Defeat on the Chessboard
The Grand Duchess had lost at chess.
Chess. A supremely classic contest of minds, in which two players sit across a checkered board and use specially shaped pieces to eliminate one another's forces. To hear it described, it sounds like a simple enough game—just use your pieces to remove your opponent's. In practice, it was anything but.
It hadn't earned its reputation as a classic game of intellect for nothing. Every single move demanded that you forecast the next several moves before committing, and it was said that a match between chess masters could burn over four thousand calories. That alone told you just how much brainpower the game devoured.
One might well ask what chess was doing in a romance fantasy novel in the first place.
And yet there it was. Astonishingly, it existed. I couldn't tell you why—perhaps the author was simply a devoted chess fan.
In any case, chess existed in the world of The Crown Prince Wields a Sword too, and there were scenes depicting the protagonist, the Crown Prince, playing matches against various other characters. Each and every time, Mikhail Schuelgart rode his protagonist's plot armor to victory, and there was even an episode where the character who'd played against him declared, "What a magnificent mind you possess. I shall follow you," and became his subordinate on the spot.
But to return to the story that actually matters—mine and Rebecca's—the two of us had already played quite a lot of chess together. We were hardly commoners who'd never been exposed to games like this; we were both nobles raised on exactly this sort of pastime. Which is to say, there had never once been a situation where I needed to explain the rules to Rebecca.
Of course, among all those many games, there was not a single one I had lost.
Not one.
It wasn't that Rebecca was bad at chess. Quite the opposite—she was genuinely good. The Munchkin Young Lady had a razor-sharp mind, and she'd come within a hair's breadth of beating me more than once. Whenever she attacked with some completely unexpected move, I would sometimes feel my heart sink, wondering if this might finally be the day I lost.
And yet I had never lost, not even once. Part of it was that I'd been a devoted chess player long before I ever transmigrated into this body.
"And what outrageous blunder will Your Highness commit this time on your way to defeat?"
"..."
When I needled her pride like this, Rebecca—who was always brimming with the determination to crush me no matter what—had a habit of destroying herself. She'd cling to a winning position out of greed and throw the game away, or fail to notice a trap I'd left sitting in plain sight and lose outright. It had gone that way every single time until now.
"Laugh while you still can. Soon enough, you'll be begging my forgiveness."
But the fact that the forfeit had been changed to granting the winner a wish seemed to have stoked Rebecca's competitive fire, because this time she refused to take my bait.
Having grown considerably through her accumulated backslaps, she'd earned a round of applause.
"I can't even count how many times I've heard that line."
"..."
My bored response crumpled her face on the spot, and I pressed on with the follow-up strike.
"Seeing that ugly expression of yours, I'd say I'm winning today's game too."
"..."
"How many times have I told you that sort of face doesn't suit you, my lady?"
"...Just you wait and see."
With Rebecca's now-familiar third-rate villain line, the game began.
"...That's impossible."
And naturally, the result was my victory.
Rebecca sat there wearing the expression of someone whose soul had left their body. She had every right to. This time, I really had come close to losing.
As if she'd been taking private lessons from a professional chess tutor, her skill had improved enormously since I'd last seen her. The relentless pressure she kept applying had nearly overwhelmed me into outright defeat.
—You're floundering because you couldn't take a single Knight? How disappointing.
Once again, her psychological warfare, delivered at precisely the right moment, had been the deciding factor. From the moment she said that, Rebecca became obsessively fixated on my knight to a maniacal degree.
"...But I was supposed to win for sure."
I gazed down at her deflated form with something like pity. Whenever she made that heartbroken-puppy face, a wave of guilt would come crashing over me.
But if I gave in to that guilt, there was no telling what humiliation might follow. Losing was simply out of the question.
"...I'm going to fire you."
"...?"
The lady muttered quietly, drowning in the despair of defeat. I suddenly felt like the villain who had stolen a hardworking butler's livelihood.
...Surely not.
Shaking my head to dispel the thought, I stepped closer to Rebecca.
"...Why are you coming closer?"
Her voice brimmed with wariness, eyes narrowed as if she'd bite me if I took one more step. Paying it no mind, I closed the distance until I was right beside her.
