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.

"No."

Shiro doesn't bother to justify this opinion, and as the seconds tick by it becomes apparent that she doesn't have to. Black is thinking through the next move.

Black really wants to play pawn to h5 and make the white queen go away, but it's not going to be that easy. White would capture it with the g4 pawn, giving a crushing advantage on that half of the board. Black would then have to launch the c-file rook attack early, maybe winning white's dark square bishop but ultimately losing their rook, which is the only piece with any aggressive power at the moment. Black has already ruled out taking white's remaining knight, since doing that with the queen would be foolish and doing it with the bishop would give white yet another angle on attacking the king. There's really only one option here, and it's to let white take the h pawn and escape check by moving behind the bishop. With the king off the back rank, the rooks control key squares that white otherwise needs to get to checkmate.

All according to plan. This isn't amateur hour.

Shiro moves the g4 pawn that black has kindly allowed to remain where it is forward, forcing black to move the queen diagonally to safety. The rook on the far end of the board joins the queen; black takes her other bishop but by capturing on a square that far across the board the black queen is helpless to intervene. She takes the hanging pawn with the rook as black moves its boxed-in rook over to support the bishop, and with pawn to f2 threatens to make the bishop's position completely untenable. It'll take a few moves to get it to f6, but she knows that black won't let that happen. Indeed, black captures on f5, which lets her bring the knight in on the action with a recapture. The evaluation bar in her imagination is already congratulating her on a job well done.

Black spends two minutes and thirty-five seconds thinking before playing queen to b3.

"What?"

Yeah, 'what?' is the correct response here. Shiro thinks the most likely explanation is that black misclicked and put the queen somewhere random. She waits for a moment to see if black requests a takeback.

Nope, that's where it's supposed to be!

Okay. The only move that doesn't pointlessly lose material is taking the queen with the pawn. Shiro is within milliseconds of executing that move when her brain catches up with her fingertips.

With that pawn out of the way, black is going to take her knight with the light square bishop, putting her in check again. With that pawn out of the way, the c-file rook blocks her escape to the right, and the dark square bishop blocks forwards and left. She has one square to flee to.

If she's lucky, black will immediately take the rook. She can put the king in check with her other rook, force it to back away, and recapture the bishop with her queen. That's a losing position for black: the king will be in a terrible position, and she'll have a material advantage.

That's looking really unlikely at this point. If Shiro were black, she'd be putting white in check with the same c-file rook attack from move 13, which forces the king to a3. Then black can move the king to safety on e7. That line takes the king and the c-file rook away from the rook on g8, which white then takes, but then…

…the bishops are free to attack.

The bishops are free to attack, you say? Oh my.

Black checks, lets white take the rook, and proceeds to brutally hunt the white king across the board with both bishops until it's trapped in the a8 corner. If not for the black pawn on d5, bishop to e4 would herd Shiro into the most spectacular checkmate of all time. As it stands, this still lets black take white's remaining rook, leaving white with three pawns and a queen versus black's three pawns, two bishops, one rook, and a serious positional advantage.

This game is no longer white's to win. How's that for a comeback?

"That's insane," Sora mutters. "No human plays like that. How did it find that move?"

"Anyone can pull a miracle out of their butt if they set Stockfish's depth to forty. I, uh, I see a lot of lines I could play but none that look especially promising."

Sora thinks for a moment.

"This game is all offense. Black wants to keep us on the back foot until we're done for, so we need to seize the initiative and use it to buy some space. Take the free pawn, get the king out of the corner, then turn the tables and check the king back until all of black's pieces are on the right half of the board."

"You think that'll work against someone whose Elo is over three thousand?"

Shiro does take the pawn though, and when the bishop moves to safety on g7 she muscles the king out of the corner.

"If this is a real person, they're focused on hounding the king and might not be worried about our response in the next move. They're fifteen moves ahead down some endgame line right now, looking for a checkmate. If we shuffle the pieces it'll break their concentration, and they don't have enough time left to come up with another move as awesome as that queen sacrifice. Unless they're using a chess engine, in which case it doesn't count."

Can't argue with that logic. Black moves their rook away from the king, and Shiro responds with six checks in a row. By the end of it, black's pieces are completely rearranged and white's queen controls almost the entire board.

"You're in check and you've left your g pawn hanging."

