‘He spreads out his hands. They glow yellow, then orange. Threads emerge from underneath his nails, shining out of the skin. They weave themselves together, the fingers knitting their light-made lace until the threads form a fabric heading out of the glass panes and towards the fields. They cross the glass without so much as a shudder. Seo crafts his land.’

Seo Kuroaku has it all. Adopted as a boy by the formidable Sir Neil, he’s the youth champion of Twine, the high-pressured national sport. Played in arenas where thousands come to watch, weavers craft creatures from their fingertips to wage battle against fearsome opponents. But this is a Britain of much darker times - and Seo is harbouring a secret.

When he is outed, Twine can’t help him. With the help of his little brother Minjun and Jack, the man he can’t decide if he loves or not, Seo has to find a way to get his life back on track, whilst facing the biggest match of his life.

In The Game Weavers, Rebecca Zahabi has created a fantastical yet hauntingly contemporary narrative which is both love story and fable - The Game Weavers is a coming of age story about the importance of intimacy, family and self-acceptance.

Minjun

Minjun is watching Seo play. His hands are spread above the ground, the skin glowing orange and pink. The light forms threads which go all the way from Seo’s fingertips down to the field. Then the strings weave creatures, which detach from the fingers with a wet sound, like babies cutting their own umbilical cord. Today his pawns live mostly underground, in complex burrows which they’ve dug for themselves, in the soft, sandy ground Seo has made for them. None of them are more than four feet high. Most are under two.

Seo is weaving Twine. Twine is a game. Minjun is very involved in Twine tournaments because Seo is the World Youth Champion. That’s a lot of people, and a lot of countries. Seo plays for the UK although he’s Korean by birth. Minjun is his brother. They’re both from South Korea, but their papers say they are British and their family name is Japanese.

Seo is twenty, so he plays Twine with adults now. The field is divided in two. Seo isn’t allowed to see his opponent’s side of the battleground unless one of his creatures goes there and sees it for him. Seo is standing up, both arms outstretched before him. There’s sweat on his

~1 ~

forehead, which he wipes off with his forearms. His hands are busy.

Minjun thinks Seo will win the match. It’s going well. Minjun is in the manager’s box, with Sir Neil and the coaches and the doctors. They’re inside the arena, in a room underneath the audience’s seats. In front of them is a board like the inside of a spaceship, but instead of controls and buttons and windows showing stars and planets, there are screens showing the game. They cover Seo’s territory from every angle, but not his opponent’s. As everyone in the manager’s box is on Seo’s side, they’re not allowed to see what the other side is doing. That would be cheating.

Sir Neil has a microphone in front of him which he can activate by pressing a button. Sometimes he mutters instructions to Seo through it.

Along the border between both territories, Seo’s opponent has placed pawns with big flat swords. They stab the blades through the earth, take them out, and then stab again. They’re stopping Seo’s pawns from crawling underground into his opponent’s territory. It mostly works, but in Twine, mostly isn’t enough.

Seo’s pawns are worms, with round mouths which burst open like flowers, in layers. Seo told Minjun he used lamprey eels as inspiration. When they slip through the defences, they put their mouths above ground and pretend to be flowers, eating anything that stumbles into them. Instead of roots, they’ve got a thick, twisting body. If they’re found out, they dig a tunnel to somewhere else, and pretend to be a flower there instead. They’re good spies. They’ve caused the opponent to kill a lot of his plants, which means his pawns have less to feed on.

The worms dig through the field, only pawns don’t really dig. Pawns don’t interact with the real world – they brush

~2 ~

through it like holograms. The ground they bore through is soil Seo has crafted, like them. The field is separated by a silver curtain, which the referees have woven and which hides the opponent’s strategy. The pawns can move through the curtain; when they touch it, it shimmers.

In the same way, pawns can’t eat real flowers, only flowers crafted by a weaver. But pawns do like to eat. They can be sustained by the weaver, but they don’t grow; whereas if you craft food for them and they eat they’re less effort to maintain, and they sometimes fatten and thicken, becoming more of a threat.

