Are You The Complete Player?

PROLOGUE

PROLOGUE

Dear Player,

It is of utmost importance that you pay close attention to every word in this letter. This year’s tournament prize money is increased by 200% for every round. (Attached herewith is the complete prize money list from first round to grand winner). Every player receiving this letter is eligible to compete.

IMPORTANT RULES TO FOLLOW:

1. There shall be a flight from Frankfurt, Germany to an undisclosed location (that will serve as this year’s tournament venue) provided for PLAYERS only, all expenses paid. Everyone is expected to be at Frankfurt Airport at 2:30 a.m. There shall be no exemptions. Latecomers will automatically be eliminated.

2. The information in this letter is strictly confidential and shall not be shared to any living being.

3. Once you read this letter, you cannot opt-out of the competition.

4. Don’t forget to delete this before departure.

Failure to adhere to the said rules shall result in your instant elimination.

So, what are you waiting for? Are You The Complete Player? Prepare yourself physically, emotionally, and mentally for the battle ahead.

Good luck, Player! See you there or see you never.

-WIC

***

Krystupas Pavlis, a Lithuanian professional tennis player, was checking his e-mails on his computer, when his nine-year-old nephew, Jonas, ran towards him, a smile planted on his sweet face.

He was holding a pencil and a notebook. “Uncle, can you help me with homework?”

“Of course. What is it about?” Krystupas automatically responded, but wasn’t really paying attention to his nephew. He hadn’t opened his e-mails for days, so he was trying to catch up by opening each unread mail one by one.

“What does it mean by ‘mysterious’?” Jonas asked, lost in concentration.

“Ah, that’s easy…” Krystupas answered, still multi-tasking and not looking up at the boy.

“What? I should get a dictionary?” Jonas asked again.

Krystupas let out a chuckle. It was his favourite answer whenever Jonas asked him the meaning of a word. ‘That’s easy. Get a dictionary and look it up.’ He was amused Jonas had memorised it so well and was repeating it to him.

Krystupas finally looked up and pulled Jonas close to him. He ruffled the boy’s hair. It was a gesture from him that Jonas had always loved.

“No, I mean, ‘mysterious’ is easy to define. When we say something is mysterious, it means it is hard to explain.”

“Ah, like my teacher’s tests. My teacher’s tests are mysterious,” Jonas said with a naughty smirk.

“Exactly,” Krystupas said laughing. “You’re so smart. You got that from me.”

His phone suddenly rang. His friend, a professional tennis player from Belarus, Egor Milevskiy, was calling. He answered the call but wondered what it was about. He was not the type who hung out with fellow competitors when he was home and not in another country playing a tournament against them.

“Krys? Tell me I wasn’t imagining things…” he heard the agitated voice of Egor from the other line.

“What’s up?” he asked. “Yeah, it’s really me. This isn’t your imagination.”

Egor didn’t laugh at his attempt to joke. “Did you get it too?”

“Did I get what?” asked Krystupas. Something about the seriousness in Egor’s voice was sending shivers down his spine.

“The letter from Roland Garros. The… wait, you didn’t get it?” Egor asked. His voice sounded spooked.

Roland Garros or simply RG is how players sometimes call the French Open tournament. It is the second Grand Slam tournament in the tennis calendar, after Australian Open. Roland Garros is the venue of the tournament, hence, the nickname.

“I’ve just started sorting my e-mails. It must be in here somehow. Why? Any interesting rule change?” Krystupas asked.

“Uncle, can you tell him to just call later? I need to use your phone for my game,” Jonas interrupted their conversation impatiently. Krystupas laughed at Jonas quietly and mouthed “in a minute”. He waited for Egor to answer his question.

“You should check it yourself. I don’t know if I’m being pranked or if I’m imagining things. I’m never going to smoke weed again. I must be too high.”

“I’m with my nephew, bro. You might want to keep your voice down,” Krystupas said softly, almost whispering. He scrolled through his unread mails looking for an email from the French Tennis Federation, the organisers of the tournament. But he couldn’t find any.

“What did it say? I can’t find it,” Krystupas said.

“It just sounded… all weird. Eliminated can also mean dead, right? Or does my English comprehension just suck and I’m just scaring myself over nothing?” Egor asked.

“Yes, eliminated can also mean dead, but it depends on the context it is used.”

“The letter just sounded like a death threat, bro. ‘Failure to adhere to the rules shall result to your instant elimination’. It is so freaking spooky. Plus, it didn’t have the usual RG letterhead. It says WIC instead. It’s…”

Those were the last words of Egor Milevskiy before the line went dead. Krystupas found the whole conversation strange. He sent a message to Egor asking for a copy of the e-mail because it piqued his curiosity but Egor never responded.

“Uncle, can I have your phone now? Please?” Jonas pleaded.

As Krystupas handed Jonas his phone, his sister Agne suddenly came storming into the room.

“Open the TV, Krys. Oh my god. I can’t believe it!” Agne said to him. Her hand was shaking hard. “Have you heard? It’s all over the news. Oh my god! This can’t be real.”

As soon as Krystupas turned the TV on, he found out almost instantly what his sister was so shocked about. Levi Keller, considered the greatest tennis player of all time by tennis analysts all over the world, was found dead in his room. It was the headline in every news channel. Krystupas had barely spoken to Levi Keller but he considered him his tennis idol. Before Krystupas even went professional, he used to watch Keller’s matches as a little boy.

