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“Bianca?” Nico asked, looking around, eyes squinting at all of the flashing lights before he saw her, VR goggles on, at a pedestal. “Bianca!” He ran over, pulling on her shirt a few times before she finally turned to him, pulling the goggles off.
“What?” She snapped, looking down at him, angry. “Niccolò, I want to play my game!”
Nico’s face dropped. “Sorry. I just wanted to play Mythomagic with you.” He kicked the floor, fidgeting with his deck, his journal clutched under his armpit.
Bianca shook her head, falling out of a trance. Her eyes became a bit warmer. “Don’t be sorry. We can play.” She hopped off the pedestal, sitting on the floor with her brother. “You want to hand out the cards?”
Their surroundings were crowded at best. The chaotic scene of adults and children running and gambling, accompanied by the jumbled sound effects from their video games, was loud and overwhelming. However, Bianca tried her best to pay attention to Nico, no matter how tempting all the games seemed.
Sometimes, Bianca found herself too lost in a playthrough to pay Nico any mind, the greed getting the better of her. But he was her brother (although annoying as heck), so she’d try to humour him when it was just the two of them. She’d always craved freedom and the peace of being with someone other than her younger brother, but she was all he had, and she loved him more than anything, so she had to stick around. Mama made her promise.
Nico handed out the cards, yapping excitedly about each of the gods’ XP points and their character facts, pointing to notes he’d written in his book about each card. “See, Bi! Ares has extra attack power; it’s because he’s the war god, but I like to think it’s because he has a giant, bird-vulture guy–” He stopped passing out the cards to motion his hands above his head to emphasise the sheer size. “Who helps him out. Just like it has on the figurine I won in the claw machine! I wrote about it in my journal, and I called him Argios because there’s a story in the Mythomagic handbook where he turns this guy Argios into a vulture after he…” Nico continued to rattle on, almost forgetting to play the game in the midst of his rambling.
Bianca simply smiled fondly. As much as she loved watching the minutes pass like seconds as she played every game in the arcade, she enjoyed these little moments with her brother much, much more.
Nico had always been a little writer, and Bianca liked to joke that he’d come out of their mother that way, pen in hand. Mythomagic, a game she’d found for him in the gift shop of the casino, had only heightened his love for writing, and the little stories he wrote about the gods and goddesses on his favourite card game always made her smile.
Nico paused his rant about Ares, freezing halfway to putting a card down. He looked at Bianca with a deer-in-headlights expression. “Bianca…” He said her full name, which was odd.
Bianca stopped her daydreaming, focusing all her attention on her brother. “You okay, Niccolò?”
He frowned, his mouth pressed like he didn’t want to say what he was going to say. He glanced side to side, checking their surroundings. A few moments, and the coast was clear. “Um. What if a boy didn’t find a girl pretty?”
Bianca raised a brow. “What do you mean?”
Nico resumed playing, looking to the floor, trying to play off what he was saying. “What would happen if a boy found another boy pretty instead? Is that allowed?” His eyes remained on the carpet, though they flicked to the Ares card on the top of the deck every few seconds.
Bianca knitted her eyebrows together, confused. “I…” She trailed off, eyes tracing the colourful arcade games like they could give her the answer. She placed down her cards in defeat, unsure. “I don’t know, Nico. Mama never spoke to me about that kind of stuff. I’ve never thought about it.”
She honestly had no idea. Was that allowed? Boys liking boys? Would that mean girls could like girls? Before she had time to ponder it further, her brother slightly folded in on himself.
Nico’s shoulders hunched over noticeably. “Oh. Okay, Bi.” He looked around a few seconds, sheepish, until he met her eyes without moving his head back up.
“And what if I don’t remember Mama?”
Bianca gasped palm finding her mouth. “I, uh.” She breathed in, calming herself. “You were pretty young, Nico. I can help remind you.” She scrambled, hoping Nico didn’t catch onto the mix of melancholy and panic rippling through her chest. “She always made us tea, the peppermint one.” Bianca’s hands moved almost wildly as she explained, grasping onto the moments she could remember, though they still felt like they were slipping away – it’d been so long since their mother passed, when they were left living on their own. They were lucky to stumble upon the casino; they were without food and shelter and warmth long before. “Mama always loved you and your writing. She, uh. She gave you your first notebook. It was a gift from our dad, she said.”
