Chapter 38: Time Out

"Wait, so in this example, you should to just get rid of your knight? Like no big deal? I though you said a knight was important."

"Uh, well right now the knight is not the most important thing. Plus, this is called an exchange, and it's an intrinsic part of playing chess. I capture your knight, then you capture mine; they've been exchanged."

"What if I don't take your knight?"

"Then I'm going to capture your queen."

"Shit. That's right."

Honda did the correct thing; he captured Ryou's knight. However, in doing so, he opened the file up between his and Ryou's queens. Automatically, Ryou took Honda's queen with his own.

"WHAT THE FUCK, RYOU."

"You have to capture my queen, now. Your king's in check."

"Capture it with what?"

"Your king."

"Oh yeah. I forgot the king can take stuff. Cool."

"Yep. The only problem is you can't castle now, and also the path leading to your king is now wide open for attack."

"Hold up, Ryou. We need to backtrack."

"What?"

"What's 'castle'?"

Ryou let out an accidental snort of disbelieving laughter and looked at Honda inquiringly. He quickly apologized when he saw the frustration on Honda's face. "Sorry. Just. I…I thought you were setting up to castle with the kingside rook. I didn't know…that you didn't know…that you could…."

"If it's something stupidly simple, then I swear, Ryou, you'd better not fucking tell Ryuuji about this or I'm coming after you once I'm forced to I kill him to get him to the hell shut up."

"Do you want to go back a turn? I can tell you a better move so you don't have to worry about a queen exchange yet."

"Isn't your next match in five minutes, though?"

"I was thinking about sitting out this round anyway."

"Don't get lazy, Ryou. Why else am I here but to keep you from getting lazy, right?"

"But I can totally sit out a round if I need to. It's not a big deal. It's scored like a draw."

"Save it for when you need it. We've only been here for an hour and fifteen minutes. You can't sit out yet. That's weak."

Ryou begrudgingly agreed and collected his notebook from where he'd optimistically placed it in his bag at the start of the break. He'd won his first match fairly quickly, but he was pretty sure it was because his opponent wasn't paying attention. The tournament had started oddly early, and not everyone participating seemed to be fully awake yet. Honda, styling himself to be something of an improvised coach and cheerleader, had told Ryou enthusiastically that Ryou should use the situation to his advantage as long as it lasted and score all the points possible. Ryou had grumbled and said if no-one else was trying, then why should he? Honda had been aghast and told Ryou that if Honda was sacrificing his afternoon—really the better part of his entire day actually—to accompany Ryou to a tournament, then Ryou ought to fucking win this shit.

"So, tell me more about the exchanges," said Honda when Ryou returned from the next round. Ryou had won again, so Honda was positively chipper. He was convinced his "training" with Ryou was clearly making Ryou do super well, along with Ryou's key advantage of being the most awake competitor in the building. Honda figured this was how you practiced chess: you just went through all aspects of the game like an inventory at every free moment in order to remind you what your options were. Then, you tried to remember it all in the heat of battle.

Honda was not totally wrong in this assumption. Unfortunately, Honda knew too little about chess to ask very challenging questions that might've actually caused Ryou to reflect on all he knew in a meaningful way. Instead, Honda asked Ryou about the absolute basics, about the vocabulary, and didn't pay enough mind to Ryou's answers. Frequently, Honda would mentally tune Ryou out, especially when Ryou's answers veered to deeply into real, convoluted theory. Specifically, positional theory. Honda, as an utter novice, only had a mind for tangible, active things, like tactics. He wasn't a damn palm-reader, which was what is sounded like you needed to be to actually win whatever game it was that Ryou was playing and called chess, even though it made no practical sense whatsoever and seemed awfully full of extrapolated bullshit no human was actually capable of calculating in a real match.

"You can't gain anything in chess unless you give something up. You have to try to mitigate the cost. It's not Magic and Wizards. You can't pull the right trap card and basically get something for nothing by way of luck. You can't fill your deck with the strongest, rarest cards and start dominating duels. What you give up, what you risk, the concessions you make, and the weaknesses you take on in order to pursue your goal, these things actually matter and should be considered."

