The Lotus Gambit

In the freezing depths of a secluded prison, a blind, silver-tongued criminal named Yute challenges Shiro, his ambitious but frustrated jailer, to an impossible bet: he claims he can beat her at a game without seeing the board or pieces.

Yute woke to the sound of screaming. He sat bolt upright from the floor of the cell and swung out his arm to grab the prisoner next to him.

“What’s happening?” he rasped.

“Hamari woke up with frostbite on his cheeks,” a hoarse voice replied.

Yute listened to the wild screams descend into sobbing and heaving. 

“So what?” he muttered. “Hamari wasn’t pretty to begin with. Tell him to shut up.”

Yute wrapped his threadbare blanket tighter around himself and let shivers wrack his body. He lay down on the floor again, trying to reclaim what was left of his body heat before it leeched into the stone floor. 

All the fat was long gone from his flesh, along with his eyes. He couldn’t see the cell, but after two years, he knew every inch of it: it was eight feet by eight feet, soaked in piss and packed with the stench of unwashed bodies, with a floor made of cold, smooth granite cut into a neat grid of hexagons. The walls were caked with blood and wisps of hair from all the heads that had pounded against them over the decades. He’d learned quickly that the prisoners near the center of the cell stayed warmer at night, while the ones at the edges bore the brunt of the cold.

Graverobbing had gotten him ten years, but if they had known his real name, the sentence would have been life. Which, for an immortality scholar, was significantly longer. Before he had been imprisoned, he’d been halfway through a unique kind of self-mummification; he’d spent years carefully removing most of his organs, leaving him a half-empty shell of bone, skin, and atrophied muscle.

Just when he was on the verge of replacing his blood supply and abandoning his metabolism entirely, he was caught breaking into a mausoleum while wearing the skin of its caretaker.

The harsh rattle of a steel club against iron bars filled the cell, and Yute grit his teeth.

“Against the wall, all of you! Stand up, stand up!”

 Slowly, painfully, he got to his feet and let the blanket slide from his shoulders. He felt his way toward an empty space on the freezing wall, folded his arms over his head, and placed his forehead on the stone. The chill cut straight through his thin shirt and ragged pants, making his whole body tremble. Behind him, he heard the cell door screech open and two pairs of boots step inside. Something heavy and wooden was dropped on the floor, and he heard the sloshing of water.

The boots left, the door closed, and the other prisoners rushed away from the wall to kneel on the floor. Yute turned around slowly, listening to the wet ripping noises. He used his foot to prod the gathered prisoners, searching for an open space. When he found one, he got down on his knees, elbowed his way closer, and reached down.

His hands felt the smooth wooden sides of the trough and he smelled the mix of blood and water that sat at the bottom. There was something soft in the trough, and Yute knew it was boiled horse meat. As he reached down and tore off a chunk, he thought the same thing he had every morning for two years: there has to be a way out.

After breakfast, they were given small, coarse brushes whose hairs were bow-legged from years of scrubbing. Yute got on his hands and knees with the others and began to scour the floor of the cell, forcing all the dust and dried shit out of the hexagonal lines etched into the stone.

Each of the hexes was perfectly symmetrical, with no cracks or flaws in the etching. Though he couldn’t see it, he knew that each of the six sides was made of tiny rows of glyphs, so minute that they seemed to form a single, unbroken line when viewed from afar. The glyphs formed a spell that made the stone as hard as diamond, and anyone who tried to unravel the enchantment would discover that picking it apart would take almost as long as chiseling through the stone itself. The same enchantments spanned the walls and wrapped around the bars.

When he had first begun studying the art of immortality, Yute had read the work of a scholar named Roku Zhu Gi, whose aim was to unmoor one’s perception from human scales. Roku wanted to see the veins running under the skin as clearly as if they were rivers, and view canyons as though they were cracks in a table. He said it was the duty of every immortality scholar to see eternity in all things, because it was hiding in everything large and small.

As he scrubbed, Yute could imagine the grid of hexes as canals in a city, as orderly as the lattices of blood vessels beneath his skin. He felt his mind slip into the depths of those canals, watching the glyphs flow downstream, then imagined gazing up at his own face filling the sky. His brush hovered over the floor, moving in circles but not touching the surface.

From those depths, he heard distant voices. He pulled his mind back into his body and heard a pair of guards walking down the hallway, talking.

“God, they’re disgusting,” one said. It was a woman’s voice—one Yute hadn’t heard before.

“Most of them have gout,” replied the other. Yute recognized that one as Nura, the barrel-chested guard with the shaved head. “We don’t grow any food on the island here, so we have to wait for the boat for supplies.”

“Do I have to be here for bath day?” the woman asked. “I don’t want to see them naked.”

“I can handle that,” Nura grumbled.

“Thank you.”

Yute heard a pair of boots stop outside the cell. Not Nura’s heavy steps—it was the other one.

“Hey, you—I can see you,” the woman’s voice called through the bars. “You, the one just pretending to scrub. Stand up.”

Yute stood slowly and turned to face her, keeping his shaggy hair hanging over his empty eye sockets. His mind contracted from the infinite. 

Yute raised his arms in front of him so the guard could inspect them.

“Madam, look at me. I barely have enough muscle left to hold the brush,” he said.

“You get the same food and rest as everyone else here, don’t you? So why are you so skinny?” the guard asked. She sounded both fascinated and disgusted by him.

“Oh, well…” Yute smiled and looked away, feigning bashfulness. “It’s embarrassing.”

“Spit it out,” she ordered.

Yute could smell the leather of her gloves—calfskin, newly oiled. Expensive and unsuited for heavy work.

“I’m pining for someone,” Yute said.

“Who?”

Something tinked against the steel club tucked into her belt—a little chain of pearl or jade charms, the kind of decoration hung from the pommel of a sword. 

