Three thousand years of optimisation have left the King of the Underworld with nothing to do. He finds the exit. He does not find a job.
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
Having passed through the gates of the afterlife and settled into the place he was meant to occupy, as arbiter among the gods, what awaited Atem was the solemn rest of the soul——
…Or so it sounded. The reality was otherwise.
Over several thousand years, the systems of the afterlife had been optimised to a frightening degree.
The scales of Maat weighed the burden of sin fully automatically, the Book of the Dead had been converted into a digital archive, and the routine work of the officials left not the slightest opening to exploit. The Pharaoh's duties? Those amounted to stamping the occasional report that came up the chain with a seal reading "See to it as you think best."
"…I am bored."
On the golden throne, Atem let out a deep sigh.
There were no battles. No provocations from a worthy rival (the face of one tenacious Seto Kaiba crossed his mind).
Above all, there was no "Game" to shake the soul.
At this rate he would die of sheer idleness. No — he was already dead, but in a spiritual sense he was close to ceasing to exist.
"Very well. I shall break out."
A Pharaoh's decisions are always swift and bold.
Slipping past the eyes of the gods and exploiting a security hole in the afterlife, he made his way back to the living world and its light with remarkably little difficulty.
Karan, koron — the familiar glass wind chime rang.
Opening the door of the Kame Game Shop in Domino City, Atem caught sight of his former Aibou——Yugi Muto——and produced a Pharaoh smile of the very highest grade.
"Hey, Aibou. It's been a while."
"Eh…!? The other me!?"
Yugi nearly dropped the boxed new release he was holding, his eyes going round. Naturally. A soul that was supposed to have departed for the afterlife was standing there with roughly the casualness of someone who had just popped out to the convenience store.
"W-why are you here? What about your work in the afterlife!? The gate was supposed to have closed properly…"
Faced with Yugi's panic, Atem folded his arms and gave a short laugh, with all the air of adult composure.
"Heh. Don't worry. My duties in the afterlife are all proceeding smoothly — no problems whatsoever. I simply judged that an occasional inspection of the living world was necessary."
(A lie. He had shirked his duties entirely.)
"R-really? Oh, thank goodness… I'm relieved you look well."
Honest as ever, Yugi took Atem at his word without a millimetre of doubt and let his shoulders drop.
Seeing that guileless smile, Atem made a small fist pump internally.
——The living world is good after all. Above all, he could live with his Aibou again. This time there would be no battle to save the world, no Shadow Games. Nothing but days spent happily and peacefully, immersed in board games and building decks out of new card releases!
In his head, Atem had already completed a perfect layout of which space in Yugi's room he would lay his futon out in.
But the reality of the living world was harsher than the systems of the afterlife.
In the evening, Solomon came out from the back of the shop and, on seeing Atem, was startled nearly off his feet — but age brings composure. "Oh ho, so you're back!" he boomed, welcoming him wholeheartedly.
…So far, so good.
Around the dinner table, in the middle of a peaceful stretch of time, Solomon raised a practical matter.
"Now then, Atem. What do you intend to do from here? I've no objection at all to you stopping with us, but…"
"Grandpa, naturally I intend to be here with my Aibou again—"
"Ah, well, that's the thing…"
Solomon stroked his white beard, looking troubled.
"As you can see, we're an ordinary household. And with online orders getting more automated lately, Yugi and I between us are quite enough to man the shop. Even if you offer to help, there's no room to add another shift."
"…A shift?"
Atem's fine eyebrow twitched. It was a word absent from the Pharaoh's dictionary.
"And besides, Atem, you don't have any identification in the living world, do you?"
Yugi added it apologetically.
"Whether it's meals or living here from now on — when there's one more grown man in the house, there are procedures and… well, you'd need to be financially independent, sort of…"
"Financial independence…"
Atem was struck speechless.
The supreme authority who had once governed ancient Egypt and held the finances of a nation in his hand was being treated as "surplus personnel" within the four-and-a-half-mat economy of modern Japan.
"So… you are saying I cannot remain here?"
"No, we're not throwing you out!"
Yugi hurried to smooth it over.
"It's just, you can't stay hidden here forever, and if you want to live 'happily and peacefully' in the living world, you'll have to build a base of your own, or you'll end up having to leave anyway. That's all…"
A Pharaoh who had broken out dreaming of a peaceful, unhurried life, abruptly confronted with the crisis of being jobless and homeless.
The wind of the living world brushed Atem's cheek colder than the sandstorms of the afterlife.
"…I see. So this is what they call the living world's 'baptism'."
Atem stood quietly and looked out of the window.
The neon of Domino City at night was shining. Somewhere in this world, was there a person convenient enough to employ a former Pharaoh with no identification, guarantee him food, clothing and shelter, and relieve his boredom besides?
