UNUSUAL GAMBIT

11.00.

Ms. Wisteria closes her laptop.

“Alright,” she says, turning off the TV with the energy of someone who has already mentally left the building. “Recess starts now. Be back in your seats in one hour. The preparatory test begins at 12:00.”

The classroom detonates.

Chairs scrape. Bags unzip. At least four conversations erupt simultaneously at a volume entirely unsuitable for an enclosed space. Someone near the window groans with relief.

I remain in my seat.

Back left corner. Desk 019-004.

The schedule on my tablet reads:

Period 4. 11.15 – 12.00. Environmental Science.

I look at the clock. 11.00.

Recess has been moved up.

I look at the room reorganizing itself.

It takes less than forty seconds for the social architecture to shift. Clusters form. Someone is already eating something they brought from home, which suggests they anticipated this development in advance.

I am cataloguing this when the first variable arrives.

Vivi.

She does not walk so much as she materializes. One moment she is across the room, the next she is standing at my desk with her bag on both shoulders and her scarf already wound back around her neck despite the room being a perfectly acceptable temperature.

She stares at me with enormous, earnest eyes.

“Nepipi,” she says. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Still okay? Like, the same as this morning okay?”

“Functionally identical to this morning,” I confirm.

She stares at me for three more seconds, doing something with her face that I can only describe as scanning. Then she exhales so deeply her whole body deflates, like a balloon that has been worrying since 08.10.

“Good,” she breathes. “Good. Okay. Good.”

Lui arrives second. She drops into the chair beside me, backwards, arms folded over the backrest.

“So,” she says. “First day back. Still alive. Love that for you.”

“Thank you,” I say.

“I wasn't complimenting you.” She pauses. “But also, good.”

Elowen arrives last, from the front row. She has her bag already on her shoulder. She is carrying an extra water bottle that is clearly not hers.

She sets it on my desk.

“You probably haven't had anything since this morning,” she says quietly. “I had an extra one.”

I look at the bottle. Then at her.

“Thank you,” I say.

She smiles. Something lighter than the sad expression she usually carries around me like a coat she has forgotten how to take off.

Vivi is still looking at me.

Her eyes drift to my left hand.

I follow her gaze.

The cartoon bear band aid.

Still there. Applied four days ago in my kitchen after the skillet incident. It has survived a hospital discharge, six days of activity, and my complete failure to notice or remove it.

It is no longer a cartoon bear. It is a grey, flattened, faintly questionable piece of adhesive that has seen better days.

“Nepipi,” Vivi says, with the tone of someone delivering a terminal diagnosis.

“Yes,” I say.

She points at it. “It's dirty.”

“Yes,” I say. “I forgot it was there.”

The sound she makes is not quite a word. She reaches forward immediately with careful fingers.

“Hold still,” she instructs. “I'm going to remove the patient.”

“The patient is—”

“Shh.”

She peels it back.

We both look at the skin underneath.

Clean. Unmarked. No bruising.

Vivi stares at it.

I stare at it.

Lui leans across, looks, leans back. “Huh.”

“Huh,” I agree.

Two seconds of silence.

“Why did you wear a band-aid again?” Lui asks.

“The bear fixed it,” Vivi announces, with complete serenity.

“That is not how—”

“The bear,” she repeats, lifting the worn band aid with both hands like a retired flag, “fixed it. He did his job. He can rest now.”

I flex my fingers. All five respond immediately. No lag. No static. No pain.

I have no better explanation.

“...Okay,” I say.

Vivi folds the band aid and places it carefully in her front pocket.

Elowen is watching with an expression I am cataloguing as fond and slightly resigned. She glances at my hand, then at my face, and the tension she carries quietly releases by a small degree.

Lui is already standing.

“Okay, this is very sweet,” she says, “but I need food or I will not survive a preparatory test. My brain is running on fumes and whatever that was Ms. Wisteria gave us for Period 3.”

“CAFETERIA,” Vivi agrees immediately, springing upright.

They both look at me. “You coming?”

I have not eaten since 07.15. That is a gap of three hours and forty-five minutes.

“Yes,” I say. “Cafeteria.”

The cafeteria is in the basement.

I stop at the top of the staircase.

“Neptune?” Elowen turns back.

The building is three stories. The logical placement is ground level, for accessibility and ventilation efficiency. This staircase descends two floors below ground.

“They built down,” I say.

“Silveria has weird money,” Lui says. “Keep walking.”

The staircase opens into a room wider than the building's footprint should allow. The acoustics absorb sound instead of bouncing it.

“Stop looking like you've discovered a new continent,” Lui says, already walking.

