Kaiba arrives in the afterlife carrying tablets.
He does not argue with the priest, and he does not touch what has been done to Atem. He installs an AI console, some drones, and a stone-tablet-shaped screen, and then he goes home. Within weeks the afterlife has a different working day, and a net optimised for the old one no longer holds anything. What Atem gets back is his own time, and with it every fear that time had been protecting him from.
Then comes the part nobody can do for him: standing in a great hall at an unreasonable hour, working out what to say to a man who never once lied to him and never once let him go.
This is a translation of an original work on Pixiv.
Original Title: 07 共に立つために
Original Author: 葉人(@Hathor_yuki)
Personal site: https://prideshipping.sakura.ne.jp
Kaiba appears in the hall of the afterlife.
That presence alone changes the air, and Atem's chest is dragged back in an instant to the memory of the living world.
"…Kaiba."
Nostalgia and heat rise, and Atem's voice wavers slightly.
But Seto, attending at his side, quietly inserts his words.
"My king, the rite continues this afternoon, and the people are waiting."
Atem nods in spite of himself, and is dragged back to reality.
Kaiba looks at the scene coldly and smiles thinly.
"Your schedule seems remarkably full. …It looks as though even the time to converse freely is being taken from you."
Provocation. But on Atem's arm is the ornament Seto passed onto him, and what remains in his heart is the scent and the voice of every morning.
That memory of repose affirms Seto, unconsciously.
"Kaiba… it isn't like that. This is necessary—"
And he begins to explain, himself. In that instant the initiative is already in Seto's hand.
Seto moves his gaze to Kaiba and tells him coldly:
"Modern-day whelp. The king is at present fulfilling the duty of the afterlife. …The heat you gave was strong, certainly. But what supports the days is not the flame. It is the foundation."
A sensation he cannot deny spreads through Atem's chest.
To Atem, Kaiba is special, and the feeling remains. But the one protecting and supporting him now is Seto.
In an Atem caught in the mesh of the net, there is no margin left with which to resist that contradiction.
Kaiba narrows his eyes.
"I see. …So the ancient ghost has bound the king with the daily round."
Grasping the situation, he murmurs it low, and looks for his next move.
Atem is by nature a man of strong assertion who carries everything alone.
If the ancient ghost says he binds him, then the restraint need only be undone.
Side. Seto
The air of the hall changes.
The presence of the modern-day whelp, which calls up Atem's memory of the living world. That will certainly shake the king's chest.
But the afterlife is Seto's domain.
Standing at the king's side, he draws Atem's attention with a single minute gesture.
The usual incense he has made familiar; a change in the tone of his voice; with trivial motions he makes the rhythm of "the daily round."
That is Seto's manoeuvring.
Kaiba laughed coldly and provoked him in a low voice.
Even the time to converse freely is being taken from him. Time — that is Seto's weapon.
An attractive man, certainly. Made too well, this modern-day whelp. In addition to his intelligence he has the passion and the force of breakthrough that make it possible, and his intuition is strong as well.
Even Seto, who ought to have taken Atem's heart, cannot easily read Kaiba's calculation.
A faint light in Kaiba's eye, a subtle movement of the shoulder — by that alone he can tell that the man is about to play his next move.
Inwardly, Seto tells himself:
But I know. The king entrusts his heart easily to the stability of the daily round. By long experience I know that when the king touches a zone of safety, he is at his most defenceless.
Atem returns his attention to Seto's ornament and Seto's incense. A small nod, an unconscious movement. This, precisely, is the proof of victory.
However much heat Kaiba brings to bear, now, here, Atem's eyes are turned toward Seto.
Kaiba murmurs. That the ancient ghost binds the king with the daily round.
Seto gives a small laugh.
As expected of the modern-day whelp; just so. I dominate the king with this daily round. Not with love, not with trust, but by the accumulation of days, I make a place that will not be shaken.
Deep in Atem's chest, the reassurance of the daily round beats in small waves. Feeling that pulse, Seto carves the dominion in still more gently, and with certainty.
Today, too, the king narrows his eyes in my hand, and smiles.
That will in time be the proof that he does not waver, however much the modern-day whelp may call to him.
Night in the afterlife.
Atem was being driven, as always, by the work Seto had stacked up.
"Atem. Stop your hands a moment."
He turned round at the voice from behind him. It was Kaiba.
Kaiba's voice was low and quiet, but with power concealed inside it. In his hands were flat tablet-like objects, and boxes.
