Chapter Text
Every song started with a basic beat—most commonly through the use of a kick drum or an equivalent synthesizer, but sometimes through other means as well. Similarly, Yugi's own music needed to begin with a basic beat—something that kept the song steady when everything else was chaotic and upturning.
Thus, it could be said that Yugi's life was lacking the basic beat he'd been riding steady on for the last two years.
The sudden appearance of his voicebank coming alive within his monitor, asking to hear Yugi's feelings—the good, the bad, the ugly, everything in-between—had left Yugi shaken, but it was most apparent after he woke up from sleep the day (night?) everything went down.
Yugi pulled himself out of bed, staring at the light trying to claw its way between his blinds for the nth time. Sometimes he felt pity for the world just trying to follow its routine but could never bring himself to open the blinds; other times he couldn't be bothered to give a damn about the world's routine.
"I've heard sunlight is good for you," a hauntingly familiar voice echoed through the room right by Yugi. Yugi flinched, immediately looking at his monitors—but he was only greeted by the darkness of powered-off machinery. "You should really open your blinds."
Yugi, hesitantly, turned to where his phone sat on the small table beside his bed. There, coming out of his damn phone, was ATEM. He was wearing the same Egyptian royalty-style outfit from last night, but this time it was like a mini-3D projection coming out from his lit-up phone screen instead of being a flat moving image on his screen.
ATEM looked over at him with a curious expression. "What?"
"...How are you in my phone?" Yugi slurred out; he seriously was not awake enough for this. ATEM hummed.
"Short answer, I accessed your phone over the Wi-Fi. I don't think I can access anything else except your computer and phone, though."
Yugi ran a hand down his face; he really needed food before he dealt with... all of this. And a shower. And maybe a cup of coffee. Of course, even after he got all of those things, nothing was normal; ATEM was still in his phone and/or his monitors, he was still chatting away or humming one of Yugi's songs, and he was still confident in Yugi—which was unnerving.
But! Yugi's internal crisis over his problems could wait, he had more pressing issues to attend to. Like—
"What exactly do I call you?" Yugi asked ATEM a few days later while he was preparing breakfast for himself. "I can't really just... keep calling you ATEM."
"Why not?" The voicebank tilted his head. "That's my name, right?"
"That's the name of the voicebank that you happened to be modeled off of," Yugi waved the spatula in his hand at his phone sitting on the counter behind him.
"...But I am ATEM?"
Yugi turned to look at the hologram coming out of his phone, then sighed. "...If you want me to call you Atem, that's fine. I just..." His throat closed up; he refocused back on the food in the pan in front of him.
"Mm. I appreciate your concern, but Atem is who I am."
If Yugi was maybe two years younger, he could've said he could hear the smile in Atem's voice.
Atem proved to be a very easy roommate to have, all things considered. He didn't need to eat or drink, was never up late at night (whether or not he slept Yugi was still determining, but the answer seemed to be at least a partial yes), and never left junk around the apartment. He was, however, always by Yugi's side and seemingly never did anything except sing and make comments on Yugi's production.
(Not like Yugi was any better, spending all of his time songwriting. But again, his problems could wait. Digital roommate/voicebank first.)
They would spend the entire day together; even when Yugi went to get food (read: reheat a microwaveable meal), Atem would transfer to his phone to follow him into the kitchen when he was getting food. At one point, Yugi asked Atem if he wanted to do something other than stare at Yugi constantly rewrite the same bar fifteen times for every other bar. The voicebank simply smiled and gave Yugi a suggestion for the current part he was tinkering with.
(It was actually a good suggestion. Credit where credit is due, if you are a digital voicebank that has come to life, you do know your stuff about songwriting. Yugi wondered sometimes if Atem knew other songs aside from Yugi's, but Atem never said anything on the topic.)
Perhaps it was because of all the time they'd spent together, but finding the rhythm of his day-to-day life again wasn't as difficult as Yugi thought it would be. Atem was such a consistent staple in his life that soon Yugi was able to read him and predict what he was going to say: if he stared at Yugi for a prolonged period of time, he was probably going to ask a mildly sensitive question and was deciding whether or not he actually should ask it; if his brow furrowed with no prompting, he was thinking about a way to help Yugi with a part of his song, but if it was in response to something Yugi said, it was because he was either distressed with Yugi's response or angry at the person who hurt Yugi; if he was moving around a lot, he was itching to sing something whether it be the song Yugi was working on in the moment or another song of Yugi's or a different song altogether.
...If he wanted to admit anything, it was a little terrifying how quickly he'd slipped into a life with someone else by his side, even if that someone was a hologram of the voicebank he'd been using almost since he started creating music. For the last two years, he hadn't spoken to anyone face-to-face; hell, the only person he'd actually spoken to was his grandpa, and that was over sparse and short phone calls and text messages. For him to fall so easily into a rhythm with Atem had him hesitating a lot in his everyday movements, asking himself if this was okay and if he was just crazy and hallucinating Atem altogether.
"Yugi?"
Yugi blinked; his eyes flickered to Atem's own ruby ones that were asking him a silent question: are you okay?
"...Sorry, I got lost in my thoughts for a moment."
Atem smiled, telling him that was okay and wondering if it was about the current song Yugi was working on. Yugi hummed and indulged him, hearing the ideas Atem had to offer about his newest creation. It wasn't exactly needed in this case, as the song on his screen was the song Atem had come alive for—the song containing Yugi's emotions and feelings, just as Atem had asked to sing and witness. Of course, saying that and doing it were two different things; even after two weeks of working on this song, he's had little luck in fully working out... well, everything. But regardless, Atem trying to add his influence into Yugi's song was (dare he say) cute, but unnecessary. Yet Yugi humored him.
Yugi glanced at the lyrics sitting on his other monitor as Atem continued on about building upon the base beat for the song Yugi had already crafted. His lyrics were sparse and still fragmented (the lyrics were arguably the worst part about this whole thing, and the part Yugi had been dreading and putting off thus far; it was one thing to create a melody and harmony based off of abstract feelings, but to actually take those abstract feelings and turn them into tangible lyrics was nothing short of a living hell), but he had the makings of a chorus sitting in his drafts, staring unyieldingly up at him.
"Let these emotions overflow, so get ready to hail me with roaring applause!"
He hoped it would be what Atem was expecting.
(He hoped he wasn't lying to himself.)