Ok from chapter 100, chapters are going to be long, like this chapter which is 3,2k words long. Some will even be 4k-5k words long.So I'll be alternating between 1 chapter a day and 2 chapters a day.
Chapter 100: The Millennium Items
"Ha. Neither of us could escape becoming pawns of capital in the end."
Inside the Kaiba Corporation's private lounge, Karl Wein laughed with the particular quality of someone who had no better option.
Kaiba Chiha gritted her teeth. "If you want to refuse -- no. You have to refuse, Karl!"
She couldn't defy her sister. That meant her only remaining hope was Karl refusing for her.
"I'm not refusing."
Chiha's expression entered territory reserved for people who had bitten into something completely different from what they expected.
If the price of this arrangement was actually marrying Karl, she would sooner walk away from the Kaiba Corporation entirely.
"You shameless little-sister-obsessed creep!"
"You're a little sister too, you know."
"That is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!"
"I don't have feelings for you, Chiha. Not anymore." Karl was entirely matter-of-fact about it. He admitted that when he'd first encountered Kaiba Chiha, the combination of her family name, her appearance, and the shared academy had made her seem like a reasonable prospect. Then he'd actually gotten to know her particular fixation, and whatever interest he'd had disappeared cleanly without drama. They'd settled into something else.
"Think of this as a mutually beneficial arrangement. A pure exchange of interests. You don't want to stay in confinement indefinitely, do you?"
"You really mean it?"
"Your sister's assessment is correct. A Kaiba-Wein alliance helps the Kaiba Corporation through its current difficulty and advances the Wein family simultaneously. We're both just pieces in a larger game of capital. Pieces don't need to spend too much energy on their own preferences."
"I didn't think you were capable of saying something like that, Karl." Chiha looked genuinely surprised.
She'd carried a certain picture of him: petty, envious that his sister had awakened HERO powers he couldn't access himself, coasting on good looks without much underneath.
"Of course, as the woman in this situation, you're carrying the greater burden. Once the Kaiba Corporation stabilizes, you can dissolve the engagement whenever you want. For the reason -- just say I was unfaithful. I'll make a public statement to that effect."
"Karl. Did I have you completely wrong?"
"Because I genuinely think of you as a friend, Chiha." Karl turned toward the Kaiba lounge's floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the hotel. "I don't have my sister's sweeping sense of justice, the kind that wants to protect everything all at once. I just want to help the people I actually care about. In whatever way I'm able."
Below, the banquet hall was filling up as representatives from the various families arrived and settled into their places.
Then Karl spotted a familiar face.
"Amano Rei." His eyebrows pulled together immediately.
The lower-district duelist. The one who carried HERO cards that Karl himself couldn't access. The one the Kaiba Corporation had been pursuing for months over the fourth Blue-Eyes White Dragon. The one who had made Karl personally drop a hundred thousand Eva Points.
Small money, objectively. Still irritating.
But Karl hadn't been petty enough to actually go after Amano over it. Even after hearing that Chiha had subsequently dueled Amano and lost badly enough to trigger a stock collapse and her own confinement, Karl hadn't moved.
The reason came down entirely to one person. His sister.
Karl didn't like Finesse. That was simply a fact. Part of it was the HERO situation, yes, but the larger part was something else: Finesse's habit of holding everyone at arm's length behind a manufactured coldness, shutting out anyone who reached for her, including Karl, while insisting she needed nothing from anyone. That was the part that genuinely grated on him.
But she was still his sister.
He also knew that Finesse had been quietly using family resources for years, tracing the people responsible for what had happened to her mother. That shadow had followed her through everything. He'd always understood, even when it frustrated him, why she was the way she was.
Then Amano Rei appeared, and Finesse's entire manner began to change. Gradually, visibly. She opened up in ways that hadn't happened before.
Maybe this particular person had finally given her a path out of that shadow.
Karl had decided not to interfere. He'd maintained that position even through the fallout. As long as Amano stayed by Finesse's side, Karl intended to leave well enough alone indefinitely.
But what he was watching through the floor-to-ceiling window right now was Amano walking out of the Wein family lounge and heading directly for the Nanki'in family lounge. And standing at the lounge entrance waiting for him was Nanki'in Sakuya, sole heir of the current Nanki'in generation.
"What is going on?" Karl's expression tightened considerably.
