Chapter Four - December 7th

Just because you don't know a rule, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Rules are important. Rules will beat you if you're not careful.

We spent the whole of Sunday and the beginning of Monday making enquiries around the Orphanage. When it became clear that the last person Jun had seen before leaving that day was the Director, Mr. Valentine, our hopes deflated. We didn't want to see the Director. He was a monster of a man. And we had no way of getting into his office, either, and there was no way he would take us seriously, despite our extensive and brilliant careers as detectives.

The investigation was momentarily put aside for the afternoon, while we returned to the Sunken Corner for our share of sweets. There weren't as many children this time, probably because it was a weekday, so Bonman finished distributing the candy early. "So, Bonman."

"What is it, Jaylin?"

"Are we going to play today?" I had to stop myself from jumping up and down excitedly. It had been a while since we'd played. I wanted to beat him.

"I guess we have time for a quick game," he complied, frowning at the sun.

I ran to the chessboard and set up the pieces seriously. The armies were lining up. The King and Queen at the back, out of harm's way, with their Bishops, their generals, at their side. Brave soldiers on the frontlines, willing to give their lives up to protect them. Majestic knights, proud on their horses, their banners waving in the wind like flames…

"Jaylin?"

"Mmmh?"

"I investigated about L a bit," Bonman said as he sat down opposite me.

"Really?"

"Yes. But I found nothing on him. There are forums discussing his identity, blogs of dozens of people posing as him, but nothing concrete. Not one single fact. Not even if he's male or female. It's like chasing a ghost." I nodded – L must have a lot of enemies. I had expected him to be secretive, even paranoid. He could hardly call himself the best in the world if he didn't know how to keep his personal data private. "I did find things on the other two of the Detective War I told you about, though. Their names are Eraldo Coil and Deneuve. One is English, the other's Canadian."

My shoulders sagged. "Oh." I couldn't very well go to England to see Eraldo Coil.

We started playing quietly. At that age, I was an intuitive player. I hadn't studied the great chess games in history yet, and I had never heard of Grandmasters. I didn't know any of the famous opening sequences or the official names for different kinds of checkmates. But that also made me supple and flexible. I could adapt easily to new situations and change my plans on the run. I wasn't conditioned by the knowledge of mainstream strategies; it made me an unpredictable, if innocent, opponent. I saw the board, and I saw the pieces, and I saw the possibilities.

Around the middle of the game, Bonman made a number of serious blunders that gave me an enormous advantage. In little more than a dozen moves I captured both knights and one of his rooks. I stole a peek at him, smiling smugly. It wasn't like him to make such elemental mistakes, but I wasn't one to give him any quarter because of it either. He touched his red, rounded nose, a gesture he often did when he was thinking hard.

Twitching with anticipation, I forced a position in which his only option was to exchange Queens. The King would weep his loss – but only when the battle was over. Finally, only two of his pawns remained as potential threats, and they would be taken care of quickly, before I moved in for the checkmate. Grinning, I advanced my own pawn two squares, to block the first's advance…

… And froze when he moved the other in a way I hadn't seen before. "What's that?" I demanded, my grin suddenly falling away.

Bonman wasn't smirking like I had been during the whole game, but the corners of his mouth were pulled slightly upward, and there was an amused light in his eyes. On him, that expression was the equivalent of laughing in my face. "It's called en passant," he informed innocently. "Don't you know that rule?"

I crossed my arms, brow furrowed. He'd been the one to teach me Chess. He knew perfectly well I had no idea what en passant was. "No."

"The pawn can take as if you had moved only one square," he explained, still slightly smug.

I would be lying if I said I wasn't suspicious. Of course I wouldn't normally accuse Bonman of making up rules, but I had been winning during the whole game, and then he came up with this out of the blue. I was also extremely upset. My victory had been certain before, but now he was dangerously close to queening. In fact, given the position of my pieces, I could no longer prevent him from queening, no matter what I did. And then he would probably queen with the second pawn…

"You can't use that rule," I protested. "I didn't know it."

Bonman looked at me seriously. "Just because you don't know a rule, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist," he stated. "You're an amazing player, Jaylin, but you think you know all there is to chess, and you don't. Rules are important. Rules will beat you if you're not careful."

I ground my teeth. I'd thought there was something wrong with the way he played, and only now I realized that he'd been losing on purpose, so he could humiliate me this way in the end. It wasn't fair. He couldn't win by using strange rules I didn't know of!

"What are you going to do, girl? Throw a tantrum like a baby or keep playing?"

I closed my eyes, forcing my anger to recede, visualizing the board in my mind. There was no point in playing anymore. With two queens on his side, I had lost. Might as well forfeit the game… However, something in me steered rebelliously at the thought. I couldn't just forfeit. If anything, I should attempt to buy myself some time to think, through continuous checks...

He won, of course. I watched as my King, alone on the chessboard, ineffectively tried to flee the army closing in on him like a net. It was sad. I used to lose against Bonman a lot, at first, but now it rarely happened anymore. And when I did lose it was usually because of stupid mistakes I made, and I never lost the same way twice. But this... I'd played flawlessly, I'd played my best game, and I'd still lost. It was unbearably frustrating, and humiliating, and unfair.

