As Chad opened a door that would soon become very familiar, a sweet voice greeted him.

“Hey Chad.”

“Hi Ko-ko.”

Kobani, in her usual kneeling position next to the table in the meeting room, was scribbling on a piece of paper while he took his seat next to her.

Unlike the day before, he immediately went to the student council meeting after fourth period, trying to avoid being scolded by either Rose or Sarah for being late.

It was actually surprising that anyone had even beat him. The classroom he departed from was nearby and he had some extra energy today so he walked at a decent pace. Plus, Kobani was a slow walker due to her extremely short strides. It was interesting that she, of all the council members, had gotten here before him.

“Have you made any progress on the assignment Mrs. Wenwir gave us?” Kobani asked.

“Huh? Oh, no I haven’t. I was too busy doing other homework during the rest of my classes. I guess I’ll do it after the meeting today.”

“Other homework?”

“Well yea, I have other classes during third and fourth period. I usually do those classes' homework during the same period. I find it hard to do art homework during class, especially since Mrs. Wenwir moved me to the front.”

Wenwir seemed to be one of those teachers who actually cared if a student was paying attention or not during the class.

“Wait, you do homework while class is going on?”

“I mean, what other time do I have to do it during the school day?”

“Oh.”

Kobani gave herself a light tap on the head, as if she just came to an obvious conclusion.

“I completely forgot you’re still just a sophomore.”

“What does that mean?” Chad asked.

“It means that you probably don’t have any periods off.”

“Periods off?”

She smiled and sat up a bit taller.

“Since I’m a senior, I’m finishing up all the classes I have to take. In other words, I can’t fully fill my schedule with classes, so I have open periods where I have no classes.”

“Oh, that seems like a nice deal. Although, I feel like I would run out of things to do and get bored just sitting around at school waiting for my next class.”

That and the void in Chad’s schedule would make his structured and routine based lifestyle a bit uncomfortable.

“You could do what I do and pick up a TA position.”

“TA position?”

Kobani tilted her head, “You don’t know much about this school, do you?”

“Why would I care about learning about my school? I only come here to get an education and then leave. Learning about the nuances of this school seems wasteful.”

“Well, you are a student council member… Anyways, TA stands for teaching assistant. They are positions usually held by upperclassmen in courses they have already taken.”

“Is it a paid job?”

“No.”

“Then why would anybody do something that isn’t required to graduate?”

“Resume building of course,” Kobani looked off to the side, “I also kind of want to be a teacher in the future. I thought it would be good experience.”

Her shoulders slumped a bit, forcing him to ask a question to continue the conversation.

“Is it good experience?”

“No. All I do is do printer runs, proctor exams and other miscellaneous tasks. There’s not much teaching for the job being titled ‘teaching assistant.’”

“Hm”

Chad didn’t have any further comments. He was just trying to imagine Kobani as a teacher. Even if all the students were sitting in desks, she would still probably have to look up at them. It was quite a humorous scene.

“Why are you smiling? Did I say something funny?”

Lost in thought, he had let a smile crawl onto his face.

“Uh no. I was just imagining you as a teacher. Why do you want to be a teacher anyways? No offense, but you don’t seem to be quite the type to teach.”

Kobani didn’t seem dumb by any means, by not exactly the sharpest. Also, she was super tentative around Chad. Teachers should be confident and firm when speaking. Plus, there was also the size issue that made it seem hard for him to imagine her as a teacher.

“I want to teach elementary school kids. I just think it would be awesome to work with cute little kids every day.”

Her eyes sparkled at the thought of becoming a glorified babysitter.

I guess that makes sense. It would be the only age group she would be consistently taller than. Although a few might be as tall as her.

He internally laughed at the imagined scene.

Just as he started to wonder if anybody else would show up, the door swung open. Sarah walked in and took her seat across from Kobani.

“Hi Ko-ko.”

The whole time she didn’t take her eyes off the paperback book she was reading.