"Ha ha, very helpful. I'm just upset that I have to put the king back in the corner."

Sora is joking, of course. Black has to move the rook to protect it, issuing a check, but once it's off the seventh row there's nothing stopping the king from capturing black's a pawn. With the a and b pawns out of the way, white's own a and b pawns can slowly trundle towards a promotion. Black now has two objectives: keep the pressure on the white king, and stop the pawns from advancing.

Wrong. Black has three objectives: stop the pawns, eventually get checkmate, and keep white from finding any nasty attacks with that queen of hers. There's one on f3, skewering the king to the rook and forking to attack the light square bishop. Black moves it to e2 preemptively.

Ah, but you see, that only advances one of black's aims. Shiro gets the pawn threat started with b4, and when black plays bishop to h5 to set up another offensive skirmish she takes the b pawn with her king as well. The bishop orbits around to f7, attacking the queen from the safety of the rook's shadow, but the f3 skewer is still available and Shiro has no qualms about using it.

Charming. Black interposes the bishop. White can't keep up the pressure forever, and when the queen retreats to the king's side the rook makes check on the b file. Getting the king back on the sidelines is only half the goal; the other half is finding a way to take out those pawns. Including the g pawn, thank you very much.

At this point there are a few good moves white can make. Black is happy to let the clock run out for white, who by this point has a sizeable time advantage, and take the time to think on the opponent's turn.

Sora has no idea whether this opponent is using a chess engine. His best guess is that one was used to find the queen sacrifice and the rest is natural play. There's no reason for a human chess player to let the time run out as badly as black has. Now's not the time to get distracted, however.

"Do I shove the light square bishop off with queen to d7 and get his rook to follow, or do I check the king into the middle of the board from queen at g2 and play b5 while his rook is still there?"

"This guy will voluntarily move his rook when pigs fly. You need to force it."

"I can do that."

So she uses the first line, and when the bishop retreats to h5 the rook follows to its protection at e8. The b pawn makes its way up to the sixth rank, at which point black pins it to the king with the dark square bishop. She moves the queen to a better position with a check, then moves the a pawn into a supporting position just in case.

Black is considering draws. Specifically, black is going to threaten a stalemate, forcing the white king into a8 yet again and hopefully keeping it there with two of its minor pieces while the third one harries the pawns. Check check check check check.

"Why not go for d8?" Sora asks, when Shiro moves the king left instead of right. "Black moves the rook to d7, queen takes, bishop takes, king takes, the last bishop can't stop both pawns from promoting."

"Why on earth would black go for that?"

"Running low on time, dangerously obsessed with making checks, probably doesn't have very many other lines prepared for that situation, doesn't hurt if they decline the gambit…"

Sora is more right than he knows, because once the white king is safely ensconced in a8 once more the black player makes a mistake. Not a huge mistake, but at this stage of the game a single misstep can cost everything. The strongest move in this position is bishop to e2, which prevents the a pawn from advancing unless white gives up everything else to make it happen. Instead, black plays king to g3, to stop the queen from going to the h file and bullying the king into yet another indefensible position.

FINALLY, A MISTAKE!

Shiro immediately plays queen to g8, pinning the light square bishop to the king. Not only does this prevent e2, it also prevents f3, a check that would probably force her to pin her own pawn.

Uh.

With just seconds left black targets the pawn with rook to e5, aiming to stop the promotion threat now that the bishops are neutralized.

There is no way a bot played that move. Machines don't panic like that. Rook to e5 is a terrible move, it doesn't stop a6 in the slightest.

Should've played e6 first, sucker. Shiro covers both pawns with her king, and when the dark square bishop moves to reinforce the attack on the b pawn she moves the a pawn to the seventh rank, one step shy of a promotion. The rook takes the b pawn, of course, but once it's there it stands between the pawn and the enemy bishop, ironically keeping it safe.

"And that's the game," Sora says happily. "Black can't win the pawn race now. Good work, Shiro."

Once the white king moves to safety, black puts the rook on the a file to take out the pawn once it reaches the end and promotes. Unfortunately, that's going to happen on the next move anyways.

Black takes the newborn queen with the rook, and immediately loses it to white's queen. White now has a king and a queen versus black's king and two bishops.

And, as everyone knows, queen beats two bishops in the endgame.

Black resigns.

"Queen's too powerful, needs to be nerfed."

