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Seto drove to the theater. For one, even a sports car was more discreet than a limousine. For another, the act of driving—of being in control of something—quelled his nerves a little.
It was foolish to be so nervous. He wasn’t the one performing before hundreds of critics, hundreds of judgmental pairs of eyes, hundreds of clandestine camera phones poised to immortalize each fuck-up. Yet he’d rather be onstage tonight. He preferred any type of performance over casual socialization.
A sports car also made for a more dramatic getaway…
“It’s green,” said Mokuba, glancing up from his phone. His wrists didn’t poke out of this suit, as they had been lately; it must be new. Seto accelerated too fast and scraped the bottom of the laser blue Lotus Elise against the pavement. Dammit. This theater, Houseki, was nestled in an older part of Domino, and the roads were shit. In fact, it wasn’t far from—well. He remembered walking past it more than once.
The GPS pirouetted to the northeast, and the little upturned teardrop made its entrance. Sure enough, there was the old theater sign peeking through the trees, its bulbs glittering like sunlit seafoam. Seto scanned the shrouded, residential street. Cars and trash cans cozied up from corner to corner. His frown deepened. Would he have to make the block? Find a spot? He cringed at how offended he was by this. Surely he wasn’t that spoiled.
At the same moment he spotted them, Mokuba cried, “There they are!”
Seto’s grip on the steering wheel tightened. “Help me find a spot,” he snapped, ignoring Mokuba’s gesticulations—no, defying them, glaring in the opposite direction. Mokuba defied right back, rolling down his window, letting in a surge of bitter air.
“Honda!” he shouted, waving. “Anzu!”
“Hey, Mokuba!”
“What’s up, man?”
“We’re parking!” Mokuba proclaimed the obvious. “We’ll catch up to you!”
“Sounds good! We’ll wait out front!”
“Sounds good!”
Mokuba flopped back into his seat. He was grinning, his cheeks and nose blossoming red, looking happier than he had looked in a while. His smile might’ve quashed some of Seto’s misery, but there wasn’t a space in sight. He could drop the kid off and go home. Pick him up at the end. Do donuts in a back lot somewhere in the meantime. Everyone would understand. But he was loath to be so cowardly. He rolled Mokuba’s window back up from his control panel and sped down one more block. Another. They were four blocks away from the theater now.
“We’ll have to walk,” he said.
“I don’t care.”
At last, he found a spot, a little pocket by a caving-in storm drain. He parallel parked, succeeding in the first try—not that he had worried he would fail—and he and his brother tramped to the sidewalk and power-walked toward the theater.
Mokuba tugged his phone from his pocket. White-yellow light spread before them, highlighting their cloudy breaths, the polished tips of their black oxfords. They’d come straight from work.
“It’s so dark,” he said, swinging the light back and forth. “There aren’t even streetlights.”
“Some streets don’t have them,” said Seto, in a tone so petulant as to be immediately suspect.
“It’s just Honda and Anzu,” said Mokuba.
“What?”
“It’s just Honda and Anzu.” Mokuba bent the flashlight toward Seto. Seto squinted and scowled, raising a hand.
“Get that out of my face.”
“You like Anzu. And Honda. Right?”
“No.”
“Well, they like us, anyway.” Mokuba held the light on him. “And you won’t have to talk to them for very long. It’s a play. You’re not s’posed to talk.”
“Is that so? I didn’t know.” He swatted at the phone. Mokuba dodged him, swapping it into his other hand. The light reeled and glanced off the gloomy, towering evergreens which lined the sidewalk. A startled bird fled from the beam.
“Just hide in the bathroom, or something,” said Mokuba. “I’ll talk to them.”
Acerbic retorts swarmed Seto’s mind, like clouds of harassed hornets. He wasn’t a goddamned coward. He didn’t need to hide. He was allowed to be unhappy, getting dragged into this. But soft voices rose, and lights emerged from the trees, and Mokuba stashed his phone and waved again, running ahead to meet his friends under the marquee, forgetting to look both ways. “Be careful!”
Seto pushed his hands deeper into his pockets. He didn’t look both ways, either. Maybe a car would hit him. Just enough to injure him; just enough to send him home with a noble wound, a doctor’s note, no, he wasn’t being dramatic. He was allowed to be unhappy. He had every right.
This play had better be good.
“It’s kinda funny, huh?” Honda flipped through the program, not reading it, struggling to include the taciturn man on his left. Seto scrutinized the same page he’d been on for minutes now. “Local voices deserve to shine. Hino Electrical Service is proud to sponsor the arts at Houseki Theater and across Midori Ward, where we have conducted business for over 40 years”…Honda squirmed.
“What is?” chirped Mokuba, snug between Honda and Anzu, the little trickster, Seto’s betrayer. What happened to “I’ll talk to them!!” Why was Seto stuck sitting beside any part of the dweeb patrol? At least he was by the aisle…
“Well, I mean—” Honda gestured toward the dim stage, where the velvet curtain hung, patient and heavy. “That Atem gets his own body—gets to be his own person, finally, after millennia—and the first thing he does is pretend to be somebody else.”
