Kusumesh

3 months later…

I have one memory of when I was a baby, the only dream I ever had in my life, and the last time I ever felt the need to sleep. I saw flowers crying or (and?) dew falling upwards from their petals. It was hard to remember at this point, but I knew it had to mean something. I didn’t do anything about it for years, until 3 months ago… The police only let us get the security footage from our camera, and all that it showed was the alliance key falling from the sky into Alex’s hand, dew dripping down its petals.

That was the only evidence I was given for the case. Apparently, Alex poisoned Bacia and ran away, Soraya was the one who discovered it, and Cozbi was at the party. But something always felt off about it for me. Alex left my house around 8:15, and I felt Bacia die at 8:27. Unless he took a car, which he couldn’t, there was no way he made it to her house and had time to poison her. Also, if he was the only one there, why didn’t he at least try to hide it? The case wasn’t declassified yet, but I knew he was too smart to leave the situation like this. Someone else had to have been there, either Soraya or Cozbi, and set him up. It was probably Cozbi, he always had something against her. I could make it look like both.

Castling is a move with only 4 rules, but leaving the rook vulnerable isn’t one of those rules. Rooks are gone, but this isn’t exactly chess… the king isn’t in check and the queen is completely fine. It’s still a much better situation than before, 2 down, 2 remaining, and the romantic tension is gone too. The Triamala’s themselves were much trickier, but this situation made it much easier - once I figured out how to prove the temporal inconsistency without revealing my abilities. The only way was accessing the investigation files, and those were locked up with the police. All I could do for now was wait.

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The grass felt moist on my neck, and the sun was starting to come up. I spent the past few hours upside-down, staring at the petals of a chrysanthemum, watching the dew drip upwards into a puddle on the ground, thinking about what my moves were going to be for the school year, and the past. A droplet slowly meandered towards the edge, and rose into the puddle. A small ant was chewing on a leaf, the perfect test subject. Touching it with my finger, it glowed a light shade of white and the veins slowly inched into the hole followed by the blade, with the exact same effort as a couple hours ago when I had tried the same thing. Recreating the dream did absolutely nothing, although maybe it was a scale thing. That was an issue for another day though, and it is the last step to usurp the throne, it could wait. All I could do for now was wait, which was fine. I still had to figure out one last…

“What are you doing?”, a voice in the distance shouted.

“It’s the first day of school and you already like this?,” my mom exclaimed as I stood up and scuttled towards the door, “Now go get ready before I sell you to the orphanage.”

“That's not how an orphanage wor…”

“GO”

“O…kay,” I sighed. Today was going to be extremely difficult.

Step 1: Get access to the tracker Soraya was going to put on Cozbi.