✔️ Body and Mind 3

Chess Worlds

Yuzuru was leafing through yet another magazine, hoping to see an article about Anya again when his heart suddenly skipped a beat seeing her name mentioned as a co-author on one of the publications.
Yet the reason why he was so surprised was when the author of the article just by the way mentioned that between her MIT studies and a CERN work she is also going to attend the Worlds at chess this year.
He quickly checked the date and saw that the Worlds were already last week.

Yuzuru darted to the bedroom to fetch his notebook and couldn't believe that he has actually missed it. She didn't participate in the Worlds or any other major competition in the past two years, but he still thought he would have known if she actually started to play again this year and qualified. On the other hand, he had to admit his surprise should not be justified considering he barely ever thought of her or followed her in the past months.

He quickly began to google the competition and after a while finally found a recorded stream.
Yuzuru settled on the sofa and again listened to the same voice belonging to the same commentator like almost three years ago when Anya was at the Grand Prix.
He sped up through the initial player introductions until he got to Anya.

"And here we have our latest addition among the legendary Grandmasters. Only twenty-four-year-old Anya Fraser. She took a break from chess tournaments for the past two years to focus on her studies but ever since she came back, she showed us all that she definitely didn't get rusty. Except for this season's Grand Prix where she took second place after Magnus Carlsen, she has won every other competition she participated in. Finally increasing her rating and becoming a Grandmaster, currently being among the Top Five best players in the World. But if you would ask me, she should have been there already years ago. This was all long overdue."

Yuzuru listened to the commentator with his mouth open, not believing that Anya is finally a Grandmaster, and darted from his sofa once more, this time fetching his wallet and looking for a pen.

He took out the little folded paper of her goals and made a tick sign next to the line "To become a Grandmaster" and a wave of happiness and pride spread all over his body as he did that.
He turned his attention back to the screen but unable to wipe the wide smile off of his face.

Yuzuru began to skip through the stream to watch just her matches and even though the first ones were rather fast he, in the end, decided to go just to the very final one, seeing that she made it to the finale, being it just her and Magnus.
He would like to watch also the previous ones, but when he started to notice the feeling of longing he felt seeing her on the screen as she was unconsciously wrapping her index finger around her braid or just closed her eyes to think with a little smirk at the corner of her lips anytime the endgame was approaching, he knew it would be for the best just not to watch any further.

He clicked on the last video in the list, titled Fraser vs Carlsen, and went to make himself a cup of camomile tea, seeing that the video had four hours.
And as he stood in the kitchen, waiting for the water to boil, he really hoped he will be able to handle looking at her face for so long, without going back to the place where he was after his mum's unexpected visit.

Yuzuru settled on the sofa and finally hit the play button, making a little quiet prayer that she would win, so he could tick yet another thing off of her list.
But most of all, he just simply wanted to see her win.
He wanted to make sure, like he did so many times before, that he did the right thing.
That Anya will again prove to him, that her career and dreams are better off without him.

Considering the length of the video, he was quite surprised to see that they began the game rather quickly. Both Anya and Magnus making their moves without any obvious pondering.
The commentator, therefore, reduced his remarks to merely naming the moves they are doing, and only once they got to the mid-game, their moves have finally slowed down and the commentator yet again started to chip in with some interesting facts.
Yuzuru quickly increased the volume to the maximum, to make sure he catches every little detail.