The burden of perfection(part 1) - Dead Logic

Hiroshi's apartment had been completely transformed into something resembling the aftermath of an indoor intellectual competition.

Sheets of paper covered the table beside his computer, those were stacked while others lay scattered across one another, their corners bent from repeated handling. Almost every sheet displayed the same result 100/100. A few, however, had slightly lower scores, with marks such as 97, 98, and 99 circled or underlined in red. Beside the printed mark sheets sat a keyboard, a mouse, and several tabs still open on the computer screen, each showing the results of another online test. The floor was also chaotic. Chess pieces had been abandoned beside a half-finished game, playing cards lay spread across the carpet, wooden puzzle pieces had been separated into little piles, and several other games occupied whatever space remained. A Rubik's cube was under the bed, while another puzzle had been left on the windowsill.

Hiroshi sat at the edge of his bed, his elbows resting on his knees and his hands loosely clasped together. His head was down. Every object reminded him of another attempt he made but failed.

He had challenged Shuhi to different games, believing that a change of rules would eventually reveal a weakness he could exploit and win. The challenges depended on knowledge, sometimes on calculation or pattern recognition or strategy. They took online tests and checked the results against one another. Hiroshi had scored exceptionally well, often receiving full marks, yet Shuhi was getting full marks every time which Haruto found increasingly difficult to explain.

Whenever he lost a point, he examined the question, searched for the mistake, and tried to determine what he should have done differently. That was how he had always approached failure. To him, a mistake was an invitation to improve. A defeat was a problem that could be solved if he devoted enough time and effort to it. But what was he supposed to learn from a result that offered no obvious lesson? That was the question. At least, one of the first question.

He remembered the girl who had challenged him a year ago. Back then, Shuhi had still been someone he could compete with. He had defeated her before. He could remember the game very well. Yet the girl sitting in his apartment now seemed almost unrelated to that memory. She approached every challenge with an unsettling calmness.

"Has she changed that much in a single year or did I underestimate her before? Mayve something happened during the intervening months that he knew nothing about…no, that's too short of a time. What can happen in that little time?"

He tried to find an answer, but every explanation seemed to lead to another question. The more he thought about Shuhi, the less certain he became that his previous understanding of her had ever been accurate.

On the floor a short distance away, Shuhi was sitting with a wooden puzzle box. Its surface was covered in interlocking patterns, and several small pieces could be shifted or rotated to reveal the mechanism hidden inside. She examined the box from different angles and was occasionally pausing to scribble a few notes of that puzzle. She would study a section, test a possibility, reject it, and then try another arrangement. After a while, she held the box out toward Hiroshi. "I'm finished." Hiroshi looked at the object, then at her. He inspected the completed arrangement and found that the mechanism had been solved correctly. He could have asked her how long she had taken or which part had been the most difficult, but the questions felt pointless. He had already watched her solve enough puzzles to know that the answer would probably give him another detail to analyze without bringing him any closer to understanding her.

Instead, he straightened his back and got up from bed, "Let's…let's play rock, paper, scissors," he suggested, voice hesitant.

Shuhi tilted her head. "That game? Now that's pure gamble. Nice choice, I would say." She smiled faintly.

"All right." They raised their hands. Hiroshi chose rock, while Shuhi showed paper. He frowned, then tried again. This time, he chose scissors, but Shuhi chose rock. On the next attempt, he selected paper and she selected scissors.

With each round, Hiroshi became more attentive towards her microexpressions, hoping to get a read on her. Her hands, shoulders, eyes even the brief pauses before they made their choices. He tried changing his rhythm, delaying his movement, and making his expression deliberately unreadable. Yet Shuhi continued to beat him. He began to suspect that she was reading something in his behavior, perhaps a subtle physical cue that he was unaware of, but even that explanation failed to satisfy him.

He knew the game was not a pure test of luck in practice if a player could read another person's habits, but that did not explain how she seemed to anticipate his choices so consistently. He had played rock, paper, scissors countless times. And now, in his own apartment, he was losing it over and over.

"Again," he said.

Shuhi lowered her hand. "How many times are we even playin?"

"Until I win."

"Then it's gonna take a hell lot of time."

Her response irritated him more than it should have. But he instantly calmed himself. Hiroshi narrowed his eyes and tried to remember every round, searching for a recurring pattern as they gave their moves.

"Last time I checked, this damn game wasn't this hard! No matter how much someone is able to read other's move, some turns should have been gone on my favor! Is there some kind of cheating going on then? That would explain things."

He wanted to accuse her of cheating, yet he had no evidence. Calling it bare luck was also not a good explanation. Worst of all, he wanted to believe that he was merely making a series of mistakes could be corrected. If he could identify the flaw in his approach, he could change it and win. But the longer he sat there, the more the possibility emerged that he was searching for a simple answer because he could not tolerate the absence of one.

Shuhi watched him quietly. She could see that he was no longer treating it as a game. His expression had stiffened, and the small movements he had once made without thinking had become deliberate. Every loss was making him more cautious.

He was examining each decision so much intensely that he had stopped allowing himself to act naturally. Shuhi knew better than anyone to not mistake that reaction for weakness. Hiroshi was intelligent, disciplined, and accustomed to correcting his own errors. The difficulty was that he had begun applying those strengths to a problem in which constant analysis could become counterproductive.

She had seen the same pattern in him before, though never quite so clearly. He did not merely dislike losing. He disliked the feeling that a loss had revealed a limitation he could not immediately overcome. And the more he feared that possibility, the more desperately he tried to force every outcome into a form he could control.

---

The day before:

"One more time," Rina said, her voice coming out from the bathroom.

"You have 30 seconds. Choose any room you want and go inside. I'll stay here and lock the door. After I come outside, I'll tell you which room you picked without searching."

Shuhi stood in the corridor. Rina went inside the bathroom, looking too pleased with herself for someone who had proposed such a simple game.

"You aren't going to look?" Shuhi asked before Rina could close the door.

"Not even once. I mean, that's the point. I don't need to." Rina said without looking back and closed the door.

"Well well, this game sounds absurdly easy to manipulate. This apartment has 4 rooms. This is the living room. So, we got the bedroom which is near the bathroom, the kitchen at the left side and another extra room at the very back. I the options are many. I can also make something to that would cause a noise which would make her focus on that room. There is no apparent reason Rina should be able to distinguish between the possibilities without seeing me" Shuhi thought.

Shuhi eventually entered the kitchen and waited for Rina to make her call.

After the designated time, Rina got out from bathroom, "The kitchen," Rina said.

Shuhi got out, "Correct."

"Again."

The second time, Shuhi selected the bedroom. Rina named it correctly. The third time, Shuhi entered another room. Rina still guessed correctly.

Shuhi began to pay closer attention to the circumstances surrounding each attempt. She noted the position of the doors, the direction of the corridors, and the distance between the rooms. She tried to determine whether Rina was relying on a sound she had overlooked or some predictable aspect of her movement. To remove the possibility that the game depended on her choosing different rooms, Shuhi returned to the bedroom three times in succession. Rina named the bedroom every time.

And to remove the possibility of Rina relying on some kind of sound or super hearing ability, she played a music on her phone, set the sound to maximum and placed the phone on the table of loving room.

Despite all of that, Rina guessed correct everytine. When Shuhi returned for the third consecutive attempt, Rina approached her, "Well?"

Shuhi studied her face. "I…I am baffled. Somehow you know which room I am in every time."

Rina laughed, "I am going to teach you this same technique. Just make sure one thing. When you challenge Hiroshi, make sure to absolutely demolish him. Like no diff him. Don't hold back."

Chapter 63 - The burden of perfection(part 1)