It’s difficult to spy on Seo, because there’s nothing to see above ground, only sand and dust and desert. And underground, you need smart, small creatures if you want them to escape the worms’ notice. Seo has always had good Twine skills, but what he’s best at is strategies. Underground games weren’t a thing before he brought them into youth tournaments. Some adults still haven’t realised this is something you need a counter for.

Seo has to play well, because he’s a professional weaver and because Twine is important. It’s the reason the Kuroaku brothers left South Korea.

Sir Neil presses the microphone. He is an old man with thinning hair and a growing belly and a lot of money.

“Now,” he says.

“Getting there,” says Seo. His voice comes out from a speaker in the middle of the control board. The microphone is curled around his ear and down his cheek, like a thin black snake coiled around his face.

Minjun comes to all the Twine tournaments, wherever they are. Most happen at the home ground, the Norwood Stadium, which is owned by Sir Neil. Minjun knows the arena off by heart now, and most of the journalists will

~3 ~

recognise him. Sometimes he sits with the public, where you can see both of the players’ grounds. It’s more fun to know the whole strategy, but it means he can’t talk with Seo at half-time. So most often Minjun stays in the managers’ box, even if it isn’t as interesting.

At half-time, Seo drinks too much coffee, and gives Minjun the free chocolates he gets during the interviews. Mostly he’s given mint chocolate. Minjun found the taste strange at first, but now he loves cheap mint chocolate. They’re brown and green, like things from outer space.

The audience gasps and closes in around the players. Minjun leans over the screens to see what’s happening. It’s now the last phase of the game; soon it’ll be open grounds. The silver curtain will be unravelled. Everyone will see everyone’s strategy. The final attack will be led, and whoever holds most of the ground at the end will win.

Minjun stares as Seo, sweat glistening across his brow, moves his worms out of the earth. They align there, on the dusty desert ground. They look like bloated sausages, a pale brown colour, puffy in the sizzling sun. They’re the size of dogs.

Minjun knows what’s coming next, but the public doesn’t. He’s seen Seo craft these. Slowly, the wet wings push out from underneath the cracked skin. People whisper in excitement, some start shouting. There’s cheering and jeering, depending which side of the arena you’re on. The sound would be deafening, were it not for the double glazing between players and audience. Plus, Seo has headphones on. Different weavers put different songs in their headphones – Seo puts white noise. Minjun borrowed the headphones once. Static is very boring. After long enough, it made his fingertips tingle. Maybe that’s why Seo likes it.

“Larvae,” said Seo, winking at Minjun, the first time

~4 ~

he showed him. “Let people call them worms, but they’re larvae.”

This time Seo used ants as inspiration, the way they live underground but fly at mating season. His larvae are waiting, crumpled damp wings emerging from their backs, unfolding with the rustling of crêpe paper. Once open boards is called, it doesn’t matter if they’re visible – the wings will be dry. It’s difficult to build a good counter to underground games, and it’s difficult to build a good counter to flying games. It’s impossible to do both. His opponent has focused his strength underground – he won’t be able to do anything about flying monsters. His fans know this, and they’re howling and shaking their heads already, even though the final attack hasn’t even started.

Sir Neil isn’t smiling. He’s crossed his hands and he’s resting his chin on them. He watches the game.

There are a lot more Kuroaku fans, and they’re drunk. A song starts. They’re stamping their feet in unison, and in the manager’s box you can hear it through the ceiling. The tiers are shaking.

Seo is camped with his feet wide apart, and he controls the pawns through the coloured threads emanating from his fingertips. He isn’t one to flourish, but for the fans he moves his hand in a quick circle, sending ripples down the threads – like a whip cracking, only the crack is more like lightning than thunder. The fans answer with a Mexican wave, shaking their scarves, to copy the arc flowing from his fingers.

“Get on with it,” says Sir Neil. Minjun glances at him, and he catches one of the coaches looking too. Sir Neil is usually alright about indulging the fans, especially if it’s late-game and everything is under control. But today he doesn’t seem pleased.

~5 ~

“On it,” says Seo.

When open grounds is called, the referees lift their hands. They catch the silver threads holding the curtain together. It’s like watching the water’s surface break when you throw a stone: the curtain collapses, starting from the centre. The battleground becomes visible to both weavers. In the manager’s box, four screens which were on standby suddenly light up.

