Time stretches out like an endless road in this place. There is no day or night or need for food or sleep. On Earth, time is finite, and a resource not to be wasted, but, here, it is infinite. I have forever to think, to ponder, to wonder.
Three thousand years was just a drop in the bucket to forever.
At least I have my memories. That's the one thing that keeps me sane this time around.
There are others here, others I fought beside, others I trusted, others I befriended, others I loved. I remember them now. They certainly remember me. They remember me as their pharaoh, their king, the avatar of God on Earth. That is how they still see me, three thousand years later.
However, that is no longer how I see myself.
After I spent three millennia trapped inside the Millennium Puzzle, an unusual Japanese teenager named Yugi Mutou gave me a second chance at life. The minute he put that final piece of the puzzle in place, I was granted the power to inhabit his body and to set up housekeeping in his mind and soul.
At first, all I could detect were forces in place designed to hurt the boy…bullies who took advantage of his small, weak form and his lack of companions and allies. My only instinct was to protect this vessel at all costs, to challenge those who opposed me to Shadow Games that only I could win, and to gather allies to his cause. As his collection of compadres grew, my instinct to protect extended to them as well. I was cutthroat in my judgment and merciless in my punishments.
"Come, it's time for a game. A Shadow Game." In saying those words, I once again felt truly alive and present in the world. No matter where I am or what form I take, an Egyptian pharaoh or a Japanese schoolboy, I am, first and foremost, a gamer. That is my true essence.
It is that essence that I also saw in Seto Kaiba.
Seto Kaiba! He was, in this brave new world, my first worthy opponent, although his soul was obviously twisted and corrupted. I first challenged him when he stole something of great value from Yugi's grandfather, the Blue Eyes White Dragon card. I won the card back from Kaiba, and, in my penalty game, I hoped to show him the Heart of the Cards by showing him the spirits of the monsters within. Perhaps my mercy had been misplaced. The illusions I showed Kaiba gave him two things: the inspiration for holographic duel technology and a deadly thirst for revenge.
After I won our second duel at Death-T, a horrific theme park specially designed by Kaiba to ensure my demise, I could see that more drastic measures needed to be taken. It was time for Kaiba to pay for his crimes. My chosen penalty game was the Mind Crush, in which I shattered his corroded heart into thousands of tiny puzzle pieces, leaving it up to him to assemble it back together minus the evil, now destroyed. I had belief in Seto Kaiba that he would be up to the challenge, for as I shattered his heart, I noted its structure, and Kaiba's heart was strong, much stronger than most. I had faith that he would come back from the experience redeemed.
Six months later, at Duelist Kingdom, on the roof of a castle, Kaiba and I dueled once again, this time for the chance to face the malevolent inventor of Duel Monsters, Pegasus J. Crawford. On the line for Yugi and me—Yugi's grandfather's soul, which Pegasus had stolen in order to ensure Yugi's participation in the contest. We had to face Pegasus or else Grandpa would be lost forever. I had Kaiba on the ropes. One more attack, and I would win. But, then, suddenly, Kaiba changed his tactic to a psychological one.
"Yugi, the game has only just begun," Kaiba said to me in a cool, calm, controlled voice. "I lost 500 life points from that attack, so, each of these squares on the ground will be 100 of my life points. I will move back as many life points as I lose." He stepped back, slowly, deliberately, one square…two…three…four…the fifth step brought him to the top of the castle parapet. One more step, and Kaiba would tumble to his doom.
A second chance is rare from me, and a third chance, impossible. Kaiba had already had his opportunity for reform. If this was the game he wanted to play with me, so be it. He goaded me, "Yugi, slit my throat with your card!" Seto Kaiba's life was in my hands. I readied myself to attack with my Celtic Guardian and to end this duel, this bitter rivalry, once and for all.
It was Yugi who stayed my hand.
Beautiful, sweet, kind, gentle, forgiving Yugi Mutou wrested control over our body and overruled me for the first time. It was at that moment I began to see the error in my ways, the corruption in my own heart. Duel Monsters was just a game, and winning was not everything; winning was not worth ending this man's life.
For it turns out I was wrong, Kaiba had been redeemed. Pegasus had also kidnapped Kaiba's little brother, and he was dueling in an attempt to save him. Kaiba's ploy was the last-ditch effort of a truly desperate man, for Mokuba was everything to him. The boy was the only family he had left in the world and his only friend.
"Do you know what God gave us so we could play games in this world?" Kaiba asked. "A single chip called life."
I was playing with a borrowed chip-Yugi's chip, Yugi's body, Yugi's name. As much as I relished this second chance given to me, I knew it to be ultimately a false one. I knew this situation could not persist, and that is why I decided to begin the search for my own memories. Turn of the twenty-first century Japan was not the world to which I belonged.
Why did it feel so much like I did belong there?
