1. It's Just a Game
"First of all."
"................."
"I understand perfectly well what concerns you, Father."
Because if I claimed I didn't, I'd have to be an idiot. It was the scandal that shook the entire household to its core.
Hand-carving dice myself and teaching everyone a game called Yacht had been fine in itself. In the beginning, most of the servants, unable to adapt to the complicated rules, gave up, and only a handful remained to enjoy the game.
Had it ended there, there would have been no problem. The real trouble was that one of the people who truly came to understand the game happened to be a knight of the family.
──Huh? Couldn't I make use of this?
That thought, and his habit of recommending the game to his fellow knights, was where it all began.
If his purpose had simply been to spread a fun pastime, it never would have been called a major incident. Because that knight's goal, from the very start, was gambling.
To be fair, light gambling with dice or cards had long been quietly tolerated. The stakes never amounted to much, and for knights enduring brutal physical training, it served as a healthy way to blow off steam.
But the moment that knight somehow wedged Yacht into the knights' private wagers, the situation changed entirely.
'Yacht exposes the gap between veterans and complete beginners like nothing else.'
Well, what board game doesn't do that? Though the tendency only grows sharper the more the game demands strategy and brains — and Yacht in particular was stuffed to the brim with little tricks and techniques.
Once the knight realized this, he began sweeping up the other knights' money through Yacht, and word has it the atmosphere gradually overheated.
The same man kept winning, so everyone got worked up, the stakes climbed higher, and fun gave way to money as the whole point of it... something like that.
In the end, the Knight Commander raided one of the gambling sessions and the matter was brought to a close — but by then, some knights had already wagered their family deeds or ten years' worth of salary, and above all, my second older brother had been mixed up in the whole affair. There was no way the Knight Commander could hush it up on his own.
Father, having heard every report, rendered a swift and unflinching verdict. The quietly tolerated gambling between knights would be banned outright. The knight who had spread Yacht would be dismissed. The knights who had joined the games would face pay cuts.
And I — the one who could, in a sense, be called the root of it all, the one who first introduced Yacht... was let off with house arrest.
Though "house arrest" was really just a polite way of saying don't pull anything like this again.
Thanks to that, apart from one personal butler and one personal maid, I couldn't even play board games with anyone anymore.
"Then I suppose I must make sure you understand."
"And there is a lesson I learned from that incident."
"Let's hear it."
"That board games, in and of themselves, are entirely without fault."
"................."
Well, he's giving me the 'go on, then' look, at least.
If I falter here, it's over. I have no choice but to say everything I came here to say.
"Seven servants learned the dice game at the time, including that knight — and only one of them caused any trouble."
"That trouble occurred at all, and that is the problem."
"Of course, I know. But the other six enjoyed board games purely for the fun of it. The only one who ever thought to turn a board game into a gambling tool was that knight."
"We've been over this already."
"So I thought about it. What if that knight had never gambled in the first place?"
"...What are you getting at?"
"Wasn't it an open secret that the knights blew off steam with a little casual gambling? It was precisely because he was a man already inclined to gamble that he never saw the board game as pure entertainment — only as another form of betting."
"Hmm........."
In other words: it's the person who's rotten, not the board game.
As they say, the eye sees only what it wants to see — the point is that trouble arose because he was a gambler to begin with.
'If Yacht had been what started the gambling, I wouldn't have a leg to stand on.'
But the gambling had already been going on long before. Yacht had merely dragged it out into the open.
"But what about now, Father? You've banned gambling, and the knights who gambled back then have all been replaced. Surely no one today would look at a board game and see a wagering instrument."
"And so you think all is well?"
"What's more, unlike the dice game last time, Kylegalli is fundamentally unsuited to gambling. It depends on quick wits and physical ability far more than on luck or the intellect."
It's no accident that cards and dice are the traditional tools of the gambler. Gambling, by its nature, requires an element left to chance.
Crooked games exist, of course, but even then, the whole trick lies in appearing fair. And on that front, Kylegalli fails outright.
Luck or no luck, raw individual skill trumps everything — meaning almost no one, or at best a rare few, would bother trying to gamble on it.
