Jun-yeoul Yeom, who was aiming to win the championship.
He was indeed strong enough to make that his goal.
He wasn’t as good as Elo’s top rankers or grandmasters, but he could be as skilled as the national masters or FIDE masters, which were a few ranks below.
‘No more intuitive moves. I’d better plan it out carefully, even if it takes up more time.’
I checked my time limit on the chess clock and moved my chess piece.
Up to the semi-finals, each round had a 30-minute time limit, called Rapidplay Chess.
It had a bit more time than Blitz, which was chess with a time limit of 15 minutes, but the finals were different.
‘Looks like Je-gun Yong set up this rule.’
The final round was a ‘standard,’ or chess with a time limit of over 1 hour.
The time given to each chess player was 90 minutes in this case.
Fischer mode was also applied, in which the time limit increased as the players made more and more moves.
It seemed like Je-gun Yong was telling us, “I did a show, I made the stadium nice, I gave you enough time, so show everyone what you’ve got.”
‘But this rule isn’t in my favor because my headache worsens and hands get colder the longer I play chess.’
But I didn’t intend to show it.
Beep.
I pretended composure and moved my piece, then pressed the button.
Jun-yeoul’s gaze fell on my fingertips for a moment.
Jun-yeoul is extremely sensitive to heat and temperature changes because he bends fire.
At this distance, he might have noticed that my hands were colder than when I shook hands with him.
Considering his personality, he’d be worried about me, his junior, but he made the next move without hesitation.
‘Good, this is a time to deal with me as a chess player. Worry about your junior after the match.’
My playable character had the mindset of a professional.
‘I have to do my best, too.’
Because of my headache, the urge to leave my hand to intuition and allow shallow moves skyrocketed.
It felt like a pain to move the chess piece with my increasingly chilling fingertips.
My condition wasn’t bad today, but my opponent was strong and the match was getting longer, so it was worsening.
‘I may not be able to make the best move, but I can try my best.’
The moves Jun-yeoul had made so far.
The current situation of the match.
The ways of moving my remaining pieces.
I carefully put the information together, one by one.
Beep.
Beep.
The time decreased on the clock as the turns went by, and the situation began to change.
‘I’m starting to see how I can win.’
The aspects of chess games are largely divided into three.
The beginning was made of the mainline where the players make moves with more than 1,300 tactics established in theory, and the opening, where one makes original and novel moves.
The middlegame, where the competition is the most intense.
The endgame, where the main battle has ended and only a handful of chess pieces remain.
‘Soon, the points of the pieces will fall below 13, except the king. It’s going to fold into the endgame phase.’
Jun-yeoul Yeom losing seemed obvious as we neared the endgame.
Jun-yeoul noticed this also, and he slowed down.
Jun-yeoul Yeom, eyeing the chessboard, suddenly looked determined, and pulled a completely different move than I expected.
‘The atmosphere changed?’
There were only a few pieces left, but he didn’t seem to have any intention of surrendering.
His pattern changed suddenly right before the endgame.
I could see what he was doing without having to think deeply.
‘Jun-yeoul Yeom gave up on winning, but he doesn’t intend to lose either!’
The main difference between chess and mind sports such as Go and Xiangqi is that there is no ‘resting for one turn.’
In chess, when your turn comes, you must move one chess piece no matter what.
Even if you lose a chess piece due to that move, and the situation gets reversed.
‘I thought that was the charm of chess and was attracted to it. I started playing chess because of that rule.’
The problem is that since either player can’t skip a turn, there are some cases when one couldn’t move their chess pieces, and solving that was troublesome.
There are two situations where moving chess pieces were impossible.
The first case was if all the paths of the chess pieces were blocked.
Second, If I make a move, no matter what, I become checked.
In the second case, if you move your piece, it’ll be like suicide to the king, but in chess, the king’s suicidal moves are banned, so there is a contradiction.
‘That intriguing rule created a contradiction and the ‘stalemate’ was required.’
