Kaiba reads Atem's résumés and reaches a conclusion: the man needs an employment history more urgently than he needs a Duel.
This is a translation of an originalArtificial Intelligence work.
Original Title: 04 就活王
Original Author: Gemini with 葉人(@Hathor_yuki)
Personal site: https://prideshipping.sakura.ne.jp
Seto's urging voice sounded far away.
The light drained rapidly from Atem's eyes, in which a warrior's flame had unmistakably been burning a moment before. The sharpness of his bed-head remained, but deep in those eyes alone he regressed once more to "the utterly clouded dead-fish eyes of a man running five solo night shifts a week."
The strength went out of Atem's hand, and the deck tilted limply on Isono's palm.
"…I cannot, Kaiba."
"What did you say…!?"
"There is no possible way… I am not in the mental state (read: the mood) to Duel just now…"
Atem's knees shook and he crumpled weakly onto the sofa. He covered his face with both hands and let out a deep, endless, despairing sigh.
"I have… remembered. That I am currently unemployed. The terror of applying to company after company, blocked by the wall of identification, of an interviewer sneering 'What is governance of ancient Egypt?' — it is only now closing around my stomach… Kaiba, you could not understand. For a part-timer who does not know what tomorrow holds, what a direct attack on the spirit it is to have a future time limit called rent beginning in one year…"
"You…!"
Seto stared, dumbfounded, at the rival who had reverted at speed to worn-out mode in front of him.
Leaving the just-delivered deck on the table, the former Pharaoh buried his face in the sofa cushion, fully assuming the posture of escape from reality.
"I beg you, Kaiba. Send me home to that deeply soft bed for today. And… tell me where the employment office is…"
At so precipitous a drop, the luxurious room in the Kaiba mansion was wrapped in a freezing silence of a completely different kind from the one before.
"…Isono. What is this stack of paper you retrieved along with the deck?"
Seto's cool voice carried through the room. In his hand were several photocopied résumés, which the men in black had taken from the desk in Atem's room as "related documents," just in case.
Seto flicked through them and at once turned on their author the look of a man seeing something unbelievable.
"…Hopeless. Utterly beyond discussion. Atem, before unravelling the systems of the living world, you should first have read the rulebook of the game called 'the rules of job hunting in Japan.'"
Curled up on the sofa, Atem let one eye peer faintly out from the cushion.
"…What is hopeless about it? I exhausted every writing faculty I possess and believed I wrote them mindfully."
"All of it is hopeless!"
Seto slammed the résumés down on the low table.
"Who writes 'to make it the foundation of a peaceful life in the living world' as a reason for applying! Your pride gets in the way, and even addressing an interviewer for casual work you unconsciously construct your sentences as though looking down from above. However well arranged your face may be, it is self-evident that an interviewer would feel fear and reject you."
Atem hung his head again. For all his high-spec brain, he simply could not adapt to the absurd game called modern job-hunting etiquette.
Glaring at Atem's utterly worn-out figure, Seto folded his arms and snorted.
"However… with game sense like yours, and that astonishing capacity for optimisation that has cleared trial after trial, you have potential enough to work in my KaibaCorp's systems development division, or in debugging and AI construction for the new Duel Links."
"…!"
At those words, Atem's bed-head twitched. The faintest light returned to his clouded eyes.
"Kaiba… what did you just say? That I… could work…?"
"Do not misunderstand. I am saying only that the brain you are letting rot connects directly to my company's profits."
Seto returned to the desk, sat back deep in the chair and declared it haughtily.
"And should KaibaCorp's culture, by some remote chance, fail to suit your nature… even then. Put your name on our register once, and leave a record behind you."
Seto smiled fearlessly and levelled an index finger at Atem.
"Then, when you next try to move elsewhere, you can write boldly at the top of the work history that follows that threadbare résumé: KaibaCorp, Grade-A Game Analyst. Or: Special Strategic Adviser reporting directly to the President. It becomes an absolute card (read: a status) sufficient that the rabble of companies in the living world, on seeing a single character of that record, can never treat you as unemployed again."
"A work… history…!"
In Atem's mind, the scattered pieces assembled in an instant.
In the Duel called modern society, the most powerful Equip Spell of all——he now grasped it completely. The social credit called employment history at a major corporation.
