Chapter — Flank and the Pieces That Changed Their Colour

Flank plays a game where nothing stays the same colour for long.

In Reversi, when he sets a piece down so that a row of enemy pieces is trapped between it and another of his own, every one of those trapped pieces flips — enemy becomes ally, in an instant, right across the board. “Ownership isn’t fixed here,” he says, placing a piece and watching a whole line change colour. “What’s mine can become yours; what’s yours can become mine. The board is always changing hands. The trick is knowing which pieces will stay mine — and heading for those.”

Flank used to be terrified of changing his mind.

He’d been raised to think that changing your position on anything was a kind of defeat — that once you’d claimed something, or said something, or picked a side, flipping to the other was proof you’d been wrong, and being wrong was shameful. So he clung, stubbornly, to whatever he’d first decided, even when the board had clearly changed around him. It made him rigid, and it made him lose.

An old strategist taught him to see flipping differently. “You’re playing a game built on changing sides,” she said, “and you’re afraid to change anything. Watch —” She flanked a line, and a whole row of pieces flipped to her colour. “Flipping isn’t losing. It’s how the game works. Pieces change hands. Minds change. That’s not weakness — it’s the whole mechanism.” Then she pointed at a corner. “But here’s what matters: some things can’t be flipped. A corner piece can never be trapped, so it stays yours forever. The wisdom isn’t refusing to ever change. It’s knowing which things last — and building on those.”

He came to the GridForge academy as the piece who teaches territory. On his first day the head asked him to explain how Reversi is won.

Flank placed a piece, flanked a line, and flipped it. “You win by owning the most pieces at the end,” he said. “But watch — the count keeps changing, because pieces flip. Leading in the middle means almost nothing.” Then he took a corner. “This piece, though? It can never be flipped. No line can trap it. So the real game isn’t grabbing the most pieces now — it’s claiming the ones that will still be yours when the flipping stops. Corners. Stable edges. The things that last.”

“Most beginners grab everything they can flip right now,” the head said. “You play for what will stay.” And that has been his role ever since: teaching that in a world of flipping ownership, you build on what’s stable.

A young piece came to him upset. “I had the most pieces, and then everything flipped and I lost!” Flank nodded knowingly. “Because you grabbed pieces that could be flipped right back,” he said. “A big lead in the middle is a mirage — it can all change colour in a few moves. Don’t chase the pieces you can flip now. Chase the ones that can’t be flipped later.” He showed the young piece a corner. “Take this. It’s stable. It’ll be yours at the very end, guaranteed, no matter how much else flips. Build from the things that last, and let the middle churn.”

The young piece stopped chasing the flashy mid-game lead and started quietly claiming corners, and its position — unglamorous but stable — held all the way to the end.

Later the young piece said the deeper thing. “I always thought changing was bad. Losing pieces, changing my mind — it felt like failing.”

Flank set a piece down and, for a moment, was the rigid kid who couldn’t stand to flip. “I thought so too, for a long time,” he said. “I clung to whatever I’d decided first, even when everything around me had changed, because flipping felt like admitting I was wrong. And I lost, over and over, being that stubborn.” He flipped a line, easily, without shame. “Then I learned that changing isn’t failing — in this game, and honestly in life, things change hands, minds change, and that’s healthy. The skill isn’t refusing to change. It’s staying steady on the few things that truly last —” he touched a corner ”— while letting everything else be free to flip.”

The young piece went home lighter, no longer ashamed of changing its mind, and quietly certain about the few corner-solid things that wouldn’t.