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The Beach executives have all kinds of privileges inside the utopia they live in. Better rooms, a private pool, and access to the easy games once other stupid players clear them. Once game arenas where low numbers are played are found, the executives can go and replay them as many times as they want with victory assured. Lower-ranked members of the Beach are sent to explore new arenas, to play more difficult games, while the executives sit and enjoys the illusion of a good life.
Or at least, that’s what happens until Hatter gets bored or a game takes too long to get cleared.
“I’m sending two of you to the game arena in Ueno. No one has cleared it yet, so we have guessed that it’s a high number,” Hatter says, nursing his drink even if it’s still ten in the morning. Today there's no girls sitting on his lap, only the two shirtless bodyguards that Niragi finds useless because he already has the militants for that. Or Aguni. “We think that it’s either diamonds or clubs.”
“And a nine or a ten maybe. We’re missing the high numbers from almost all the suits,” Kuzuryu adds with that horrible habit of talking from behind his hands. Rude. “We need two strong players. We’ll send two executives with a small team of players from the lower ranks.”
Niragi kicks his legs to rest over the table, already tired of this meeting. The smell of whisky clings to the room, and it makes him nauseous. Hatter keeps smiling, and he wants to pluck his eyes out from behind those stupid shades. He hates that man and his delusions of power.
“So you’re going to risk two of our strongest players?” Ann asks. Around this table sits the people who have brought the most cards to the beach. Losing any of them would be a terrible move this late in the game. “It’s a big risk to take.”
“That’s why we’ll send a set of players who can succeed in any kind of game they throw at them, because I know they won’t disappoint us.” In front of Niragi, Chishiya’s smile grows into a grin. He’s been smiling like an idiot since he heard the words diamonds and risk together. “Chishiya, I want you to go. I know you will bring me back that card.”
“I’m running out of days on my visa.”
That’s all he says.
Diamonds or clubs. That means that it’s either Ann or Kuina. The second one doesn’t belong to the executive, but with how glued the woman is to Chishiya, she may as well be. And in a clubs game, he can only see Chishiya working with his only friend.
“Perfect,” Hatter claps his hands together and then points his stinky glass to Niragi. “Then Niragi will be your companion for this adventure!”
“What!”
Niragi stands, slamming his hands against the table. The chair hits the floor with a loud thud.
“I don’t play useless games!”
Diamonds are boring.
Clubs are team games.
Not his thing.
Has Hatter finally gone completely mad?
“I know, but you’ll be an asset in case we’re wrong about what kind of game it is. If it spades, you’ll be ready.”
“And if it’s hearts,” Mira says with that creepy smile of hers. “I’m sure you won’t have any problem killing each other!”
That’s stupid, because neither Niragi nor Chishiya would have any problem killing anyone in a hearts game. They don’t care enough about anyone in this stupid world.
“I refuse.”
“Your visa also ends today,” Ann pipes in. “You need to play.”
“Niragi, you are playing,” Aguni's voice makes a shiver run down his spine. “You don’t have a choice.”
He is the Beach number four, so he guesses it’s not that weird that he’s unlucky, he's never been a superstitious person, but maybe his luck run out.
“If you make me fail behind you’re going to wish for a laser on your head,” Niragi says, leaning on the table to be closer to Chishiya. “That would be a gentle death compared to me.”
“You’re thinking too highly of me, Niragi,” Chishiya and that stupid smile of his infuriate him. “I don’t care enough about you to be scared of your theatrics.”
Niragi is about to jump over the table when Aguni’s hand rests on his shoulder and makes him sit down again.
“Stop fighting. Save the energy for tonight's games,” he says, eyes glaring daggers at Niragi. “Behave for once.”
Behave, behave, behave.
Always the same, always telling him to back down, but it’s never Chishiya the one getting scolded for pushing his buttons.
He hates him.
He hates everyone in this damn place, and he doesn’t care if they hate him.
“Fuck off.” He slaps Aguni’s back away and stands from his chair, kicking it against the wall. “If you’re late, I’m leaving and clearing that game without your sorry ass. I don’t need you.”
Aguni screams for him to come back.
Hatter says something along the lines of kids these days.
And as Niragi slams the door behind him, he can feel the headache coming already.
Today is going to be a long day.
Niragi is waiting for him in the front yard.
