Atem wants a kitchen garden.
Seto provides a commercial-grade greenhouse, which is not what a kitchen garden is. Atem plants bitter melon on the exterior wall of the mansion without asking, speaks to the seedlings every morning, and LOVE-OS records a +12% growth rate correlated with his voice.
He also brought fava bean seeds with him, having decided on those from the start.
Somewhere between the hoe and the harvest, the head office lobby becomes a farm and Atem's plant sketches become a museum exhibition.
This is a translation of an original work on Pixiv.
Original Title: 愛と理論 14 王、土をいじる
Original Author: 葉人(@Hathor_yuki)
Personal site: https://prideshipping.sakura.ne.jp
"Just as we cultivated love, to cultivate plants... I see, it stands to reason."
Once he took an interest, that was the end of it; Atem acted at once. This capacity for action is, of course, Seto's influence.
He promptly took the matter to Seto for consultation.
"Seto, I think I'll start a kitchen garden."
"Oh?"
Seto stops his wasteless typing hand and raises one eyebrow slightly.
"The scale?"
"Since it has kitchen attached to it, the scale of a kitchen."
"I see. I'll have it prepared."
The next day.
A greenhouse (ultra-high-performance, commercial grade) was completed in the courtyard of the Kaiba mansion.
With the newest temperature and humidity management system.
Linked to A.R.E.S. and LOVE-OS, with automatic meteorological data analysis.
Truly a perfect cultivation environment.
But Atem folded his arms and tilted his head.
"...Is this not a field for agriculture?"
"Is it not? It's within the household."
"No, it's different. A kitchen garden is more, well... unadorned, something the wind passes through."
The next morning again.
Before leaving for work, Seto found a strange shadow on the exterior wall in front of the entrance.
"...What is this?"
"Bitter melon."
Atem answers with a full-faced smile.
"It seems it fruits in summer. The magazine said it also becomes a green curtain to block the sunlight."
"...On the exterior wall of the Kaiba mansion?"
"That's right."
Seto gazed for a while back and forth between the bitter melon seedling and Atem,
and in the end let out a sigh without saying anything.
A.R.E.S. supplements quietly.
Lord Seto, the exterior sensors have detected "encroachment by vegetation."
"Leave it alone."
From that day, the King's green curtain project began.
"...You've increased them again."
Coming out onto the terrace in the morning, Seto knitted his brows.
The bitter melon that had certainly been a single plant until last night has increased to three this morning. And the row is neatly ordered.
Atem tilts a watering can with an innocent face, and smiled while gazing at the seedlings reflected in the water's surface.
"Life is a thing that increases, isn't it? With love, all the more so."
At those words, Seto's theoretical circuitry bristles up roughly.
Not love — germination conditions, water temperature and sunlight.
Seto silently activated A.R.E.S. and ran an optimisation program for fertilizer composition.
The instant it was determined that an N:P:K ratio of 1:0.8:1.2 had the highest growth correlation, he shows the spreadsheet to Atem as though triumphant.
"Scientifically, this is more accurate than affection."
But LOVE-OS displayed a new graph.
[VOICE INPUT / CORRELATION WITH PLANT GROWTH RATE]
Within the waveform, Atem's voice slowly surfaces.
The light is beautiful today as well. Stay well, you too.
Growth rate +12%.
Seto's fingertips stop.
"...Don't be absurd. Non-reproducible data like that won't become a theoretical value."
"The part that can't be made into theory — isn't that what people call love?"
Atem said it calmly, and stepped into the greenhouse Seto had prepared.
The sound of tilling rings quietly.
While gazing at that figure, Seto thought.
Within the perfect environment he himself designed, Atem is touching the soil and laughing.
Which of them is nearer to life.
Theory is beautiful. But love at times surpasses it.
On LOVE-OS's screen, yet another new figure was displayed.
[CORRELATION COEFFICIENT: AFFECTION 0.87]
Seto let out a deep breath.
It appears this experiment begins from defeat.
"...Atem. That isn't digging, that's stabbing."
Inside the greenhouse with the morning sun coming in, Seto pressed at his forehead.
Atem holds a hoe in both hands and is poking at the soil with oddly sacred movements.
With every strike, for some reason, incantation-like words were appended.
"O earth, receive my will."
"No, the ground doesn't listen to your chanting."
"Then is this rhythm bad?"
"Before rhythm, the angle is bad. Physically far too inefficient."
Seto let out a sigh and opened a tablet.
