Atem starts calling him Seto, which takes her three attempts and a great deal of going red. Yugi, finally certain the two of them have sorted themselves out, goes to the laboratory to demand that Seto stop making her worry — and is told, in a voice that frightens him, why the waiting is deliberate.
This is a translation of an original work on Pixiv.
Original Title: 10 安全地帯
Original Author: 葉人(@Hathor_yuki)
Personal site: https://prideshipping.sakura.ne.jp
A year ago, Atem's careless remark — that she'd become a woman so she was living at her boyfriend's house — had turned from a lie into the truth.
Seto really had become Atem's boyfriend.
"Seto."
"What is it?"
"That... never mind."
"I see."
The sort of thing where she'd only wanted to say the name. Seto understood, and had not one complaint about it, Atem being as dear as she was.
From the day after their feelings reached each other, Atem had been calling Seto "Seto." She had explained haltingly, going red, that she couldn't very well call him "Kaiba" once they were together someday, and so she was using his name.
For all that it sounded like an excuse, this came from possessiveness; in short, Atem simply wanted to be the only one who called Seto by his name.
The first time she said "Seto" was, of course, in Seto's room, the two of them alone.
The morning after White Day, Atem visited Seto's room early. She still felt she couldn't quite believe it, but her mind was made up.
"You're early today. What is it?"
"Good morning......... Seto."
Seto blinked a few times, then answered at once with a smile at his mouth. Fastening his watch, in the same calm tone as the night before.
"Good morning, Atem."
Like that tone, it was a calm morning.
Everything except Atem's heartbeat.
"I've made up my mind... Seto. If I let today go there probably won't be another chance. I'm going to be with you, after all... And when that happens I'll be a Kaiba too."
Her face was red, and her eyes alone had something challenging in them.
Her mind must be made up; Atem had a strength when it came to resolve, and Seto had seen it many times. Though it could also be said that it was in the arena of battle.
If Atem wished to say his name, he had only to make it happen. He would of course throw her as many lifelines as she needed.
"Whenever you like, at whatever moment suits you. Being called by name by you is a welcome thing."
"...Seto."
"In ordinary times, no one calls me by my name."
Seto being called Seto happened at most when someone was after his life.
For example in the air on the way to Duelist Kingdom — one wrong step and he'd be dead, but his cool judgement, his reflexes and his ability to use his surroundings were exceptional. As a rule he turned it back on them.
"Seto."
"What is it."
There was no opening in Seto once he was dressed.
From the crown of his head to his toes. She knew his fingertips, right to the nails, were polished and cared for.
When she'd said his nails were beautiful, she was invited along for nail care, was polished alongside him, and her nails came out gleaming. Since then she was called whenever he had his nails done, and Atem's were always immaculate now too.
The perfect man in front of her was her lover and her one and only. The more she looked at him, the more her heart raced — enough that she wanted to take it out on him with a this handsome bastard! And they were only in a room together.
Téa's words came back to her. His face is put together, he's tall, he's clever, president of KaibaCorp, popular in Japan and America.
Atem's memory was outstanding as well; a year old or not, if she turned her attention to it she could pull out any amount of memory concerning Seto.
And apparently there were many rivals, since women all over the world were falling for him.
That man was her lover. The person she had pledged a future to.
Recalling even those facts, she couldn't stay calm inside.
She murmured, quietly.
"You're mine already."
Atem's jealousy was always on full display. It had merely become words this time; to Seto it was business as usual. He didn't let it show, but he arrived at Atem is dear again today.
Seto took Atem's hand, looked steadily into her eyes, and said:
"That has been so from the beginning. The one I love is you alone."
"L— love?! Honestly, from first thing in the morning, you shameless — this—"
This handsome bastard!
"It is simply fact. There is nothing to worry about. I'm off."
He ruffled her hair as always and left. She'd missed her chance to say that she loved him too.
Of course, being called that was a happy thing for Seto too. There was no possible way that saying the name of the one you loved, and murmuring love back and forth, could fail to be a happy thing.
And because the jealousy and the possessiveness were plainly visible in it, it followed naturally that Atem looked all the dearer.
Atem showed the Seto-calling basically only in front of the Kaiba brothers. Seto thought there was nothing to be shy about, but that was Atem's business to do as she liked with, so he said nothing.
Mokuba of course noticed the change in their relationship as well (in fact he had noticed on the night of White Day, from the face of an Atem wandering about vacantly), but he didn't say anything in particular. He merely told his comrade-in-arms Téa, quietly.
Let's have an Easter party.
The one who came out with this inexplicable suggestion was Joey.
You didn't need a reason to gather, but apparently it made things livelier.