It was stuffy and noisy in the auditorium, and the seats were fraying and uncomfortable. If Atem stuck it out with this ragtag troupe, Seto might consider a donation. If he was gonna be forced to sit here more than just this once, anyway…
“I guess it is kinda funny,” said Mokuba.
“He’s always been theatrical, though,” Anzu said, leaning in from Mokuba’s other side, fanning herself with her program. “I think it suits him. He is being himself, in a way.”
“Spoken like a true performer,” Honda said, smiling at her. He smelled good; that was a crumb of relief. Seto caught traces of a finer cologne whenever he shifted. He had his jacket folded neatly over his knee. Evidently none of this basic class had rubbed off on Jounouchi…thank god Yuugi and the bonkotsu had tickets for another night.
“Have you ever seen this movie?” asked Mokuba, displaying the program cover. A brilliant mare stood on a hill, her mane spilling in iridescent swirls across the sky. It gazed at a full and ice-white moon, which formed the “O” within the title: The Last Unicorn.
Honda said, “Nope.”
“I have,” Anzu said. “I think it’s a book, too. But I haven’t read it.”
“Have you seen it, Niisama?” You have the audacity to address me? You who swore to be my right-hand man, who’s left me to the wolves—“providing reliable electrical service to thousands of customers”…
“Niisama. Have you seen the movie?”
Seto glanced up. “I read the book.”
“Really?”
“Why would I lie?” Seto groused. “...Atem wanted to read it. Always left it lying around…”
“Preparing for the role, I bet,” said Anzu knowingly. Honda chuckled.
“I’m surprised he’s not just improvising!” he said. “Like he does when he duels.”
Granted, it wasn’t difficult to set him off. Still, Seto bristled at Honda’s easy laughter, his chortling dismissal of Atem’s preparedness, his prowess, his intelligence—Honda hadn’t been there, hadn’t witnessed Atem pacing the office, the sitting room, the bedroom, script before his face, arm raised, heart forward, beckoning. Seto contorted in his seat, opened his mouth, and—
The lights dimmed. Honda had turned away; he was silencing his phone.
Maybe it was just a joke…a shitty joke. Seto closed his program, crossed his arms, and forced his eyes ahead.
Music poured from two massive, outdated speakers which flanked the foliated stage. The curtain opened, and the scene, for all its plainly DIY aspects, wasn’t as amateur as Seto had expected. There were scrolling, hand-painted backdrops: rolling hills, villages, a waterfall. There were flowers and trees in the foreground. Shortly, hoofbeats thundered through the speakers, and two hunters galloped in on toy horses, conversing, marveling—“This is a forest like any other, isn’t it? Then why do the leaves never fall here, or the snow? Why is it always spring here?”
“I tell you, there is one unicorn left in this forest…”
“Let’s turn around. Hunt someplace else.”
“Stay where you are, poor beast! This is no world for you…and good luck to you, for you are the last.”
No sooner had the hunters departed than from the trees emerged the unicorn. She lingered center stage, in the spotlight. Her flowing white costume teemed with dazzling sequins. She looked after the hunters, fretful and dismayed.
“I am the only unicorn there is?” she said. “I am the last?
“...That cannot be. There has never been a time without unicorns. We live forever.”
She paced the forest, shaking her head and tossing her long mane, renouncing her growing fear. “...What do men know? Because they have seen no unicorns for a while does not mean that we have all vanished! We do not vanish! We are as old as the sky, old as the moon…We can be hunted, trapped, even killed if we leave our forests. But we do not vanish!
“...Am I truly the last?”
She asked this of a passing butterfly, a dancing marionette. He warned her of the ‘Red Bull,’ a beast that threatened to drive all the unicorns to the ends of the earth. And after filling up with fear and indecision, the unicorn decided to set out. She had to find the rest of her kind. Had to know their fate.
The unicorn narrated her own journey as the backdrops scrolled again, taking her through increasingly mundane terrain. Farmers and passing travelers mistook her for a mare, which she disdained. The lights went up and down and up again, rotating days; and as the music swelled and the fair unicorn proceeded, Seto felt the shift within himself. His imagination, ever vital, ever strong and eager, stretched its clutching hands toward the stage and took hold. Took hold of the performers’ hands, of their reaching, beseeching passion. He was invested.
He ought to be embarrassed by this feeling. Mortified. Honda was right there, tapping his foot, rubbing his chin. It was just a corny play.
But—but no. It wasn’t. If it had the power to unlock this wonderstruck part of him—if it could free his soul like this, even for just a little while—then this play had transcendent, invaluable worth.
He tried not to blink.
Soon, exhausted, the unicorn lay beneath a tree to rest. The scene settled. Night fell. The score struck a sinister discord.
