"You are an awfully good looking boy," a man's voice spoke out the moment Sunny stepped through the door.
The man sat on the floor at the centre of the room –a well decorated room, one that looked like something from the real world, with miniature antiques lain on tables, books on shelves, flowers in vases, and an old traditional crystal chandelier hanging on the ceiling.
Between Sunny and the man was a low lying rectangular chabudai, with one end awaiting Sunny.
"Were we to meet elsewhere I would have mistaken you for a girl," the man said, with a chuckle, "but I doubt you haven't experiences the same all too often."
There was something eerie about it all. The ambience of the room felt wrong– too wrong. Everything in Sunny's body almost pleaded for him to not approach the man.
"Come on, have a seat, let us talk."
"No," Sunny replied, a certain defiance weighing heavy in his tone.
The room grew quiet for a moment before the seated man let out a laugh to break the tension.
"Oh, but I insist," He said, the room shifting with his word, until Sunny found himself seated opposite to the man.
The man was awfully good looking, beautiful even. He wasn't the kind of beautiful that was mistook for a girl like Sunny's, but he was still beautiful– unhumanly beautiful at that.
"Fancy a game, dear?" The man asked, a laid out chess board materialising on the chabudai before them, the black pieces facing Sunny.
Sunny looked at the man for a moment before gazing back down at the board.
"What is this?"
"Are you not familiar with chess?" The man's head tilted in confusion.
"Where am I? Who are you?" Sunny enquired.
"Aaah, I am someone that wishes to help you, my friend," the man answered, moving forward a pawn.
"By pulling me into...what, a chess game?" Sunny's brow raised.
The man did not answer, he instead signalled to the board, as though to mean if Sunny wanted an answer he had to play.
And play he did.
Without much thought behind the move, Sunny advanced a pawn.
"You are rather new to being a system user, SAGS takes pride in exploiting the likes of you. For what? You don't get anything of substance. The better you get at the job, the worse it gets for you." The man spoke as he assessed the board before advancing another pawn, taking control of the centre.
"How do you know this?" Sunny progressed a Knight.
"Let's say I'm rather knowledgeable," the man replied, "the path of the system user is difficult, under wrong leadership you will not succeed...I'm here because I want to guide you." He took Sunny's pawn using a bishop.
"I have a guide of my own." Sunny progressed another pawn, not paying much concentration to the game, only playing to make the man speak.
"Ah, yes, the calamity. Where was she while you were facing Runners on your own?" Another one of Sunny's pawns fell.
"I had agent protection," Sunny said as he progressed a pawn, unsure if it was even a valid argument to the point the man had given.
The pawn quickly fell to a white pawn. "Yes, that definitely helped you greatly when you lay on that street bleeding out."
Sunny went quiet for a moment before progressing his Knight. "You have a point, buy why me?"
"Why not you? I can help you so you can help many others. I have helped many others escape that organisation. And together, we can save the world."
Sunny's Knight was taken by the white queen, and for a moment, he hesitated. Maybe the man was right.
"I don't even know you, you think I'll just believe you? If you're such a hero where we're you when the Runners attacked?" Sunny's bishop progressed, taking down the white queen. "At least Luna came to help, late as she was."
The man looked at Sunny for a moment before letting out a chuckle, taking the bishop with his Knight.
"And you think you know Luna or Areste? You just met them and they immediately sent you out to fight anomalies. Can I tell you a secret, Sunny? SAGS won't bat an eye when you die." He leaned forward, gazing into Sunny's eyes. "In fact, they will take part directly in your death. You're like a sheep idolising a butcher."
Sunny's jaw tightened. The man did not lie, not once. Immediately trusting SAGS was idiotic. Still, Luna had saved his life twice and Moonlight had endangered herself to save him. Meanwhile this man had brought his to a location that did not exist to try manipulating him.
"What if I refuse?" Sunny progressed one of his last remaining pawns.
The man's Knight tore down the pawn immediately, with him holding eye contact with Sunny. "SAGS is a dangerous organisation."
"Dangerous to who– anomalies?" Sunny castled.
"There are things you do not even begin to comprehend, kid, SAGS cannot be left to raise its numbers and pose the threat it stands for," a white rook moved, "check."
"It stands for global security," Sunny cleared, moving his rook between his king and the white rook.
The man held his gaze on Sunny, an undeniable impatience on his face. His jaw clenched and eye twitched.
Sunny rose to his feet as he spoke, "I want to leave, if you want to help me, you'll allow me to think about it."
The man's gaze shifted from Sunny to the door behind him, as though signalling to it.
It felt wrong, the man had just spent all this time trying to convince Sunny, all so he would just let him leave? Was it some sort of trick? Sunny wondered as he walked toward the door.
Holding his breath, he pulled the door open.
"Of course."
The side through the door was the same room, with the man seated on the middle of the room and Sunny at the far end, looking through a similar door.
He looked back and indeed, there was another door at the other end of the room, a person standing behind it, with his head turned, only rich golden hair being visible– Sunny's rich golden hair.
His heart was racing. The man in the middle of the room looked at him, face void of any emotion.
Sunny huffed, he had ran through the same door into the same room so many times he'd lost count. He leaned over supporting himself on the knees, watching himself in the room ahead doing the same thing.
It was an impossibility.
It had to be a trick.
He took a book from a shelf and hurled it forward, at the other him. Something hit the back of his head about the same time it hit the other him on the front room.
Sunny turned, rubbing his head, finding the him from behind already turned, doing the very same, and the book on the floor before him.
"Checkmate," the man's voice spoke out, breaking Sunny's panting.
Sunny immediately felt a slight strain on his body, as though the air around him was getting denser, pressing against his skin.
Before he could react, a burst of light erupted before him– a nova– bright, nigh blinding. He was then stretched to an impossibility, something that defied truth, something that defied physics.
His very essence was stretched apart across a distance beyond imagination. He shouldn't have been conscious, he shouldn't have been alive, but he was.
His lungs existed in places so different that using them was an impossibility. He wanted to scream, but he couldn't. At the very moment, he was at the edge of non-existence. He was but a consciousness filled with nothing but pain, an utter, unimaginable pain. A pain that shouldn't exist, yet it did.
Sunny's body was stretched out so far that moving a finger would mathematically take aeons–if the nerves would even know where said finger was, or if he managed to somehow overcome the pain to try moving.