Spacious, well equipped, everything laid on. No complaints about anything except the master of the house. In truth there were no complaints about him either, but Joey turning combative toward Seto was something like a habit, and Seto's attitude toward that Joey being poor was equally routine.
As far as Atem was concerned it was a familiar sight, but she thought both of them might stop it soon. Everyone except the two of them thought so. The truth was that even they found it tiresome, but a habit is a hard thing to break.
"Your little friends have arrived, it seems."
She had assumed the system notified him, but apparently that wasn't it — he could tell who had come from the footsteps and the voices.
Come to think of it, last year when they were talking to Téa about the musical, he had cleared various things away as though sensing Yugi's arrival.
"What, do those people intend to come to my room? Atem, get back to yours."
"What's the harm? Join in on the Easter party with us."
"Do you think I'd join in?"
"I think you could."
"I won't. I have things to do. And they're not coming into this room. We're leaving."
Seto took Atem by the shoulder and steered her out of the room.
"Oi, Kaibaaa! What are you doing to Atem this time!"
"And what is it you claim I have done?"
That small body staggered easily when pulled and was carried off by Joey, and Yugi peeling him away was the usual sequence.
"Joey, nothing was done to me, you know?"
"Exactly. And Atem's a girl, so don't paw at her like that. You'd feel sorry for Mai if someone was pawing at her, wouldn't you."
"A Wheeler is a Wheeler no matter how much time passes. Then, Atem — later."
"Sorry. On your day off, of all things."
"Don't mind it."
Seto ruffled Atem's hair lightly and left. This hand. A large, gentle hand, different from Joey's and from Yugi's.
He had surely gone to the laboratory. She watched his back for a moment, then chased after the friends who had headed for her room.
Easter party or not, what they did was the same as always.
Reporting on how they'd been, playing games, laughing about nothing.
The only odd thing was Joey, as ever, putting an inexplicable quantity of sugar and milk into his coffee. He could just start with a café au lait, though nobody bothered to say so.
Yugi could not shake a certain restlessness.
Having been outmanoeuvred at Valentine's still stung, and since he'd seen Seto's face for the first time in a while, he wanted this torment brought to a full stop.
"I think I'll go and see Kaiba."
Direct negotiation, in other words. Being dragged along by a sickeningly lovey-dovey couple and used as it suited them — he'd had enough.
"Is it urgent? If it isn't, you'd better not."
"And whose fault do you think — well. It isn't your fault."
No — thinking properly about it, it wasn't entirely not her fault either. Both halves of an insufferable couple deserved punishing.
"He's in the laboratory, so it's probably work. We can't interrupt."
"Ain't it his day off?"
"It's nearly always work; I don't think he does much more than take breathers. He works like crazy."
"...Then we can't interrupt."
"Does the guy do anything but duel and work? Atem, you must get bored stuck here, right? I live alone — why not come over?"
"I can't do that. I'm staying here."
Atem declined the offer with a soft smile. She looked happy; her eyes were shining.
At that expression, Yugi was certain. She'd acquired some firm reason to be here. Which meant the relations between the two of them, the very seed of his troubles, had progressed.
In that instant the restlessness dispersed. In its place he felt wrapped in the sparkle of Atem's eyes.
Overcome, Yugi seized Atem by the shoulders.
"Aibou?"
Yugi kept his face down and didn't answer.
This past year had been nothing but grief. An indescribable sense of accomplishment welled up. He even felt like crying.
"What's wrong? Do you have some business with Se— with him?"
He patted her shoulder over and over. As an expression of everything he felt he'd have liked to whack it, but the shoulder he'd grabbed was thin. You couldn't do that to a girl.
"Aibou? Are you all right?"
Yugi's head came up sharply and he said:
"Atem, congratulations. I'm glad. I'm happy too. I'm so glad. Really... really glad..."
Words from the heart, without a trace of falsehood.
"About what?"
Had anything happened that warranted praise from Yugi?
Something to be that glad about, over and over — she considered it, arrived at that sweet stretch of time, and Atem felt the heat gather in her face.
She'd been told endlessly before Christmas and before Valentine's. Yugi had been guessing all along that Atem and Seto were going out. She had denied it at the time, but at this point denial was impossible.
Seto Kaiba was Atem's boyfriend. Which meant they were going out.
"H-hey, Aibou. You don't mean—"
"Don't mean what? You aren't hiding it."
"What are you talking about?"
"Ah, ahh — is this, finally, that sort of thing?"
Joey, slow on the uptake, would never notice to the end.
Tristan, who had a sister, had apparently half noticed. He was the sharper of the two.
Nobody would ever realise how much this had tormented him, Yugi thought, and got a little sad, and swore privately that he'd turn it into a funny story someday.
Atem, who didn't understand why she felt embarrassed, simply deflected with it's nothing and waited for the topic to move on.