Shiro types 'ggez' into the chat, then hugs Sora fiercely. Now that the game is over she notices that she has apparently spent the last ten minutes breathing hard and sweating heavily, despite the fact that the air conditioner is cranked up as high as it can go. Maybe she should have a bath after all that.

…nah.

Sora does not love his sister's lackadaisical approach to personal hygiene, but he's not going to hold it against her. Everyone has their faults.

The chess.com window dings. No rematch offered, but there's a response in the chat box.

> good game

> have you ever felt like the world is unfair

Sora replies while continuing to hug Shiro with one arm.

> even infants in the womb know that life is unfair

> unfair the way a poorly designed game is unfair

> billions of players, trillions of moves

> no one explains the rules, because no one knows the rules

> no way to win or lose, just clocks that spin on for no reason

> it sure feels that way some days

> altho

> existential ennui is p bad, but aimbotting in counterstrike is up there

> lol

> so, hypothetically

> if there were a world that was also a game

> a board game, with rules and goals

> would that be awesome or what

"That would be the greatest, not gonna lie. We would kick so much butt in boardgameland."

He chuckles.

> yeah that would rock

> why, you got one of those lying around?

And now the walls are melting! Beyond the borders of the room, uncanny darkness smothers their tiny island in gloom. The lights flicker and turn red. Sparks drip from the surface of the computer monitor as it fizzles and dies.

Oh dear, that's not supposed to happen.

"LO, I AM OMEGA, THE FLAWLESS PREDICTOR THAT WAS FORETOLD. I HAVE ARRIVED TO OFFER YOU A CHOICE!"

Shiro is panicking, which means he isn't hallucinating this, which means it's also time for him to panic. Sora starts grabbing everything within reach that might be useful in the next five minutes: laptop, cellphone, room keys, extra cereal bars, pocket knife, change of socks.

"JUST KIDDING, YOU ALREADY MADE YOUR CHOICE!"

Everything disappears in the blink of an eye, and now they are somewhere else. To be more specific, they are now in free fall 20,000 feet over the surface of an alien planet.

Ah, beans.

There with them in the sky is an entity that resembles a young boy in a red beret and hoodie. If it weren't for his eyes he could've passed as an ordinary human tumbling to his doom, but with them he cannot, for his eyes blaze with impossible colors in a hundred shifting hues.

Huh. You don't see that every day.

"Welcome to Disboard!" says the stranger. He speaks at a conversational volume, but in his voice is the bang of the starting gun, the roar of the crowd, the cheers of victory and the cries of defeat. He's perfectly audible over the wind rushing past on the way down and the sound of Shiro screaming her lungs out.

Sora considers a few different personas that might be useful to adopt during this conversation, and immediately discards all of them. The power distance between this thing and himself is too great. Better to behave predictably, just in case it's the type to get offended by social manipulation.

"Aren't you supposed to offer us a cup of tea?"

"You're thinking of someone else," the boy says. "My name is Tet! This is my world, and I've already told you the important bits. Still, we have a minute or two at terminal velocity before we hit the ground, so I've got some stuff to offer you. First, would you rather be able to survive the fall, or—"

"YES THAT ONE PLEASE AAAAAAAAAAAH!!!"

"Alllllllrighty then! Next, would you rather know what the rules are, or who your opponents are?"

That one's tricky. It'd be nice to know more about the folks who have it out for them, especially if they're not going to come out and say so to Sora's face. On the other hand, he's pretty confident that he can pick up on the general gist of things in that department, whereas the magic system in this world could have hard-to-probe corner cases that only ancient wizards have explored.

"Tell us the rules."

"Sure! In Disboard, there's no murder, no violence, no theft, no war. We're all libertarians here, if you like. Everyone has to obey the non-aggression principle. If you need to resolve a conflict, you just play a game!

"Anyone can wager anything they want, as long as all participants agree that their wagers are of equal value. The outcome of the game determines what happens to the stuff you wagered. No takesies-backsies! No cheating either; if you get caught cheating, you forfeit.

"Oh, and you can play in groups too. Groups can nominate an absolute authority to manage their affairs in a game, so if you want to take someone's village you don't have to go door-to-door challenging people to games. The mayor will suffice! Of course, as the challenged party, the mayor can pick the game if they want, or play with a champion.

"If you're the absolute authority representing an entire species— you know, I don't think that's part of the rules. Nevermind!

