A Pivotal Match

Milan couldn’t help but scowl. He’d studied James’ photo, his matches—the many he’d won, the few he’d lost years prior—but hadn’t prepared for him to look just as smug, just as vainglorious in person.

James was wearing his usual posh, careless get-up: a sloppily buttoned white shirt, oxfords, a sleeveless jumper. There was a red crocosmia pinned to his lapel. It was overly pretentious, and Milan could tell that James knew this. He enjoyed that kind of skeptically critical attention.

They shook hands and sat. 

The board was set in starting position, but Milan still leant forward to study it, as if he could decipher his foe’s strategy before the game even began. It was an important day for the both of them. Winning this would be James’ crowning achievement, the final match within his age grouping; it would mark his entrance into the world of Opens. To win would mean the same for Milan, but he hoped it would mark a psychological fruition as well—his final opponent, the one he’d long dreaded, now behind him. No matter how many matches Milan had won prior, his obsession with James seemed to overshadow them; they weren’t the real matches. 

James opened with the Göring Gambit. Obnoxious prick. He caught Milan’s eye and smiled smugly before clicking his side of the clock, slowly. The whole game was like this. Not a second of respite, not a move which wasn’t a pointed taunt. As much as Milan hated James’ flaunting, he also revelled in it, as it urged him on and made him more aggressive in his middle game—though apparently this was all for naught. 

James had a mate in three, and there was no avoiding it.

Milan held his head in his hands, contemplating this failure, stalling in punching his side of the clock, when a shadow above caught his eye. One of James’ previous opponents, he couldn’t recall a name. Before even understanding the situation, he watched as the former opponent grabbed the clock, swung it, and bashed it into the back of James’ skull. 

Milan stared at his enemy, now slumped over the board, encircled by all the pieces he’d knocked askew. Blood was blossoming from the wound, coating the white pieces in crimson; Milan’s gaze held fixated on the droplets cascading to the floor, crumpling into the petals of the fallen crocosmia below.