From the ether, a caravan emerged, rattling and creaking over the dirt road. A witch leapt from the carriage box, steepling her jagged fingernails, dancing toward the unicorn with blatant, greedy glee. “Hee hee hee. And here I thought I’d seen the last of them…!”
She called her henchmen to her, to ask them what they saw. “The fools. They will think it’s a horse, for sure!”
The first henchman stepped down from the carriage and into the light.
“Rukh, what do you see lying there?”
“Dead horse,” said the henchman.
“You’re a fool!—But I knew that. And what about you, wizard? What do you see with your sorcerer’s sight?”
And Seto heard his whole row gasp, heard Mokuba whisper, It’s him! And Seto felt his own smile, and he let it strain his cheeks.
“I…I see a horse,” stammered Atem, quite clearly seeing something more. He stared in barely-restrained awe. “Just—just a white mare.”
Seto would know Atem in any form, in any guise or body. Atem wore his patchwork wizard’s costume with ill-befitting poise. He strove to act awkward, wringing his hands, tripping over his feet. It was surely convincing to most. But Seto could tell how much effort it took to efface his natural grace.
The witch cackled, sneering with pride. “Hee hee. I thought so. Now, cage her for me. I want her for the carnival…”
Atem and Rukh forced the bewitched unicorn into a cage. Then the scene shifted again: The caravan split into five cages, rolled into a semicircle, each one containing a painting of some ferocious, mythic beast. Roars and shrieks tore through the speakers. A small crowd of village folk shuffled into view, led by Rukh, and admired the creatures. And while they toured the seedy carnival, a spotlight shone over the leftmost cage—the unicorn’s cage; and out from behind it, Atem crept onstage.
“I shouldn't be here. But quickly, tell me what you see.” Atem spoke to the unicorn, quietly and kindly. “Don't be afraid. Look at your fellow legends and tell me what you see.”
The unicorn scoffed. “Illusions! Deceptions! Mirages!”
And as she said this, the beasts transformed via rotation into paintings of average animals. The manticore became an elderly lion; the satyr, an injured monkey. Only the cruel, seething harpy was real. Seto had the passing thought that holograms would sell this ten times better, but he wouldn’t insult the set builders’ artistry. Holograms were an illusion all their own.
Atem introduced himself at last. “I am called Schmendrick, the magician,” he told the unicorn. And with a small tilt of his head, and a smile equal parts wry and humble, he added, “...You would not have heard of me.”
Seto watched Schmendrick help the unicorn break free; watched the fierce harpy burst from its cage and rise on its marionette strings and attack them; dug his fingers into his crossed arms from the tension. He knew half these lines from Atem’s endless rehearsing, but within their element—with others around him—Atem became Schmendrick. And Seto worried for him, and Seto huffed a tight sigh of relief when they were free.
Schmendrick and the unicorn met with a band of rough outlaws and broke free of them, too, taking with them a new friend, the tough Molly Grue. But Molly Grue wept at the sight of the unicorn. She threw her arms around the unicorn’s neck, bawling like a child.
“Can it truly be? Oh, where have you been? Where have you been?! Damn you! Where have you been?!”
Seto felt absurd, for his eyes stung with memories of tears. He knew how she felt. She had waited all her life for her dear one to come to her—and he had, too. He had. And those months he had been without him, they were hollow and wretched and lost in the woods. Schmendrick watched the pair from some distance, hesitant, surprised that Molly Grue could see the unicorn for what she was. He cleared his throat and interrupted.
“We are journeying to King Haggard's country to find the Red Bull. And it is time for us to go.” So they went.
The scenes scrolled; the trio traveled. They stopped to rest. Suddenly, the lights flashed red, flat bold blood red, and smoke poured in and overtook the stage, and the Red Bull reared its massive head and charged the unicorn.
The party scattered. Seto gagged. He lost his bearings for a moment. It was just a play. He was a child. Where was Schmendrick?!
“Please! Do something!” shouted Molly Grue. The Red Bull had the unicorn cornered, pressed against the wall. She reared her head and kicked her feet, wild, powerless pumps of hooves, and finally, finally, Schmendrick burst from the frothing smoke, mumbling, doubting himself, tugging his hair—he raced out in front of the bull and was thrown aside, and only then did he raise his arms and with the force of a king cried out: “Magic! Magic! Do as you will!”
He repeated this. Magic! Magic! Do as you will! Magic! Magic! Do as you will! And Seto felt the whole row cower, for they knew what this magician was capable of, as the music crescendoed and the lights flooded the stage, obscuring all.
The smoke faded. Schmendrick collapsed. The Red Bull nosed at a white heap where the unicorn had been; then he turned and lumbered offstage. Molly Grue rushed to the heap, and she shrieked when she realized what Schmendrick’s rude magic had done.
The unicorn was gone. She was human, naked, shivering, covering herself with her flowing white hair. Molly Grue held her and rocked her. She rounded on Schmendrick, who staggered to his feet, righting his hat.