They were devices developed with Kaiba Corporation's technical resources poured into them, designed to raise the operational efficiency of the afterlife dramatically.
Not that they were difficult. They were designed so that the way to use them would come of itself once you touched them, and the AI installed in them had been tuned to be obliging.
"No… but the business of the office—"
Atem drew his brows together, troubled. But Kaiba put on a smile.
"No difficulty. Sit here."
Kaiba lightly straightened the sheaves spread over the desk, instructed the AI to process them, and sat Atem down beside him without allowing an answer.
"Listen. You are plainly overworked."
"That's not so. I'm grateful for the concern, but I'm all right."
Atem thanked him mildly, but Kaiba did not smile, and did not let his serious expression break.
"Don't imagine you can deceive my eyes."
To Kaiba, who lived in the present age, circumstantial evidence — expression, condition — was sufficient.
That thing being taken, overwhelmingly insufficient, necessary.
Time.
First he would take that back.
"Developed for you exclusively. Install this."
He displayed a screen in the air and worked through the explanation.
"Kaiba Smart Throne — KST. An AI console to support your decisions. Ritual schedules, analysis of the popular will, presentation of optimal options in an emergency. If something is giving you trouble, let it process the matter and it will produce a suitable option."
In short, Kaiba-brand AI, Atem understood.
Kaiba's room next door had certainly reached an extraordinary state of development, but this was the afterlife.
"In my age there was no such—"
"Don't flinch. You were a modern man yourself a little while ago."
"When you put it that way I've no answer, but—"
"I'm continuing."
Ignoring an Atem hanging back, Kaiba went on.
"Atlas Drones. Light transport, temporary installation, medical support. They finish preparations automatically and shorten the hours in which you are tied up."
Kaiba took a drone out of a box. It looked like nothing but a glowing offering tray.
But apparently every necessary task could be left to it.
"Archive Beacon. It digitises ancient documents and stone stelae, and explains and presents them. For the citizenry in particular, the meaning of rites can be made generally known without your having to go out to them. This one is already installed."
The screen showed the way it had actually been installed. In appearance it was nothing but a frame in the style of a stone tablet.
The display changed, until there was only the tablet-style frame, and inside the frame a moving image played.
"That's the sort of thing you'd like," said Atem.
"What is that supposed to mean."
"You were always hijacking television broadcasts, weren't you."
"…Never mind. As a use for it, that's accurate."
Kaiba started to say something back, and stopped. The priority was undoing Atem's restraints.
"Did you say you'd installed this?"
"Rest easy. I selected places where an effect could be expected."
"Rest easy? Everyone will be startled."
"I scattered a few others about as a trial, but the people of this world are pleased at the development of civilisation."
If they had already been scattered about, there was no help for it.
The same capacity for action as ever.
"The Civilisation Accelerator, right enough."
"I'll take that as praise."
The day when the afterlife came up as a candidate site for the Kaiba Land World project would not be far off.
"Use the first two to begin with. You won't have your time taken up by decisions. The drones work of their own accord, so that you needn't be on the ground."
"And the tablet-style frames?"
"When you use technology in a public setting, transmit the sight of it. Show them that the afterlife is developing."
Why he should suddenly want the afterlife modernised — his intention was obscure.
Unenthusiastic as he was, it looked as though not using them would cause trouble of its own, so Atem tried them for a few days.
The result was exactly as Kaiba had said.
The Kaiba-brand AI shortened the time things took and gave Atem periods of rest as a matter of routine. The hours in which he was troubled by decisions dropped away sharply.
The drones flew about in Atem's stead and secured Atem's time directly.
Kaiba's design had fitted neatly into place.
The technology became a "tool for time and for decisions," and Atem, no longer troubled by those, began little by little to return to a "self."
There was less relying on Seto, and both the hours to think alone and the spare capacity in his head for thinking increased. And precisely because of that, something began to build.
"Seto…"
To the voice that called in the empty room, there was no answer.
He wanted to be held in those arms; and he wanted to keep his distance. Which was his true feeling, Atem himself did not know.
Doing nothing in particular, sitting beside Kaiba.
To Atem, it was a gentle stretch of time.
Come to think of it, he used to spend hours like this before. Indulged, and free.
Kaiba's existence, and the things he did, naturally released Atem's mind from the net that bound him.
"Going well?"
"Frighteningly so. But why… I— you—"
When he had betrayed him.
"Did you imagine I give anything up easily?"
"Are you still going to fight?"
"Who can say."
Kaiba and Seto fighting each other over him.
