Seto turns twenty and spends his birthday deflecting marriage proposals in a suit that doesn’t match his expression. Atem wishes him happy birthday; he blinks, says he’ll take it, and leaves without saying thank you. A month later, Yugi attempts over coffee to get a straight answer about what is going on between Atem and Kaiba. He does not succeed. Then Christmas: Téa’s first stage performance, a VIP box, a bouquet with no stated reason, and Atem standing quietly afterward with her closed fist pressed to her chest.
This is a translation of an original work on Pixiv.
Original Title: 06 冬の入口
Original Author: 葉人(@Hathor₋yuki)
Personal site: https://prideshipping.sakura.ne.jp
Winter was almost here.
A month ago, the man who was both a world-class engineer and researcher had been celebrated in grand style for his twentieth birthday — and had spent the occasion visibly sulking.
That day, even from Atem’s perspective, Seto had been in an exceptionally foul mood from the moment he woke up.
“Your birthday?”
“Yes. Obviously.”
He answered with irritation, dressed in a suit noticeably more formal than usual, expression and outfit completely at odds with each other. She hadn’t seen that look in a while — and it was doing no favours to what was otherwise an objectively remarkable face.
Business partners, politicians, people from every country and profession imaginable, all descending to offer their congratulations — when he’d said they could hold it at the company, it had apparently spiralled out of control before anyone could stop it.
His face said: this is a waste of my time and I want everyone to know it.
As Mokuba later explained, clients who wanted to make connections had inserted themselves with please, allow us to celebrate alongside you.
“It’s not so bad, being celebrated.”
“It’s a waste of time.”
“I’ll celebrate you. Happy birthday.”
Seto blinked, briefly, like he hadn’t quite expected it.
“Ah.”
“That’s all?”
“...I’ll take it.”
He closed his eyes once, smiled — faintly — said neither thank you nor anything else, and left.
“At least say thank you.”
“Atem... that, for him, on his birthday — that was the thank you.”
“Really? He’s hard to read.”
“He was so surprised he forgot to say happy birthday back.”
“Sorry, I got there first.”
“No, no — I’ll pass it on as the company representative.”
Mokuba smiled.
Besides, since we’re hosting, and today we’re clearing out all the outside guests at once — getting him home early is probably the best birthday gift. Something vaguely alarming had been said very casually, but Atem decided not to engage. This was Mokuba. She had learned, eventually, that Téa and Mokuba were not people to make enemies of.
“You’re dependable.”
“I have to be. Last year was a nightmare, you know. He found a sports tournament to enter just to avoid his birthday.”
“Wait, he went that far?”
He wasn’t a man who hesitated over methods — but that seemed entirely without principle. She genuinely couldn’t follow the logic. If he wanted something to do, he could have held a dueling tournament. He’d probably even have enjoyed that.
“He’s always been naturally athletic. We’d already started on the training programme, but I managed to get some pressure applied in time to stop him.”
“Athletic — I always thought of him as more of a strategist. Though, actually, those moves of his weren’t bad...”
Soldiers going down one after another. The coat catching the air. A technique she couldn’t name, executed without a single wasted motion. The efficiency of it had been something else entirely. Natural ability made sense.
“It’s not just sport. Have you ever seen Nii-sama’s artwork?”
She’d been shown the schematics for the Duel Disk once. The accompanying projected image of the finished design — had that been his own drawing?
According to Mokuba, middle school had been a continuous revelation of his brother’s seemingly bottomless talent.
The sports records on the walls, across all three years, were saturated with the name Seto Kaiba — unbroken to this day. Behind glass, there was a sculptural piece from the art department, apparently, displayed as the graduating class representative. In the music room, recordings of his performances had been kept as archival material. The list went on.
In reality, these were the results of extraordinary effort applied to extraordinary ability — but the more she heard, the more a mildly rude question formed in the back of her mind: is this person actually human?
For Seto, his birthday was the single most wasteful day of the year.
The banner said celebration. The faces said opportunity. The number of people who draped themselves in well-wishing while angling for proximity was, frankly, staggering.
