"Mmmmm... Your cooking keeps getting better. I should make you my personal chef."
"Thanks... But am I not it already?"
"I guess you are. You sure you just watched the cooks at the Palace and learnt from it?"
"Yeah, people should learn how to observe, it's useful."
"Yeah, yeah, we get it, 'I'm a genius and no one can match me.' Give it a rest, idiot."
She hits the back of my head. "Ouch..."
She called me an idiot too...
I'm on a bench eating with Rhys and yet my mind moves somewhere else. I'm not even seeing Rhys right now... The informal way she speaks with me and the names she uses make me think of someone else, Patea.
I can remember when we were together and used to play our games... My mind drifts into the memories of the past when I was just eight...
We were laying down on the grass of Hyde Park looking at the sky...
---
"Rook from (c4, 5, 4, 2, 8, 5, 5, 6, 3, 1, 4) to (c4, 5, 4, 7, 8, 5, 5, 6, 3, 1, 4). Checkmate."
"What?! Aaaaaa!!! I hate you!! 12D chess is way too hard for me!! Go hang yourself!, you and these stupid games!"
"You said I could pick the game this time, it's hypocrite complaining now."
"And you intentionally decided something I can't compete with you in!!"
Chess was somewhat easy for us so we invented 3D chess, but since we were able to handle it as well, we decided to add even more dimensional axes. To explain it in simpler terms, the classic chess everyone plays is 2D chess. The rook, for example, can only move in 2 directions, front-back and right-left. In 3D chess, the rook would be able to move in another direction—front-back and right-left like before, but it also moves up-down. To do so, you would need to have a chessboard on top, or below, the initial one. Since a classic chessboard is an 8x8 square, the 3D chessboard would be an 8x8x8 cube where there are eight 2D chessboards stacked one on top of the other.If '-' is a 2D chessboard, then in 3D chess we have a situation like this: '--------'. My rook, let's say the a1 one, would be able to move to the a1 of the second '-', creating a third direction it can move on. For 4D chess it's the same logic, but instead of a cube it's an 8x8x8x8 tesseract. You simply follow the same logic up to 12D. That's what we were playing. All those numbers I said are the coordinates of a single piece, where each number is the position in a dimension. A1 means the rook is positioned at A of the first dimension and at 1 of the second. So if I say rook (A1, 1), it means the rook is positioned at A of the first dimension, at 1 of the second, and at 1 of the third. Or, another way to say it: at a1 of the first of the eight 2D chessboards. All the other numbers are the next dimensional axes.
Anyway, that's how we spent our time together. I would always beat her in games like chess, where you have to use logic, visualization, and calculate possibilities. While she'd always beat me in games like poker, where you have to read the situation, your opponent, and manipulate him. In other games like blackjack, we were equal. I could count cards by simply using my memory, while she could do the same by creating a memory palace. She wasn't a genius in the conventional sense—I would define her as cunning. She would have never competed with my brain with sheer intellect, but she was able to do it by creating tricks and deceiving me. With that, she sometimes even beat me at chess, inducing me into thinking I was making good moves just to fall for her traps. That was until we added all these dimensions. I think that was too much for her. The quantity of mental calculations necessary likely exhausted her. For 12D chess you would need to mentally visualize up to 68719476736 different positions on a twelve-dimensional plane. I was surprised she could even just play the 4D version.
But don't misunderstand me. I always admired her cleverness, but that wasn't the reason I liked her; I'll try to explain. The fact I could always excel in anything related to education, manners, politics... made the royal life boring to me and influenced how people saw me. Victoria's children always worked—and still work—hard to meet expectations; they studied hard to graduate from the best universities and to improve in politics. I simply never worked hard for it, and therefore people stopped having expectations—I would always exceed them anyway. My parents even stopped worrying about my education. They would simply tell me, 'You know better than us what to do.' I wanted to be treated as any other kid... I even wanted to play ball with other kids, but I couldn't. 'You have a reputation to maintain,' so people 'below' me were out of the question. The ones I was allowed to play with were Victoria's children and other high nobles', but they barely had any time since they were working for their futures. And the only time we had to play, they kept treating me as some kind of jolly. 'It's unfair, Nathae, we can't compete with you.' It's not my fault I can do these things—I just wanted to have fun. I also have a feeling they hated me out of jealousy. I didn't have to work hard like them, and that influenced how they treated me. They weren't friends, they just pretended to be—always jealous and resentful. That's why Patea was so special to me. She wasn't treating me as 'Nathae the genius prodigy of the royal family' but as 'Nathae, a kid.' She was informal with me to the point she called me names. She wouldn't care how smart I was—she would even call me dumb for not understanding the things she was good at. It didn't matter how proficient I was in most things; to her I would always be dumb in others, to the point she even taught me one or two tricks in life. In a sense, she was smarter than me and really understood me. And maybe that's why losing her hurt more than I could ever admit. I really wish I could play one more game with her—even if I lose... Just once... I want to go back to when she was still in this world...
---
"Also, yesterday I stole some sweets from a noble. I know, I know, I shouldn't have, but I was hungry, and they looked way too delicious to be someone else's. After he called... Nathae?!"
"..." I return to reality. Right, I was with Rhys.
"Why are you crying? What happened?"
Am I crying? I touch my eyes and indeed feel tears.
"Who even cries out of nowhere like that!? Especially when I was talking about the sweets I stole the other day!! Are you dumb?!"
...Dumb? "Did you say I'm dumb?!"
"Hell yeah, I did! Sometimes I don't get how someone with your brain manages to do stuff like this."
I lay my head on her lap and look at her. "Say it again."
"What? That you are dumb?"
I nod.
"Who would even ask something like that?! What's wrong with you today?!"
I just smile, looking up, with teary eyes, at her... Patea...
"I really don't get you..."
"Rhys... Do you mind coming with me to a place tonight?"
---
"Who are those roses for?"
"My parents. We are going to their graves."
"You didn't tell me they died. How did it happen?"
"..."
"Sorry..."
"No, it's fine. They were killed. Someone who calls himself Jack killed them in their room, when I wasn't home. I saw them on the bed, bleeding and holding each other's hand."
"I bet it was sad. Are you ok?"
"Yeah... Can I ask a weird question?"
"Sure, I guess."
"Did you ever believe something despite knowing it's not true?"
"I mean, I believed in ghosts and stuff, but some little girl keeps telling me that they aren't real."
"In your opinion... Can people be reborn?"
"Maybe? I don't know. Weren't you against supernatural stuff though? Why are you asking me such a question?"
"Well... I always thought that things like superstition help people live better. Sometimes something doesn't necessarily need to be true. For us, it might be enough believing that it's true. Humans always searched in the supernatural for what they hope. I myself am no different. Even if I sound hypocritical, I want... no... I need to believe that people can return to life... In this moment, for me it's important."
She hugs me from behind. "If that little brain of your believes it can happen, then I'm sure it's true."
"...Thanks."
I want to believe Patea reincarnated... She died, but right now she is with me... Hugging me from behind...