"Yeah," said Honda distantly, telling himself that even though this explanation was boring and long (the absolute worse combo of two things imaginable), he was helping Ryou by forcing Ryou to share it. Exchanges, it seemed, made much of their living comfortably in the realm of the extrapolated bullshit side of chess that Honda so greatly abhorred.

"You should strive for the strongest position in the match, but if your opponent is any good, they will always counteract your moves. You can't play to keep up a positional balance between you and the opponent forever. Eventually, you have to try to win. Eventually, you have to start sacrificing what you have for what you want. So, you have to make exchanges. Remember what I told you about the relative value of the pieces?"

"Kinda. But, Ryou?"

"What?"

"In a general sense, I do really get what you're saying about giving pieces up, but at the same time, I also have no idea what you're talking about because I have no idea how to play chess properly, and about all I know is how knights and stuff move. Also, as of now, I know how to castle."

"Sorry."

"But I think it sounds like a great metaphor for attain what you want in life. Nothing's free. 'You have to start sacrificing what you have for what you want.' All that. That's like, in general, really good advice."

"Well, are you helping me practice chess, or are you turning chess theory into life lessons?"

"I like to think I'm doing both. All great coaches incorporate life lessons into their art. You have to grow as a player and a person by the end of this."

"I'm going to grow as a person by the end of this tournament, Honda?"

"So help me."

Honda, of course, was being sarcastic. He'd already used his one motivational, reality-checking, impassioned speech on both Ryou and Seto. There was nothing left. Unlike Ryuuji, who thought he had everything figured out about everyone, Honda had a rough idea of exactly how much shit he himself was full of at any given moment, particularly when it came to telling people what to do under the guise of giving them advice. That's why Ryou was hanging out with Honda now instead of Yuugi or Anzu or most anyone else. Ryou knew Honda didn't take the dispensing of useless advice and reassuring comments as a responsibility of his.

"Can chess really get you into a person's head and let you see how they think? Like, you can basically learn everything about them if you play chess enough times?"

Ryou blinked at Honda dumbly. Sometimes Honda's questions strayed really far from actual chess. It was hard to tell how serious Honda was, because Honda always looked vaguely serious, even when he said intentionally stupid things.

"Uh, the most you can learn about a person by playing chess against them is how they play chess. You can maybe get a read on their aggressiveness, but that sort of thing is also influenced by how much they know of chess. Like, you might play more aggressively if you know you aren't capable of the stamina needed for a more drawn out match."

"Is Kaiba an aggressive player? He does like having the most powerful monsters in Magic and Wizards. Kaiba likes to annihilate opponents."

"He doesn't get very flashy with chess. People have called him boring, pedantic. Chess depends on a lot of things determining how the match is played. It can depend on which color you start with, if you get to set the tone for the match or not, how well your opponent can actually play. Seto's really, really serious about it. He doesn't really celebrate when he wins. He only gets upset about losing if it's a surprise, like if someone he thinks is an idiot beats him."

"Like Ryuuji, except I can totally vouch that Ryuuj is actually an idiot, and don't let Ryuuji trick you into ever believing otherwise. It would do Ryuuji a lot of good if less people treated him like he was hot shit all the time."

"I'll keep that in mind next time Ryuuji kicks my ass in chess," said Ryou with a serious nod. Honda laughed, and then set up the board again so Ryou could show him the better move Ryou had mentioned before he'd gone for his last match.

When Ryou returned from the next round, he was surprised to discover Honda had a few problems ready for him. Ryou figured Honda had looked them up while bored. Ryou grinned and challenged Honda to find something he hadn't yet seen in the thousands of exercises he'd done with Seto. Honda promised he would, oddly confident in his ability to test Ryou at chess.

Ryou laughed nervously as Honda finished setting up the little travel set between them. The image before Ryou didn't seem to add up properly. This was actually a hard exercise.