It had been this way since he joined the Kaiba family — marriage proposals slipped in under the guise of casual conversation, year after year, the numbers only growing. A headache of the highest order.
But now — Atem existed in the modern world not as an ancient, occult presence, but as an ordinary contemporary person. Not just visiting. Staying.
The moment Atem found her own feelings, he intended to put a ring on her finger. After that, she would become his wife. That had already been decided.
He wasn’t letting her go again. He wasn’t holding back. He wasn’t going easy. It was simple enough: all he needed was for her to learn what it meant to be free, and to lean on someone.
Seto understood perfectly well that he was both the head of the company and its public face. He knew exactly how to present himself.
“President Kaiba, congratulations on this occasion.”
If this were a business proposal, at least it would be worth something. He was fairly certain this man had a granddaughter. The target was a marriage arrangement.
He caught Mokuba’s eye across the room. Mokuba would handle it from here.
Two figures moved away together. Conversation drifted back, light and easy. A peaceful postponement of the problem.
That boy’s warmth is genuinely unmatched. He handed his glass to the nearest black-suited staff member, and let the corner of his mouth do as it liked.
Released by Mokuba — at a considerably earlier hour than the schedule would have suggested — he headed home.
Work remained. But today he wanted to see Atem’s face. A year ago, he would have gone to the Afterlife first, without question.
He was sober — but there was no room for softness right now. He needed to return to himself. And yet, to do that, he needed Atem. The irony was not lost on him.
“Welcome back. Mokuba really came through — right on time.”
“What are you talking about.”
“He said he’d get you home early. That was the birthday gift.”
“I see.”
“Still — you really are something, aren’t you.”
Mokuba must have told her something. He could find out the details if he wanted to, but it didn’t matter. Simply seeing her face was enough; the noise in his chest was already settling. For him, that was nothing short of peace.
Peace was not something the gods provided. What the gods gave was life, and nothing more. What Atem gave him was something closer to what humans called warmth — something maternal, in its way, though that was perhaps an odd word for it.
“Don’t lump me in with your friends.”
“That’s... hm, I don’t think I can, actually. Not this time.”
She looked a little troubled when she said it.
That was unusual. Atem, who tended toward equal treatment of everyone, had just drawn a clear line.
Naturally, Seto answered, and smiled in a way that didn’t bother to be modest about it.
By the time he came home, the furrow between his brows from that morning was gone. Even the tension she’d caught in his brief replies had been there when he arrived — and now it wasn’t.
She’d wanted to do something about that. Apparently it was no longer needed.
Good. Atem let out a quiet breath and smiled.
Back in her room, she lay down on the bed. Sleep usually came easily — but tonight, it wouldn’t.
He probably just hates the marriage talk, Mokuba had said.
Given his position, that kind of thing was inevitable. She understood that much.
She couldn’t imagine anyone who would actually be a match for someone that unreasonable — but even so, someday that day might come. Someday, someone compelling might appear.
When that day came, this life would come to an end.
“I’ve rather grown to like it here, though...”
Atem didn’t have a word for what she was feeling. She just knew there was something sitting on her chest, and she didn’t know what it meant.
A month since then.
The feeling hadn’t gone away.
Things with Seto were the same as ever — eternal rivals, nothing changed between them.
Hands in her pockets, Atem headed toward the meeting place.
What are you wearing, it’s freezing — that was Yugi’s greeting, approximately thirty seconds later.
The Christmas commercial season was, as the name suggested, a battlefield.
Streaming had become the dominant format — and yet physical sales still moved at a pace that left shelves bare no matter how much stock was put out.
If all of those were gifts, did each one represent a child’s happiness somewhere?
Mokuba watched his brother in silence, turning over numbers without a word.
“Nii-sama, about the Kaiba Land opening day—”
“Proceed as planned.”
There were times when his brother sank into thought in the middle of everything else — mid-work, mid-conversation, some part of his attention going somewhere Mokuba couldn’t follow. He’d always known it happened.
Whether he was thinking about the parents neither of them had known, or about Atem — whether it was memory or something imagined forward — Mokuba hoped, whichever it was, that it was a happy kind of thinking.
