Ryuuou no Oshigoto! - Volume 16 - Chapter Aft

FOR THE AFTERWORD: “VOICE”

My mother dealt with a disability: her lungs.

She was involved in a horrific car crash when she was a second-year high school student. The injuries to her face and throat were particularly bad, including her vocal cords and windpipe being crushed. She survived the ordeal but always looked in pain because she could never breathe in the same amount of air as a healthy person from that day on.

Several rounds of surgeries made her scars barely noticeable, but one remnant of that accident was obvious to everyone she met.

Her voice.

Apparently, the loudest voice she could muster was something barely above a faint whisper.

Why only apparently? …… Because I never noticed the difference.

As strange as it sounds I, her only son, understood everything she said as plain as day.

Not once did I think she sounded raspy or too soft. I could hear her voice from wherever she was in the house.

I discovered a latent talent for hearing …… that would be an interesting premise for a novel, but I think that what I experienced was normal.

Only my mother’s voice was that easy for me to understand.

Which was why whenever my mother was the butt of a joke …… When I heard other people laughing while speaking in a raspy voices, I didn’t understand what was going on right away most of the time.

Even after the fact, when my mother was in tears, I didn’t feel any anger or hatred toward those people.

“There’s nothing wrong with your voice, Mom. What’s the problem?” I would ask with complete honesty.

She would stop crying after that and tell me.

“Clearly, some higher power made sure to give me a son who could always understand me.”

She passed away five and a half years ago.

I can still hear her voice just as clearly now.

As a person in good health, I think it’s exceedingly difficult to write about characters with disabilities.

Deciding not to include them in the story was an option.

Looking back on it, I think my mother’s influence is why I decided to have characters like that appear in this series.

Now that I’m a father, it’s become painfully obvious just how amazing she was.

How in the world did she raise me all on her own ……? Disabled, no less.

I believe society treating her as weak is what gave her a strength that I can’t even imagine.

So I wanted to express that kind of strength in this book.

Now! In addition to my wonderful supervisors from Saiyuki, I also worked in collaboration with some Shogi software programmers this time around.

Specifically, the match between Ayumu Kannabe and Jin Natagiri was inspired by match records given to me by Tayayan-san, the developer of Suisho Shogi software. I took a few excerpts from matches between Suisho 5 and dlshogi and ordered them in my own way to create that battle. Kinoa Shogi’s Yamada-san was also kind enough to recommend a few match records that matched my story points.

These were all received in return for donations to the nonprofit corporation AI Denryusen Project. I contributed and got match records in return (ha-ha).

I was also lucky enough to receive lectures about Shogi software and what the future may hold from Jinzou Kishi 18-Go’s Tama-san and Yaneura-Oh’s Isozaki’san.

Thank you so much for all your help. I look forward to working with you again in the future!

Professional Shogi players debate how to process the match records created by software every single day …… That includes authors whose job is to express Shogi in words.

Match journalists’ ability to watch a match between two people and transform it into literature was so inspiring to me that I began writing The Ryuo’s Work Is Never Done! It truly amazed me how they could take a sheet with a bunch of numbers and characters and make it into a battle for the ages.

Shogi software constantly produces truly remarkable match records. So it stands to reason that combining those records with the characters I’ve created would make for an even more intense story, yes?

Computers don’t have emotions, but human beings have an incredible ability to be moved and inspired simply by looking at match records.

Just as the treasures produced by nature can be refined into something even more beautiful by human hands, couldn’t match records produced by computers become the ore that produces something even grander and more intense than ever before?

I would like to use> the good times I have left to pursue that answer.

REVIEW SESSION

This is my first time riding the Portliner. Of course, I heard of it before, but ……

“This was the first driverless public transportation system in the world,” Ai Yashajin brags from her seat next to the window.

We’re the only ones inside of this train-like vehicle that connects Kobe’s Sannomiya to Port Island. The terminal station is Kobe Airport.

I’m used to trains running alongside the ocean, but this thing is driving right over it.

“This is …… a monorail, right?”

It’s easy to see the whole island in the middle of the strait through the window.

The thing is that I really don’t like heights. I try my best to hide how scared I am of this thing zipping along above the water and strike up a conversation.

“This isn’t a train or a monorail. That’s why it’s called the new transportation system.”

“Neither one ……?”

“Not to mention that Port Island, our destination, was the first waterfront artificial island in Japan and was the largest in the world when it was first constructed. Didn’t you know that?” 

“This thing’s been around since before I was born, okay? Kobe is an amazing city, I get it ……”

“That’s right. Kobe is full of world firsts and world bests,” she adds with pride.