“The most beautiful woman in the world,” Yute replied. “She has…”

Yute broke off suddenly and lightly kicked the prisoner next to him. “Hey,” he whispered and jerked his head toward the guard. “What color are her eyes?”

After a moment’s pause, the prisoner said “Brown.”

Yute faced the guard again. “Beautiful, deep brown eyes, like sweet molasses, and…hey, what color is her hair?”

The guard laughed.

“Black,” she said.

“…soft black hair that dances and sways around her face, like the mane of a wild mare.”

Yute heard her leather under-armor creak a little as she leaned her face closer to the bars. That was a rookie mistake—a prisoner could reach out and gouge her eyes. 

The guard blew air through her nose. “You can’t see at all, can you?”

He could smell the faint tang of sea salt clinging to her hair—she had just arrived on the island. Which meant the boat was here.

Yute lifted his head so she could see his empty sockets. He grinned and raised his eyebrows. “No—but given the choice to imagine beautiful women or stare at my cellmates, I’d choose to be blind.”

The guard gave an amused grunt. “Fair enough. Back to scrubbing, and try to make it look convincing.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Yute got back down on his knees and started scouring the floor again. Wheels began turning in his head.

The boat arrived today, which means it’ll take three days to unload the new prisoners and all the provisions for the prison. Another two days for the crew to rest, one day to refit and resupply, then they’ll be back out to sea.

“You’re a real charmer when you want to be, eh?” someone called to him.

Yute turned his head and flashed a smile in that direction. 

Only with marks, he thought.

Down the hallway, he heard a group of guards gathering around the little table where they sat and watched the cells. Something thudded on the table, followed by impressed murmurs.

Yute heard the same woman’s voice call out: “Is that my Dogen set? Excellent.”

Another voice, one of the guards near the table: “You spoil us, Shiro.”

“You’ll address me as captain,” corrected the woman. “Now set up the pieces.”

Yute listened to the familiar sounds of metal clacking against polished marble.

Dogen, Yute thought, his lips peeling back in a grin.

As afternoon wore into evening, Yute listened to the voices of the guards and the clicking of the Dogen pieces. There was raucous laughter, hisses of anxiety, and loud cheers as each guard sat down across from Shiro and endeavored not to embarrass themselves. 

The sounds brought Yute back to his first year at Itzon, the oldest and most prestigious school of immortality, where students learned to perfect the flesh, blood, and bone. The exam was notoriously difficult, but Yute had been able to slip by with a forged identity, some cleverly hidden crib notes, and a few quid pro quos with the examiner. At Itzon, Dogen was used as a method to separate the sophisticates from the pretenders, so when he wasn’t studying anatomy, he was sitting at a table by himself, practicing openings and feints.

Dogen was played with two opposing sets of five pieces: four pawns and a general. The game was originally meant to portray a skirmish between armies, and the object was to eliminate your opponent’s general. However, if your opponent’s general was their only piece left, you could win by moving your general to the opposite side of the board. 

The movements of the pieces were dictated by two cards chosen at the beginning of the game, and each of the cards was named after a weapon. The subtlety of the game was that as soon as you used a card to move a piece, you passed that card to your opponent; an old Dogen adage was “Your opponent gives you the means of their own demise.”

But that was only the surface. Like everything, there were hidden depths to the game for those who could see them. At Itzon, he’d learned one of the deepest—the Lotus Gambit.

He had been introduced to the Gambit one spring afternoon in the private library of his mentor, Ru Okazi. Her dark hair and spotless glasses glinted in the light as she folded a paper lotus, using the heel of her hand to smooth the folds.

“Everything you do…is a reflection of who you are,” she said in her soft voice. “The way you walk…the way you eat…the way you talk. You can identify…a person by their handwriting, or the way they cook a dish. The markers may be small, but if you l-look close enough, you’ll see them…”

As her mind focused on the symmetry of the paper, the broken cadence of her speech faded.

“It’s the same with folding a paper lotus. Every time you make a fold, there will be a flaw in it, sometimes big, sometimes small, because no one can fold a perfect lotus. Humans are imperfect by nature. Each fold you make affects the next, and all those little deviations from perfection create a pattern.”

Ru delicately peeled back the petals of the lotus—each one a little isosceles triangle.

“That pattern reflects the person who created it. It reveals whether they’re aggressive, cautious, cruel, intellectual…and that gives you the broad strokes of their soul. But the closer you look, the more the details come into focus.”

Ru had lifted her eyes to Yute. Her gaze was impassive, as if she were looking at an anatomical chart rather than a person. Ru was utterly inept when it came to social etiquette, making her exceedingly easy to lie to, but he found himself avoiding it out of respect—she was the only one of his instructors who seemed more concerned with eternity than her niche within Itzon’s gilded hierarchy.

“And once you know the contours of your opponent’s soul,” Ru continued. “You won’t need to see the board. You’ll know what moves they’ll make before they do.” 

Back in his cell, leaning against the bars, Yute could already see Shiro unfolding in his mind:

Shiro was used to wearing expensive little charms on her weapon.

She wore new calfskin gloves, not the cowhide of her fellow guards.

She had a Dogen set, a game for aristocrats and scholars.

She was given the role of guard captain as soon as she arrived.

It was clear that Shiro came from wealth and prestige.

She was imperious and disdainful, accustomed to giving orders and being entertained.

She was convinced that she was a better class of person, and needed others to know it.

She wasn’t afraid of the prisoners—they were too pathetic to fear.

It was obvious that she detested the prison. Not just because it was disgusting, but because it was beneath her.

She had not asked to be a guard here. So why was she here?

Yute traced invisible circles on the floor, letting the cold numb his fingertips.

She’s either been sent here because she’s being punished, or because someone deemed it a fitting position for her talents. 

That night, Yute remained next to the bars and listened. The temperature dropped as the sun set, and the group of guards around the Dogen set thinned until the only two left were the guards on duty: Shiro and Anari. As the games went on, he heard Shiro sigh several times. Finally, Anari said something in a conciliatory tone.