“Aibou, what are you doing for Christmas?”
“Looks like I’ll be working.”
“Téa?”
“Yeah. ...Wait, am I being interrogated? Did you just do that?”
“Yeah. She doesn’t tell me much about herself directly.”
Yugi gave Atem a look — partly reproachful, partly resigned — and double-checked, while he was at it, that she was properly dressed for the weather and had something warm with her. Left to her own devices, she had a habit of stepping out in practically nothing, every single time.
“You said Téa. So there’s something you are talking about?”
“I’m not that easy to get talking.”
“With me, you mean.”
“Well, yeah, I suppose.”
“So you are talking to someone.”
“It’s girls only, Aibou.”
She said it with a wink, looking entirely too pleased with herself. Whether she fully understood what she was saying was unclear.
According to Téa, Atem was something of a natural wonder.
“There’s no girl or boy between us at this point.”
Fair enough, Atem seemed to agree — and said nothing more. Just accepted the logic and moved on.
In battle, this person had been fiercer than anyone, willing to take any hit without flinching. Now she was calm. Settled. Living in peace.
Thank you, Yugi thought, to no god in particular — or perhaps to one specific goddess. In that sense, maybe making her a girl hadn’t been entirely wrong. Whether it counted as consideration was still unclear. But.
“Are you getting along with Kaiba?”
“We had a three-round match the day before yesterday, then went through the whole post-game analysis.”
Woke up and it was morning, both of us had just fallen asleep there, she added, laughing.
The fact that she was laughing about it was remarkable in itself, Yugi thought. He still wasn’t quite sure what to make of Seto — never entirely had been, and it had only gotten less clear since Atem came back.
He’d thought they’d reached something equal, once. Apparently not.
All right. She said she wouldn’t talk — so I’ll get her talking. That makes us even. Yugi made his decision and spoke carefully.
“Is that okay? You are technically a girl now.”
“He knows that. He’s thoughtful about it. He’s kind, actually.”
Kind, hm. That’s not quite what I meant.
So there was no sense of danger, then. No, of course not. She was the type to walk into traps knowing they were there. Trusting her to look after herself in that particular area — she had too much of a track record for that.
This was exactly what made her such a natural.
A reindeer-drawn sleigh was drifting through the sky over Domino. In a town as thoroughly KaibaCorp as this one, nobody batted an eye. A child pointed up, delighted.
Well, if they were going out, perhaps some of that could happen. Might as well try shaking her up a little.
“Just to check — you’re not worried about, you know, anything improper happening?”
“He’s not the type to do something like that.”
“Right.”
That was healthier than expected. This was Seto Kaiba they were talking about. The trust between them was also a mystery, when he thought about it. She wasn’t someone who trusted easily — she’d always been sharp about that, for all that she walked into traps willingly.
What Yugi didn’t know was that the trust had been built slowly, deliberately, over months — and Atem hadn’t noticed it being built.
He must love her very much, Yugi thought. Those blue eyes were too expressive to hide it. Even at the autumn festival, he’d watched Atem — dressed up and glowing — with a look that was unmistakably gentle. And Yugi had seen them, a little later, walking hand in hand.
Atem, for her part, must feel something too. She’d been led by the hand, her expression hidden, but the distance between them had been very small, and the atmosphere around them very warm.
He’d meant to get her talking. She was turning out to be more difficult to crack than expected. He wondered how Téa ever managed it.
Yugi leaned his cheek on his hand and spoke slowly.
“I thought, by now, I might be hearing that you two were actually together. Like, an actual report.”
“Together... me and Kaiba?”
“Who else is there?”
“...Well, I mean, he is the only man in my immediate life, but—”
Atem went quiet, thinking.
Yugi took a long pull on his straw.
“Aibou — what does together mean, exactly?”
“—! What are you saying, are you serious? Whatever happened to girls only?”
He’d nearly swallowed his cream wrong. He coughed.
They were obviously together, and yet. Hand-holding, dates, and what does together mean — that wasn’t concealment. That was something else entirely. Like laying out your hand face-up and insisting it was a reverse.
“I meant like us.”
