Ayanokōji's POV
As I retraced the path I'd taken with Sakayanagi yesterday, I took a moment to properly consider everything.
In the moment, I had been far too drained from the back-to-back special exams to think about it properly.
It was, of course, a massive surprise to discover that Class A's leader, Sakayanagi Arisu, was aware of the White Room's existence.
I was sure that, if I weren't already familiar with the uneasy feeling Ryuzaki gave me, I would've frozen up momentarily at the time.
However, beyond that, Sakayanagi appeared to be one of the greatest students in the school ability-wise.
Although brief, Sakayanagi had displayed a high level of mental understanding and maturity when we spoke.
Additionally, just the fact that she was the leader of Class A alone was proof enough of her capability.
Sakayanagi seems to have not been idle during the year so far - although Class A has been quiet, Sakayanagi was gathering information and sizing up her enemies.
She was aware of Shiro's excellent specialty in calculation skills, for example. Even though it wasn't exactly being kept a secret, it was still a bit surprising to hear come so nonchalantly from a stranger.
The Zodiac special exam probably accounted for a large portion of scouted intel held by the classes at the moment.
Classes were forced to sit together and interact; this meant that it was easy to scrutinise individual students for their personality and behaviour.
Sakayanagi had likely instructed her supporters to collect information while they were away. I would've done the same in her position, after all.
I also wouldn't be surprised if Sakayanagi had a hand in sabotaging Class A from the shadows during the previous two special exams, intending to leverage control of the class from Katsuragi.
I had a feeling it was something she would do.
I arrived at Keyaki Mall, and made my way to the karaoke parlour.
The rental karaoke rooms at this school were extremely useful for a wide variety of things.
Firstly, they were private, which meant you could conduct business away from prying eyes. There were also no cameras in the rooms themselves, which made it an ideal meeting spot it you, for some reason, needed to hide from the school.
The reason I was heading there today, though, was a lot simpler. The karaoke rooms were great for letting loose and having fun without having to worry about disturbing others.
Or, in Sora's case, it was the perfect place to play a game without the other classes spying on you.
I arrived at the parlour, and approached the room Sora had specified in his messages.
I knocked on the door and, after a brief wait, it opened from inside, revealing a skinny, maroon-haired boy with unkempt clothes on and a girl's hand clasped in his.
"Kiyotaka! Long-time no see!"
Sora seemed to view the time between yesterday afternoon and now as a long time.
Perhaps, for shut-ins who had long-since lost their track of time, and who were literally never out of each other's sight, being apart for a day did seem long.
"Hey." I greeted the pair of siblings before me.
"Come in! Lelouch is already here."
Other than me, Lelouch had also been invited to partake in whatever devious game Sora had organised.
I stepped into the room and closed the door behind me. My eyes took a moment to adjust to the light level, but once they had, I made out the figure of a boy sat alone at a circular table.
Atop the table was something covered by some form of blanket. I assumed that that was the game we were going to play.
Noticing me, Lelouch lifted his hand in greeting. "Yo, Ayanokōji."
I waved back, and walked over to the table with Sora and Shiro.
"Everybody sit at a different side of the table." Sora ordered.
Following the instructions, I took the seat closest to the door, to the right of Lelouch. Shiro sat to my right, and Sora was left with the seat opposite mine.
"So, what are we going to play?"
Lelouch asked the question I'm sure we were all wondering.
"Yeah, Nii, I want to know too."
That was surprising. It looked like Sora had kept the game a secret even from his sister.
"Now, now, children. All will become clear when we remove the cover," Sora said, motioned towards the blanket.
He'd probably intended to do it dramatically, but the bored-looking Lelouch had other ideas, and whipped it off in the blink of an eye instead.
"What the...?"
The game that lay on the table before us was unexpected.
There was an 8 by 8 grid of checkered squares.
Then, on each side, there was an 8 by 2 rectangular grid of squares coming off the board, creating what was basically a 12 by 12 grid missing the corners.