He had meant to have done with that sort of thing.
"If it's a game, I can take you on."
"And where was there time for that."
Atem's eyes wavered. Told so, he realised there had been none.
Even being a rival, he had stepped down from at some point.
"If work binds your time, then clear the work away. You have far too little freedom."
"But Seto had less freedom than that, didn't he."
"Certainly."
Days of staking his body on the country, with no regard for sunrise or sunset or holiday.
Going on being an absolute symbol as a banner of hope, a tension he could not drop in front of anyone. A sense of responsibility that endured that weight to the end.
He had shed tears once only. Alone at the royal tomb, when he put a prayer into words.
Holding violent feeling inside him, handing down cold-blooded judgments for the restoration and nothing else, he had gone on fighting.
"But is there a need to bind that one and yourself with an equals sign?"
"That's—"
Atem could not answer.
"The answer is no."
"How can you say that."
"Because what that one wished for was the repose of a you who had fallen in battle."
Atem caught his breath.
Kaiba's fingertips touched Atem's shoulder. From the touch alone came a sensation of being released from the time and the obligations that had bound him.
The soul is inherited, and that hand brings repose.
For some reason his shoulders did not stiffen in the time he spent with Kaiba. One of the very few he need not defer to.
Now, the only being who would stay his equal.
His equal.
These days they hardly played games at all. Even so — could they become rivals again?
"Watch and see. Before long I'll set you free."
"…You can't. There is still a great deal left that I must do. So I can't be free."
"I am not a king, but I have no intention of being a subject either. And I do as I please."
"You're as good as a king yourself."
In a single year he had ruled ruins, space, and one whole city.
"Then let it be so. A king, and free. And you as well — since I am the one letting you out."
"And what am I supposed to be running from?"
"When the time comes you'll understand."
Suddenly modernising the afterlife, and now announcing that he would let him out. As ever, Kaiba's intentions were not to be understood.
Only — the blue eyes looking at him were exactly the same colour as Seto's.
The people of the afterlife came to use the epoch-making devices. Not that they were anything very large. They spread, one day, quite suddenly.
Yet order was kept as peaceful as ever.
A number of priests, too, had begun using tablets like Atem's in their own offices. But only those not close to Seto.
For that reason, the temple side, and Seto's circle in particular, required a small stretch of time to notice that change across the whole afterlife as an anomaly.
In that interval, the environment called the afterlife was greatly re-created by Kaiba.
What Kaiba did was what he always does. Unbound by any frame such as this is the afterlife, he simply spread the technology and information he possessed as far as they would go.
The common sense of the afterlife, its mechanisms, its working efficiency changed, and the world was transformed.
It was a transformation on the scale of an entire world called the afterlife.
The Kaiba-brand AI, as Atem called it, greatly extended Atem's capacities and weakened the force of the "dependency and binding" Seto had built.
And in the end it changed even the thought and the structure of the afterlife at the same time.
The net of dependency Seto had made grew gradually thinner, and dominion by horizontal expansion had already lost its meaning.
Seto was of course inwardly enraged, but he let none of it appear on the surface.
A world of influence over Atem, built up across years, had been thinned out by modern technology.
The wound to his pride as a composed schemer set a quiet anger burning.
"Your free time seems to have increased. That is good."
"Mm."
Atem had certainly become free. But Seto would not let him relax his guard. Within this freedom, how to shake his mind.
"Being free and freedom of the heart are separate things."
Whispered so, Atem reacts unconsciously. A small wavering of the eyes.
He teases him by degrees. The subtle crossing of fear and pleasure.
Come a little closer, withdraw a little. Match the breathing.
Skilfully, so as not to let Atem notice that he is within his hand.
In grasping him, the alternation of speed and restraint is essential. Without hurry, without pressing, wind him in by degrees.
"True enough. But Kaiba — I always thought he'd do something eventually, though I never imagined anything on this scale."
That man, the incarnation of the future, was never going to be quietly steeped in the environment of the afterlife, Atem said with a wry smile.
Seto sharpened his gaze for an instant, but his voice was composed.
"Is that so. But there is no telling what may happen while my eyes are off you. Do not forget it."
"Sorry to make you worry."
Seto took a step closer and put on a faint smile.
"Mischief is not permitted."
"I know that."
Atem's expression was composed, and that stoked Seto's anger and impatience further.
Atem was sensing Seto's caution in trying to protect the order of the afterlife, and his tension in watching the situation closely.
