The G Game

by bluemicrocosm

-- Chapter 5 --

October 2, 7:00 a.m.

His room is birdless the next morning. Lediv wanders the house discreetly, before arriving at the breakfast table with a dismal prediction of how much damage D can cause. He wonders if the contract has any form of insurance. Probably not.

“Good morning, Lediv,” says William, looking up briefly from his newspaper and smiling at his son’s unfailing impeccability. Ironed black slacks. A navy blue jacket with the school’s emblem over the left breast. A dark turtle neck replaces the usual collared shirt, but even so, his son wears the academy uniform better than all the other children.

“Morning, Dad.” Lediv pauses and peers over the low wall partitioning the kitchen and dining room. His mother’s back sways as she bustles over the stove, the loud sizzling of bacon drowning out the morning radio.

Keeping Geneva in his peripheral vision and fingering the collar of his turtle neck, Lediv says, “Hey, Dad.”

“Hm?”

When Lediv doesn’t speak, William lowers his paper again to regard his son questioningly.

Lediv pulls down his collar.

William stares at the white mark stamped perfectly onto tan skin like a royal seal, his face robbed instantly of curiosity and awareness. The transformation is startling, similar to a patient falling into a trance at the hypnotist’s word.

Lediv’s heart skips a beat. Pressing the start button on his stop watch, he quickly spares his mother another wary glance. When Geneva remains distracted, Lediv says quietly, “Take out the sports page of the newspaper, turn it underside down, and fold it into a crane.”

Wordlessly, without so much a twitch of facial muscles to convey a sense of understanding, William extracts the sports page and inverts it. Then he hesitates, fingers holding the corners of the page. He begins to bring one corner up to make a diagonal fold along the paper, stops, and puts the corner down.

Lediv can feel his palms sweating as he monitors his father’s impassive uncertainty and his mother’s oblivious cooking. His finger hovers over the stop button, the digits on the watch display changing rapidly in a blur of black, jumping from two minutes to two minutes and thirty seconds to three minutes.

Come on, do something, Lediv urges, glaring at the hands that fiddle with the entertainment page.

From the corner of his eye, he can see the plate of bacons piling and his mother returning the package of frozen bacons to the fridge. It will take about two minutes for the bacons sitting in the pan to be fried.

Three minutes sputter into four.

The instruction to stop perches on the tip of Lediv’s tongue, ready to leap out once his mother collects the last of the bacons.

Suddenly, William blinks, confusion animating his face like a puppet coming to life.

Lediv immediately hits the stop button, sweeping his eyes casually over his watch.

Meanwhile, William frowns at the entertainment page in his hand, as if he isn’t quite sure why he is holding the one section of the newspaper that he despises. Turning to his son, he asks, “What I was doing a minute ago?”

“Reading the paper?” Lediv offers, putting enough perplexity into his voice to encourage his father to explain the situation himself.

“That’s what I thought. But I can’t for the life of me remember pulling out the entertainment page.”

“Could you have misread the headlines and mistaken it for a different section?”

“Maybe,” William says doubtfully. He rubs his chin in consideration, as he tries to recall the last few minutes. “Except I don’t even remember pulling it out.”

“Looks like you’re getting old,” jokes Lediv.

Nearing the table enough to hear his comment, Geneva sets down plates of bacons and toast, asking, “What did your father do now?”

Lediv grins. “Dad’s losing his memory.”

“It must’ve been subconscious, like flushing the toilet. Sometimes you just don’t remember trivial things like that,” says William, though he sounds like he’s trying to convince himself.

Geneva seats herself next to her husband. The radio drones in the background, bits and bites of the weather forecast drifting to the breakfast table. “Oh, Lediv, you never told me how you did on the SAT. It’s been two months. The results should have come out, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well?”

His mother ignores her own plate as she waits with eager eyes. Lediv cuts his bacon into three pieces, forks one into his mouth, and chews slowly to draw out the anticipation. Then, nonchalantly, he says, “2400.”