I had said everything I wanted to say. Now there was nothing left but to wait for my father's judgment.
"Is that the end of it?"
"It is."
"Remarkably optimistic."
"................."
"'No one gambles anymore, so it will be fine'? You don't find that a touch too rosy? In the very midst of a forced prohibition on gambling, you would permit a board game that could conceivably be turned to wagering — and you believe no one would exploit it?"
"...That's—"
"If even the smallest possibility remains, then banning board games altogether would settle the matter once and for all. Would it not?"
...He isn't wrong. Allowing Kylegalli brings him no particular benefit, whereas banning board games outright would sever any chance of gambling's revival at the root.
But — this was the first new board game I'd gotten to enjoy in years.
Games like chess were fine. A simple card game could be enjoyed too. Yet to my mind, the true charm of board games lay in their diversity of genre.
Physical, strategy, deduction, luck, psychology, management, reasoning.
Board games exist in every genre imaginable, and only by playing across all of them, I was convinced, could one truly claim to have experienced board gaming.
And for that, if nothing else—
"Then I will stake everything I have."
".............Hm."
"I know. As the third son, I hold a position that can wager little. But even so, I will stake my everything. All that I have been able to do, and all that I will ever be able to do — every last bit of it."
"And in exchange, you want Kylegalli permitted?"
"No. What I want is your permission for board games themselves. Should even one of the board games I create — like that dice game — bring harm to the family, I will give up all of it."
"..........."
I meant every word. If I couldn't play board games at all, then selling myself to the family was the far better bargain.
Life had been mind-numbingly boring even before I turned twenty — and I was supposed to live another few decades without board games?
Left that way, I really would end up drowning in liquor, women, and gambling. It was worth making a genuine, once-in-a-lifetime wager.
"...Why go so far?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"It's nothing more than a board game. A mere pastime, a way to pass the hours. And yet you would stake your life on such a thing. Do you not hear how that sounds — like the reasoning of a madman?"
"................."
'Just a board game.' Honestly, it's a fair point. It was, after all, only a game.
...And yet the reason I could still stake my life on board games was—
"Father, have you ever played a board game?"
"..................."
"You're right that board games are a form of amusement. But the joy they offer runs along an entirely different track. Matching wits with an opponent, trading words with them, locked in fierce competition — and seizing victory at the end of it all. That joy is... special."
"..........Hm."
The sting of losing by a single point after trading strategy with everything you had.
The desperate prayer behind every roll of the dice, chasing one more resource, one more token.
The electric thrill when the plan you plotted actually lands.
The racing heart of those rare moments when you commit everything to chance.
And then — the pure, intoxicating pleasure of winning.
Board games, I believe, are among the finest tools ever devised for connecting with another person. Even the most awkward relationship warms after a few rounds — I'd lived it myself, more than once.
How else did I ever get close to Sally, who was so prickly with everyone?
"I don't want to be the only one who knows that feeling. I want more people to discover the joy of board games — to laugh and cry over them........."
"Hm?"
"...But more than that."
Forget the pretty words. If I'm being honest—
"If I do this... won't more people be around to enjoy board games with me?"
".........What?"
"Honestly, playing with just Charles and Sally is getting dull. My real wish is to enjoy board games with all sorts of different people."
What kind of face was I making as I said it?
A slightly sheepish smile, probably.
And my father — whose expression had been so stern until now — stared at me blankly for a moment, and then—
"Ha, hahaha! So that's it, is it? That's why you'd stake your life?"
"Nothing will come of it that requires putting my life up as collateral, so it hardly matters."
"Haha......... Very well. When my son pleads his case this earnestly, a father can hardly turn a deaf ear."
"Then does that mean.........?"
"I permit it — Kylegalli, and all board games besides. Go on, then. Enjoy yourself to your heart's content."
".......! Thank you, Father!!"
Finally. Finally!
It had been a long road — a truly long one. A dream once bent out of shape by Yacht and the gambling scandal, and now, at last, the chance to begin again.
Ah, the days of living as a board game scrub are over.
Beyond the long stretches of boredom and joyless hours—
It was time to return to being a TRUE board gamer — the kind who blew every last coin of his part-time wages at the board game café......!
