But whatever. With his yellow shoes with built-in wheels under the heels, five of the six colours were represented, and poor Rutger would likely never have a chance to let his sexual orientation blossom.

If not for the lack of orange, it would have been game over for Rutger already. Now he had a one in six chance. A two was what he needed to keep breathing. No more, no less. Was this it? Third time lucky.

He took out his dice and shook it in his hand, giving it extra time now, even though that obviously had no effect on the result. Contrary to popular belief, the dice had no memory; each individual throw was isolated from all previous throws and the result was simply the whim of the dice. Or, put differently, pure chance.

That said, chance was always constrained by the odds. No matter how badly chance wanted to roll ten sixes in a row, it wasn’t particularly likely to succeed. And right now, neither chance nor the odds were on little Rutger’s side.

‘Are you getting something or what?’

He squeezed the dice and turned to the short but muscular man with a beard, dressed in a motorcycle outfit. ‘Oh, I’m sorry—’

‘No worries. But if you wouldn’t mind moving.’

‘Of course, absolutely.’ He quickly stepped aside and felt his pulse begin to race. Soon, he would break into a sweat, too. Also, he hadn’t picked up a single jar of pickled herring, even though he’d been standing there, blocking the fridge, for several minutes. Talk about making yourself conspicuous. Damn.

He turned away, only to discover that both the boy and his father were gone. Fuck. He looked around; it was all he could do not to start dashing wildly around the shop. The CCTV cameras had probably started zooming in on him already. The whole thing would be over before he’d even warmed up.

He made sure to keep putting things in his basket as he quickly moved towards the tills. At least stressed people in a hurry were a common enough sight.

It was all that bearded man’s fault. If not for him, the dice would have given its verdict and he could have focused on following them to their car and noting down their registration number. Now the mood was ruined, and of course neither Rutger nor his dad were anywhere to be seen when he reached the tills.

Where the fuck were they? They couldn’t have just disappeared. No one could escape the will of the dice. No one. And he was the one holding it, which meant the boy’s fate was in his hands. Thus it was decided and thus it was going to be.