“A perfect score?” Without waiting for Lediv’s confirmation, Geneva grips her husband’s arm and exclaims, “Did you hear that, honey? Lediv got a perfect score!”

“Congratulations, son!” William beams.

“Thanks.” Lediv forces a smile, years of practice having taught him exactly how many muscles to pull and how long to hold them for a natural appearance. Rather than a sense of pride, which is what his parents are shamelessly conveying, he is more indignant that they hadn’t expected him to do well. It’s just the SAT. The questions were ridiculously easy; he finished in half the allocated time for each section and spent the rest playing a game of chess in his head. Besides, Kiros scored the same, and that’s the minimum standard Lediv will observe.

“Do you want anything, Lediv?” his mother asks. “A new phone? A laptop? Or maybe that videogame you young people are so crazy about – what’s it called? World of…”

“It’s okay, Mom. I don’t need anything.”

A burst of trumpets from the radio saves Lediv from his mother’s doting.

“Breaking news, from your number one news source! Earlier this morning, the body identified as the serial killer Roge Ferand has been found in a ditch near the city landfill. Donald Yeller, a worker at the landfill, stumbled across the body today when he drove by. A knife was lodged in Ferand’s chest and is currently being examined by forensics. It is suspected that the bottom layer of blood on the blade does not belong to Ferand and may in fact be linked to the body of Serene Placer, who was found approximately an hour later in an alley on 3rd Avenue, between E and F Street. Ferand himself may have committed suicide after killing her, making her the seventh murder that he has committed…”

The reporter goes on to list Ferandez’s crimes and Serene Placer’s background.

“My goodness! Who would have thought that a criminal would commit suicide!” exclaims Geneva. “You think his conscience got to him?”

“Not likely,” snorts Lediv. Pushing his chair back, he announces, “I’m done.”

Turning away from the dining table, he catches the tail end of a white comet flying into the kitchen.

“Let me get your plate for you,” says Geneva as she starts to rise from her chair.

“No, I got it.” Lediv hastily collects his breakfast utensils and dumps them into the dish washer. He glares at the dove perched on the microwave.

“Where were you?” he mouths.

D shifts her attention from the stack of French toast on the table to offer Lediv a cursory look. ‘Out. Watching you sleep is dreadfully unappealing.’

About to retort, Lediv realizes that D never moved her mouth – or beak, in this case. But the sound of her voice is undeniable, as if he is hearing her through invisible headphones.

Hesitantly, he thinks, ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I’m hungry.’

The golden beak seems to curve into a smirk when Lediv’s eyes widen in disbelief.

‘Why didn’t you tell me you were telepathic?’ he asks.

‘You never asked.’

‘How was I supposed to suspect that you can read other people’s thought and project your own to them?’

‘If I can increase life spans and turn into avian creatures, then why not telepathy too?’

Lediv has to admit, D brings up a good point.

‘Well, at least this makes our communication less conspicuous,’ he says grudgingly. When D eyes the toast again, he sighs. ‘Are you serious? Do you even need to eat?’

‘Regardless of my needs, I enjoy the pleasure of food. Now, are you going to be a good host, or do I have to help myself?’

‘Are you going to swoop into the dining room and snatch a piece of toast with your claws?’ Lediv thinks snidely.

‘Is that a challenge?’ D bristles her feather, appearing quite affronted that Lediv underestimates her pillaging skills.

“No, I’ll get it. I’m always a gracious host,” mutters Lediv. He doesn’t want to explain to his parents why there is a dove in the house.

Cramming a few pieces of toast into a sandwich bag, Lediv says casually, “It’s for a science experiment. We need food samples to test the effectiveness of amylase.”

As long as the reason is for educational enrichment, his parents will agree to anything. They will probably let him take the whole damn plate if he asked.