Minjun leans over the screens. Seo’s opponent has pawns like knights, with slits through their helmets for eyes. They’ve covered the floor in metal and stone, to prevent underground attacks. There are round balls with spike-like claws to help them roll across the floor; wolves with fur made out of copper, which forms frizzy brown armour around them. Nothing which can pose a threat to Seo.

Minjun feels a strange, floaty feeling, like he doesn’t quite belong, like everything comes from far away. It’s a happy feeling. It means everything is going to be alright. He turns away from the match; he doesn’t need to watch anymore. No-one in the box asks him why he’s leaving. He goes to the vending machine and buys a can of soda while Seo wins.

Then he waits in Seo’s lounge, drinking his soda. Seo has to answer interviews straight after the game, without time for a break first. But it’s only short interviews. Minjun is patient.

Fifteen minutes later, as Minjun is playing on his tablet computer, Seo comes in. Minjun turns on the coffee machine with one hand, keeping the other on his game. He can’t stop now, or even avert his eyes from the screen. Seo comes and leans against the sofa’s armrest, towering above Minjun. Minjun doesn’t look up – he’s at a tricky pass. Seo watches until Minjun clears the level.

~6 ~

“Nice one,” he says. Then he goes and fetches his coffee. Minjun turns off the tablet.

“You too,” says Minjun.

Seo smiles. His hands are still gleaming faintly. In an hour or so the halo will fade and disappear. Pawns have a relationship with their maker. When they’re content, the weaver feels a warm cosy feeling, like when you come home after being outside in the cold. But when the spies crawl through enemy territory, part of the creature’s stress seeps back to you, as if you were the one experiencing it. As long as the hands glow, the aftermath of emotion persists.

Seo downs his espresso and says, “Let’s get dinner over with.” Minjun pulls a face; they’re eating with Sir Neil this evening. He was expecting it – match days are usually dinner days – but he doesn’t like meals with Sir Neil. He always hopes they will go to the restaurant with Seo, just the two of them, and order what his brother calls ‘stupid food’. Stupid food is food you can’t be caught dead eating.

Weavers are supposed to keep fit and eat healthy, needs-tailored food. When Minjun and Seo go out they order pizzas with too much cheese, or burgers with bacon and egg inside, or sometimes they just eat brunch for dinner, with cereal and yoghurt and cake. People generally give Seo what he orders, whatever the time of day. There are advantages to being famous. But if Sir Neil is with them, he will order the food for both brothers, selecting ingredients which conform to their diet.

Seo shrugs a jumper above his twiner’s kit, a black top with several sponsors’ logos. On the shirt there is a crest with a black devil on blue background, and his name sewn underneath it. He picks up his bag that he left lying on the floor and throws it over one shoulder.

~7 ~

“Let’s go,” says Seo.

Minjun throws his tablet inside his backpack, chucks the can of soda, and grabs his hoodie. Seo disapproves of the hoodie, but he can’t say anything because Sir Neil bought it. Minjun likes it because it’s a fandom hoodie, with Seo’s key-creatures from his championship match. It’s blue and black, like Seo’s kit. Seo thinks it’s silly; Minjun thinks that everyone who sees him will know he’s on Seo’s side.

He follows his brother outside the arena. It takes a few long, winding corridors to get outside, because they want to avoid the crowded concourse around the main stage, and the exits most people will be taking. If they used the public tunnels, they would never get out. They come out directly on the staff parking space. The sun is setting, but because it’s very cloudy you can’t see it – only the blue of the sky as it dims and becomes inkier.

The chauffeur tells them Sir Neil wants them to eat at his house. This is unexpected. Match days are an excuse to be seen. They often eat in a restaurant, and the fans know it and search for them in public places, trying to get autographs and photos.

In the mansion, the meal will be cooked by Sir Neil’s staff, and there will be two sets of dishes on the table – the ones Seo can eat and the ones he can’t. Technically Minjun is a junior weaver too, and in front of Sir Neil he always eats from the twiner dishes, all the while wondering why people put seeds in salads, or what quinoa would taste like if they roasted it in the oven, maybe with grated cheese on top. Minjun feels that with enough Cheddar, even quinoa could become interesting.

