Atem wants a cat. Seto, having anticipated this since the sentence began, has already built a facility.
At the cat café, the cats form a two-meter exclusion zone around Atem and pile onto Seto instead, which Seto attributes to stable temperature and Atem attributes to being a specification that gets loved.
A photo book is proposed. Seto refuses. Atem, who has read the entire contract, does not.
This is a translation of an original work on Pixiv.
Original Title: 愛と理論 16 王、動物と触れ合う
Original Author: 葉人(@Hathor_yuki)
Personal site: https://prideshipping.sakura.ne.jp
Life is not theory; it is something one can feel only by touching.
Having arrived at that conclusion, Atem abruptly opened his mouth one morning.
"Seto, I want to keep a cat."
Even having anticipated it, Seto lowers his eyes and lets out a deep breath.
Atem's flashes of inspiration always move either the laws of nature or the state of the world. He can only pray that this time the former will suffice.
"...I have nothing but a bad feeling about that preface."
Atem smiles.
"In antiquity there were cats in the temples as well. That supple form, that free spirit... truly a sacred existence."
"By that reasoning, you yourself are treated as sacred. Don't increase the sacred any further."
"But the heart is healed, isn't it? Merely by a small life being nearby."
Seto put a hand to his forehead. The moment the word healing came out of Atem's mouth, there is nothing but a bad feeling.
"Isn't it the cat that gets healed? You'll no doubt start keeping an observation notebook, saying things like its sleeping posture is the golden ratio."
Atem's eyes shine faintly.
"...You understand, don't you."
"I'm not praising you."
Seto sank into the sofa as though half resigned.
If Atem gets serious, any form of life will be theorized. That has already been proven with plants.
"In that case, Seto, you need only take care of it."
"How does that follow."
"I observe, Seto manages. That is the joint work of love and theory."
"Love and theory is not something to be tested in that form."
Atem laughs. A little, like a child.
"While saying that, you're already searching for how to keep one, aren't you?"
"...Be quiet. The AI's fault."
"Heh. I'm watching."
In that tone there was warmth rather than mischief.
Seto stood up as though giving in, and closes the tablet screen.
"...Starting from the design drawings for a cat tower, then."
In the end, the King's wish is granted.
But its realization is always built atop Seto's theory.
And so, in the Kaiba mansion, preparations for a cat space designed by golden ratio are put in order.
While arranging the preparations to welcome a small life not yet seen, Seto thinks.
That in this house, the creature most difficult to control is, after all, Atem himself.
Several days from Atem's I want to live together with animals statement.
Seto decided to start by showing him the real thing.
Experience over words, the field over theory.
That way he can guide Atem's capacity for action in a safe direction. In theory, at least.
"Here it is."
A green hill spreading out atop a mountain.
The wind crosses, and the cries of sheep ring like the sound of bells.
M — ther Farm. Far too idyllic a place for a King and a president to visit.
Atem blinks at the sheep lined up in fluffy rows beyond the fence.
"Seto... I've never seen this scale in the palace. The wool is... moving."
"They're animals. Of course they move."
"But these are... not pets, are they?"
"In the modern age they're production animals. Chiefly for wool and milk..."
"Which is to say, human beings depend on their blessings."
Atem's voice was on the verge of entering the usual philosophical contemplation mode.
Seto sounds an internal alarm bell. Start discussing the relationship between life and civilisation here and the day is over.
"Touch them instead of thinking. Theory comes later for now."
When Seto urged him so, a farm attendant brought over a flock of sheep with a smile.
A white wave pressing in, fluffy.
Atem drew back a step, and in the next moment was completely surrounded.
"...Seto, they're encircling me."
"You're liked, presumably. Whether by the King's majesty or the smell of hay, I don't know."
One sheep sniffs at the hem of Atem's one-piece, and another rubs its face against him.
In no time he is wrapped in the distinctive smell of lanolin, and even Atem's hair catches the light softly and glitters.
"Atem... you're completely covered in lanolin."
"So this is... the oil of life."
"No, it's grease."
When Seto held out a towel, Atem smiles as he takes it.
"But it isn't bad. Body heat is transmitted. Breathing can be felt. Almost like fragments of stars breathing atop the grass."
"Don't gloss it over with poetic expression. The result so far is only that you got sticky."