The room divides into three sections.

General Dining. Large. Loud. International Students. Quieter. Menus in four languages. Class A Exclusive. Frosted glass partition. Card access gate.

Lui is already at the gate, her card against the reader. It clicks open.

I stop for the third time.

No menus. Trays in neat rows on a long counter, each with a small printed card. Alphabetical. Pre-prepared. Name-assigned.

Each tray holds the same meal. Red rice. Grilled chicken, two pieces. Green salad. Milk carton.

“Every day is different,” Vivi says, already collecting hers from the row. “They never repeat meals. But Thursday has dessert, often cheesecake or macarons.”

I find my name near the end of the row.

Ahlquist, Carena.

I approach the counter and show my ID to the woman behind it. She glances at it over the top of her glasses.

Then she turns to the shelf behind her. Not the main row. A separate shelf, lower, slightly set apart.

She places a tray in front of me.

Red rice. Salad. Milk.

But also: a second piece of chicken. A small sealed container labelled Protein Supplement: Enhanced Recovery. And in the corner of the tray, a small ceramic dish.

Pudding.

I look at the tray.

I look at the woman.

“There is additional food,” I say.

She points at my ID card without looking at it, and turns to the next student.

Vivi heads for the international section.

I follow. “Why are we not going to the Class A section?”

“Oh!” Vivi turns around, walking backwards now, which seems dangerous but she appears to have practiced this. “Because that's where the 12A people eat usually!”

“The seniors?”

“Mm-hm.” She nods very seriously. “You do NOT want to be in there when Senior Mael and Senior Yure are eating. They're both from 12A and they're...” she lowers her voice significantly, as though the seniors might hear from three sections away, “...very scary.”

“Define scary,” I say.

“Just trust me,” Vivi says. “Very scary.”

“Mael in particular,” Lui says, from beside me. “That guy has this thing where he just looks at you like a bug. He’s like as tall as me but the only thing he said to me is, ‘Get out of my way.’”

“And Yure,” Elowen adds softly, “is very quiet. I tried asking her how to draw animals better, but she just looked at me confused and didn’t say anything.”

I file this. Seniors Mael and Yure. Avoid.

“But Fleur is in 12A too and she's really nice!” Vivi adds brightly.

Lui makes a sound.

“What?” Vivi says.

Lui sighs, “I'm just saying. Fleur has this... energy.”

“What energy.”

“You know. The energy of someone who was born in a house with a name.”

Vivi stares at her. “What does that mean.”

“It means,” Lui says, gesturing loosely with her free hand, “arrogant rich lady energy. Not mean, just. She looks at you and you can tell she's doing a very fast and very quiet calculation of your net worth. Her smile is icky.”

“That is NOT what Fleur does,” Vivi says, with great offense. “She is my FRIEND. She is lovely. She remembered my birthday and she brought me the exact tea I mentioned one time three months ago.”

“I'm not saying she's evil, I'm just saying she's polished in a way that I personally find exhausting—”

“Don't say mean things about Fleur!”

Elowen, very wisely, says, “I think Fleur is quite kind in her own way.”

“See!” Vivi points at Elowen.

“That is not the defence you think it is,” Lui mutters.

I observe this exchange.

I file it under: Group dynamics. Functional.

As we sit down, I look at my friends' trays.

I look at the tray again.

“Why is mine different?” I ask.

Lui looks over. Her eyebrows go up slightly. “Huh.”

Vivi leans across the table, craning her neck to look. Her eyes go wide with pure delight. “Nepipi, you got PUDDING.”

“Yes,” I say. “Why.”

“I don't know! But that's so cute! You got a special meal!”

“That is not an explanation.”

“Can I have some pudding,” Lui says.

“No,” I say, which surprises me slightly. I don't know why I said it. I haven't even tried the pudding.

“Maybe it’s because of your card?” Elowen asks.

I turn my card over in my hand.

Carena Bjornhelm Ahlquist. SIHS-019-004. Born 10 April 2005.

I look at the back.

I have not looked here before.

I set the card on the table. “What does the zero mean?”

Vivi looks at it. She picks it up, tilts it toward the light, and her brow furrows in the way it does when something is trying to become a thought.

“Ellie,” she says, passing it across to Elowen. “You know about these right? What does it mean?”

Elowen takes the card gently. She looks at it for a moment. Then she looks at her own card and places them side by side on the table.

“So,” she begins, in the soft careful voice she uses when she is explaining something she doesn't want to feel overwhelming, “everyone in Class A has a Level 3A card. It means priority access — library reservations, enhanced meals, early facility access. Things like that.” She touches the symbol on her own card. “It's the standard for students here.”