The chauffeur drives, and Seo and Minjun rest on the back seat. Seo extends his hand, still shining yellow, to Minjun. Minjun goes to high-five it but Seo retrieves his

~8 ~

hand at the last minute. He smiles, and extends it again. Minjun wins a few times – when he slaps his brother’s hand, sparks fly around them, and some stick to his fingers for a few seconds before dying out.

They get out of the car in front of Sir Neil’s mansion. The car brought them all the way up the drive, past the orchard, the walls of roses. Nothing is alive at the moment – it’s late winter. The trees don’t have leaves, the grass is dank. The roses are bushes of thorns; they make it look like brambles have invaded the grounds.

Sir Neil’s dining room is long, with a high decorated ceiling. White napkins are set next to the plates with more forks and knives than Minjun thinks are useful. “Just use whichever one you feel like using,” says Seo. “I don’t know why we bother.” But Seo always uses the right fork at the right time. At home, they eat with stainless steel chopsticks. They’re easier to clean and Seo likes them better.

Today, Sir Neil’s mood is awful. Despite the victory, he scowls at his food as they eat. There’s faint, discreet music playing in the background, but he asks the manservant to change it three times, saying it’s getting on his nerves. He’s in a suit, as always, the dome of his skull gleaming under the candlelight.

After a while, probably bored by the silence, Seo recounts the game for Sir Neil. Sir Neil listens without humming or saying ’yes‘, without lifting his face from his roasted potatoes and his juicy meat. When Seo stops talking, Sir Neil finishes swallowing his mouthful and moves his chair backwards. He leans back, a few lonely grey hairs drooping above his ears and the nape of his neck.

“Nothing else you wanted to tell to me?” asks Sir Neil. Seo shakes his head. He glances at Minjun, but Minjun

~9 ~

pulls his ’I don’t know‘ face. Minjun really doesn’t know what has put Sir Neil in such a foul state, why his lips are pulled tight, why he eats little but drinks and glares at Seo.

Minjun knows Sir Neil would rather he didn’t come to professional dinners altogether, but Seo always brings him along. “You’re my brother,” Seo said once. He didn’t say anything else because he didn’t need to – Minjun knew that he meant the world had tried to mess with them and keep them apart and that the world had failed.

But today dinner is strained. Minjun can feel Seo is waiting; he wants Sir Neil to say what’s wrong, and he doesn’t want to have to ask. Sir Neil wants Seo to apologise, and he doesn’t want to have to ask either. So the meal goes on, and food gets brought in and taken away, and glasses of wine are refilled and emptied, and no-one asks what they want to ask.

In the end it’s Sir Neil who speaks first, in his quietest voice. He says, “You’re a bright young man, Seo.”

Seo looks up from his plate and says nothing. He doesn’t like the word ’bright‘. “What do they think I am, a monkey?” he sometimes grumbles when he hears someone say he’s bright. “A pet? Kosmos is bright. A light-bulb is bright.” Kosmos is the parrot. Kosmos is bright, he knows how to sing ‘Who Let the Dogs Out’, with the woofs and everything. Which is pretty decent for an animal who doesn’t bark.

“I would never have guessed.” Sir Neil’s voice is low, nearly a whisper. He whispers when he doesn’t want the servants to hear.

Sir Neil leans forwards over the table. Seo and he are staring at each other, and neither of them is blinking. Seo holds his fork but doesn’t lift it to his mouth.

“One thing’s sure,” says Sir Neil, “I wouldn’t have taken

~ 10 ~

you into my family if I’d known you were a homo.” “What?” Seo hisses but his eyes dart to Minjun, and Minjun shakes his head in fright because he knows what his brother is thinking: he’s thinking someone must have given him away, and he’s looking for a suspect and only Minjun knows about the men on his phone because he

scrolled through them once.
“You do realise being outed on a dating site is in poor

taste?” asks Sir Neil. “It’s not even original anymore.”
Seo turns back to Sir Neil and says, more loudly: “What

on earth are you going on about?”
Minjun looks down at his plate. He feels a dull pain in

his chest, just above the heart. Seo isn’t as good as lying as he would like to be. Sir Neil must have thought something along the same lines because he says, “So you’re a liar on top of everything else.”