"Take a powerful Field Spell by the name of KaibaCorp as my ally, and crawl up out of the Graveyard of my career — no work history — as a top-level monster in a single move… And then build that into a deck called a work history…!"
Atem shot up from the sofa with tremendous force. In those utterly clouded eyes, a true fighting spirit — more glittering than ever before, aimed at clearing modern money survival completely — was returning at one hundred percent output.
"Heh. Your will, at least, appears intact. Then I shall put that half-rotted talent to effective use at my company. …Isono! Bring the employment contract template here at once!"
"Sir!"
At Seto's sharp order, Isono moved like the wind once again.
Atem, for his part, had shed every trace of the worn-out part-timer of a moment before and now wore the face of a Pharaoh taking on a new project.
"Interesting. The game called modern society — I shall clear it completely, with your castle, KaibaCorp, as my starting point. Kaiba, let us exchange that contract at once!"
Fired up, Atem made to run his pen across the contract spread on the desk then and there.
But here modern society's final defence system bared its fangs.
The moment the man in black overseeing personnel scrutinised the documents Atem had submitted, a delicate atmosphere settled over the room.
"…Sir. Regarding Mr Aten's residence record and official identification, the data shows severe inconsistencies. Or rather, on the national database there is almost no matching personal information at all. It is in an extremely 'suspicious' state. Proper employment procedures cannot——"
"Hmph. Ridiculous!"
Seto dismissed it out of hand. He drew the terminal on his desk towards him and began striking the keyboard faster than the eye could follow.
"What of the national database. With KaibaCorp's network and thick pipelines to senior government officials, 'reconstructing' one man's identity (read: status) is no trouble at all. Atem, from this moment today I shall grant you a flawless public identity as a 'classified special genius researcher' invited from overseas by my company!"
By the genius President's extralegal power, Atem's suspicious identity was rewritten within a matter of minutes into the strongest data available, on a par with a state-certified first-class foreign specialist.
"No complaints now, I trust. Sign, Atem!"
"Yes… you have my thanks, Kaiba!"
The pen scratched across the page with force, and the employment contract was duly completed. With this, not merely the rent a year from now but a permanent foundation for living in the living world was fully secured.
Glancing out of the window, he found the night view of Domino City spread out beautifully.
Between being escorted here and the completion of the paperwork, the night had grown quite late without his noticing.
Having secured the greatest possible victory (read: complete stability) in his living-world survival, Atem felt the taut thread inside him snap, and his stomach let out a thin, plaintive rumble.
——Work settled. Identity acquired. …Right. Now that things have calmed down, I am ferociously hungry.
Atem tucked the deck from the desk fondly into his pocket, leaned back deep into the sofa and looked at Seto.
"Kaiba. Now that the contract is safely done and I am at ease, I find myself unaccountably hungry. Could we leave the Duel for another time? For today I would rather go home and eat something good."
Watching Atem casually postpone the Duel that had been the whole point of the day, Seto shrugged in exasperation. But deep in his eyes was a definite satisfaction at the sight of a rival whose cloudiness had cleared and whose prime-era brilliance had returned.
"Hmph… I sense no 'hunger' in you fit to fight me. Crushing a spineless Duelist is merely tedious. I shall carry it over for today. But there will be no next time!"
"Yes, I promise it. Next time I shall meet your challenge at full strength."
Just as the two of them had finally reconciled, the door was knocked briskly and Mokuba burst in, flustered.
"Nii-sama! Atem! …Huh?"
Hearing that Atem had already been escorted in by the men in black, Mokuba had rushed over thinking, "Damn it, Nii-sama's over-the-top intensity is going to grind Atem's Life down!" He braced himself for a moment — too late? — but instantly read the settled, oddly peaceful air in the room.
"What's this? I thought you two would be fighting, and you're deep in conversation. …Anyway, it's already eight in the evening. Shouldn't you both eat something?"
"Mokuba is right. Kaiba, there will be something good in your castle's dining hall, I take it?"
Atem smiled.
"Hmph. I will not have my household chef's cooking measured against a palate at the level of that 'cold-brew barley tea' of yours. Come."
Seto swept his coat around and set off at the head of them.
The three of them moved to the vast dining hall of the Kaiba mansion and gathered round a dinner of the highest grade.
Seto tilted his glass in his usual ill humour, but Mokuba listened happily to the failures of Atem's new life and laughed uproariously, while Atem, savouring the excellence of living-world cooking, talked about his prospects in the work ahead.