"Jay," Bonman said gently. "You aren't upset, are you?"

I didn't reply, staring blankly at the board, then extended a hand and toppled my King. The noise it made as it hit the board rattled inside my head.

"I did it because I thought it would do you good, girl. It's hard to fill a cup that's already full. I needed to empty your cup."

My lips thinned. "I still think that's like cheating."

He beckoned me closer, and I reluctantly got down from my chair and walked over to him. "How about I give you this as an apology," he whispered, getting out his hand from his pocket, fingers closed over something. "I saved it just for you."

He opened his fingers to reveal a Rainbow Jam, my favorite chocolate of all time. I forgave him instantly.

When he declared the sun was setting and finally left, Sandra, Olm and I sat in a circle on the grass, back in Detective mode. "What have we got so far, Knight?" she demanded, leaning her head in her hand.

Olm cleared his throat, looking down at the small notepad on his lap. He'd been given the task of recording the progress of the investigation, since he had the best handwriting. Sandra had asked him with a smile and a flutter of her eyelids and he'd agreed without a thought. See what I mean? She wasn't above manipulation. "On the first of December, at two p.m., Jun, for some reason, requested to see the Director. A short time later Slop the gatekeeper saw him leave the Orphanage." He grimaced. "Slop, being the retard that he is, didn't ask why or where he was going. At six p.m. Jun was found by the Waterside warehouse, beaten and bloody. He had numerous bruises and broken bones, as well as a concussion. It means a blow to the head," he clarified upon her blank look.

We were silent for a while after that. I contemplated the grass, thinking.

Finally Sandra spoke. "The way I see it, we have three possible courses of action," she started. Sandra's voice had always had a tinge of authority in it, but now it seemed to be amplified by the grave atmosphere. She irradiated true authority, the kind that made even adults listen to her. "We can go to the Waterside warehouse to inspect the crime scene, question the victim again, or go see the Director." Olm nodded, but I didn't say anything, so she turned towards me. "What do you think, Bishop?"

"The victim won't change his story," I stated slowly, still looking down. It felt better to say the victim than Jun. Somehow, admitting the possibility that he had really lied to us made my heart sink. Thinking about it in detective terms was much easier to stomach. "Questioning him again will be a waste of time, at least until we have some proof that he's lying. I also think that the Waterside warehouse won't tell us much."

Olm snorted. "You're just a pansy. You're scared of going downtown."

I scowled back. "I'm not scared."

"Alright," Sandra interrupted dryly. "Bishop, keep going."

To take my mind off Olm, I got out the elastic from my pocket and started fiddling with it. "More than anything, I find the victim's behavior before leaving the orphanage suspicious. We all know Jun wouldn't willingly go within a fifty meters radius of the Director's office. So why did he suddenly ask to see him?"

Sandra nodded solemnly. "There's something fishy there, for sure."

"The thing is, he probably won't tell us why. He already lied to us about the attack, after all. I can't help thinking that whatever's making him keep quiet is linked to the Director. He might have wanted to resign, or..." I trailed off, the implications of my words hanging in the silence.

It was just a hypothesis, less likely than the thugs scaring him into silence. No, more likely. Jun wouldn't fear some thugs, no matter what they'd done to him. But the Director...

Sandra was thinking the same. "You think the Director's threatening him or something?"

"Possibly," I replied somberly. "He's a monster. He could do anything."

We weren't exaggerating. The man was an embodiment of cruelty. Once, a child in our room, Haru, was called up to his office. No one knew what he'd done wrong, but he must have angered him beyond reason, because he never called us to his office. He returned two days later, wide-eyed and numb, with red bruises from his wrists all the way up his forearms. No one could wring a word out of him for months. He'd become jumpy and scared at everything, and sobbed into his pillow at night. Everyone in our room could hear him, even if he tried to be quiet. When somebody mentioned the Director, he froze up completely, and then started shaking violently like a wooden puppet.

To us, the Director was worse than a demon from Hell. He was worse than a dragon and a vampire and a giant spider combined. I'd only seen him once, from the window of our room, as he got inside a limousine parked at the gate, and I didn't want to see him again.

"We should interrogate the people at the Willow again," I continued. "It isn't like Jun to simply leave without a word. He must have told somebody something."

Olm shook his head, his brown curls shifting into his eyes, and he had to push them out of the way again. "We've already asked all the dorms, and nobody knows. I even asked Rei and Ann. I even asked Slop." He shivered. "And I'm not doing it again, the disgusting creep."

Sandra, who'd been silent for a long time, finally spoke up. "Jun wouldn't lie to us. The Director's threatening him, that's for sure."

Not for sure. But probable. Wanting to see the Director, then leaving the Orphanage straight afterwards, and then coincidentally getting beaten half to death. The thugs not taking anything from him, him refusing to talk. The more I thought about it, the more I could feel a plot shifting underneath it, like watching ripples on the surface of a dark pond. You knew something was underneath, causing it, but you didn't know what. The water was too murky for you to see anything.

I frowned. This was no longer just about Jun, or the Director, or throwing the criminals in jail. This was about the truth. I needed to know the truth. I needed to solve this case.

If jumping into the murky pond was the only way of doing it, then jump I would.