In chess, if one cannot move their piece, it becomes a stalemate and the match ends in a draw.
It doesn’t matter if one side only has a king left and the other has a lot of pieces left.
‘Jun-yeoul Yeom gave up victory and started aiming for a stalemate.’
The moment I identified the intention of Jun-yeoul, for the first time since the start of the round, I was able to laugh suspiciously.
Jun-yeoul Yeom, who saw me smiling, opened his eyes wide and looked this way.
Beep.
The sound of the clock button rang jauntily.
I recalled a conversation I had with my college junior, Sung-heon Cheon before I came to this world.
– Ui-shin hyung, you said you had a nickname when you were a chess player.
After befriending Sung-heon Cheon, he sometimes talked about chess.
He wanted me to become a professional player again or at least play as a hobby.
I pretended I didn’t hear it every time.
– ‘Stalemateless’. Is that right?
I once had such a useless long nickname.
It was due to the fact that I was a teen who hated stalemates.
– I’ve seen all your records so far, and there was not one stalemate. In some of the matches you lost, you could’ve made it a stalemate…… Do you hate stalemate?
Yeah, I didn’t like becoming stalemated or stalemating someone.
What I loved about chess was that if your turn comes, you have to make a move.
However, stalemate makes you unable to move and results in a wishy-washy draw.
It was a terrible rule indeed.
– Yeah, I hate it.
– ……Your nickname suits you.
– When the endgame came, I was always on the lookout for stalemate. And for people who tried to stalemate me……
I don’t know what kind of expression I made at that time, but it was probably that suspicious face.
– I smashed them.
“Check.”
I was most obsessed with finding solution tactics of stalemate.
I was confident in catching the opponent’s king when my opponent tried to stalemate me.
Soon after my checkmate declaration, the black king fell.
Aaaaahhhh-!
Pop! Pop pop!
As soon as the King fell, the spatial skills of Je-gun Yong were released.
I heard Jun-yeoul’s fans sighing, but they were buried in sounds of shouting and firecrackers.
Second-grade class 0 shot the psychic firecrackers at Jun-yeoul’s fans, so that was probably why I couldn’t hear them.
“Ui-shin, that was a wonderful match. You read my intentions at the end, right?”
Jun-yeoul rose from his seat and held out his hand.
I grabbed his hand and nodded.
Jun-yeoul’s body temperature seemed to be higher than others, perhaps because he bent fire.
Or it was just because my hands were cold.
“Your hands are cold. You didn’t show it, though. I thought I felt that wrong.’
As expected, he knew and was worrying about it.
My mentee was a caring, kind student.
“You know when you started moving against my stalemate, and you smiled? You kinda reminded me of my mentor.”
So he didn’t respond to my smile just because it looked suspicious.
When I met Jun-yeoul as his teacher, I always went as his future appearance and wore a crow mask.
How did I remind him of that?
* * *
I received the medal and prize money on the spot, and the victory of ‘the suspicious vice president Ui-shin Cho’ ended.
Before I joined my classmates, Je-gun Yong handed me his device code.
“When you want to play chess, come to Stalemate’s room or contact me at any time.”
Je-gun Yong changed his handsome face to a strange shape and laughed.
I’ve seen that look a few times.
It was that ecstatic expression that even his fans, in the days when there were still some game users left, said that face was “not cool.”
‘I’ve received the device code of Jun-Yeoul Yeom……. the Originals and their Descendants in my device are increasing.’
I haven’t overcome all my chess trauma yet.
To overcome this, it would be better to play from time to time, so it wouldn’t be bad to challenge them two for a game.
“Suspicious Ui-shin has won! Congratulations!”
“Hahahaha! Ui-shin Cho. You’re suspicious even now!”
When I arrived at the place where I had promised to meet my classmates, Yuri Kim and Jiho Hwang welcomed me.
Yuri’s words were pure congratulations so I felt happy, but Jiho’s got under my skin.
‘Is it the difference between playable characters and NPCs? Or is it just Jiho Hwang?’
