Night had fallen. A fine rain fell like woven silk, gently brushing the eaves of the old-fashioned, elegant wooden house.
At the eaves, the faint yellow light of an old-fashioned lamp spilled unevenly onto the wooden floor beneath them and the wet flagstone path outside. The light mingled with the raindrops falling from the eaves, shimmering softly through the gloom.
The Wallfacer Bill Hines, a scientist and politician who had served as president of the European Union, discovered that thought and memory in the brain took place at the quantum level, and was the only scientist ever nominated for Nobel Prizes in two different fields for the same discovery. He sat cross-legged beneath the eaves, silently lost in thought.
Though he had become a Wallfacer, he had spent this entire period—especially the time since returning from Vern Island, the PDC headquarters—here. He saw no outsiders, deliberately shutting himself away from the world, and spent every day sitting alone in this secluded little place, lost in deep thought.
In the dim yellow light and rainy night, light and shadow outlined his figure, blending it faintly into the scenery around him. He looked exceptionally peaceful, profound, and forlorn.
But he didn't particularly mind...
He simply sat cross-legged on the wooden floor, deep in thought. There was a quality to him, like something that had weathered the years yet remained as warm and smooth as ever, as though he could bear all the world's burdens and musings.
Clutching a small white piece in his hand, he stared blankly at the board beneath the dim light. Anyone who thought he was playing a game or studying a game record would have been sorely mistaken.
The old, sturdy board was almost empty. Only the four star points at its corners held black and white stones.