The wood groaned.
She moved a silver general in her head. 27. Silver to 4c. Kaori Saejima -2021-
She walked deeper. The air tasted of wet plaster and old secrets. The wood groaned
The Caretaker. She had invented that name. She had never spoken it aloud. Not to her therapists, not to the one ex-boyfriend who stayed long enough to learn her tics, not to the mirror on the nights she wept without sound. like a marker on a grave.
The gold general from 2014. Her abandoned pawn. It sat in the center of the board's edge, placed precisely on the 8th square of the first rank, like a marker on a grave.