"All I am asking is for you to go with me to see your auntie for one lunch. She had asked to meet her nephew." Melisa asked nicely.
"But mom…"
"Please. Just do this for your mother."
"Ugh… Fine."
"Thank you." Ming Yue Guang's mother had a smile of approval. If she did not have her son by her side after her husband had passed on, the lady would not have known what to do with herself. Ming Yue Guang was everything to his parents. "Let me message her back then."
The young man could tell that her mother missed her sister a lot. It must've been extremely tough on Melisa's part. After all, she had not them for twenty odd years, much less talk to them. Ming Yue Guang knew that his mother wanted his company and had said that his aunt had asked to meet him. That was why he had agreed to it in the first place. The boy did not have a good impression on his mother's side of the family and so, why should he give them face in the first place.
In the Tobion house, Melanie face lit up when she read the message that her sister, Melisa had sent her. A few months back, Melanie had heard from news that Ming Jiang Fei had passed away. At first, Gray's mother did not know why she felt that the name was so familiar. It was only after she had went back to visit her own family, did she recall her youngest sister's husband's name. Realising that her man had passed on, Melanie immediately started to investigate for Melisa's number. She had to check in on her own dear sister, even though Melisa had explicitly said that she had wanted to live a simple life.
"What is it?" Alex asked. He noticed a change in his wife's emotion.
"I will be meeting up with my sister in two days time."
"Why are you this happy over meeting up with Mary? Don't you see her like once or twice a week?"
"No dear, I am meeting up with Melisa. You do remember I have two sisters right?"
"What? Melisa? Didn't she say that she was going to cut off all contact with your family?"
"Yes. Her husband passed away a few months ago and only recently did I find out about it. That was why I approached her to see if she was alright."
Although there was a small hint of sadness, Alex's face did not show much change. He did not particularly care about anything outside of his family. "Well, did you tell Mary?"
"I did. She agreed to come along with me to Country Z for a day trip."
"Have fun then."
"I will."
…
For the entire afternoon, Sato had been teaching and refreshing his memory on chess with Byron. The old man was like a child that had many questions ready for Sato to answer. The boy's photographic memory was powerful in a way that he could remember everything from his past clearly. All the books and videos he had watched on chess came back to him very easily. The knowledge were as if it had been simply kept away in the drawer and all Sato needed to do was take it out of there.
The boy's ranking had spiked again, going beyond 3000 points rating. He was now a Grand Champion rank in the casual Blitz games. This was a crazy feat, since the young man had not lost a single game since he started playing with Byron by his side. Most of the time when his opponent was thinking, he would even take the opportunity to explain to Byron his course of action. It was essentially a casual session of chess to the young man. However, to the multitudes of players spectating Sato's games, the young man was an anomaly.
Not know to the old and young duo, Sato's crazy win streak had caught the eyes of players in the higher ranks. A dark horse had entered the top 0.01% world ranking and became a Grand Champion. His games were always played differently and there were close to zero mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes were actually traps used to regain the center field of the board and as a result, generate him enough tempo to win his opponents.
People on social media had started calling Sato, a Boa Constrictor. Once the young man grabbed onto his opponent, he would never let go until his opponent ran out of oxygen. It was a scary name for all players that encounter Sato. Although most of the time, people do not really care about the casual player ranking, this did not mean that reaching Grand Champion was an easy feat. It wasn't as professional players also play casually and so those non-professional players would have to eventually play against the pros.
For Sato's case, Byron had pointed out that his last opponent, before he had made it into the Grand Champion ranking, was the 10th in the world, Jovia Binks, the number one player in Country S. Sato was happy to see that he would finally be playing against a profession player. He focused his hardest out of the twenty odd games that he had played so far. In the end, in Sato fashion, he won in the last thirty seconds of the timer. The time pressure had added onto his opponent and eventually, Jovia made a mistake that Sato immediately capitalised on.
At the end of the game, Jovia Binks had messaged Sato personally to ask if he himself was a professional player that had created a new chess account. The young man replied humbly that he had only just yesterday gotten back into chess. Of course, the truth was jaw dropping for the number ten player in the world. Jovia had even asked why Sato was not playing in competitive, to which the boy said in the most speechless way possible.
"I was only playing chess to accompany my grandfather."