New Challenger
The special, complicated, difficult thing that only Rain could do was chess.
"Hmm... so if this goes here..."
I studied the pieces on the board and smoothed a hand along my jaw. Play this right, and I might actually win again. The moment drew tight. I ran a few simulations through my head, then took a piece and moved it—calm, steady, exact. It settled with a soft click.
"Checkmate."
"Waaah! I lost!"
What had begun as chess had become a bet paid in forehead flicks, and the winner of that nerve-fraying little penalty game was me.
"Uuugh, Lady Ira, you're way too good..."
"Flattery won't save you. Forehead. Now."
My finger snapped against her brow.
"Ow!"
Rain rubbed at the spot, already red and swelling, and pulled a face like she might cry. I don't let people off for things like that. A penalty has to be carried out properly, doesn't it?
Current record: five to zero.
Chess is pretty fun when you play someone around your own level. Calling it the same level after five straight wins is ridiculous, I'll grant you—but Unit 1 is so far beyond me we might as well be playing different games, and the other summons are too dim to learn the rules at all. Among the people I actually know, an opponent who sits at my eye level the way Rain does is hard to come by.
Evelyn feels like she'd be good at this sort of thing, too. More than anything, though, I'm genuinely awful, so unless my opponent learned chess about five minutes ago—Rain's level—a real game never even gets off the ground. I don't know just how disgraceful our play looked, but Unit 1, who had been watching, eventually couldn't stand it and stormed out. To anyone who actually knew chess, I imagine we put on a match rotten enough to curdle the eyes.
"Good game, Rain. One last round? This time, one flick for every piece you lose."
"Okay! I won't lose so easily this time!"
Rain was already resetting the board as if it were second nature. At first she had mixed up the knight and the bishop, or set the queen and king on the wrong squares, but five games in, it was starting to look familiar. When I suggested we raise the stakes, she nodded without a second thought. She was enjoying the bet in her own way.
Rain had more of a competitive streak than she let on. Honestly, going back and forth with kids like her is the most fun part—even if, so far, I'm the one winning every time. Next I ought to try making something besides chess. A card game, maybe. Rain would call anything fun.
From what she had told me, she had hardly ever played games like this at the Church. There were too many fixed routines, too many rules that had to be kept; there simply hadn't been time. So when I said we could do nothing in particular and just mess around together, she had been delighted enough to jump. Kids are supposed to be like that—pure little things who love to play. The Church really is hopeless.
Once Rain finished setting the board, she opened, by our rule that the loser of the last game moves first, with a pawn two squares forward. I answered by advancing the pawn across from hers, and slipped a question in as I did.
"Rain. Now that I think of it."
"Yes? What is it?"
Sit two people down over a board game and you get more time to talk than you would expect. Thanks to that, I had picked up how the Church treated Rain, and what they had done to her there, without particularly trying. What snagged on me most was that she had learned to read at the Church.
"You said you learned your letters there, right?"
"Yes. They forced me to read the scriptures."
"Then you could read a book to me, too?"
According to Rain, every morning the moment she opened her eyes she was dragged into a mandatory class. And the lessons? How to read scripture. How to put doctrine into practice. Dry, theoretical talk about faith. Ridiculous people—committing those acts at night, then spending the day putting on a holy face. Thanks to all of that, the Church was now fixed in my mind as a den of lunatics I could tear apart and still not feel satisfied. Even so, one thing they had done for Rain would be useful, to her and to me.
She looked a little thrown, and murmured.
"I don't know... I've never looked at any book but scripture..."
"They're still letters. The principle ought to be about the same, right?"
As I said it, I drew out the botanical guide I kept tucked against my chest and held it out to her. A thick plant guide suddenly appearing from my clothes seemed to startle her—the look of someone who could not begin to guess how long I had been carrying it. The truth was, from the very beginning. Ever since I found this guide, I had not once let it leave my person.