“But we’re not together. Not like that.”
“That’s — okay, that can’t be true. You get along, right? He’s kind to you? That whole side of things?”
“You mean he takes care of things? That’s a bit different.”
He takes care of things. Seto Kaiba. Taking care of someone. Case closed.
“Do you feel anything like... liking him? That sort of thing?”
“That — those kinds of feelings — I’m not really sure.”
She laughed, a little, and took a sip of something sweet.
“You’re very universal in your affections, aren’t you. What about wanting to keep him to yourself? Anything like that?”
“I’ve already kept him to myself for a long time — he’s my rival, our road stretches further than anyone can see—”
“Okay! I give up! I get it, forget I asked, I’m done, thank you very much!”
“You’ve still got some left.”
She pointed at his cup, looking puzzled.
Which was technically true — and also beside the point. If Atem was buying today, the bill would presumably find its way to him eventually, but that wasn’t what Yugi meant either.
What kind of relationship is this. He was more confused than ever.
Was this — could this possibly be what people called idiots in love? The sheer inconvenience of it pointed that direction. A new kind of couple that didn’t put anything into words. He’d heard there were cultures where that happened, even abroad.
But then — would Seto really say nothing? He’d always seemed like someone who put his feelings into collisions, who needed to make contact. Quiet didn’t fit him.
A natural wonder. That was what Téa had said.
Was it genuinely possible they weren’t actually together? He hadn’t considered that scenario.
“If you were just a little less oblivious.”
“Aibou, you’re starting to sound like Téa.”
There it is. She had no idea. The monk theory remained stubbornly unresolved — but the undeniable warmth between them wasn’t something he could dismiss either.
He gave up trying to get her to say anything, blew a long frustrated breath into his straw, and made a sound that was deeply undignified.
They stood, more or less simultaneously.
Black slim-fit trousers, a fluffy outer layer, soft earmuffs. Cute overall — but the muffler stood out: white base, blue and black lines, clean and sharp.
“That muffler is Kaiba’s.”
“You can tell? He wrapped it on me on the way out.”
She put her hand to it, eyes dropping slightly — remembering, maybe.
“Ah. I see.”
The image came to Yugi easily. Those quiet, warm blue eyes watching her. At least dress warmly, or something like that, probably said while winding it around her.
He understood, a little, why he still found Seto difficult. It wasn’t anything Yugi could do. He’d be too flustered just making eye contact to think about anything else, let alone looking after someone.
“I would have gotten cold standing around. It helped.”
“You should say thank you.”
“Yeah.”
Atem — do you know what your face looked like just now? Proud, like always, and happy, and just slightly embarrassed. He didn’t say it.
Since coming back, Atem was living quietly, and apparently happily.
Christmas.
Yugi was so nervous his right arm and right leg were going forward at the same time.
The VIP invitation had arrived two weeks ago.
He’d dug out his suit, had his mother re-iron his shirt, polished his shoes.
The person who had once been another version of himself had apparently known the details when they met the other day. At anything that counted as a game, she was completely unbeatable.
“This looks all right, doesn’t it?”
“You’re fine. It suits you, Aibou.”
Atem’s wink was cheerfully confident — dressed in a one-piece yet somehow the most self-assured person in the room.
“You look great too. Did Kaiba pick it out?”
“No, Mokuba gave it to me this morning. That kid is really going to be something.”
“Hm.”
Now that he thought about it — the yukata at the festival had been Mokuba’s too. That had suited her as well. Today’s was perfect. The kid had extraordinary taste.
“Never mind that — you’re nervous, Aibou, and today is Téa’s moment.”
“I know, I know.”
Today they had been invited to a musical performance.
He knew KaibaCorp had been constructing a large venue. Téa wasn’t in the lead role — but she had made it through auditions to join the cast for the inaugural commemorative production.
He hadn’t realised any of this had been in motion while she was back in Japan.
“I would have been fine with a regular seat.”
“When I said I was coming, they set this up. It’s a big space for one person — come on, let’s cheer her on together.”
“Kaiba is the same as ever.”
He’d probably anticipated Atem would come and had it arranged in advance.