Shiro should be getting bored with her new playmate right about now, Yute thought.

He took a deep breath, then called out: “Who’s winning?”

There was a pause.

“Who’s that?” Shiro asked.

“Your eyeless admirer,” Yute replied. “I wanted to know who’s winning.”

“I am,” called Shiro.

“You’re playing Dogen, aren’t you?”

“We are.”

“I’m curious…have you ever played the Lotus Gambit?”

Shiro scoffed and said to Anari, not quite out of earshot: “That’s an old con.”

“Not for me,” Yute countered immediately. “Want to make a bet?”

Footsteps, then a voice on the other side of the bars.

“What does a piece of trash like you know about Dogen?” Shiro asked.

“I used to play against grandmasters, and they could only beat me every other game.”

Shiro gave a harsh laugh. “Bullshit! You’re Serano, aren’t you? They said you’re a graverobber.”

“Serano” was an alias he’d been using since he left Itzon. No one here knew his real name. 

Yute chuckled and shook his head. “Not quite. I’m a scholar who dabbled in grave-robbing.”

Shiro grunted. “Funny, I don’t believe you.”

Yute straightened his back and spread his arms as if speaking to an auditorium.

“A short passage from In the Garden of Souls: ‘The noted scholar Roku Zhu Gi described the Lotus Gambit as ‘The reduction of a soul to geometry and the elevation of a game to augury.’ On its face, the Gambit is simple: one player folds a paper lotus, then hands it to the player taking the Gambit. The second player trades their view of the board, pieces, and cards for another kind of vision—one that penetrates their opponent’s soul.’”

Yute lowered his arms and raised his eyebrows. “Should I keep going? I have the rest of the chapter memorized.” 

He could imagine Shiro looking him over, sizing him up. 

“Seems like a con,” she said.

“Give me an opening. You choose the cards.”

“Hammer. Pawn to second rank, third file.”

“Easy—the Emissary opening. Meant to feel out an opponent before revealing your real strategy.”

Shiro snorted. “You’re quick. Okay, so you can play.”

“Better than the guards here, I’ll wager,” Yute said, grinning.

“And you’ll play the Lotus Gambit?”

Yute waved his index finger over his empty eye sockets. “It’s all I can play.”

Shiro breathed in, and Yute heard her cross her arms. “Fine, then. You’ll be chained, hands and feet. You’ll call out your moves, and we’ll move the pieces and the cards. What are your terms?”

“If I win, I get a bottle of gin, my meals served in a bowl, and a cell to myself.”

“And if I win?”

“I’ll cut off my own finger—your choice. But I don’t think it’ll come to that.”

There was silence for a few seconds, then Shiro stepped closer to the bars. Yute judged that she was within his grasp—all he had to do was find the collar of her armor’s breastplate, pull her hard, and her head would slam against the bars. But that would be stupid and short-sighted—Anari was still watching them.

Shiro spoke in a low voice. “If you’re wasting my time, I’m going to turn your life into an even deeper hell than it already is,” 

Yute smiled. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Shiro pulled the metal baton from her belt and ran it against the bars, shouting “On your feet! Against the wall, hands on heads!” 

Cursing and grumbling, the prisoners behind Yute woke up and dragged themselves to the wall. Yute stood in the center of the cell, facing the bars with his wrists stretched out in front of him. Anticipation tingled in his half-hollowed chest cavity.

Let the game begin. 

Yute heard the cell door open, then felt the cold steel of the manacles close around his wrists and ankles. He shuffled forward as Shiro led him out of the cell.

“Shiro…” Anari called warily. “I don’t think that’s–”

“He’s fine,” Shiro interrupted. “He’s so weak that he can barely move the pieces anyway.”

Yute walked with Shiro down the hallway, and after twenty-six short steps, he bumped into the wooden table. He heard a chair scrape across the floor and found the legs with his right foot. He eased himself down in the seat and set his manacled hands on the table.

“Anari, can you fetch us a few sheets of square paper?” Shiro asked. 

“Are you sure?” the other guard whispered. “Being alone with him, I mean.”

Shiro scoffed. “If he tries anything, I’ll snap him in half.”

“All right…”

Yute listened to Anari’s footsteps fade down the hallway.

“So what kind of scholar were you?” Shiro asked. “History?”

Yute took a deep breath. “I studied the immortality of the body.”

Shiro grunted. “I doubt that.”

“Why’s that?”

“If you were a scholar of immortality, you’d be rich, living in a mansion somewhere. But you’re in here for grave-robbing.”

Yute grinned. “Life can be unfair.”

“What do you mean?”

“I studied a type of self-mummification. I put years of work into that. When I presented my work to the surgeon-masters, they called it unexpected, inventive. They called me a savant.” 

Yute lifted his manacled hands so he could raise one finger. His mouth twisted into a sardonic smile. “But one of my lectors took offense that I hadn’t credited him in my work. He gave me a whole speech—‘No great work comes without debt,’ he said. ‘And you owe me a debt.’ I said he’d taught a hundred other students what he’d taught me, but none had done what I’d done.

“So he convinced the rest of the faculty that I had stolen my work. I was expelled for ‘unscholarly conduct’, and he made sure I was blacklisted.  That left me with one path—the one that led me here.”

Yute nodded at Shiro.“The last lesson I learned as a scholar was that talent is punished as often as it’s rewarded.”

“I see…” Shiro said thoughtfully.

Yute heard Anari’s footsteps return. A few pieces of paper whispered onto the table.

“Thank you, Anari,” Shiro said. Yute heard the soft crinkle of paper folding. 

While Shiro worked, Anari spoke up. “Sorry, but how exactly do you play the Lotus Gambit?”

“Shall I recite the same passage as before?” Yute asked Shiro.

“Dumb it down,” Shiro said absently. “We’re not all scholars here.”

