FINAL NIGHTS
Hiuma Kagamizu arrived at the hotel just as one of his junior 3-dans had almost finished checking in at the front desk.
Walking up behind him, Hiuma said in a friendly tone, “Hi.”
“Oh, hello.”
A big, unfamiliar city. Already under the immense pressure that comes with the night before the final day of matches in the 3-dan division, seeing Hiuma’s face was the first ounce of relief the young 3-dan had felt all day.
Kansai Sub League members started a tradition of staying in Shinjuku whenever they had to journey to Kanto decades ago. Many still carry it on to this day.
Now that he had been coming here for over 20 years, the staff at the Shinjuku Park Hotel knew Hiuma so well that he could check in with little more than a nod.
Despite not making any plans to meet and with each person traveling to Tokyo on their own, the Kansai Sub League members staying at the hotel gathered together as if guided by an unknown force.
Therefore, it has become standard for the Kansai players to eat together the night before the final matches.
Though all 3-dans may be in Tokyo this night, steps have always been taken to ensure that Kansai players never meet head-to-head on the final day. However–––.
“Did you hear that the association set up hotels for Sora and Kunugi? They’ve even got their own attendants. I get that they’re famous an’ all, but how is that fair? You’re the one with the best record, Mr. Kagamizu, so you should be the one that ……”
“Easy there.”
With their nerves settling and a hot meal in their stomachs, the 3-dans began voicing their misgivings about the unique arrangements made for Ginko Sora and Sota Kunugi.
Hiuma did his best to quell their frustration by saying as gently as possible, “Ginko is a high school girl and Sota is still in elementary school, yes? They need someone to watch out for them.”
His words, however, did little to convince the 3-dans.
One sitting at a different table slammed his fist down.
“These match ups… it’s just not fair! All of us have traveled all this way, so why–––!”
“Not another word.”
Hiuma silenced his junior with authority.
“For Ginko, Kunugi and even Mr. Karako, getting this much attention …… constantly being in the spotlight can’t be a walk in the park.”
Hiuma empathized with the group rather than spurned their anger.
–––We’re the ones that get trodden over at every turn ……
It may have been part of their training, but Sub League members were often required to serve as errand runners or do odd jobs. The Shogi world was built on professionals exploiting Sub League members.
The only reason they put up with that treatment was because the professionals had once been Sub League members themselves.
–––Fairness trumps all else in the Sub League. Anyone who doesn’t abide by it gets shunned by the rest.
The very fact that they were required to travel to Kanto for the final day was enough to draw the ire of Kansai Sub League members.
…More than a decade ago…
Hiuma Kagamizu, a native of Kyushu who had only known the Kansai Shogi Association, first made the trip to the Kanto Shogi Association in Sendagaya when he joined the 3-dan division.
What if I get lost on the way ……?
A terrified Hiuma went to one of his seniors looking for reassurance, “Um, may I ask you something? How do you get from Sendagaya Station to the Kanto Association building?”
Hiuma would never forget the answer he received that day for the rest of his life.
“Just look fer guys that look like Sub Leaguers an’ follow ’em!”
–––I thought he was joking, but that really is how I found the place.
He held back a grin as he looked out over his fellow 3-dans.
Unhealthy, pale skin. Glasses. Checkered clothing.
Out-of-style haircuts and brandless second bags.
Fighting the flow of businessmen walking to the station, they drift toward the shrine as if refusing to go along with the rest of society.
Those are Sub League members.
A bit dark, earnest, perverse and yet pure, they are lone wolves who care for little else than their own improvement.
And right now those Sub League members were singing Hiuma’s praises.
“Please promote, Mr. Kagamizu!”
“It wouldn’t be right, you not getting into the pros!!”
“Go show them what the Sub League is made of!!!”
Hiuma was genuinely touched, seeing his juniors bear their passion and applaud him as they fought back tears, and felt heat building up in the pit of his chest.
“You guys ……”
This is what it means to be in the Sub League.
—To be gritty and stubbornly strong …… but also to live out a more intense youth than anyone else while maintaining more purity than everyone else.
And Hiuma was proud to have been part of it. In fact, he felt sorry for Ginko and Sota for not having a chance to experience this for themselves.