At the front door, Lediv suddenly calls, “Mom, can you bring me a sheet of paper towel? It’s for the experiment.”

“Here you go, honey.”

“Thanks.” Tucking the square of paper towel into his pocket, Lediv slips his finger beneath the collar of his turtle neck as if to scratch his neck, watching his mother’s gaze unconsciously following his hand. “You should take a break from work today.”

Puzzled, Geneva shifts her focus from Lediv’s hand to his face. “Why would I want to do that, dear? I’m swamped. My entire day is booked with appointments.”

“That’s exactly why. You shouldn’t overwork yourself. Everyone deserves a break now and then.”

“You’re such a sweetie to look after your mom. But don’t worry, I know my limits.”

Geneva looks at Lediv’s neck again. She opens her mouth to say something, but Lediv beats her to it.

“I have to go. Have a nice day at work. Bye!”

The walk to school takes approximately fifteen minutes and traverses a small, wooded park. Here, the trees weep tears of gold and red. Half-naked branches stretch beseechingly into the sky, vain pleas to a wind determined to rob the last of their summer beauty. Here, despite the trees and undergrowth, all is illuminated in gossamer light, secrets and nuances brought into visibility. Here, the morning silence is disrupted by two pairs of footsteps crunching the leaves.

“Well?”

Lediv tosses the sandwich bag into D’s outstretched hands. “Enjoy.”

While D nibbles on the toast, Lediv smugly tosses the paper towel into a trash can. His experiments to test the rules of the Alef worked perfectly. From this morning’s observations, he has concluded several restrictions:

1) The subject must see the Alef before the power can take affect.

2) Instructions must be within the capability of the subject or else they will not be executed. His father cannot fold origami to save his life, and not even the power of the Alef can grant him that knowledge.

3) Instructions must be given within 4 minutes and 30 seconds of the when the Alef is first viewed, but the actual execution can exceed that time constraint. His father’s brief fiddling of the newspaper suggests that if instructions are not accompanied by a specified time, then the power of the Alef lasts for 4 minutes and 30 seconds. However, Ferand’s suicide occurred at least an hour after he saw the Alef (approximately the time it takes to walk from the alley to the landfill), indicating that the execution of commands is not subject to the period when instructions must be given.

4) A subject may only be influenced once. His mother complied last night when she saw the Alef for the first time. The second time, at his suggestion to take the day off, she is unaffected.

Frowning, Lediv re-considers his third inference. If execution is not bound by time, then can he simply demand for someone’s eternal obedience? And if the Alef is technically still in affect between when the command is given and performed, then can he continue to give instructions past the 4 minute and 30 second mark?

“Smoke is coming out of your ears.”

“What?” Lediv scowls at the amused smile behind D’s half-eaten toast.

“What are you thinking so hard about?”

Lediv doubts that D will provide anything substantial, but it doesn’t hurt to try. “The rules of the Alef.”

“Can’t help you there,” says D dismissively.

On second thought, he should know not to waste his breath.

A stone bridge divides the wood and encompassing city, straddling a brook whose gurgle is drowned in the rush of morning traffic. Who built the bridge, no one knows, nor is there a date inscribed in its weathered surface; but its variegated pebble walls and crumbling steps harkens to a time before the city’s birth.

When Lediv spots a blue coat through the grove of trees, he says, “You’d better finish eating and turn into a bird again. I would rather not have to explain to anyone why I know a red-eyed, silver-haired, androgynous non-human who dresses like a priest.” He glances at his watch. “In fact, you have exactly one minute.”

“Until what?” D chews lazily, as if Lediv didn’t just rush her.

“Until my friend –”

At the sight of a familiar mop of black hair rising to the top of the bridge, Lediv snatches the toast from D's hands, hissing, “Leave!”

Ignoring her indignant protests, Lediv puts on a confident smile as he waves to the figure now atop the bridge.

"Hey, what's up? You're early," says Lediv.