Everyone else is screaming in the hall, getting assigned a group or partying in the club and the pool if they don’t have a game tonight.
Chishiya was ready for Niragi to be late, too busy at one of the parties, dancing with the young girls to seem draged to him all the time for some reason. He expected for him to arrive drunk and high on adrenaline, ready to drag him down and mess their game.
But Niragi is outside already, leaning against a car that looks one day away from falling to pieces. He’s sitting in the hood of the car, smoking a cigarette.
“Can you turn that thing off?” he asks, and Niragi turns around to give him a deadly look, dark shadows under his black eyes. Oh, if looks could kill, Chishiya wouldn’t have to play this stupid game.
“No.”
And he blows the smoke into his face like a petulant child, always searching for what boutons to push.
Chishiya scowls like an annoyed cat, trying to wave the smoke away and not to cough.
“You’re a disgusting piece of shit.”
“Takes one to know another,” he jumps to the floor, grabs his rifle, and gets into the driver's seat. The thought of being in a car driven by Niragi is not appealing at all, but it can be worse than that time Ann drove them to the five of diamonds. “Get in, or I’m leaving you here and running over your corpse when the laser hits.”
“And the others?”
“Hatter will send them to us in a while,” he starts the car as Chishiya takes his spot in the passenger seat. “They’re still drawing straws to see who has to come.”
After all, even in the madness and delusion the Beach has created, no one wants to face a nine or a ten. Or maybe they don’t want to be on the same team as Chishiya and Niragi, which is perfectly normal.
Niragi hits the dashboard, and Chishiya turns around to look at him, to see if he has gone crazy in the last five minutes, but then music blast trough the car radio.
"I thought technology didn't work?"
"Analogical," he says. So that's why this car is a piece of shit. It's old as fuck. "I'm not sitting with you in silence."
If Chishiya opens that big mouth of his, there’s a big chance of Niragi crashing the car just to stop listening to him.
So they make it to the game arena with a rock music station filling the car, hide the it in an alley, and walk to the building that is shining like a lightbulb.
There’s a big screen announcing Game Venue Ahead and, under that, a set of numbers.
“Fourteen out of thirty-two,” Chishiya reads out loud. “Big game with a player limit?”
They grab their phones, and the number goes up to sixteen. They advance into the stairs. There’s a small signal shapped like an arrow pointing to the right, to one of the two sets of stairs. The moment they start to climb, there’s a ding, and then the mechanical voice speaks.
The first team is complete. Please, from now on, the players must take the stairs at their left.
“Two teams?”
Behind them, the arrow rotates to point to the left, and a second set of stairs is now the one being pointed to by the spotlights, while the one they stand in is now in the dim darkness of the arena.
“A club’s game then?”
Niragi scoffs, ignoring Chishiya’s question, not like he expected an answer.
He hopes the clearing condition doesn’t imply his whole team making it out. This will be much easier if they can make sacrifices.
“The idiots from the Beach are late,” is the only thing Niragi says. “They’re going to be on the other team.”
Chishiya is glaring at the entrance.
He knew they should have waited for the others. If this is a team A vs. team B game and they need to eliminate people from the Beach, that’s okay, but Hatter will be pissed if their numbers go down or if they kill a good player.
He can see brightly colored shirts start to arrive, and he gives his back to the entrance to keep climbing the stairs. The damage is already done. They’ll better keep going.
They’re waiting in a white room. The light is dim, and he can barely see anything, but it looks too small to play a big game. This is probably just the waiting room before they take them into the real arena.
From his corner, he starts to observe his new teammates. It takes a few minutes for the other team to be completed, and by the time it happens, Chishiya has everyone pretty much figured out.
Game difficulty: Nine of Diamonds
The voice announces.
By Chishiya’s side, Niragi is smiling like a kid with a new toy. For someone who called Diamond games boring, he looks happy. He’s balancing himself on the heel of his feet, and then he speaks at the same time as the voice, already familiar with the way the announcement goes.
“Game: Chess,” Niragi’s voice mingles with the woman’s robotic one. Around them, people start to whisper to each other. “This is going to be fun.”
“How did you know?”
It could have been a lucky guess. But something tells Chishiya that it’s not that.
