The burden of perfection(part 3) - Dead Logic

"We will…do somethin different." Hiroshi said in a little sluggish voice after witnessing the constant loss in the rock paper scissors game.

"And what's that?" Shuhi asked.

Hiroshi moved from his place and headed towards another room of his, "We need to go outside for that."

He went back to his room to change before leaving the apartment, taking his time as though the extra preparation might help him clear his head. He wanted a different environment. A different setting. After a few minutes of walk, they stopped in front of a large hotel. They walked inside as the automatic glass doors slid open.

As Hiroshi expected, the hotel was very busy. People moved through the lobby in small groups, some carrying luggage while others stood near the reception desk or waited beside the lifts. The polished white floor reflected the lights coming from above. The constant movement created a lot of disorder.

It was exactly the sort of environment in which predicting the number of people who would exit a lift seemed like a ridiculous gamble. Hiroshi had suggested the challenge himself. After their earlier games, he wanted something that appeared to depend less on learned skills and more on luck. They would stand near a lift and predict how many people would exit when its doors opened. If only one of them guessed correctly, that person would win the round. If both guessed correctly, the round would end in a draw. A wrong prediction would count as a loss. Both of them weren't allowed to change a prediction after making it.

The first round began when Hiroshi finished explaining the rules. A lift stopped at their floor.

"Three people," Hiroshi said, confidently.

"I think it's four," Shuhi said with a straight face, immdiately after Hiroshi made his prediction.

The doors opened, revealing a small group of passengers, and the round ended with Hiroshi's prediction falling short. He tried not to react. It was only one attempt, and a single result meant very little.

On the second round, Shuhi guessed correctly while Hiroshi did not. On the third, both predicted the number correctly, resulting in a draw. Hiroshi began paying closer attention to the lobby, observing the people who approached the lift and the ones who stepped away.

"Let's see what I know. The hotel has seven floors. Based on this much crowd, it isn't too impractical to think that this hotel is very active so all the rooms are booked. Now uh..." Hiroshi ran his thought based on his current surroundings. He then tried to picture the hotel from outside and imagine how many rooms would be fit including corridor.

"Considering the time, people would more likely return to their rooms rather than coming out. I can think of the delay of the lift stops," Hiroshi kept thinking while staring at the lift move. It stopped on the fourth floor and the on the second floor. Finally coming down.

He made some assumptions on how many people stopped at floors and how many entered to reach ground floor.

"Five people this time." Hiroshi said, this time with more confidence than ever before.

"Same. Five people." Shuhi said while looking at the lift.

After the floor reached ground floor, they saw that it was five people. So a draw. Hiroshi kept his focus sharp on the lift's movements. Two losses and another draw for Hiroshi occurred.

Shuhi, however, remained patient. She did not purse her lips as if mentally calculating probabilities, nor did she watch the elevator as if it held some puzzle she could unlock. Sometimes she watched the lobby. Sometimes she focused on the doors. She acted so normally that Hiroshi couldn't identify which observations she cared as if she cared at all.

After ten attempts, the results were undeniable. Shuhi had won seven rounds. The remaining three were draws. Hiroshi had not won a single round.

"Seven wins, three draws in ten attempts, and she didn't lose once." Hiroshi his head turned towards Shuhi and thought in disbelief.

"How?"

The question struck him with a very high intensity. He had expected Shuhi to lose some rounds. He thought he would eventually find a pattern, discover a useful variable, or identify a weakness in her approach. Instead, every attempt had left him with more questions than answers.

"Did I overlook something that Shuhi noticed?" he felt as if the world had gone silent for him.

He turned his head and kept staring at the floor and then looked at her again. She was just standing there, giving Hiroshi time to accept his defeat. She wasn't celebrating, mocking him, or demanding that he acknowledge her superiority. That somehow made the result harder to bear.

If she had been gloating, he could have dismissed her as someone who wanted to humiliate him. If she had made an obvious mistake, he could have focused on it. If she had revealed a clear technique, he could have begun studying it. Instead, she waited quietly, leaving him alone with the question.

For the first time since the competition began, Hiroshi felt that the game had stopped being about winning. He needed an explanation, and he needed it now. Without one, he had no idea what to do with the result.

"What's goin on? There definitely is somthing that she is using to win every game. It can't just be luck. But what is it? Maybe a use of advanced tech. Possible candidates could be...glasses with AI in it. It might have helped her get the questions correct. Maybe the pen she used had something."

