Chapter 3: Tag, the game of wit.

I formulated a plan. I needed to learn magic. That was my gateway to the top once again. Everything else comes later.

To learn magic, I needed to get out of the country.

The plan was that I would sneak up on a soldier at night, distract him with magic, then run right past him. The gate is wide open as long as you can climb it.

After I get out of the city though, I’m on the war field. I need to slowly make my way across. I will find a camp of soldiers, and surrender myself to them.

For all of this, I need my body to be more in shape. Which, even through the magic training, I don’t have.

So finally, I will take people up on their offer. I’ll play a game.

That day at the park, I yelled,

“Anyone who wants to play tag, line up here!”

I got a decent amount of people. Not enough though. There were too many boys, not enough girls.

I asked the boys,

“Anyone know any girls that you could convince to play?” Most of them shook their heads, but a couple went to find the girls they knew.

This was perfect. There was an entire 50 people playing.

I explained the short list of rules to them.

“This will be slightly different than normal tag. If I tag you, you are completely out. You don’t become a tagger or anything. You must wait under the tree there. You might think that’s unfair, but you would be surprised how fast you can run when there’s incentive to. Oh, and one more thing. Whoever gets tagged last can have the dessert from my dinner.” While everyone wasn’t quite ready before, the dessert got them all fired up.

I counted down, “10. 9.” Everyone ran as if their lives were on the line, “8. 7. 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1. Here I come!”

I checked some of the usual hiding places, and I did in fact find some people there.

I found that people generally grouped up based on their speed, so you could find a large group of people all at the same skill level.

This made it harder to hide for most people, but the combined reassurance that there was less of a chance to be tagged in a group made up for it.

While some people hid near the start, I found more people at the very end of a large field at the park.

The field was about the size of a football field, so if you were at the far end, you had plenty of time to prepare if someone was running at you.

At this point, I had tagged about 15 people. But I was about to head to the field. Most of the people on the field were still only about halfway to the end, so I ran as fast as I could to try to tag them.

I eventually tagged one person, and after that they just kept coming, one after another.

I was down to the last 10 people, but these people were different. They were much faster than the others.

I saw that they were in 2 different groups of 5. One on the left, one on the right. I went for the right group.

I was about to catch up with them! I was just out of reach!

Got them! I got all 5 of the people.

I saw the other group. They were a 2 minute run away. But I was tired. I outran 45 people.

So I just kept track of where they were, and sat down.

That’s what they thought.

I bribed someone that looked like me with dessert, and had him sit down and observe them. All that time, I was chasing after them.

When they thought they lost me, I was actually right above them on a slide.

I got 3 of them.

There were 2 left.

One was a boy, one was a girl. The boy was ridiculously fast, and the girl was just trying to keep up with him.

Eventually, I drove them into a corner.

“Which one of you wants dessert?”

They both looked slightly scared, but the boy said,

“You can have it Emi.”

Emi!? Like Emi from Magic Highschool on Akafwhuwa!?

“Thanks!” No, it’s definitely not Emi. Looked too outgoing.

But that still made my head hurt. Remembering the fact that I had killed Emi along with everyone else.

I fell to the ground, and they ran away.

“Damn.” I said to myself.

I did catch them eventually. I tagged the boy, so at dinner time, I gave Emi my slice of cake.