In each 8 by 2 rectangle was a uniquely coloured arrangement of chess pieces, each set up how they would be in a normal game of chess.
The pieces on my side were blue. Lelouch's were yellow, Sora's were green, and Shiro ended up with the red pieces.
"What is this? Four-way chess?" Shiro murmured.
"Ding ding ding! That's exactly right, dear sister of mine!"
Immediately, one thing was apparent to me - this game would be exponentially more difficult than even regular chess. The introduction of two extra players increased the number of possible variations in any given position drastically.
"How does it work?" I asked.
Obviously, with four players as opposed to two, the rules of the game must change at least a little.
"It's simple. Order of play will go around the table in the clockwise direction, starting from you, Kiyotaka. The way to win is simple. Capturing a piece will give you points equal to that piece's standard value, with the exception of the King, which is worth twenty points. If you are the last player standing, you win, the player who was eliminated first loses, the player who was eliminated second gets third place, etcetera. If we reach a position where we agree it's unfeasible for any more progress to happen, but multiple players are still alive, the game will end there, and the rankings will be determined by points. Players are eliminated when their king is captured, since check and checkmate don't exist in this game, and when a player is eliminated, their pieces remain on the board, valueless. Pawns promote on the 8th rank from their starting position, as in normal chess, but the promoted piece's value remains as 1. All pieces function as they normally do."
The rest of us listened intently to the rules while Sora spoke.
The game took the format of a free-for-all. This meant there was an extra layer of 'diplomatic' strategy that involved making sure you stay on the good side of opposing players.
In this game, even if two people teamed up on you, it would be disastrous. You only get to move once every four moves in total, and only get to move one piece.
Fighting multiple opponents means facing multiple moving pieces per turn, and a board state that can change dramatically even between two of your turns.
Another element I'm sure everybody else has also considered is the power of each piece in this variation of the game.
Normally, in chess, knights can be extremely strong pieces because they can pressure eight squares, a total of 12.5 percent of the board. A Knight in the centre of a typical chess board also only needs to move once to attack on any side of it.
However, in this version, there are 128 squares; double that of the regular game, meaning knights can only cover 6.25 percent of the board at most. Also, the board is much bigger, and since the knight can only move up to two spaces in any given direction, it would take a long time for it to traverse the board.
In other words, rooks and bishops, which can go from one end of the board to the other instantaneously, are much more effective than knights, whose range on this bigger board is insufficient.
Although the point gain would be equal for both sides, trading your Knight for an opponent's Bishop would be beneficial, as the bishop is clearly the more powerful piece.
"Does everybody understand the rules?"
Lelouch, Shiro and I all nodded in response.
"Okay, then just one more thing – I propose we all wager 10,000 private points on the outcome of this game. First place will receive 25,000 from the pot, second place 10,000, and third place the remaining 5,000. How does that sound?"
That would be a total prize of 40,000 dished out.
If I were to win, I would earn 15,000 points, which would pay back half of what I'd spent on groceries yesterday.
Conversely, if I were to come in last place, I would lose my entire 10,000 wager, and would have to live conservatively for the rest of the month.
Logically, with only one of us four actually earning a profit from this game, it didn't make sense to participate in the wager. However...
"I'm in! Anything to get back at you for taking my points in chess right at the start of school. This game will be my revenge." Lelouch declared.
"I will also participate." Shiro said. "Whether with two or four sides, chess remains as simple as tic-tac-toe. 15,000 free points is appealing."
Clearly, my classmates didn't prioritise "logic" when deciding whether or not to participate in a wager. Entertainment was paramount.
"Kiyotaka?"
Not wanting to be a downer, I decided I would bite the bullet and agree, too.
"Yes, I'm in."
"We may as well begin, then! Whenever you're ready, Kiyotaka."
And like that, the game began.
I decided that playing aggressively off the bat would be a foolish choice, so instead thought about how to set up a decent defense of my own king.