“Afternoon”

“Hey Sarah”

Sarah quickly glanced up just to glare at him.

What the hell did I even do? All I did was say hi. Getting on her good side is going to be quite the task.

Before the door had fully closed, Kate followed her into the classroom and stood at the head of the table across from where Rose usually sat.

“Rose will be late today. She’s in an urgent meeting with the school board.”

She then took her seat after the announcement.

A moment of silence passes, then another… and another. Everybody sat without talking to each other, nor even looking at each other.

Sarah continued reading, Kobani was drawing and Kate took out her clipboard and calculator and started doing who knows what.

Is this really the student council without Rose? Why aren’t we doing anything? Are they really that reliant on her leadership?

“So… what’s the plan for today?” Chad asked.

“How about shut up and relieve me of any future headaches.”

“Jesus Sarah, all I did was ask a question.”

She just rolled her eyes in response.

“Rose is usually the one who makes the itinerary for each meeting. Without her here, there isn’t much scheduled for us to do.” Kate said.

“So all you guys do when Rose isn’t here is sit in silence?”

“Pretty much. Got a problem with that?” Sarah replied.

Although having the student council sit and do nothing was preferable for Chad, there was no way he was going to let this opportunity pass. Without Rose present, there was a vacuum of any leadership and direction. He needed to step in and exploit this opening when she wasn’t here.

A bit ironic, since his eventual goal was to have the student council do as little as possible in the future. He needed to step in and have them do something now in order to have any chance of reaching that goal.

“It just doesn’t seem very productive for us to sit here and do nothing.”

“I’m not doing nothing, I’m reading.”

Kobani sat up from her drawing position, “I think what Chad’s trying to say is that since we’re all here, we shouldn’t just all be doing our own things. We should do something as a group.”

“But Rose isn’t here.” Kate said.

“She doesn’t need to be here for us to do something. There are still four council members here.”

“If you’re so proactive, then what do you suggest we do?” Sarah said while snapping her book shut.

Chad hadn’t gotten that far in his plan yet. He just knew sitting in silence wouldn’t help him in his plan. Even just chatting like this was a more productive way of becoming closer to the council members.

“Well… There are plenty of things we could do…” He gulped, “Like…”

“Playing a game!”

Playing a game?

Kobani’s proposal caught him off guard, but it saved his lapse of thought.

“Why would we play a game?” Kate asked, “It doesn’t seem all that more productive than doing what we have been doing.”

“It’s not about being productive,” Kobani said, “It's about building comradery. Right Chad?”

“Uh, sure.”

His plan was to start executing smaller student council duties without the presence of the president. Then, he could slowly create a separate entity in the student council. One that wasn’t under Rose’s rule and could operate independently. This could eventually lead to two separate factions, one led by Rose and one led by him. He would utilize this to eventually overtake the student council. That was, at least, a very rough outline of a plan he had recently come up with.

As always, plans don’t always go accordingly. Most usually fall through entirely, but Kobani’s suggestion wasn’t the worst and maybe it would be an even gentler push towards this faction plan. Building chemistry with the other members was a good start.

“Oh in that case, it does kind of sound fun,” Kate put down her calculator, “What should we play? Battleship? Or maybe monopoly? I’ll be the banker, I love keeping track of the money.”

“We don’t have those games. In fact, we don’t actually have any games in this room. Back to reading in silence I guess.” Sarah put her feet onto the table.

“What about twenty questions? That doesn’t require any supplies.”

““What’s that?””

Kobani and Kate looked quizzically at him.

“You guys have never played twenty questions before?”

This was a bit surprising. Even Chad, who sorely lacked friends throughout all of his life, had played.

“I can quickly explain then. It isn’t too hard.”

“It can’t be if a caveman like you understands it.”

He quickly glared at Sarah before starting his explanation.