"Or maybe you're late,” smiles Kiros, except his attention is settled on something behind Lediv.

Following his gaze, Lediv sighs inwardly when he sees D fly off into the woods.

“I didn’t know we had doves around here,” Kiros muses. His eyes flick down to the last bite of toast clutched in Lediv's hand. "Huh, it's unusual for you to bring breakfast out."

Lediv shrugs. It is easier to let Kiros come up with his own reasons.

"Where were you last night? I called, but your phone was off.”

"I forgot to charge it yesterday and didn’t know it was out of power until this morning," says Kiros. "Why? Did something happen?"

"I nearly died."

“You what?” Kiros’ shock, discolored by the onset of guilt, makes Lediv feel oddly touched. While he knows that Kiros does not brush him off with the same disregard as he does the rest of the world, it is nice to see evidence of his worth.

“I nearly died from boredom.”

Kiros visibly relaxes. “Well then, I apologize for not being there to rescue you. What saved you instead?”

As tempted as Lediv is to divulge his newfound power to the one person closest to him, unbidden doubt restrains his voice. No words can describe how much he wants to trust Kiros. Yet the profound change that his secret will inevitably instigate between them is irrevocable and permanent. Lediv thinks – wants to believe – that Kiros agrees with his ideals. However, if Kiros doesn’t, then that secret will harden into an impenetrable divide in their friendship, forcing a loss that Lediv loathes to assume. In the end, Lediv is a construct of reason, and although the impulse to trust tears at his soul, his soul is housed inside a steely body of logic.

All in good time. I will tell him when I’m ready, Lediv decides. To Kiros, he says, “Take a guess.”

Kiros surveys Lediv curiously, then a sly grin spreads across his face. “Did you meet a girl?”

Lediv grins back, not because of Kiros’ implication, but because his friend hit closer to the truth than he realizes.

“Why do you say that?” he challenges.

“You’re wearing a turtleneck, which probably sits in the back of your closet until you run out of clothes. Plus the fact that you were bored last night and late this morning…You can’t blame me for thinking in that direction.”

Kiros’ critical gaze falls to Lediv’s neck, where a layer of cashmere separates dark eyes from the unconditional power of the Alef.

“So you take me to be an amoral, promiscuous, hormone-driven teenager. Thank you for the high regard.”

“Any time.” Kiros grins.

“Why did you immediately assume that the girl wasn’t Mimi?” Lediv tries not to wince at the name. Mimi Daisy’s infatuation with him is, well, terrifying, to be put it lightly. The high school queen has all but cajoled, pleaded, threatened, and coerced him into dating her. It astounded her, her groupie, and every male with functioning reproductive parts why Lediv continuously refused. She’s the trophy girlfriend, the prettiest, most popular girl at school. Personally, Lediv thinks she’s a deadweight, with nothing behind that pretty face except a piercing voice and an obnoxious personality. His resistance finally caved when she began stalking him. For a month. He doesn’t know what he was thinking at the time, except maybe that dating her will keep the other squealing females off his back, as well as be consistent with his social image. In retrospect, he should have just got a restraining order.

Kiros laughs heartily. “Mimi? Lediv, you hate her! I doubt you would want to do anything with her even if she were the last girl alive.”

“Is it that obvious?” Lediv grouses.

“Well, maybe not to everyone else. But I know. If you really liked your girlfriend, you wouldn’t shudder at her name, insult her indirectly, or go out of your way to avoid her.”

“You just don’t understand the pain of dating. How about I introduce you to a nice girl first, and then you can critique me on the validity of my feelings?”

“No thanks! I’m going to hold on to my freedom for as long as I can.”

The golden roof of Trojan High glimmers at the end of the street, its Greco-Roman façade overlooking the herd of uniformed students pooling through the front gate. Lediv inspects the entrance warily, his paranoia growing when there is no abominable redhead in sight.

“You see Mimi anywhere?” he asks under his breath.