Having your king in the corner would move it closer to one player, but farther from the other two. Additionally, pieces cannot cross the corners of the board as there are no spaces there. This meant that castling still seemed like the best defense for your king.
With a vague strategy in mind, I reached out to the board, and moved the pawn in front of my queen one space forward.
"Quite the conservative move, eh, Kiyotaka?"
Sora raised his eyebrow at my choice of move.
"The most common starting moves in chess are moving a pawn by two spaces," Shiro added.
"Well, this game is a little different." I answered.
Lelouch gave me an approving glance, and moved a pawn one space forward as well.
The players beside me had the opposite king and queen sides to me; whereas my king was on the right, Lelouch and Shiro's were on the left. Therefore, even though Lelouch also moved his queen's pawn, it was on the opposite side to where I had moved.
Lelouch and I were both making space on the side closest to each other.
Sora, with a sly grin on his face, grabbed the pawn in front of his king and moved it two spaces forward.
"Nii is too confident," Shiro remarked as she moved the pawn in front of her King forward by one space.
"T-Too confident?! Whatever are you saying, my cute little sister?"
Sora's face wore some kind of panicked confusion. Shiro was the only one whose comments could actually affect his self-confidence.
"You are trying to play a mind-game, but this is chess. At the highest level of play, mind-games aren't a factor." Lelouch told him.
That was true. No competent player would act on feeling alone - they would calculate extensively to decide whether their move was good or not.
Setting a "bait" in chess was usually pointless, especially since it costs the solidity of your own position to do most the time.
It was only viable in extremely deep traps, but since this was the first move, such an excuse could not be used.
"Ah, but in this game, it is exceedingly difficult to scry every possibility with pure logic and calculation." Sora countered. "Some intuition is necessary."
While pondering the back-and-forth between Sora and Lelouch, I calmly moved my king-side bishop out to my third rank, where it could capture Shiro's rook if the blocking pawn ever moved.
It was certainly true that the typical conventions of regular chess wouldn't automatically apply here. The fact that it was impossible to see every possible continuation of a given position ensured that you would need to follow your gut when making some moves.
Unless...
I glanced over at the girl to my right. On top of her confident words a moment ago, her demeanour appeared relaxed. She didn't seem worried at all.
Would Shiro seriously be able to do it?
If so, it would make competing against her nigh-impossible for the rest of us. At least by ourselves.
But I wasn't sure if I could believe it. Being able to calculate every eventuality in this game would be a feat that even surpassed the abilities Shiro had demonstrated thus far.
Somehow, a part of me felt like it didn't want such a monstrosity to exist.
"Well, I guess only time will tell." Lelouch said, moving his open bishop to the third rank, just as I did.
"Indeed." Sora smirked, and moved his pawn yet another space forward.
Was he planning to go for a promotion straight away?
To achieve that, Sora would need to be allowed to move his pawn three more times, unimpeded. Surely, he realised that this isn't feasible.
What was he up to? I looked at his smirking face, but couldn't read anything beyond his grin.
"Are you trying to monopolise the centre?" Lelouch asked.
"Perhaps I am."
"That may not be such a good idea," I remarked. "While owning the centre of the board would make your moves more flexible, it also puts you directly in the firing-line of every other player simultaneously."
It doesn't take a genius to deduce that such a position would be impossible to survive in the long run.
Sora would not make such an idiotic mistake. No, Sora is the type of person to make us think that he was doing one thing when in reality he was setting up a different scheme behind it.
"Nii is impossible to read."
Shiro complimented her brother, before picking up her open bishop. She then proceeded to do some unimaginable.
"Huh...? What the hell are you doing?" Lelouch asked, astounded.
Shiro had moved her bishop to my third rank, such that it was directly in front of my king's pawn. Since it was my move next, there was nothing stopping me from capturing it with my f pawn.
"I have played against Nii countless times, and I have experienced with Lelouch's chess ability too, however... We are yet to see anything from Ayanokōji."
