The board ga had been Leo’s idea.
Which ant Kai was going to win, and Leo was going to take it personally, and Mina was going to find the whole thing funny without pretending otherwise.
The ga was called Dungeon Conquest. One of the dozens of hunter-thed products that had appeared in the city’s markets over the last month, companies were moving fast to put the gate phase into cardboard and plastic and sell it back to the people who had lived through it.
The objective was simple. Build a team. Clear dungeons. Control territory. The strategy layer was deeper than it looked, which was probably why Leo had been losing consistently for two weeks without being able to identify the specific reason.
Kai had identified the reason in the first ga.
"That’s cheating," Leo said.
"It’s a strategy."
"It’s cheating."
"It can be both."
Kai moved his piece forward and claid the territory that Leo had been building toward for the last four turns. The piece sat on the contested section with the specific finality of a thing that had already been decided.
Leo looked at the board. Then at Kai. Then at the board again. "How," he said. Not a question exactly. More like an accusation waiting for a target.
"You spent all your resources on Legendary Hunters," Kai said.
"They were cool."
"They were expensive."
"They were very cool."
Mina, who had been watching from the end of the table with her coffee, nodded. "He has a point."
Kai looked at her.
"You’re not helping," he said.
"I know," she said.
Leo high-fived her across the table. Kai looked at both of them and said nothing, because the conspiracy was already established and naming it would not dissolve it.
Twenty minutes later, the board looked less like a ga and more like an archaeological record of a series of poor decisions. Leo sat back in his chair and stared at the evidence.
"The ga is broken," he said.
"It isn’t."
"Then Kai is broken."
Mina considered this with the expression of soone taking a question seriously. "That’s possible," she said.
"Thank you," Leo said.
Kai stood up before the conversation produced a conclusion he would have to live with. Sunday had beco a routine over the last several weeks.
No dungeons, no training sessions, no checking the rankings or responding to the guild inquiries that still arrived at regular intervals despite his repeated non-responses.
Just the apartnt and the people in it and whatever the day produced.
It had felt strange at first.
Now it felt necessary.
An hour later, they were in the city. The streets were at the comfortable density of a Sunday, busy enough to have energy, not so busy that navigation required planning. Food stalls along the main stretch.
Street perforrs at the intersections. Hunter rchandise at every other storefront, class insignia on everything from clothing to kitchenware. The city had absorbed the gate phase and was selling it back to itself, which was either resilience or comrce or probably both.
Leo pointed at a food stall without breaking stride. "Food."
"You just ate," Kai said.
"That was an hour ago."
"Exactly."
Leo looked at Mina with the expression of soone seeking coalition support.
"See what I deal with," he said.
"I do," Mina said sympathetically.
Kai felt the betrayal register sowhere in his chest and chose not to address it.
The day moved without any real plan.
Food beca lunch, and lunch beca wandering through the shopping district, and wandering beca looking at things without any intention of buying them, which was itself a kind of luxury.
A few people recognized Kai.
Not many, but consistently, the recognition arrived in a glance and a whisper, and then the quiet self-conscious decision by the person recognizing him to not make it a thing.
Rank One. The Divine Maze Hunter. The Sky Fortress guy.
Leo heard every one of them.
His grin grew with each instance. Kai noticed this and considered the distance to the nearest side street and decided that leaving Leo behind would be noticed within thirty seconds and was therefore not worth the temporary peace.
They were passing through the denser part of the shopping district when Leo stopped.
"Oh," he said.
Kai knew that tone. Years of being Leo’s older brother had taught him what it ant.
"Oh no," Kai said.
"Oh yes."
Kai followed the direction Leo was looking.
Sera was across the street with several shopping bags, enough bags to suggest she’d been shopping with a plan. She looked up and saw them before waving.
Leo waved back with the enthusiasm of soone who had been waiting for exactly this situation without knowing he had been waiting for it.
"Don’t," Kai said.
"Too late," Leo said, and was already moving.
Kai watched Leo cross the street at a pace that communicated urgency and stopped beside Sera with the comfort of soone who had already decided they were friends.
Within three minutes, Sera had joined the group. Kai wasn’t entirely sure how this had happened. It had simply beco the new arrangent.