"Who gave you this?" he asked. "I've seen it before, but I had trouble solving for the mate in four turns. You can't tell me you just found it randomly by searching 'hard chess problems' online on your phone."

"Ryuuji sent it to me. He knows I'm here with you. I'm not sitting around staring at the wall while you're playing."

Ryou pursed his lips and leaned forward, checking to make sure Honda had the answer, too, before wasting time trying to solve something he knew Honda couldn't even check was right. Instead of moving pieces, however, he just copied the answer down, mulling over it for a moment before committing to it and handing the finished work to Honda to compare with his solution.

"That must've been easy," said Honda. "Here's another."

Honda began going through a whole list of problems from his phone, occasionally needing Ryou's help to set them up when they were written in some form of notation rather than as pictures. Eventually, he was just showing Ryou his phone screen and hiding the solutions. Occasionally Ryou would work out a few steps of the solutions on the board when the puzzles were particularly tricky.

"This was fun for like, the first ten problems, but now I'm bored," said Honda after they hit a problem that had already taken ten minutes to work out and counting. "You seemed stumped. Let's skip this one."

"No," said Ryou, resting his chin in his hand as he continued to stare down at the miniature board. His eyes jumped back and forth rapidly as he mentally moved pieces and followed the likely sequence of events in each turn. He'd sometimes begin moving pieces physically, but then frown and put them all back, displeased with the direction he'd gone.

"I take back what I said last time. Giving the problems sucks when the other person takes forever. Let me give you a hint."

"You can't give me a meaningful hint," said Ryou. "You're just going to move the pieces for the next turn, and chances are I've already figured that out. It's the last few turns I'm having problems with, and as soon as you get to those, you'll just be giving me the answer rather than a hint."

Honda sighed and slumped in his chair. "Maybe Ryuuji sent a trick question just to fuck with you."

Ryou frowned at the board but didn't look away from it.

"When's your next match, anyway?"

Ryou jumped up as if electrified and looked frantically at his watch. "Oh no," he gasped and grabbed his notebook. Without any real goodbye, he was gone, hurrying back to the main floor for the competition.

Ryou wasn't much more than five minutes late, but it was going to count against him. He slipped heavily into the seat across from his opponent and shook hands absently to be polite as he whispered an apology. In the same quick movement, Ryou had his e-pawn out, swiftly starting the match before even full settling down in his chair. The opponent said nothing, likely too stunned at Ryou's sudden appearance across the board and the immediate commencement of the game.

Ryou's mind hadn't fully divorced itself from the problem he'd been working on in the practice room, which confused him as the tried to play the opening. He kept finding that his thoughts kept wandering down the winding path to that other solution, with very little regard for the match he was currently playing. Luckily, his opponent responded to Ryou's opening as perfectly as a textbook, which kept Ryou from having to think too hard as his mind's eye struggled to adjust itself to the new board. He prayed he might snap back into the match before the middlegame, however, or else he was screwed.

Seto had been right about not working too hard before a tournament, or reviewing material one wasn't entirely competent with when one was in the middle of competition. It required too much focus, too much strain. It overextended the chessic mind to the point of distraction, interfering with one's ability to play the actual match before them, because they'd start looking for all the tactics and tricks that applied to the exercise…as they might apply to the current game that was not the exercise. Opponents were people. They didn't respond like they were supposed to for the sake of the unit of study. People were independent. People took risks, blundered, deviated from the standard line, and were occasionally brilliant beyond measure. You had to watch out against people. You had to plan ahead.

Ryou rubbed his eyes tiredly, counting a few seconds to himself before he opened them again and forced himself to analyze the positions on board. He was still leading by time (tempos, not minutes), but not much else. It was a precarious edge. His opponent hadn't let Ryou take any advantage other than the one Ryou had started out on. He wondered when the opponent would finally strike out and dare to take the initiative from him. Which of them would be the first to make a mistake? Had Ryou already made one? But no, that was impossible. It was still too early.