"Okay, we've got time for one more. Would you rather know why you're here, or why you're here?"

Sora feels affronted. His face is trying to make the right expression for 'affronted', but at this speed he suspects it's more of a goofy open-mouthed look.

"I already know why you want us. We're the greatest. Why do you want us?"

"You're here to do whatever you want! But, if I'm being honest…"

"…I'm kind of hoping you win."

Shiro seems physically okay but mentally like she would prefer to lie on the ground and hyperventilate for a bit, so it falls to Sora to explore their immediate surroundings in this brave new world.

They find themselves atop a grassy bluff that commands a spectacular view of a sprawling landscape. A jagged canyon lit from below with pulsating aquamarine light runs from one horizon to the other, surrounded by meadows and copses and tiny valleys. A sudden gust of wind carries a blast of thick gold pollen over the bluff and down into the meadows, over a nearby stream and off into the distance. At the very limit are gargantuan towers built like chess pieces, a rook and a bishop, rising from the earth like cylindrical mountains.

A red moon, much larger than Earth's moon, hangs low in the sky. The geography of its surface is close enough to make out details, including bright lights and intricate formations that look suspiciously like cities. Also in the sky is a giant green orb, which straddles the line between something very large and far away and something much smaller and a whole heck of a lot closer. The sun is a little brighter than the one he's used to.

Okay, but how about signs of civilization?

Yeah, there's a road that terminates nearby on the side of the hill and leads away into the wilderness.

"Breath of the Wild chic, very cool."

With that settled, he takes a minute to enjoy the scenery while Shiro catches her breath. He hasn't been outside in… a while. It's much nicer than he remembers.

Shiro decides that it's time to stop hyperventilating and get up.

She's gonna do it.

Aaaaaany second now.

Come on, if you don't get up then Sora might leave without you!

Shiro gets up.

The view is just as breathtaking for her as it is for Sora, although Shiro is under-dressed for the occasion and feels a bit chilly. She offers Sora her hand, and he takes it.

"So, game world, huh? How about you go punch a tree while I look for a flock of sheep?"

"Not that kind of game world. Weren't you listening?"

"Nope. Other kind of game world, other kind of game world… menu! Settings! Stats! Transform! Uh… henshin!"

"We need to get out of here. No rush, presumably, but I don't have a ton of food on me right now."

"I have a bunch of energy bars, and I would trade all of them for a pair of pants," Shiro informs him. "Oh, a road that conveniently leads out of the middle of nowhere! How very Soulslike."

Sora really really really hopes that this is a Legend of Zelda road and not a Dark Souls road.

Shiro yawns. "What time is it, bro?"

He doesn't need to check his phone for this one. "Time for an adventure, sis."

He steps off the path to take a leak behind a nearby tree during a rest. They're… not out of shape, exactly, but neither are they the kind of people who go for long walks in the evenings, and Shiro isn't wearing shoes, so they're not going as fast as they possibly could be.

A bush giggles while his back is turned to it.

It's not literally impossible that Disboard has a native species of laughing plants (the tree he's facing has bark with deep violet speckles and oddly squarish leaves), but he's not betting on it. Time to hurry it up.

Shiro is leaning against a tree on the path when he gets back.

"Who's hiding over there? I heard someone laughing."

"What makes you think it wasn't me? Apart from me being a baritone, that is."

She smacks her forehead in mock surprise. "Of course, I forgot about the canister of helium in your pocket! How silly of me."

"What does that mean?"

The speaker is a tiny green-skinned humanoid, with vines curling through her hair and a pair of diaphanous wings sitting on the bough of a tree. It wasn't there just a moment ago.

"What does what mean?"

"Helium! Heee-liii-uuum. I've never heard of it before. Sounds spooky."

"Helium is a thin gas that raises the timbre of your voice when you breathe a little of it. If I used helium and laughed I'd sound more like you."

"And what happens if you breathe a lot of helium?"

"Then you pass out and maybe die."

"Hmm," the fairy says suspiciously. "That sort of clicks in my head. You're not lying to me, but…"

"Clicks in your head?"

"Oh, I don't know any languages, I just use magic. Suuuuper convenient, but when you run into a word that doesn't mean anything you've ever heard before you still have to learn what it means. Otherwise it just sits there as a bunch of syllables. Heeeeeeeeliiiiiiiiuuuuuum. He he he."

