The first round of Monopoly started predictably enough, which somehow made it worse. Everyone settled into that comfortable rhythm of taking turns rolling dice, buying properties with barely concealed greed, and exchanging those special kinds of looks—the ones that promised future betrayal, sabotage, and the eventual destruction of all relationships in pursuit of fake paper money.

The coffee table had become our battlefield, littered with the corpse of our fourth pizza box and the scattered remains of several strategy discussions that had devolved into arguments about the color of the dice.

"Your turn, Satori," Juan mumbled without looking up from his position, his body language screaming that he'd rather be literally anywhere else. "Try not to bankrupt us within the first hour, please. I'm already regretting agreeing to be on your team."

I nodded and reached for the dice, but Carmen's hand shot out first, surprisingly fast for someone I was ninety percent certain had replaced her blood with cheap sake at some point in the last hour.

"I'll roll," she slurred, her head still heavy on my shoulder, her breath warm against my neck. "I'm lucky when I'm drunk."

"You're always drunk, Sensei," Juan pointed out with the weary tone of someone who'd made this observation many times before.

"Exactly!" Carmen replied triumphantly, lifting her head just enough to fix him with her one good eye. She gestured expansively, as if this proved some profound philosophical point. "Therefore, I'm always lucky. It's basic logic, Juan-kun."

"That's not how logic works," he muttered, but she was already shaking the dice in her cupped hands like they were sacred talismans.

She rolled. Snake eyes.

The dice came to rest on the board with what felt like cosmic mockery, landing our iron token directly on Income Tax—arguably the most depressing square on the entire board aside from landing on someone's hotel.

"Your legendary luck is truly something to behold, Sensei," I said dryly, watching Juan lean forward with a put-upon sigh to hand over $200 to the bank. "I'm inspired. Moved, even."

Carmen patted my cheek with the gentle affection of someone who'd forgotten what boundaries were approximately three drinks ago. Her palm was warm, slightly damp, and lingered just a fraction too long. "Don't worry, kiddo. I'm just... setting up our comeback story. Every great underdog tale needs a rough start."

"Is that what we're calling terrible dice rolls now?" Juan asked the ceiling.

Across the table, Natalia's team was operating with the kind of terrifying efficiency usually reserved for military operations or professional esports teams.

The contrast to our chaotic mess was almost painful.

Jacob had his datapad propped against a pizza box at a forty-five-degree angle, his fingers flying across the screen as he researched optimal Monopoly strategies with the fervor of someone decoding enemy transmissions. Akari leaned over his shoulder, her impossibly green eyes scanning the numbers and charts he'd pulled up, while occasionally glancing up to shoot winks at anyone who caught her looking—a multipronged attack of gathering intelligence and psychological warfare.

Natalia herself sat straight-backed and imperial in her position, organizing their growing stack of property deeds. Every card was aligned perfectly, sorted by color group and value. She looked less like a teenager playing a board game and more like a general arranging troops before battle.

"Baltic Avenue is statistically the least landed-on property after the purples," Jacob was saying, his voice gaining confidence and speed the way it always did when he got to talk pure data instead of navigating the minefield of social interaction. "We should focus our acquisitions on the orange and red properties, which have a 20.3% higher landing frequency due to the Jail proximity effect and the statistical clustering of—"

"Yes, yes, we'll crush them with math and probability," Akari interrupted, reaching over to pat his head like he was an especially clever puppy who'd just performed an impressive trick. "You're very smart and we love you for it. Now tell me which property I should negotiate out of Hikari's team next."

Jacob's face colored slightly at the casual head pat and the praise, his mouth opening and closing. "That's... that's not how probability works. I can't just predict which properties they'll be willing to trade based on mathematical—"

"Sure you can," Akari said sweetly, her smile widening. "You're a genius, aren't you?"

He was already pulling up new calculations, completely played. I filed away the observation: Jacob responded to praise the way plants responded to sunlight. Useful.

Next to them, Team Jocks was the living, breathing personification of chaos given flesh and dice. Strategy was a foreign concept. Planning was for the weak. Victory would be achieved through sheer force of will and volume.

Hikari slammed the dice down onto the table with enough force to make the little plastic houses jump, several of them toppling over like they'd been hit by a miniature earthquake. The sound echoed through the common room like a gunshot.

"GO BIG!" Jaime shouted from behind her, his booming voice rattling the windows as he performed what looked like a pre-game ritual before each of her rolls—a series of elaborate poses that showed off his physique while somehow also looking like he was summoning ancient spirits of victory.

Hikari's roll sent the dice skittering across the board. She landed on St. Charles Place and immediately slammed her hand down on the property card before anyone else could even process what had happened.

"YES! DESTRUCTION!" Hikari pumped her fist in the air, her smile bright and terrifying in its simple joy. "PROPERTY ACQUIRED! ENEMIES WILL FALL!"

The two exchanged a high-five that created an actual, visible shockwave—a small burst of displaced air that sent several Chance cards fluttering off the pile. One of the precariously stacked pizza boxes teetered and fell, hitting the floor with a cardboard thud.

"That's not even a good property," Skylar commented from across the table, not looking up from filing her blood-red nails.

"IT'S THE BEST PROPERTY BECAUSE IT'S OURS!" Hikari countered.

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