Episode 12
648 Words
“Ch… Check mate…” Lidia said, “I… I think.”
Leo snapped out of his musings and looked down at the board.
“If you move your queen, I take it with my knight and if you cover with the bishop I check again with the rook,” she said, pointing at the pieces and looking at him expectantly.
He looked over the board and scratched his head, he lost in three moves no matter what he did.
“Yeah…” he said, “Well played.”
“Are you okay?” Lidia asked, “You aren’t playing like yourself and you are making lots of mistakes.”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Leo laughed, “I just haven’t been playing a lot recently, Ben’s got me playing this game called Skylair Online and its taking up way too much of my time.”
“I thought you wanted to be a chess master though?”
“I do…”
“So shouldn’t you be prioritising that?”
“Well… maybe, but Ben really wanted someone to play with and the game is pretty fun. It’s fine… really. I have all the time in the world to play chess once we’re out of high school, while we’re here I can just have fun with my friends.”
“I suppose,” she replied, not sounding convinced, “What was the name of the game?”
“Skylair Online. It’s a virtual reality multiplayer battle arena game, so you have teams of five people battling against each other. Everyone has different roles in the game. I play as a scout, so I have to run around trying to spot the enemy before they spot me and then Ben plays as a mage, so he has magic and stuff.”
Lidia nodded, looking like she was taking a mental note of everything he was saying.
They put the chess pieces back to their starting position and this time Leo took the first move.
“It was your archery tournament, thing, last weekend, wasn’t it?” Leo asked.
“Yeah.”
“Well, how’d it go?”
“I came forth.”
“That’s really good, unlucky though, just outside of the medals.”
“They only gave a prize to the winner.”
“Still, that’s really good.”
“Thanks. It wasn’t that big of a deal though.”
“Did you enjoy it though? That’s a the main thing.”
“Yeah.”
She smiled slightly and moved her knight.
“Are you going to give me more than a one sentence answer? Or am I going to have to extract a description out of you one piece at a time.”
“No. Defend your bishop.”
Leo rolled his eyes.
“Where was it?” he said and defended his bishop.
“It was just outside Timrun forest, they set up the targets on the trees so that you had to run through. You got points for accuracy and speed.”
“That sounds really cool.”
“You could join an archery club if you wanted to. Mine meets Thursday evening. If you wanted to. You wouldn’t have to join mine. You could join anyone. But mines probably the closest. If you wanted.”
Leo inwardly winced at the thought of how much he definitely couldn’t afford all the gear archery entailed.
“I think I’ve got my hands full at the moment with just chess and school and now Skylair,” he laughed.”
“Yeah. That’s probably for the best.”
She pouted slightly, just for a second, almost imperceptibly.
Leo moved his knight, taking a pawn and saying, “Check.”
Lidia scowled at the board, looking between him and the board like it had just offended her.
Leo smiled at her, “Gotta watch those forks, I’ll be taking that queen.”
She shook her head and moved her king, allowing him to pick up her queen and put it beside the board.
“You distracted me by talking about archery.”
“Well, you know, someone who is as clearly as washed up as me has to use every trick at their disposal, including misdirection.”
They played a few more moves before Lidia, unable to salvage the situation, knocked over her king.
Leo glanced over at the clock, “I don’t think we have time for another.”
“Yeah…”
Leo picked up the box for the chess set and they put the pieces away.
With the room returned to how they found it, they headed off to lessons just as the bell rang.
- Writer