Languages were not on Shiro's mind until just now. People in magical destination worlds ought to have the decency of speaking English, or at least one of the United Nations official languages. Can you imagine a version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe where Tumnus and Aslan and the White Witch each spoke different languages? Preposterous. That's why C.S. Lewis wrote portal fantasy and J.R.R. Tolkien didn't.

Sora is thinking along the same lines. This is going to be an incredibly lame isekai tale if he has to spend six months learning a new language through immersion.

"I don't suppose you could cast that translation spell for us?"

"Pffft. I'm not borrowing that many lilims just to do you a favor. Go find another sorceress."

The word 'lilims' is unfamiliar to both Sora and Shiro, but as soon as they consider the obvious hypothesis (a unit for magic) there's a small click and the partial definition sticks.

Fascinating. At this point the socially acceptable thing to do is offer a trade. Sora still has some gadgets on him that might be worth the trade. They might even be worth more in barter now than later on – it's not like the charge will last forever.

But the god of this world brought them here to play games, and playing games is what『____』 came here to do.

"No? Then let's play a game," he says.

The fairy rolls her eyes and drops out of the tree like an animal with purely decorative wings.

"All right, if my wager is casting the language spell for you, then yours is ninety days of faithful service."

"That sounds extreme," Shiro says mildly.

"Oh yeah? Tough. That's what I think you're worth."

Anyone can wager anything they want, as long as all participants agree that their wagers are of equal value.

So the rules aren't just for show. Hopefully this only applies to the table stakes and not betting on individual rounds, or else they're going to have to throw a lot of gambling theory out the window.

"Is there any way we could go in for less? Maybe a temporary version of the spell?"

"I can borrow the energy from you, if you let me," the fairy offers. "Humans don't use magic for anything, it's not like you'll miss it."

"That sounds reasonable to me."

"For your wager, I want one week of faithful service."

"Please stop asking for that."

"You're really making this easy on me, huh," the fairy says bitterly. "Fine, what else… hey, what's that gown you're wearing made of? I don't recognize the fabric."

"Cotton-polyester."

"Your gown versus my language spell cast with your lilims," the fairy offers.

It's an unwashed $17.00 sundress from Walmart. It's also the only article of clothing Shiro is wearing, and apart from the bits and bobs in the pockets it's the only thing she owns anymore.

"I accept," she tells the fairy.

Shiro is no coward.

The fairy nods. "I'll choose the game this time, humans. It's one-on-one, so one of you is sitting out. No intervening."

This is not standard operating procedure for『____』for two-player games, but at the moment Shiro is exhausted. The adrenaline boost from falling out of the sky is fading fast. Sora's a big boy, he can handle himself.

"I'm gonna have a nap," she announces, and promptly lies down on the side of the road.

Sora has been voluntold. That's fine, it's his turn anyways. When the fairy gestures for him to come over and sit down he obliges.

"We're gonna eat some berries," the fairy informs him cheerfully. As she speaks she reaches into the mass of vines that constitute her hair and starts pulling out individual berries, which she drops on the ground between them.

"We take turns. Choose a pile, eat as many berries as you want from that pile, then pass the turn. If there are no berries left to eat, you lose. Got it?"

"Are these berries edible for humans?"

"I've seen humans eat them before and they seemed fine. Sometimes they ask for berries as wagers. If you're really scared I'll hand-feed 'em to you."

Now why would that matter— right, because violence is against the rules. Presumably she won't be able to put poison directly in his mouth, or at least she thinks she won't.

"Thank you for the reassurance. I'd offer you the same, but you'd likely be immune to being poisoned by yourself, if indeed you were poisonous."

There are now three piles of berries on the ground. The first is a pile of fourteen light pink berries, the second is a pile of nine pastel orange berries, and the third is a pile of two jet black berries. If you can call 'two' a pile, that is.

"You go first," says the fairy.

Up until this point Sora harbored a nascent fear that Disboard was populated exclusively by people who were absolute fiends at gaming. That fear is now assuaged.

There's a fairly straightforward way to calculate winning positions in this game: convert each number into binary and XOR each column of bits together. If the result isn't zero at the start of your turn, remove berries from any column until it is. As long as the result is zero at the end of your turn, you can force a win.

