attaché case, drew out one piece of living-world super-science after another and embedded them in the palace walls. While Atem watched idly beside him — "Ohh… they're glowing!" — Seto constructed, at divine typing speed, a dedicated server linking the Underworld and the living world.
"Right. Connection established. Setup of the encrypted interdimensional IT infrastructure is complete."
"You have my thanks."
Priest Seto bowed respectfully.
At the corner of his mouth was a colossal, shit-eating grin of victory.
Immediately after the two of them finished the work and returned to the living world.
Left behind in the palace of the Underworld, Priest Seto revealed his true nature at once.
He sat down in front of the cutting-edge terminal Seto had installed and began, at the speed of light, to access the living world's internet, and KaibaCorp's databases.
"…Fuhaha! Splendid. The living world's technology, information, history — all of it flowing into this stone tablet!"
Priest Seto's objective had never been anything as sweet as the online games Atem dreamed of.
He absorbed, ravenously, data on the living world's advanced IT technology, its infrastructural architecture, and its defence systems besides, and began to fuse it all with the sorcery of the Underworld.
Within days, holographic security systems were running through the palace of the Underworld, the Book of the Dead was managed on the cloud, a priesthood group chat had been opened, and the palace's outer walls were undergoing a cyber unauthorised modification worthy of a living-world skyscraper.
"While the Predecessor is off being giddy in the living world, I shall update this Underworld into the strongest cyber-empire there is — one surpassing the living world itself…"
Behind the back of a wholly ignorant Atem, who was in the living world eating parfaits in sweats and thinking Kaiba's arms are the best…, the Underworld was being made high-tech, at Priest Seto's hands, to a degree from which there was no going back.
"Do not imagine that managing the dead is the only work of the Underworld."
Priest Seto's unauthorised modification did not stop at the digitisation of infrastructure.
Having browsed the living world's vast history and databases, he analysed with cold detachment every failure and success recorded there of the human race. Any mechanism that looked usable he localised to the Underworld to suit himself, and adopted one after another.
The first thing he took in hand was education. He established schools based on living-world curricula and constructed a system to raise the next generation of Underworld cyber-engineers.
He then turned to the energy problem.
This country had no fossil fuels of the kind the living world possessed. But it had endless land. And above all, natural disasters — earthquakes — absolutely never occurred here. In which case—
Priest Seto built a nuclear power station, gathering the finest of living-world science, in the wastelands of the Underworld. Fusing protective wards raised by sorcery with KaibaCorp's newest systems, he brought it into operation as a perpetual engine, theoretically incapable of an accident at a rate of a hundred percent.
He had not, of course, imitated the living world in every particular.
Hm… This thing called social media is dangerous. It contaminates the minds of the people with something called the desire for approval, and collapses a country from within. Its introduction should be restricted, or thoroughly censored.
Having seen through the darkness of networked society in the living world in an instant, Priest Seto was extremely cautious about how entertainment was brought in.
As a result, an exceedingly intellectual and orderly culture took hold among the people of the Underworld: quietly enjoying electronic books on the latest tablet terminals. In the once dimly lit libraries of the Underworld, one now found the dead spread out with tablets in hand, reading calmly through the living world's literature and academic works.
And so the Underworld transformed rapidly, at Priest Seto's hands, into a hyper-futuristic dystopia — a utopia — that was easy to live in, with exceptionally few incidents or accidents, and surpassing the living world.
—However.
Of this earth-shaking paradigm shift, the King himself had not noticed one millimetre.
Atem stayed in the Underworld for only a few hours a week, after all. And since a NEET life of rising at one, sweats, parfaits awaited him the moment he returned to the living world, on arrival he simply travelled the shortest possible route between his private chambers and his office. The cyber nuclear plant that had suddenly reared up outside the window, the priests operating tablets — none of it entered the field of vision of a man whose head was entirely elsewhere.
"Right, today's bug check is finished. Seto, I'm going back to the living world. Kaiba's waiting for me."
"Indeed. Do take care."
Papyrus abolished, striking a keyboard in front of the latest slimline monitor, Priest Seto saw Atem off with extreme carelessness. Atem nodded, satisfied — "Mm!" — and passed happily through the Interdimensional Elevator again today.
That night, in the master bedroom of Kaiba Manor.
"…Hmph. That priest is a terrifying man, as ever."
On the bed, gazing at the periodic log of the Underworld network displayed on the tablet at his hand, Seto could not help pulling up the corner of his mouth.
The Underworld's infrastructure, now connected to the living world, could naturally be monitored from the terminal of its highest administrator, Kaiba. Displayed on the screen were a flawless urban plan that made the most of the absence of earthquakes, perfectly controlled clean energy, and a digitised Book of the Dead.
At Priest Seto's excessively rational, waste-free skill at nation-building, Seto felt something oddly close to admiration.
And then, at the edge of the screen, he looked at Atem — in his favourite grey sweats, fitted neatly inside Seto's arms, breathing the idiotic, peaceful breaths of the soundly asleep.
So this, after all, was the reason that ancient ghost dealt with a gushing Atem so carelessly, and pushed him at me as a spouse of his own accord.
To Priest Seto, Atem was at once a precious former King and the finest diplomatic card there was for extracting infinite technology and budget from Seto Kaiba of the living world. The more deeply Atem drowned in Seto in the living world, the more the newest super-science flowed into the Underworld at no cost, and the further the country developed.
"You truly are a blessedly ignorant NEET, Atem — you have no idea how conveniently you are being used."
Seto let out a wry laugh, half exasperated and hopelessly full of love, and switched off the tablet.
Priest Seto's schemes and the Underworld's unauthorised modification were all within Seto's own projections. And above all, in exchange for them, the heart and the body of this endearing rival were both settled entirely within his own hands. For the King of the living world, there was no more favourable trade to be had.
Seto drew his beloved freeloader's waist closer, buried his face in the side of his neck, and quietly closed his eyes again tonight.