“What have you done?!” Molly Grue accused him. “What have you done?!” she wailed.
Schmendrick was stricken. He rushed to justify himself. “What do you mean, what have I done? Only saved her from the Red Bull by magic, that's all I've done! By magic! By my own true magic!” He paced the barren stage with a frenetic gait, avoiding the others' eyes. “Doubtless you are wondering how I plan to return her to her proper shape. Wonder not. The power will come to me whenever I need it…
“...I am a bearer! I am a dwelling! I am a messenger!” Schmendrick’s voice rang. His eyes flashed.
The human woman rose. She tried to take a step. She fell. On her knees, she hugged herself and whispered, “What have you done to me? What have you done to me?” Molly Grue wrapped her in the wizard’s cloak. She shivered still. “I’m a unicorn. I’m a unicorn—!”
Schmendrick tried to explain, but the woman was distraught, bereft. “I wish you had let the Red Bull take me. I wish you had left me to the harpy! I can feel this body dying all around me…!”
Seto couldn’t look away from Schmendrick’s face.
“But…” Schmendrick swallowed. “It’s only for a little while. I promise you. Soon…”
And his eyes, for an instant, lost focus, pooling with strange and intense melancholy. Just for an instant.
“...Soon, you'll have your true shape again. Forever.”
Molly Grue protested, but the woman shuddered. “I’m afraid of this human body,” she said. “More than I was of the Red Bull.” She clutched the cloak around her shoulders and cried out at the last:
“Afraid!”
The music had been building, and it trembled here, sustained, foreboding. Schmendrick, Molly Grue, and the woman held their poses, and the curtain closed.
The house lights rose. The audience stirred, coughing, chatting, laughing.
“What do you think so far?” Anzu asked them right away. She stood, stretching her arms toward the chandeliers, vivid and lithe. “Isn’t he great? He’s so good!!”
“He’s super-good,” said Mokuba, a little muted, shaking off the wonder. “Man…I gotta pee, though…”
“That smoke was killing me,” said Honda, rising, too. “I’ll go with you. Need some water.”
Seto was closest to the aisle.
“You, uh—you mind, man?” Honda asked lightly, biting his lip. “Letting us out?”
“What have I done…”
“Huh?”
Honda frowned at him. Anzu texted a friend; she hadn’t heard. Mokuba didn’t react.
“What have I done…?!”
Seto couldn’t breathe. He bolted from his seat.
Failure. Fucking failure!!
It was too much. All too much. Forehead pressed to the stall wall, eyes squeezed shut, imploding. It felt like bees again, for real this time, and in his mind each way he turned he turned to pain. Stabbing him, poisoning him. All three times he’d been stung in his life, he had broken out. First his wrist, then his foot, then his neck had all swelled up and remained inflamed for days, and no one had offered him medicine. Not the counselors, not Gozaburo. Ha! He wished he’d been deathly allergic instead. He wished he’d never made it far enough to meet the one he’d hurt the most.
The toilet flushed in the stall next to his. He opened an eye. The sloshing disgust in his chest drained a bit. What was he doing? What had he done?
Schmendrick’s face—Atem’s face—had told him everything, had confirmed everything with sinking, sickly dread. For all these months, Seto had been a broken record: Are you happy? Did you really want this? And Atem’s exasperated smiles and sighs and hugs had all been fronts. Deceptions! Mirages! Lies.
Why would Atem lie? What had he to gain? But he was that much of a goddamned martyr. He would feel bad enough to just go along with it. With him. To abandon heaven for him. To shed immortality, to start the clock of decay. Did he hate it? He must. His face made that so clear.
The sham magician here was Seto. A tawdry vanishing act taken to the nth degree, a billion-dollar budget dedicated to a ludicrous illusion.
He checked his watch. It was the wrist he’d been stung on, so long ago. His whole arm trembled. He could leave. But he wasn’t—he wasn’t a coward…
He could hear the faint glittering of bells, that eccentric courtesy of the theater: Get your ass back to your seat. The bathroom sounded empty now; he fumbled with the crooked stall latch, washed his hands, eschewed the mirror and set his face. Let Act II be a punishment. You deserve to feel this way, you failure. Failure. FAILURE
He slid back into his seat just as the house lights dimmed. The other three were back already, settling in, creasing their programs. Anzu tugged her hair into a ponytail. Honda tensed a little, drawing away the slightest bit, and no one said a thing to him. Seto could always feel it, though—the brutal, burning stinging of his brother’s disappointment.
The second act was punishment, indeed, for Seto met himself in the jealous, wild-eyed, obsessive, muttering form of King Haggard.
King Haggard, who loved unicorns and only unicorns so much that nothing else in all the world could make him happy. So much that he made the Red Bull hunt them all down and drive them all into the sea, the sea that surrounded his castle; writhing, abysmal waters. So much that he captured them, imprisoned them, threatened them, until they were too afraid to ever leave him. They formed the twisted core of his mad happiness. He owned them all. All but one.