Seto's anger. To Atem, that showed itself as an expression of deep affection and responsibility.
Because room had been made for a reversal by Kaiba, Seto's interventions in Atem's "daily round" increased, in order to prevent it.
But by that time Atem had recovered enough margin to laugh at the increased routines in exasperation.
To enfold from outside. That is a thing of external dependency, stabilised by entrusting oneself to environment and to another.
Kaiba destroyed the mesh of Seto's net, which had enfolded Atem from outside, from still further outside it. Skilfully, quietly, certainly — and at the last, boldly.
Kaiba had long since made up his mind about fighting Seto. Even a change on the scale of the world called the afterlife was a small matter.
If the man put out a hand or a word over it, he would simply push back with technology.
And on top of that, he would watch over Atem's freedom.
While securing safety, make a range that Seto's stratagems could not reach.
Not interfering directly; arranging a situation in which Atem chooses for himself. This is the strongest way of protecting.
As a rival, Kaiba trusted Atem. That Atem had the power to break out of dominion and decide for himself.
The view before his eyes is calm, but behind it there is a fine net of observation.
But whatever schemes are turned, he will not allow Atem to be exposed to danger.
Within this quiet freedom that no fighting reaches, he would have Atem take Atem himself back.
Then, one morning.
Atem noticed the moment he woke.
His head had become astonishingly clear. As though he had surfaced all at once from the bottom of a long sleep. A new wind was blowing through him, down to the depths of his chest.
Before Seto came for the morning routine, Atem got up and went out. To the room of Kaiba, who happened to be staying in the afterlife.
"Kaiba."
In Atem's eyes lodged not the relief born of dependency and dominion, but a true safety and warmth.
But at the same time, deep in his heart, a great agitation was swaying.
So he has been released. Seeing those eyes, Kaiba murmured it quietly inside himself.
With this, they were even.
He loosened his mouth by the barest fraction. A smile combining strength and gentleness, turned toward Atem alone.
"Your choice is your own. You are no longer bound by anyone's hand. You are free."
Kaiba's voice was composed, and at the same time filled with certainty to its furthest limit.
Atem nodded naturally, and returned a smile from the heart.
"Right."
It was the moment when Seto's horizontal expansion was completely destroyed by the power of the modern age and by Kaiba's skilful manipulation of time.
That net had been optimised to the environment called the afterlife. Then the environment need only be changed.
Kaiba had not gone along with Seto's dominion; he had rewritten it into an environment in which he himself excelled. The whole of the afterlife.
The cage that shut Atem in no longer functions.
Alteration of environment. The grasp of numbers and information. That was Kaiba's most practised weapon, and one that would infallibly bring victory.
And now, Atem can once again choose by his own will.
He could have made him choose Kaiba.
But at this particular timing, Kaiba did not press him for it.
"Atem. You've become free. From here it's a fight."
"I am?"
"You and that one."
He would have to fight Seto. Atem's eyes went wide.
That was so. He had only just escaped the binding; nothing was over.
"That may be so."
"Why not dismiss him."
Kaiba smiled thinly and looked at him sidelong, as though provoking him.
"Hardly. If anything, I've been thinking that forcing the throne on him a second time is one option. He can govern far more soundly than I can."
Making Seto be king.
To Atem, that was not flight but one realistic possibility.
But at the same time, permitting it would mean retreating once again himself.
"As a matter of ability, the possibility exists. The ten years he spent working himself to the bone are worth the assessment. He has patriotism as well… though he'd insist on calling it duty."
"With your endorsement, it's viable."
"In any case, it comes after crushing that one."
"You're about the only man alive who fights everything that way."
How he ought to reach a settlement, Atem himself did not yet know.
To begin with, he had no sense of obligation or mission requiring him to fight at all.
Atem let out a small breath.
Whether he would cross swords with Seto or throw words at him, even that was not yet certain.
But there was one thing that was certain.
Not to refuse Seto, and not to accept him either; he had to face him from directly in front.
If he could go back to how things were, as though nothing had happened. Such a thought came to him, but it was Atem himself who had taken Seto's hand that day.
Considering the present relationship, there was no way it could simply stay as it was.
But it was not that he resented him, nor that he was angry, still less that he had come to dislike him.
The dominion is gone now. In that case, might the relationship not do just as it is?
"You aren't thinking of maintaining the status quo, I trust?"
Struck exactly where it hurt, Atem looked away.
"You— it's high time you corrected that trait of yours. You aren't about to say there's no need to fight?"
"…I want to."
