Another Like Me - Part I (CoTE x OC) ✔

Chapter 47 - Queen

"Then you might as well not ask," I deadpanned. "Tell me more about yourself, Sakayanagi-san. You know about 'that place'. How? I want answers."

Sakayanagi merely chuckled under her calm exterior.

"Getting impatient, are we?"

"I am, indeed. It is a serious matter for something like this to get revealed to an outsider."

"Outsider? Your words wound me, Takeyama-kun. But yes, I merely am an outsider in that white world of yours," she said, resting her cane by the side of the chair. "But I have no intention of ever becoming one with that place. I just cannot see how someone without any natural talent can become a genius just if they work hard. It trumps nature's predetermined notion of evolution and extinction."

I slowly bent forward. "You seem to believe in natural talent an awful lot."

"I do, indeed. I find it hardly amusing that someone who has been born to dominate the world get undermined by the outdated notion of hard work." Her words cut like knife through butter, leaving no space or time for a comeback.

"But here I am, am I not?" I said with a smirk on my face. "I'm living proof that you don't need to be a born with good genes to become a genius. Hard work trumps genes."

"You cannot convince me with your words, Takeyama-kun, even though you have a way with them," she smiled. "I can merely state that you indeed WERE born with superior genes. That is the reason that your hard work paid off. Consider a person who did not have such genes. They'd collapse under the White Room curriculum."

"You talk like you know what we were taught."

"Fufu. It is just a hunch. I have no idea what they teach you in that place," she said smugly. "But I'm positive that it isn't something that the normal human is capable of."

"I see. I'm surprised you were even allowed," I muttered under my breath.

"My father has quite the connections, you know," she said. "I merely tagged along with him to the place."

"You say you saw Ayanokoji Kiyotaka there?"

She smiled, as though remembering a sweet memory. "Indeed. I saw him for the first time behind that glass screen. It was such a breathtaking sight — watching him mercilessly destroy his opponents one after another, I mean."

"Hmm? Was he sparring?"

"No, silly. He was playing chess," she said. "He was completely dominating his opponents. Choking their kings into the corner of the board. I was motivated to pick up the game after watching him.

My goal is to beat you in chess, Takeyama-kun."

Huh? Me?

"But why me?" I asked genuinely. The coffee we had ordered had arrived. "Wouldn't it make more sense to, say, try and beat Kiyotaka himself?"

"But that is what is most expected, is it not?" she said sweetly. "Beating Ayanokoji-kun comes after beating you."

"Are you underestimating me, Sakayanagi-san?"

"Fufu. I did not mean to, Takeyama-kun. I feel like it is the highest honor I could bestow upon you. If I cannot beat you, I cannot beat Ayanokoji-kun. But it works the other way as well. If I cannot beat Ayanokoji-kun, I cannot beat you. Both of you are on a level I can only try to reach."

"Then would you fancy a chess game right now?" I asked.

"Why, it seems you are itching to prove your superiority to me," she teased me. "But I cannot decline such a well-mannered challenge from one of my idols. I accept your challenge, Takeyama-kun."