"My lady, do you remember what I said before we started playing?"
"Nope. Doesn't ring a bell."
Rebecca shook her head rapidly, as if nothing at all came to mind. It was honestly a rather adorable sight—but the world of competition demanded a clear head.
"We agreed that the loser grants the winner's wish."
"..."
Sooner or later, the moment always comes when a person must honor what they promised.
Seeing that her feigned ignorance wasn't working on me at all, Rebecca changed tactics and began heaping abuse on me instead.
"Y-you shameless scoundrel. What exactly do you intend to do to me?"
"Shameless, to your own fiancé? The Valencia Ducal Household servants would love to hear that one."
"Are you planning to unleash the dark desires you've hidden all this time?"
"...From me?"
Frankly, it was a little absurd. I was fairly sure the lady was simply spewing whatever came to mind, desperate to avoid having to grant my wish.
And here I worked so hard to never give anything away.
I had carefully buried my feelings for Rebecca, terrified that she might notice them—and now she was accusing me of harboring "dark desires." Absurd was the only word for it.
"I'd love to know on what evidence you're basing this."
"You're my fiancé, and I'm this beautiful. There's no way you don't harbor feelings like that."
What a supremely confident statement. Only Rebecca—armed with both the fact of her own beauty and the self-regard to match—could have said it. I didn't bother arguing the point, either. It was true that Rebecca was beautiful, and it was equally true that I harbored feelings for her.
But if I indulged the lady's tantrum now, the hard-won victory in that chess match would have meant nothing.
"My lady."
I addressed her, my voice deliberately bland.
"Is performing the forfeit really so distasteful to you?"
"..."
Her lips trembled faintly, as if she wanted to shout yes, exactly that this very instant—but her dignity and pride as a lady wouldn't let the words out. And as I always had, I used that against her.
"If you truly hate it, I could pretend this never happened."
"...Really, you'd—"
"Of course, that means next time I lose to you, I might behave exactly as you're behaving now."
Rebecca's face had brightened for a moment at the hint of mercy, then promptly fell again at my follow-up. She would never accept that offer. Having to grant a wish I asked for would be worse than death for her—but having nothing at all to show for beating me would be even worse. She was the Grand Duchess Rebecca Valencia, after all. If she were the kind of person who'd accept such a proposal, I never would have brought it up in the first place.
"That's..."
Just as I'd predicted, Rebecca reacted with that's not quite fair, actually.
"Then no more complaints. Perform the forfeit."
"..."
I drove the wedge in before she could recover.
Rebecca agonized for a long while, caught between carrying out the forfeit now and savoring the sweetness of victory later—and finally,
"...What is your wish, then?"
she asked, as though she had no other choice. The expression on her face—a flawless blend of I truly don't want to do this and but I have no choice—was exquisitely subtle.
"Pfft."
I burst out laughing. I couldn't help it.
"...What's so funny?"
Rebecca's voice went glacial, as only natural. Caught off guard by the sudden chill that had fallen over the room, I had nonetheless spent three years at Rebecca's side and long since learned the proper protocol for situations like this.
"It's nothing."
"..."
I knew perfectly well that in moments like these, the best strategy was to plead total ignorance.
Rebecca glared at me with undisguised displeasure, but I turned my head away from that searing gaze. And so the lance of her burning stare and the shield of my oblivious head-turning fought a protracted battle, until at last Rebecca sighed in defeat and spoke.
"Haah... I can't believe this is the man I'm engaged to."
"I know perfectly well that you love it, my lady."
Zzzt—
Her look demanded to know how I dared let that one slide. The lady's eyes were razor-sharp, but in contrast, her voice had gone utterly dejected.
"...Just tell me your wish already."
I had a premonition that if I teased her any further, I wouldn't see Rebecca's face for a solid week—so I stopped stalling.
"Give me a kiss on the cheek."
"...I'm sorry, what?"
Rebecca made the face of someone certain she'd misheard. Unfortunately for her—
"One kiss on the cheek for the fiancé you love so dearly would be most appreciated."
—the lady's ears were in perfectly working order.