On the screen appears the specifications of the newest automatic tilling robot.
"Tilling depth eight centimeters, work efficiency four times. Introduce this and..."
"No good."
Atem cut him off flatly.
"To touch life, it has no meaning unless it's by hand."
"No meaning? Dig by hand and if the angle goes wrong the air layer is crushed and the roots..."
"Seto, this is dialogue. Exchanged not by theory but by sense."
That way of saying it was oddly serious, so Seto swallowed his words.
The next moment, Atem raises the hoe again.
Just as he vigorously struck the soil, mud sprang up all around.
"...Are you picking a fight with gravity?"
"No, I'm resonating."
"Don't resonate, level the ground."
Seto finally took the hoe away.
"Give it here. Watch. The wrist goes like this, the angle at forty-five degrees. Rather than swinging down, you slide it."
Atem peers in with interest.
"I see, theoretical."
"Naturally. This is physics. Friction and inertia."
Suddenly, Atem laughed.
"But Seto, there is gentleness in the movement of your hands."
"What did you say?"
"Love wrapped in theory, as they say."
In that instant, Seto's movement faintly stopped.
The blade tip of the hoe stops at the end of a beautifully ordered furrow.
Atem gazes at that line and nodded, looking satisfied.
"...Mm. This is good."
"How so. I did nearly all of it."
"A joint work."
"No, joint liability, you mean."
Atem laughed and thrust both hands into the soil.
"Let me remember the feel of this earth. Something will grow from here."
Even with his brows still knitted, Seto closed the tablet.
"...There are limits to inefficiency."
But that voice was somehow soft.
"Seto, since we've come this far, I think I'll grow something edible."
At that one line from Atem, who had propped the hoe against the wall, Seto put a beat's pause and blinked.
"...That preface just now, since we've come this far, is already ominous."
"If we're to cherish this earth, then eventually to taste its blessings is only courtesy, isn't it?"
"Don't start agriculture out of courtesy."
Seto flung it out coldly and took out his tablet.
"It isn't agriculture. It's a kitchen garden."
"And so, what do you intend to plant. Surely you aren't going to tell me you haven't decided."
Atem nodded brightly.
"You understood well. I haven't decided yet."
Seto presses at the space between his brows.
"...What percentage of these furrows do you think were made by momentum."
"Momentum, precisely, is life."
"Planning, precisely, is civilisation."
While Seto was arranging his logic to rebut, Atem took out a small pouch from somewhere.
"For the moment, I had decided to grow these."
When he broke the gold seal, what tumbled out from inside were fava bean seeds.
"Look at that, a perfect form, isn't it?"
"...Fava beans, of all things. The sowing season is wrong."
Seto murmured it, automatically calculating temperature, humidity and days to germination in his head.
"Atem, to begin with, these don't get direct-sown. First, seedling raising."
"I'm of the converse directly school."
"Don't speak to the seeds; first put the environment in order."
Just as he was, Seto pointed at one corner of the greenhouse.
There, seedling trays, insulation sheets and an A.R.E.S.-controlled temperature management system are already lined up.
"...You had it prepared."
"The future in which you run out of control was already predicted."
Atem was frankly surprised, and laughed lightly.
"You really do read ahead."
"Naturally. Order can only be built on top of theory."
Even while saying so, Seto took Atem's hand and had him place the seeds in the tray.
"First press them lightly into the soil. Put in too much force and the air escapes. Gently."
"...Like this?"
"...No, too gently. With your benevolence the roots won't take hold."
Atem laughed delightedly.
"Difficult. The adjustment between love and force is always something you teach me."
Seto was stuck for words for an instant, and operates the temperature settings while maintaining a blank expression.
"...The germination rate is decided by theory."
"No, sprouts come out because they think they want to wake."
Beneath the fingertips of the two, the soft soil was quietly pressed into order.
The humidity sensor in the greenhouse lights up faintly.
On LOVE-OS's monitor, new data was recorded.
[GERMINATION PROBABILITY: THEORETICAL VALUE 92% / AFFECTION CORRECTION: +8%]
Seto closed the screen without a word.
"...A statistical error."
Atem smiled.
"An error is proof that theory is still human, isn't it?"
Seto's shoulders trembled slightly.
Whether he laughed or was exasperated, Atem could not judge.
"Seto, look!"
In the morning light, Atem crouched on the floor of the greenhouse, his eyes shining.
From within the seedling tray, small green cotyledons are showing their faces.
They were lined up in ranks, as though responding to the King's summons.