"Heh, but Seto..."
Atem continued leisurely while stroking a sheep's back with his fingertips.
"Unlike plants, these answer when you stroke them. Not by theory, but by emotion."
Seto let out a short breath.
"...Which is to say, the supremacy of love argument again?"
"That's right. It appears love and theory are in equilibrium today as well."
In the distance the wind sounds, and the sheep chew grass at their leisure.
The afternoon atop the mountain flowed on, more calmly than theory, filled with love.
From that day on, Atem took to finding photographs of sheep and offering the impression that "their coats are like clouds."
What's more, as a morning habit, he says "good morning, sheep" in front of the green curtain.
From any angle there are no sheep, but the man himself is serious.
"...Should we just keep the real thing after all?"
While processing documents in the president's office, Seto pressed at his head.
The King's desire to raise sheep is increasing by the day.
There is that dangerous portent of action, the same as when he planted the bitter melon without permission.
The company AI is excellent, has already calculated the profitability of running a farm, and has even completed the site selection.
That speed is frightening.
From the instant Atem said he wanted to raise sheep, multiple departments within the company have been moving of their own accord, saying "then shouldn't we establish a farm."
Whether this is the fruit of employee education or simply an overreaction.
"...Buying a farm is different from raising them."
Seto reached his conclusion and closed the terminal.
Theoretically speaking, Atem would become not a raiser but rather the guardian deity of the farm.
That is already not management but the domain of myth.
But he cannot bring himself to deny Atem's wish to be together with life.
Through plants, the King had come to turn his heart toward the circulation of life; Seto had been watching that better than anyone.
"...Nothing for it."
Seto sends his gaze to the terminal on his desk and opens a particular plan file.
There was a progress report on "Project CAT" — the Feline Biological Contact Space Development Plan.
That day when Atem first said I want to keep a cat, Seto had immediately drawn up countermeasures.
And now, the plan is complete.
The location is one corner of the relaxation floor in Kaiba Corporation's head office building.
There, a high-function air purification system, and several cats living under AI health management.
In a space where soft light pours down, they were quietly purring.
"...Come, Atem."
Seto murmurs quietly.
"From today your love and theory meets new life once again."
That expression, while composed, was somehow satisfied.
After all, he believes in the love inside theory.
That day, the relaxation floor of Kaiba Corporation's head office was wrapped in a particularly soft light.
The newly established "cat interaction zone." Commonly known as the cat café.
A space Seto had been secretly planning ever since Atem said he wanted to keep a cat.
"Seto... so this is where the cats are!"
Atem's voice was already bouncing.
At the point of stepping on the disinfectant mat at the entrance, he is already as solemn as at a rite.
"Calm down. This is not a temple. It's a sanitary zone."
Beside Seto urging caution evenly, Atem is already peering inside through the glass, his eyes shining.
The cats, as though sensing the King's visit, looked over all at once.
But their expressions were composed beyond measure.
When he opens the door, a dozen or so cats are walking about freely as they please.
Atem knelt, spread both hands and called out.
"Come, beloved people of the sun!"
In that instant, the cats abruptly averted their gazes and all of them back away some three paces.
Stillness.
Only the sound of the air purifier rang out with strange clarity.
"...Why is it, Seto. They're looking at me, and yet they don't come."
"Your heat is too high. Because you call them in the tone of an oracle."
"That isn't so. Calmly speaking to them... come, my friends."
The cats again took a little distance.
As though to say "yes, yes, we know you're sublime."
Meanwhile, the instant Seto lowered himself onto the sofa without a word.
A general trooping.
The cats gathered as though drawn in by magnetism.
"......"
"......"
Atem froze.
Three on his lap, one on his shoulder, and further cats curled up at his feet.
Seto, completely forming a cat kingdom.
"Seto, that is... what phenomenon is that."
"I don't know. Presumably stable temperature was preferred."
"Temperature... which is to say, that theory rather than love reaches cats?"
"No. Cats transcend theory and choose stillness."
"...Which is to say, I spoke too much."
"As always."
Seto answers placidly while stroking a cat.
The cats entrust their bodies to those fingertips and purr languidly.
Atem gazes at that scene and puffed out his cheeks slightly.
"But, Seto..."
"What."
"Your theory is, after all, of a specification that gets loved."