“Two teams of sixteen players—I can’t think of any sports that need a team of sixteen. It could have been a tournament, two rounds, one within the team and the final one versus the other one. That leaves us with teams of eight, and what sport do you know with teams of eight? I don’t think they’ll have alternates as an option, so it couldn’t be a physical game. Unless they make us play dodgeball. But they would just split all of us into two teams for that, not ask for an exact number of players. There would be a time limit for registration, not a number of players one.”
That is, actually, a very logical reason.
“So that leaves us board games. Tt can’t be cards because what kind of card game takes a team? Again, it could be a tournament of two on two, and the winner from each time survives or something. But that sounds stupid.” Niragi keeps talking, and something about the way he speaks makes Chishiya pay attention for once. “Shogi and checkers don’t fit the number of players, but chess does.”
Then, to make a last point, Niragi points to the floor.
“And our stairs and this room are white. The other team's stairs were black, and I’m sure their waiting room is black too.”
So he can use that brain of his.
Interesting.
Chishiya stares at him. He opens his mouth to speak when the voice starts to explain the rules.
Clearing condition: Checkmate. The team that takes the King from the rival team wins. It’s game over for the whole team if you lose your king. Is Game Over for a player who is captured by a rival piece? It’s game clear for all the players who remain in the winning team after the rival king is dead.
“Do you know how to play chess, or did you use that single brain cell of yours to deduce that this was the game?”
“Won’t you love to know?” Niragi asks with his usual grin and a wink. “I would be more worried about figuring out who in this room can play chess.”
That’s true.
There’s a group of four girls, still dressed in their school uniforms. But they’re bruised and dirty. This isn’t their first game. An old couple that clings to each other, the man's leg is wrapped in bandages. That won’t be a problem for a Diamonds game, and it means they’ve been here for a while already.
You have fifteen minutes to decide each player role and a strategy; good luck!
“Excuse me,” a man around their age taps Niragi’s shoulder. “What is all this about?”
And here they are, the new players.
How does someone manage to have a nine as their first game? It’s not possible for someone to be that unlucky. And on top of that, he approached Niragi so he can’t be smart. Or maybe he’s just terrible at reading people.
“Didn’t you hear, idiot? It’s a game.” Still smiling, he points the rifle at him. “You play or you die, easy.”
The guy screams and falls to his butt.
Another guy and a girl scream and run to him, kneeling by his side.
“What do you mean die?”
“Exactly what you hear!” one of the high school girls screams. “If we win, we live.”
Instead of paying attention to the new players, Niragi seems to be bored and fires a series of shots into the sky with a scream. Everyone jumps and looks at him. And at Chishiya, who for some reason is still standing by his side.
“Enough talk. We need to get our fucking roles sorted. Who here knows how to play chess?”
Between the sixteen of them, only Chishiya and one of the high schoolers raise their hands.
Fantastic, they can just hope the other team is even more confused than them.
“If you want to live, listen to me.” Chishiya takes a step forward and looks at the girl. “You really know how to play?”
She gives him a shy look, checks her tinted pink cheeks, and Niragi rolls his eyes.
Teenagers.
“Be honest: are you any good?”
“Aya is a good player,” the other one says. “She’s the Chess Club president at our school.”
“Oh, Chess Club president, so impressive,” Niragi says, and Chishiya wants to kick him in the knee. “You’d better not fuck up, or it’s game over for you before the laser can get you.”
“I’m afraid there are not lasers in this game.” A new table is in the spotlight now, and it has a set of white collars. At the back, a screen shows different symbols, one for each piece. “It’s going to be a boom.”
Niragi rolls his eyes, walks to the table, and eyes each collar carefully before grabbing the bishop one. Chishiya doesn’t know if Niragi is grabbing that one because he knows what the piece does or it’s just the first one he saw.
“Any problem with this?” He points the rifle at Chishiya, and he takes his hands out of his pockets, raising them in surrender. So he knows. He wants to be a powerful piece, interesting. “Perfect.”
Everyone else is whispering and starting to get nervous, so Chishiya takes it as his clue for the performance to start.
“I’ll be the White Queen.” He ignores Niragi’s chuckle and turns towards the girl, offering her a collar. “You’ll be the King. Stay back and observe the whole game board from there. You’ll know how to move so they don’t get you, won’t you?”
She nods and, with a confidence that wasn’t there a second ago, clicks the collar around her neck.
“Give everyone else their collars. If we guide them, it won’t matter what role they play.”