Hiroshi tried recalling the moments when Shuhi first knocked at her door and offered playing the games. He recalled each game and tried to find something that potentially helped her win the games. But the results were zero. Shuhi never wore glasses while the games commenced. And she never even brought a pen of her own. The pen she used was Hiroshi's.

"Wait, maybe she was wearing a hidden microphone and had a secret mini camera attached to her clothes. Someone was on the other side and giving the answer. That might be it."

He tried to focus even more and tried to find clues from the visual details that he remembered. Again, nothing. He found no sign of her wearing any kind of microphone. He remembered that a mosquito had entered in her ear and she shook her head to get it out. It made even less likely for her to wear microhone. And her clothes didn't have any button that would work for hidden camera.

No matter which explanation he thought, failed to satisfy reality.

"Senpai, spaced out?" Shuhi said from behind.

"Oh uh..." Hiroshi came out from his deep thinking.

"Are we done?" Shuhi asked.

Hiroshi didn't say a thing. He immediately turned back and walked away from that place.

"Hey senpai, where are we going now?" Shuhi asked and started following him. No reply came from Hiroshi. Without even turning back, he got outside of the hotel.

---

It wasn't until they stood in the narrow hallway behind the hotel, away from traffic from the lobby, did Hiroshi realize how tense he was. The hallway walls were close together and a giant green commercial trashcan sat by the backdoor. Hiroshi sat on its rim with his head hanging down and eyes clenched shut. He had hardly spoken since exiting the hotel. His hands were folded between his knees and his fingers had tightened into fists without him realizing it.

Shuhi approached him, intending to say something, but he interrupted before she could begin.

"Be quiet."

She stopped.

Hiroshi stared at the ground. The results kept returning to him, each one bringing back the same unanswered questions. He tried to arrange the events into a sequence that made sense, but every time he reached a possible explanation, he found another detail that did not fit.

He had always thought that one could improve themselves by identifying a flaw then working to fix it. It was an ideology that had worked for him. Whenever he encountered something he couldn't do, he drilled until he got better at it. Whenever he lost, he analyzed what went wrong and tried again. Even his greatest successes came about because of that mentality. He taught himself to solve harder and harder puzzles. He honed his body and studied countless subjects. He had gained more skills than most people would bother learning in a lifetime. His mentality hadn't manifested out of thin air. It had been strengthened through years of success.

Yet now, sitting behind a hotel with his thoughts circling the same questions, he could not identify the next step. He didn't know which mistake to correct or what should he do at all.

Shuhi watched him for a moment before stepping closer. "Senpai, I—"

"I told you to be quiet!"

His voice was sharper this time. Shuhi stopped again but she didn't leave. She understood that he was angry and the anger was directed at her as well as at himself.

After a short pause, she reached for his hands.

Hiroshi jerked away as though her touch had startled him. He looked up sharply, his eyes fixed on hers.

"Don't touch me."

Shuhi pulled her hands away. She stayed silent for a few seconds. She could have told herself he let her do this, that she reminded him before he agreed to the challenges, that she never wanted to make him look foolish. But any of those words would've failed to address what he actually wanted to know. He wasn't prepared to hear an excuse for her actions. He didn't understand why he lost and why he cared so much about losing.

"Then at least listen to me," Shuhi quietly said.

"It's an electronic lens! I am sure of it!" Hiroshi suddenly turned his head up and looked at her. His answer suggested he was still looking for an answer and Shuhi understood it.

But looking at Shuhi's eyes, he discarded the possibility. His mode died instantly.

"What?"

"I have been thinking what method are you using to win the games. But no, you aren't wearing any lens. I can see that," Hiroshi said and turned back.

Shuhi didn't say anything and kept looking at him. Waiting for him to finish.

"Stop lookin at me as if Imma loser!" Hiroshi snapped.

Shuhi didn't break eye contact.

"Okay I lost all the games! But you don't need to say that to me!"

But Shuhi wasn't actually saying anything. Her stare did all the job.

"With those pitch black eyes...no light in it. Devouring anyone that comes in sight. It's the same as a year ago." Hiroshi continued.

Shuhi finally spoke. And that conversation led to the biggest change in Hiroshi's life.

Chapter 65 - The burden of perfection(part 3)