“So in this game, there is one answerer and the rest of the people playing are questioners. I’m not sure if those are the correct terms for the roles, but let's go with them for now. The answerer thinks of a person, place or thing. The questioners then have twenty questions to guess the word the answerer chose. The questions have to be yes or no questions.

“If the questioners don’t guess the correct word by or on the twentieth question, they lose and the answerer wins. If they do, then the answerer loses and everybody else wins. The questionnaires are only competing against the answerer so they can work together.

“The game doesn’t require anything but our minds, so we don’t run into the problem of not having the right equipment for it.”

“Seems like you may be ill prepared.”

“If you’re so against playing a game, then why don’t you go to the corner and read your silly book.” Chad quipped back.

He pointed to the corner Sarah once used as refuge from the headaches he caused her.

“I think I’m fine just where I am.”

Whatever.

Chad had already essentially given up on winning Sarah over anyways, he now mostly focused on bringing Kobani and Kate to his side.

“So, how should we decide who’s the answerer first?” Kobani asked.

“Whenever I play board games with my family, the oldest always goes first. It sucked though, because that meant I never got to go first.” Kate suggested.

Everyone’s eyes turned to Kobani, who was the only senior in the student council, so she was presumably the oldest. A safe guess at least.

“Oh, ok then… I have my word, so guess away.”

After quickly glancing around the room, Kobani gave Chad a nod letting him know she was ready for the game to begin.

Round 1:

Answerer: Kobani

Questioners: Chad, Kate

Spectator?: Sarah

“Is it the floor plans for Manha High School?” Kate asked, almost hopefully.

“Uh, no?”

“You probably want to stray from too specific of questions right away. Try thinking of questions that are a lot more broad.”

Chad smiled at Kate, trying to come across as friendly as he could.

She gave an assertive nod back.

“Noted.”

He furrowed his eyebrows. Even though he knew the rules of the game, he couldn’t remember the last time he had played it. The rules stated that the word could be a person, place or thing. That allowed for the word to be just about anything. Narrowing it down into one of the three categories would be very useful.

He asked the first question, in hopes to categorize the word Kobani had chosen.

“Is it a person, place or thing?”

“Ooo, good question Chad.” Kate said encouragingly.

“Uh…”

“Nice yes or no question, dumbass.” Sarah snarked.

“I don’t know how to answer that question within the rules you gave us.” Kobani looked at him with glossy eyes.

Shit.

Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

Since he had never really played this game before, one of the core rules completely slipped his mind. It made it even more embarrassing since he was the one to explain the rules.

Chad slid down into his chair, giving Kobani a sheepish smile.

Kate then brought forth a question that seemed to be inspired by him.

“Is it a person?”

Although not that efficient, they could work out the category of the word with yes or no questions.

“No.”

Kobani answered with a smile, seeming to be having fun with the game.

Kate pushed up her glasses and then scribbled something down on her clipboard.

Is she taking notes?

Shedding that thought to the side, Chad was thinking of ways to most efficiently utilize their twenty questions. Going through each category would most likely work, but thinking of a question that would not only cross out one of the categories but also a part of the other category would be even better.

With a confident smile, Chad asked his question.

“Is it something you can hold in your hands?”

“Yes.”

Perfect.

This not only got rid of the category “Places”, since holding a place in one's hands is impossible, but also crossed off “Things” larger than something a person could hold. Coming up with broad questions that also would also give them assumptive details was definitely the strategy.

He had already come up with his next great question. With a confident smirk, he parted his lips to ask it.

“Is it-”

“Does it have fur?”

Huh?

The question came from an unexpected source across the table. The mouth that asked it was still behind a familiar paperback book.

“I thought you weren’t playing?”

“When the hell did I ever say that mouth breather?”

“Well, you sure seemed disinterested in playing.”

“Hmph, whatever. So Ko-ko, does it have fur?”