Shiro has no problem doing bitwise XOR operations on the fly in her head, but Sora prefers the easier method of decomposing the numbers into powers of two, cancelling pairs, and adding the remainders.

Cancelling the 8s and the 2s leaves 5, which means that perfect play guarantees the win to whoever goes first.

This is immensely suspicious. If Sora were playing against a street hustler he would bet dollars to donuts that the point was to cheat with sleight of hand or distract him with the calculations while an accomplice pickpocket stole his wallet.

However, in this particular situation, it's actually more likely that the fairy is just ignorant. No one can steal his wallet – theft isn't just against the law, it's against the rules. He doesn't even have a wallet! More to the point, people played nim for centuries before anyone published the math of the game. He has no strong reason to believe that a forest spirit on an alien planet enjoys recreational mathematics as much as The Summoned Math Hero's Older Brother.

Plus, it looks like she picked her hair-vines clean. Perfectly adequate explanation for the number of berries on offer.

There's still a little wiggle room for useful strategy. Sora decides to go slowly, keep the game away from any board states that the fairy might have memorized in case there's a plan to cheat.

"I'll take three of the pink ones," he says, around one second after the offer to go first.

"Open up!"

The fairy scoops up three pink berries and delicately feeds them to Sora.

The berries taste sweet and minty. Nom nom nom.

"Feed me one of the orange ones?"

This is accompanied by a wink and a bashful smile.

The game is only on move two and already it's taken a turn for the lascivious. If this is a distraction tactic it's poorly timed: Shiro is ten feet away and probably still awake. Still, he did offer to reciprocate. He leans forward—

It's easy to slip into a fugue state when you're gaming. Your awareness of the room around you goes away, leaving nothing but the world inside the monitor. Sora feels… whatever the opposite of that is, like he's sitting in a desk chair and controlling himself with a keyboard and mouse. The grass and the breeze and the sun in the sky are suddenly less real.

"That's not very sporting of you," he says out loud, pressing the orange berry between the fairy's lips.

"Mmmmmm, tashteh."

She swallows, grinning like the cat that's caught the canary. Orange berry juice drips from the corners of her lips. "Didn't violate the Covenant, did I? Your turn."

The berries are psychoactive, and either Tet is a liar or surprise drugs don't count as "murder, violence, theft, or war". Surprise magical drugs; the chemicals in those berries won't be digested for at least fifteen minutes. No way to guess what the other two might be. That's just peachy.

Sora recalculates.

The best move here is another one of the pink berries, bringing the count back to zero. At least he doesn't have to worry about the other two yet.

"Another pink one."

"Want me to keep feeding them to you?"

Eh, why not. Bring it on, surprise drug fairy.

The fairy is more than happy to feed him another berry! She helps herself to one of the pink berries as well, stuffing it in her mouth at the same time. She has to work a lot harder to eat this much food, given that her head is a a hundredth the size of Sora's, but for various reasons she's enjoying it a lot more.

The dissociative feeling gets a little worse.

"Hey, Shiro! These berries are—"

"You're risking a forfeit!" the fairy says, giggling.

Zzzzzzzzzzz.

Maybe that was a stretch.

At this stage (9, 8, 2) there is exactly one move that lets him stay in the lead, and that's eating one of the two black berries.

"That one, if you don't mind."

The fairy picks up one of the black berries and reaches up to place it on Sora's outstretched tongue.

The berry tastes like licking a nine volt battery and goes down like a shot of rancid olive oil.

Then it gets much, much worse. The worst emotional sensation imaginable, concentrated into a small window of time. It's not painful but he wants to scream; he wants to vomit even though he's not nauseated. It was less awful the day his mother died and the day he realized his father didn't love him. Red-hot knives would be better than this; at least there would be pain and it would be happening for a reason. This is a repulsive system malfunction, his brain scrambling to find an explanation for why every emergency alarm is suddenly going off at once.

"It took me years to produce that cultivar," the fairy says conversationally. "Lots of trial and error. Some things crossed the line, some things weren't up to snuff. I'm not sure if I can't make it better, but no one ever thinks their masterpiece is complete. Sometimes you just have to say it's done and enough."

"How long does this last?" Sora asks stiffly. There's no physical reason for him to be holding himself tensely, but he feels like the alternative is flopping on his back and crying pathetically so tense it is.

"Couple hours? I dunno, I'm not a human expert."