A former Pharaoh who had broken out of the afterlife's boredom and been battered again and again by the systems of the living world.
But now, taking warm soup, he was wrapped in a fulfilment beyond anything he had known.
The meal over, Atem was driven back to the tower in a KaibaCorp limousine and burrowed once more into the deeply soft bed.
From tomorrow, his first day at work as KaibaCorp's Special Adviser awaited.
"The game of the living world is… not half bad, as it turns out."
In a comfortable fullness, Atem quietly closed his eyes and dreamed, this time truly, of a peaceful and shining tomorrow.
Atem made his true start in the living world as KaibaCorp's Special Strategic Adviser.
His governing ability as a Pharaoh and his high-spec brain demonstrated their fearsome true worth in modern IT and gaming.
Let Atem read one move ahead in a specification and the set card concealing a bug was instantly exposed; let him adjust game balance and a perfect god-tier meta that shook users' souls was born on the spot.
And his work was ultra-high-efficiency.
Finishing tasks faster and more perfectly than anyone, he did no overtime whatsoever and clocked out on the dot. On top of that, KaibaCorp's formidable benefits and the enormous incentives (read: special bonuses) calculated against his output sent the Life Points in Atem's account soaring as never before.
"Heh… so this is the power of social credit. And the absolute defence called 'take-home pay.' A magnificent sense of security."
Having acquired room to spare both financially and mentally, Atem resumed, this time in earnest, his "mindful living (by Atem's standards)."
First, those catastrophic cooking skills were supplemented by the power of money.
To raise the quality of his cold-brew barley tea, he used his KaibaCorp salary to install "a luxury water server that produces pure water of the highest standard at the touch of a button." Buying a luxury electric cooking pot that simmered ingredients to perfection fully automatically, he further succeeded in automating housework — deck construction — to the point where curry could be summoned by pressing a button.
As for the laundry rotation, thanks to the fully automatic washer-dryer from Mokuba, he kept the "wear it as soon as it's dry" style intact, but it had evolved into shirts that never sagged: always uncreased, clean and beautifully scented.
Only the bed-head still stuck up in its usual tuft, a charm point; but what he gave off now was not the melancholy of a worn-out part-timer, but the aura of "a young genius executive whose private life is shrouded in mystery."
One afternoon on a day off.
Dressed in well-tailored casual clothes, Atem opened the door of the Kame Game Shop with the first smile from the bottom of his heart in a long while.
"Hey, Aibou. I have worried you. In fact… I have found work."
"Really!? Is that true, other me!?"
Yugi leaned over the counter in delight.
"Oh, thank goodness! You'd been so down about the job hunt not going well, Grandpa and I were both worried. …So, which company was it?"
"Kaiba's castle. I am to take part in systems and game development as a Special Adviser at KaibaCorp."
"Whaaaaat!? Kaiba's company!?"
Yugi's eyes went round. And then, as though it half made sense, he gave a small wry laugh.
"I see… Yes, there really is nowhere better to make use of your game sense, other me. I'm glad. …But, you know."
Yugi put a hand to his chin and voiced a simple question.
"If you'd applied through an ordinary job listing, KaibaCorp would have thrown you out at the document screening a hundred percent of the time. How on earth did you get hired? …Oh — did you go and see Kaiba directly?"
"No. His men in black escorted me off in something close to an abduction. I showed Kaiba my résumés there, and he was exasperated at how poor they were… and then he thrust a contract at me on the spot."
Atem said it as though it were nothing, drinking cold-brew barley tea (luxury server edition) from his own bottle, and for a moment Yugi's eyes went distant.
——…Hold on. Which means, if he'd gone to see Kaiba first thing, the way I was suggesting all along, he wouldn't have been ground to pieces by rent and taxes and turned into a sagging, worn-out part-timer at all…?
The whole thing had been a detour. What on earth had those first months of hardship been for?
But whether or not he sensed his Aibou's inward retort, Atem looked up at the blue sky beyond the window and smiled fearlessly.
"The game of the living world has depth, Aibou. It is precisely because I passed through a rock-bottom phase that the Field Spell called stability is felt in the bones now."
"Ahaha… well, if you're positive about it, that's fine."
Through all its twists and turns, Atem had finally built a perfectly won board in the living world.