The last unicorn—whom Schmendrick named Lady Amalthea, who had been human for too long now, forgetting her magic—the last unicorn fell in love with the spawn of King Haggard, his bumbling heir, a plain and pining huntsman called Prince Lir. Lir wasn’t King Haggard’s son. A rescued orphan—bastard child. He brought King Haggard emptiness, not happiness. He was no unicorn. He was a waste.
Lady Amalthea forgot her true identity, but King Haggard didn’t. Through several scenes he stalked the woman, backing her into the parapet walls against which she brooded, leering over her with lustful concentration.
“Love is slowing you down, my lady,” he drawled. “I will catch you at last if you love much more.”
At length—at last—the four heroes, Schmendrick, Molly Grue, Amalthea, and now Lir, wrenched themselves free from their long and spiraling confinement at King Haggard’s castle. They solved a vexing riddle; unearthed a secret passage; raced boldly through the tunnel that would lead them to the Red Bull.
The music echoed their resolve, reverberating through the umbrous cavern. And here, Schmendrick revealed to Lir that his lover was a unicorn—the last. He explained that he must change the lady back, so she might fight the Red Bull and defeat him, freeing all the captives. Her fellow unicorns.
Schmendrick was shocked when Lir answered him, “I know.”
“How could you possibly know?!” Schmendrick cried. “She can’t have told you, because she doesn’t remember it herself!”
Lir gained an eloquence he’d lacked up to that point. “Unicorn, mermaid, sorceress—no name you would give her would surprise or frighten me. I love whom I love.”
Schmendrick huffed. “That’s a very nice sentiment,” he said. “But when I change her back into her true self—”
“I love whom I love,” the prince repeated. “You have no power over anything that matters.”
Lady Amalthea stepped forward. She had heard their whole exchange. She tore her hair—cried out in protest. She refused the transformation.
“But you will grow old and die,” Schmendrick said.
“Everything dies,” she groaned. “It is good that everything dies.” To Lir, “I want to die when you die. I am human, and I love you.”
She pleaded and pleaded, declaring her love for Lir over and over, desperate, trembling in the spotlight. Schmendrick took on a posture of fond resignation. He smiled a little; he chuckled. He sighed.
“There’s no need for all that,” he said. “I doubt I have the power to change you back. My lady, you are truly human now. You can love, and fear, and forbid things to be what they are, and overact.”
He knelt. He took her hands in his. He was so heartbreakingly gentle.
“Let it end here, then,” he said. “Let the quest end. One good woman more in the world is worth every single unicorn gone. Let it end.” His smile softened even further. “Marry the prince and live happily ever after.”
And clawing his rigid arms, Seto thought, Yes! That is her wish. Please, for once, you bastard—listen to her!
But fucking Lir opened his big fucking mouth and said, “No.”
He spewed some bullshit about heroes and quests. Some bullshit about destiny. Martyr shit.
“No,” Seto whispered. “Not again. Not again.”
They didn’t hear him. Schmendrick waffled and capitulated. His magic did what it would, transforming Lady Amalthea into a unicorn once more. The Red Bull emerged and charged for them—more smoke and red light, this time over a beach, a beach at the foot of the terrible castle.
Lir ran out onto the sand and threw his arms wide to protect the unicorn, and got impaled—what the hell else did he expect? He died, of course. He didn’t have to do all that. The unicorn raged, wild with grief. She summoned the full strength of her power. She summoned her friends.
From the sea the unicorns charged, a wave of them, their numbers aided by the ear-splitting clamor of hooves in the soundtrack and Schmendrick’s awestruck cry, “There are thousands! Thousands of them!” They thundered up the shore, leaping and splashing like seafoam—past the Red Bull, whom they drove into the sea, a phantom, condemned. They galloped up and over the castle walls, and their hooves broke through the stones and crushed the parapets. They were free.
The castle fell to pieces, collapsing into smoke. And King Haggard, who had watched all this from the top of his tall tower, fell. He vanished into the thick, rolling smoke, laughing. Laughing all the way down.
Lir made it, after all.
The unicorn kissed him, a delicate touch of her horn against his cold forehead, and restored his life.
He now had a ruinous kingdom to run.
With two stilted hugs, he bade Schmendrick and Molly Grue farewell. “I will miss you. I never had any friends before.”
And in the serenity of the denouement, as Schmendrick and Molly Glue slept beneath starlight, the unicorn appeared a final time. Schmendrick awoke; he ascended the shallow knoll to meet her. He reached for her long face.
“You are a true wizard now, as you always wished,” whispered the unicorn, leery of waking Molly Grue. “Does it make you happy?”
“Well, men don't always know when they're happy. But…I think so.” Schmendrick caressed her face, once, tenderly. “And you?”