Kaiba let out a great sigh. Before, it would have developed into an argument over differing values.
"That you've become honest, I've no objection to at all."
"I've got the time to think now. I'll think of something."
"Think, is it. Remarkably leisurely."
There was irony mixed into Kaiba's voice, but his look was serious.
"The time I can give you is at best a very little. That one will not wait. It won't take him long to grasp this environment."
This environment. At last he understood Kaiba's intention in modernising the afterlife. It was to let him out, mentally.
"The king of the grasp. That one's methods are skilful. He will certainly catch you."
Atem clenched his fist.
"I know."
"Then do it at once. Bring that one down."
"…You're harsh sometimes, you know."
At those words Kaiba loosened his mouth slightly.
"So you've finally understood."
Atem drew a deep breath. The hesitation deep in his chest was taking shape, little by little.
"I'll find the answer. Without fail."
On his way out, Kaiba held out a new device.
"It's a communication terminal, but use this newer one. I'll collect the old one."
A terminal. To Atem's eyes it registered as a smartphone with a preposterous number of functions attached.
"What's different about it?"
"You can call this."
In Kaiba's hand was a terminal similar to Atem's.
"…To the living world?"
"That's right."
For a while he passed his days in a developed afterlife.
But at some point, the meaning of the "letting out" Kaiba had spoken of before this development began to weigh on him heavily.
Once he was let out, the "fight" began.
What came first was a sense of loss, and confusion.
It felt as though he had been soaking in comfortably warm water all this while and had suddenly been exposed to cold air.
Kaiba visits the afterlife as the whim takes him. That had gone on being so even after Atem chose Seto.
There was neither the time nor the stamina for exchanging cards, and it amounted to a little conversation, but even so, Kaiba went on showing himself in front of Atem.
And so now, as well.
The only one with whom Atem has a completely private and equal relationship is Kaiba. And beyond that, to Kaiba, Atem is a being he has watched all along inside his memory.
There was no possibility of such a man failing to notice a change in Atem.
"You seem to be having a hard fight of it, for you."
"Perhaps so. But… I don't understand it. Why was I so—"
Had he been leaning on Seto somewhere in his heart?
"That is what dominion is. You were bound, and at ease about it. Am I wrong?"
Kaiba's words are exact, as though he had read his thoughts — and yet they tell him only fact, objectively.
"Dominion. Bound…"
Had those calm days really been something that warranted words so strong? But he could not express it well any other way.
"Loss, confusion. And then distrust of yourself… are you not feeling surprise, and fear?"
Surprise. Fear. Told so, he could feel that breaking the confusion apart did contain them.
"How do you know that?"
"Psychology is a comparatively new field, but it has developed. That much I can tell."
"I see."
"Before long you'll feel conflict, and pain. Something like withdrawal symptoms."
"Why does that happen."
"Because that is how that one loves. What suits you is not the inside of the cage. It is the outside."
How he loves. The cage.
Atem was surrounded by things he did not understand.
His free time had been scarce, but nothing had been forced on him.
All of it was because Seto had controlled it, naturally enough, but that was not within Atem's knowledge.
Only, they had all been gentle hours, he thought.
Yet Kaiba says it was a cage.
"You mean I was inside a cage?"
"There is no expression more apt. But that cage was a cage that protected you. Once the protection is gone, feeling fear of what is outside is — something you have experienced already."
"…I can't say I don't follow."
The memory of that time, fighting Marik's puppet, came back to him. A cage carries the meaning of protection as well.
"I feel as though I've heard a prophecy I never asked to hear. Have you been foretelling the future?"
"I have no taste for the occult. And moreover, so long as you possess the Millennium Puzzle, foresight is impossible. This is merely a forecast."
"And preparing myself inwardly is useless, I take it?"
"Useless."
The things that were to come. Preparation as futile resistance.
Atem put on a wry smile and let his back rest against the chair.
"You really are without mercy where I'm concerned."
"Would you like some?"
"No. You wouldn't do that."
At the attitude no different from usual, Atem was, somewhere in his heart, relieved.
"A prophecy is not a thing for handing out sweet hopes. It is a thing for thrusting facts at people."
"True enough."
Atem narrowed his eyes.
Feeling the sensation sinking heavily deep in his chest, rather than refusing it, he received it as though embracing it instead.
"I may have chosen that cage."
The murmured voice was both a question to himself and a request to Kaiba for an answer.
Kaiba lowered his eyes and laughed slightly.