In the castle of his greatest rival, watched over by his greatest Aibou, the former Pharaoh's modern salaried life (grade-A class) went on very "mindfully," and very meaningfully, deep into another day.
As KaibaCorp's Special Adviser, Atem had constructed a completely won board, financially and mentally alike.
And then one day, a message from Yugi appeared on his phone screen.
"Are you free this weekend? Shall we all get together for the first time in ages?"
Until now, Atem's life had been on the edge and he had seemed to have no mental room to spare, so Yugi had considerately left him alone. But there was no blind spot in the Pharaoh now. No throttled budget SIM to dread, no night security shifts chasing him.
"Heh. Of course, Aibou. My schedule is perfectly under control."
The weekend. Seeing Atem arrive at the meeting place, Joey, Tristan and Téa all three widened their eyes alike.
"Hey, hey, hey! Look at that, Joey — Atem's gone seriously sharp, hasn't he!?"
"Seriously? When Yugi told me the other day he was 'sipping barley tea in a sagging T-shirt with a face like death,' I was worried, but… he's wearing a watch that looks expensive!"
"Heh. It's been a while, everyone."
Atem's hair, sharp again, swayed as he smiled fearlessly.
That day was the best kind of day off, exactly as though they had returned to how things had been.
First they headed to a large card shop in Domino City to check the newest packs. Atem no longer had to worry about war funds, so instead of his old buying-on-the-edge-of-pocket-money method he displayed the smart purchasing of an adult, which sent Joey into agonies.
After that, at Téa's suggestion, to a stylish new café.
Atem took a sip of the iced coffee that was brought out and nodded quietly.
"I see. The selection of the beans, and the temperature of the extraction… a flavour comparable to the cold-brew barley tea made with the water server in my own castle."
"Other me, you can't compare café coffee with barley tea…"
Yugi shot back without missing a beat, and everyone dissolved into laughter.
The good time passed in no time at all, and it was night.
When the talk turned to "what shall we do now?", Atem spoke up naturally.
"Téa has a curfew, I imagine, but if you like, will you come to my sacred territory after this? You will be welcome."
And so, having parted from Téa at the station, Atem, Yugi, Joey and Tristan headed for the top-grade high-rise Mokuba had arranged.
"Whoa — whoaaaa!? What is this tower!? Damn, the elevator's so fast my ears are ringing!"
While Joey went wild over the night view from the balcony, Tristan looked around the room in trepidation.
"Hey, Yugi… Atem's housekeeping is catastrophic, right? Isn't there going to be a mountain of T-shirts flung on the floor, or some suspicious mouldy object transmuted in a corner…?"
But what leapt into the men's eyes as they stepped inside was a scene far too unexpected.
"…Huh? It's incredibly clean."
The room was astonishingly tidy.
T-shirts pulled from the fully automatic washer-dryer hung on hangers, arrayed beautifully in the closet (the wear-it-straight-off-the-hanger style was intact, but with more clothes to hand the closet had begun to function).
In the kitchen, the luxury water server that produced superb water at the touch of a button glowed quietly, and not one scrap of washing-up remained in the sink.
"Be seated. I shall prepare the feast."
Deftly — which is to say, entirely by pressing buttons on the fully automatic cooking pot and the latest appliances — Atem laid out chilled beer and a range of perfectly warmed snacks on the low table.
"Hey, Atem… you're living pretty decently, actually — no, you're living about as properly as it gets!"
Joey raised his beer can, impressed.
"Heh. I told you, did I not. I am always mindful of 'mindful living.'"
Proudly, Atem raised a glass of his prized luxury cold-brew barley tea (tonight, specially, with a slice of lime).
"Ahaha, it's true. Back at that grey apartment I wondered what would become of you, but… you look like you've made the systems of the living world completely your ally."
Yugi smiled happily and touched cans with him.
The ice chimed in the glass.
A Pharaoh who had broken out of the afterlife's boredom, been battered by the rough waters of the living world, and at one point sunk as low as a worn-out part-timer. But what surrounded him in this moment was a certain independence won by his own sweat, and the smiles of precious friends that no change of era would ever alter.
"Now then. Let us begin. Tonight, until morning, our game (read: drinking at home) continues!"
Against the backdrop of the Domino City night, the men's boisterous laughter went on echoing through the Pharaoh's warm new home.