Why haul it around everywhere? Of all the books I owned, this one had the most pictures. When I was bored, flipping through it was a decent way to pass the time. My version of short-form videos, more or less. Still, I had been looking at nothing but the pictures for so long that the actual words were starting to itch at me... and now that Rain could read, of course I was looking forward to it.
"This is..."
Rain took the guide and turned the pages one by one, wonder moving over her face.
"Well? Think you can read it?"
"Probably...?"
A botanical dictionary, every plant drawn down to the last detail. Maybe because so much of it was new to her, she could not pull her eyes away for a while. Then she seemed to come back to herself, looked at me, and asked.
"But why this...? Lady Ira, did you want me to copy it out for you?"
"No. Read it to me."
"What?"
She stared, startled, as if that had not been what she expected at all.
"Lady Ira... you can't read?"
"...That's right."
A little embarrassing, sure, but what can you do? I can't read it. That's why I'm trying to learn, isn't it? Learning starts when you admit you don't know! Feeling called out, I raised my voice at her for no good reason.
"The letters here just aren't the ones I know! I never had a chance to learn them separately!"
"Oh... I see! I knew there had to be some reason!"
The excuse must have landed. I watched the spark of suspicion in her eyes snuff out all at once.
"If that's how it is, then of course I should help! I'll read it to you!"
Pure, and bright with energy. Good. I would forgive her for suspecting I was an idiot, if only for a moment.
But—
My finger snapped down.
"Ow! What was that for all of a sudden?!"
"I took your piece."
"Whaaat?! No, that's cheating! You just pulled my attention somewhere else!"
"You've still got to focus on the game, don't you?"
What, you can't multitask? I am a multitasker by nature. Two things at once, minimum—eat while I game, surf the web, dump garbage posts on the forums. If you don't live at least that efficiently, a shut-in hikikomori starts drowning in the futility of existence.
While I was cackling away, Rain puffed her cheeks as if she were furious, then suddenly moved a piece, took my pawn, and struck straight back.
Her finger snapped against me.
"Ow!"
"Revenge!"
Huh? That one had some feeling behind it, didn't it?
A little later, the last chess game came to an end.
Evelyn, back from her usual patrol, took in the state of our foreheads and looked thoroughly thrown.
"...Did the two of you fight?"
"We... bet flicks."
"...Even so, it doesn't look like you were only hit on the forehead."
"..."
I had miscalculated. I never should have made the last round one flick per piece. I had overlooked the fact that in chess, even the winner almost never finishes with all sixteen pieces still standing. I won in the end, but when I counted the hits, winner and loser were not all that different... And because my forehead hurt too much to keep taking them there, we switched to wrists, then backs, then calves, until I was simply someone who had been hit more or less everywhere.
Ugh. Now that I had been on the receiving end, Rain's hand was sneakily mean. Because she is a demon, maybe? I was starting to understand why people keep their guard up around them.
"Hmm... if you weren't fighting, that's a relief, but still..."
Honestly, it had nearly gone the way Evelyn feared. Feelings had almost gotten hurt. By the time we came back to ourselves, the air had gone awkward enough that this was how we were sitting. Once Evelyn settled between us and started talking, though, that stiffness loosened in no time.
After we had each worked a little of the knot out of our chests, I was the one who edged over first. I gave Rain a light poke.
"Hey, Rain. Should we go read the plant guide now...?"
"Yes, I'd like that. Shall we read it in the chair that looks out on the garden?"
"Mm. Yeah. Good idea."
"Even so, no more bets that involve hitting, from now on. Understood?"
"Yes...," Rain and I said together.
That was when Evelyn lifted an arm.
"Wait, you two. Hold still for a moment."
"...Yes?"
Why all of a sudden? Evelyn was not the type to shout freeze and start a game for no reason, though, so Rain and I stopped cold, just as she had asked.
Then, from outside the mansion, a presence began to announce itself. Faint, but unmistakable—the beat of hooves, and the click of armor shifting at the joints. Who would come toward the house armed like that? The question had barely formed when Rain, looking out the window, went white to the lips.
"What?!" Evelyn and I burst out together.
The Church had found this place?