Ryou decided quickly on a strategy he could follow, finally breaking away from the textbook back-and-forth between him and his opponent that had dominated the opening so far. All that Ryou had was the initiative, so he'd strike out first. He was beginning to suspect his opponent never would. His opponent was far too comfortable with the highly predictable sort of playing they'd managed so far.

Only a turn later, a sudden, shrill noise filled the hall. Ryou recoiled as if burned, startled, from where he'd just hit the button on his side of the clock. In the same fuzzy second of thought, he realized what was happening was that the school's bell for class dismissal had gone off. Behind him, there was a clatter and a crash as someone else, equally as startled as Ryou had been, knocked over their entire board. This was not the only disrupted match. It was cruel thing to jolt chess players out of their concentration with such sudden, literal alarm.

Music began to play, and Ryou and several other players looked up, baffled. Someone commented that it must've been one of those schools where they played music in the halls between the classes. A low rumble of chatter, most of it surprised remarks and observations of the situation, erupted around the tournament hall as directors and arbiters bustled about to address the disturbance. These adults shushed the competitors, but by now the situation was more than a little out of hand for such a small team of officials to deal with as the music continued.

"You're not scaring me into moving my pawn, so you can forget about that course," said a whispered voice across the board from Ryou. "I'll take that bishop after you capture the pawn. Even if you chicken out and don't take the pawn, you'll be losing your undefended knight to mine. And if I take that knight, I'll go ahead and capture your other bishop, too. Perhaps you'll finally retaliate and capture my knight by then, but the fact remains that I'll still have both my bishops plus a knight, and I know much better how to use them than you'll know how to coordinate the sole knight and bishop you'll have left."

Ryou gawked at the green haired teen in tinted glasses and a surgical mask. He hadn't known they let you wear surgical masks during tournaments. He supposed the close quarters made them something of a considerate gesture if you were sick. He was fairly confident Seto Kaiba wasn't wearing the mask because he was sick, though.

"I can't believe you're here right now; what if someone sees you and recognizes you?"

"When the arbiter turns around, I suggest you move that bishop back."

"Are you even listening to me?"

"Then I guess I'll do it for you."

Seto reached over in a flash after glancing up to check where the arbiters and floor directors were hurrying to as they tried to address the music that continued to play along with the spoiled matches that required close arbitration to resume course. Someone was walking down the rows telling the competitors that the music would last five minutes and that it was best to suspend their matches until it was over.

With a slight of hand that bordered on truly magical, Seto moved one of his rooks uselessly aside one square in a circuitous gesture which required him to pass his hand over Ryou's own bishop and move it back. He hit the clock to end the turn, checked the locations of the officials once more, and then hit the clock to end Ryou's move without allowing Ryou to take it. He returned his displaced rook to its original square and forced Ryou to capture his knight. He hit the clock two more times and finally sat back to consider how he was going to respond.

"Oh look," said Seto with mock surprise, "you changed your mind and captured my knight instead. Smart move. You've definitely weakened my pawn on the a-file. You're pretty good."

"How the hell did you…? So fast?" stammered Ryou, only processing what had happened now that it was over.

"Keep your voice down, the commotion's waning. You'll get us kicked out."

"I'm going to get us kicked out? You just broke the rules."

"The arbiter won't believe you. Why would you argue that in this commotion I gave you an advantage? Who the hell does that?"

"I didn't write it down."

"You were just about to when the bell rang."

"I'm not—"

"I'd like to see you uncapture my knight without anyone here noticing you putting it back."

The music finally stopped, three minutes early, rendering Ryou unable to respond as silence resumed its place. One of the officials was telling everyone present to refrain from playing any moves, that five minutes would be added to the overall time allowed for each match. The arbiters and floor directors then splayed out to negotiate complaints from a few competitors who claimed their opponents had used the moment's distraction to cheat. Ryou glanced at Seto, who raised his eyebrows (there was very little else visible of his actual face), silently daring Ryou to say something to the official that was about to pass their table. Ryou glanced at the players on the board next to theirs and Seto shook his head. No, they hadn't seen. Seto had been too quick. They'd assumed Ryou and Seto had simply kept playing through the interruption.