And he grabs Niragi to pull him apart. It must take him by surprise, Chishiya’s sudden burst of giving a fuck, because he doesn’t have time to resist.
“You know how to play.”
“Oh, do I?” he asks, eyebrow arching until it disappears behind his bangs. “What makes you think that?”
“The fact that I am not stupid, and it looks like neither are you.”
Niragi gives him a smirk and gets free from Chishiya’s grip. He leans down, closer to his face, and Chishiya narrows his eyes. Does he really think he’s intimidating when he gets like this?
“Let’s see who can capture more players of the rival team, okay? I just want to have fun.”
He walks away from Chishiya, kicks open the double doors, and disappears into what seems to be the real arena.
They’re in the roof of a building, and the whole floor is painted like a checkerboard. Niragi is already waiting on his little square, crouching down to tie something around his ankle.
All players step into your corresponding position. All players tie the rope around your ankle.
The woman’s voice says over and over again.
Chishiya follows Niragi’s example and takes his spot as the Queen, right next to him. What is even the rope for? They already have the explosive collars. Are they going to twist the game?
“Listen, I’ll order you around,” Chishiya says as everyone starts to take their positions. He tries not to look at the Black team. He doesn’t care about the familiar faces he may find among them, but he prefers to focus on his own team. “You, what was your name?”
“Aya,” she says as she ties the rope to her ankle.
“You stay back, get a general vision of the board, and help me move everyone around to achieve the win. If I call a bad movement, you stop me. Understood?”
After all, it’s been a while since he played, and this girl seems to play on the daily if she’s part of the chess club at school. Better safe than sorry.
She nods and squares her shoulders. Her two friends, who are playing as a Pawn and a Rook, give her a twin set of thumbs up.
You have 90 minutes for the first 40 moves, followed by 30 minutes for the rest of the game with an addition of 30 seconds per move starting from move one.
“What?”
Someone asks, and, to be honest, Chishiya was not paying attention. Once they start playing, the time limit won’t matter, not against non-professionals at least. Something tells him that this will end quickly.
Whites open. You can start playing. Good luck.
“We start! That’s good, right?”
“It’s not that big of an advantage,” Chishiya says, hands back inside his pockets. “B2 to B3.”
The old woman looks at him, gives him a shy nod, and takes a step forward.
The rival team answers with the same shyness, and it goes like that for a while. Next to him, the girl seems to agree with how he’s playing, and, at his other side, Niragi sinks into a crouch and pulls out a pack of cigarettes.
“What? I can't move until I get these two idiots out of my way,” he says, gesturing towards two of the pawns at his diagonal. They’re so terrified they don’t even notice. “Call me when I can explode someone’s head.”
And he sits on his little square.
“You’re impossible.”
“The feeling is mutual.”
After a few minutes, it happens.
Before Chishiya can speak, the girl does it for him.
“Mana!” Aya scream at their Rook. “Take the pawn!”
A black Pawn is one move away from ending one of theirs, but Mana nods and walks towards the other woman in confident steps.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “But I’m not dying here.”
The woman can’t even scream or beg for mercy. The collar explodes, and her body falls limp against the board with a thud.
Mana presses her hands together into a praying position and bows.
“Thank you,” and she steps into the space the woman left.
“How are we going to play with the bodies lying around?” Niragi asks, looking up at him.
For once, it feels nice being the one who looks down to face others. Niragi ignores the screams and the panic of the people who are starting to realize that this is real. He seems chill and relaxed.
“Maybe it’s part of the difficulty of the game? Having to move around the bodies?”
“I don’t think so,” the girl playing their King says, pointing at the body. “Look.”
The body starts to be dragged back. The rope around the woman’s ankle pulls her into the other side of the board. The shackle around the woman’s ankle opens, and then the voice speaks again.
The players can now move the pawn out of the board.
Most of the team is trembling so much that they won’t listen. There’s a teen boy who throws up, messing the board even more. The person who actually pushes the woman outside the board is one of the militants, a bulky woman Chishiya has never talked to.
“Move!” she screams. “It’s our turn now!”
They move slowly.
No one looks like they know what they’re doing.
The black Rook moves and places himself at the perfect spot for Mana to take him to. She bows and thanks him again, and the game goes on.
They lose a Pawn, and Niragi is the one discarding the body with a kick that makes the man roll out of the stage where they’re playing.
