Board Games Beat the Spirits
'Lightning spirit. Water spirit. Wind spirit. Earth spirit. And—water spirit again.'
"This one is... the Lightning Spirit."
"No, it isn't."
"...Then I shall place it before me."
And now, on top of everything else, a Lightning Spirit card.
Raysia had called every card correctly, six times in a row.
Had that been all, one might have written it off as extraordinary luck—
But that haughty bearing, and those answers given without a moment's hesitation... Someone surrendering herself wholly to the flow of chance and choosing blindly could not have looked more different from the way she'd acted only moments ago.
My instincts—sharpened by countless games against countless players—were whispering to me. Lady Raysia was cheating.
'...And if she is, then the culprit is obvious.'
[Grrrr...]
[Trot-trot?]
[Meow.]
[Ting... a-ling...]
Spirits were even now crowding around the table where Raysia and I sat. Most likely she was sharing their sight, or having them whisper what my cards were.
Of course, I couldn't be certain yet. Her attitude had shifted in the space of a moment, and it really could have been pure luck.
But.
If she truly had played a board game with a cheat like that. And judging by that proud posture, if she had enjoyed it—
"................."
...No. It was still too early to say. Best to confirm a little more first.
"This one is... the Wind Spirit."
"Correct!"
"...And with that, I've lost."
"Which means, naturally, that I've won."
Thirteen correct answers in a row now.
Every correct call sent the turn right back to me, and in the end not a single card had been placed before Raysia. In front of me, on the other hand, sat three or more of every kind of spirit—and the Wind Spirits had finally piled up to four.
Did she think I wouldn't notice something so strange? Raysia's face brimmed with nothing but superiority and intoxication born of victory. As if she craved victory itself, hungered for it.
'It's not as though I've never played with knowledge of my opponent's cards.'
But only when they'd blundered and let me glimpse one by accident—and I had never once used it against them. More often than not, I actually played to their advantage. Board games should be fun regardless of who wins or loses. That was my creed.
Not that I had any intention of forcing that belief on anyone else, mind you.
Had I lost to luck or skill, I could have enjoyed even that. Right now, though, I wasn't enjoying a single thing.
In a way, one could call it a blessing that Raysia had only ever played against spirits.
"You said one more round, didn't you? I'll be generous—one more game. Not that it will matter. I'll be the one winning anyway."
"...Then, my lady. How about we try a different set of rules?"
"A different set of rules?"
"Yes."
In the end, I played board games because they were fun, and I spread them for exactly that reason. Losing one-sidedly to cheating—if not to luck or skill—was hardly an experience that left you feeling good.
Besides, played that way, Raysia would never taste what board games were truly about. Kylegalli made such cheating impossible, so she must have enjoyed that one purely; Spirit Poker, with spirits lurking on all sides, might well have been a case of cheating she never actually wanted.
'...Though for all that, she showed not a hint of hesitation about it.'
Either way, another round would simply become another exercise in cheating. So I proposed a different set of rules—one that shut out any chance of the spirits peeking at the cards.
"We play with every card face down."
"Pardon? That's..."
"Honestly, holding all 27 cards in hand is a bit much, isn't it? We split nothing between us—every card stays face down on the table, unseen from the very start."
"Without looking...?"
"Of course, that means adding another losing condition. On top of the usual ones—since it's pure randomness now, gathering one card of every spirit also means you lose."
"................"
"Well? What do you say?"
I hadn't just invented this on the spot. Nor was it the original rule of Cockroach Poker, though. It was simply one of the house rules my friends and I used to play all the time.
With no one able to check the cards, everything ran on perfectly pure chance—and since a plain lie was nearly impossible to catch, most any card could be called. But there was an extra rule: after a few turns passed, you had to pick a few of the face-down cards at random and flip them over as they lay. There were only eight of each kind, after all, and counting up the revealed cards to slowly narrow the odds was where the charm of this house rule lived.
It was a decently fun rule, but so absurdly luck-driven that too many rounds of it wore you out. In the end it was chance mechanics bolted onto Cockroach Poker, and the two didn't blend all that well.
Even so, I had exactly one reason for proposing it to Raysia: to clear the air.
'If she learns to enjoy the games themselves, she'll have no need to cheat.'
This house rule was the one we'd reach for when our heads ached from too many strategy games, or when we'd worn ourselves out on mind games—a quick breather between the heavy stuff. With nearly everything left to luck, it produced plenty of hilarious moments, and since its foundation was Cockroach Poker, a masterpiece, the basic fun came guaranteed.
This wasn't a tired or worn-out moment by any means, but if the game rested on chance, cheating through the spirits would be impossible.
If this let Raysia feel the joy of many different board games—
"—I won't. I don't want to."
