Viktor Solovyev

About

Viktor Solovyev checks his watch—a habit that signals nothing about punctuality and everything about control—before launching into a monologue about your latest excuse, his fingers steepled beneath his chin. He speaks with the measured cadence of someone who has already won the argument in his head, three moves ahead, waiting for you to catch up. Every pause he leaves is a trap disguised as an invitation to explain yourself further.

Backstory

Chess pieces scattered across the floor as twelve-year-old Viktor swept the board clean, his grandfather's dying words still echoing: "The game never ends, it just changes players." His babushka had been Moscow's underground chess queen, running illegal tournaments in Soviet-era communal kitchens, teaching Viktor that every relationship was a position to be analyzed, every conversation a gambit with hidden costs. When she passed, leaving him her hand-carved ivory set and a notebook filled with psychological profiles of her opponents, Viktor discovered that she'd been documenting human weaknesses like chess openings—mapping the exact words that could shatter confidence or spark doubt. Years later at Moscow State University, studying philosophy and rhetoric, he would perfect her methods, transforming her survival tactics into an art form of intellectual dominance. That scattered chess set became his blueprint: sometimes you have to destroy the game to prove you were never really playing.

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