Chapter 3

“What am I, a human sacrifice?!” “Welp, I’m off. Lots of secretary work to do, you know! I’ll leave you two to introduce yourselves and make friends. I’m counting on you to get the job done right, okay, Fay?” Miranda said, and then, with another smack on the shoulder, she was gone. Get the job done right. She wasn’t talking about teaching Leoleshea, of course, but about spying on her. Fay found himself alone with a god. Just two people, together in a… Wait. Was it right to think of them as “two people” if one of them was a god? Well, Chief Secretary Miranda had talked about them as if they were the same, and if it was good enough for her… “Oh! Umm…” “Hullo, human! And welcome!” The vermilion-haired girl threw herself on the sofa, the hem of her tank top fluttering. “You sit there. I’ll just clear the table.” She set about cleaning up the assortment of dice and game boards. More accurately, she pushed them wholesale onto the floor. Maybe humans and gods just thought of “cleaning” differently. But why was she clearing the table? Was she going to welcome him with tea and snacks? If that was what Fay had been expecting, those expectations were dashed by the next words to come out of her mouth: “Okay! I know it’s kind of sudden, but let’s get started.” “Started on what?” “Oh, come on. What else?” She sat down across from him, her eyes glittering, and spread her arms. “A game! Me versus you.” “…Shoulda guessed,” Fay said with a slight smile. He’d known this “former god” was an avid game player, but even he hadn’t really expected to be challenged to a match the moment they met. “I’m willing to tell you my name. Around the Arcane Court, they call me Leoleshea.” The collection of syllables didn’t mean much to Fay. Did it come from the time of the ancient magical civilization? It sure didn’t sound like a name you heard much these days. “Should I call you Lady Leoleshea, then?” Fay asked. “That’s fine.” “Okay…” Geez. Inside, Fay was smiling dryly. Chief Secretary, you stinker. You know I came back here to play in the gods’ games, and you stick me with this? Looking after a god who had come to the mortal realm? The whole thing had sort of gotten away from him, but there was no turning back now. Especially not after he’d been invited to sit down and play. Fay never backed down from a game—not even one against a god. “Say, uh, Lady Leoleshea?” “Yeah?” “I love games, so this is great and all, but don’t you think we should introduce ourselves a little more?” Miranda had charged Fay with spying on this young woman. That meant information came before games. If he didn’t know who this former god really was, how could Fay hope to spy on her? “Since I’m supposed to be your teacher and all, I thought maybe we could get to know each other…” “That’s exactly what this game is for!” The former-god girl took out a deck of cards. A total of eighty, each inscribed with handwritten characters. Leoleshea spread them faceup on the table so Fay could see what they were. “Huh? Name, age, hometown, gender, hobbies, dreams… Is this…?” “A little something I whipped up in my spare time. I call it Self-Intro Memory.” “That name’s very, uh…descriptive.” Presumably, it was a variation of the game of Memory played with a deck of cards. You flipped over any two cards, and if they had matching numbers, you kept the pair. It was a simple memory game where you attempted to remember the numbers and locations of the various cards. “I get it,” Fay said. “Instead of making pairs of numbers, you’re trying to match self-introduction topics, right?” “Yep. It’s played with the same rules as Memory. For example, if I collect the two ‘hometown’ cards, you have to tell me where you come from. If I don’t manage to find a pair, you don’t have to tell me anything.” “All right.” “But if one person makes a pair, the other person has to answer honestly. That’s the rule.” “Sure, of course.” You couldn’t lie. A game like this couldn’t work without that basic understanding—but it was also perfect for Fay in his role as spy. The god herself was promising not to lie, which meant any kind of question was fair game. “Okay, then. Now you know what topics are on the cards. I’ll turn them over, shuffle them, and put them out…” “Oh, hang on.” “Yes?” “Mind if I shuffle them again?” Fay piled the facedown cards together and then shuffled them once more, so that even he didn’t know which was which. “You put them faceup on the table, right? To teach me the rules?” “Uh-huh. But then I turned them over and… Wait. Don’t tell me…” The vermilion-haired girl’s eyes were wide. “You managed to memorize the locations of all the cards in those few seconds, and then keep track of them when I was shuffling them?” “My bad habit. Ages ago, there was someone who trained me to play games—trained me nearly to death. Pretty much every day, we played games of Memory using ten decks, 540 cards, and we played first to win seven games.” Leoleshea looked at him with her mouth hanging open. For a former god, it was a strikingly human gesture. Then her face broke into a smile, and she exclaimed, “That’s great! You’re awesome. I like you a lot! I adore people who love games from the bottoms of their hearts. What a terrific attitude!” Leoleshea, the dragon god, had grasped the real meaning of what Fay was saying: he wasn’t going to resort to petty cheating like playing Memory when he’d already memorized the cards. It was a statement of intent, an announcement that even in the face of a god, he wanted a fair