"Sprouts! Proof of life!"
"So it is. The germination rate is ninety-five percent, as predicted."
Seto says it while operating the tablet without expression.
Atem, unconcerned, spoke gently toward the cotyledons.
"Let's grow without haste. The sun and the wind, time will give them. Is the harvest half a year off?"
Seto raised his face.
"Half a year?"
"Fava beans are a crop that takes time, aren't they? In my age..."
"Atem."
Seto cut him off evenly.
"Modern seeds are already selectively bred; those are an early-maturing variety. Furthermore this greenhouse is A.R.E.S.-controlled, maintaining optimal humidity and temperature. The fertilizer is managed by data as well. Which is to say..."
"Which is to say?"
"In three months we can make that thing you're after."
"............What?"
Atem was silent for several seconds.
He gazed at the cotyledons, and then looked at Seto.
"I-is it all right for a king to give his people blessings that quickly?"
"Monarchy is irrelevant. Growth rate is science."
"But the people cultivated by waiting for the ebb and flow of the Nile's waters."
"You're three thousand years too early to lecture me on fava beans."
Atem gazed at the soil in a daze.
"...Civilisation is a fearsome thing."
"Don't be surprised at this late stage. You come from the civilisation that built the pyramids."
Even at Seto's irony, Atem nods seriously.
"...I shall have to pay respects to the speed of time as well..."
Saying that, Atem tilted the watering can toward the sprouts once again.
"Slowly is fine. Grow at your own pace, all of you."
Seto folds his arms and watches over him as though exasperated.
"...And if the growth is delayed by a day because of that, it's outside the statistics."
At that moment, wind blew from the terrace behind them.
The vines of that planted without permission bitter melon had already extended past the window.
The deep green leaves catch the sunlight and shine.
Seto narrows his eyes.
"...Your irrational method of affection may be not so easily dismissed after all."
"Heh, theory is the effort to try to understand love, isn't it?"
"Wrong. Theory is an apparatus that converts love into error."
"Then let me embrace that error."
Seto lost his words for an instant, and then let out a deep breath.
"...If I let LOVE-OS hear this conversation, it seems likely to output correlation coefficient: affection 0.9 again."
"Isn't that fine? Love that can be quantified — interesting, isn't it?"
Seto twisted the corner of his mouth slightly.
"You transcend both time and data, and yet what you do is primitive."
"The primitive is the beginning of everything."
Atem said that and poured water again.
The sprouts swayed faintly and glittered in the sunlight.
"...Atem. What did you do."
Ten in the morning.
In the head office lobby of Kaiba Corporation, an uncanny sight had spread out.
Between the cutting-edge Solid Vision advertisements and the automatic reception machines, countless flowerpots.
On the labels, "Tomato," "Cucumber," "Basil," "Fava Bean," and even "Watermelon."
A contractor carrying cardboard boxes was asking Atem for a signature with a bewildered face.
"This is the right place, isn't it — Kaiba Corporation head office."
"Yes. No mistake."
Atem throws out his chest proudly.
"Because this is our garden."
At that point, the elevator doors open.
The instant Seto appeared, the employees froze the air.
"...What joke is this."
"It isn't a joke. It's love."
"...Love?"
"To cultivate plants fills the heart. The morale of the employees rises too. Theoretically it's beneficial as well."
"How so."
Seto's voice is below freezing.
Atem smiled like a child waiting to be praised.
"Look at this vitality. The figure of stretching toward the light is, precisely, a symbol of a company's growth."
"Symbols are all very well, but don't build a field on the business floor."
"It isn't a field. It's a small kingdom."
"Don't erect a kingdom inside the company."
Seto opened a display and confirmed the delivery history.
There, the words "In-House Greening Project / In Charge: Atem" are shining.
"...A project? When did you launch this. I have no recollection of approving it."
"Last night. I clicked with affection."
"Don't put affection into a click."
Without any appearance of concern, Atem reached out to a tomato seedling.
"Seto. When these bud, the hearts of the employees should bud as well."
"What will bud is incident reports."
Among the employees secretly setting up smartphones around them, a strange atmosphere is born.
"But... the president's angry, and yet he looks kind of like he's enjoying it..."
"Atem-san is cute..."
"Actually, if we could harvest in the office, wouldn't that be a cost reduction?"
Seto pressed at his temple.
"Your love is gradually encroaching on management."
Atem laughed calmly.
"Love has the property of diffusing. Theory can't stop it."
Seto let out a deep breath.