A VIP box — less a seat than a small room — with an excellent view of the stage.
The depth of feeling in that alone said quite a lot. Kind — yes, undeniably kind.
The lights came down. Mokuba stepped out to give an address on behalf of the company.
“Not Kaiba?”
“Well — he’s the lead, so...”
“...WHAT?”
The lead? His name wasn’t in the programme.
He liked to make an impression, sure — but performing in a musical seemed entirely unlike him in every way.
While Yugi was still processing, Atem burst out laughing.
“Ha — I’m joking. Did I get you?”
“You completely — wait, since when do you make jokes like that?”
“...Kaiba does it.”
“That one I don’t believe. I’m not falling for it twice.”
Yugi shot her a sideways look.
“No, really though.”
“Come on, it’s a joke.”
Atem looked faintly troubled and said nothing.
Was she setting up another lie? Or had Seto Kaiba actually, genuinely, at some point, told a joke?
Her expression gave nothing away.
The production ended — beautiful in light and sound — and Seto himself came out to deliver brief remarks, presented flowers to the leading performer, and saw the evening to its close.
A small part. Still the most conspicuous person on the stage.
Yugi sent Téa a message and watched the general audience filing steadily out.
The door opened behind him. He turned.
“Atem.”
Seto had come in, carrying a bouquet. A glossy black suit, flowers in deep red — the contrast was striking.
“Kaiba. We had a great view — thank you.”
“No need.”
“Thank you for including me too.”
“That was Atem’s doing, not mine.”
He crossed the room toward Atem as he said it.
“Why do you have flowers? Did someone give those to you?”
“These are for you.”
“For me? I wasn’t in the show.”
“Do you need a reason?”
What a voice to say that in.
Yugi made a quiet effort to become part of the furniture.
One person holding out a hand, presenting a bouquet, every line of it reading as a proposal. One person with absolutely no idea what was happening. The image was something.
“A reason — I mean, but—”
Atem’s cheeks had gone faintly pink.
What are these two doing. If they weren’t going out, that was the real joke.
Yugi was edging slowly, silently toward the door when Seto’s manner shifted — from that warmth, back to his usual register.
“That was a joke.”
He said it with a brief, quiet smile.
So Seto Kaiba telling jokes was not wrong. It was simply true.
In several distinct ways, Yugi had nearly reached his limit.
“That kind of joke is cheating.”
Cheating? It looked more like embarrassment covered up with cheating — Atem was clearly sulking.
“You’re going to your friend. Take these. Yugi — yours too, since we’re here.”
So Seto looking after people was also true.
Yugi accepted the bouquet that was pressed into his arms. He hadn’t expected to be going backstage, and he’d come empty-handed — so he was genuinely grateful, practically speaking.
Simply considered, Seto had come to deliver flowers to Atem. Coming in person had its own implications — and yet, as ever, what he was actually thinking remained completely opaque. Yugi still found him difficult.
“You know where to go?”
“Yeah. I’ve got the layout in my head.”
Oh. The layout.
“The car is arranged. From the backstage corridor, go straight down to the underground—”
“—right, got it.”
Letters and numbers, probably a parking level. He filed it away.
Both of them — the one giving directions and the one receiving them — retained information with an ease that made Yugi feel quietly inadequate.
With Atem teased and the errand complete, Seto turned and left. On the way out, he reached back without breaking stride and smoothed Atem’s fringe — which had been slightly off — with the tips of his fingers. Effortless.
To care for someone you love as a simple matter of course. To make it visible. That was something Yugi wasn’t anywhere near catching up to.
“Are you all right?”
“Fine. It’s nothing.”
It clearly wasn’t nothing. Atem had been looking, quietly, at the hand that had just been held — the one the flowers had been placed into.
She closed it gently, brought it to her chest, and looked up with something close to happiness on her face. That said everything.
See — you say you don’t know, but that’s exactly what it is, isn’t it?
“Shall we go?”
“Yeah.”
Atem led the way, and Yugi followed her toward the backstage corridor, toward Téa — who was waiting there with a full, radiant smile, arms full of flowers.