"Then bear the responsibility for what you chose. You cannot run from that pain. …Though if you wish it, I could put the room of your heart in order for you."
"Which, as I said, you wouldn't do."
Kaiba is, if anything, good at looking after people, but his method is close to throwing the cub into the ravine.
"Call me whenever. I can't take your place, but I'll see it through. The sight of you bringing that one down."
"That's a reassuring thought."
Kaiba went home, and he was alone.
Atem sat down in a chair in the hushed room.
"Can't take my place… is it."
Repeating it inside his mouth, the sound of it struck deep in his chest and felt appallingly real.
The memory of stability spent with Seto came back like a sweet pain.
That warmth had certainly been a cage, and had certainly been repose.
Now he no longer knows.
In its place, an uncertain expanse called freedom lies before his eyes.
Atem clenched his fist unconsciously.
"The fight… has it begun."
What pressed in next was his feeling toward Seto.
The body is free. There is neither cage nor binding. But the heart is still wavering somewhere.
Was freedom as heavy a thing as this?
Suddenly he remembers Seto's existence. That cold gaze, the sweetly whispering voice, and the sensation of being wound in by degrees.
He wants to resist, but his body's reaction is honest, and the confusion accelerates.
With every step forward, the old dependency and fear come back.
"Am I… still able to be myself?"
He looks up at the empty air as though asking. There is no answer yet.
From Seto he is loved down to the finest parts of daily life.
The question of whether that is dominion; and although he receives a love that has gentleness and fierceness both, a sadness whose source he cannot locate spreads through his chest.
The happiness and the relief were real. Is this really what is called dominion?
If it were possible he could simply have asked Seto directly. But there was no way such a thing could be done.
The sadness spreading in his chest was at the same time a strange sensation that warmed the heart.
Dominion, or love — a question no one will answer for him presses quietly at his chest.
Seto's love, or his own feeling. Atem looks into his own heart.
The sense of safety when Kaiba's presence is near him, and the difference in temperature from the hours with Seto, rise vividly now, belatedly.
Dominion. Binding.
"Seto. You— to me, you're—"
"I think of you very dearly. Here."
As always, Seto holds out a dish.
The usual dish, with the fruit he likes on it.
Always, unchanging.
If it is dominion, then he must cut it off.
This — this sweet daily round. Thinking of it, his heart hurts.
He almost wanted someone to teach him. What this happy place had actually been.
However much he cried out inside his heart, there was no one at all who answered.
Atem put out his hand to the dish and touched the fruit gently with his fingertips.
A sweet scent tickled his nose. For an instant his heart softened, as though it had come loose.
Is this dominion, or love? However he asked and answered himself, no answer came.
But what could certainly be said was that the warmth of the fruit taken in his hand, and the deep feeling behind Seto's gaze, were real, and were certain.
Pain of the heart and warmth pressed in at once. Bewildered by that contradiction, Atem nonetheless laid up, little by little, an understanding of his own.
What remained at the last was a lightness of breathing, and the widening of the world.
Only when he got that far did he understand at last. That he had been bound.
He is free now.
But the joy of freedom brought fear along with it.
The daily round in which he had been protected until now.
The dominion, the cage, that Kaiba spoke of.
"So this is what he meant."
But that fear is a thing no one but Atem should hold. Responsibilities and choices Atem ought to carry.
Protected by Seto, he had gone without them, and they had simply come back all at once.
He could not sleep.
He took up the terminal he had been given, began to place a call, and stopped. He gripped it hard in his hand.
This is his own problem, not a thing to drag anyone else into.
But without his having called at all, Kaiba appeared directly in front of Atem. Ordinarily he would say he had fixed his coordinates on the room he had made for himself next door, or somewhere outside the palace, and go there first.
Now it was straight in front of Atem.
"Kaiba. Why?"
To that there was no answer.
Kaiba checked Atem's expression and put on a faint smile.
"Atem. Build a deck. I'll give you thirty minutes. You have the time now, surely."
The afterlife had developed and business had been made efficient; time he certainly had. Which was precisely why he had over-thought himself into this state.
"Sorry, but this isn't the moment for that. And it's late."
"Fight. That is the place suited to you."
A Duel Disk was thrust at him.
Kaiba's words are always exact.
If he says it is necessary, then.
As a rival, Atem trusted Kaiba. That Kaiba had the power to destroy dominion and lead him to freedom.
Quietly, he removed the ornament on his left arm, the one given him by Seto. In that instant, a sense of loss and a lightness of heart contended with each other.