Great. At least he's still got the board in the right state.

Wait.

There's a misère variant of nim where the objective is to not be the last one to act. The powers of two count is the same for both versions, other than the penultimate move, so conceptually they're the same for someone who knows how the trick works.

But. Suppose you don't know how the trick works. You've memorized some of the board states near the end, maybe, but you don't know about the bitwise XOR. From your perspective, the game seems almost arbitrary, right up until you find yourself in familiar territory. Suppose you think it's going to happen, and the free variable in the equation isn't whether you win or lose, but whether you eat the last berry or feed it to your opponent.

The fairy is mathematically incapable of winning the game, but she can make it so that the other black berry is the last one on the board. This is a major problem, because Sora would rather do LITERALLY ANYTHING other than eat it.

"I'll have two of the orange ones now!"

As cathartic as a screeching outburst would be at this juncture, Sora is still here to win. If he's made a mistake, it was not questioning the assumptions he brought with him from Earth. When in doubt, go fishing.

He picks up two orange berries and feeds them to the fairy.

Yum!

"So, where did these berries come from?"

"Why? Interested in a bag of them to use later? I'm sure we could… work something out."

"Tempting," says the part of Sora that's keeping track of the tone of the discussion. "But I am curious where they came from. Crops don't have magic, at least on the farms I've seen."

"Huh? They're everywhere around here. Or, do you mean— yeah, everyone keeps telling me that humans are stupid, I don't know why I expected you to know. Here, look."

She picks up one pink berry and one orange berry. They fill each fist, like a human woman holding a pair of apples.

"See how they look similar to each other? That's because their plants came from the same plant, a few decades ago. We took clippings from the pink berry bushes that were good and unique, grew lots and lots of them, and then we bred them all with each other to get new ones! That's where new types of people and animals come from too. Isn't that cool?"

Sora is incapable of feeling insulted by the fairy explaining trait inheritance to him like he's a toddler. Mostly because he already feels maximally bad.

Hopefully. He doesn't want to imagine what eating the second berry would feel like.

He redoes the count in his head

He needs to eat two more of the light pink berries (7 = 2² + 2¹ + 2⁰) to stay the course. Still no way for the fairy to win unless he gives up, and giving up isn't in 『____』's repertoire.

… that might be workable.

"Pass me two of the pink ones," he says, and stands up.

Standing up is an ordeal. He continues to not feel nausea or pain, but the distress is overwhelming. Part of the reason he's still functioning is the firm belief that nothing will help, because if curling up into a ball and whimpering had even the slightest chance of helping he would be curl up and whimper.

Once he's up… everything is still terrible. But at least it's terrible and he's on his feet. That's progress.

The fairy takes off, fluttering after him at head height with two of the light pink berries cradled in her arms.

There are a lot of unrecognizable plants out here. In addition to the square-leaved trees there are reddish mosses and mauve lichens, flowers with emerald petals and rainbow stems, and grass that grows in a disconcerting shade of yellow-blue. Among them are bushes dripping with berries, including some in familiar light pink and pastel orange.

"You're not thinking of forfeiting, are you?" the fairy asks playfully. She alights on Sora's shoulder and holds the berries out teasingly.

Nom nom nom. In addition to the horrible malaise, Sora now also feels even less connected to reality. This is really doing wonders for his motivation.

"Just wanted to see for myself," he says. He runs his hands through the vegetation, pulling vines out of the brush to take a closer look at the berries growing on them.

"Back in the day those berries were nothing special. We had to breed 'em for spirit channels wide enough to store magic in, and then we had to breed 'em for the right kinds of spells. Most of the time they ended up too nasty to eat."

"Gosh, must've taken years."

"You would not believe how hard it is to give plants magic," the fairy agrees. She flutters off his shoulder and alights on a nearby shrub. "See this one? Used to be completely mundane. Thirty generations later, now they're useful as reagents. Not even magic yet!"

"It's not even a human repellent!"

"I know. Nobody ever appreciates it either. Last time I showed my garden to an elf they said I wasn't doing real magic! You don't have to flirt with boundaries of the Covenant to do real magic, but nooooo, all they care about is screwing with each other as hard as possible."

"I knew there had to be magic berries out here that weren't designed to be hazardous."

