Chess is a conversation

After waving the counsellor out the door, Touka turned her attention to me.

“...please don’t hurt me,” I begged. Actually I wouldn’t mind her hurting me, so long as there’s a safeword.

“Don’t worry, I’ve mostly finished my training for today anyway. And I wouldn’t wanna just throw you into a spar unprepared or anything,” she giggled. I’d pay very good money to have headphones strapped to my ears replaying a clip of that giggle for the rest of my life. “Instead of training, why don’t we get to know each other a little better? If we’re gonna be partners for a while, it’s best we learn a little more about each other, right?”

“R-right…”

Dammit all, how is it that I could shit talk God Himself if pushed to it but this girl says the word ‘partners’ and I go weak in the knees? Since when the hell do I have a stammer? This girl was bad for my heart.

“So, how’d you get into chess? How long have you been playing?” she asked casually, not aware of the fact that I was calculating how tall a stepladder I would need to make out with her.

“Uhh… I’ve been playing as long as I can remember. My dad taught it to me when I was a sproglet, it was the o-” I paused, rethinking how much I wanted to share. “...it was something we tended to do whenever we were spending time together.”

Touka tilted her head to the side slightly. She definitely seemed to pick up on the stutter and the past-tense, but had the tact not to push me on it. I was silently grateful for that.

“I wish either of my parents were chess players,” she pouted, “I’ve always thought it was cool, but never had anyone to introduce me to it.”

“Was it your parents that got you into boxing, then?” I asked.

“Nope, that was all me! I was always pretty quick and strong as a kid, and I just wanted to do something with it. I tried a bunch of stuff, like sprinting, and tennis, and football, but boxing was the only one I ever really loved.”

“But… why boxing?” I asked again. “What’s so special about punching each other in the face?”

“Hmm…” she said, tapping her chin. “It’s not really about the violence side of it for me. It’s more like… it feels like a dance, but you get the excitement of not knowing what your partner is gonna do next. Every time you get it right, you get the reward of landing the next hit. And when you get it wrong, you get punished. It means you spend the whole fight trying to better understand your opponent, and the better you understand them, the more exciting the match.”

“I… see.” I didn’t get it all.

Though, I suppose in a way it was no different to how I used to feel playing chess. Figuring out my opponents play style, analysing their options, predicting how they’d react to every move I played.

Damn. Forgot how much I missed that feeling.

“…Touka?” I called out tentatively.

“Hmm? What’s up?”

“You ever have matches where your opponent is just… so far below your level that beating them isn’t even a challenge?”

“All the time!” She replied gleefully. I had no idea what she was so happy about.

“How do you enjoy those sorts of matches? How do you find it fun trying to ‘understand’ your opponent when your opponent isn’t even at a level that’s worth understanding?”

“You’re wrong there, Nanako.” She slightly shook her head, but her kind smile didn’t disappear. “Everyone is worth understanding. Whether they’re a beginner or a world champion or a dead-equal match. There’s always something fun you can learn about them through their fighting style. Whether they’re defensive or aggressive, confident or timid, how well they’re conditioned to take hits, all of those things tell a story about the person you’re fighting. When I fight, I try to uncover as many of those pages as I can. That’s the thing about boxing I love.”

I… didn’t understand it. Not at all. When I play against someone of a caliber so much lower than my own, I don’t see ‘defensive’ or ‘aggressive.’ I just see mistakes. Bad, sloppy, punishable moves that only serve to bring me one step closer to checkmate. Inaccuracies that I could never understand the rationale for. Blunders that are unforgivable.

All I see is a mockery of the beauty of chess.

“Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions a little,” said Touka, “but are you maybe… just… bored of winning?”

“It’s not winning that’s the problem. It’s the way I keep winning,” I grumbled. “I go in with a strategy and tactics and a hundred different variations in my head that all put me on top, and it’s all rendered pointless when some loser with an ELO four hundred points less than mine blunders on turn 9 and throws the whole game away. It’s an insult to all the preparation I’ve done.”

I felt my fists clenching as I spat my words. I don’t know why I was spilling my guts to this girl I had never even met before today. Seemed like I was getting worse and worse at keeping my composure. Why did chess make me so angry? I should have just been grateful that my hard work and natural skill had taken me so far. But every time some moron threw a mostly even game with a mistake I couldn’t even imagine making, it felt like a personal attack.

Chess is a conversation, and they were spitting in my face.

“...why don’t we call it here for the day, it’s getting late,” said Touka, a gentle smile on her face.

“Y-yeah… thanks…”

I guess she noticed how sour my expression had turned. A normal person would have seen it as a sign to jump ship and find a new coach. After all, what sort of nutcase just starts whining about chess being too easy five minutes after meeting someone? I must have seemed out of my mind.

But this girl… she definitely wasn’t normal.

“I practice twice a week, but I can use one of my sessions for chess instead. Does friday at 4pm work for you?”

“Huh? Uh, yeah, that’s fine,” I said, somewhat flabbergasted at how casual she was being.

“Cool, see you next week!”

She gave a little two-finger salute and bounded on out the door, without a care in the world. I was so taken aback I barely thought about the fact that I’d have to follow her out.

…what a strange girl I had gotten myself involved with.