“Hm…” Kiros pretends to search diligently. “Nope. Could she be hiding behind the gate like last time?”

“Please don’t remind me,” groans Lediv. That particular incident involved Mimi attempting some sort of weird piggy-back, which led to the both of them collapsing to the ground with Lediv serving as a cushion.

“Do you want to risk the front gate?”

“I suppose. I don’t think she’s stupid enough to try the same trick twice.” Lediv pauses to reconsider. “Maybe.”

“It’s your health,” Kiros jokes. “I’ll be there this time to save you, if need be.”

“Thanks,” mutters Lediv. “So you charged your phone?”

“Yeah. But please remember that I need to sleep too. If you need someone to desperately talk to at four in the morning, I can introduce you to a friend in China,” says Kiros, throwing Lediv’s earlier offer back at him.

“There’s a reason that I called you and not someone else.”

Kiros raises his brows in wonder. “Was that a compliment?”

“If you want to take it as such,” says Lediv. “I called you because there’s a good chance that you’re still awake and you won’t care if I woke you up.”

“You think pretty highly of yourself, huh?”

“Well, were you asleep?”

Kiros combs his hand through his hair, a gesture that Lediv learned is used to buy time. “No, not really. I got caught up in solving this cryptogram.”

“A cryptogram?” Kiros isn’t lying, but the pause in his response convinces Lediv that something isn’t being said. When Kiros fails to elaborate, he presses, “What kind of cryptogram?”

“An incredibly complicated and time-consuming one,” says Kiros dryly. “It’s part of an online challenge.”

Lediv frowns inwardly at Kiros’ vagueness and evasion. His friend appears quite calm, carrying a familiar air of apathy and solitude that allays any concern one might have for him. Although Kiros may be a good actor, Lediv is a master, and this mask that his friend dons in his presence is both frustrating and upsetting.

Confronting Kiros isn’t going to work. He’ll talk when he’s ready, just like how he eventually opened up about his parents and unfortunate childhood. Maybe something happened in his family that he prefers not to address.

Lediv prepares to acknowledge Kiros’ decision, when a shrill cry of his name makes him jump. Eyes darting around the campus ground as if he is on the battle field with the enemy concealed nearby, Lediv mutters, “Where is she?”

“Your left. Approaching from gym. Appears to be moving alone,” Kiros mutters back seriously, despite his amused smile.

“Lediv, honey! I missed you!” A ball of red-haired energy, dressed in a blue jacket and knee-length skirt, tackles Lediv.

Lediv counts to three seconds, then gently but firmly pushes her back. “Mimi, remember what I said about public displays of affection?”

“Aw, but it’s just a hug!” Mimi flutters her wide, green eyes at him in a way that he assumes is supposed to look cute.

“Mimi, we went over this before. Please respect my requests.” If she really respects him, then they won’t be dating at all. Also on the list is the sole use of his name and not those annoying endearments that she habitually sprouts out, but Lediv conceded that one pretty quickly after realizing its doomed failure.

“Fine…” Mimi pouts. Her lips shine wet and sticky; Lediv feels a little nauseous just from looking at them.

“Class is about to start soon,” he says, starting to walk towards the east wing.

“I’ll walk you!” Mimi skips beside him, missing the tick in Lediv’s face and Kiros’ hidden laugh.

“You’d better not or else you’ll be late. Your class is in the west wing, right?”

“Oh, you were only looking out for me? Thank you, dear!” Mimi gushes. “And you remember where my class is!”

“Of course.” Lediv summons a concerned smile. “You should get going.”

Mimi bobs her head enthusiastically. “Okay! See you at lunch, darling!”

Lediv nods back, his hideout already prepared.

“She won’t find you,” Kiros states, after one glance at Lediv’s scowl.

“No.”

“What if I told her?”

“Then you, buddy, will be joining us for lunch.”

Author's Note: Thank you for reading and reviewing! Your feedback encourages me to write :)