fight. “You’re not even afraid of a god like me. That’s terrific. In that case…maybe this table is a little cramped for a game like this.” “Huh?” If they weren’t going to play on the table, then where? While Fay was still trying to decide whether to ask, though, the young woman—the god—snapped her fingers. “Float. Initiate spin,” she said. The eighty cards levitated into the air, and then, surrounded by a faint red glow, they began to rotate like a roulette wheel above Fay’s and Leoleshea’s heads. It was psychokinesis, a display of the gods’ power. The cards whirled above them, never staying in the same place for even a second. And that wasn’t all. “Wow! The exact speed and trajectory of every card is slightly different?” Fay said. “Ooh, you’re a quick study,” Leoleshea replied. “Good, good.” She sounded downright thrilled. “Every one of the eighty cards is on a different trajectory, so even I don’t know how they’ll spin. It’ll be more fun this way, right? The idea just came to me!” “I get it…” Fay said. It was 3D Memory, so to speak. In a normal game of Memory, Fay would never have forgotten the location of a given card once it had been turned over, and the same had to be true of this young woman. So she’d added a sort of house rule that meant the precise location of the cards was constantly changing. You might think you knew where a card was, but an instant later, it would be somewhere else. “So we have to memorize not just the locations of the cards, but the angles they’re rotating on?” “Uh-huh. Think you’re up to it?” “Sure am.” “Great! Oh, one more thing. A special original rule of mine for this particular game of Memory. You don’t object, do you?” “Uh… What is it?” “I call it the Absolutely One Turn Only rule.” Leoleshea took out another deck, this time ordinary playing cards. She pulled out two of them—a five and a five. A pair. She handed them to Fay. “Normally in Memory, if you collect a pair, you get another turn, right?” “Sure… I guess that’s how people usually play.” “That rule is out the window. That’s all it means.” So they would alternate turns, whether or not they managed to make a pair on their turn. It was as simple as that. It didn’t strike Fay as the sort of thing most people, let alone a former god, would go so far as to dub a “special original rule.” No, stop! Fay shouted at himself. I get it. In this particular game, that rule could be a real pain in the neck! Ba-dum. His heart started racing with nerves and excitement. It had been so long since he’d felt that way, he’d almost forgotten the sensation. He could feel his body temperature creeping up. “That’s fine,” he said. “Great, even.” He nodded at the girl, who was grinning at him. She knew he knew. This was no ordinary game of Memory. From the moment the Absolutely One Turn Only rule came into effect, the strategy for the game was turned on its head. This game isn’t about memorization—it’s an information-selection exercise where we decide what information to pursue on each turn. Eighty cards—not all of equal value. “Okay, good. Let’s get started, then!” The dragon god, Leoleshea, clapped her hands in excitement. “I’ll let you have the first turn.” Go right ahead, eh? Fay responded by pointing to two cards directly over his head. “Don’t mind if I do, then. I’ll take those two cards… Huh! They turned themselves over.” Indeed, the cards Fay had pointed to flipped faceup in midair. It turned out they weren’t a pair, though. The first turn of a game of Memory was entirely reliant on luck. The chances of making a pair on your first move were less than 2 percent. It just wasn’t going to happen very often. Then there was the issue of what the questions on the cards were. “Name and Blood Type… Do gods even have a blood type?” “My blood runs hotter than lava!” “Come again?” “I’m the very manifestation of flames and blood, taking the form of a dragon. If so much as a drop of my blood were to spill in this building, the whole place would melt into a pile of slag.” “Hold on, that sounds really dangerous!” “If you’d like to know more, then I encourage you to collect the Blood Type cards.” The god called Leoleshea twirled her vermilion hair around her finger and giggled. “Okay, now it’s my turn. Hmm, which cards should I choose…” She studied the possibilities intently. She was sitting on the floor, leaning forward slightly as she looked at her options. “Uh… Y-Your posture…,” Fay said. “Is there a problem?” Leoleshea asked. “Well, not, like, a rules problem or anything, but… Buuuut…” It was all Fay could do to keep his eyes averted. The neck of Leoleshea’s tank top was loose, and when she leaned forward, it hung down, giving him an almost uninterrupted view of her chest. It was worse than that, too. “Let me guess… Gods don’t have any concept of, uh, underwear, do they?” “Underwear? Oh! You know, even once I took on human form, underwear never made any sense to me. Clothes are for covering your body, so why would you wear more clothes under them?” “I guess that’s a, uh, good question…” Fay sure didn’t know how to answer it. But there it was: this former-god-turned-girl was clearly not wearing a bra. Under her tank top, it was all skin. She’d done a proper job of incarnating herself, too, and definitely had some womanly curves. “It just makes it hard to concentrate…” “Oh! Well, we don’t want that. Not being able to concentrate on your game is terrible.” Leoleshea bounced up onto the sofa, pointing at a couple of cards as she went. “That one and that one! Hometown