Seto stopped his hand for just an instant and looked at Atem without a word.
In that interval one cat walks over from Seto's lap toward Atem.
Atem instantly held his breath and gently held out a hand.
"......!"
He touched. Soft fur, a quiet heartbeat.
Atem's expression relaxes leisurely.
"At last, theory and love have intersected!"
"By chance."
Seto's reply is composed, but that voice was somehow soft.
The cat's throat sounded quietly again.
That sound rang out like a chord of love and theory.
After the first day of the cat café, Atem this time became a captive of cats.
Since then, Atem took to frequently appearing on this floor during employees' break times, observing the cats and offering philosophical impressions.
From that time on, there was not a day when cat hair was not attached to Atem's clothes.
White shirts and jackets alike wear a soft light, as though they had been fur-processed.
"...Atem, that is no longer clothing; it's a cat's shed skin."
When Seto said it as though exasperated, Atem threw out his chest.
"This too is proof of life."
"Wash it."
"Wash it and it's lost. This is a record of having lived together."
Seto let out a small sigh.
At the point when it becomes clear Atem has begun processing something as a concept again, the contest of theory is over.
"Seto, look at this one. Truly a beauty."
At the end of Atem's pointing finger is, from any angle, a male cat.
The swell of the nose and cheeks, the skeletal frame of the legs, and a somehow coarse manner of moving.
Seto raised an eyebrow lightly.
"...Are you saying that knowing the sex?"
"Of course. Beauty has no relation to sex. But for these graceful gestures, the word beauty is most fitting."
"It's male."
"But..."
"It's male."
Seto's voice was quiet, but merciless.
Atem lost his words for just an instant, but at once composedly straightened his posture.
"Which is to say, our axes of evaluation for beauty differ."
"Wrong. Simply your powers of observation are lax."
Seto indicates the next cat over with his chin.
"Skeletal frame, posture, movement. Characteristics show in every one of them by sex. Look at the figure and you can tell at a glance, can't you."
"Mm... Seto, could it be that you can identify a cat's sex by its figure?"
"It's discernible on sight, isn't it."
"...You, in a past life you may have been not a priest but a scholar..."
"Be quiet."
Atem turns back to the cat and speaks to it gently.
"Whether a beauty or a handsome man, your sublimity does not change. As for the sex of your heart..."
"Stop, the cat is recoiling."
Exactly as Seto pointed out, the cat twitched an ear and drew back half a step.
Atem's heat had apparently once again exceeded the animal's threshold.
This cat café was also an experimental space designed with the objective of testing whether Atem can really keep a cat.
The AI analyses Atem's behaviour at every turn, and successively outputs reports such as "excessive approach" and "gaze fixation duration too long."
Lord Atem, the distance to the cat is thirty percent over the ideal value.
The AI voice announces evenly.
"...I see, so love was excessive."
"Rather than love, obsession."
Seto folds his arms and placidly surveys the data.
On the graph, [Cat Stress Index] and [Atem's Tension Progression] were displayed as having a splendid negative correlation.
"The more you approach, the more the cats withdraw. As an experiment it's perfect."
"Theoretically I understood. But Seto, my heart doesn't accept it."
"That is called coexistence with cats."
The cats gather again at Seto's feet and curl up, looking satisfied.
Gazing at that scene, Atem murmured quietly.
"...Is love the courage not to draw near."
"Your learning speed isn't bad."
In Seto's voice, unusually, a faint laugh was mixed.
On the AI's monitor, the words [King's Aptitude for Cat-Keeping: Under Observation] blink evenly.
Love and theory. Today again, that balance was being tested.
Several days later.
Atem appeared at the cat café again.
Seto had already opened a laptop and was organising the AI's cat behaviour logs.
"Seto, I have resolved."
Opening with that, Atem said it with a serious face.
"...What experiment have you thought up this time?"
"I want to know the language of cats."
"...What did you say?"
"I want to understand what the cats are thinking and what they are appealing for."
Seto stopped his hand and looked at Atem without a word.
That expression is the quiet resignation of "here we go again."
"Seto, do you understand the feelings of cats?"
"I do."
It was far too immediate an answer.
Atem blinks a little.
"...You understand cat language?"
"Not language. Look at the face and you can tell, can't you."
