The walls stay up

“Aaaaalright! We’ve dilly-dallied enough already, ain’t we? We know what you guys wanna see, so let's have the chessperts get this game going!”

“I am begging you to never combine ‘chess’ and ‘experts’ every again.”

“I value this language deeply and would sincerely prefer you not bastardise it at the slightest whim.”

“Why are you guys only in sync when you’re attacking me!”

“Because you doing something wrong is one of the only objective truths that there’s no point arguing over.”

“Could your replies be a little less cruel?!”

“No.”

“Why not?!”

“Call it a teachable moment.”

“You can’t teach in a nicer way, you jerk?!” Pep sighed overdramatically as we derailed the stream yet again, though I could tell she was having fun with it. “Anyway, are you guys gonna start the game or wh- oh, our first donation!” she said, seemingly immediately forgetting the words she was literally just saying. “Let’s see what the message says… ‘why is K so mean and snide? Does he just live off negativity?’ Ha! You haven’t seen the half of it! One time someone in our class dropped something and he called them ‘a walking symbol of all human failure.’”

“That ‘someone’ was you, and the ‘thing’ you dropped was a beaker of sulfuric acid.”

“I choose not to remember that part,” she said, an ironically smug look on her face. “But he’s not as mean as he seems, really. Underneath all the snark and insults he’s just a lonely guy-”

“I’m not lonely. I’m alone. There’s a difference.”

“-who spouts cliches and says edgy stuff as a defence mechanism. Once you see past that you realise he’s just a big softy with a heart of gold.”

“If you had a heart of gold I’d cut it out and sell it without a second thought.”

“I’m that worthless to you?!”

“If it makes you feel any better I’d spend quarter of the money on your funeral.”

“I’m not even good enough for half?!”

“If the two of you are done with your tedious comedy routine, might I actually begin the match? As we already intended to do? Several minutes ago?”

Sai snapped us out of our rhythm, though I was honestly somewhat glad she did. I appreciated Pep defending me in front of her audience, but if I was gonna do this whole performance song and dance I wanted to keep my ‘real self’ as far out of it as possible. For as long as I was playing this character, the walls stayed up.

Sai issued the challenge to my account, and the app randomly selected me to play on white. That could only possibly mean one thing. My beloved Vienna opening.

“For one so vocally opposed to the precepts of theory, you certainly have an obsession with this particular opening line,” Sai said, as we played the beginning moves of the vienna game. After responding to the f4 gambit with the common d5 countergambit, she also predictably took the e4 pawn with the knight after f-takes-e5. It was a line she and I had played several times at this point, so the first few moves were played practically without thought.

“Hey, if it works, it works. I’m not gonna throw out random shite in the first few moves and completely ruin my own development right out of the gate. Just because I’m not a theorist doesn’t mean I’m an idiot,” I said, developing my knight to f3.

“You’re correct, you being an idiot is entirely unrelated,” she replied, playing the obvious bishop-to-c5. We continued playing out a practiced line with d4, bishop b4, bishop d2, and I could already feel myself getting bored. Unfortunately, this particular variation of the Vienna was one Sai knew just as well as myself. It would be difficult for me to play any novelties.

“If I’m an idiot, what does that make you? Considering our current track record I’d be careful with throwing around insults if I were you,” I said, responding to her c5 with bishop-to-b5-check.

“Only a fool would stake her intelligence merely on her proficiency in a game. At chess you are perhaps the better of us, but your success over the board is marred by your failure as a human being,” she replied, blocking the check with knight to c6.

“I’m a failure as a human? People in glass houses shouldn’t call kettles black, you know.”

“If you’re attempting to aggravate me with your horrific malaphoring of idioms, I regret to inform you that it is working.”

“Haaaaah… you guys see what I put up with day-to-day?” Pep tutted and slowly shook her head, wearing an obviously theatrical expression of exasperation. “It’s exhausting being the only normal, civil person in the club. It’s a constant struggle.”

“Oh please, you’re about as normal as a line intersecting a plane at a non-orthogonal vector.”

“What’s with the weirdly specific insult?!”

“I’m afraid I must concur with K, to refer to you as ‘normal’ would be an affront to geometry.”

“Are we actually going with the maths metaphor?!” Though the bit seemed to die there, the interruptions to the game didn’t end, as a moment later a pinging sound rang out from Pep’s computer. “Ooooh, another donation! Let’s see… ‘K and S seem super in tune, are they a couple?’ Well if they are they’ve done a good job hiding it from me!”

“I take offence to the question. It’s rude to that a person would take advantage of the intellectually impaired,” said Sai.

“I appreciate you defending me but you really shouldn’t put yourself down like that.”

“Can you muster no better response than a simple reversal?”

“I often find effectiveness in the simple approach.”

“Well that’s to be expected, of course. When your only tool for navigating life is a battering ram, I’m certain every problem does look like a city gate.”

“You’re acting like you’re the scalpel, but considering the way you get along with people you’re barely more than a hammer with a nice coat of paint.”

“If I wished to listen to a jaded imbecile spout shameless hypocrisy I would attend a political rally, not a chess club.”

Sai and I very quickly fell back to our usual verbal spar, but my unending awareness that our conversation was being listened in on by thousands of strangers made it impossible for me to feel as comfortable as I normally did in these situations. Despite streaming being a form of tacit consent to listen, I couldn’t shake the feeling our privacy was being violated with every word we said.

It was strange. On the surface, the stream seemed to be going substantially better than I had expected. Our conversations seemed natural, Pep was taking to her own role well, and it seemed like the audience was sticking around. On paper, the situation was more or less perfect.

But certain things felt… off. The subtle but noticeable lack of sting in Sai’s tone. The slight falter in Pep’s smile as she read the messages in her chat. The growing feeling in my chest that this whole thing was prepared to go tits-up at any moment. All culminating in these occasional moments where the three of us seemed to share the subtlest looks and glances that betrayed our own anxieties to each other.

I just couldn’t shake the feeling that this fragile routine we were maintaining was balancing on a knife’s edge, and one slight tip the wrong direction would make it fall and shatter like glass.