Ryou sighed and took up his pen to write the moves down. He paused occasionally as he did so to shoot Seto a disapproving look. He deeply suspected that Seto might be sneering beneath the surgical mask.

Though Ryou was ahead by time and material now, he used his next turn for the utterly bullshit move of sifting his king over a square, sentencing it to a future with no prospect of castling. Seto made a small, irritated noise and immediately did the same move himself, thus confirming to Ryou what Ryou already suspected: Seto was trying to lose the match.

Ryou decided he wouldn't make this easy for Seto. Unlike Seto, Ryou knew how to commit to losing. His next turn, he took three whole minutes to move his h-pawn forward two squares. The only reason he finally did move was because Seto deliberately twitched his hand in the direction of the clock, threatening to make the move for Ryou once no-one was looking.

Eventually, the moves got a little more serious after and arbiter stopped over Ryou's shoulder to observe the progression of the match. Seto and Ryou were reminded how suspicious it would look if the match timed out and the very obvious fact that they hadn't been playing properly revealed itself in their notes. Thus, they interspersed useless moves with what passed for the barest shadow of a semblance of a real game. But, by no means were they playing proper chess, not really. They were playing a game of who would lose first while trying to make it look like chess in case to anyone glanced over.

Seto was someone who fought to win, though, even if the object of the game was to intentionally lose it. He also cheated by nudging Ryou's rook into a more advantageous position and then hit his side of the clock followed by Ryou's. Ryou now had Seto in check, and Seto's king escaped in the worse possible direction that would lose him the game in only two turns if Ryou acted on it. Ryou, however, immediately moved his rook alongside the king prematurely, forcing Seto to capture it to get out of check. Reluctantly, Seto did so.

As they played, Ryou didn't think too much about why Seto was here and struggling to lose a chess match against Ryou after avoiding him for nearly a week. He supposed the simplest answer was the most likely: Seto had simply wanted to make a dramatic entrance. He'd probably expected that Ryou would want to win the match, too, seeing how Ryou had never won a match against Seto.

Well, Seto was wrong. Ryou had no aspirations of beating Seto at Seto's game, even if Seto deliberately handed him the victory. It wouldn't make Ryou feel better about Seto ignoring him for entire days. He wondered, dryly, if Seto might tell him that he was on a business trip all this time. Just like Seto'd been on a business trip when the team had failed to make it through their first tournament. For such important trips that cut him off from all contact for entire days, they certainly seemed rather last-minute in their shoddy organization.

Surprisingly, Ryou didn't take much offense at the fact that Seto was trying to give Ryou a victory, though Ryou supposed he had full right to be offended by it. If Ryou hadn't been so annoyed with Seto for a whole host of other reasons beyond the wound to his pride that was a match was being thrown for his sake, Ryou might've even let himself beat Seto. He wouldn't have considered it a real victory, but he would've accepted it as some weird, conciliatory gesture from Seto, because he would've understood how hard it was for Seto to give up a match. This sort of thing was very much against Seto's deeply held beliefs of himself as a serious game competitor. He was making a concession for Ryou. But, Ryou wasn't going to let him. Seto would have to earn his own failure as much as he earned his victories.

Time was running out at last, and the group of competitors had dwindled to the point where it was impossible for Seto to pull off any more slights of hand unseen. Ryou saw this match would be won with minutes, not with moves, and began dragging his turns out again. Seto did likewise. At one point, Seto waited so long, Ryou was afraid Seto might just sit there for the full ten minutes he had remaining. When he finally moved, the result was actually productive in the advancement of his position. Supposedly this was to justify the amount of time he'd taken.

Ryou was inspired by Seto's last move. In a sudden reversal, he began to capture the pieces on offer to him, closing in on Seto's king. When he met Seto's eyes, Seto offered a slight, approving nod, welcoming Ryou to win the match. With only his eyes, he seemed to somehow imply that it was about time Ryou had come to his senses.