“Did they say how he died?” he asked. He suddenly remembered the word Jonas asked him about. Mysterious. This day has been turning out mysterious, he thought to himself. Was this what spooked Egor, Keller’s death? He couldn’t recall Egor mentioning Keller at all. He decided it was worth asking. He was about to type him another message but changed his mind. He saw that Egor hadn’t even read his previous message yet. He didn’t realise then that their phone conversation was the last he would ever hear from Egor…

***

“BREAKING NEWS: Levi Keller, a forty-year-old 20-time-Grand Slam tennis champion, was found dead in his home in Monte Carlo, Monaco. His wife, Mirka, said he was just on his computer and talking to her about the upcoming tennis tournament in Paris when he suddenly fell from his chair, dead. The cause of death is still being investigated until now, but there are speculations that he suffered from heart failure.”

Carmella Cortez turned off the television and did not bother to finish the news report. She avoided anything tennis-related since her brother’s disappearance. Her brother, Will Cortez, was the best American tennis player at the time of his disappearance. She felt frustrated that the Professional Men’s Tennis Association president at that time didn’t do enough to find him. Her brother wouldn’t vanish out of thin air. The association, in her opinion, should be held accountable for what happened. Her brother was a fifteen-year-old tennis prodigy, and he was at a tournament in St. Petersburg, Russia when he disappeared.

Their family hired their own detectives to help find him but to no avail. It has been ten years since. By the third year of Will’s disappearance, their parents had already given up hope that he would ever be found. They just presumed he was dead and held a small memorial ceremony in his honour. But Carmella hasn’t given up on him yet. She could still feel his presence. His last text which she had already memorised word for word made her believe he is still alive somewhere. His text said: “I am going to a sweet, sweet journey to the unknown, but I will be back someday, so don’t worry about me, sis.”

Will had a high IQ and was interested in mysteries, clues, and puzzles. He was also a firm believer in the existence of the supernatural. When she received that text, she didn’t think something was amiss. It was so Will to say those things.

But it was the last time she ever heard from him. The tournament staff said he couldn’t be found the next morning. All his stuff was still in his hotel room, but there was no sign of him anywhere. He missed his match that day and was never found again.

“It’s horrible, right? Levi Keller was a beloved tennis icon,” her friend, Brigitte said. “This is so, so tragic.”

Carmella felt like crying remembering the grieving face of Keller’s wife from the interview. At least you can give him a proper sendoff, she thought to herself, as if she were talking to Keller’s wife. I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye to my brother.

“Are you okay, Mela? You look sick,” Brigitte said, a hint of concern on her voice upon noticing the paleness of Carmella’s face.

“Yeah. I agree with you. This is so tragic. I bet they are still going to hold the French Open. That’s how heartless PMTA is,” Carmella said, bitterly.

“Well, yeah, that’s life. The show must go on, as always,” Brigitte said, shrugging. “Anyway, so, are you coming with us later to Michael’s place?”

“We’re too old for parties, don’t you think?” Carmella asked.

“No one is too old for parties. Unless it’s a kid’s party,” Brigitte laughed. “I wish you would get out of your house once in a while. I swear, if I don’t come here often, you wouldn’t have any human interaction in another hundred years.”

Carmella ignored the dig. She used to be very outgoing. When she was thirteen years old, she went to parties left and right. But she changed when Will went missing a year after. Most of her adolescent years were spent joining groups started by families of missing persons and conducting her own investigation about Will’s disappearance with the help of the internet and through contacting her brother’s old friends just to find out any lead to his whereabouts. She has never believed he was dead.

When Brigitte left, she reclined onto her seat. There were days when she was not thinking about her missing brother, but not today. Not after Levi Keller’s untimely passing. Suddenly, she noticed a red envelope on her table that didn’t seem to be there when Brigitte was around.

She instinctively picked it up. It had the letters WIC printed on it in bold. She opened the envelope and saw a letter addressed to her.

Where did it come from? And how did it get in her house? Did Brigitte put it on the table?

Dear Carmella,

I know where your brother is. If you wish to see him again, take the flight to Frankfurt, Germany. The plane ticket is provided for you. But let me remind you, this is strictly confidential. If you break the confidentiality of this agreement, you can say goodbye to your dear brother forever.

-WIC

Carmella trembled in fear. It had been ten years since Will vanished. Who would pull a prank on her now? And if it was a prank, why would they provide a flight to Germany? She felt dizzy just imagining a plane ride to another continent. She had never been outside the United States, where she was born and raised. But how could she pass up this chance? She would do anything to have her brother back.

She hugged herself thinking of other possibilities. What if this was a trap and she would literally be walking to her death if she took the flight?

Her eyes lingered on the picture of her brother on the wall. His immortalised fifteen-year-old face was smiling goofily at her as if daring her to find him soon.

Carmella decided she would go. It would be like a “journey to the unknown”, as her brother said in his last text. Going to another country, another continent, without knowing what lay ahead.

She picked up her phone sitting beside the book she was reading before Brigitte’s visit. She texted both of her parents: “You are the best parents ever. I love you so much. Always.”

Carmella felt a tear trickle down her face. She needed her parents to know how much she loved them both. She felt it in her gut that this trip might not just be a trip to finding her brother, but also losing her own life in the process.

But she knew Will was worth the risk. She knew she would do anything for him, including exchanging her life for his if she could…