Somewhere in a distant story
"Excellent move" Shinki as Mike had just taken one of his rooks with his knight.
Shinki moved his bishop, Mike moved his queen. The game continued for a while longer until Shinki, by changing his pawn to a queen, put Mike's king in checkmate.
"Ah…" blurted Mike, his gaze blank.
Shinki laughed for a moment seeing his opponent's devastated expression.
"Don't make such a devastated face, my dear Mike" he said. "It was an excellent game, you just still have a little way to go"
In the corners of the room, servants and guards were sweating and turning their heads away. However, their gaze always ended up being drawn towards the gaming table located in the center, but also and above all to the strange spheres which gravitated above.
"Well even though it was nice, orders are orders and rules are rules, so I can't avoid your punishment" Shinki said smiling.
He snapped his fingers and one of the spheres suddenly fractured and shattered.
"Good, now that that's done, you can escort him to his room" he told the guards.
They took Mike back to his room and went out, closing the door behind them.
Mike put his head in his hands: how had he gotten to this point?
About two years ago
It all started when he woke up in a place he didn't know, after being kidnapped by Noir. Waking up, he took a few minutes to regain his senses but then he didn't think more than that directly and started running through large corridors, looking for the exit from the place where he was.
Along the way, he passed several servants and guards, but none of them tried to stop or attack him. He managed to find an exit door, wide open, and almost went through it... stopping just in time to avoid falling into the void.
"Wow, was a pretty close call, wasn't it?"
Mike turned around and saw a thin man, and at first glance almost as tall as Frey, wearing strange red and white clothes, with a crown-shaped bracelet on his wrist.
"Welcome, my dear guest" he said, walking towards Mike. "Let me introduce myself, I am-"
He couldn't finish his sentence because Mike, still dazed, had reflexively taken a step back when he saw him moving towards him, and had slipped, falling into the void. Mike tried to imagine an airplane like he had done earlier, but he was far too dizzy and scared to apply himself, and could do nothing but pray.
However, his fall stopped, and he felt himself being pulled back up by a strange force. He realized that what he had just fallen from was in reality a huge castle floating in the void.
"Haha, another close call" the man in red and white said humoristically. "You're going to have to be a little more careful when you're on the edge. My castle may be very good, but it lacks a mechanism to prevent falls, I will really have to work on that"
As he said this, he moved his index finger and Mike was finally brought back into what he now knew was the preamble to the castle. The man spoke again:
"Enchanted, I am the king of all the worlds that make up this story, King Shinki" he said. "But as a valued guest, you can call me Shinki and use familiarity, I don't mind"
Shinki? It sounded a bit like a Japanese name, but he and his subjects nonetheless looked more like Europeans or Americans than Asians. Mike replied:
"Uh, thank you, looking lost. I'm sorry, but I just woke up in the middle of this castle and didn't know how. You... uh, could you please tell me what I'm doing here, Shinki?"
"Haha, of course" Shinki replied.
Mike felt a bit more reassured. Maybe this guy wasn't so bad after all.
"It was my master, Noir, who sent you here after capturing you" Shinki said as if it were completely normal. They asked me to take care of a certain human and play some games with him. You guessed it, that human is you, congratulations"
Not so reassuring, after all. Mike started to sweat profusely.
"You... you're with Noir" he said with a frightened look.
"Yes, that's what I just said, sorry to disappoint you" Shinki replied, keeping his smile. "But don't worry, you'll only have to play once a day and I'll let you go after just one win, easy right? I'll even give you some information about him, I promise it on my master's name"
Mike didn't answer, too busy trying to find a solution to escape. Obviously he failed, the opposite would have been surprising.
"Well, it wouldn't be fair if you play and lose in this state, so I'll give you until tomorrow afternoon to prepare for the first game" Shinki said. "Well, now that it's said, I'll let some of my retainers help you get settled, see you tomorrow, Mike.
A guard and two servants took charge of escorting him to this famous room, although Mike suspected that the guard was only there for form, given how helpless he was at that moment.
Once he arrived, Mike was pleasantly surprised to see how spacious the room was: it was about one and a half times larger than his apartment in the Prime World, and included a bathroom and a small kitchen, as well as a window to the exterior of the castle.
In terms of furniture, there was a desk with a lamp and a computer, a large, soft-looking bed covered in neatly laid sheets, a dresser with an alarm clock on it, a closet with some clean clothes, and a small bookcase filled with 'around sixty books on various subjects. After letting him shower and change, the servants collected his dirty and torn clothes and left with them.
Mike didn't know if they were going to wash them or throw them away but given their condition and his situation, it didn't bother him that much. He quickly tried the computer and confirmed that he had access to the Internet.