And Sir Neil goes back to eating as if nothing has happened. For a moment Seo is struggling for words, and Minjun doesn’t dare look at him, because he can feel his shame, the shame of it, growing and growing like a pit around them and he can feel the lurch in his stomach as they fall. They’re both falling together because Minjun always feels what Seo feels. And it’s so embarrassing because Seo doesn’t laugh, doesn’t shake it off. The silence is like saying yes, and while Seo says nothing Sir Neil grows more tense. His knife slips and screeches against his plate – Minjun winces.

“You are being ridiculous,” says Seo at last. It sounds forced.

“So you’re not denying it,” says Sir Neil.

“Of course I’m denying it!” snaps Seo. “I don’t know where you heard...”

“Read.”
“Pardon me?” Sometimes when Seo is thrown by

~ 11 ~

something he reverts back to his education with Sir Neil, where he wasn’t allowed to say ‘what’ and always had to remember ‘thank you’.

Sir Neil gestures to the butler, and the butler brings them a folded newspaper, some trashy bold-letter-title tabloid. “You even made it to the front page. Congratulations.”

The butler puts the newspaper down next to Seo but Seo doesn’t acknowledge him.

He’s staring holes through Sir Neil’s face. Minjun wishes he was boring actual holes, and Sir Neil was all mottled with black spots so he couldn’t speak anymore nor say anything that would hurt Seo.

“Scandalous news, exclusive witness. Et cetera. I didn’t get to the end. It was putting me off my supper.”

Seo has gone from red to white.

“Before you ask, yes. You will have to make a public statement either confirming or denying it.”

Minjun wants to speak up for his brother, defend him, but he knows that he will only make matters worse. Often, when he tries to say something, Seo just says “Shut up, Minjun.” He doesn’t mean it in a nasty way. He just means “You’re too small to do this.” And if Minjun speaks now, when Seo is red and white and breathing hard and not quite standing up but sitting so straight he seems taller than usual, then for sure Seo will tell him to shut up. Even Sir Neil might tell him to shut up.

“You have no idea the trouble you’re in. Luckily I spotted it early. Not early enough to prevent this issue coming out, but none of the bigger newspapers will follow suit.”

Sir Neil looks at Seo and nearly smiles, the smirk of someone who didn’t particularly want to win but has won anyway. “That is, until you provide them with a statement.”

~ 12 ~

That’s when Sir Neil looks at Minjun for the first time. Minjun is so surprised by this that he looks back – he doesn’t think of lowering his head to be polite or smiling or anything like it. And Sir Neil says, “Did you know about this?”

Minjun shakes his head.

Sir Neil nods towards Seo and insists, “Well, what do you think?”

Seo gets up suddenly; his chair flies backwards. The movement is awkward, brutal, in this vast room with jazz music and carpeted floor and cream wallpaper. Minjun feels the pain in his chest becoming worse, and he has to press a fist against it. The ache is sharp, as if a monster is pinching him between two claws.

“Don’t drag Minjun into this,” growls Seo.

“Why not? You have to realise what you do impacts more than just you. How are you going to explain what ‘faggot’ means when that’s the abuse you’ll get in the newspapers? Stop Minjun from reading newspapers? You’d better stop him from coming to the stadium while you’re at it, because I can tell you right now that you’ll hear it there.”

At this Seo slams both his hands down in front of him, hard enough for knives to skitter to the floor, for wine glasses to tremble. Some of the servants jump, and the butler moves closer, as if to hold him back. He opens his mouth to say something, but Sir Neil is swifter, smoother. Better oiled.

“Aren’t you a bit old for tantrums?” says Sir Neil, and smiles for good this time, showing the teeth and everything. Seo turns away from him and stalks out of the room. Not wanting to be left behind, Minjun pushes his plate and his chair back, and scampers after his brother. Seo is taller

~ 13 ~

than him and his legs are longer; he strides down the room and then down the hall, and Minjun has to run to keep up. They get to the front door and walk out into the cold night. It’s been raining; the gravel shines where the light

filtering through the door catches the wet pebbles.
They should ask the chauffeur to come and pick them up but Seo doesn’t ask and doesn’t stop at the front steps. He stamps down the avenue and Minjun dashes after him. When the house and its illuminations are behind them, Seo slows down. The scent of wet soil rises from the lawn. Wind rustling in the trees makes drops of water roll off the

leaves and onto their heads.
Seo breathes in deeply. The pain in Minjun’s chest has

dulled. They don’t speak for a while.
“Are you okay?”
“Shut up Minjun.”
Minjun says nothing, and they walk together to the

gates. They’re automatic gates; when the brothers are close enough the exit creaks open, the metal scraping against the stones. Outside the mansion, it is a residential area where the houses are hidden by high walls and the street is bordered with trees to make shade for the cars.