"...I'll have an automatic irrigation system installed across this entire floor later. Left alone, you'd walk around among the employees carrying a watering can."
"Oh? The collaboration of theory and love?"
"Wrong. Risk management."
Even so, by afternoon the employees were coming and going among the flowerpots with smiles.
The small tomato seedlings sway faintly, bathed in the light of the sun.
On the AI display, the internal environmental data is updated.
[AIR CLEANLINESS +15% / STRESS INDEX −20% / CONVERSATION OCCURRENCE RATE +40%]
Seto looked at the screen and twisted his lips slightly.
"...Within the margin of error."
Atem laughs quietly.
"It is precisely within the error that life dwells."
Early afternoon at Kaiba Corporation.
The president's office.
Atem was spreading out materials with dignity.
"Seto, I had the AI analyse the condition of the employees. Happiness level, conversation frequency, rate of smile occurrence. Every one is on an upward trend."
"Hmph, well, only natural. As a result of the plants' photosynthesis reducing CO₂ in the air, the oxygen concentration has slightly..."
"Furthermore, this."
Atem threw out his chest and held out one more sheet of paper.
"An observation record."
Seto took it in hand and gazed at it.
There, drawn across the whole sheet, was something.
Circles, lines, dots, and for some reason a mysterious aura-like thing.
"...Atem, what is this."
"A tomato."
"It does not look like one."
Atem points proudly.
"Here is the fruit, and here is the stem. Here I expressed the radiance of life."
"This radiance looks like nothing but the physical destruction of the tomato's internal structure."
Keeping his expression blank, Seto tilted the picture and held it up to the light.
"You... it's fortunate for you that you were born in an age with writing on stone tablets."
"What do you mean."
"If you had recorded history in wall paintings at the time, the civilisation would have been misunderstood."
"What did you say...!"
Atem, put out, pouts his lips slightly.
"But observation is a thing seen with the heart. Not realism — it copies the truth."
"...No, this is neither. It's a concept."
Even while letting out a sigh, Seto turned his eyes to the AI's output data with interest.
"That the employees' happiness level is rising is fact... But stop attaching this observation record to the official report. Confusion will arise."
"Then how about using it for the cover?"
"Stop."
"The back cover, then?"
"Stop even more."
Atem laughed delightedly and fanned the sketch with his hand.
"I merely added a breeze of love to a report of theory."
"That is called not decoration but contamination."
Even while saying so, Seto closed the AI analysis screen at hand and glanced at the picture.
The colour and the form are both misshapen, but somehow warm.
As though it were a symbol of the irrational.
"...Well, at least it has humanity."
"Oh, you praised it?"
"Irony."
"Irony is love's way of hiding embarrassment, isn't it?"
Seto entrusted his body to the back of his chair and let out a quiet sigh.
"You. You seriously intend to green the entire company like this."
"Of course. I'm aiming at the coexistence of love and theory."
"Stop, don't launch a project on that theme."
But on the AI display, yet one more new figure was displayed.
[CREATIVE ACTIVITY INDEX: +32%]
Seto closes the screen without a word.
Atem delightedly takes up a brush and began drawing the next "observation record."
"This time it's a cucumber."
"Stop. Don't draw it in three dimensions."
"...Atem. This is, what exactly is this situation."
"What is, Seto?"
Seto thrust the tablet in his hand out in front of Atem.
On the screen the trend column of the internal social network is showing.
The tag shining at the top is
#AtemObservationRecords.
"Your plant sketches have become a topic in the company."
"They went viral? That's a happy thing. Everyone is cherishing the plants too."
"Wrong. They're laughing."
Atem tilts his head slightly.
"Laughter is a variety of joy, isn't it?"
"...Well, that's true, but."
In fact, those "observation records" had spread throughout the company.
The tomato picture is "Red Sphere (Possessing a Soul)"
The cucumber is "Green Serpent God (Sleeping)"
And as for the bitter melon, "Guardian That Covers the Sky"
they are titled, and all of them are drawn with uncanny poetic annotations.
"Atem, why did you put these on internal sharing?"
"Because the AI instructed me to submit a record of my observations."
"...LOVE-OS, no doubt... Superfluous..."
But as a result, "Master Painter Atem" obtains abnormal popularity inside and outside the company.
The public relations department delightedly began using them for illustrations in materials and in the company newsletter,
and in the end they even found their way into presentation materials for business partners.
Seto puts a hand to his forehead and lets out a deep sigh.
"As I thought, betrayal begins from the inside..."
