A Prophet’s Perfectionism

“The board game room?”

Given that I had researched it, I was of course aware that this library had a board game room. However, its attendees tended to be… rather old. Most games there could be played online –of course, classic board games were losing fashion in the first place, especially with their needlessly expensive physical editions; going to a library to play against others was considered a waste of time in the attitude of most modern young people. Seeing my puzzlement, Mark elaborated a little.

“What else would you want to do in here? Look at those lumps of paper?”

Personally, I was fine with looking at the physical books, but this seemed fine. I gave a passive nod, and we entered the elevator tube to quickly move to the third floor’s board game room. Looking I around, I felt that the floor was supposed to imitate some kind of 19th century-style wooden mansion. While that was a tad anachronistic considering the ages of most attendees here being at most a bit over 150 years old, it certainly gave the desired impression of “old-fashioned”. The room wasn’t especially busy, so I suspected that some moderately quiet chatter wouldn’t get us in trouble.

Mark and I glanced around, before, by silent mutual understanding, approaching an available chess board. Mark gave me a smug look.

“You know, I was actually the champion of my school’s chess club. I’ll go easy on you.”

His high school had a chess club? To my knowledge, that was atypical in most public schools. That aside….

“It’s fine. I’ll win.”

I wasn’t going to lose to a human in chess. On this matter, I wasn’t going to make any exceptions, even for my mission. Since Mark insisted on letting me go first, I ended up with white. So, we began to play.

===

1. e4 e6

The French Defence? That’s boring. Let’s see….

2. b3 d5

3. Bb2 dxe4

I would prefer to play a little more aggressively in this game.

…

12. Bxg7 axb3

Hm? I guess this is over. He was better than I had initially suspected, at least.

…

23. Qa8+ Kd7

He should’ve resigned by now. Nonetheless…

24. Qxb7#

“… That’s checkmate.”

===

We shook hands, though I minded my grip strength this time. Mark’s expression was quite displeased as he looked at the board. I was about to offer to go over the game with him before….

“Let’s go again.”

I supposed that worked too. I decided to play black this time.

===

…

50. Rf4#

“That’s checkmate.”

“One more time.”

…

“Checkmate.”

“Let’s just have on more go.”

…

“Mate.”

“Again?”

…

“…”

“Can we-”

“Do you want to play something else?”

“… Alright.”

===

I have to respect his persistence, I suppose….

After losing an impressively long series of games, Mark finally conceded – or, rather, he agreed to play something else instead. While I was certainly willing to play more, it seemed counterproductive to my goal of converting him to simply frustrate him by making him lose against me over and over. At this point, his look of frustration was slipping a little more into suspicion. Why does he keep looking at me like that? While I was thinking that, Mark suddenly began to cough. So he did actually get sick staying out in the rain? Without thinking much on the issue, I patted him on the back and invoked the Lord to cure him.

“Are you alright?”

Then I realised my slight misstep. I had just given up a very limited opportunity to show off a miracle. Perhaps I could still use this…? I looked him in the eye and began to speak…

“That was a m-”

“Hm?”

Mark tilted his head when he looked at me. His eyes were narrowed once more. Ah, the hue of my eyes. Well, couldn’t even that be evidence…? While I was hoping that I could work with that, Mark suddenly queried me in a somewhat hushed tone.

“Are you-”

Before he could finish, he cut himself off as he noticed one of the especially busy cards tables had become available. Cards aren’t quite a board game, but I suppose they are in the same ‘genre’…. Mark turned to me meaningfully.

“Want to try some poker?”

I had not actually played poker before. Rather, my board game experience was almost entirely limited to chess. Of course, it’s not that I haven’t tried other games…. In any case, I agreed to play with him, and we moved tables.

Skipping forward a bit, I can confirm that my first ever game of poker was a fairly frustrating loss. While I had only cobbled together a one pair, Mark won with a three of a kind. The second through fourth games ended similarly. At that point, I was immensely irritated by the smug look which had regrettably returned to Mark’s face. Even though we were both shuffling, I couldn’t help but be a little suspicious at this absurd luck.

“Let me have the deck for a moment.”

“… Sure?”

I inspected each card, before returning it to Mark, who now had a rather puzzled face, for shuffling. After watching his shuffle and dealing carefully, I finally turned to look at my hand. Hm…. I decided to go all in immediately.

Of course, I lost once more. This time with a high card against his full house. Just as Mark was about to gather up the cards, I stopped him. Setting the statistical improbability aside, I was now certain….

“You cheated.”

Mark mockingly raised an eyebrow and gave me a smirk.

“I would never!”

However, I had examined the deck this time. While the cards that were shuffled to me were correct, the cards in Mark’s hands should have been impossible to receive considering his shuffle. Those cards were further down in the deck. I split the deck to the correct location, and, indeed, his cards were duplicates. I proudly displayed the duplicates to him. Checkmate. I eagerly await your grovelling apology for your attempt to deceive a prophet of the Lord.

“I mean, yeah? I was obviously cheating.”

… But that took some of the wind out of my sails. I didn’t particularly care about him cheating, but I wasn’t exceptionally pleased with his flippant attitude. Was this his revenge on me for beating him earlier? I gave a resigned sigh, before deciding that I was finished with playing games against humans for a lifetime. At last, I decided to cut through the pretence and question Mark on the true issue here directly.

“Why did you run away from home?”

Mark gave a forced smile, his amber eyes glinting strangely against the room’s light for an instant.

“I don’t really know. Because it seemed fun?”

I stared at him for a moment. I didn’t have any evidence to outright refute it, but I was fairly confident that he was either lying to me or to himself with that statement. Nonetheless….

“You come from a wealthy family, right?”

The strange glint from earlier returned, this time staying, and his expression grew deadly serious.

“Were you sent by my father?”

I was making an educated guess based on the hints, but that is as good as confirmation, isn’t it? I considered denying his question outright here, but I felt that I would be limiting my future dialogue choices if I did so. As such….

“Do you want to go to a quieter room to discuss this?”

Mark glanced around at the various senior citizens who were giving us the baleful looks of a pet dog planning the assassination of an endangered marsupial. Exhaling, he gave me a curt nod and we moved to the fourth floor – the private rooms.

===

Entering an unoccupied room once more ripping off a 19th century aesthetic, and taking parallel seats, we finally began to speak.

“I told my father that I wouldn’t return. I am an adult now; he has no right to force me into taking that exam.”

Wow, thanks for spilling that without me even needing to ask. As for an exam… wealthy family… running away… so the exam is difficult and targeted by influential people? Ah, I think I have a guess.

“I have no idea who your father is, Mark, but are you referring to the civil service exams?”

To that, Mark’s expression deteriorated into the look of a passerby on whom a falling refrigerator was about to land. Taking that as confirmation of the latter, I gave him my most charming head tilt I could muster before pressing him again. Let’s try the Sarah approach.

“I have nothing better to do, so perhaps you would benefit from talking through whatever this is to get it off your chest.”

Mark, likely feeling a little cornered, gazed at me intently for an uncomfortable ten seconds. Finally, he broke out into uproarious laughter.

“Alright, Elysia. You got me. Whether or not you’re from my father, I would appreciate talking it through. But first… I have one potentially impolite question.”

“Hm?”

Mark leaned forward on his chair a little.

“Are you genetically engineered?”