Chapter 2

He pulled. It stuck. He shoved. It opened.

The hallway smelled of old coffee and overheated printers. Bulletin boards were layered with flyers for esports clubs and coding bootcamps, some so faded they'd become abstract art. Austin walked past them, his sneakers squeaking on the linoleum, until he reached the lost-and-found office: a closet-sized room with a window that looked like a bank teller's booth.

A woman in her fifties sat behind it, reading a romance novel with a cover that featured a shirtless man holding a sheep.

"Can I help you?" she asked without looking up.

"I'm here about a lost student ID. Khem Ratanawong."

She turned a page. "You the one who lost it?"

"No. I found it. Online." He pulled up the forum post on his phone and showed her. "Says it's here."

She finally looked at him, then at a plastic bin beside her desk. "You're not a student."

"Does that matter?"

"Technically no." She set down her book, dug through the bin, and produced a card in a clear sleeve. "Sign here."

Austin signed. She handed him the ID. The photo was worse than he remembered—Khem looked like he'd been caught mid-blink, his glasses slightly askew, his expression hovering somewhere between surprise and mild regret.

"Know where I can find him?" Austin asked.

"ICT students usually haunt the second-floor labs. Room 204 has the good computers."

Austin thanked her and left before she could ask why he cared.

Room 204 was a long, narrow space lined with monitors that hummed like a beehive. Half the seats were empty. The occupied ones held students in various states of focus—one was asleep on his keyboard, another was watching a cooking tutorial on a second screen. None of them looked like the ID photo.

Austin stood in the doorway, scanning. Nothing.

He was about to leave when a door at the far end of the room opened. A young man stepped out, carrying a takeout coffee cup and a laptop bag slung over one shoulder. He was tall, thin, with dark hair that fell across his forehead and round glasses that caught the fluorescent light.

The same glasses as the photo.

Austin moved before he could think. "Khem."

The man stopped mid-step, his head snapping toward Austin with the alertness of someone who'd been caught off guard one too many times. His eyes went wide behind the lenses.

"Do I know you?"

Austin held up the ID card. "You dropped this."

Khem stared at it for a long moment, then at Austin. Recognition flickered—not of the face, but of the situation. He reached for the card, but Austin pulled it back.

"I want to ask you something first."

Khem's hand hovered in the air. He didn't retreat, but he didn't push either. He just waited, his jaw tight.

Austin leaned against the doorframe, blocking the exit. "The match last night. KHEM_01. Why did you delete your account?"

The question landed like a stone in still water. Khem's face went through a series of micro-expressions—surprise, then something like embarrassment, then a guarded stillness that suggested he'd been asked this before, in some form.

"I didn't think you'd actually come," he said quietly.

"You were wrong."

Khem looked down at his coffee cup, then back at Austin. "It was a test."

"A test for what?"

"For me. To see if I could actually beat you." He paused. "I couldn't. So I deleted it."

Austin frowned. "That's not how improvement works."

"I wasn't trying to improve." Khem's voice was soft but steady. "I was trying to prove something. To myself. And I failed."

The honesty caught Austin off guard. He'd expected excuses, deflections, maybe a challenge. Not this quiet admission of defeat.

He handed over the ID card.

Khem took it, slipped it into his pocket, and started to walk away.

"Wait."

Khem stopped but didn't turn around.

Austin cleared his throat. "You play again, and I'll show you how to beat me."

The words came out before he'd fully decided to say them. Khem turned slowly, his expression unreadable.

"Why would you do that?"

Austin didn't have a good answer. He had a dozen bad ones—curiosity, boredom, the lingering itch of an unfinished game—but none of them felt true. So he said nothing.

Khem studied him for a few seconds, then nodded once. "Tomorrow. Same time. Room 204."

He walked away before Austin could respond, his footsteps echoing down the hallway.

Austin stood there, the ID card's plastic warmth fading in his palm, and realized he'd just made a promise he didn't understand to a stranger who'd already beaten him once.