I made eye contact with the white-haired girl who'd just made a seemingly outrageous move.
"A test, then."
Shiro merely nodded, waiting to see how I would respond.
I gave myself a brief pause to think about it.
In regular chess, it was important to trade pieces. Trading a weaker piece for a stronger one was obviously beneficial, but also, trading an inactive piece with an opponent's in a better or more troublesome position was also beneficial.
However, in this variant of the game, trading pieces seemed to almost always be bad. Even giving up your Knight or Bishop for an enemy queen seemed like a blunder.
This was because, a trade between two players weakens both sides, but the other two sides would remain as they are. A trade between two players benefits the other players who weren't involved most.
If I were to capture Shiro's bishop here, I would definitely weaken her power considerably. However, I'd also be doubling my pawns in the centre, and there's no doubt that the stray pawn would be lost in due time.
In other words, I'd be weakening my pawn structure a lot, and also exposing my king to a diagonal attack.
Judging Lelouch to be less of a threat than Shiro, I'd chosen to castle on my queen side, the side closer to Lelouch, which meant that the damage to my pawn structure wouldn't be as bad as it could be.
However, as the game progresses, it could turn out that a queen-side castle would be suboptimal for me. This capture would force me to castle on that side regardless of the board state.
It was always better to remain flexible, and it was far too early to say whether it was safe to commit to castling a specific side.
Taking all of this into account, I decided to simply ignore Shiro's provoking move, and moved my queen-side knight instead.
"I see..." Shiro murmured.
She seemed to be evaluating me on-the-fly.
"That's smart from both of you." Lelouch commended.
He opted to mimic Shiro's move, and swept his bishop all the way up to Sora's third-rank, sandwiching it between his advanced pawn and his king.
"If you're going to line up your bishop to threaten my pieces from in front of Ayanokōji's, then I'll do the same." Lelouch said, looking intently into Shiro's eyes.
Sora laughed, and then unhesitatingly captured Lelouch's stray bishop with the pawn in front of his queen.
"W-What are you doing?!" Lelouch exclaimed in horror.
"What? I'm simply taking a free piece." Sora retorted, a condescending smirk on his face.
"You've just doubled your pawns! Don't you understand that all you've done is hurt the both of us?!"
It seemed that Lelouch had a similar thought process to Shiro and I when rationalising such a move. However, Sora was a complete wildcard. He didn't conform to our logic.
"Did I? The way I see it, the only one who took damage just now was you." Sora said confidently.
Lelouch gave him an astonished look. I had to admit that even I was puzzled, unable to comprehend his rationale.
"One of those doubled pawns is going to be recaptured at some point, you know? It doesn't matter that I lost more than you, Shiro and Ayanokōji are laughing right now because you just weakened us both!"
"Yeah, yeah, who cares. Sacrificing one pawn like this is worth it."
"Worth screwing yourself over just to take my bishop?! What kind of logic is tha—"
"That's not it." Sora cut him off.
Apparently, Sora was thinking along different lines to the rest of us.
"By doing what I just did, I've made you an example, and set a precedent: you cannot take advantage of self-preservation with me. From now on, none of you will try something like that again with my pieces, because it would be the same as willingly destroying yourself. This means that I now have an advantage over all of you; presence. While you all focus on setting up an ironclad defense and trying to let everyone else attack each other, I'm going to assert dominance over the board and destroy each of your undeveloped fortresses one-by-one."
I'll gain ground not by a positional advantage, but by a mental attack. If you want to fight, you'll have to do it on my terms. This was Sora's mentality that justified his opening moves, and decision to capture Lelouch's bishop.
Lelouch, who looked as if he was about to snap back at Sora, surprisingly closed his eyes and laughed.
"I see... you want that kind of battle, huh? Then you've got one!"
"Hah! Good! I wouldn't settle for anything less!" Sora said.
He raised his fist and slammed it down toward the table in excitement. His face changed to panic just as he did so, and he stopped his hand just inches from the table.