“I am a little afraid to go home,” she whispered. “I have been mortal, and some part of me is mortal yet. I am no longer like the others; for no unicorn was ever born who could regret. But now I do. I regret.”
Schmendrick bowed his head. And Seto mouthed the lines with him—the final lines—which he had heard so many times in recent days.
“I am sorry,” he whispered with Schmendrick, likewise hoarse with contrition. “I have done you evil, and I cannot undo it.”
But the unicorn said, “No. Unicorns are in the world again. No sorrow will live in me as long as that joy…” She amended, “...one sorrow. And I thank you for that, too.”
The unicorn turned away. Schmendrick’s arms fell to his sides. The lights faded—no, concentrated on the hanging full moon, and the unicorn looked like a goddess, aglow from mane to tail, luminescent.
“Farewell, good magician,” she said over the rising music. “I will try to go home.”
Darkness.
Silence.
Then—celebration.
The curtain whooshed open again, and the soundtrack reprised the theme in exultant strains. Applause rang out as the spotlight followed the lead actor to center stage. She held the unicorn mask under one arm. She was breathless and beaming. She bowed without ceasing. Another spotlight swung to catch another actor—
“Atem!”
Seto was genuinely startled. It was Atem. He was back. He wore the same costume, although he now removed the hat and dipped into a low bow with it. He, too, shone with sweat and triumph, grinning, radiantly happy. Seto could feel the audience rush to their feet, could hear them clap and whoop and holler, but he couldn’t move—could only sit and stare, resisting disillusion.
Other cast members skipped into the fray, Molly Grue and Prince Lir and even King Haggard among them, bowing and beaming, beaming and bowing.
“YEAH!!” shouted Honda between whistles. “BRAVO! ATEM!!”
“Bravo!!” Seto heard his brother mimic Honda.
“ATEM!” Anzu waved, and Atem’s sharp eyes snapped to her. His grin burst at the seams. He raised his arm to wave back, raising Lir’s in turn, whose hand he held. They all held hands. His eyes swept the row, crinkling in gratitude at the sight of Mokuba, of Honda—blinking to a halt at Seto.
Immediately, Seto looked away. Like a balloon attached to an air gun, he felt an explosion of shame. POP. His heart burst and withered. He needed another. At least some more air.
He yanked his suit jacket over one arm, crammed his program under the other, and fled the theater again. Falling upward. Failing still. The audience clapped to praise Atem, to laud the unicorn. They clapped to mock Seto—to drive him out.
He made it halfway to the car before stopping, breathing heavily, alone in the drowsy darkness. The neighborhood seemed cozy, unobtrusive. Rundown, but neat. Still tended to. It was too dark to tell exactly where he stood, too obscure to set against his memories. Hell, those were obscure, too. The cold air helped to clear his head a little, of the scarlet smoke. It made his hands too brittle, though—too stiff to try and patch back up his heart.
He was tired of that. He backtracked, blowing on his hands. Tired of that. When he’d first truly hardened his heart, he had walled himself in; he had crushed Mokuba’s heart under its weight. When he’d broken his heart for the first time—when it had been broken—he had taken great care not to fit it together too tightly. Had taken great care to try and leave some cracks, to let light in. And it had crept in. Like Schmendrick, fifteen minutes or lifetimes ago—like the wizard, Seto hadn’t known that he had been so empty, to begin to grow so full. The magic that had filled him was real. He had learned how to believe in it. How to believe in Atem.
Then, when his heart had been broken again—
His mind threw up a wall, striving once with great force to protect him. But, god—his defenses were down. Gozaburo—
—the Red Bull—
—King Haggard had laughed as he fell. Seto dreamed of that fall, in those days. Months ago which felt like yesterday. Because—
Seto stopped, perching on the slanted sidewalk, feet askew. There was Houseki Theater, quaint and aged, glowing with the promise of warmth. Like a scene from an old movie on a small TV. The theater might have been a mirage, a hundred-year-old vision, grainy and silent, bright and new. From across the street, he watched the first few groups emerge.
Mokuba hadn’t texted or called. He must be talking with Anzu and Honda. They must be combing through pockets of beguiled attendees and tired performers, searching for Atem. It was nice to know that Atem was inside, and warm, and safe. Atem was safe because he was the star, the leading man. He’d always be safe. He’d always come back.
Yet from across the street, where Seto stood…Houseki Theater felt farther away than Aaru.
SETO [21:53]: I’m at the car. Are you coming or staying?
It’s fine with me either way
MOKUBA [21:54]: work stuff?
atem invited us to dinner
most of the cast will be there too
The thought of dinner with King Haggard curdled Seto’s stomach.
MOKUBA [21:55]: honda says he can drive me
SETO [21:55]: That’s fine. Go ahead
MOKUBA [21:55]: ok
u good?
SETO [21:56]: I’ll be up when you get home
Have fun
MOKUBA [21:56]: i will
Seto looked up just as his brother and the others stepped into the frosty night. He regressed into the shadows. They didn’t notice; they wouldn’t miss him.