It is likely to be both.
However, I was grateful to Jiho Hwang, who came to support me without missing a day.
“Congratulations, Ui-shin!”
“Congratulations!”
“Congrats.”
The other children congratulated me one by one.
“Thanks.”
They were more pleased with my victory than me, so word of gratitude came naturally out of my mouth.
“Let’s go for beef. I reserved it in advance.”
At these words, the kids murmured.
“What? Did you make a reservation before winning and losing was decided?”
“Vice prez, you booked because you knew you were going to win!”
“Haha, what were you going to do if you lost?”
Yeah, even if I lost, I was gonna feed you guys beef.
Listening to the kids chattering, I walked toward the restaurant I had reserved.
By the time I arrived at the place, my headache had disappeared as if it had washed away, and warmth returned to my hands.
* * *
Meanwhile, Jun-yeoul had exited the stadium before Ui-shin.
Jun-yeoul Yeom changed into a suit and hurried to the meeting.
‘I’ll barely make it on time.’
The Red Lion and the Dragon clan had decided to meet the leading figures of Juo and TC group today at the dinner feast, instead of going to the party on board tomorrow.
There being the chess tournament and all, Jun-yeoul considered not going to the dinner and attend the party on board instead, but the Dragon clan, Red Lion teammates, and his family all opposed to the idea.
‘Even mentor was against it, so it can’t be helped. Let’s just go to that dinner.’
The dinner place was on the top floor of an air hotel, ‘Snow and Air.’
At the entrance to the hall, people were seen waiting for Jun-yeoul Yeom.
“Jun-yeoul, you’re here.”
Those who received the news that Jun-yeoul had lost in the final.
Everyone, Dragon clan and human alike were on edge.
They couldn’t accept the reality that Jun-yeoul lost.
However, they refrained from their harsh response, fearing that they would end up hurting his feelings.
Jun-yeoul knew they meant well, so he decided to act cool also.
“Hello, everyone.”
The head of the Dragon clan, Blue Dragon, coughed dryly.
“What about Je-gun Yong?”
“He needed to wrap the tournament up and have an after-party with Stalemate’s staff, so he couldn’t come.”
In an awkward, but delicate atmosphere where both parties were thinking of each other before themselves.
The dinner began with a greeting from each head of group that was at the Jamsil Baseball stadium that day.
‘Um, can’t taste anything.’
Shark’s fin steam with abalone sauce.
Buddha Jumps Over the Wall(a Chinese traditional dish) made with shao xing huang jiu(a Chinese traditional alcohol).
And all the other menus looked delicious as well, but he couldn’t taste anything.
Perhaps it was because he didn’t win first place, which he tried with all his might, and even lost stalemate, the next best thing he tried.
‘I wanted to show my mentor what I was capable of……’
The shock was greater than he thought, and the smile of Ui-shin kept overlapping with his mentor’s.
‘Can’t take it. Let’s go get fresh air.’
Jun-yeoul excused himself and left his seat.
A few people gave worried glances, but after an intense, unspoken communication, it was concluded that he was best left alone for now.
So Jun-yeoul Yeom was alone.
He did not feel better even at the sight of the breathtaking night view from the Air hotel lounge.
‘They must have booked the whole floor. No one is in the hotel lounge.’
Jun-yeoul was looking back at the chess match he had with Ui-shin.
“Hi.”
A woman in a red dress came to him.
He thought there was no one just now, so he couldn’t tell where she came from.
‘An Original clan.’
Because of their unique ability, Original clans and descendants could recognize each other.
Although he couldn’t tell which Original clan she was from.
“Hoho, you look less mature than the child.”
The child?
Who was she talking about?
He felt bitter, hearing her say he was immature after he had been defeated.
“I want to talk to you for a moment, will you come along?”
The Original clan lady smiled alluringly.
Jun-yeoul answered firmly without hesitation.
“No. My master told me that I shouldn’t follow a stranger.”
Jun-yeoul Yeom was a good student who followed his teacher’s words.
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