Yugi tries to explain Valentine's to Atem and gets koibana instead — she wants to hear about Seto's love life, not her own. Asked his type, Seto answers with strength and tactics, then says he never understood it either.
Past tense, and the word either; Yugi catches both and Atem catches neither. On the day itself she is handed flowers and her own name, and nothing else.
This is a translation of an original work on Pixiv.
Original Title: 08 バレンタインに花束
Original Author: 葉人(@Hathor_yuki)
Personal site: https://prideshipping.sakura.ne.jp
The town had a giddy air about it, pink and chocolate everywhere you looked. And yet Yugi was sitting dejected in a room of the Kaiba mansion — Atem's room.
It must be because Téa is in America and he has no chocolate coming, Atem consoled him.
"Cheer up, Aibou. I'll give you friend chocolate."
"No, I'll pass on that. Give it to Kaiba."
"To Kaiba? Why?"
"You're... honestly."
As ever, there were limits to being this dense. Apparently she wouldn't understand unless it was said outright.
"I mean, you're going out, aren't you."
"Not you too, Aibou, saying that again... You've been influenced too much by Téa, you know?"
Atem said it wasn't so, but Yugi could not believe her in the slightest.
Who exactly had gone red at having a bouquet held out to her at Christmas?
That sweet voice from that day. An overwhelming, magnetic aura that carried your whole attention off with it. That he'd felt a real sense of danger, of possibly running off down a forbidden road if he weren't careful, was also true. If Atem and Téa hadn't been there it would have been close. Seto Kaiba was dangerous.
Atem, who took that head-on and was fine (she was not in fact fine), had to be out of her mind.
Seto showed not the slightest sign of hiding his feelings. That had been true even with Yugi standing right there, so he surely wasn't hiding them here either.
Not hiding his feelings. In a sense, that was Seto Kaiba exactly as he always was.
Even so, if Atem's words were the truth, then for some reason it was only this particular shape of feeling that had failed to reach the nationally protected airhead.
For all that it was that blatant. Really, truly unbelievable. And this was what he wanted her to tell him was a joke.
"He apparently only eats chocolate from the plantations he has under contract. That hot chocolate you're drinking now is from there too."
Had KaibaCorp extended its reach as far as the confectionery industry without anyone noticing? He hadn't realised.
Yugi took a mouthful of the hot chocolate. Sweet. A flavour Atem would like.
"Does Kaiba have a sweet tooth?"
"He doesn't have many likes and dislikes, I think. But that one isn't what he usually eats — it's the commercial product, so it's sweet. Apparently you can drink it at the hotels in the group."
"Huh."
Hotels, but presumably not the official hotel at Kaiba Land — the lounges of the very expensive sort of hotel.
It was good enough to make you wonder what all the chocolate up to now had been.
"Wait, that's not it — it's Valentine's, you know?"
"I know that. It's a day for giving presents to people who matter to you, isn't it?"
Matter. You could put it that way, perhaps.
The one being strung up by the airheaded, spectacularly dense Atem was, in all likelihood — nine times out of ten, and not off the mark by even the remotest chance — that object of her affections, Seto Kaiba. Or rather, wasn't it himself?
Were they having some contest of endurance to see who got impatient first, or was the man genuinely an ascetic monk?
At the very least, Yugi did not look capable of any further asceticism.
"Not people who matter — people you like."
"That's what I'm telling you, I don't understand that. And I probably don't have anyone like that anyway."
Chin propped on her hand, Atem said it as though there were truly nothing there.
Doubt. He wanted to call it. If it would land.
How maddening this was.
"Have you never talked with Kaiba about that sort of thing?"
"Ah, koibana, you mean."
Koibana. Well, you could just about call it that. She must have picked the word up recently. Atem lifted her face, delighted. The source was certainly Téa. She'd taught her something strange, with no idea at all what she was putting him through.
"A lot of presents seem to be arriving lately, so I did ask him about it."