It goes on for five minutes. They lose three Pawns and a Rook.
One of the new guys, who is also playing as a Pawn, finally reaches the end of the board, and Chishiya takes a deep breath. The game is theirs. They already won this.
“What is that sound?” The music chimes in, just like it does before the rules announcements, and everyone turns to look at the guy who is now illuminated by a red spotlight. “What is happening?”
“Pawns are not as useless as people think,” the girl, Aya, says. “If you manage to bring your pawn all the way to the other side of the board…”
A pawn has reached the end of the board. Do you desire to change your pawn into any other piece?
“It can become any piece of your choice, except for King. It's called promotion.”
This is what Chishiya was planning. Sneaky movements, making the guy reach the other side little by little and hoping that the other team wouldn’t notice it.
The game is theirs.
“Q-”
“No!” Niragi’s voice interrupts him, and Chishiya’s head snaps in his direction. He finally jumps to his feet, throws his cigarette to the ground, and steps over it. “We won’t promote the pawn.”
The red light fades, there’s another ding, and the board goes back to normal.
“What are you doing?”
“Are you insane?” Chishiya raises his voice. "Pawns don't move back! He's useless now."
Chishiya and Aya are looking at him like he grew a second head. The other players, the ones whose heads are still attached to their shoulders at least, are trying to understand what is happening.
“Where is the fun of winning with a promotion?” he says. “What was your plan? Making every pawn a queen? We don’t need that.”
“But we would achieve the victory in fewer moves!” Aya seems to have grown a spine in the time they’ve been playing. The girl stands against Niragi’s bullshit from her place at the board. “You are condemning part of our team!”
“I’m making chess fun!” Niragi claps his hands and then points at one of the squares. “You! Miss Chess President's friend, move two squares to your right.”
“We are not listening to you!”
Chishiya is starting to have a hard time playing.
First, the perspective is not helping.
When you play chess, you can see all the board from above. You know where all your pieces are, how many spaces are left for a check of to capture the other one. From this place, he’s having trouble keeping up with everything happening around the board. Knowing what piece is in each square is harder without the full vision of the board.
And second, he’s not playing about people who are actually good at chess, which makes their movements messy but more unpredictable. They don’t stick to a way of playing or do things Chishiya would expect from a chess player.
Somehow, playing against newbies is making it harder for him to figure out a strategy. And that young girl is having the same problem for the way she looks.
Third, there’s Niragi, who until now has been following Chishiya’s instructions to move around. He knows that Niragi can play chess. It’s obvious by now. If he’s following Chishiya’s orders, it’s only because he knows that is the right movement, that it’s the correct way to proceed for the win.
But with this stunt, Chishiya is now fully off the rails.
His whole plan for winning needed those two queens.
“Listen to him!” The girl's voice makes Chishiya stop thinking so much. She sounds like she just realized something, eyes wide open behind her glasses. “Go! He’s right!”
“Are you sure, Aya?”
She nods, and the girl moves.
The timer makes a clicking sound, and the turn changes to the black team, who now moves a pawn forward, even if it does nothing for them.
“Rook to their Bishop!”
“Rook to 5D!”
Niragi and the girl scream at the same time.
The man obeys, and they took down the last black Bishop.
Their Rook covers his face from the splash of blood and gore. The body hits the floor, and the rope starts to pull him out of the play area.
The black team answers by making a Knight one turn closer to taking their Rook.
“Go back to the border,” Niragi is looking at the other high schooler, who is their other Rook. “Now!”
From there, somehow, Niragi takes the lead. Aya nods along with his orders, and Chishiya, even if it’s not his preferred way of playing, can see the logic in what Niragi is doing. He plays in the same way he would do in a Spades game. Violent and cutting, he’s sharp with his orders and plays risky moves that could end their whole game.
He turns around and faces a Pawn.
A pawn wearing swimming trunks and an ugly shirt.
He’s from the Beach.
“No, no, please,” the man falls to his knees, hands clasped in front of his face. “Niragi, please! Please don’t do it, Chishiya! Tell him to stop it!”
Niragi looks at the man.
He’s in his thirties, and all he knows about him is that he invited him to a drink three times last night. And Niragi told him to fuck off all the three times. And then he went on to pester Saiko, who also told him to fuck off but in the shape of a fist to the face and a black eye.