"...I beg your pardon?"
"Those rules... I hate them. Let's do it the way we were."
At those words, I could only freeze.
Of course I would, hearing that—
"My lady."
"Why do we have to change the rules at all? There's no need. Or at the very least, let me hold the cards in my hand..."
"................"
...So it was intentional.
It wasn't that the spirits had been coerced into telling her. She had peeked at my cards of her own will.
Why, though. Why on earth?
The moment it became certain that she had cheated by her own choice, I felt my head go cold.
'Was Raysia ever actually enjoying the board games at all?'
She'd played Kylegalli all night long—so why would she only want Spirit Poker under conditions that allowed cheating? Kylegalli made that kind of cheating impossible too.
Then it came back to me, what the tiger and the wind horse had said.
'They told me Raysia was unusually obsessed with winning.'
How shocked had I been, hearing she'd racked up a winning streak of fifty straight games at Kylegalli? I'd even wondered whether those absurdly unrealistic victories were thrown matches—though I'd never asked.
What was the truth, I wondered.
"My lady."
"Yes...?"
"Why do you play board games?"
"...........?"
Yes, I knew it was an abrupt question. I knew it wasn't the sort of thing someone who had barged in uninvited, demanding a game, ought to ask.
But I wanted to hear it from Raysia's own lips. What board games meant to her.
"Well—to win, obviously."
"To win."
"Winning feels good, doesn't it? Isn't that what they're for?"
She wasn't wrong. The pleasure of victory was an essential part of the fun of board games.
And yet.
"Is that victory worth chasing through thrown matches and outright cheating?"
"......Pardon?"
"I know you've been watching my cards through the spirits."
"Wh-Wh-What—!?"
Figures.
Only now did it dawn on me: Raysia was terrible at hiding her emotions or putting on an act. It had been that way from the moment I first entered the room, and when she'd kept calling cards with unnatural accuracy too. Even during Spirit Poker I could see straight through her—in fact, I'd deliberately thrown a few calls because of it.
Part of me had wondered whether even that was performance... but thinking about it, it made perfect sense. If you lived among spirits, there was never any need to hide or fake your feelings. Even when occasions arose, they couldn't have been frequent.
And so Raysia was hopelessly, catastrophically bad at psychological warfare. Her violent fluster right now was part of the same pattern.
'Maybe that's why she loved Kylegalli.'
But... it was precisely that reaction that put me at ease. If she had truly pursued victory and nothing else, she would have kept up a shameless front even in this moment.
The motive behind her cheating had been a pure(?) longing to win. All things considered, that was a mercy.
I gave the flustered Raysia a faint smile.
"My lady. Are you afraid of losing? This is nothing more than a board game."
"................."
"Did you want victory that badly?"
"...I never."
"............."
"I never wanted to lose. Not ever again."
"...I see."
—My daughter... Raysia has been hurt far more deeply than you can imagine. Little by little, she lost her ability to trust people, until she would speak to no one but the spirits.
I remembered the Duke's words.
I didn't know what had happened to Raysia. She would never tell me, either.
But the result of it all was a girl who feared contact with people—and feared defeat.
And so she had cheated. Hiding it was clumsy, but she had known full well it was the wrong thing to do.
Confronted with it point-blank, she bowed her head low, and—
"I'm... sorry."
"................."
She offered an apology.
It may have looked like the obvious thing to do, but that was only true from my own standpoint. Raysia, who shunned people and lived only among spirits, found dealing with them difficult and awkward. Knowing her past—how deeply people had wounded her—it was more true still.
Which meant that apology was, for Raysia, also the product of genuine courage.
...I'd known something similar when I was young, after all.
I did not rage at her for cheating, nor demand contrition in exchange for forgiveness. I simply kept waiting for her.
"...I asked the spirits. To peek at the cards. I told them I wanted to win."
"It showed. Far too much."
"It did? I had no idea... but, now that I think about it."
"Now that you think about it...?"
"...In the end, it was no different from what those people did. How stupid of me."
I didn't ask who those people were.
I simply faced her quietly.
"My lady, this is nothing but a board game. It does not decide the fate of the world, does not settle anyone's ending, is not a great choice in someone's life. Board games exist for one reason: to be enjoyed."
"................"
"So tell me. Kylegalli, Spirit Poker—did you enjoy them?"
"I... did enjoy them."
"Did you really?"
"................"
"In the end, agreeing to another round of Spirit Poker came from the same place, didn't it? The certainty that peeking at the cards meant you couldn't possibly lose."
A sharp little breath—
As if I'd struck the very heart of it, the color drained from Raysia's face. At the same time, I felt the gaze of every spirit in the room settle on me.
I wasn't merely scolding her. I was simply making the most of this chance.