“All right…” Yute said brightly. “One player folds a paper lotus and gives it to their opponent. That player unfolds the lotus, examines it, and divines their opponent’s soul from the folds, then puts on a blindfold and plays the game without seeing the board, pieces, or cards. If they have truly read their opponent’s soul in the lotus, they won’t need to see—they will be able to predict their opponent’s moves, from the first to the last.”

“But how do you divine someone’s soul from the folds in a lotus?” Anari asked.

“You can’t,” Shiro said matter-of-factly. “It’s just part of the ruse. He’s going to guess my moves from the common openings and choose his responses based on that.”

Yute chuckled. “That’s how most people do it. They don’t know the secret.”

Shiro snorted. “And what is the ‘secret’?”

“No one can ever fold a perfect lotus, because no one is perfect. Who you are is the sum of all your flaws, and so the flaws in your lotus create a map of your soul. I know how to read that map.”

Shiro scoffed. “So once you read my lotus, you’ll be able to tell what I’m going to do after I leave this table?”

“No, the number of possibilities is too great for that. In Dogen, however, your soul can only express itself in a few ways: move a piece forward, move it back, or side to side. And that, I can predict.”

There was a pause, then something slid across the table. 

“We’ll see,” Shiro said.

Yute reached out and picked up Shiro’s lotus, then carefully unfolded it and set it on the table. He ran his thumbs over the square of paper, then began tracing individual lines with the tips of his index fingers. A familiar pattern emerged.

The Hunter.

Yute recalled the archetype’s description: at their best, the Hunter was confident, driven, and independent, hungry for recognition and competition. At their worst, the Hunter was cruel, arrogant, and single-minded, willing to abandon decency and morality to get what they wanted. They had few friends, but prided themselves on their loyalty to the few they chose. The Hunter’s chief enemies, whether they knew it or not, were their fierce pride and their fear of vulnerability.

Yute’s fingers sought out the Hunter’s weakest places: its fears, its delusions, and its secret hopes. He found Shiro’s arrogance, warping her own self-confidence into a fear of failure. He traced the contours of her distrust, which made her both disdainful of companionship and deeply lonely for it. Finally, he outlined the shape of Shiro’s aspirations, which eschewed pleasure and comfort in favor of security and prestige.

All souls had a thread that could unravel them—an unspeakable threat, a nightmare worse than death. When confronted with it, the soul had two options: annihilation or contortion.

He could see the beginning of Shiro’s thread: she was terrified of being a nobody.

Yute set the lotus aside and folded his hands. He had handled it for less than two minutes.

Shiro laughed skeptically. “You’re ready? That didn’t take long.”

“There’s a reason for that,” Yute replied. “I’ll tell you after the game.”

“Are you saying I’m simple?”

“No, just familiar. Choose your cards.”

“All right,” Shiro said. “I choose Hammer and Dagger.”

“Give me Halberd and Spear.”

The cards slid across the table, and Yute heard Shiro arrange the pieces.

“Would you like to go first?” Yute asked.

“Sure.”

There was the rustle of clothing, then the metallic tap of a piece touching down on the board. Shiro set a card to the right of the board, where he could pick it up. He didn’t need her to tell him what it was.

Hammer. Left-side pawn forward one, then one to the right, to control the center of the board. She’ll establish herself in a position of power, then toy with me to test my limits.

Yute called out “Halberd. Far left-side pawn advances forward one, right two.”

Yute heard Anari slide his card to the left side of the board and slide Shiro’s Hammer card in front of him.

Another pawn clicked on the board, and another card whispered across the table.

Halberd. Right-side pawn moves to the left of the first pawn, to bring it closer to the center.

“Spear. Far right-side pawn moves forward one and left one.”

They continued trading turns, with Shiro testing his flanks with lone pawns. Each time one moved to the center rank, he moved up one of his own pawns to force her to retreat. Eventually, all of the pawns were arranged on their respective second ranks, like two rows of soldiers lining up for a pitched battle. 

From this state, Yute knew the normal procedure was for each player to look for the right moment to advance a pawn into the middle rank of the board, within striking range of their opponent. From there, each player would need to navigate the ensuing chain of exchanges, capturing and sacrificing the right pieces at the right time to ensure that their opponent ran out of pieces before they did. One wrong move could ruin the whole chain.

“Halberd. General moves left two, forward one,” Yute said casually. It was a stalling move, pushing Shiro to initiate the chain: his general was far to the left side of his row of pawns, out of striking range. 

Twelve rounds had already passed, and that meant they had traded cards 24 times. At this point, the chance of him guessing which cards had been passed to him was infinitesimal. By now, Shiro would be feeling some tumultuous emotions: disbelief that he hadn’t made a mistake yet, a sense of indignation at the amount of effort she had to put into her moves, and a growing fear that maybe she wasn’t going to win.

In two turns, she would decide that her own doubts were her real enemy, not him. She would decide to take decisive action and seize control of the game. She would move one of her pawns to the center of the board and begin the chain.

A piece moved across the board, and a card slid across the table.

Spear. She moved her general to the left one.

“Dagger, “ Yute said. “General back one, to the right one.”

It was another stalling move. If Shiro were attentive, she would be asking herself how he could know exactly how long to stall. 

Shiro moved another piece, then slapped a card next to the board, shaking the table slightly.

There it is—Halberd moves her far-right pawn to the center of the board.

Shiro’s piece was now in the no-man’s land between their two frontlines, able to strike at his pawns. If he was a conventional player, he would capture it before it could strike, setting up his capturing piece to be taken in turn.

Instead, he simply moved his general to the left corner of the board in the back row. Another stall.

“Spear. General moves one to the left.”

Shiro immediately moved her pawn and slid her chosen card beside the board.

She had captured his center-file pawn, ruining his battle-line. Neither of his cards allowed his pawns to move to the left or right, leaving her pawn to wreak havoc until he was passed Spear, which she would withhold from him. 