Seto turned his gaze toward the cats.
"This individual is currently seventy percent asleep. That one is hungry. That one over there is kindly concerned about you. The focus of the eyes, the angle of the ears, the movement of the tail — every one of them shows clearly."
"...In a past life as well, that observing eye..."
"Cats have nothing to do with rites."
"But that composure suits an owner."
Atem said it happily.
"Seto, you should raise one after all."
"I refuse."
"Why. You could be a perfect owner. The cats trust you and come near."
"I have no interest in pets."
Seto answered evenly.
In that voice, not a fragment of hesitation.
"I'm merely good at reading biological responses. Not limited to cats — humans, and AI as well."
"...Which is to say, you can understand without taking an interest."
"That's right."
Atem let out a quiet breath.
"Seto, that is a talent, but... at the same time it's lonely."
"I don't get close enough to cats to feel loneliness."
Atem loses his words.
The wall of theory. A transparent partition that cannot be crossed however much love is poured in.
Seto stood up and glanced at a cat rubbing against his feet.
The cat is purring, looking satisfied.
"Atem, what you're seeking isn't understanding. It's empathy."
"...Is it different?"
"The cats don't wish for that. Humans are merely projecting emotion onto them as they please."
Atem falls silent.
But in those eyes, the light of wanting to unravel it had not gone out.
"...Then at the least let's build a translation device. From the cat's voice, the meaning..."
"Useless."
"Why."
"You talking is the noisier part; the noise can't be removed."
"...I see."
At Seto's composed observation, Atem nodded a little.
Love and theory. Once again, they don't mesh.
Even so, the two were in the same room today as well.
As Atem increased the time he spent with cats, he arrived at one conclusion.
"Seto. Cats run because you try to control them."
"......?"
"In antiquity I never commanded a cat. I merely permitted them to be there. That was coexistence."
"Which is to say, you dealt with cats as a king?"
"No. As a subject."
"...How does one get that wrong to arrive there."
Atem laughed and shrugged.
"There was no one who defied a cat. It's the same now."
Indeed, inside the room the cats are occupying the desk with dignity and curling up on top of Atem's notebook.
Seto had already given up. Even if a cat steps on the keyboard, there's an autosave function, so there's no problem.
It was one such day.
A single image leaks onto social media.
A shot capturing the moment the King brings his forehead close to a cat and smiles as though cherishing it.
The balance of light, the composition, the soft air. That photograph, almost like a work of art, was disseminated in an instant.
"...Who photographed this."
Seto knits his brows.
"A capture from the surveillance camera. In cat-perspective mode."
"Cat-perspective mode?"
"A program that analyses the cat's line of sight and automatically frames the subject."
"Atem... In the end, you built an AI for the cats' sake."
"It's to understand cats."
Seto lost his words, and then thought.
The boundary line between love and research has vanished by now.
Several days later.
Contact came in to Kaiba Corporation's public relations department from a person calling himself a manager.
It's an offer to publish a photo book. As a "The King and the Cats" series.
Seto closed the documents while remaining silent.
Beside him Atem says brightly:
"It seems the world has moved again."
"...You. Stop moving it already."
"But Seto. This is art."
"To me it's a disaster."
The one cat that will keep Atem company curls up on his lap, and a hair floated lightly into the air.
That single hair would later be put up at auction as the Miracle Hair — no one knows that yet.
"Refuse the photo book story."
Seto said that while closing the documents.
"Why?"
Atem asks as a matter of course.
"Look at reality. You're being avoided by the cats."
"That's not..."
"It is."
Seto evenly operates the monitor and plays back the surveillance footage from the cat café.
There, a cat-free zone with a two-metre radius had been distinctly formed.
Even when Atem turns a smile on them, the cats avert their gazes in the opposite direction all at once.
"...They are merely being reserved."
"Wrong. Your tension is too strong."
"Tension?"
"Intimidation. Cats sense it by instinct and take distance."
"Which is to say, cats too have the power to recognise a king?"
"...There's no talking to you after all."
The person in charge at the editorial department, having heard that conversation, still did not give up.
By all means we'd like to see it once on site!
The natural sense of distance between the King and the cats is precisely the reality!
Seto tore up the memo without a word.
"Reality? Then I'll show you reality."
And the next day.