Of course, as was to be expected, the functionality was different from that of the Primary World Internet, and he probably wouldn't be able to contact anyone for help. However, there still seemed to be plenty of options, so Mike had the luxury of playing a few rounds of different online games.
It wasn't that he was no longer aware of the seriousness of the situation, but rather that he needed to relieve the pressure after having done all this action at once. After a little over an hour of play, the pressure had finally subsided, giving way to immeasurable fatigue.
Mike crawled into bed, got under the covers and closed his eyes.
Mike opened his eyes to hear the alarm ring, which was quite pleasant despite being at a high volume. Mike turned off the alarm and looked at the time to realize that it was already 11:40 in the morning. He stopped playing around 8:13 p.m., which meant he slept for over fifteen hours straight!
Thinking about it, Mike was quite surprised that no one woke him up, considering he was still a prisoner. Or was Shinki telling the truth when he said Mike was a guest? Could he really walk away like nothing happened if he just managed to win a single game? Mike didn't know, but it seemed too good to be true.
However, he had no choice but to follow Shinki's instructions while waiting for more information. He saw that a breakfast consisting of a croissant and orange juice had been placed on his desk, which he hurriedly took. He then left his room, without anyone calling out to him or trying to stop him. He wandered the corridors and other accessible areas of the castle for a while, hoping to find something that could help him.
He found nothing, but consoled himself with the magnificent view that we had from certain places. He also noticed a little boy in a servant's uniform following him with his gaze at one point, but didn't pay much attention to him. Then he returned to his room, where a meal tray had been placed on the window sill, as well as a note:
'Mike, I hope you had a good first night, that you like your room and that you like it here in my castle. Please join me around 2 p.m. to start our first part. I will wait for you in the game room in the center of the castle.
Sincerely, your friend Shinki'.
It at least had the merit of being clear, Shinki had no intention of harming him, at least according to what he said. But no matter how much Mike thought, even if he had only met Noir once, it didn't fit the character at all to just send him on vacation. Since it was almost time, Mike stopped worrying about nothing and made his way to the center of the castle, entering the game room just before it was 2 p.m.
"Hey Mike, you're already there? You're a good minute ahead, excellent mentality" Shinki said with an encouraging smile.
Mike couldn't guess whether he was fooling around or not, so he just walked into the room. It was a simple place, with just a table in the middle, surrounded by two chairs, with thousands and thousands of tiny glowing orbs floating above. There were also a few guards and servants in the corners, but Mike's attention fell on Shinki, sitting on one of the two chairs:
"Come sit down quickly, so we can start the game and have fun!" Shinki shouted enthusiastically.
Mike sat down in the empty chair, apprehensive about what was going to happen. But Shinki simply snapped his fingers and different board games, almost all of which Mike knew, appeared on the table.
"For our game, you can choose any of these" Shinki said. "You can also create one using what's here, and if the rules are fair, we can play it. Also, I've seen you tense since earlier, don't stress yourself out too much, you won't have any problems even if you lose."
I guess, replied Mike, who had relaxed slightly.
He chose the game of "power four" and they both began to play. The game was close but in the end, Shinki ended up winning by aligning four tokens of the same color.
"Haha, looks like I won" he said to Mike. "But don't worry, as promised, nothing will happen to you."
Mike finally felt reassured. He would be able to take a few days of vacation before going to meet his friends, in great shape and with, as a bonus, important information. He just had to find a game where he could beat Shinki.
"Besides, that makes me think, I still haven't explained to you what these little things are that have been flying above us since earlier, have I?" Shinki asked.
"Um no, I don't think so" Mike replied.
"As I told you, I am the king of all the worlds that make up this story, said Shinki. Well, speaking about these worlds in question, they all are grouped together there, just above us"
"Eh!?" Mike shouted.
"Yes, it's crazy, huh? Well technically, they're just miniature representations, but they're connected to the real ones, so it's the same thing, since whatever happens to them here, will also happen to the real ones" Shinki said.
He held out his finger towards one of the worlds, which came to lodge itself in the palm of his hand.
"Each of these worlds is a universe with different properties: there is one where there is only the color pink, one where absolutely everything smells of lemon, one where everyone is invisible, one which exists outside of time, and even one where the smallest thing is bigger than this castle. It's crazy, right?" he asked Mike.
Mikenodded.
"Finally, these small spheres are about as difficult to affect as the full-size universes, so the fact that they are connected to them is not very important" Shinki said. "Well, that doesn't concern me"
Shinki clenched his fist lightly and the sphere exploded, taking with it the universe linked to it.
"Why did you do that?!" Mike shouted, trying to get up, but the guards came over in an instant and forced him to sit down again.
"Why? What do you mean, 'why'?" Shinki repeated with an innocent look. "I said you wouldn't be punished in case of defeat, not that there would not be consequences."
At these words, Mike finally understood where he had landed: hell disguised as paradise.