Match 2: Players on the Board
The shifting of the eras is inevitable, and the old is destined to be weeded out.
Bright, adorable, and possessing a blossomlike grace that housed a lively innocence—Yunoki Nagisa, the rising star of Tennoji Dojo, took her seat.
The pieces had already been arranged on the board, and the piece toss was complete.
Neither spoke a single word until the signal to begin arrived.
"..."
The fragrance of spring blossoms gently grazed their nostrils. In the mild warmth that almost invited a yawn, their eyes never met.
After a few minutes—just as the surrounding bustle began to be overwritten by stillness—the cue to begin reached their ears.
"Let's have a good game."
"Let's have a good game!"
Nagisa's energetic voice rang out loud enough to drown out Aoi's. Nagisa bowed lower than anyone else in the room before slowly lifting her head.
The corners of her mouth dropped in an instant.
Her once-soft eyes narrowed into slits, casting aside all girlish charm beyond the edge of the board. As if declaring that her everyday self had no place in a match, her icy gaze locked onto the grid.
Rolling up her sleeves, her hand reached out, craving only the single hue of victory.
One move, then another—. As if shoving the pieces along with the tips of her fingernails, without hesitation and without waste, she crushed every budding chance in her path with a rhythm that could only be aimed at the absolute shortest route.
Hold on...
Aoi's face stiffened. She had thought speed was her own personal weapon.
A blitz right from the opening. As though preventing Aoi from getting away with building her favored formation, Nagisa launched an attack early on without even bothering to castle properly.
Barely a minute into the game, they had already plunged into the middlegame. One of the spectators casually looking on parted his lips in sheer disbelief.
"..."
Cold sweat beaded and ran down Aoi's cheek. Nagisa was like an entirely different person.
She's going way too fast right out of the gate...!
For Aoi, this was a development she had anticipated to some extent.
While not on the level of Mikado or Tojo, Aoi's playstyle was distinctly unique. Her way of branching into original variations through applied surprise tactics could bury an opponent in an instant if they weren't properly prepared.
And even if they had prepared, punishing Aoi—who boasted an immense amount of research in that field—was no easy task.
The problem was that there was no way Nagisa didn't know this.
As a student of the same Tennoji Dojo, Aoi had been making waves since middle school, and there was no chance the current master, Tennoji Kaito, would overlook her. And Nagisa was Kaito's direct student.
She's prepped for me. Better assume it. —In her head, she thought she understood.
"...!"
Nagisa's hands didn't stop. Her pinpoint, optimal offensive was likely—no, definitely—a "prepared" sequence.
It wasn't as if Aoi kept using the exact same strategy every time. She adapted her order of moves to the situation, shifting her game formation to counter whatever strategy her opponent chose.
Yet in the face of optimal moves—no matter how she struggled, she was countered.
...Does she misunderstand?
With an icy gaze, Nagisa shifted only her eyes from the board toward Aoi.
And that was merely a passing glance.
It's not as though I'm strictly a Static Rook player.
Lowering her eyes once more, Nagisa continued reading moves ahead, deeper, deeper, deeper still, looking to stay far in front of Aoi, who had already sunk into deep thought.
The match had begun as an asymmetric clash of Static versus Roving Rook. The strategy Aoi had employed was "Misdirection"—enhanced with Tennoji Gensui's personal modifications into "Tennoji-style Misdirection."
If Gensui's doctrine was to let the old blossom, Aoi had wagered that Kaito's doctrine was to pursue the new. Maximizing zero-error play, minimizing mistakes. Worshipping the optimal move, and placing faith solely in the cold figures of evaluation values.
Static Rook is absolute. The first move is to push the rook pawn. That was the orthodox gospel of the optimal.
Aoi's "Tennoji-style Misdirection" had exploited that very "dogma," serving as a cunning ploy designed to force Nagisa's playstyle onto the scales.
An abrupt early rook lift in the opening. While standard manuals taught that one should respond with "Opposing Rook," adhering strictly to engine evaluation dictated that pushing the rook pawn regardless was the correct answer.
When thrown into a position where either choice was technically correct, people invariably opted for the easier step that offered psychological relief. Someone who had fought solely with Static Rook, chanting "optimal, optimal," couldn't possibly abandon modern textbook AI at this stage.
After all, familiarity is a chain. Aoi's design—having read that far ahead before springing her trap—was meant to drive a wedge into Nagisa's compass and rattle her bearings. That had been the opening clash, executed in barely a dozen seconds.
—The problem was that not only had Nagisa shown zero hesitation in countering with "Opposing Rook," she had systematically crushed nearly every single prepared follow-up Aoi had researched using optimal responses—and the entire sequence had unfolded in a mere minute and a half.
This was far beyond a simple miscalculation.
At this rate, even "clock pressure"—one of the core advantages of surprise tactics—was completely useless. The position was already in the middlegame, with both clocks hovering just under forty minutes. In Nagisa's case, barely thirty seconds had ticked off her time—that was the reality.
Aoi touched the major pieces on her stand. Two bishops and two pawns in hand. In contrast, a Dragon loomed inside her own camp, and her silver general had been reduced to a sitting duck that could be captured at any moment.
Wait...
Impatience swelled. Her heartbeat quickened.
In the match next to them, the pawns were only just beginning to collide.
Has she... prepped for all of this—?
