Ryuuou no Oshigoto! - Volume 7 - Chapter 4.3

  THREE MINUTES, SEVEN MINUTES, FOURTEEN MINUTES

“………………………………………… I lost,” I finally say after taking fourteen minutes to compose myself.

A Letdown Stick got drawn on the match record. Along with the fourteen minutes it took for me to come to terms with losing.

“……………”

Knowing that this atrocious, pathetic match record will live on forever makes me want to kick and scream right here.

But, even worse than that …… My promotion is as good as gone.

That fact hits me hard. So hard that I couldn’t even do a review session.

I must look like a total wreck. The match recorder cleans up in the blink of an eye and stands up to take the match record to the association office.

Now just the two of us at the board, Zaou-sensei mutters a few words out of the blue. Words I never saw coming.

“I didn’ think ’ere’d be much hope for ya if ya threw in the towel at the drop of a hat.”

“……?!”

“I thought I was invincible back when I took a title, too. I remember watchin’ others and thinkin’: why’d an’body play such weak Shogi? That went double fer the ol’ timers. Though, ’at’s when I got whipped by a geezer who I thought couldn’ hold a stick to me …… I ain’t the only one neither. Happened to Seiichi, too.”

“Chairman Tsukimitsu ……?”

That’s when it finally hit me.

Exactly who the player named Tatsuo Zaou really is.

That he had fought all sorts of big name players with multiple titles like the current Meijin for years as Kansai’s only title holder all by himself.

And …… That he identified Chairman Tsukimitsu’s talent at an early age and kept watching over him like a guardian of sorts.

“Shogi changes. New strategies are poppin’ up all the time. Young’uns now are a whole major piece stronger ’an they were back when I was a young buck.”

“……”

“But, ’ere’s somethin’ ’at never changes. Shogi is a battle of minds. No matter how strong computers get, no matter how long we analyze ’em, it’s people that play. ’At’s constant. And people who walk along the same path tend to hit the same walls ’n trip over the same stones. Jus’ like today’s Shogi.”

The person in front of me right now …… is my future self.

How I’ll look after 60 some years have passed and fighting in over 2,000 league matches, me in the distant future.

“I’d throw in the towel after three minutes. Seiichi, after seven. Yaichi Kuzuryu takes fourteen, eh ……? Now, is that because yer made of stronger stuff or jus’ a sore loser?”

Zaou-sensei dryly chuckles to himself and continues.

“’Ere’ll be more walls in yer way. Some on the board, some off. ’Ere’ll be times that heart of yers’ll feel like breakin’. Look at this match record when ’at happens. ’Ese fourteen minutes of ya sufferin’ to the very last moment’ll prove yer talent.”

I didn’t say anything, or even nod. I just sat there, listening.

There’s just too much emotion swirling around in my chest …… The agony of defeat, the despair knowing that I won’t promote is just too strong …… I couldn’t understand the meaning behind what Zaou-sensei was saying.

Until finally, a storm of media people swarm into the arena.

The retirement interview starts up right away.

Someone representing a Shogi newspaper poses the question, “How do you feel now that you have played your last match?”

Tatsuo Zaou 9-dan answers with a brilliant smile.

“65 years as a pro, an’ I did ever’thin’ I set out to do. Ain’t got a single regret.”