–––Win or lose …… tomorrow is my last day as a Sub League member.
In that case, I’ll fight for all these guys, he swore to himself.
Ginko collapsed into bed the moment she walked into her hotel room.
“…………… Hot …………”
Body feeling like lead, she had a fever that refused to break.
The 3-dan division matches two weeks prior had pushed her to her physical limit, but going to the summer festival immediately afterward and getting rained on certainly didn’t help her situation.
A cold had made her life miserable ever since.
The fatigue wouldn’t go away. However her mind had been in continuous overdrive. No matter how she tried to rest her weary body, sleep never came. Her already weakened physical state only worsened day by day.
–––…… Why won’t my brain turn off ……? It’s been going on and on …… So much more than ever before ……
The journey, however, had taken so much out of her that Ginko fell face first into bed at her hotel without bothering to change out of her uniform.
That was when the phone she had absentmindedly dumped next to her pillow began to buzz.
“……!”
Practically jumping up from the comforter, she answered it immediately.
–––Could it be …… Is he… worried about me ……?!
“Ms. Sora, I will be arriving to escort you to the Shogi Association early tomorrow morning. Please be ready at 7:30. Sota Kunugi will be in a separate car, so please don’t worry. Do you have any questions?”
It was just someone from the association.
Ginko was so exhausted that she couldn’t keep up with what the man on the other end was saying to her. Worse, she was disappointed. So very disappointed ……
“…… Miss Sora? Is the schedule all right?”
“……………… Doufu …………”
“Huh? What did you say?”
Asked to repeat herself, Ginko felt even lonelier than before. He would’ve understood.
“…… Yes. That will be fine.”
“Then I bid you good night. Sleep well.”
Phone call… finished.
Ginko chided herself for getting her hopes up, even for a moment.
“He-he ………… How stupid. The rules were changed to prevent players in the title match from any form of communication after sealing move, remember ……?”
Setting the phone back down next to her pillow, Ginko decided she should at least put on pajamas and sat up.
Doing so made her feel something in her pocket.
“Hm? This is …… The pipsqueak’s printout?”
Since she hadn’t had a reason to put on her uniform since the last day of Sub League regular activities, the paper she put in her pocket during the summer festival was still there. Her school had resumed classes after summer vacation, but she had yet to attend any of them.
–––Maybe I should just drop out of school ……
Though she knew it was depression setting in, she had lost the mental capability to think about anything except Shogi long ago. Both her mind and body were running on fumes.
–––…… And still my brain won’t be quiet …… Why ……?
Her greatest fear now was her heart, the bomb encased in her rib cage since birth. The one saving grace was that her body had always warned her just before it went off.
The difference now was that she utterly refused to go to the hospital.
–––There’s a chance the doctors would force me to stop, just like Mr. Karako said ……
Forfeit and it would all be over. Desperate to avoid that at all costs, Ginko had spent the last two weeks convalescing at her parent’s house.
Only her parents, who had faced death with their daughter many times before, wouldn’t object to Ginko chasing her dream no matter how much she suffered in the process.
Instead they told her stories about her past, recounting the days when Ginko first learned how to play Shogi.
–––After one more day …… it will all be over after two more matches ……
Looking for even a moment of relief from the pain, Ginko unfolded Ai Hinatsuru’s Shogi puzzle and solved it once more.
“Reverse Check and idouai ………… Heh. As if it would ever happen in a real match.”
Then, she turned the paper over to look at the puzzle Ai drew out by hand.
…… 10 minutes …… 20 minutes …… 30 minutes …………
Time flew by as she sat with her eyes glued to the puzzle, but–––.
“………………… Difficult. Did this actually happen in a match?”
A sickening feeling overtook her as the minutes passed by without finding the answer. Ginko put the puzzle down on the bed and stood up.
She then made her way over to her room’s large window.
“Stars …… There aren’t any at all.”
The sky over Tokyo was a black void. Try as she might, Ginko couldn’t find a single twinkle no matter where she looked.
So she looked down over the city instead.
Gazing in the direction of the hotel where the Crown Title Match was taking place, she whispered his name.
“…… Yaichi …………”
The person Ginko wanted to see more than anyone else in the world was framed somewhere within the boundaries of this window.
