They worked for an hour.
The pattern was brutal.
She'd get one right and feel a flash of triumph, a brief moment where the universe made sense. Then she'd get the next three wrong and watch her chip stack shrink like ice cream in July.
Isaiah didn't gloat. He didn't say anything mean. He just kept explaining, kept walking her through the steps, kept taking her chips with that same calm, neutral expression.
But the visuals told the story.
His pile grew. Red chips stacked into towers. Organized in neat little rows like a general surveying his conquered territory.
Her pile shrank. Pathetic. Lonely. Like the last survivors of a massacre.
This is humiliating.
Worse, he started playing with them.
He'd clack his chips together while waiting for her to work through a problem. Stack them into patterns. Roll them across his knuckles like some kind of casino dealer from a heist movie.