Nico’s eyebrows tensed, like he was trying to remember. He looked down at his notebook, his stories on display in his signature messy yet intelligent handwriting. His dark brown eyes met Bianca’s, which looked much the same. “Did Mama have wide eyes, like an owl? But like, still stern? I can remember her like that. With brown hair. That’s who gave me my journal.” He held up his dark blue journal, flicking through the pages and showing her the cover.
Bianca thought over it for a moment, wondering where in hell Nico got those ideas from. She chimed in, “No, Nico. That’s not correct. Mama had warm, kind eyes and black hair. She was just like us. Can’t you remember?” The image of their mother felt like it was slipping through her fingers even faster, and her hands shook as she tried to hold onto the memory. Her mother’s face seemed to flicker, ever changing. It had the description Nico had conveyed for a moment, wide blue eyes that held the weight of knowledge. Bianca tugged at her hair, trying to bring herself back to reality. She forced their real Mama’s face back into her imagination. Their mother was Maria di Angelo, and if Nico couldn’t remember her, that was fine. Bianca could keep her alive, her legacy. If she focused hard enough, she could almost smell the stale yet comforting scent of their mother’s book shop, given to her by their grandfather. She would hold onto that, even when Nico couldn’t.
“Bi?” Nico asked, worry bleeding into his words. Bianca’s eyes sprang open, the blaring noise of the Lotus Casino encompassing her senses. Her heart drummed against her chest, threatening to escape as she rendered her surroundings. Her green hat felt wrong on her head, itchy and heavy like it wasn’t meant to be there. She could only choke on air as she tried to breathe. Mama was gone. And she was losing memory of her. Her voice. Her face.
“I made you upset, didn’t I?” Nico slammed his book to a close, dropping it to the floor instantly. He shoved the Mythomagic cards aside in one sweep as his face dropped in worry. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked–” He lurched forward, his cold, small hands cradling her face and wiping away her tears as his own face got wet in his panic.
His hands grounded Bianca, and she felt her mask slip back into place. She was there to protect Nico. She had promised Mama. The real one. This was only a small hiccup; they were both fine. She wasn’t freaking out. “Oh, you didn’t do anything, Niccolò.” She squeezed at his cheeks like their mother used to do. “I’m just really…” She searched for the word, eyes darting until they found the sign guiding them to their suites. “Really tired. Isn’t it time we go to bed?”
Nico didn’t seem to be fooled in the slightest by her sudden facade change, but he humoured her, helping pack up the cards. He still seemed suspicious, but Bianca had to convince him everything was fine, because it was! On their way to their room, she reassured him with her classic smile, the soft one their mother always used to wear.
“Which story are you writing right now? The one about Ares, or the one with Apollo that you spoke about before?” She redirected the conversation, and her brother’s star-struck, innocent glee returned in a heartbeat.
“Well, I’m writing this story about Athena this time, she has this magic owl and she…”
Bianca opened the door, happily listening to Nico’s story as she settled him into bed. She could almost pretend they were back, above Mama’s bookshop. She could almost imagine their mother’s fond chuckle as she tucked them in, reading them a different book from her collection each night.
Once Nico was all comfy in his bed, he said a rushed goodnight before burying his head under the covers, his pocket torch from one of the casino games clicking on, and Bianca heard the sound of lead being scraped against paper.
Bianca let it slide for a few moments, leaving herself to sit at the suite desk, brewing some peppermint tea to settle her restlessness and remind her of home. Once it was cool enough to drink, she finally turned back towards the bed, telling Nico to sleep; he would be too tired to play games in the casino with her in the morning!
A brief conversation, and Bianca settled on the promise of ‘Five more minutes.’ She always did – she couldn’t help it with Nico’s little left dimple that appeared when he smiled bashfully, pleading for just a little longer.
She sighed fondly, flexing the ring, embedded with a purple crystal, on her finger as she picked up a pen of her own, pulling open the drawer of the desk to find a black journal with a matching gem.
My Dearest Niccolò , she wrote.
Nico was going to flourish in the writing world when he was older. Their mother would be proud, and his sister was too. Bianca was just glad that she was there to watch.
Those ‘ Five more minutes’ were really paying off.