Seeing this childish side of her is a bit of a relief. This is definitely the Ai Yashajin I know ……

“…… How about you tell me already?” I asked, not able to take it anymore. “Akira said her company’s server would give Women’s League players access to the latest Shogi software. You were doing a demonstration throughout the match series, weren’t you?”

“Go on?”

“In other words …… you are trying to prove that signing a contract with your company would make them stronger than trying to use their own personal computer, right? This country still hasn’t seriously tried to develop top-rate Shogi software as an industry. That real estate company is just a front to hide what you really want to do, which is–––”

“Get up. This is our stop.”

“Huh? Oh ……”

While being prodded forward like cattle, I catch a glimpse of the station name–––

Keisan Kagaku Center Station.

I can’t imagine why anyone would name a train station mathematical science, but Ai explains it to me on the way.

“The name changes all the time. It used to be called Kay Computer Station.”

“Kay? …… Computer?”

I’m sure I’ve heard that name before, but I can’t remember where.

“I’ve said this before, but I’m not exactly head over heels.”

Leading me into a building directly connected to the station, Ai starts talking again.

“I don’t see myself as the number one prodigy in the world, nor do I think you’ll ever treasure me as the number one. I just …… know it.”

“Know what?”

“That you are the number one Shogi prodigy in the world and that what you love isn’t human.”

“…………”

“No matter where you try to run and hide, no matter how far you travel, in the end …… you’ll always come back here, to Shogi.”

Ai takes me deeper and deeper into the building.

I follow her without saying a word.

“I’ll let you in on something. I don’t believe in myself at all. I believe in Shogi. That’s why being apart from you doesn’t worry me at all. All I have to do is play Shogi no one has ever seen before, and you’ll be transfixed.”

“Th––––––”

That’s not true!

…… Is what I started to say. I swallow those words halfway through.

“…………”

I can’t deny that I’m stuck in that cycle.

It happened again just now. I threw away the perfect chance to get back on normal terms with Ai Hinatsuru to seek out Ai Yashajin.

“The Yashajin family made its name as the proprietor of harbors and such, but we branched out and became heavily involved with the construction of Port Island. And we also provided financial and manufacturing support to lure the mathematics institute to relocate to the island.”

The point is, Ai continued.

“We are the reason that Kay was built here …… The supercomputer that used to be number one in the world.”

“……!”

I get it now. The supercomputer.

I had assumed it was somewhere in Tokyo …… To think, it was here on Port Island in Kobe the whole time ……

“My father and mother both attended university in Tokyo. Although they met through the Shogi club, they also just happened to be in the same department majoring in the same scientific field. That’s how they grew close.”

“The same …… major?”

It feels like the world is turning on its head.

No, the opposite.

It was the way I view the world that was twisted.

To me the world revolves around Shogi. Obviously. I’m a pro, so playing Shogi is how I make money.

 But …… Ai’s parents were amateurs. In other words, their real job was outside the Shogi world.

Maybe the reason her parents are buried on that hill …… isn’t to watch over their daughter.

But …… to keep an eye on something else?

“That’s right.”

Nods of the girl dressed in black as if she’s reading my mind.

Beep.

Using her palm print to confirm her identity, Ai goes inside the room in the deepest corner of the facility.

“This is where Mother and Father worked. Their mission was to create the next generation of supercomputers.”

Inside that room are–––big black things.

Just like those gravestones on top of the hill, they’re square and dark …… But so much more massive. There are tons of them all lined up.

“There are 432 casings. They contain a total of 150,000 individual CPUs connected in a vast network to create a single computing system. It’s currently the most powerful calculation machine on earth and will stay that way for the foreseeable future,” says the girl dressed in black in the middle of a room that could pass for a graveyard.

“The world’s fastest and most powerful next-generation supercomputer–––Awaji …”

Ai Yashajin says while gently running her fingers down the side of a black casing.

“Like me, this computer is a product of Father and Mother’s love …… Basically, we’re sisters.”

“Awaji ……?”

“According to Japanese legend, Awaji was the first island the gods Izanagi and Izanami created after their fated meeting around the Ama no Mihashira pillar.”

Everything she’s saying reminds me of that striking island I saw outside the window of the Portliner on the way here. But something else has been on my mind the whole time. Those 10 matches that Ai Yashajin played ……

The answer is right in front of me.

This calculation machine from the future created by human hands. This is the answer I’ve been looking for.

It’s just that using the world’s most powerful supercomputer to analyze and dissect a board game sounds like a child’s daydream and would normally get ditched without a second thought.

I believe, though. It’s because I have proof.