Instead, he advanced his general forward with Halberd and took her pawn, sealing the hole in his line.

There was silence from the other side of the table for a long time. Shiro muttered “Why would you…?”

Players like Shiro rarely used their general. They kept it remote and passive, away from harm, because its loss meant failure, her greatest fear. It was unthinkable to bring it to the front lines, except as a feint.

Now, Shiro was faced with a dilemma: her attack had been thwarted. Her battle-line of pawns was now at a disadvantage in terms of numbers, and she would need to find another opportunity to break the stalemate. That would take patience, but Shiro was not patient.

“Looks like we’re at a stalemate,” Yute offered.

“Yes, it does,” Shiro sighed. “Anari, you can head to bed for the night. I’ll take the watch.”

Yute heard Anari’s chair scrape against the floor, a mumbled ‘goodnight,’ then retreating footsteps.

“I thought that stretching out the game would give you more time to slip up,” Shiro sighed.

“Well, how am I doing?” he asked.

“It feels like I’m wading against a goddamn river.”

Yute smiled to himself.

“I keep looking three moves ahead and realizing you’ll have just the card you need at just the right time,” Shiro muttered.

“It’s how the Gambit goes.”

Silence. Shiro’s failure was weighing on her, breaking down her confidence and letting her insecurities rise to the surface.

“How are you really doing it?” Shiro asked. “You can hear where I’m moving the pieces, can’t you?”

Denial. She doesn’t want to accept her defeat.

“We could stuff cotton in my ears, if you wanted,” Yute offered. “It won’t change how I play.”

“There’s no way you could read my soul in the span of a few minutes.”

“You’re right, I couldn’t. It takes hours to read someone’s lotus.”

“So you are cheating!” Shiro said triumphantly.

Yute was calm, matter-of-fact. “No, I’ve just read a lotus like yours before. A very similar one.”

“Who?

“A friend of mine, from my school days. She was very talented. A duelist as well as a scholar. She was also a…very angry person.”

“Angry? Why?”

That’s what caught her attention: a kindred frustrated spirit.

“She worked hard, and people knew she was talented, but she never got what she deserved,” Yute said. “It came through when we played Dogen—she was impatient. You seem more disciplined.”

“For all the good it does me…” Shiro muttered.

“What do you mean?” Yute said, gently prompting her. She was beginning to let down her guard.

“Before, you were saying that talent isn’t enough. I get that. You need to…how do I put it? Kiss the right rings.”

“Whose rings were you kissing?”

“House Junra. I entered their service eight years ago, and I thought they’d make me a seneschal this year, after my trials. But instead I’m assigned to this island, to a prison full of stinking criminals.”

Yute nodded slowly. A seneschal was the eyes, ears, and hands of their House—sent to capture enemies, negotiate with allies, and spy on rivals. Yute could see Shiro’s attraction to the freedom and power of the title, but he focused on the word “prison.” 

You see this as your prison, not mine. You fear being stuck here, in obscurity.

Yute grunted. “That makes sense.”

Shiro paused. “What?”

“I could tell you were different. Most of the guards here are thugs. They’re on the other side of the bars, but they’re still thugs. You’re more dignified. You speak with authority. You have a determination about you, and it comes through in your playing.”

She sighed again. “It wasn’t enough…”

“How long are you posted here?” Yute asked.

“A year.” 

“And at the end of that year?”

Shiro’s voice was despondent. “They’ll evaluate me again and decide what they want to do with me.”

Yute steepled his fingers. “So something needs to change in that time.”

Shiro exhaled. “Your friend—what happened to her?”

Yute sighed, as if it pained him to recall the memory. “She had a sparring exam with another student at the end of her sixth semester. She did very well, but she made one wrong move. Her opponent seized on that and broke my friend’s arm. My friend lost her calm and tried to retaliate. Another broken arm.

“Afterwards, the instructor told her she wasn’t ready to advance. He said she kept sabotaging herself, and that something in her needed to change.”

Yute stared sightlessly at the pieces for a few seconds.

“She and I, we talked for a long time about what that ‘something’ was,” he said quietly. “I asked her to fold me a paper lotus. I looked at it for days, trying to figure out how she could change. I came up with an answer, but she didn’t believe me.”

“What did you tell her?” Shiro’s voice was intrigued, slightly desperate.

Yute paused again and folded his hands on the table.

“Can you imagine yourself as someone else? Someone completely different?”

“Not really…” Shiro replied. “Why?”

“That’s because you won’t allow yourself to. Your current self is cutting you off from being anyone else. Who are you now?”

“A swordbearer of House Junra.”

Yute pressed her. “What else?”

“A prison guard…”

Exactly what you don’t want to be.

“Are you loyal?”

“Yes.”

“Do you follow orders without question?”

“Yes.”

“Would you do anything to complete an order?”

“Yes.”

Yute leaned forward and pointed a finger at Shiro. “Then that’s why you weren’t made a seneschal.”

“What? How?”

“You didn’t hesitate on any of those questions. Not once.”

“How is that wrong?” Shiro asked, indignant. “That’s what a good house-member would do.”

“No, that’s what a servant would do,” Yute countered. “You’ve trained yourself not to think. You live to follow orders, and that’s not what they want in a seneschal. They want someone shrewd, sophisticated, guileful—someone comfortable with intrigue and lies.”

Yute shook his head once. “You’re intelligent, disciplined, but that’s not enough.”

Shiro was quiet for a while, taking in his words. When she spoke, she said “You really read my soul in that lotus?”

Yute inclined his head solemnly. “I did. Do you want me to tell you what you’re afraid of most?” Yute took a deep breath. “You’re afraid you’re going to grow old here, sleeping in the barracks, watching these filthy people scrub floors for ten, twenty, thirty more years, until—”

“Enough,” Shiro said quietly.