“And the zero?” I ask.

She pauses. Just briefly.

“Level Zero is different,” she says. “I've only ever read about it in the student governance documents. It means Global Override Access. You can go anywhere in the building. All areas, no restrictions.” She looks up at me. “It's the same level as the Student Council President. And the Vice President.”

The table is quiet for a moment.

“Teacher systems too,” Elowen adds, very gently. “The card would give you access to those as well.”

Level 0. Global Override Access.

Lui leans back. “Cool cool cool. Normal. Totally normal thing for a student to have. Now I know why Carena came here that night, probably fixing stuff.”

I look at my name on the card.

Carena Bjornhelm Ahlquist.

Who exactly is she?

I pick up the pudding.

It is chocolate.

Someone put it on this tray specifically for me. Someone in this school's system knows something about Carena Ahlquist that I do not.

BANG.

A tray hits the table.

I look up.

Brown hair. Sharp face. Two top buttons undone, tie loose at the collar, no blazer. She is standing at the end of our table looking at me with an expression I cannot immediately classify.

She doesn't sit.

She reaches into her bag and pulls out a chessboard. Compact. Magnetic. Travel-sized. She sets it on the table and begins placing pieces without asking, without greeting, without looking at anyone else.

White on my side. Black on hers.

“Neptune,” she says. Not a greeting. More like a conclusion she is testing out loud.

“...You really are still alive.”

“Yes,” I say.

She doesn't respond to that. She just keeps setting up pieces.

I look at the board.

Chess. Sixty-four squares. Sixteen pieces per side. I know the names, the movements, the theory. I know what it is.

What I do not know is what my hands know.

“Medea.” Vivi's voice is careful. “I don't think this is the right time.”

“Noted,” Medea says. She does not stop.

“She has amnesia—”

“I know,” Medea says flatly. “I just want to check.”

She sets the last piece down. She looks at me for the first time directly.

Her eyes are sharp. Clinical. She is not looking at me the way the other students looked at me this morning — like something fragile that survived. She is looking at me the way someone looks at a machine they are about to run a diagnostic on.

She pulls out the chair across from me and sits.

“Move,” she says.

My hand moves toward the king's pawn.

“I know the rules,” I say. “I don't know the rest.”

Medea's expression doesn't change.

But her jaw tightens slightly.

“Show me,” she says.

I move first.

Queen's pawn forward two squares.

Medea responds immediately. Knight development. Nf6.

My hand moves before I can think.

Counter-pressure on the centre. Knight f3.

Another move from Medea, e6

Another from me, c4.

She moved b6.

I moved g3.

Then she stops.

Completely still.

She stares at the board for a long moment.

“What… the fuck,” Medea mutters.

Lui has put her fork down. Vivi is watching Medea with wide eyes. Elowen has both hands around her cup and is very still.

Medea looks at the board. At the moves. At the specific shape we have made in twelve seconds from an empty board.

Her expression is doing something complicated. I watch it happen. The expression from before is still there. But underneath it something colder has settled in. Something more focused.

“Fianchetto on a Queen’s Indian defence,” she says quietly.

I don't know what that means. But my hand had known exactly where to go.

“Is that significant?” I ask.

She doesn't answer.

She looks at the board for another long moment.

Then she begins taking the pieces back off. One by one. She puts the board back in her bag.

She stands up.

She picks up her tray.

“Medea?” Vivi says.

“Leaving,” Medea says.

“But—”

“There's nothing here,” she says. Her voice is flat.

She turns.

She walks towards the back section without looking back.

I watch her go.

I look at the empty space on the table where the board was.

I search the empty room in my head. Medea. The contacts list. The texts.

I lost again.

You did that on purpose.

Rematch. Tomorrow.

Neptune I know you're reading this.

I look at my hand.

Fianchetto? I had not chosen it consciously. My hand had simply gone there.

Which means some part of me still knows how to play.

Which means some part of me knows why she left.

I pick up my pudding.

For once, Lui doesn’t say anything. She just watches Medea walk away.

Vivi is still staring at the door. Her expression is the saddest I have seen it since the hospital.

“Did I do something wrong?” I ask.

Nobody answers immediately.

“No,” Elowen says finally. “That's just Medea. She’ll be back again. Don’t worry.”

“That's just how she is, Nep. Don't take it personally. She doesn't do personal.” Lui says finally.

I look at my spoon.

That is not a complete explanation. But I file it for now.

The pudding is chocolate. It is very good.

I eat it alone.