The Nanki'in family was the Wein family's primary commercial rival. Had been for years. The list of explanations Karl's mind produced was not a comfortable one.
Amano was colluding with the Nanki'in family. Selling commercial intelligence about Wein operations. Had been a Nanki'in plant from the beginning, the underground duel a deliberate setup to get close to Finesse. And at the extreme end of the list, the possibility Karl was least willing to consider: Amano was the kind of person who kept multiple arrangements running simultaneously and had somehow entangled himself with both a Wein and a Nanki'in at the same time, which would make him either extraordinarily reckless or extraordinarily stupid.
The last option was probably the least likely. No one was that reckless.
"Chiha. I need to step out for a moment."
---
"You're finally here." Nanki'in Sakuya's face didn't change, but Amano had spent enough time around her to detect what was underneath. She was mildly annoyed.
"Sorry, sorry. Class rep."
"What did you just call me?"
"Ah. Right. Sakuya?"
The name still felt awkward in his mouth. He was more comfortable with class rep, or just Nanki'in. But with half the room about to address her by family name, and the grandfather she was bringing him to meet certainly going to call her by it, using her given name for the evening was the practical choice.
Sakuya looked him over from head to foot.
"I suppose I can overlook the wait, given how you look."
"Right. You wanted me to meet your grandfather. Let's not waste time."
"You're suddenly in quite a hurry."
Of course he was. Amano had slipped out the moment Finesse went to change into her evening dress, using the excuse of a bathroom break. He had a window, and he needed to use it. Handle the Nanki'in obligation, get back to the Wein side before Finesse finished changing, keep a low profile for the rest of the evening, and survive. He was operating as a time management specialist and a disaster management specialist simultaneously.
"My grandfather is in the back room." Sakuya led him through the Nanki'in family lounge.
The moment they pushed inside, every person in the room looked toward the entrance simultaneously. There were a significant number of them, and without exception they had faces and builds that communicated a very specific occupational history.
Eden Tower prohibited violence absolutely. These were, somehow, the people who had accumulated those expressions and those scars anyway.
The instant the crowd registered that it was Nanki'in Sakuya who had entered, every trace of hostility dissolved. The posture in the room shifted from something dangerous to something formal and attentive.
"Young Mistress!" Multiple voices at once.
Sakuya raised one hand in acknowledgment and kept walking.
The Nanki'in patriarch, who had spent fifty years studying Dark Games and was seeking duelists who had survived them: Amano's expectations were calibrated accordingly. He braced for someone severe.
"Grandfather. It's me."
The back room held an elderly man with white hair and a white beard, seated at a shogi board opposite a man who appeared to be family staff. The patriarch was currently taking back a move.
"Ryuuma, I can see the entire shape of this game completely. I only need two more take-backs and I have the win."
"Sir, you've taken back thirty moves in this game already. At this point it might be simpler to play against yourself."
"I'm done playing. My granddaughter's here." The old man swept the board clear with one arm, scattering pieces in every direction, and turned toward the doorway with a warm smile. "Sakuya, come sit with me."
He was solidly built. He looked, despite everything, genuinely kind.
Then he noticed the person standing behind Sakuya, and for just a moment, behind the genial squint, something considerably sharper moved through his eyes.
"This would be the young man Sakuya mentioned?"
"Yes. The one I told you about the other day--"
"Sir. I'll excuse myself."
Ryuuma, with the instincts of someone who had been doing this for a long time, found a reason to be in the hallway before Sakuya reached the relevant part of the introduction. The door clicked shut behind him.
"Grandfather. This is Amano Rei. The duelist I told you about who experienced a Dark Game."
"Well, a young and impressively put-together fellow." The old man gestured toward the space Ryuuma had vacated. "Amano, sit down."
"If I may, sir?" Amano decided to lead rather than wait. "Sakuya mentioned you have a particular interest in duelists who have been through Dark Games. I'd like to understand why, if that's alright."
"Rather than waiting for an old man to set the pace, you'd prefer to ask first." A pause. "It's been some time since I met a young person with that kind of nerve."
The patriarch straightened in his seat. The warmth in his expression organized itself into something more precise.
"I am Nanki'in Muramasa. In my youth I was fortunate to escape from the darkness alive. After that, I spent more than fifty years studying Dark Games. My goal was simple: to stop being afraid of the darkness I'd carried inside me ever since."