And, of course, with Seto thinking Ryou had finally conformed to Seto's plan, Ryou easily stalled in his last two minutes and ran out of time first. Seto immediately realized how much he'd taken Ryou's cooperation for granted, but it was too late. When a director came over to ascertain the result of the tournament's longest match, there was no way for Seto to argue that he hadn't won. Ryou's time on the clock had run out. Seto still had his five surplus minutes because Ryou had arrived late to the match an hour ago.

Ryou pretended to be disappointed but a good sport about the loss. He shook Seto's hand and said he'd try to arrive on time to his matches in the future. They went and delivered their results, Seto sulking wordlessly. Ryou continued to the practice room where Honda was grinning and mouthing nonsense at his phone screen like an idiot as he texted.

"Shit, Ryou, that match took forever," said Honda as Ryou entered his peripheral vision. "Why the hell was the bell ringing? Who the hell organized this tournament? I mean, I've never been to one of these things, but I didn't expect a set up this unprofessional. Did that throw you off? I don't think you'll have time to work on the problem Ryuuji sent. I think we should skip it anyway. Do you want to just see the answer?"

"I'm going to pass up my next round," said Ryou. He picked up his bag from the floor at Honda's feet.

"Your last match sucked that much?"

"No, I've got to talk to someone real quick."

"And ditch me? Cool."

"I'll be back. I've got to finish the tournament anyway. You can go do something else for two hours, I guess, since I'll probably have to go to the next match directly after my…meeting."

"A meeting now? Why so mysterious, Ryou? I know chess is the game of super villains, but like, if you're being recruited by some, you can tell me. I didn't park far. We can make a break for it. Losing a tournament is a small sacrifice for a life indentured to the service of evil."

"No but really, I'll text you," said Ryou, not taking the moment to chat with Honda. He tossed his bag over his shoulder and turned to go. "I don't want anyone overhearing the details, but I'll text you in like five minutes. I promise."

Honda rolled his eyes and took up his phone again. Ryou suspected he was texting Ryuuji, complaining about how odd and hurried Ryou was acting. Ryuuji was probably encouraging Honda to sneak after him and find out what was so mysterious. Honda was probably currently making the argument that if he kept intruding and eavesdropping on Ryou, Ryou would never hang out with him ever again, and friendship was way more important than satisfying one's reckless curiosity.

Ryou, meanwhile, looked around nervously as he left the tournament area and slipped through a hall door leading to the classrooms and offices of the host school. He felt lost for a moment, feeling like he'd fallen through a portal created by some unseen glitch in the fabric of reality, because the hall looked more like a corporate office than a school. A wavy line of tiles formed a vaguely oceanic mosaic in the floor that provided the long, receding space with a sense of movement and marked distance that was often lost when the floors and walls were all the same various shades of sandy white and tan. There were alcoves in the blue-gray walls with various scientific instruments inside, encased behind glass like a museum display.

Ryou silently gawked a moment, temporarily forgetting his purpose for stepping out into this hall that he was most likely not allowed to trespass in. This door should've been locked, really. He checked his phone to see the room number Seto had sent him along with directions on how to get there. Ryou walked that way, texting Honda as he went to let him know that he was going to talk to Seto.

Honda, of course, immediately replied that Ryuuji had already guessed this. He also joked that this didn't mean super villains weren't still trying to recruit Ryou. Ryou had to be careful.

Though he was amused by the joke, Ryou was too anxious to smile. He muted the phone entirely, put it in his back, and continued on his way to meet Seto.

Notes:
I have no idea how people deal with loud shit interrupting a round of a chess tournament. So, I took some creative license, because how else are Ryou and Seto going to get the chance to bicker?

Also, losing chess is an actual game. But like, it has rules. Seto and Ryou are clearly playing by the rules bullshit.

Let Me Take a Moment:
According to plan, next chapter ought to be the last one.