He let the car warm up. A few theater-goers soon passed him on the sidewalk, chatting, texting, phone lights bobbing, searching for their cars. He flexed his fingers; felt the tug of his warming skin. He pulled the car out slowly, maneuvering in careful, studied increments, like a finely tuned robot. The engine snarled a bit, restless, resentfully holding back. A small part of him still wondered…
He eased to the crest of the hill and turned left, and it was almost comical how close it was to where they’d parked. Whoever lived there now still had their New Year’s shimekazari tacked to the door, and the shrubs in the front flower bed huddled close, cringing away from the turn of his headlights. A child’s bike lay propped against the low stone wall.
Seto slowed, but he didn’t stop. Atem would linger on this kind of thing. Not him.
Kaiba Manor was too large. Its yawning halls swallowed the comforting sounds of an ordinary life. It made coming and going into an affair either stately or secretive. Two tired specks crawled across Monitor 3, dragging past the guards at the front door. Seto was monitors away, a smudge of ink on ink, scarcely perceptible. The light from his office computer, a sterile triangle, was all that gave him away.
His eyes flicked to the door when it eased open.
“Hey, Niisama. We’re home.”
“Welcome home.”
“It’s so late…Can I stay home tomorrow?”
“See how you feel in the morning.”
“It’s already morning. I’m going to bed…”
Seto heard, in his brother’s brief pause, in his tired and considered tone, the offering. He didn’t take it.
“Goodnight.”
Mokuba yawned, withdrawing his heart and his head through the door. “Goodnight.”
The door drifted in his wake, stuttered, and swung inward again.
“Can I come in?”
Seto was weary enough that his shame didn’t drown him; it only pooled, swamplike, somewhere around his waist. “..Mm.”
With much rustling, Atem felt his way to the lamp by the sofa. The room inhaled the low, warm light. Atem unzipped his knee-length parka, revealing his black tights and leotard. He tossed the coat over the back of the sofa; he dropped a bouquet of roses onto the cushion and collapsed beside it, tilting back his head, melting like a cat into the comfort.
“From Anzu,” he said, tilting a knee to nudge the flowers. "She returns to America on Sunday." He sighed, melting further. “It’s like a duel, and it isn’t at all. Can I endure this exhaustion, tenfold?”
Ten shows total. Two weekends, four nights each, and two matinées. Knowing you, Seto began in his mind, Seto wanted to say—but he thought better of it. How could he know the soul of another? That had been his error.
With his program, he marked his place in the book. He closed it before him, not quite setting it aside.
“What did you think?” asked Atem. “How did I do?”
“You know—” You know you were amazing. You know you were right. He couldn’t finish.
Atem lifted his head. He had washed his face, perhaps at the theater; traces of makeup lingered in his hair.
“What do I know?” he said, sitting up a little, summoning the effort required to be annoyed. “I feel as though I know very little. This was the first night of my first show, after all.” Annoyed, and perhaps a little hurt.
Seto hated this, hated making this about himself, and his shame was rising and his resolve was giving way quickly. But he didn’t know how else to proceed. He couldn’t know, until he knew.
“Atem,” he forced out. “The unicorn. When you—when your character made her a human—”
Atem listened, straightening up further. His chin rose a little. He was bracing for feedback. Remarks on his acting. Seto shook his head. Not that.
“And then, when you changed her back…were you—why did you…” His jaw flexed. His eyes burned.
Atem’s brow furrowed. “Why did I what?”
“Why did you lie to me?”
His bitter tone struck Atem dumb. His dark eyes widened. His mouth even fell open. Seto watched him rein it in, watched him direct his offense through his body and into his hands—his tense, dynamic hands. They shimmied a rose free from the bunch, playing with its plush petals, flirting with the thorns.
“I’m trying to think of what you could mean,” Atem said, very calmly. “...I have a guess.”
I feel like—Why did you let me—Seto’s thoughts collided. His shame clouded further with fear, that most ancient recipe for anger. His voice rose.
“You can leave,” he said. “You can go. I didn’t know you saw me like—no, I knew, and you lied to me. Who the fuck knows why. In service of your own misery, I guess.”
“I can’t do proper battle with a face-down card,” Atem said. Ever even-tempered. Smoldering just beneath it. “I haven’t set traps. I don’t plan to cast spells. Let us fight in the open, if we must.” He pressed a petal tightly, smashing it between his fingertips.
Seto stood. He nearly shouted, “We’re not fighting! I’m telling you to get the hell out! Since you wish for it so badly!”
“And if you won’t reveal it,” Atem went on, “I must assume its identity. You think I’m like the unicorn. You think you are King Haggard.”
Atem paused for confirmation. Seto said nothing; his expression must have given him away.
“You think I regret becoming mortal.” Atem tugged the petal right off. Swept it from his knee, onto the carpet. “You think I feel trapped here.” Pluck. “You think I agreed for your sake alone—no…” Pluck. “You think I allowed myself to be driven.”