An unexpected participant had stolen his thunder. Not only did she interrupt him, she also asked such a specific question. The answer was bound to be no. Out of all the things that somebody can hold in their hands, only a small fraction had fur. This question was going to be a waste.

“Yes…”

Kobani bit her lip, seeming a bit anxious.

What?

By some miracle, Sarah’s overly specific question had given them great insight to what the word could be.

Chad instantly started racking his brain of animals that one could hold in their hands.

Dog? Cat? Guinea Pig? Squirrel? Chipmunk?

There were still too many to guess directly. He needed to think of ways to subcategorize all of these and then ask a question that could eliminate approximately half of them. That would be the optimal strategy.

“It's a bunny.”

“Huh.”

“Oh sorry, I almost made the same mistake as the neanderthal. I’ll phrase it as a yes or no question. Is the word ‘bunny’?”

What the hell type of shot in the dark is that?

They were only about six questions in and Sarah was already guessing the answer. That was definitely not an efficient way to play. The only times he could think of to guess the word,was when the answer was apparent or if they were on they’re last question. Guessing the word on the sixth question with barely any details was blasphemy.

“Yes, that's correct. The word I chose was bunny. Good job Sarah.” Kobani swayed back and forth, seeming embarrassed that her word was guessed so easily.

“Wha- Huh, h-how’d you know?”

Chad was dumbfounded. The sheer number of possibilities the word could’ve been. Combined with the little information they had about it made guessing the word statistically impossible.

“It was really simple. I actually knew it from the start of the game. I just let you guys whittle it down a bit before I became one hundred percent certain I had it.”

“That’s impossible. Out of the millions of words it could’ve been, how did you know it before even asking a single question?” Kate asked.

“Ko-ko is really easy to read. And also, when people are put on the spot, they usually rely on their surroundings. Ko-ko’s drawing a bunny. She likes bunnies. There was a good chance that’s what it was going to be from the start.”

Chad looked over to the picture Kobani had been drawing since he walked in. It was a bunny mid jump with a flower in the background, beautiful as were all of her drawings.

Of course.

He had been looking at this game from a completely analytical and statistical standpoint. He didn’t take into account the human aspect of it. Especially the personalities of each of the participants. If he were to utilize this, he would’ve been able to come up with the same conclusion as Sarah.

“I guess I win. Are we done playing now?”

“Rose still isn’t here, and I haven’t heard anything from her. She would’ve messaged me if the meeting were to be canceled today.”

“With how quick that game went, we could probably squeeze in another. M-maybe somebody else could be the answerer… I didn’t do too well.”

“It's ok Ko-ko,” Chad patted her back with a smile, “This isn’t a competitive game or anything. We are just trying to have some fun.”

I want to win. I want to beat her.

Ever since joining the student council, Sarah has looked down on him. She’s let him know on a multitude of occasions of her intellectual superiority.

He heard from Kobani that she was some sort of genius, but that just made him want to beat her more. He never felt this fired up before in his life. A competitive nature had suddenly been nurtured and set ablaze.

“Sarah, do you have your word picked out?”

“Why do I go next?”

“You won didn’t you? Makes sense for you to go next.”

“Didn’t you say it was a team game? Technically all the questioners won.”

“Yes but you figured it out. It makes sense for you to go next.”

Sarah furrowed her eyebrows at Chad’s proposal. After letting out a long sigh, her book finally closed and was set on the table.

“Fine, just give me a moment to think… Ok. I got my word.”

She had looked at Chad the entire time. She definitely didn’t pick something that was in the room. He would have to find other ways to connect her personality to the word she chose.

Round 2:

Answerer: Sarah

Questioners: Chad, Kate, Kobani

“Is it a person?” Kobani started.

“No.”

A person would be too easy. A place would also be easy to whittle down at with twenty questions. With how fast she picked it, she definitely picked something that came from a random thought. Figuring out what in the room spurred that thought would be extremely helpful.

“Is it that book you’re always reading?”