And onto his left arm he fastened the Duel Disk.
"……"
A Duel Disk, after so long.
Cards, seen after so long.
His own deck, missed.
Time that had been stopped since some point he could not name.
Atem gazed at the cards for a while, and then murmured.
"…This will do as it is."
Start again. From the beginning.
Together with the resolve to shake off his hesitation, the readiness to start over from the beginning filled his chest.
"Very well. Let's go."
Two shadows fall in a great hall empty of people.
They had always fought here.
"What about the first turn."
Before, one or the other of them would naturally have taken it without asking.
He could not remember how it went.
"The first turn is mine."
Kaiba, who had been watching in silence, drew a card first.
Provocation, bluffs, reading each other. Every part of it was missed.
The fight after so long — the same moves as last time were hardly going to work; he could not read the traps through, and he lost.
But this was good.
"Your use of trap cards is as skilled as ever."
"Traps— …never mind. Your face has improved slightly, at least."
"That's a terrible way to put it. So — how did you know? That I was going to call."
Atem gave Kaiba a level look. Meaning: explain yourself.
"…Grip strength, and the way you hold it. I installed a function in that terminal that registers any contact differing from the normal."
"Kaiba, you—"
"I told you to call."
The same as ever. Unchanged. Not the slightest deviation in the man.
What about himself?
"I've changed."
"If my rival's gone gutless, I'll simply beat him back into shape."
"If I'd gone gutless, you wouldn't bother with me."
"If you can talk like that, you haven't changed."
The distance between the two of them was like before, and subtly different. Acknowledging each other, and at the same time testing each other.
The manoeuvring of rivals, precisely, had begun again.
"Have you given any thought yet to disposing of that one?"
"I'm not going to do that."
"I'd have him out without hesitating."
"Hesitate a little. You were the one assessing his ability."
He had believed in him. He had thought he was being protected. In fact he had been protected. And that had been binding, and dominion.
But the safety and the sweetness he had received inside the cage had not been lies either.
"You can't bring yourself to hate that one."
"But I can't go on obeying him either."
Was that not affection but dominion and subordination? And yet it was fact that he had been protected, fact that he had been loved. What on earth had it been?
But Kaiba, as though he had read his mind — and there was a possibility that he actually had — said the same thing as when they had met before.
"That is how that one loves."
"It's a difficult subject for me."
"You needn't accept it. Understand it. If you can't, crush it."
"Which, as I keep saying, I'm not going to do. There may be a little sadness in it, though."
Perhaps because he had run hot for the first time in a long while, his heart was somewhat becalmed.
It might be a good state in which to face the voice of his heart slowly.
"Then thrust it at him. Even Yugi stands alone now."
"Aibou is—"
To stand alone. At the Ceremonial Battle, they had faced each other as one and one. In their own places, in order to stand.
Atem gave a faint smile, as though giving up.
"True enough. Understood. Tomorrow morning—"
"Do it now."
"Now, he says. Stop asking the impossible. He'll be asleep, obviously."
"Have you the resolve to shut that one out?"
"I'm not going to shut him out. But my mind is made up."
When he answered so, Kaiba grinned.
"Why not come out. Ancient ghost, you're there, aren't you."
When Kaiba raised his voice, there were footsteps, and Seto showed himself.
A man in whose presence he ordinarily felt repose — and now a strange fear pierced his chest.
In Seto's eyes lodged composure and ease, and at the same time something like an overwhelming force of dominion. Not an enfolding gentleness: an aura as of a man holding everything in his grasp. Even in the way he stood there was no opening, and yet one could not take one's eyes off him.
Different from usual.
This was surely the true form of Seto, the one he does not show now, from the time when he existed as king.
Atem's heart stirred. Between binding and sweetness and the sense of loss, it was still wavering.
This was no mere fight. A fight to take his heart back; a fight to cut the binding away.
With the tension stretched taut, Atem steadied his breathing and hardened his resolve to stand.
Seto showed by his bearing that he would take up that fight.
"The modern-day whelp has a carrying voice…"
"…Seto."
A fight. And yet in the voice that called the name, pain and regret seeped through.
"My king, if it is a conversation, I have grasped its content. The hour is late tonight as well. Please do not overtax yourself."
As though pushing Atem away, as though bringing this relationship to an end, Seto turned his back on Atem and made to leave the great hall.
But Kaiba did not permit it.
"Threats again."
Threats?
It was certainly a blow to have Seto no longer at his side. But that did not amount to a threat.