“Call the driver, will you?” says Seo.

Minjun phones their driver and they wait underneath a tree. Seo folds one leg and rests it against the bark, leaning backwards, putting his weight in his foot. Kosmos sleeps in the same position on his perch, with one claw up, coiled underneath his feathers.

In the car, Minjun thinks of the men on the phone. He first noticed there was something wrong with Seo’s phone when he tried to unlock it one evening. The phone wouldn’t unlock. But Minjun knew Seo’s password, so that meant it had been changed. There was no reason for Seo to change

~ 14 ~

it, except if there was something secret on the phone.
Seo isn’t good at passwords. It only took half an hour to find the right one. Minjun waited for Seo to go to bed, leaving his phone to charge on the counter, next to the sleeping Kosmos. When he’d unlocked the phone, he found a new app which Seo didn’t have before. He clicked

on the bright logo, and it logged him in automatically. Mostly it contained photos. Photographs of men, portraits, sometimes without shirts on, but mostly with their clothes. There was one with a tattoo across his knuckles and a leather jacket like someone from an action movie. Minjun didn’t know what the photos were, but he thought maybe other weavers, or people Seo had to watch out for. Maybe this was a list of supervillains. Kosmos, unknowing and uncaring, was sleeping on his perch, his

head tucked under his wing.
Minjun put the phone back to charge and went to bed.

He felt it was a secret so he didn’t ask.
The silence in the car is the wrong kind of silence.

Minjun isn’t sure what the driver knows, but he must know something went wrong. They left before dinner was over.

“We need a copy of that newspaper,” Seo says, while they’re driving through the city centre traffic. Minjun remembers he left Sir Neil’s copy on the table.

“Maybe Sir Neil will send it to us,” says Minjun, because he sometimes does that when Seo or Minjun forget something at the estate. But Seo says, “We’ll buy our own copy.”

So they make the driver stop in front of a supermarket and Minjun jumps out to buy the newspaper for Seo. Minjun is glad it’s a big supermarket. It means he’ll have more time, because big places are an excuse to get lost and be late.

~ 15 ~

When Minjun finds the newspaper, before he goes through the automatic tills, he opens it. He reads standing between the aisles, hidden from the front doors. He scans through the article, conscious the car is waiting for him, thinking he’ll have to pretend there was a queue. The title is simple enough:

The Queen of Twine

Underneath, it’s written:

Sex Machine Seo – youth champion Kuroaku beds 200 men in 200 days

The article goes on, but Minjun stops reading.

He imagines his brother kissing another, undefined man like you see actors on TV do with women, with the tongue and everything. He feels the sickness again, the hot suffocating feeling trickling down his heart as Sir Neil said nothing and the silence was worse than bad words. He buys the newspaper and brings it back to Seo – neither his brother nor the driver mention anything about how much time he took. Seo reads the tabloid with his head resting against the side of the car. He only reads that article, but he reads it several times because he doesn’t close the newspaper until the car stops.

When they step out, Seo throws the newspaper in a public dustbin before climbing up the stairs to the flat. He tells Minjun he can take the lift, but Minjun runs behind him. Soon they’re racing – Minjun is fitter than Seo but Seo has longer legs, and they rush up five steps at a time, shoving each other to go round the corners, holding on to the bannister to help tug their weight upwards. When

~ 16 ~

there’s only one storey left, Minjun pushes underneath Seo’s arm, the one he’s using for the handrail. Seo trips, and it slows him down enough for Minjun to leap over the last few steps in front of him.

They reach the seventh floor panting, their legs sore and their faces red. Seo shakes his head as he turns the key in the front door.

“I win,” says Minjun.