Kate seemed to take Sarah’s advice of guessing with the person in mind. Maybe taking that advice too literally. Her question was much too specific.

“No.”

“Is it bigger than this?”

Chad put his arms out at about shoulder width, as if he was holding an imaginary box.

“Hmm…” Sarah looked to the ceiling, “Yes and no. It's hard to say.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She shrugged in response.

With that answer, he came to the conclusion it was something that could come in different sizes. It didn’t have a fixed size.

“Does it grow bigger when you feed it?”

“No.”

Kobani’s question was definitely alluring to some sort of animal. Animals came in a plethora of sizes, so the question fit what they currently knew about the word. If the answer would have been yes, that would have substantially narrowed it down. Her question at least crossed off living things.

“Is it paper?”

“No.”

Kate seemed to be going for homerun questions, or didn’t really know how to ask broader questions. It didn’t help their chances, but Chad didn’t want to correct her and say something that could come across as mean.

“Is it something I can cuddle?”

“No.”

That question was quite odd. Chad tried to think of information he could pick out from this answer, but they had already ruled out animals.

Wait.

There was a chance Sarah had misinterpreted the question like he just did. When someone hears the word cuddle, they instinctively think of soft things, but they could cuddle a cactus. It wouldn’t be comfortable, but it was possible. Can was a powerful word.

He asked his question, needing to confirm something.

“Is it just something you wouldn’t want to cuddle, or is it something you can’t physically cuddle?”

“That’s two questions. And it's not a yes or no question. Next.”

Gah, I’m an idiot.

Once again, he forgot one of the few simple rules.

Swallowing his embarrassment, he reworded.

“Is it something you can’t physically cuddle?”

“Yes.”

At last, they had gotten a yes.

This allowed him to cross out physical objects.

I guess I could’ve just asked if it was tangible, but Kobani started my train of thought with that cuddling question. Whatever, we arrived at the same information.

The word Sarah had chosen was definitely something abstract and not physical. Now it was time to find categories of abstract words so they could slowly cross them out.

“Is it a value someone can hold?” Kate asked.

“Like honesty?”

Kate nodded.

Sarah began playing with her lips in thought.

“N-no… I wouldn’t think so…”

Chad was still looking down the table at Kate.

She had asked a surprisingly good question for how horribly specific her last ones were. She seemed to be improving fast.

It also helped him start game planning for the next question.

“Is it something tangible?”

Kobani seemed to have just arrived at a conclusion he had some time ago, asking a very similar question to one of his earlier ones.

“No.”

Chad racked his brain, thinking of categories of words that could still fit within the description of this word.

“Is it something related to religion?”

“No, but that’s such a broad question it could be yes.”

Sarah was right. Asking if something like that was not only a broad question, but also horribly subjective.

“Is it a feeling?”

Her timid voice was barely audible when asking. Kobani’s eyes started to become glossy.

Sarah’s eyes widened then answered.

“Yes.”

That was huge.

“Nice question Kobani, we’re almost there.”

Chad praised her with his fabricated smile. She seemed to jitter at his words. Perhaps he startled her.

Having the list of words be brought all the way down to feelings was extremely helpful.

“Is it a feeling that you’re feeling right now?”

“No.”

Kate again was a bit too specific. Even if that answer was yes, figuring out how Sarah felt right now wasn’t for sure going to be easy.

“Is it a question related to happiness?” Kobani asked, playing with her sleeves.

“No, five questions left.”

Crap.

Kate and Kobani had been rattling off questions left and right, leaving Chad in his thoughts. He needed to think of a question, a good one at that.

They know it's a feeling and it isn’t related to happiness. How could they categorize feelings?

They needed a way to efficiently figure out what type of feeling it was, without listing out all the basic ones, wasting their questions. Even if they were able to narrow it down quickly, they still would need a question or two to sift through synonyms.

Oh, that might do.

“Is it one of the seven deadly sins or related to the seven deadly sins?”

