Shiro lies on the floor, surrounded by discarded clothing and bedsheets no one has bothered to fold. She rolls over on her back, groping blindly under the desk with one hand until she finds a box of cereal bars, the kind that advertise themselves as nutritionally complete. Down the hatch. Crumbs spill everywhere, adding to the crumbs already on the floor and nestled in the cracks of the laptop keyboard.

"Want one?" she asks through a mouthful of food.

"He was the first emperor of— who was Napoleon Bonaparte? Good. This marsupial is native to North America… what is the opossum? Good. The Red Auerbach Trophy is awarded to— oh, no thank you. I'm not hungry right now." And he has pocket aces on table four, which gives him an 85.18% chance of knocking out the other guy and finishing the round.

"When was the last time you ate?"

Gaming is a low-risk activity, as these things go, but people have died while glued to their screens, ignoring petty mortal concerns like calories and bathroom breaks.

"A few hours ago," Sora says vaguely. "Hey, this guy reraised me before the flop and his stats are tight-aggressive. His range here is high pocket pairs, probably kings or queens since I have half the aces. Bet I can get him to shove on the turn if I play passively."

Shiro pelts him with a granola bar. It bounces off his head and lands on the desk. "If you pull a Snowly, it doesn't matter how famous you are, no one is going to your funeral. We're anonymous."

"Not even you?"

He eats the granola bar, not really expecting an answer. The minds behind 『____』 are as codependent as they come. If he dies, he suspects Shiro will cope by never leaving the apartment again. FIDE will have to send her awards in the mail.

Shiro doesn't think of a response to that before the laptop dings, flashing the contents of a new email delivered to their joint account.

The only thing in the email is a link. Someone is inviting『____』to play a game of rapid chess.

"Aren't spam filters supposed to reject emails with nothing in the sender field?"

"Probably. Might be a glitch. What does it say?"

Just a chess.com link. It's a rapid game, with each player given fifteen minutes on the clock plus an additional ten seconds with every move made. Reasonably common in online games, even at a high level.

To the side of the board is an unused chat interface and the names of the players in the match.

『____』 (2740) vs. Tet (3110)

"Well, that explains the email mystery. Someone's cracked the chess.com database and manually set their Elo all the way up in CPU-land."

"That's bizarre." He sighs. "Could be someone gearing up to troll us with a chess engine, could be a computer programmer with an ego and something to prove. Hard to say."

"Only one way to find out."

"Give 'em hell, Shiro."

[ Skip → ]

Shiro moves the king's pawn forward to e4 and is utterly unsurprised when black responds with c5. The Sicilian Defense is one of the most common chess openings, letting black counter white's starting advantage by quickly aiming attacks at the squares in the center of the board. Shiro has played this game thousands of times. She has read entire books on it. Sometimes it haunts her dreams. She already knows what to do.

On move five black advances the g-file pawn one square, opening the way for the bishop to move out and bite into the two knights Shiro has on the same diagonal.

Black has clearly blundered by initiating the Dragon Variation. Not because it is a losing proposition for black, at least in theory, but because it is a line of play that both Shiro and Sora have studied extensively and can play with their eyes closed. Mostly because the name appealed to them when they were younger, admittedly, but still. The next few moves are almost predetermined, leaving the black king apparently safe in one corner and the white king primed to castle to freedom in the opposite corner.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In just a few moves, both of them are going to be fighting on the offense with everything they've got.

"I'm thinking bishop to c4. It delays castling but it gives me absolute control over d5, maybe lets me get in an early win down the h-file if black starts playing too defensively."

"What year is this, 1965? The Yugoslav attack isn't a slam dunk for white anymore. Figuring out how to handle this position as black is practically the first thing they did with Deep Blue after it beat Kasparov."

"Whatever, nerd."

She plays the Yugoslav attack. Black responds by chasing it away while Shiro castles queenside, losing tempo by maneuvering the knight into position and giving her time to advance the h pawn. It doesn't free up her rook immediately, but if she sacrifices it she can put black into a worse position and completely open the right-hand side of the board for her rooks and queen to harass the king.

The next few moves are brutal. Black finally attacks with the knight, forking white's queen and bishop. White takes it off the board with the white square bishop, and black recaptures with the rook. The planned pawn sacrifice does nothing, as black no longer needs the other knight to guard the center of the board and can take it without undermining the king's defense. White advances one pawn to chase the knight back, and a second pawn to chase the rook back as well. At the end it looks remarkably balanced, both sides armed with open files to launch attacks and relatively strong defensive positions.

"Hey, can you take a look at this with me?"

Well, the challenge was for 『____』, not just Shiro. He gives up on memorizing trivia for the day and flops onto the floor next to his sister. Both players have thirteen minutes left on the clock; plenty of time to strategize.

"I see what you're going for. Queen to h2 and then to h7, right? Can't do that yet, black has too much control."

"You think we should simplify first? Trade a knight for a knight, they move the f pawn over somehow… I like it. It lets their queen out, but I can work with that."

She does so. On move 20 her queen makes the inevitable transition to an attacking position, and black responds with a defensive queen move in turn.

"Is it a bot?" Sora wonders out loud, while both players noodle with their pawn structure. The traditional way of telling is by looking at the amount of time between moves – quick, evenly spaced, no matter whether the move is obvious or devious. It takes the same amount of time to use the computer on each move regardless of how difficult the choice would be for a human.

It's a great heuristic for anonymous online games, but for someone who is tacitly claiming to be the greatest chess player of all time it's not quite as informative. The first eight moves of the game were directly out of the book, and the rest of the development was standard up until the knight and the bishop were lost. It could still be a grandmaster with a weird sense of humor and a friend who works for chess.com.