"You're a little too excited." I said.
"Shush."
It seemed like we were in for a long and arduous battle here.
△▼△▼△▼△
Light's POV
I yawned as I woke up, stretched my arms, and pulled the covers off of me.
A lot of people have difficulty getting out of bed in the morning, however, I faced no such problem.
Every day, I went to bed strictly at 10pm and woke up at 7am. This resulted in exactly 9 hours of sleep every night, which was not only optimal for a growing high-school student, but also equalled precisely six sleep-cycles.
It was important to get sufficient sleep every night if one wanted to be the best possible; insufficient sleep dulled brain function and limited your thinking ability, along with a plethora of other undesirable side-effects like moodiness.
Before doing anything else, I went for a shower, got dressed, and prepared some miso soup for breakfast.
After I'd finished it, I cleaned up right away. Leaving stuff like that for later was not something I liked to do, since not only was it a great inconvenience, but it also created the possibility of excess labour piling up.
Then, after all of that was done, it came the part of my morning routine I dedicated to reading through and replying to all the unread messages I'd received, and arranging plans with various people for the day.
Usually these would be for after school, but since it was summer vacation, there were invitations for the whole day instead.
It seemed like I'd received messages from nine people since I went to sleep last night. I scrolled through them all, looking for which invitation I should accept for the day.
It was important for me to not only consider personal likening when choosing, but also to consider which relations were important to maintain.
Even if I didn't particularly like the people's company, in this school's environment where it was vital to have connections with the other classes, I would sometimes have to just grit my teeth and spend some time with them.
"Huh..."
As I was looking through all my unread messages, I noticed one I'd received some from somebody who I'd never really hung out with before.
Hirata Yōsuke, from Class E. It was strange that I'd never really made proper connections with him when you consider that Hirata is one of the cornerstones of the first-year boys.
It was likely that the group going out would be the collective of all the respected, or "popular" boys, across our year group.
In my experience, the popular students gravitated towards the other popular students, not out of ego or anything like that, but actually because of the "unpopular" students.
Somebody like Hirata would happily befriend just about anyone in our year, so the fact that he hadn't speaks for itself in where the issue lies; it was the boys who were considered "unpopular" that wouldn't accept Hirata as their friend.
In Class E's case, this would be the group of Ike, Sudō and Yamauchi. It was obvious that these three were not friends with Hirata, and to anybody with a bit of insight, the reason was also obvious.
Ike and the others were simply bitter about Hirata's popularity, and hated him because of it. For this reason, they would reject his friendship.
This trend is one that I'd observed during middle school, too. People would complain about the popular people flaunting their status, all the while rejecting the idea of being friends with them out of jealousy.
School is like a microcosm of the greater society in this regard; within humanity, there will always be those that have something, and those that want it. It is a breeding ground for envy and hatred.
"Guess I'll go with Hirata's group for today."
I made my decision, and sent him a reply. Interestingly, while most the messages I'd received were from yesterday, after I'd gone to sleep, Hirata's was today. That meant that he likely followed a similar routine to me.
I sent a generic, polite reply to everybody else, explaining that my schedule already had arrangements for today, but I'd be happy to make plans with them for some other day.
My meeting with Hirata wasn't until the afternoon, so until then, I decided to kill time by just going out and seeing who I bumped into.
I preferred to do this than try to squeeze another planned outing into my day, because it was too strict. By doing this instead, I could still fulfil my social quota while also being free to respectfully say my goodbyes and leave any time I wanted.
I looked in the mirror one last time to make sure I was looking as presentable as possible, and headed for the door.
A/N: 4124 words, I really didn't intend to write this much about a filler game lmao.
I hit 500 followers today! Just wanted to say thank you, and that I love you guys! <3
Also, April fools is coming up soon. Do you guys think I should make an April Fools special chapter? cough Reaction/Lemons chapter cough
Thanks for reading.