"I shall merely fulfil my duty. Nothing changes from what has gone before."
Surely, from here on as well, if he relied on him he would lend his strength.
But how far does if he relied on him extend?
"I am king."
"Yes. You are king."
"You were king as well."
"That is so."
He did not know what he ought to say.
What was it he was supposed to thrust at him?
Kaiba said nothing, and only looked at Atem steadily.
"I will stand alone."
"Understood."
This time Seto really did make to leave the great hall. With this the fight was over.
It was over.
Far too easily.
When it had been such a serious matter.
Atem gazed vacantly at Seto's back.
As they passed each other, Kaiba and Seto met each other's eyes. Seto was turned away, so his expression could not be seen; but Kaiba's expression was appallingly cold.
With that same gaze, he signalled: crush him at once. Though the fight was over.
"Seto."
"What is it?"
Seto turned round. He had already returned to a priest's composed expression, no different from usual. Seto too must have meant to end it.
What more was he supposed to say?
When he looked at Kaiba, his arms were folded and his posture was that of a bystander. To set someone on and then leave the rest to them: a considerable degree of trust.
He cannot resent Seto. But there is sadness as well. And yet what he was given had certainly been warm.
"You — to me, you are—"
"You may trust me. I am one who protects."
Seto always protected him. That is fact.
That he came to lean on it was Seto's dominion, and also his own weakness and softness.
"I do trust you. So — let us stand together."
Let each of them stand properly alone, and then stand side by side. And so there is no more need of protection. No need of threats either.
For an instant, Seto's eyes went wide. It was the first time Atem had ever seen him let his expression break.
"What I wanted to tell you is not a parting. I want you to understand that."
The silence for a while was painful.
But Kaiba's loud laughter blew it all away.
"You lose, you ancient ghost."
"You have not won either, modern-day whelp."
Seto seemed as though something stretched tight in him had snapped. His usual inorganic expression turned to a wry smile.
"So that is the conclusion he goes to. Well — that too is like a king."
Those words were a soliloquy that did not reach Atem. Only Kaiba was listening.
The air of resignation and acceptance mixed together in Seto, Kaiba received quietly, and with satisfaction.
And then he smiled. Passing by the side of a Seto standing where he was, he walked over to Atem and rubbed his head into a complete mess.
"What — why suddenly!"
He complained in spite of himself, but Kaiba only laughed softly.
"Hn. No particular meaning."
The eyes of a Kaiba certain of victory were, in all likelihood, honouring a fight well fought.
At the gesture, his heart came softly loose.
What is here now is only the fact that they stand as equals to one another.
Each of them standing together — in that case, Kaiba had always been standing as an equal. From the very beginning, all along.
Kaiba's rival was released from the spell that had bound him so long.
I could take him now, he thought as well, but decided after all to keep it on hold for the present.
Atem had become able to choose freely. He would choose freely, at a time of his own choosing.
Kaiba proved by his actions that love gives freedom.
Seto looks back and says that love was protecting.
There is nothing binding him now.
Atem compares the two of them, and for the first time can truly choose.
Night breaks into day.
Atem takes one deep breath. And then he closes his eyes, as though letting the weight inside his heart go smoothly out of his hands.
The conflict up to last night, the hesitation, the bound feelings. All of it dissolves quietly.
Seto stands beside him, his expression hardly changing at all. Behind the composed gaze mix a very little relief and a faint sense of well, well. The stillness after accepting Atem's choice is somehow soft.
And Kaiba. The eyes that have watched over him so long are gentle, but the core of them does not waver. He puts a hand quietly on Atem's head and strokes it lightly. Not sweetness alone: a proof of trust and understanding. The respect of one rival for another is there.
"To stand together. Understood. Together — for the sake of this world."
Seto's voice is low and quiet, but it carries weight. To Atem it was neither an order nor a promise, but simply a signpost for standing side by side.
Atem looks up at the two of them. Deep in his chest something warm spreads, and the old unease and fear vanish away. He need no longer fear being bound by anyone, or being taken.
Between the three of them, words are unnecessary. Eyes meeting eyes alone, and everything is understood.
At the end of a long journey, in order to stand side by side once more.
In a hall with light coming into it, three souls quietly, but certainly, cross.
Acknowledging each other's existence, respecting, loving, they begin to walk.
A new daily round begins here.
The road splits again.
Chapter 8 exists in three versions. They are alternatives — read any, or all, in any order.
8a — REAL
8b — DREAM
8c — IDEAL
None of them is the "true" ending.