Yute closed his chapped lips and folded his hands again.

“You said you can change your lotus?” Shiro asked quietly.

Yute nodded. “You can. My friend didn’t listen, but maybe you will.” He exhaled. “You have to do something…that you could never imagine yourself doing. No one has to know it except you. You have to do it with your whole heart, and if you don’t feel any doubt, any regrets, then you’ll know you’ve changed.”

“Like what?”

Yute pretended to think for a while. “When you were a child, did you ever do something bad, something no one ever found out about?”

Shiro paused. “…yes.”

“What was it?”

“I…stole something from a friend. A necklace.”

“Do you remember that guilt? That feeling?” Yute asked.

“Yes. It felt like a weight,” Shiro answered.

“Did it ever go away?”

“No, not really.”

Yute nodded. “Ah…that’s because you won’t let it go. You were taught to follow rules, to be a good, obedient child. Your parents, your house, they taught you to hold onto their rules and punish yourself when you don’t. Now, all of that is holding you back.

“You have to imagine breaking a rule, an important rule, and feeling nothing. No weight. No guilt. Can you imagine that?”

“I…maybe,” Shiro said softly.

Yute took another deep breath. This was the key moment

“Then I think I have something you can do,” Yute said. “No one would need to get hurt, and it would be hard for you to get caught.”

“What is it?”

“When the ship leaves in a few days, add a name to the list of prisoners being released. Any prisoner you want,” Yute said gently. “No one ever has to know except you, and you can go to bed every night knowing that you broke a rule and didn’t get punished. If you can do that and feel no guilt, no shame, you’ll know you’ve changed.”

Before Shiro could respond, Yute continued. “And in a year, when your evaluation comes, you’ll have grown into a different Shiro—canny, guileful. They’ll realize you’re wasted here, and that will be the last you see of this place.”

Shiro was silent for a long time. Yute imagined his picture of the future painted in her mind—the freedom, the resumption of her upward ascent.

“Ugh…” she said quietly. “I don’t want to let any of these animals out. If I did, they’d probably just get arrested again and someone would notice they’re out early.”

Yute chuckled. “True. You’d need to pick someone who’s going to keep their nose clean.”

Shiro was silent again, and Yute felt a spike of frustration over his inability to read her face, her eyes. Yute could imagine the confusion swirling inside her head: the tantalizing, abstract salvation he’d proposed, the fear of being caught, and her innate distrust for him. She would catch on soon.

Finally, she said “You want me to release you, don’t you?”

Yute shrugged, trying to act indifferent. “That’s not my choice. That’s for you to decide.”

“Can’t you predict what I’m going to do?”

He could almost hear her smirk. She thinks she’s caught me out. 

“If you were someone else, maybe I could,” Yute lifted his manacled hands to tap his head. “Everyone builds their own prisons within their minds. They spend their whole lives pacing back and forth, so it’s not hard to predict them.” 

Yute lifted his head and gazed sightlessly at the prison’s ceiling. “It’s a rare person who has the strength to break free. Your lotus shows strength, but…I can’t predict what you’ll do.” 

Shiro gave a dry cough and cleared her throat. “I see. I’ll…think about it.”

Yute stared at her with his empty eye sockets. He could press her further, but it was dangerous. He might awaken her pride and stubbornness, and the whole discussion would become tainted. 

“Sleep on it,” he said amiably. “In the meantime, all I need is my cell, the alcohol, and a candle.”

“Wait…why do you need a candle? You can’t see,” Shiro said.

“The light keeps the rats away. I’ll burn it while I sleep.”

“Fine…I’ll get it,” Shiro murmured. “Come on, follow me.”

Yute followed Shiro down the hallway to the far western end, took a right turn, then down another hallway–-the same one that led to the exit. He heard her open a cell door, then felt his way to the entrance. He stepped inside and sat down on the bare floor, which was markedly warmer than his old cell. Shiro closed the door and walked away, then came back a few minutes later. 

“Here,” she said in a low voice. She clinked the bottle against the bars.

Yute stood up and walked closer, running his fingers along the bars until he felt Shiro’s wrist. 

It would only take a little effort to twist it against the bars, break the bone, then pin it while his other hand searched her belt for her keyring.

But that would be loud. Messy. Better to wait.

Yute wrapped his fingers around the bottle’s neck and lifted it out of Shiro’s hand. He took the candle and matches next, then said softly “Once you’ve tasted life outside the bars, you’ll start to see everything differently. Trust me.”

 He listened to Shiro’s footsteps fade down the hall.

The next day, Yute woke to the sound of his cell door opening. Something wooden touched down on the floor, and the door closed again. He sat up, crawled closer to the door, and found a tray with a wooden bowl and cup of water. In the bowl was a small piece of boiled horse meat.

A more civilized meal, he thought.

After breakfast, Yute sat against the wall of his cell, waiting and listening. When he smelled the new leather of Shiro’s gloves, he knew her shift had begun. She would be with another guard, but that guard would take a break after three hours. They would sit at the table in this hallway to watch the prisoners.

During that time, Yute could imagine Shiro staring at the pitiful, hollow faces on the other side of the bars, their eyes glinting with desperation, like rats. The more she stared, the more certain she would become: his name would be the one she would add to the list. Of all the prisoners, only he seemed human to her.

After three hours, the clock at the guard table sounded, and the other guard got up for their break. Shiro was by herself.

Yute cleared his throat and stood up, facing the bars. “Feeling up for another game?”

He heard a chair scrape back, then Shiro’s boots.

“Why? It’ll just be the same result, won’t it?” she said.

She’s been thinking about that, Yute thought.

“It will,” he said. “Until something in you changes.”

“I’ve been thinking about our conversation,” Shiro whispered. “I don’t think that would change me. Not deep down.”

Her resistance is stiffening. I need to wear it down again.