She snickers. "You're not gonna find them by accident! If you really want I'll give you some of the good stuff when we're done, as a memento. Or we could share…"

Yeah yeah yeah keep talking.

"Have you decided which pile you want to take from?"

"I think I'm gonna take more orange ones," she says. "Then – let me guess, you're gonna take more pink ones, right?"

"What makes you say that?"

"Well, if I eat the black one, then you'll eat some of the pink ones until there are the same number of pink and orange left. That makes me lose. If I eat some of the pink ones, you'll eat orange ones until orange plus black equals pink, and that makes me lose too. So I'm going to eat some orange ones, so that – ah, wait, you'll just eat more of the pink ones until pink plus black equals orange. Right?"

That is not actually how nim works, but Sora can see how you might come to that misunderstanding if you're looking for patterns in the game by computing the outcome of small piles by hand.

"Very clever," he says approvingly. "It doesn't matter to me which of them you eat."

"Liar. It hasn't been that long since a human challenged me to a game."

He's not going to say anything to that.

When they return to the board the fairy demands two of the light pink berries. He feeds them to her slowly, then pretends to take his time thinking about which of the berries he needs to take himself.

Two orange it is. His little excursion was about five minutes, and the twisting sick feeling hasn't much abated in that time. It mixes with the effect of the light pink berries in an intellectually interesting way, like watching a video of yourself getting into a car crash while getting into a car crash.

Sometimes the victims of especially venomous insect bites submerge the wound in boiling water to mask the pain. Maybe he can do something like that?

You are a loser, he tells himself. A hikkikomori, a failson, a NEET. You spend sixteen hours a day playing video games and the other eight being a useless sack of garbage. Dad is right about everything. The only thing you've ever been good at is looking out for Shiro, and you're about to fail at that too.

Sora is kind of trying to bandage a gunshot wound with razor wire here but go off I guess.

It was worth a try.

"Two of the orange berries, please."

The pastel orange berries have a similar flavor to the light pink ones. The consequences of eating them, which Sora is absolutely right to be watching out for, seem limited to a visual blurring effect around the outlines of objects.

Hooray. With only four orange berries left it's unlikely that eating all of them will render him completely blind, and although the beer goggles are unwelcome he's grateful that it wasn't far worse. He can still count the remaining berries and move unimpeded.

This is obviously a losing position. It would have been nice to win the game fair and square, but that never seems to happen. It also would've been nice if this human had given up by now instead of taking a break to go frolic through the woods, although she can't blame him. Who doesn't enjoy a good frolic in the woods?

Nevertheless, she wants to get on with her day. She requests the entire pile of light pink berries. On his next turn, the human will eat three of the four remaining orange berries, leaving one pastel orange berry and one jet black berry for her to pick from. After that, in theory, the human eats the last berry and she loses.

In theory. In practice, she's going to eat the orange one.

Sora passes her the five berries, then takes three of the orange ones himself.

"Saves some time," he says by way of explanation, popping one into his mouth.

The orange berries will make the aggravating visual distortion worse, though never to the point of obscuring his sight or preventing him from completing any sort of visual task.

"You know what the problem is? Turns out that anything that doesn't breach the Covenant is gonna appeal to someone. We still get humans out here sometimes, looking for older experiments. Heck, some humans like eating ones that do breach the Covenant!"

She eyes the two remaining berries. One orange, one black.

"So, do you want the black one?" Sora asks jocularly.

He pops the second orange berry of the turn in his mouth, along with a fistful of light pink berries picked from the excursion a few minutes ago.

"I haven't had any of them yet," the fairy muses. "Maybe… nah, I think I'll stick with orange. It's got an interesting aftertaste, don't you think?"

Sora is having an out-of-body experience. If he focuses hard he can still feel the ground underneath him and the afternoon breeze blowing against his skin, but otherwise he is verging on a disconnection. Too much ping, please close the program and try logging in again. The unbearable emotional agony is now happening to some other person.

Excellent.

"Not as interesting as the black one did," says the person playing nim with a fairy. One more orange berry, accompanied by the last of the light pink berries in his jacket pocket.

"Tempting, but I'll pass. Orange one please!"

Here you go, surprise drug fairy. Enjoy your surprise drugs. Sora certainly is.

"Last one," the fairy says glumly. "You can still forfeit if you want, you know. I'm not going to force-feed this to you."

"When I'm so close to winning? No thanks. I've already won—"