Exercising a mysterious sort of pride, Atem — with Yugi's support, and a somewhat grey guarantor route that Solomon arranged from behind the scenes on the grounds of "old favours" — managed to rent a thirty-year-old studio apartment in a corner of Domino City.
And so the curtain rose on the former Pharaoh's life as a barely-scraping-by part-timer.
Atem's current status: "in-demand (aspiring) convenience-store night-shift worker."
His hourly wage was a fraction above Domino City's minimum. The smartphone in his hand ran on a ¥980-a-month budget SIM that Yugi had recommended. Use up the data allowance and the connection was throttled, so the iron rule was to borrow the Kame Game Shop's Wi-Fi whenever he wanted to watch a video.
The boredom of the afterlife might never have existed. He was busy now.
"…I see. Payment for the juu-ni-gatsu-gou is made by scanning this barcode at the register."
In his hand was a payment slip for National Health Insurance premiums.
The official paperwork sent from the ward office was harder to decipher than ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, but he ran his considerable intellect at full tilt and cleared the systems of modern society one move at a time.
There was a great deal to do. And it was tremendously fulfilling.
He controlled his own time by his own power, and in that there was the sensation of being alive.
Atem himself was under the impression that he lived each day very "mindfully" and very "stylishly."
In the morning, on waking, he went first to the kitchen.
He poured tap water into his favourite glass jug and solemnly dropped in a single shop-bought barley tea bag.
This was the one and only top-grade beverage Atem could currently produce: cold-brew barley tea.
"Good. A perfect extraction today as well."
As for domestic skills, one word covered it. Catastrophic.
Give him fire and he scorched the stove; give him a knife and the ingredients turned into mysterious polyhedra. His staple diet was therefore the bentos the convenience store threw out, or pot noodles that needed nothing but hot water.
His "mindfulness" was distinctive in the matter of laundry as well.
When the T-shirts and trousers hung out on the balcony had dried in the sun, Atem did not fold them.
"Heh. Rational, is it not."
He pulled the dry clothes straight off the hanger and put them on as they were.
This was what he called "full automation of the rotation (clothing edition)." It was a Pharaonic life hack (read: plain laziness) that dispensed with the wasteful phase of putting things away in a closet.
One evening.
In the spare moment before his shift, Atem poured himself a glass of freshly brewed barley tea — freshly taken out of the water, at any rate — and sat down on the tatami of his cramped single room.
From the window he could see the streets of Domino City stained by the setting sun.
"When I was in the afterlife, I never imagined an everyday as trivial as this would come to me."
Spread on the table were his shift schedule and the board of the game he had played against Yugi the day before and narrowly lost.
No God Cards here, no Millennium Puzzle, no dark god leading the world to ruin. Only the next rent payment and tonight's stocking schedule on the night shift.
"Well then. About time."
Atem drank off the rest of the barley tea, stripped his freshly dried work uniform (read: polo shirt) straight from the hanger and pushed his arms into the sleeves.
The name tag read "Aten."
His wallet was down to the wire, but his eyes shone more vividly than they ever had. The Pharaoh's modern survival had only just begun.
The social structure of the living world was a far colder, far more merciless contest of grinding down Life Points than any Shadow Game.
As one month passed and then another, the plating on Atem's "mindful living" gradually flaked away.
The cause was the perfect collection system that modern Japan takes such pride in.
From the payslip he had earned working through the small hours, residence tax, National Health Insurance premiums, pension contributions and savings towards the renewal fee on his apartment were deducted at astonishing speed. Every time he calculated what was left in hand, a little more of the old composure vanished from Atem's fine features.
"…The figures do not add up. Why, when I am working, should the sacred barrier of my wallet (read: the balance) grow so thin…?"
The man who had once led the people of ancient Egypt, always dignified and imposing, was nowhere to be seen.
First, that trademark edged hairstyle began to show unmistakable signs of the wear of daily life.
The tips, left with bed-head as they were, looked somehow worn out and had lost the sharp gloss of his prime. The clothes he kept pulling straight off the hanger had been washed so many times that the collars sagged slightly, giving off a faint smell of ordinary living.
What the mirror showed was not a Pharaoh with a piercing gaze but "a reasonably good-looking part-timer with dead eyes, working five night shifts a week."
Once he used to go out to all sorts of places in Domino City under the banner of "inspecting the living world." Looking in at new card shops, examining the latest gadgets — every part of daily life had been like a game, and enjoyable.
But he had no such energy left now.
"The return fare would buy two frozen pasta meals…"
From the day he muttered that, Atem's range of movement narrowed dramatically.
He stopped taking the train anywhere on his days off, and worried enough about his data allowance that he would not even open the screen outdoors. His days off were spent lolling on the futon in his apartment, looking at the wood grain of the ceiling and recovering his stamina, and nothing else.
The whole of his life converged on the round trip between [work] and [apartment] — perfect minimalism (read: running out of stamina).