“Of course you don’t,” Yute said calmly. “When you imagine it, you’re imagining yourself like a naughty kid sneaking out of bed. That’s the old Shiro. You have to shed all that fear, the guilt, and pretend you’re someone else. And soon, you will be.”

“But why would my house want someone that betrays them?”

The question I’ve been anticipating.

“It’s not about betrayal,” Yute replied smoothly. “You cling to the idea that loyalty and service will ingratiate you with your superiors. It’s a dog’s mindset, and your superiors can sense it. They don’t promote dogs—they promote people like themselves. They want guile. They want boldness.”

Shiro blew air from her nose, uncertain. “I need to think about it a bit more. Just…leave me alone for a while.”

Yute shrugged. “Okay.”

He sat down against the wall and leaned his head back.

Leave me alone.

The little hole of doubt he’d created in Shiro was rapidly sealing itself again. He could take his time, wear her down slowly, but the boat was leaving in a few days. It would take another month for it to return—another month of horse meat, cold nights, and threadbare clothes.

He decided to take a gamble.

Over the next four days, Yute worked quietly and carefully, burning his candle and collecting the soot in his bowl, then mixing it in the bottle of alcohol a little bit at a time. At both his meals, he’d add a little more water to the mixture. Whenever he heard the guards walk to the other end of the hall, he would shake the bottle, which agitated the soot and broke it down.

From what Yute had heard from snatches of conversation between guards, nearly all of them got lazy during the night shift. They took their time to get out of bed, get dressed, and make their way to their posts, turning a gap in the shifts that should have been two minutes into one that usually stretched to ten. This was especially true if they were on watch alone, and even more so if their post didn’t require watching prisoners, like at the front gates. Or the hall to the cargo bay.

Shiro hadn’t slipped into the same laziness yet, but she had a habit of starting a shift and then immediately finding some excuse to use the washroom. 

The routine is already grating on her, so she needs to steel herself at the start of each watch, he thought.

At night, Yute listened to the guards come and go. He counted the minutes before the new guards replaced the old ones and tried to imagine how long it took the laggards watching the cargo bay to put on their socks and shuffle to their post. Twelve to fifteen minutes, he estimated. 

That would be enough time.

When the mixture of water and soot was ready, he faced the wall of his cell and began punching the smooth, hexagonal stones. After eight punches, a splintered bone in his ring finger tore through the skin. He broke a two-inch shard off of it, staunched the bleeding, and began rubbing the shard against the granite walls. After two days of rubbing, it was needle-sharp.

Once he was ready, he poured the soot mixture in his cup, dipped the bone needle in, and began to tattoo himself. 

The next night, Yute was leaning his head against the bars of his cell, holding his bandaged left hand against his chest. His bone needle was tucked in his pocket, along with Shiro’s paper lotus. Underneath his threadbare shirt, there was an intricate black mandala of sharp, geometric shapes tattooed across his chest. It was an old enchantment he’d learned at Itzon, during one of his surgery courses.

It was close to midnight when the evening guard changed over for the night shift. Yute began counting as their boots dwindled down the hall.

One, two, three, four, five…

After two minutes, he heard two pairs of boots walking down the hallway from opposite directions, toward the table. Anari’s voice echoed down the hall. Shiro’s voice answered. They would share this shift. 

Before she sat down at the table, Shiro spoke. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

To the washroom.

When her footsteps had faded, Yute whispered a word. The enchantment on his chest tingled for a moment, and he took a deep breath. He began pressing on his sternum with his right palm, feeling it warp and sink deeper into his flesh. He pressed on his ribs one at a time, bending them until they pressed against his lungs.

Finally, he ran his finger along the sagittal suture of his skull, making the bone soft and pliable.

Then he got on all fours, emptied his lungs with a long exhale, and set his head against the bars. With a grunt, he forced his skull between them. He twisted his body sideways and reached through the bars, pulling himself across the floor. His shoulders passed through, then his sternum, then his ribs, his waist, and his knees.

In the darkened hallway, he whispered another word and felt his bones slowly take their old shapes, blooming in his chest like flower petals.

Yute stood up and began walking down the hallway with one hand running along the bars of the empty single-person cells. He knew Anari’s chair faced away from his cell. His bare feet padded across the cold floor, and he counted the steps.

One, two, three, four…

He approached the table, listening to Anari’s breathing, then lowered himself on one knee so his head was directly behind her right shoulder. Then he wrapped his arm around her neck and jerked her backwards, tipping the chair to the floor.

Anari started gasping and thrashing, but Yute kept his arm locked around her throat, squeezing the air out. Anari twisted onto her side and struggled to her knees, but Yute clung to her back and held on. He felt the atrophied muscles in his left shoulder strain, then snap, but he pushed down the pain and held on. Anari staggered to her feet, but she only held herself up for a moment before she collapsed and lay still.

Yute let out a ragged breath and let go of Anari’s neck, then disentangled himself from her body. He pressed his palms over her face and nose until her chest stopped rising and falling. 

He still had two minutes until Shiro came back.

He felt around Anari’s belt for a keyring. There was no keyring.

Shiro has it.

Yute rose to his feet and walked down the hall, feeling his way toward the hallway intersection ahead. He passed the door to the washroom and heard Shiro’s soft movements on the other side. He could try to ambush her like Anari, but he could barely use his left arm. Subtlety would serve him better here. 

It’s time to choose, Shiro.

He gripped the handle to the washroom with his right hand and pushed the door open slowly, silently. He slipped inside, listening to Shiro splashing water from a basin, and arranged his hair to hide his empty eye sockets.

Empty sockets are disquieting. I need to be reassuring.

“Shiro,” he said softly.

Shiro yelped and stood in silence. Yute stood up straight and squared his shoulders, with his open hands at his sides.

“Serano?” she hissed.

“Don’t be afraid,” Yute whispered. “Everything is okay. It’s all okay.”

“How did you…? Where’s Anari?”