"Sir. You experienced a Dark Game yourself when you were young?"
"Experienced would be too generous a word. I fled from it in a panic. A complete failure. Even so, I paid a price." He said it without self-pity, and only when his expression truly settled into seriousness did Amano notice what he'd been missing: the old man's left eye was a mechanical prosthetic.
He remembered suddenly. When he had first met Nanki'in Sakuya, the reason she'd agreed to that initial duel was to earn points toward Master Vail's fee for crafting her grandfather a new prosthetic eye.
He had almost left this man without any eye at all.
"Now it's my turn to ask, Amano. The person you encountered in the Dark Game -- can you describe them in detail? Most importantly: were they wearing any kind of unusual accessory or ornament?"
"Describing their appearance might not be very useful. I encountered the same person twice, but they looked completely different each time."
"Twice!" Nanki'in Muramasa's mechanical eye flickered, the light within it shifting rapidly. "You're saying you survived two Dark Games? Against the same opponent?"
Amano gave the old man a measured account: the Puppeteer's consciousness-manipulation ability, the remote-control approach to conducting Dark Games, the things that were safe to mention. He kept it organized and left the rest where it belonged.
"Manipulating others' consciousness to conduct Dark Games from a hidden position. That's a different type of item from what I encountered in my own youth." The old man's tone took on a more reflective quality.
"Sir." Amano kept his voice even. "This unusual accessory -- the thing you're calling an item. You're not referring to the Millennium Items, are you?"
Nanki'in Muramasa's mechanical eye flickered harder.
"You know about them, Amano?"
He'd been guessing. But it had landed.
The Millennium Items from the original Yu-Gi-Oh! series had recognition at the highest possible level in his memory. But in Eden's recorded history they appeared nowhere -- absent from the public record the same way Exodia's five pieces were absent. The only oblique reference Amano had encountered was in the historical fragment about the three God Cards, which mentioned in passing that only a holder of the Millennium Items could obtain the power to command divine beings.
"Are they actually real? The Millennium Items?"
His shock in this moment was entirely genuine. Probably not much less intense than Muramasa's had been a moment earlier.
Sakuya sat between them watching her grandfather and the young man take turns being stunned, blinking quietly, unable to find an entry point into the conversation.
"Since you already know of their existence, I won't pretend otherwise." The old man's voice had settled. "In fact, I have one."
Not just real. One was in this room right now.
"If it doesn't cause you to think less of me, sir -- I'd like to see it."
Nanki'in Muramasa opened his wrist-mounted Eva terminal.
Streams of complex data ran across the screen, and from them, the terminal's projection system assembled a perfectly rendered holographic image above the shogi board.
The Millennium Scale.
If Amano was identifying correctly, this was one of the seven Millennium Items -- the scale that could weigh the good and evil within a human heart.
"Is that... a Millennium Item?"
It was entirely a data projection. No physical presence whatsoever.
"Try touching it, Amano."
He reached out. No physical resistance, exactly as expected. But the instant his hand made contact with the projection, something else happened entirely.
His mind filled rapidly and involuntarily with images. His own memories cycling through in a rush -- years of his life playing out in fast sequence, a living portrait turning through the whirlpool of his consciousness. At the end of the sequence came a sound familiar and unmistakable: the roar of a white dragon.
Then a feather descended onto the left pan of the scale. The scale tilted left, held, and returned to perfect balance.
The Millennium Scale, in the old legends, weighed the hearts of the dead. A feather representing truth and justice on one side, the heart of the deceased on the other. If the scales balanced, the deceased had lived with honesty and fairness, had not dammed the Nile's waters, had not stolen what was not theirs. They would pass the judgment of Ma'at and receive the trust of Osiris.
Amano had not died. But the scale had read him anyway.
"Is this genuine?" Cold sweat had materialized on his back.
Nanki'in Muramasa looked at the balanced scale and laughed with real satisfaction.
"Exactly as expected from a duelist who won two Dark Games. Amano Rei, you carry a just and good heart."
"Sir. What exactly is--"
"Remarkable, isn't it? In Eden, the Millennium Items exist as data within Eva's network. That is the truth I spent fifty years of research to find."
The future, apparently, had accommodated ancient mystical artifacts as network entries. Items constructed over centuries from accumulated suffering and desperate prayer, preserved as data on a server.