The seven deadly sins was a nice collection of different feelings. No matter the answer, this would cross out a good chunk of emotions.

“That’s two questions again dumbass,” Sarah rolled her eyes,

Shit, I’m an idiot.

“but I’ll be kind this time and answer both. No for the first one.”

She put her hand up to her forehead. It looked like she was deeply weighing her thoughts.

“And… Yes for the second question.”

“It relates to the seven deadly sins.”

“Mhm,” She nodded, “I won’t charge you for that reassurance question though. Three questions left.”

“I thought you weren’t counting that last one.”

“Chad still asked two questions and I answered both. So, three questions left.”

Sarah smirked, seeming like she was actually enjoying the game.

He looked at his teammates. They were both deep in thought, thinking of another questions to ask.

“Hey guys. Let’s brainstorm together. We only have three questions left so we don’t want to waste any.”

“Yes, let's storm our brains together.”

“Ok!”

Both of them looked at him, waiting for him to take initiative.

“So, uh… we know it's related to one of the seven deadly sins, but which one do you guys think it may be? We can’t go through and ask about each one of them.”

“Even if it narrows it down to seven emotions, it's still only related to one of them. This will be hard.”

“Um,” Kobani interjected Kate and Chad’s brainstorming with a question, “C-can you guys list all of them? I know envy and greed, but I can’t remember the others.”

“Oh, uh…”

It seemed like Chad didn’t know them verbatim either.

“Pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth.” Kate answered, proudly pushing her glasses up, “All are pretty abstract in their own rights, so this will be quite the task to efficiently narrow them down.”

Picking a word that was so metaphysical and hard was pretty unsportsmanlike.

“Why’d you have to pick such a difficult word?”

“It's not hard, you’re just dumb” Sarah stated as if it were fact.

Chad rummaged through his backpack and pulled out a piece of paper and a pencil. He then wrote out all seven sins.

“Ok, the best way to find which one it relates to is to ask a question that cuts out about half of them. It's like a searching algorithm, it's what I’ve based most of my questions on, trying to cut out half of the possibilities each time.”

The analogy he made wasn’t exactly a one to one correlation, but he hoped his point would come across.

Kobani and Kate nodded at him, seeming to be following what he was saying.

“After wiping half of them, we’ll be left with either three or four of the sins. We’ll have to take a chance with our second to last question and simply guess which one it's related to. We’ll either have a twenty-five or thirty-three percent chance of guessing correctly, but that’s still a decent chunk of probability.

“And after hopefully guessing the correct one, we’ll have one last shot at guessing the word. It isn’t much of a chance, but I believe that this is the best gameplan for winning. Do you guys agree? Have any suggestions?”

“Seems quite logical to me.”

“Impressive strategy Chad!”

The encouragement from his fellow council members filled him with confidence.

“Alright then.”

He started to write on the piece of paper again.

“So one pattern I noticed is that three of them have two vowels while the other four only have one. We could ask about how many vowels it has and that can be our splitting question.”

“No, that’s not correct.” Kate said.

Huh?

Chad looked back down at his paper, where he bolded the vowels.

Pride, Greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, sloth

“The ‘y’ in ‘gluttony’ is a vowel.”

“But isn’t ‘y’ only sometimes a vowel?”

“‘Yes. ‘Y’ is a vowel if it's the only vowel in the word, if it's at the end of a word making the ‘eee’ sound or if it's in the middle of a syllable. So the ‘y’ in ‘envy’ is a vowel and so is the ‘y’ in gluttony.”

Chad glanced at the supposed genius, Sarah, to see if what Kate was saying was true. Their gazes met and she just rolled her eyes at him as if saying you didn’t know that dumbass? He was just happy she didn’t verbalize those thoughts.

A tiny bit rattled that he had made such a simple mistake, he continued.

“W-we can still use this information though. We can phrase our question like ‘Does the sin the word relates to have one vowel?’ It will still cross out either three or four of them, still keeping to our gameplan.”