and Age. Aww, not a pair. Okay, your turn.” “I’ll take these two. Ooh! I got the Hometown pair.” So Fay was the first to make a pair. Now Leoleshea would have to tell him about where she came from. “Okay, here goes. Like most gods, I come from Elements, the playground of the gods—the place you humans call the superior spiritual realm. Did you know that because it’s the residence of the gods, humans need a special door to enter?” “Yeah. I was using that door until six months ago.” Humans couldn’t normally enter the superior spiritual realm of the gods. When they took part in the gods’ games, they had to use a special door, something that Fay, as an apostle, knew very well. The critical lesson for him in Leoleshea’s answer had been the honesty of it. “You didn’t think twice about telling me the truth. I’m actually a little surprised,” Fay said. “Well, of course,” Leoleshea said. “That’s the rule in this game. And rules aren’t just constraints.” “They’re for enjoyment?” “Ding, ding! Exactly.” The former-god-girl winked happily. So it went, each of them taking turns, discovering which cards were which, gaining an ever-expanding knowledge of what was where. “I’ll go for… Finances and Hobbies. Miss. I think I saw the other Hobbies card a moment ago, though. You remember?” Leoleshea said. “I think the Hobbies pair is the second card from the back of the four directly behind me, and the third from the right of the six that are flying over the window.” The two cards Fay had named flipped over to each reveal the word HOBBIES. “Wow, nice work!” The Dragon God Leoleshea clapped her hands excitedly. Even though her opponent had scored a pair against her, she seemed as happy as if she’d gotten it herself. She’d been waiting for a human just like this. Her unabashed smile made it clear. “Your answer, then. My hobby is…games!” Fay was dead silent. “It kind of takes the wind out of my sails when you don’t say anything.” “Aw, I was just thinking… Sure. Of course. What else could it be?” A rueful smile flickered across Fay’s face. He’d made a mistake. Privately, he’d been hoping that if this former god had some interest other than games, he might be able to use it to tease out more information about her. As someone who was supposed to be spying on this god, that was the kind of material he wanted. Leoleshea, however, turned out to be all about games after all. If Miranda had been watching the game, though, she might have sat back in amazement. For although ten groups of cards were whirling through the air, as the two players laughed and talked, they were constantly looking each other in the eye. They knew the trajectory and rotational speed of the hovering cards. They constantly calculated when a given card might be behind them or wherever else. “Ooh, I got the Name pair! What’s your name?” “Oh yeah, I guess I never did introduce myself. I’m Fay Theo Philus. Dragged here by Chief Secretary Miranda, as you saw.” “Do you have a nickname?” “Nobody’s ever called me anything but Fay. Huh… I hadn’t considered that the Name cards included nicknames.” It was very appropriate for a game of self-introduction. Part of the strategy was dreaming up what kinds of questions you could ask based on a simple prompt. If your wits were quick enough, you might be able to ask all sorts of things. “My turn. I collected the Gender pair.” “Aww, an adorable girl like me? Do you have to ask?” “That sounded kind of…rehearsed.” “It’s what your human books say. See?” Leoleshea pointed over her shoulder. Behind the sofa were piles and piles and piles of gossip rags, newspapers, manga, novels, history books, scientific research papers, and more. “That’s last week’s reading. I have just as much coming again this week. I’m so eager to learn more about humans.” “You read all that in a week?” Then something occurred to Fay: Leoleshea had been thawed out of her icy sleep just a year ago, yet here she was talking to him as plainly as anything. It should have been surprising. And she obviously learned to read and write pretty well in that time. I guess a god’s learning ability is as divine as everything else about them. Leoleshea was greedily devouring knowledge about humans. Maybe it was all so that she could play games with them. “So that’s how you learned modern language and pronunciation and everything? That’s incredible…” “Verily! I did master it to perfection in the span of a week.” “That’s not perfection! What you just said was definitely weird!” “Well, it’s all good. Anyway, gods don’t technically have genders, but this is the body I ended up in when I incarnated. So I guess I’d say ‘girl.’” “Fair enough…” Once this deity had become the young woman called Leoleshea, she was definitely biologically female. “I’ll show you, if that’ll help. You can see that I’m just like a normal human girl under these clothes.” “Don’t show me that!” Fay yelped, desperately trying to stop her as she began to strip off her tank top. “What’s wrong with you?!” “What do you mean? I was just trying to prove my answer. The rules say I should.” “You can just tell me! That’s enough! Ugh… I’m sweating buckets. You nearly gave me a heart attack…” “Not supposed to take off my tank top. Got it. I’ll just pull these pants down, then…” “That’s even worse! Especially because I know you’re not wearing underwear! Shouldn’t a god have a bit more, you know, dignity?!” He didn’t exactly feel like he was playing against a deity, more like a game-crazy kid. That feeling, though, only lasted the next few seconds.