Mina was smiling in the way she smiled when she found sothing genuinely good. Leo was asking questions. They had been walking for ninety seconds, and Leo had already asked too many questions.
"What’s Kai like in dungeons?" Leo said.
"Don’t answer that," Kai said.
Sera looked at him. Then at Leo. "He jumped off a floating island," she said.
Leo nodded slowly. "That sounds right."
"It was not a casual decision," Sera said.
"It worked, though," Leo said.
"That’s not the point," Kai said.
Neither of them appeared to register this as a aningful objection.
Lunch happened at a place Leo had been recomnding for a week, which turned out to be legitimately good.
The conversation went nowhere in particular. Nobody seed to mind. Leo asked Sera increasingly specific questions about dungeon runs.
Sera answered them with the honesty of soone who had decided that Leo could be trusted with accurate information. Kai corrected a few details and otherwise watched the conversation unfold.
"What’s the strangest thing Kai has done?" Leo said.
"Don’t," Kai said.
"He stood in the middle of a wind corridor in the Sky Fortress because he wanted to test sothing," Sera said.
Leo looked at Kai. "What were you testing?"
"Whether the Storm Sovereign Cloak absorbed wind passively or required activation," Kai said.
"Did it work?"
"Yes."
"Then it sounds reasonable," Leo said.
"It was not reasonable," Sera said. "There were also enemies in the corridor."
"He handled it, though."
"He did."
"Then it was reasonable," Leo said, with the confidence of soone whose logic was internally consistent even when it was missing the relevant context.
Sera laughed, it was different from the dungeon. It felt light without much worry similar to when they go to the cafe.
Kai noticed.
He wasn’t sure why.
After lunch, Leo disappeared into an arcade with the confidence of soone who had a plan and the vague promise of not spending all his money. Mina gave him exactly five minutes.
"Four," Kai said.
"Four," she agreed.
That left the three of them outside with the city moving around them and the arcade noise audible through the glass.
The afternoon had turned golden.
Mina was looking through the glass at Leo, who was celebrating sothing at a machine in a way that communicated he had already forgotten about the spending limit.
"He seems happier lately," she said.
Kai looked at Leo. He was genuinely happy, not the perford version that had been running through the apartnt during the worst of the debt period, the happiness that was covering for sothing else. This was the actual version.
"Yeah," Kai said. "He does."
Mina was quiet for a mont.
"So do you," she said.
He looked at her.
"I don’t."
"You smile more."
"I don’t smile more."
"You do."
"I definitely don’t."
"You absolutely do." She gave him the look that ant she’d already won the argunt. "Ask Sera."
Kai looked at Sera, who had suddenly found sothing extrely interesting in the direction of the street.
"She’s not going to answer that," he said.
"She just answered it," Mina said.
Kai chose not to continue this line of conversation.
Leo erged from the arcade forty minutes later carrying a prize considerably larger than his starting budget should have produced. Nobody asked. So information was better handled through deliberate ignorance.
The four of them walked back through the city as the lights ca on, the day finishing at the pace it had run all afternoon, without urgency or agenda.
Leo was talking and Sera was answering questions that had sohow continued from lunch.
Mina walked beside Kai comfortably. She never felt the need to fill silence. Kai listened to all of it. Leo’s voice. Sera’s laugh. Mina’s quiet comntary at the right monts.
The city around them at evening pace, full of people going sowhere or coming from sowhere, the ordinary continuous movent of a place that had survived sothing significant and was still itself.
At the entrance to the building, Mina looked at Kai. Then at Sera. Then back at Kai, with the look of soone noticing sothing and deciding not to ntion it.
Sera made him smile more.
That was a true thing. Mina filed it quietly and said nothing about it, because so things were better allowed to develop without comntary.
"Sa ti next week," Leo said to Sera, as though this had already been established.
Sera looked at Kai.
Kai said nothing for a mont. Then: "Sure."
Leo looked vindicated in a way that suggested he had been planning this conclusion since the mont he saw Sera across the street.
The day ended the way the best days ended, without a specific closing mont, just the gradual arrival of later and the understanding that this particular version of things was finished for now and would co back.
Tomorrow, there would be dungeons.
Today had been enough.
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