"Seto?"
"No... it won't stop anymore. From here the world will move again..."
In the end, exactly as Seto predicted, inquiries flooded in, and the merchandising of "Atem's Living Plants series" as stationery was decided.
Ballpoint pens for employees, notebooks, desk calendars.
On all of them, Atem's idiosyncratic lines and annotations were printed.
Seto said quietly at the product planning meeting:
"...Do as you like. However, I'll handle the supervision."
"Seto is participating too?"
"To hold the damage to a minimum."
Atem nodded, looking satisfied.
"That is what they call the coexistence of love and theory."
Seto knitted his brows slightly, and
"Wrong, it's damage control."
returned only that.
"Seto, look. A letter has arrived from an overseas art museum."
Atem holds up an envelope proudly.
Gold-leaf sealing wax, a weighty hand. The address reads
To the Great Artist, Pharaoh Atem.
"We would like to hold an exhibition of the King's plant records... they say?"
Seto's brow jumped slightly.
"An interesting story, isn't it?"
"No, a nightmare."
The museum was in earnest.
Tracing the diffusion on social media, they had evaluated Atem's sketches as an expression fusing spirit and nature, and formally sent an exhibition request.
Seto analysed it calmly.
"Left alone, an unofficial exhibition will spring up on its own. The rights situation will be confused, and there's a danger of materials leaking out."
"Then we need only hold it ourselves, don't we."
Atem says it straight.
In that voice, the ring of a king had returned.
Seto laughed lightly.
"...I thought you'd come to that."
Several weeks later.
The King, Master Painter: An Exhibition of Records of Plants and Quanta was held.
Visitors in a long snaking queue from the first day.
At the centre of the exhibition hall, the original of Atem's "Red Sphere (Possessing a Soul)" tomato sits enshrined, and the visitors let slip voices that could be admiration or bewilderment.
The AI attaches commentary, and each time the lighting production changes, praise of "artistic" flies.
Watching that clamor from the president's office across a display, the two.
"A good turnout."
"As I thought, this is worship."
While gazing at the crowd, Seto reaches out toward his lunch plate.
A salad of tomatoes and cucumbers Atem grew in the company.
The colouring is vivid, and the taste is unadorned and fresh.
"The things you grew are moving the company like this."
"Mm. Put love into them and the plants answer. The number of people who understand that has increased."
"That we commercialized it is our strength."
Seto tells him evenly while poking with his fork.
Atem laughed quietly.
"Which is to say, theory and love are lined up on the same plate."
Seto set down his fork and gazed at Atem.
"...Your turns of phrase are, at times, oddly infuriating."
"That too is the budding of emotion, isn't it?"
Seto let out a small sigh.
But at the corner of those lips, a smile faintly dwelt.
The seasons turn, and the green curtain of the Kaiba mansion grew splendidly thick.
The bitter melon vines that had extended as though to cover the exterior wall are deep green and luxuriant,
and letting the daylight through, they stain the whole garden jade.
Standing on the balcony, Atem spread both hands, looking satisfied.
"Splendid, Seto. The breath of life is something that takes form like this."
"...Though it's a thing you planted without permission."
Even while saying it as though exasperated, Seto wore a somehow calm face.
In one corner of the greenhouse, the fava beans had fruited richly.
Every pod is packed with glossy green, and the scent of the freshly picked mixes into the wind.
Holding an armful of freshly picked beans, Atem said delightedly:
"Let's have ta'ameya today as well."
"...Again?"
"These beans are sublime. A crystallization of sun and earth and affection."
"If you're satisfied, then that's fine."
Seto folds his arms and looks out over the garden.
A.R.E.S. and LOVE-OS automatically optimise the environmental data, and Atem never neglects the watering and the speaking-to as a rite every morning.
Theory and passion, existences at both poles, were ruling a single garden in a strange equilibrium.
The ta'ameya lined up on the table is fragrant on the outside, with a soft mealiness inside.
Atem says while his cheeks relax:
"After all, the things one grows oneself are exceptional."
"Analytically, it's due to the secretion of satisfaction hormones after harvest."
"Which is to say, that is happiness."
"By reasoning, that follows."
Atem smiled and nodded quietly.
Seto too let the corner of his mouth loosen slightly.
In that expression, resignation and just a little relief were mixed.
Beyond the green curtain growing thick and blue, every time the wind passes through, the sound of rustling leaves rings out calmly.
It was as though it were proof that love and theory had arrived at a single harmony.