The koibana of the person she loved. Why was she so pleased about it? Yugi could not understand it.
He could practically hear the voice of her heart saying: ask me.
Valentine's, it seemed, was a day not only for people who mattered but for telling someone you liked how you felt.
That was the information Atem had acquired.
When Mokuba grumbled that it was a nuisance how presents were being delivered to the company in bulk lately with Valentine's as the excuse, she was quick to make the association: wasn't that because someone was carrying a torch for Seto, the president?
Because Seto Kaiba was what they called high-spec, and by Téa's account he was considerably popular and had felled women past counting.
Considering the sample size, stories of that kind should be in no short supply.
Alone with him in his room, Atem threw out her question straight away.
"Kaiba, do you know about Valentine's?"
"A day with a custom of giving flowers or other presents to people who matter to you. Though in Japan it has the look of an entirely different festival. Do you want chocolate?"
There's some there, Seto said, pointing at chocolate he had set out.
Atem peeled off the wrapper and put one in her mouth.
"Good... no, that's not it. It's a day for giving them to someone you like as well. Don't you have anyone you're interested in?"
"Who knows."
The way he answered as though it were a bother reminded her of his birthday.
If unwanted marriage offers came in one after another, that might well be irksome to a man who lived for his work.
Priest Seto, who lived for his work in the same way, would draw his brows together and sometimes deal with things with a vein standing out at his temple whenever something other than work came in.
But she could not back down from this opportunity. Now and then it would be good to extract a romance or two out of him and crack that composure. That was the thought.
In short, what the modern age would call koibana.
"What is that supposed to be."
"What about you?"
"Coming at it from there, are you. But whether I like someone — I don't understand that."
"Is that so?"
Unexpected, she'd been told, but was it? That was what was unexpected.
Still, what she didn't understand she didn't understand.
"That's right. So, what about you?"
"You're clinging to this remarkably hard."
He stopped his hands, shifted the display aside, and blue eyes fixed on her steadily.
"Are you that curious?"
Originally it had been the slightest idle interest.
She hadn't been that curious, but let someone slip and dodge and you got curious in spite of yourself; that was what koibana was. Probably.
"I'm curious."
"Oh?"
Seto stopped working entirely and put a piece of chocolate in his mouth.
Leaning back in his chair, long legs crossed, you could see the composure of a man untroubled by anything he might be asked.
"So. What sort of story about me do you want?"
"Hmm... well, your type, perhaps...?"
Asking it, the one whose insides had stopped being calm was Atem. She wanted to ask, and she was afraid to ask. Contradictory feelings surfaced, and she tilted her head.
He had of course noticed the state of her, but Seto did not touch it. If she wanted to know, he would tell her; that was all. He knew she was already on the verge of falling. All that remained was to push.
Seto opened his mouth.
"Strength."
"Strength?"
"Tactics beyond imagining. Sense."
"...You. You're talking about something else, aren't you."
While she stared at him, he considered it a moment, then gave a snort of a laugh, amused.
"I had never thought about it. I didn't understand it either."
"Mm — well, if that's how it is, then that's how it is."
If he'd never thought about it, he wouldn't understand. In that case there was nothing to be done.
"And so on. In the end he thinks about nothing but cards."
He's busy, so it can't be helped, Atem said — but was this koibana?
The koibana Atem recounted was a very long way from the ordinary koibana Yugi had imagined, and since it was Seto Kaiba's koibana he had been worried about what might come flying out, so he was slightly relieved.
Which is to say: distracted by Seto Kaiba's koibana, he had let his guard down despite this being about Atem's own love life.
But having noticed, there was nothing for it. A cold sweat ran down him despite the winter. It was someone else's love life and his heart was pounding.
She hadn't noticed because she had no awareness of it, but what exactly had the object of her affections said?
He had said he didn't understand it. Past tense. Well played, and something in it felt as though he'd been measured. And on top of that, either.
Which meant: neither of us knew, but now we do. Thoroughly outmanoeuvred.