They nodded their heads in agreement. Chad then faced Sarah and asked their concocted question.

“Does the sin the word relates to have one vowel?”

“Yes.”

That’s huge.

That was definitely the answer he had been hoping for. Not only does that cross out four of the sins, but he believed they could cross out even more without a question. What was left were: lust, wrath and sloth.

He crossed out lust believing it would be awkward if Sarah chose a feeling related to that. Plus, he wasn’t sure he wanted to answer correctly if it was.

Next, he lightly crossed out wrath. He wasn’t quite as confident in this, but Kate had asked earlier ‘Is it a feeling that you’re feeling right now?’ and the answer was no. From his experience, Sarah was quite an angry and hateful person, always belittling him and picking verbal fights with teachers. He just assumed she always felt somewhat irate at all times.

Chad acknowledged that this wasn’t the best deduction work ever, but they had limited questions and they would have to take chances here anyways.

Sloth was the most likely sin for the word to be related to.

This bitch.

He had just figured out the word. It made complete sense now, seeing how Sarah viewed him and how she seemed to be glaring at him the whole game.

He continued, asking the second to last question, but with the rules he had given, this was the last question before the final guess, since you’re supposed to use the final question to guess the word.

“Is sloth the sin it’s related to.”

“Yes.”

One of Sarah’s eyebrows raised at him.

God dammit. She even utilized this game to make fun of me?

They only had the last question left. The question where you guessed the word, but Chad was confident he knew, or was at least extremely close. He’d be content either way. It was just like Sarah to use every opportunity she had to deprecate him.

“Laziness. The word is laziness,” he mumbled.

“Let me put it in proper format. Is the word ‘laziness’?”

Using a friendly game to call Chad lazy. This was so fitting for Sarah.

He clenched his fists under the table, awaiting the answer.

“Nope, I win,” Sarah said with a content smile. One that he hadn’t seen before.

“W-what? It was at least close to laziness or lazy, right?”

“Not really. The word I chose was ‘nothingness’.”

Everyone fell silent at Sarah revealing the word.

“You did surprisingly well though,” Sarah whispered under her breath.

“Is that even allowed?” Kate asked.

“I-I don’t know…”

“Of course it isn’t.”

Sarah rolled her eyes and pointed at Chad.

“Nimrod. You said the word could be any person, place or thing.”

“But nothing is literally where there is no thing. It’s not a thing.”

“I thought of that counterargument. That’s why I specifically chose the word ‘nothingness’ as opposed to ‘nothing’. The word ‘nothing’ is not a noun, but ‘nothingness’ is. I would argue that it falls under a ‘thing’.”

“But nothingness doesn’t even exist, it's not a thing.”

He continued to plead his case.

“Oh really, ‘not a thing’. I would analogize nothingness to things such as a void, or a vacuum. Would you say those things don’t exist? Because I think many people would disagree.”

Chad caught himself getting too worked up over this. He released his clenched fists along with his irritation.

“Whatever.”

He slumped back into his chair.

“That was really fun. I quite enjoyed it.” Kate said.

“Yea, I was on the edge of my seat. We got so close.”

“You’re always on the edge of your seat Ko-ko.” Sarah said, changing to a playful tone.

All three girls were smiling, seeming to have enjoyed their time playing the game. Even the usually stone faced Sarah was having fun talking to Kate and Kobani about the game and how it played out.

Huh. That actually went pretty well. Even if I didn’t win.

The unusual burst of competitive spirit in Chad simmered down. He realized he felt a lot more comfortable sitting next to these girls.

As if on cue, the discomfort came back when a certain someone barged into the room with some haste.

“Sorry I’m late everyone, there was an emergency the board briefed me about. We need to take care of this now.”

He had never seen Rose’s face so stern before, her lips pursed and eyebrows furrowed as she took her seat at the head of the table.