Night shifts and early starts took the working adults home first, leaving Atem and Yugi in the room.
As payback for all the torment and the neat little uses he'd been put to, the thought surfaced that he might tease her a bit.
"Hey, Atem. Can I ask you something?"
"What?"
"You wouldn't have got a ring already, would you?"
"Ah — ah. Well."
"Ahh, that look. Don't tell me you were proposed to?"
She didn't answer, but the face that went redder still served as the answer.
She'd clear a game she'd never seen before without difficulty, and yet she had no facility at all for a first-time romance.
When you opened the lid, they'd been in love with each other from the start.
What even is this. There was nothing to do but be exasperated.
"Wh— what about you and Téa?"
Atem tried to change the subject, but he wasn't falling for it. On that sort of topic — ordinary koibana, that is — Yugi could manage far better than she could. He wasn't a nationally protected airhead who'd only just become self-aware.
"I'm still a student. I can't really think about it yet."
"Is that how it works?"
"Generally there's that aspect, yes. It doesn't apply to you two, though."
What world's common sense could you apply to feelings fulfilled across dimensions?
"So, when are you doing it? Sometime next month?"
"Hmm, when, I wonder?"
"Hm?"
This was Seto Kaiba. The Seto Kaiba whose name you write as drive and read as Seto Kaiba. A man who obtained what he wanted by whatever means it took.
And they'd been in love all along even without knowing it, so he'd assumed they'd be married immediately.
Yugi had a bad feeling.
"Aibou, it might be that I have no appeal."
Ah. Here it was. That familiar headache was back.
What was that mass of drive scheming this time?
An enquiry from Atem whose answer was already settled was nothing but showing off her happiness at this point.
"That sort of thing is something you take to Kaiba directly."
Yugi answered with complete confidence.
Kaiba, it's your turn to be in trouble — he murmured it inwardly, and the calm part of his head instantly warned him that he might be being made to say this too.
He didn't want to be involved any further; leave me out of it. That was Yugi's honest feeling now.
"I did. He said I was appealing."
Sure enough, what came out was showing off.
But something must not have sat right with her. Atem looked as though she wanted to say something, and stopped.
Of course. That man wasn't going to be satisfied with holding hands and leaving it there. Yugi had simply not wanted to admit that what he'd thought was the end had been no more than the beginning.
What a business. A long sigh came out. Obliviousness was a terrible thing.
"I don't know what you're dissatisfied or uneasy about, but I'm not the one who can solve it. It might be Kaiba, and it might be you."
Whether she'd understood or not, Atem's response was dull.
But it really wasn't Yugi's problem, so there was nothing for it.
"I'm heading home soon too, so talk the rest through properly, the two of you. See you."
"Ah. See you."
Leaving Atem's room, Yugi headed not for the entrance but for the laboratory. Direct negotiation, this time for real.
"Kaiba, do you have a moment?"
"Yugi, is it. Go ahead."
The lock released and the door opened.
A quiet room.
Components of some sort, and tools. A display left open. Trade secrets, probably; he had no idea what was written there.
Weaving between them and arriving, he found the man with a pen in his left hand and a pen in his right as well. What was he doing?
Was he left-handed? Or ambidextrous, perhaps. He handles cards with his right, so right-handed?
"What are you doing?"
"Can't you tell by looking?"
Told that, Yugi could make nothing whatsoever of the situation.
"No. I can't."
At that, Seto answered only I see, tapped the screen twice with the pen in his right hand, scrawled something with his left, set them down, and turned around, chair and all.
Long legs crossed, one elbow on the armrest with his head resting on it — as stylish as ever.
"So. What's your business?"
He met amused blue eyes.
The first time he'd faced him at this distance since Atem had been his other self, inside him.
He must not let the man start showing off his happiness here.
Unlike Atem, he'd presumably restrain the sweetness and the boasting and the rest of it — or rather, he'd better, or there'd be trouble. If he were shown any sweet air about him, what waited was the forbidden road.
What do you think of Atem? No, that was no good. That one had a settled answer; it was nothing but showing off. He searched for words.
In the end, Yugi decided to convey his demand as it was.
"Could you not... make Atem worry so much?"
"That's her affair, isn't it."
"But the cause is you."
"Do you think so?"
"If you were more attentive, it would be solved."
If he held Atem as something that mattered, Yugi thought, he ought to resolve her anxieties and dissatisfactions. If she was troubled, he ought to sweep it away.
But Seto was not that. They would be beside each other forever. Together, but as one individual and another, each turning their feelings toward the other.
Attentiveness went without saying — but that aside, the one who had to resolve a certain kind of feeling was Atem herself.
"Besides, you're the one who brought Atem back last year."