One evening.
In the dim room, Atem sat staring at a single bottle of cold-brew barley tea.
Open the fridge and there was only discount natto and one rice ball he had been given from the previous night's throwaways.
"…Heh. This month's balance stands at three thousand yen."
Four days until the next payday.
Precisely the extreme tightrope of surviving an opponent's direct attack on 100 Life Points.
And yet, strangely, there was no despair.
The cold of the wind blowing through the station concourse, the fatigue of labour pooling in the soles of his feet — all of it was fierce proof that he was alive, now. Set against that afterlife where nothing changed, where no one went hungry, that perfectly optimised boredom, even the thrill of worrying about tomorrow's food budget began to seem a kind of luxury.
"Watch me, Aibou. I will seize this living world's Draw Phase (read: payday) without fail."
Pulling the sagging polo shirt back on and roughly flattening his bed-head with his fingers, Atem locked the door.
The back that headed out into the evening streets was a little rounded, but the indomitable fighting spirit deep in his eyes alone still burned quietly at the bottom of a part-timer's daily round.
Reality is at times more merciless than the curse of a dark god, and lands its combo of ruin without warning.
The apartment in which Atem had been living on the edge was, as it turned out, a property sitting in a legal grey zone. One day, without warning, people from the ward office and the police arrived and served notice of immediate eviction. The building itself was an illegal construction, and on top of that, demolition for decay and Domino City's urban redevelopment plan had been decided at the same time.
"Wh… what did you say…!?"
As if to press the advantage on a stunned Atem, the manager of the convenience store where he worked bowed apologetically.
"Sorry, Aten. The thing is, our shop falls inside that redevelopment area… we're closing at the end of next month."
[Loss of housing] and [loss of employment].
With both of modern society's lifelines destroyed at once, Atem, still in his sagging T-shirt, was left literally out on the street.
"Heh. It is merely a change of dwelling. There is no shortage of land in the living world."
He put on a brave face, but reality was not so generous.
At the real estate office by the station, into which he plunged clutching at straws, Atem came to despair at the high wall of the modern "contract."
"Erm, Mr Aten… your current occupation? Ah, you're due to leave at the end of next month. In that case, could I see your current savings? …And official identification, and a solid guarantor resident in Japan, and then with the deposit, the key money and the agency fee, you'd need roughly this much up front."
Looking at the figure presented on the calculator, Atem's thinking froze.
This was on another scale entirely from a throttled budget SIM. His current Life Points — his savings — did not amount to half the up-front cost. His identification remained as grey as ever.
"…Checkmate, then."
The Pharaoh, in total defeat.
Far from being unable to make a move, he had not even been allowed into the ring.
With nowhere to go, Atem trudged along dragging his feet and arrived, in the end, at the Kame Game Shop with its familiar ringing glass bell.
"…Forgive me, Aibou. Laugh at me for being so useless."
His bed-head worse than ever, his worn clothes utterly spent, Atem had become the very picture of "a part-timer battered by the rough waters of the city until his strength gave out." Far from laughing, Yugi immediately made him a hot cocoa.
"Don't say things like that, other me. It's been hard, hasn't it… You can stay here until you've found your next place and your next job. I'll talk to Grandpa about it."
"Aibou…!"
Solomon too said, "Hmph. Survival in the living world was rough on you, I dare say," and this time granted him lodging unconditionally. Though it remained a temporary refuge, on the condition that it lasted only "until the next home and job are settled."
And so Atem took shelter in Yugi's room once again and, helping to mind the Kame Game Shop, began job hunting in earnest.
But the living world's hiring ice age ground the former Pharaoh's pride to powder.
Job magazine in hand, he applied for interview after interview, and the result was a clean sweep of losses.
"Mr Aten, what is this in your work history — 'governance of ancient Egypt'?"
"If this is all the documentation you have to prove your identity, I'm afraid we can't take you on…"
"You're young, but you seem — how shall I put it — rather lacking in drive. Tired, perhaps."
The cool words of the interviewers stuck in him. The charisma that had once led tens of thousands of troops was of no use whatsoever before a single sheet of paper called a résumé.
In the evening, there was Atem at the shop counter, gazing forlornly at the pieces of an unsold board game.
He minded the shop perfectly, so Solomon found him invaluable, but the impatience of needing to find a place of his own soon gnawed at him.
"…Living in the living world is, after all, a far harder road than winning a Shadow Game, Aibou."
"It'll be all right, other me. Let's not rush — we'll look again, one step at a time."
Sipping the tea Yugi had made him — not cold-brewed, but properly steeped in hot water — Atem let out a small breath.
A Pharaoh fallen to rock bottom, a worn-out part-timer. But in this place, with his Aibou's warmth in it, he went on quietly and steadily thinking through the next move that would let him stand again.