“You didn’t stop when people told you to do it, didn’t you?”
“Please don’t do it!” He’s trembling. He shakes and bows until his forehead hits the floor. “Niragi, please!”
The man looks up as he takes another step and crouches down to face him at the same time that he raises his hands.
“Boo!”
The man screams, and blood splatters across Niragi’s face, who doesn’t seem to care. The rope tightens and pulls him out of the board, leaving a path of blood and an ear in the way. Disgusting.
“Who is next?” he asks, standing again and looking around. The back team is starting to realize how fucked they are. “Who wants to go boom next?”
After another ten minutes they have a Rook, two Pawns, the King, the Queen, and Niragi’s Bishop left. It’s a good set of pieces. The win is almost there, but Chishiya is starting to get nervous. Not because they can lose, but because Niragi seems to be capable of driving him crazy.
“Niragi, go to B7,” he says. Three more moves and it will be done. The game is theirs. There’s so much blood and body pieces on the floor that he’s no longer sure about where some squares end. “Now.”
“No.”
“What?”
“If I move there, I’ll show them where I am heading next. I’m not listening to you.”
“B7,” Chishiya repeats. “I know you’re not that stupid. Go to B7.”
Niragi does, in fact, step in the opposite direction to where Chishiya told him to go.
“I’m not telegraphing my moves,” he says. His dark eyes focus on Chishiya Head tilted like a cat. “I’m sure our dear Queen knows what he needs to do.”
Chishiya looks at the board.
At the pieces they have left.
For some reason, Niragi has sent their two Pawns into a position where they can’t move, and their Rook is back to her original spot. That leaves the King and the Queen free to move.
So Chishiya takes a step to the right, and the black King panics, moving away from his path in a way that doesn’t allow Niragi to capture him.
“Aya, don’t move,” Niragi says. “Keep going, Queen.”
And, for some reason, Chishiya obeys.
With the nerves and the mess, the floor has become, it won’t take long. The black pieces move, but they’re all too far away from their King to help. They’re starting to scream to each other, and then Chishiya sees it.
“Don’t move,” Niragi orders at the same time Chishiya says, “I know.”
He pulls a second cigarette from the package and lights it.
There’s a wide and savage grin spread across Niragi’s face as he takes one step. And then a second and a third one, stepping over splatters of blood and tissue and one eye. Chishiya is used to grime and blood, but thsound of Niragi’s shoes squashing the eye is not a pleasant one.
Step by step he approaches the King, and when he finally steps in front of him, the man is sobbing. Tears and snot running down his face. Around them the team starts to cry too, sobbing harder and louder than before. One of them moves away from his spot, tryng to run away from the board, and his head explodes before he can make it out.
Niragi takes the cigarettes between his long fingers and presses the burning end into the man’s forehead.
“Game Over.”
The Black King has been captured. It’s game over for the Black team.
One by one the collars of the remaining players explode.
Niragi wipes the blood away with his sleeve, kicks the King’s corpse out of the board, and bursts into a laugh that makes him sound like a cartoon villain.
“Man, that was fun!” he screams, arms open and spining over himself.
Chishiya ignores the outburst, takes off his own collar, and drops it to the ground before walking to the table where the Nine of Diamonds waits for them.
It wasn’t that hard. Chishiya wouldn’t have classified this as a nine, the game master has underestimated them.
The only hard thing about this game was dealing with Niragi's crazy way of playing chess.
They walk out of the game arena together. Chishiya just wants to go back in the car and get a shower. He’s covered in blood, and his brain is screaming at him about the biohazard it supposes.
There’s only them, one of the newbies, and the four girls left. The guy wanders away from the arena, mumbling to himself and trembling. The girls walk together until Niragi’s voice reaches them.
“Hey! Miss Chess Club President!” Niragi calls, and the girl turns around to look at him. “Good game.”
The girl seems surprised. She looks at her friends, the four of them made it out alive, and offers Niragi a small bow.
“Thank you,” she says, and then she does another small bow toward Chishiya. “Both of you, well played.”
“You have nine days in your Visas now. Go get some rest,” Chishiya tells them before turning around and walking out of the venue.
“Stick to diamonds!” he can hear Niragi screaming. “Brains are useful in this world too!”
What is he doing? Playing nice?