Take more responsibility, he was saying, and Seto could agree with about half of it. He agreed about taking responsibility and making her happy. That he would realise.
He of course understood what Yugi was getting at, and Atem's vague feelings as well. But the will of Atem's that had to be involved there had not yet taken shape.
If he pressed, he could no doubt make her accept it; Atem was that type. He knew that would resolve it, for the moment. And that it would then repeat any number of times. But that could not be called a healthy or an ideal form.
Seto's eyes narrowed sharply. Yugi's shoulders jumped in spite of himself.
Seto opened his mouth slowly.
"Should I simply get her with child, then?"
"Th— that's going too far, isn't it?"
Even Yugi bristled and answered back.
But Seto's expression was far more serious than Yugi had imagined.
Seto let out a small breath.
"If it were only a matter of keeping her and doting on her, that would be well enough. Answering everything is also possible. And then?"
"And then, what?"
"Then where do her desires go? He was raised to be a living god, a king. To be appropriate to it. The intrusion of individual desire was not permitted."
Seto lowered his eyes slightly. Long lashes; a beautiful face, as always.
He understood. This man was treating Atem as something that mattered, and trying to make her happy as an individual.
He wasn't refraining from touching her because she had no appeal; he refrained because she hadn't recognised her own wish to be touched. To think she'd been raised not to understand even something this natural made Yugi want to cry.
There was no such thing.
"A god, is it... I'll make her human."
His gaze drifted, resting on nothing; the words that leaked out as though to himself were steeped in anger at everything that had taken Atem's freedom away.
A voice cold enough to run down the spine.
And then Seto lifted his face as though nothing had happened.
"Are you satisfied?"
"Yes. There was nothing for me to say after all. But it's unexpected — that you'd care about someone that much."
"Not someone."
That's pure love, he thought, but didn't say it.
Was it because it concerned Atem that they'd had something resembling an actual conversation?
On the darkened way home, he headed for the house thinking that he should have asked to see Atem's ring.
The laboratory door opened and Atem put her face round it.
"Seto, what were you and Aibou talking about?"
"You knew?"
"No, I just had a feeling."
"He came to lecture me."
"Why? Did you do something?"
"No. He was imagining things."
Well, if that's all — she said it while thinking it over with a face that didn't look quite convinced, so he set down his pen and beckoned.
The way she cut straight through the many open displays without minding them — the nerve of her was on another level from Yugi's.
He drew the Atem who came to his side gently in by the shoulder.
"Is there anything here you like?"
Where Seto pointed, photographs and illustrations of any number of rings were displayed.
Delicate streamlined ones, slightly aggressive ones, simple ones stripped of anything superfluous, and — he must have lost the thread — a Blue-Eyes model. That one was hand-drawn.
"This one's out."
Atem's finger swept the Blue-Eyes model aside first of all.
"What was that? Are you picking a fight?"
"It's an entirely reasonable opinion. You have a lot of fans, so plenty of people would want it."
"Hm."
"It isn't jealousy, you know? It's fact."
"I'll take it under advisement as one opinion. It seems yours isn't among these yet."
"Not so much isn't — there are too many and I can't tell. But I think something straight and simple would suit the one you wear. You're outrageously straight, after all."
"I see."
A very Atem way of thinking. Not about herself; other people first.
How was he to teach her how to be selfish?
For better or worse she seemed to have been attached to that one in the afterlife, so there was a possibility she'd vented it there. Not that he was going to ask.
"That's a lie. I do get jealous."
"I know."
He had liked the infuriating man who had been the other self, but the straightforward Atem with her memories restored was of course good as well. The straight one was Atem.
He put his arms loosely around her from behind. She could have leaned back into him; instead the tension won and she went red and rigid.
This of Atem's was her getting embarrassed only now, and the time lag between feeling and reaction was really very endearing.
"I get frightened, thinking if I were a man. I liked you from the very beginning."
"Even supposing that were so, I would have loved you."
Turning the desert upside down, launching out into space, and on top of all that going to the afterlife himself. That the reason was searching exhaustively for one single person was, by anyone's reckoning, not the sort of thing Seto Kaiba did. Even Mokuba had tried to stop him any number of times.
"Even so, if I'd stayed a man I couldn't have you to myself like this, could I."
"I would."
The body in his arms jumped.
Atem's hand came to rest over the arms around her.
"Stay like that always. It's because you're that sort of man that it's all right."
All right could be rephrased as I can feel safe.
For now it was fine that she couldn't be selfish. So long as she knew this place was safe, the expression of her desires would come of its own accord. He had only to wait for that moment.
"I don't change. Let's eat."
"Yes."
Seto and Atem looked at each other for a moment, then left the laboratory hand in hand.
