The children quickly got split up into two different groups, each group containing five people.
Kes was paired up with Nash, Ade and another girl and boy. The boy was named Riku and the girl was named Cenice.
These two had standard appearances for the Ashen village with their ashen gray hair and brown eyes. Cenice wore her long gray hair up in a ponytail while Riku had rough and very short hair.
Cenice's name was quite unusual for the Ashen village; it sounded more like a name someone from the big cities would have. Villagers preferred to keep their names short so they could shout it quickly during hunts, but her mother had quite the strange taste so she insisted that they would name her Cenice.
Because of this she was more commonly referred to as Cen by her friends and acquaintances alike.
In front of each of the groups of children a stack of playing cards was placed by the village chief. After he distributed the cards to every group he started explaining today's lesson.
"The lesson today is quite simple. We will be doing an emotion reading test in the form of a card game. Every person will be given ten different cards and one person will start with a winning card, this person will remain unknown and be random for obvious reasons. Every person will get a turn to draw a card from another person, after they draw one they will discard one card out of their own hand. The one who remains with only the winning card by the end of the game will be the victor."
'This game is wildly unfair, only the last round really matters.' Kes started thinking
But the village chief wasn't finished.
"Some of you might have thought that only the last round really matters, which is true. But you should not forget that every time a card is taken from you you lose a card. And the objective of the game is to hold only one card, the winning card, at the end. When someone loses all their cards and is not holding the winning card they will be knocked out of the game and are no longer able to play. This way it is possible to focus down someone who you think is not holding the winning card but is low on cards with the rest of the players. But if they are holding the winning card or draw it when it is their turn, being low on cards is only more fortunate for them."
'That's not necessarily true, having fewer cards means the chance of the winning card being drawn from your hands is higher, and if you lose that one you will be really close to being knocked out.' Kes started formulating strategies.
'Ah, but then again that's not necessarily true if you lose your winning card you will definitely know who the one holding it is. And if you follow that card in their hand you can get it back while discarding a card of your own getting really close to winning, it all depends on timing and knowing where the winning card is located.'
Thinking this Kes raised his hand and after the village chief pointed at him he asked. "Are you allowed to shuffle your own hand below the table?"
This was crucial information, because if you would be able to shuffle below the table the strategy of following the winning card in the hands of the one who took it from you would not be usable.
The village chief shook his head. "No, this is not allowed."
Kes nodded satisfied, thinking up strategies to win the strange game.
But just as he thought he had thought up a good strategy to win the game the village chief still had one more thing to say.
"Now the reason as to why we are playing this game is quite simple, try to win by reading the Flow of your opponent. By reading the Flow of your opponent you will be able to feel their emotions. When they have the winning card they will be happy and when it gets taken from them they will be angry or sad. This way the person with the best control over their Flow will be the one winning the most games."
As cards started being shuffled and dealt to the five of them Kes looked around and saw the talented Nash and Ade sitting in his group he sighed deeply.
'This might turn out bad.'
And turn out bad it did.
Three games later and Ade had won all of them. This surprised Kes, he thought Nash would have at least won once.
But the young granddaughter of the village chief turned out to be more experienced than Nash at reading the Flow of others, and maybe even at the card game itself.
Even though she kept saying she had never played the game before, and how she wasn't anything special Kes wasn't buying it.
The humble bragging was also getting on his nerves, he did not think he was worse at the game but he knew his Flow and emotions were perfectly being read by both Ade and Nash.
He had acquired the winning card late into the game twice by using his intelligence. But both of the times his emotions had apparently completely given him away.
All of the games had taken surprisingly long, usually taking a while for one person to get knocked out and ending with two people against each other. Nash and Ade had faced off as the final two twice, the third game Ade faced off against Cenice.
Kes was not getting lucky either; he had not drawn the winning card at the start once, always getting a hand full of losers.
"This will be the final game for your group." The village chief announced.
'This is not good. I can't go out like this on my first day of the academy losing every single game. I have to come up with something, some sort of strategy.' Kes started thinking quickly as he got dealt his cards.
When he looked at his cards he was not happy with what he saw. He got dealt a hand full of losers again.
But that is when Kes noticed something, Riku who was sitting next to him was happy.
It was a strange feeling being able to sense another person's emotions, but Kes knew for sure Riku had gotten the winning card.
Instantaneously he came up with a strategy.
Because Riku was sitting closest to Kes he hoped Ade had not sensed his emotions yet. It was obviously easier to sense the emotions of someone else through their Flow the closer you were to them.
So, Kes started thinking of things that made him happy, trying to give his opponents the illusion that he actually had drawn the winner.
Since Kes apparently was an open book to Ade and Nash anyway, they had perfectly sensed when he had gotten the winner in previous rounds, he thought he might as well fake his emotions so his cards would get drawn making him able to steal the winning card from Riku and run away with the game.
Kes was bluffing.
And the strategy seemed to work. He instantly felt four gazes on him and quickly tried to suppress his happy emotions.
His strategy worked so well that he even saw Riku carefully looking at his cards again to see if he actually had the winning card in his hands or that he was just imagining things.
The game started off good, Ade was up first and she drew a card from Kes, it was a loser.
Kes felt happy because his strategy was working.
This too helped in his favor, because his happy emotions were leaking out through his Flow everyone but Riku assumed that Ade had drawn his losing card while missing the winning one.
Nash was next, he too took a card from Kes drawing a loser.
Cenice followed suit doing the exact same thing.
After which followed Riku who took a card from Kes too. Although he had no idea what was going on it seemed like a good idea to him to knock Kes out first so only four players would be left.
This left Kes with 6 cards letting his happy Flow flow out unrestrained, he took a card from Ade which was obviously a loser and discarded a card of his own.
The next round was exactly the same until he was up again now holding two losers in his hand.
'Now comes the critical part which card in Riku's hand is the winner.'
His strategy would be useless if he did not draw the winning card from Riku's hand this turn.
But he had a good idea which one the winning one was.
He had been quietly observing him since the start of the game after all, his strategy would not work without this critical final turn.
He was eyeing a card in the middle which Riku kept hidden between two other cards barely being visible, common knowledge told him this would be the winner.
Kes drew the card and he was elated, it was the correct card, he had drawn the winner, everything had gone to plan and he was finally going to win a game. He quickly discarded one of his original two cards and waited for Ade who was up next to draw one of his two cards.
'Now Ade only needs to take the card I originally had in my hands and I win the game, everything went exactly to plan.'
But when Ade took his card his face sank, she had drawn the winning card he had taken from Riku.
'Why, it doesn't make sense where did I go wrong?' Kes was not happy, he had thought he had won but had gotten one step short of the finish line. He had carried out his plans perfectly and even the last hardest step had gone right, he could not make sense of his failure.
After Ade took his card, Nash seeing Kes had not won took his final card knocking him out of the game.
Kes could not focus on the rest of the game being played he was only thinking about what exactly had gone wrong in the game, was Ade really just that much more talented than him?
The game finished a while after with Nash taking his first victory. Everyone had known Ade had the winning card in the end after all, and Nash played around this quite well eventually clinching victory ruining Ade's perfect run.
After the game was over Kes approached Ade.
"How did you know? What in my plans went wrong for you to figure out that I was bluffing the whole time?"
Ade let out a long sigh. "Honestly, you did nothing wrong, you fooled me perfectly. But you forgot about one thing."
Kes raised an eyebrow. "Oh what did I forget about?"
Ade smiled at him. "It was Riku, I felt the sad emotions from his Flow when you took the card from him."
Kes stared dazedly in front of him as everyone went home for the day, the first day of the academy was over.