All the emotions she had kept at bay burst forth all at once. Lamenting, Ginko pressed her cheek against the window’s cold glass.
Then she cried out like a helpless infant, just as she had the day she promoted into the 3-dan division.
“…… Yaichi ………… I’m scared. Save me …………”
She wanted him to be at her side.
To feel his arms around her like that night.
To free her weak self from the living hell that her life had become ……!
He had always appeared before her whenever she made that wish in the past. It was miraculous, as if the Shogi gods had performed that miracle just for her.
That’s exactly what happened the day she became a 3-dan. It was the first time she beat Sota, but it was her superior opponent’s overconfidence that spelled his demise.
–––Miracles happen once, no matter how strong the players are. That’s how Shogi is.
“But …… you can’t make the second miracle happen on your own. Isn’t that right, Yaichi?”
Walking back to her bed, Ginko refolded the printout and gently slipped it back into her pocket like a good luck charm.
From there, she opened her travel bag but took out an envelope rather than pajamas.
The words sorry to bug you were written in barely legible chicken scratch on the outside. Ginko opens the flap and finds a nameless match record inside.
That, and a photograph taken more than 10 years ago.
Yaichi Kuzuryu sat alone in the middle of the rug on the floor of the Western-style room that was assigned to him.
…Wearing nothing but a bathrobe.
“……! ………… ugh ………………… khh …………!!”
Body swaying rhythmically back and forth, he grunted every few breaths.
It was a bizarre sight to say the least.
Taking off his kimono after returning to the room, he had ordered a quick dinner via room service and taken a hot shower. However, his thoughts turned to the board formation when he made his sealing move before he got around to drying his hair.
–––Now! This is the move that will decide the whole match!!
As he was the one to issue the sealing move, he could see one move further into the future than his opponent, Yo Okito.
He wasn’t simply daydreaming about what could happen.
Yaichi was using a board that only existed in his mind to determine whether or not he could reach checkmate in the late game.
“Pant ……! Gasp ……! Paaant …………!!”
Only opening his eyes to take a bite of his meal or gulp down several mouthfuls of water at once, Yaichi stayed sitting on his ankles, never once getting up from the rug as he worked through every sequence he could find.
Solving extremely long sequence Shogi puzzles with only a mental Shogi board is no easy task.
Unlike those puzzles, however, there was no guarantee that a checkmate existed in a real match. Reading this deep carried a great deal of risks.
It may all be for nothing. The fatigue could take its toll and rob him of any chance to play respectable Shogi on the second day of the match.
Even so, Yaichi kept reading as if to drive out any lingering emotions.
“Wheeew––––––………… I know I’m really close ……… But that last little bit …… is so …… far away …………”
Casting his gaze up at the ceiling, Yaichi muttered his first words in hours.
The young man had decided to rely more on analog training styles, Shogi puzzles and playing through match records in order to prepare for this title match.
Yaichi had been solving puzzles with his live-in apprentice, Ai Hinatsuru, ever since the day she moved in with him. However, they competed with speed.
Though Yaichi could hold his own in match-themed puzzles, Ai fared better the longer the puzzles became. Even when she was very much a novice, her effortless reading speed had always stunned the Ryuo.
Talent. There are things that exist in this world that can only be defined as such.
“That has to be god-tier ………… but…!”
Determined to reach his apprentice’s level, Yaichi planted his fists on the rug.
–––Deeper …… I have to go deeper ……!!
Deeper, deeper, deeper, deeperdeeperdeeperdeepdeepdeepdeep––––––.
“Ah …… Ahhh …… Ac-hoo!! ……… Ugh ……”
Sniffling, Yaichi rubbed his exposed arms.
The hotel’s air conditioning was considerably stronger than the one in his apartment. His skin had become ice cold.
It was then, when his concentration finally broke, that a nostalgic voice echoed in his mind.
“Put on clothes when you get out of the bathtub, stupid Yaichi.”
“………… You’re right, Big Sis.”
Sensing the wrath of his younger older sister, Yaichi jumped up and hastily got dressed.
“I wonder if she’s in Tokyo yet ……”
He grimaced for one fleeting moment, fearing the silver girl’s ire as he had so many times when they shared the same room.
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