“She’s unconscious, back near the table. She’s okay—I checked.”

“Get back in your cell!”

Despite her agitation, Shiro was whispering.

“Shiro, listen to me,” Yute said calmly. “You were never going to be ready to take the next step. No matter how many times we spoke, no matter how much you thought about it. We have to help each other.”

“Not like this!” Shiro hissed. “You…you attacked Anari, and I’ll be blamed for…you’re going back in your cell!”

“Do you know how I got out of my cell?” Yute asked quietly. He lifted up his shirt with his right hand, revealing the spell tattooed on his chest.

“You were the one who gave me the alcohol and the candle,” Yute continued. “That’s how I made the ink for this. How’s that going to look? Either they’ll think you were stupid and careless, or we made a deal. And we did make a deal. Anari heard it.”

Shiro was silent. The implications were sinking in.

Yute spoke gently but firmly. “Now Anari’s lying unconscious back there. That can’t be undone. None of this can be undone. All we can do now is make the best of it.”

“What do you mean?” Shiro asked warily.

“If you put me back in a cell, I’ll tell the other guards you almost let me escape. The tattoo is proof of it. They’ll never trust you after that, and House Junra will never post you anywhere else. That will be the end of your story—rotting in this prison with the rest of us.” 

He paused for a beat, letting his words hang in the air. “But neither of us wants that. So I need to be gone. If you open the door to the cargo bay for me and lock it behind me, I’ll take care of the rest.”

Shiro scoffed. “It’s not that simple! Someone’s going to ask how you got out, and—”

Yute interrupted. “And you’ll tell them it was Anari. You can say you found her close to my cell. You can find the ink in there, too. Maybe I told her I wanted to write a letter—no matter what you say, it’s her word against yours. We both know she doesn’t have the will to hold out against you.”

“But I’d have to…” Shiro whispered. Her voice was soft and brittle.

Yute knew what she was thinking: I’d have to look her in the eyes and lie.

He pressed harder. “This is the moment, Shiro. The one we spoke about. If you can do this, do it and feel nothing, then you’ll know you’re free. You can change. But we have to help each other.”

“You keep saying you’re helping me, but…”

You’re threatening me, Yute finished in his head.

Through the haze of uncertainty and panic, Yute could see the Hunter reasserting itself: stubbornness, pride, and a distaste for being manipulated. Even if she went along with him at first, it would gnaw at her until she couldn’t take it.

Soon, she’ll realize she can scapegoat Anari for my escape and take credit for my capture. 

Shiro would decide betraying him was her best option. That left him with only one course of action.

Yute reached into his pocket with his right hand and pinched the bone needle against the side of his forefinger with his thumb. With his other fingers, he scooped up Shiro’s battered lotus and lifted it out of his pocket. He unfolded a few of the petals with his left hand, then held it out in his cupped right palm.

Distract her with hope.

“Please, just look…these folds here, near the center,” he said. “They showed me who you can be.”

He heard Shiro take a step closer, close enough that he could smell her sweat. He could imagine her eyes, locked on the lotus, wondering if she could see what he saw. 

He extended his arm, pretending to accidentally bump his fingers against the base of her neck. His thumb brushed against her carotid artery, and he could imagine it hovering there in space. Shiro’s hand came up and guided his hand lower. He felt her lift the lotus from his palm. 

“You can become anyone you want, Shiro,” Yute whispered. 

He dropped his right hand and shifted the needle so he held it between his middle and forefinger, then swung his right arm back up, over her forearms. He pressed the needle against Shiro’s throat and dragged it sideways, slicing through her flesh.

He knew Shiro’s hands would rise to her neck on instinct, so he stepped around her, pressed his palm over her mouth, and pinched her nose. She staggered backwards, driving him against the wall, but he kept his hand in place. He listened to her choke and gurgle and felt warm blood pool around his feet as she dropped to her knees.

One, two, three, four…

By twenty-two, Yute heard her arms drop, and Shiro slumped forward. Yute dropped his hands and let her tumble to the floor. 

He had four minutes left until the cargo bay guard came.

Yute knelt down and found the keyring on her belt, tucked it in his pocket, then went to the wash basin and splashed some water on his feet to get the blood off. When he was done, he went to the door and pressed his ear to it.

Silence.

He pushed open the door and stepped out. By memory, he made his way toward the cargo bay, where he’d arrived two years ago. He listened at the corner of the hallway, but only emptiness echoed down the hall—the guard hadn’t arrived yet. He followed the scent of sea salt to a locked door and ran his index finger over the heads of the keys until he found the one tarnished by the most rust. As he did, Yute caught the faint echoes of approaching boots.

Still around the corner.

He slotted the key in and slipped past the door, closing it behind him softly and locking it again. He navigated down the steep steps until he was standing next to the quietly lapping dock. Sitting in the water would be the ship.

After two years of smelling sweat and boiled horsemeat, the harsh tang of the ocean was heavenly. Yute found his way across the gangplank and lay down on the deck with his ear to the wood. No movement. He smiled, found the hatch to the lower deck, and climbed down, feeling his way along the walls.

Near the cargo hold, he stopped and listened again. He heard the creaking of the ship, the sloshing of the waves, then, finally, the squeak of a rat.

He followed the squeak to a plank in the floor, ripped it up, and listened to the rats scatter from their nest. He spoke a word, and the spell on his chest tingled again. He slid into the space under the planks, contorting his body to fit between the timbers. When he was set, he replaced the board above his head and lay still.

As he lay there, he imagined the pattern of bruises on Anari’s throat, the paper lotus mired in Shiro’s congealed blood, and the bloody print of his fist on the wall of his cell. He could see the contours of his soul in all those fragments, but he took satisfaction in knowing that no one else would ever be able to read them.

Want to try your hand at Dogen?

Play a simplified version of the game here.

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Those who explore hidden paths are rewarded.