The editor and Atem appeared at the cat café again.
Atem is clad in perfect attire, waiting with his posture straightened and dignified.
The cats were, as expected, all silent outside the two-metre radius.
Only the shutter sound of the person in charge's camera cuts through the dry air.
"...So they don't approach His Majesty the King after all..."
The editor murmurs in a small voice.
"They are humble, that's all."
Atem is unshaken. But the cats, like soldiers fearing a king's presence, keep their eyes averted.
A while of silence.
Atem quietly let out a breath, and then opened his mouth.
"...I'll call Seto."
"Eh?"
"If Seto is here, the cats are reassured. That man is the incarnation of theory. An existence that knows no fear."
While the editor is bewildered, Atem was operating his smart watch.
An emergency summons to the president of Kaiba Corporation is activated.
A dozen or so minutes later.
The café door opens, and Seto appeared.
In that instant, the cats' reactions changed.
One, then two draw near, and before long they begin gathering at Seto's feet.
Without so much as knitting his brow, Seto lowered himself evenly into a seat.
"...See."
Atem says proudly.
"Was there a need for me to come?"
"There was. Seto, if you're here the cats settle. Just as a king is supported by theory."
"I had thought it would be something of the sort, but don't summon me for something of the sort."
The editor gazes at that scene in a daze and sets up a camera.
The cats relax on Seto's lap, and beside him Atem smiles calmly.
A composition almost like a fable.
"...This is the aesthetics of distance."
the person in charge said in a trembling voice.
"Wrong. The division of labour between dominance and trust."
says Seto.
"What poetic words!"
says the editor.
"It's theory."
The photograph taken that day was disseminated with the mysterious caption "the president trusted by cats and by the King," and once again the world began to stir, just a little.
Several days after the shoot at the cat café.
The editorial department was, in every sense, bad at giving up.
"...Which is to say, you want to go with a composition of me and Atem and the cats rather than Atem and the cats?"
Seto set the bundle of documents on the desk as though slamming it down.
"Yes! It's stronger market-wise if the relationship between the two is visible!"
The person in charge's voice was a strange ratio of enthusiasm and fear.
"Market-wise, is it."
Seto says coldly.
In the chair beside him, Atem is nodding.
"Certainly, in management terms it's a good thing."
"What are you saying, even you."
"Seto, read the current of the world. People are seeking the harmony of love and theory."
"I don't recall shouldering that brand to that extent."
"But as a result, you gave birth to it."
"...You. Stop trying to talk me around with words just because you've begun to understand management."
Atem raised the corner of his lips slightly.
"If it's in management terms, you can't deny it either, can you?"
"What moves me is not management terms. It's rational terms."
"That difference isn't understood by ordinary people."
"...Making them understand it is management."
At the end of the quiet exchange, Seto leaned back in his chair.
"And so, what's the objective. Surely you don't intend to attach a title like The King and the President's Daily Life with Cats."
"No, it's Quantum Marriage and Cats."
Seto's brow twitched.
"Who granted that approval."
"I did."
"...Don't grant approval as you please."
"But I am a co-author, and also a model. I should hold part of the approval rights."
"You. How far did you read the contract."
"I read all of it. While you were eating your bento."
Silence.
Several seconds later, Seto put a hand to his forehead.
"...What is my legal department doing."
"The legal department made a judgment in management terms too, no doubt."
"Don't return that phrase to me."
And several weeks later.
Quantum Marriage and Cats was actually published.
On the cover, Seto with a cat on his lap, and Atem smiling beside him.
The composition is perfect, the light is golden ratio, and in the subtitle it read: "The moment theory obtains solace."
On release day, sold out immediately in every region of the world.
Online, the tag "the one King and president chosen by cats" went into the trends.
On the large monitor in the president's office, the sales graph was extending with the momentum to pierce the heavens.
Seto gazes at it without a word and lets out a sigh.
"...You have really stopped doing anything but things that are good in management terms."
Atem folds his arms, looking satisfied.
"The fruition of love and theory."
"Before long I'll be treated as a theoretical mascot..."
"You already are."
"...A correction. You have understood management too well."
Outside the window, the green curtain of the Kaiba mansion has extended a little further again.
Beneath it, that one cat that keeps Atem company was sunbathing on a whim.