He saved that girl, Aya, because she was their King. But her friends? That doesn’t make any sense coming from someone like Niragi. People like them don’t spare lives. Each time Chishiya thinks he’s getting a grasp of how Niragi is behind that mask of his, he gets more and more lost.
The girl who played their Rock? Okay, she was useful. But the other were a Pawns, ones he was not going to promote.
In all his years of life, Chishiya has never seen someone play like that, and it makes him angry, because it was a brilliant ending once Niragi took over the role of the general.
The girls disappear in the distance, and Niragi and Chishiya start to walk towards the alley where the car waits.
“Why did you ignore my orders?” Chishiya asks. “That was a stupid move.”
“I saved you, fucker. Stop complaining,” Niragi says. “I took that King myself. You owe me one.”
“You took the King because you refused to listen to me. I was going to do it myself,” Chishiya volleys back. “What was the point of dragging the game on for so long? You knew how to play. You are good at chess. Very good, if that mess of a game can be used as a measurement. I know you could have won in fewer movements. With fewer deaths. You didn’t even need to take some of their pieces.”
“They were going to die either way, don’t act like you care.”
Niragi is a mistery wrapped in horrible shirts and black leather.
“You’re insane.”
That’s it.
Niragi snaps.
He moves towards Chishiya quickly, like a whip.
“What else do you know about me?” Niragi backs him into a corner, pulling his pocket knife out of his pants. “Tell me, Chishiya, what do you even know about me?”
His hand grabs Chishiya’s white jacket that is now stained with red and pushes him back until he hits the wall.
“You’re not a Spades player,” he needs to look up to face Niragi. The other’s hand is still fisted on the fabric of his white jacket, and Niragi’s smile grows into a wild grin. “You’re a Diamonds one. No one but a Diamonds player could play a game of chess like that.”
“Do you want a prize for reaching that brilliant conclusion?” Niragi pushes him further into the wall until Chishiya hits the back of his head against the brick. “Do you feel special? For figuring it out? How does it feel to have overlooked me all this time just to be beaten at your own game?”
Indifferent, Chishiya would love to answer. He doesn’t care. He never cares.
But he stares into Niragi's dark eyes, and fury blooms inside his chest because he’s been played with. And Chishiya is the one who plays with people, not the other way around. He has overlooked something so obvious that he’s furious not only about Niragi’s whole existence but also about his own stupidity.
“Why do you even play Spades? Why do you even bother to pretend?”
The knife raises to Chishiya’s neck, barely a caress of metal against skin.
“Why?” A laugh bubbles inside his chest, and the knife digs deeper into Chishiya’s skin. He feels the sting of the metal threatening to cut his skin open. Niragi will make him bleed in more ways than one if he keeps doing that, because for once in his life, Chishiya wants to bite back and spill poison and venom and blood in this fight. He’s making him feel, Niragi is driving him away from the comfort zone his usual apathy brings to Chishiya. “Because it’s fun, don’t you think?”
Niragi’s eyes are so dark they’re almost black, and right now, the pupil overtakes the small amount of brown. Chishiya stares into dark pools of ink, and, for once, Niragi’s eyes seem not vicious but excited and happy.
“You have fun playing. You and I are the same,” he whispers into the thin spaces between them. “We play for fun, we use others and watch them fall in places where we succeed without even trying hard. We have it easy because we’re better than them, but it gets boring, doesn’t it?”
He's so distracted that he doesn’t notice when Chishiya’s hand wraps around his wrist, when he pushes his arm down until the knife is no longer against his neck.
“Winning and winning and winning against people who don’t even have a chance—where is the fun in that?”
“You’re insane.”
He repeats, because there's no other way to talk about Niragi.
“I’m bored,” he says, tilting his head. “So I play the games I know I can lose, because then it stops being boring. Why should I play in the same way I did in the Old World? Why should we play as the thing we were back then?”
There’s a strange glint in his eyes, almost feverish. Niragi is shivering with an excitement Chishiya wishes he could share. He wishes he could feel that much, to feel that way about something instead of the empty pit that resides inside his chest.
The fury Niragi raises inside him is the closest he has ever been to it.
“You’re stuck in that useless world. I live my own life in this one," he’s so close that Chishiya can notice that Niragi’s nose is crooked, and he knows how to recognize bone that has been broken before.
And once broken, it’s much easier for it to happen again.