Then why hadn't it reached her? he wondered — but she was a nationally protected airhead, so perhaps it couldn't be helped.
"Kaiba said he didn't understand it. Not that he doesn't."
"He said either, you know? He was agreeing, so it means neither of us understands."
If it was agreement, then didn't understand but now does applied to Atem as well. Would she follow it if he told her it was something like a Field Spell? No, even that seemed a thin hope.
"You really are..."
He must be certain of it. That both of them understood.
How very sweet that was.
He didn't hide his feelings, wouldn't hide them, so even his type pointed directly at Atem. He didn't lie; there were no lies in his words. He didn't waver.
Whether it was koibana or not, it had been Seto Kaiba precisely as he always was.
Did she have no thoughts, nothing to say, about all those presents arriving, not a flicker of jealousy? Perhaps not. Setting aside whether Atem was aware of it, she was the one being loved.
In reality Atem's jealousy was an everyday occurrence, but Yugi knew nothing of that.
Yugi felt as though he might get heartburn. Not from this sweet hot chocolate. From the nationally protected airhead in front of him. She was here alone, and he could all but see Seto standing close at her side.
It got late, and when he left the room thinking he ought to head home, he ran into the master of the house.
"Welcome back."
"Sorry for intruding."
"Ah."
Atem's beloved.
The blue eyes went to Atem first. Then to the room saturated with the smell of chocolate. Then to some Valentine's-related something displayed on the open screen. And finally to Yugi's expression, at which his mouth curved into a smirk.
I've been set up. He knew it instinctively.
It wasn't that he was cheering their romance on, or that he wanted to take issue with it. No — if anything he was cheering it on.
He'd even thought there might come a time to push Atem forward. But even if he pushed, being manoeuvred into it like this was not what he'd intended.
Yugi's sense of not being good with Seto showed no sign of clearing for some time yet.
Valentine's Day itself.
In the end, for reasons she didn't understand, she had received flowers on Valentine's. The meaning she could follow well enough. It was the why she couldn't.
No — the truth was that she wasn't unable to follow it; she was hesitating over whether she was allowed to.
Looking at them where they stood in her room, Atem let out a deep sigh.
She had been told it was a day for giving presents to people who mattered. Giving flowers to someone who matters — Seto had said that himself. So she understood the meaning.
Seto did not lie.
Which meant that to Seto, Atem mattered.
That Seto Kaiba, on whom the whole world turned its ardent gaze. When they had faced each other she hadn't cared and hadn't understood, but she felt she understood well enough now what sort of person he was. And those eyes were looking at her.
He had chased her to the afterlife by outrageous means, answered her wish and brought her out into the living world, and then looked after her.
She knew she was being treated as something that mattered. The day of the festival, that day in the snow, and other times besides — he had always been kind.
But having the reason for it given a shape like this, there was something she could not put into words.
Of course he was irreplaceable to Atem as well. She knew that. She had known that, and yet.
"What an ambush."
The cheeks of the murmuring Atem were red.
Of course, from Seto's side it was no ambush at all. It was an extension of Atem's koibana, and the final push.
Seto had come home, and when he came to her room he said only her name — Atem — and handed her the flowers. There were no other words.
Every word was packed into the bouquet.
Those blue eyes looking at her were clear as ever, and straight. His voice had been the same. A gentle low register, pleasant on the ear. It had been the usual Seto Kaiba.
You matter to me. She gazed at the flowers that carried that meaning.
"What am I supposed to do?"
Why. If she came to understand that answer, what would become of her?
Times like this were exactly what girl talk was for. Perhaps she should consult Téa.
But she didn't know where to start, or what to consult about, or how, and it ended up not happening. She didn't even know what it was she was troubled by.
She didn't know the answer, and she must not learn the answer — a contradiction she had fallen into.
All she could do was tuck away, quietly and with her heart pounding, a feeling whose name she did not know and which threatened to spill over.