“I don’t ‘think,’ Atem,” he said, a scathing tremor passing through his voice. “I sat through the whole fucking play. I saw your face.”
“You saw…” Atem’s hand stilled. “...Schmendrick’s face. You realize that.”
He said it gently; he wasn’t trying to patronize Seto. It stung just as badly.
“Yeah, you were acting!!” Seto shouted now. Threw out his arms. Atem watched him. “I know what acting is! You were acting, and you were fucking incredible! You were—” I thought—
Shame crested over him and ran like paint down through him, coating him. “You were so good, I thought—I thought there was no way you could be so good unless you were just being yourself. I don’t know. I—”
King Haggard fell across his mind’s eye, burning, laughing.
“I was too invested.”
“No, you weren’t.”
Atem looked at him with love, silencing him. Frightening him.
“I’m flattered to hear that you found me ‘incredible,’ ” Atem said, smiling a little. “And I won’t deny that some of this play’s themes affected me. After all—” He brought the sagging rose to his nose and winked at Seto from behind it. “I’m rather uniquely qualified to have an opinion on the subject.”
Seto could not have smiled if he tried. But he listened.
“But I had plenty of time to dwell on it all. Having memorized it.” With a little sigh, Atem stood. His leotard and tights embraced his figure, relieving his beauty; and the spot of red, the rose, hung loosely from his fingers, kissing his thigh. “And I was able to solve it.”
“It’s a script, not a riddle,” Seto mumbled. He felt his chest begin to loosen; felt his spirit being drawn into Atem’s consoling aura.
“Stories can morph into riddles, while their themes await entry at the gates of our hearts.”
Where’d you read that? “So? What was your solution?”
Atem let the rose fall. Seto watched it fall, watched it land among the remnants of itself; and as he watched it lying there, he saw Atem move, stepping toward him. He was too beautiful to look at. He was touching Seto’s face.
“The unicorns,” he said, “were driven. Were forced. I was not. I…”
He kissed Seto then. Seto jumped, unprepared; emotion crashed through him like sudden thunder in a summer storm, and he swept Atem into a fierce embrace, kissing him back. Atem pressed himself into Seto, clinging to him, entreating.
“Love did not make me forget,” Atem said between kisses. “Love blessed my memories with such meaning. Love filled my future with hope.” He brushed his fingers over Seto’s heart, to clarify. “My love for you.”
This amount of relief didn’t feel plausible. It didn’t feel real. Seto grimaced. “I didn’t—”
But Atem’s kisses continued, intercepting his self-hatred, dissolving his guilt before it had the chance to harden back around his heart. He tried to manage something, “I…I didn’t—want this—want me—to be another—quest. Another thing you—felt like you had to—”
“There again—” Atem gasped, digging his nails into Seto’s back, tilting his head to receive Seto’s kisses along his jaw. His neck. “Not the same. No need—for all that. I used to—mm—to go on quests. Now I—I am just concerned with—living.”
Living.
Seto hid one last kiss beneath Atem’s ear. He drew him in. He pressed his nose into his hair. It smelled like the theater, or the restaurant. Both, maybe.
He felt Atem relax against him, kissing him softly, kissing his chest. His warm hands against Seto’s back. His deep, deliberate breaths.
Living.
“Seto…” Atem sounded worn out. What a long night for him. “...For the record, I will say that of all the characters, you remind me of Prince Lir.” He wrinkled his nose—Seto felt the familiar expression through his shirt. “Although I dislike that practice…equating a character with a real person. Such a one-to-one is far too crude. It lacks the nuance which the living soul demands…”
Seto scoffed. “Prince Lir? That twerp?”
“Something in the way he answers everything with ‘No,’ ” Atem said, looking up. His smile was playful. His eyes were soft. “...In the way he rushes into danger for the sake of love.”
“He just shows up and causes problems,” Seto grumbled.
“And that,” Atem said, “is not always a bad thing.” He wound his fingers through Seto’s and lifted his hand, kissing his knuckles. But this was all he could manage; he slumped against Seto’s chest, relaxing completely, trusting Seto to support him.
“I am finished…” he said. “Vanquished. Nine more shows?! I need an understudy.”
Seto held him. “Who could possibly follow in your footsteps?”
“You did.”
…He had, hadn’t he?
Seto lifted him into his arms.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get you flowers,” he said.
Atem nuzzled his face into Seto’s wilted dress shirt. “Next paycheck,” he murmured.
Seto shifted him, bending to switch off the lamp.
“Next paycheck is buying new chairs for that crummy auditorium.”
Atem poked Seto’s cheek. Be nice. “No. I like them. They give it character.”
“They give me back pain.”
“I forbid it. Pharaoh’s orders.”
Seto pressed their foreheads together, admiring Atem’s sleepy face, loving him in the dark.
“No,” he said, smiling.
END