In a quick movement, Chishiya brings the heel of his hand up, hitting under Niragi’s nose with all his strength.
Something cracks, Niragi falls back, and Chishiya snatches the knife from Niragi’s grasp before throwing himself on top of the other man, pinning him to the ground.
Instead of aiming for the neck, he holds the knife over Niragi’s right eye.
“It would be a shame if Aguni’s best shooter loses his eye,” Chishiya leans closer until the metallic smell of blood hits him in the face. It runs down Niragi’s face. It’s starting to stain the collar of his shirt, and, when he smiles, it stains his teeth. Between the game and this, he's painted in red. “What use would you have then?”
Niragi's smile doesn’t flatter. Instead he spits the blood on Chishiya’s face and licks his lips clean.
“I knew you were just like me.”
Chishiya has the steady pulse of a surgeon. His hand doesn’t tremble when Niragi moves to rest his arms against the cold concrete and pushes himself up, closer to the knife.
“Come on, gouge my eye out, take your war trophy,” he taunts. “But that won’t make you forget that you’re alive because of me. You’ll never forget that I beat you at your own game, and you owe me your shitty, pathetic, and boring life.”
Chishiya's pulse has never failed him, but at this moment, his hand begins to tremble.
Niragi moves his hand, long fingers coated with blood wrap around his wrist, pulling the knife closer.
“Do it.”
He stares into Niragi’s eyes.
He’s still smiling, breathing heavily, and shivering with excitement. He hasn’t had this much fun in ages. Chishiya’s knees dig into his sides when he pushes himself up, getting free of Niragi’s hold so he can stand.
“I have no intention of getting my medical license revoked,” he steps away from Niragi. Away from whatever that was. Away from the feeling in his gut, telling himself that he should get closer instead of away from him. “I’m walking to the Beach. Good luck putting that ugly nose of yours back into place.”
And just like that, Chishiya walks into the distance, 9 of Diamonds heavy in his pocket.
There’s silence around him; the night is quiet, and then it erupts into screams.
“What the fuck was that!” Kuina screams, hands hitting the table. “What the fuck, guys!”
“I don’t know, but I’m never playing DM for them again,” Ann groans, her head falling against the table. “I think I have a migraine.”
Making a diamonds game for Chishiya and Niragi had been a nice challenge. Everyone in the group wanted those two to have a game together to bring some chaos into the campaign, but now she regrets it.
Sitting in front of each other, Niragi and Chishiya are still catching their breaths after the screaming match and whatever happened there.
“I thought that Nira was going to pin him to the table for real,” Kuina whispers into Usagi’s ear.
“I thought Chishiya was about to drag him down to either kiss him or headbutt him,” Tatta adds, and Usagi covers her mouth so she can hide a small laugh. “I feel like I’m interrupting something.”
“Should we leave, guys?” Karube barges in. Two sets of dark eyes finally stop staring into each other to look at their friend. “Knives down! It was a joke!”
“I swear I’m getting you killed this time,” Niragi says. “You’re not walking out of this game alive.”
“You always say that,” Chishiya doesn’t bother to stand. He just grabs a new bag of snacks and keeps eating. “And then you fail miserably.”
A skittle hits Chishiya’s forehead, and Niragi disappears into the kitchen to grab a new can of Coke. He needs a breather. He doesn’t even understand why he got so heated with Chishiya.
And Chishiya just stares at the spot where Niragi disappeared into, trying to figure out what got his heart beating like he just ran a marathon.
“Shuntaro!”
Kuina’s voice makes him jump in the spot.
“Fucking finally! I’ve been calling you for five minutes,” Kuina says. “Pizza or sushi? We’re ordering dinner.”
Chishiya shakes his head.
It looks like Niragi is still in the kitchen, and he wants to ask why he can’t have Niragi cook something when he’s already there.
But instead of that, he looks at Kuina and shoves his hands into his pockets again.
“Whatever you want, my vote is yours.”
Kuina smiles and runs to Arisu, screaming about pizza, almost shoving him to the ground. There's screams and laughs and everything sounds far away from here, almost like he's underwater.
Chishiya looks down at the table, at his set of white dices and the character sheet, and with a deep breath adds two new things to his inventory.
Lighter
First aid kit
Beach key
Pistol magazine
Six of Diamonds
Five of Spades
Nine of Diamonds
Niragi’s pocket knife.