The endgame phase.

This was the stage where everything was blurry, where any move each player made was like standing between a shady line of brilliancy or a blunder. Unfortunately, Anna, trying to be smart here, stepped on the wrong land. She wanted to avoid a draw, just to walk straight into the defeat path.

The blunder she made wasn't that obvious. No, she just wanted to reroute her rook back from the eighth rank to the first rank so that it could protect the promotion square. However, the steps she took were too long, and Sheva's pawn managed to sneak into the second rank, one square away from getting promotion.

In the end, while her rook managed to come in time to prevent the promotion from happening, now her rook was also cornered on the edge of the board, getting forced into two choices that would lead her into her own death scene in the next few moves. It was either her sacrificing her rook for the pawn, letting Sheva get the advantage of a rook and a knight against her two pawns, or she sacrificed her rook for Sheva's rook, yet allowing the boy to get a queen as the consequence.

The two choices were definitely the worst possible outcomes for her.

'Come on, Big Sis… Don't give up yet…' Claudia bit her lips nervously, unconsciously leaning closer to her sister. 'Just make a move first! Your time is almost gone!'

Yeah, besides the dire situation she was currently in, the girl also faced another troublesome problem, and that was her time control. She burned a lot of time in the last few minutes, and since the game was a normal rapid without increment, no matter how many moves she made, the girl wouldn't get any additional time. As a result, now, the time left for her was only 00:41 compared to Sheva's 02:12.

Honestly, Claudia knew that her sister didn't stand a chance against Sheva. Well, not from the start, of course, but once the game entered the crucial stage, she had a hunch that something big would happen that would change the direction of the game drastically. True enough, Anna made a blunder that even made Claudia widen her eyes at how bad it was.

This was also not going to be the first time the girl saw her big sister losing a game. Hell, during the earlier stage of her career, Anna lost more games against adults than she could've ever counted. However, just for this game… Claudia didn't really want to see her big sister lose just for this game.

Unfortunately, fate was a cruel mistress. All the hopes that the girl and her sister had were diminished very quickly by Sheva's decisive blow. It seemed that the boy himself wanted to win too. After seeing Anna sacrifice her rook for the pawn, he managed to navigate both rook and knight together, taking the last two pawns that Anna had before starting to land the final attack.

As she was about to get checkmated, though, Anna suddenly took a heavy breath, straightening her back while also staring at Sheva complicatedly. "Good game, Shev." She suddenly offered a handshake, letting her clock run until it was over. Yeah, in the end, she couldn't find any way to get out of her terrible position and resigned from the game.

Sheva accepted the handshake, and somehow, after doing that, a huge pressure seemed to be lifted off his shoulder. He himself had never expected it. After all, his main purpose here was to test Anna's current level. However, what the boy hadn't noticed yet was that this was his first ever win against Anna, and this was some sort of validation that indeed, he had already improved that much during the three months since he started playing chess.

Of course, not everyone was ecstatic about his win. In fact, even though Anna had some sort of acceptance of this result, Claudia couldn't feel the same way here. Her eyes were red and teary, and she tried to hold back tears from running down her face. This made Sheva a little bit guilty here, as he seemed to be the villain in this situation. Knowing that he had to defuse the tension, he coughed a little before he started speaking.

"So, do you know why you lost the game?" He asked seriously.

Anna frowned, knowing that it was time for them to analyze the game. She pondered for a moment before reaching a conclusion. "It is the rook move after I refuse the draw offer, right?"

However, to her surprise, Sheva shook his head quickly. "No, no, no, let's not talk about moves right now, but be a little bit more general. What do you think failed you the most in the last game? Your defense? Your attack? Your strategy?"

This time, Anna really thought hard, wanting to figure out what Sheva wanted to say. Not only her, but even Bagas and Claudia also did the same. Even though those two were not on the same level as Anna and Sheva—especially Bagas, who was not a pro—that didn't mean they didn't want to join the fun.

In the end, though, it was Anna herself who came up with the answer, but this time, her complicated expression was back. "It is my hesitation in the face of risk, right?" She finally said.

"To be more exact, it is your risk management," Sheva confirmed with a nod. "There are a few times when I made subtle mistakes that you should've just punished me decisively, yet in the end, you hesitated and chose the safe option. It was like this when I took your bishop here, and when I threatened your knight here."

Anna couldn't help but nod, especially when Sheva showed the moves with his own phone. There, she could also see in the particular move that the boy pointed out, the evaluation bar indeed moved slightly in her direction, indicating that Sheva truly made a subtle, inaccurate move to give her a chance, yet in the end, she went for a safer option, which only turned the game back into a tie once again.

"As for the reason I said that what let you down is your risk management, and not your hesitation, well, it is related to your last blunder." Anna couldn't help but wince at Sheva's words, clearly remembering the slip due to her recklessness in the endgame. "Honestly, I still find that it is strange, you know? You avoided taking risks at all costs during the middle game, yet once everything was stable and it was as if the game itself would end up in a draw, you took the riskiest move possible on the board, which led you to defeat against me. My question is, what were you trying to achieve at that moment?"

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