*
Click.
William watched his third son leave the office, unable to hold back his laughter, and quietly allowed the corners of his mouth to lift.
"Charles. What do you make of that boy?"
"Sharper and more capable than even you give him credit for, my lord."
"Worth attaching the head butler and an apprentice mage to him personally, is he?"
"I should say more than worth it."
Charles, who had been hiding in the next room, brought in the tea, and William took a quiet sip.
Turning the aroma over on his tongue, he replayed the conversation in his mind.
"A remarkably cunning boy. I pressed him hard, and instead of shrinking, he stood his ground."
"Did he, now?"
"His terms were 'should any of the board games I create bring harm to the family, like that dice game.' A sentence that can be read two ways. Wouldn't you agree?"
"...The first being that harm of any kind to the family would forfeit everything."
"And the second being that only harm of the same kind as that dice game would. He had every reason to be confident."
Under the first reading, I could seize on any pretext whatsoever to take him down.
Under the second, it applied only to harm caused by gambling among the family's own people. And now that permission had been granted, Kyle would surely vet his own household thoroughly — making that outcome all but impossible.
He had left the sentence open to every interpretation, while quietly preparing the narrowest of escape hatches. Rather than impudent, William found it downright endearing.
Kyle was his sore spot — the son he had never been able to do anything for, so unlike his eldest and second sons.
A boy once so deflated by his lack of talent for both the sword and magic had stood before him, head high, eyes shining. How could any father refuse that?
And more than anything else—
"He asked me whether I'd ever played a board game."
"...How did you answer, my lord?"
"I kept my silence, suitably enough. He seemed to have no idea what it meant that dice had turned up in my office drawer."
"Good heavens. Wasn't a household-wide ban on dice handed down? Why, it seems even the lord of the house has been living dangerously."
"Indeed he has."
Rattle.
Sharing a chuckle with Charles, William rolled the dice.
If the boy ever learned that his father had fallen so deeply for the depth of that dice game he'd invented — and had been playing it in secret ever since — what face would Kyle make?
'The look of a man duped? Or would he be delighted that one more person could now share his board games?'
Officially, of course, having been the one to ban dice, William played in secret with Charles alone.
But in his heart, William had agreed with every word Kyle said.
"'Playing with the same old people gets dull'........."
"My lord?"
"Honestly, I feel the same."
Just as William himself had said, a board game was nothing more than a pastime — a way to fill an idle hour.
And yet.
People loved that pastime all the same, and whenever leisure found them, wasn't it the first thing they reached for?
Even William, who strove at all times to act the strict lord of the house, had sunk helplessly into a dice game.
After a moment, he turned his gaze from the dice to the bell and the stack of cards sitting on his desk.
"Kylegalli, is it."
"A remarkably polished game. It has a different character from Yacht entirely. Whether the young master agonized over it for years I cannot say, but a genius he most certainly is."
"I tried it alone earlier — it was quite fun, I'll admit. Still, this dice game suits my tastes better."
He simply preferred strategy and a turning mind to the exercise of the body, that was all.
A matter of taste, nothing more.
"It would be nice to play with Kyle myself someday."
"If you wish it, you could do so this very moment."
"And where would that leave a lord's dignity? As you say, if Kyle is the clever boy I believe him to be, he'll spread board games far and wide. I need only approach him when he does."
"Understood, my lord."
"Speaking of which — since the topic's come up, shall we play a round? Will you indulge me?"
"But of course."
"Excellent. I'll roll first."
Rattle.
Five sixes. A casual throw of the dice.
For an instant, William's face split into a truly radiant smile.
"A Yacht on the very first roll! What luck."
"Congratulations. It seems I shall have to try harder myself."
It was a fact that only Charles would ever know —
that William's smile, in that moment, looked remarkably like Kyle's whenever the boy played a board game.
Like father, like son, indeed.
Smiling along with his lord, Charles threw the dice.
"Impossible! A Yacht for you as well.........?"
"Pure luck."
...While using just enough aura to keep it from ever being noticed.
A master was a master — but when it came to wins and losses, the dice ruled all.