Eden had genuinely recalibrated Amano's baseline for what to expect from this world.
A knock at the door. Ryuuma's voice.
"Sir. Young Mistress. The dinner will be starting shortly."
"Ha! So caught up in conversation that I forgot the time entirely." The old man pushed himself to his feet with a laugh. "I'll be right along."
Amano stood as well. He'd accomplished what he came here to do. Sakuya's obligation to her grandfather was fulfilled. He needed to get back to the Wein side before Finesse finished changing.
He was briefly satisfied with the evening's efficiency.
Then Nanki'in Muramasa's large, weathered hand closed around Amano's wrist and guided it firmly onto Nanki'in Sakuya's smooth, cool hand.
"Since the Millennium Scale has accepted you, you're a man of genuine character. I can entrust Sakuya to you with an easy mind."
Amano could not extract his hand. Nanki'in Sakuya made no move to release it either.
"As you may know, Sakuya is the sole heir of the current Nanki'in generation. I've spent considerable time worrying about the succession question, precisely because this girl's temperament makes things complicated. Her father had her by her age. She currently has no partner at all."
"S-sir..."
"But when I see you, I find myself at ease. Sakuya doesn't bring back men she doesn't care about. She's terrible at expressing her feelings, but I'm her grandfather, and I need to say something that makes my position clear."
Nanki'in Muramasa raised five thick fingers.
"If within one year you give this old man the happy news that the next heir is on the way, the Nanki'in family will reward you five hundred million Eva Points."
"The next -- next heir?"
Amano's gaze went, involuntarily, to somewhere it had absolutely no business going.
He pulled it back immediately.
He checked the system readout.
Nanki'in Sakuya. Sixty-nine affection points.
Sixty-nine points was solidly in the good friends tier. Not remotely close to the territory that involved five hundred million points and succession planning.
"Sir, I think there may be a misunderstanding--"
Sakuya's hand tightened around his.
Cold. Firm. Deliberate.
He had spent enough time around Nanki'in Sakuya's deadpan expression to read it at finer resolution than most people managed. Right now that expression was telling him clearly not to explain further.
"Good, good. You young ones go enjoy the dinner! Sakuya, take your young man out -- I'll be right behind you!"
The old man shepherded both of them out the door with cheerful efficiency.
The door closed. From behind it, almost immediately, came the sound of deep coughing.
"I'm sorry, Amano. I wasn't entirely truthful with you about why I wanted you here." Sakuya's voice, away from the room, had lost its usual flatness by a barely perceptible margin.
"Was the real reason this?" Amano had already arrived at the answer.
"Grandfather's health has been poor recently. I just wanted him to feel a little less worried."
The story about wanting the old man to meet a Dark Game survivor: a frame. The real purpose had been to bring someone in front of the grandfather who could stand as an answer to a question that was causing him genuine distress.
Amano turned this over quietly.
There was also something else he was now aware of that she hadn't said: most people in Nanki'in Sakuya's orbit sat around fifty affection points. Her affect was too controlled, her emotional range too narrow for the number to climb much higher toward any single person. Sixty-nine was already, for Sakuya specifically, a ceiling that no one else in her life had reached.
"I understand, Sakuya. The two of you clearly love each other. Wanting him to feel at ease about this isn't something to apologize for."
As for the five hundred million point offer, and what would theoretically be required to earn it: sixty-nine affection points was not a foundation on which to responsibly raise the subject. The gap between where they stood and where that conversation could happen was too large to pretend otherwise. Raising it prematurely, in front of the Nanki'in family, without the standing to back it up -- the outcome of that scenario was well-defined and it did not end well for anyone.
"I knew I wasn't wrong about you, Amano."
Sakuya's fist connected lightly with his chest.
"You're a person with genuine loyalty and integrity."
[NANKI'IN SAKUYA] [AFFECTION +1] [AFFECTION: 70]
Seventy. Finally.
The experience cost had been enormous. The homework, the exams, the months of patient investment in a person for whom emotional openness was an extreme sport. The grinding difficulty of building affection with someone whose natural affect range covered perhaps a quarter of what most people expressed. Sixty-nine had felt like a ceiling for weeks.
It had taken everything he had.
[70 AFFECTION MILESTONE: ROMANCE SKILL UNLOCKED -- "BEARING THE FAMILY'S GLORY"]
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