For these are the memories I ponder now. The memories of my time spent with Yugi, with Kaiba, Jounouchi, Honda, and Anzu, with Bakura, Mai, Shizuka, and Mokuba, with the Ishtar siblings, with Yugi's grandfather, and all the other people I met along the way. All the duels we fought, the adventures we had, the stories we shared-I replay these moments and relive them over and over and over again in my mind. These are now the memories I have that are far too precious to lose to the ravages of time.
Time. Time is infinite in this place.
I had to do what I did. I had to regain my memories. I had to journey to the realm of the dead. This was my destiny.
Seto Kaiba did not believe in destiny. He had no interest in the past. He had no interest in memories. He only believed in the future.
What of my future? Could I have had a future if things had turned out differently?
I see now Kaiba's wisdom in considering the future more important than the past. As they say, act in haste, repent at leisure.
Why was I not even compelled to find another solution?
My cousin, High Priest Seto, and I were reunited when I came here, reunited after 3000 years. He remains a loyal, steadfast, trusted friend, and, yet, there is now something strained between us that was not before.
He saw it in my eyes. He saw it immediately. He saw that when I looked at him, I was looking for another. I was looking for his reincarnation. I was looking for Seto Kaiba.
Seto shares many traits with Kaiba. Both are strong, tall, confident, arrogant, and extremely intelligent. Both share the same piercing deep blue eyes. Both are willing to stand up for what they believe in. Both lust for power and will do anything to achieve it. What Seto does not have is Kaiba's penchant for passion and obsession. What Seto and I never had was this intense, heated, deep-seated rivalry. Kaiba was determined to duel me and defeat me. He channeled his fervor very deftly into Duel Monsters, but now…now I wonder… there was always that look in his steely blue eyes. The look he never gave to Jounouchi. The look he never gave to my partner, my aibou, Yugi. The look he reserved for me and me alone.
I didn't even have my own body. There could have been no physical relationship, even if both of us were to desire it. I would never allow my aibou to be harmed in that way. I was a ghost, a specter, a relic of the past depicted on a carved stone. I did not belong there. That is what I tell myself.
Is this heaven or is this hell? Does it really matter?
There is no way to tell him now, no way to tell him how I felt about him, no way to tell him that his attitude could piss me off like nothing else and our duels excited me like nothing else. There is no way to tell him how just a glimpse of the swirl of his trench coat could take my breath away.
He would never have accepted it. That is what I tell myself.
If it was love he felt, he hid it well. He kept those feelings very close to his chest, even for his own brother. He chose to let the irritation, the arrogance, the pride, and, most of all, the anger to show through, to swirl around him like a protective shield. And, for the most part, I allowed him to do so. I was focused on my own mission, my own quest, of which he played just a part.
I, too, had been prideful and arrogant. I, too, was once bent on vengeance. He and I were, in many ways, two sides of the same coin. My aibou showed me the error of my ways. He healed me, calmed me, and brought balance to my soul.
Yugi brought me to Egypt. He brought me to my memories. He defeated me in our final duel, proved he could stand on his own, and he brought me back here, to this place where time stretches out ahead of me on an eternal Sunday afternoon with nothing to do but ponder the past and think about what might have been.
Even now that my memories have returned, I still have the same question I had back then: Who am I? Am I an ancient pharaoh or a modern teenage duelist? Am I Atem, or am I Yami? Did I really need to remember? Did remembering really answer any questions, or did it merely bring up more?
Here's what I remember-a passage from my aibou's English textbook:
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet
Romeo and Juliet. It was a tragic story of two star-crossed lovers who never found happiness together in life. Perhaps I should have paid more attention in class.
It is a tortured analogy, to be sure. Kaiba was no Romeo at my balcony. He would never be that. Instead, I was Romeo, with my faithful friend Jounouchi as Mercutio at my side. Kaiba played Tybalt, the prideful King of Cats, who was rival of us both, and ever so blinded by rage and thoughts of revenge that he was incapable of seeing us as anything beyond that. Kaiba dueled Jounouchi and won; he dueled me and lost. Then, I kissed the poison from Yugi's lips and disappeared forever.
Was this destiny, or was this betrayal?
Kaiba wished me to kiss the poison from his lips instead…of that I am certain. He wanted, he desired, he lusted to defeat me. I wonder if I could ever have let him do that. I wonder if I ever could truly have submitted to him.
It never would have worked out. That is what I tell myself.
In the end, we were both too arrogant, too much the star of our own individual stories, too wound up in our own individual destinies to appreciate the brief, shining present we had with each other. In the end, we were both too prideful for honesty. In the end, we were both merely playing a game with each other.
In the end, whatever we had was not enough. In the end, it was too late. In the end, a smile, a wink, and a thumbs-up was my only goodbye.
I wonder if he accepted it.
Author's Note: For Seto Kaiba's side of the story, please read "Kaiba's Sunday Afternoon". As always, I appreciate your feedback. Thanks for reading!