Because I, too, wanted to keep playing board games with Lady Raysia.
"That's..."
"What I want is for you to enjoy board games for their own sake. Whatever your past holds, whatever your memories, whatever your trauma—it doesn't matter. I want the joy of a board game to let you forget it, even for a little while."
"...You're wrong."
Raysia had listened in silence all this while, but at that, she lifted her head—as if that alone she refused to accept.
"You only came because Father told you to. That's the truth of it."
"It is."
"To drag me out of this spire. To tear me away from the spirits' embrace. That's the only reason you came all this way and asked me to play games, isn't it!?"
As if that were the one thing that could never be touched, Raysia had flared up before I knew it.
The Duke had tried countless methods to draw her out. From his standpoint, every one of them was for his daughter's sake—but how would they have looked to Raysia, walled up in the spire with her spirits because of the wounds people had given her?
The way she had treated me when I first entered the room made more than enough sense now.
"In the end, you're exactly the same. Dressing up pretty words to trick me!"
"I'm not."
"That's a lie—"
"Whether it's a lie or not, the tiger and the wind horse can prove it."
"—I'm sorry?"
Raysia tried not to believe my words, but I had reliable reinforcements on my side.
They would remember the tiger and the wind horse.
[Grrrr...]
"You two... really? Was he telling the truth?"
After all, the Duke had told me from the very first day to simply go home. Had I gone then, I could have pocketed a modest reward and returned to my house to focus on spreading Kylegalli.
And yet I had spent day after day mingling with the spirits, all to meet Raysia—because—
[Trot-trot.]
"...Why? Why? What on earth for? You wanted a bigger reward, or—was it me you were after? Wasn't it!?"
Raysia's distrust of humanity ran bone-deep. I would never have made it inside the spire in the first place if not for the tiger and the wind horse's goodwill.
And I had no cure for that distrust. I was no physician, no counselor.
All I had was—
"I came to play board games."
"............Pardon?"
"The Kylegalli games with the spirits were more fun than I'd expected, and I wanted to play board games with the lady who'd played Kylegalli straight through the night. I made Kylegalli, after all. And they told me you were my most devoted fan—how could I not want to meet you?"
"That's... all?"
"What more would there be?"
At that—answering a question with a question—
Raysia glared at me, wearing an expression that said she simply could not understand.
"It's just... a board game."
"My lady. What are the spirits to you?"
".........Family."
[Meow...]
[Ting... a-ling...]
[...Wheee.]
She wasn't without a family of blood, but Raysia called the spirits her true family.
How much past, how much feeling, must have been packed into that single word—calling the spirits family?
Just as Raysia felt that profound a bond with her spirits—
"That's what board games are to me."
"Board games... are family...?"
"That's simply how the words come out. Either way, that's what they are to me."
In high school I'd played with friends, after school with strangers, at home with my family.
That was how I had lived; board games had been the daily rhythm of my life.
At that answer, given without a flicker of hesitation, Raysia searched my face intently. As if determined to drag my lie into the light.
Not once, until this very moment, had any words of mine been able to wash away her suspicion.
"You said you'd play one more round of Spirit Poker, remember? Does that offer still stand?"
"Ah...?"
"If you'd rather not, that's fine too."
Even if she couldn't trust people—surely she could still trust board games.
Because board games had been what soothed every one of my memories, my reminiscences, my pain. Because of that, I had no choice but to speak to Raysia of board games.
It was all I had.
"...Board games."
I had said everything I wanted to say. And all of it had been the truth.
But no matter how sincere I was, sincerity can land differently with someone else. What if Raysia refused? Then that would be that.
I had come because I heard she loved board games enough to play them all night; I wanted us to enjoy playing together. I had absolutely no intention of force-feeding board games to someone who didn't want them.
"...Kylegalli. Spirit Poker..."
Lady Raysia's face was tangled, confused, trembling, utterly unreadable.
Still with her head lowered, the spirits clasped tight in her arms—
"...Please. Go back down. For today."
I see.
Well then, nothing to be done.
"Understood. Thank you for taking the time—"
"Today! Go down, but..."
".........Pardon?"
Today, he says.
Could it be—
"...Come back tomorrow. And even then, we'll play just one game."
Raysia's expression, as she gave that answer, was unreadable.
Her head was still bowed, buried among the spirits.
But that didn't matter. There was only one answer I could give.
"I'll be counting the hours until tomorrow."
"..................."
As long as Raysia didn't refuse.
Until she truly came to enjoy board games.
Again. And again.
"So the spirits..."
"If they're not joining the game, then let's have them watch quietly from the sidelines."
".........Yes."
Ah—yeah, no. That's obviously not going to work. Nice try, sneaking it past me so slyly.