On the verge of arriving at a conclusion she dared not accept, Aoi denied it with every fiber of her being.
It was impossible. No matter how much research someone did, predicting an individual's moves from start to finish was simply out of the question. That was the realm of professionals.
Biting her lower lip, Aoi dropped the bishop in her hand onto the board, as if trying to conceal her trembling fingertips.
—A second later, the response landed.
"..."
Aoi's face was drained of color.
Nagisa's counterattack pierced directly through the shortest path without an inch of error or wavering. Whether it was a move prepared in advance or one calculated on the spot, Aoi couldn't even tell.
In a freeform brawl that deviated from standard openings, one's on-the-spot improvisational ability was put to the test. Aoi's grand plan of intentionally preparing those improvisations in advance was the playstyle used by the generation of prodigies, who fought by wielding non-standard openings as their own personal book theory.
Yet even the dubious moves that had once thrived in the past were laid bare in the light of day once run through modern analysis engines. Memorization had shifted from paper to digital, and sprawling kifu records could be navigated effortlessly with a flick of a mouse wheel.
When a single person seriously targeted someone, even if they were an amateur, defending against it was no simple matter.
Once it escalated to countermeasures against countermeasures, it became a battle of reading the player themselves. The moment she was specifically targeted by Nagisa, Aoi had no choice but to admit strategic defeat at some earlier branch.
◇
Having earned a seeded bye as the previous year's championship team, the members of Gaisen Dojo were scattered across a corner of the venue, quietly passing the time in their own ways.
Among them was a girl whose stature was noticeably petite, even compared to those around her.
Her silvery-white hair, like melted snow, reached down to her waist, the tips tinted with a soft persimmon orange. Her eyes were a brilliant ruby, and her skin was bronze. Shrouded in an air of innocence, she wore an insignia-bearing uniform based in deep purple.
The captain of Gaisen Dojo—Aobara Akari—had been engrossed for dozens of minutes in a book she held up above her head.
Upside down.
With the text completely inverted, Akari stared at the book with outstretched arms without twitching a muscle. She wasn't reading in such an eccentric fashion to be flashy; what Akari was looking at, from start to finish, were the board diagrams printed within.
Printed across the open pages was a match account chronicling a game played by Kusui Ryujin, the celebrated Hero of the Shogi World. Even among the kifu of his many legendary matches, this particular contest had caused no small amount of controversy.
The diagram in question captured a scene where a fierce exchange involving mid-board Kings had unfolded. Titled "Next Move" by the author, to everyone's astonishment, no correct solution was provided.
When analyzed by the software available at the time, the position slightly disfavored the player on turn. Finding the optimal move would only barely keep the disadvantage at bay.
So, was that optimal move the answer? Not at all.
In the actual game record, the move Kusui Ryujin played here was one plotting an "escape." Abandoning the heavy pieces defending the middle ranks, his King's early flight toward an entering path was judged by the engine's numbers as a clear, decisive disadvantage.
The problem, however, was the extreme volatility of the evaluation values. With every increase in search depth, the eval swung wildly up and down without ever settling. Furthermore, a disadvantage was only a disadvantage if the opponent found the exact correct moves to punish it. A single misstep would allow the King to enter enemy camp, completely flipping the evaluation on its head.
Whether it was intentional or not remained unknown. But this "bad move" played by Kusui Ryujin dragged the game into a position that demanded exponentially more fiendishly complex sequences to refute than anyone could imagine.
On paper, it was nothing more than creating practical complications—a commonplace competitive gambit. Yet the reason it had grown so infamous and warranted inclusion in published books was—for one very clear reason.
Modern software evaluated that move by Kusui Ryujin as the "optimal move."
The erratic eval fluctuations had simply been because engines back then were not strong enough to comprehend Kusui Ryujin's move.
Whether this was the very inception of "surpassing AI" remained uncertain. With conclusions that might shift once again with the passing of generations, it was not something anyone could definitively claim as absolute truth.
All that was recorded in the book were the words of the match chronicle's author. Not a single comment from Kusui Ryujin himself had survived.
Her gaze still glued to the diagram in question, Akari called out to Mary beside her.
"Heeey, Mary."
Hearing her name, Mary didn't move her face or eyes, directing only her awareness toward Akari.
"Why do you think Master Kusui didn't pick the best option?"
"How should I know? What are you talking about?"
Mary replied with utter disinterest. Her eyes were fixed on the matches in other districts, harboring not a shred of curiosity toward the book Akari was reading next to her.
Without taking offense, Akari closed the book and casually plopped it onto Mary's lap.
"I'm talking about whether what we seek in shogi is art, or the optimal move!"
At Akari's words, Mary let out a sigh and shifted only her eyes.
"Philosophy? Shogi isn't some contest without an answer. If candidate optimal moves are right there on the board, that's obviously what you should pursue. Or does that book claim it's fine to lose as long as you played an artistic move?"
Unbothered by Mary's sharp, incisive retort, Akari stood up without arguing back.
"No, Mary, you're right. Spot on. After all, playing the best possible move in a contest can't ever be a bad thing."
As if wrapping up the conversation, Akari stretched out both arms and let out a big yawn. In her line of sight, Mary was quietly observing the South District match.
Glancing at her profile, Akari also peered at the kifu of the South District players from a distance.
"The successor to the Tennoji family certainly has a polar opposite approach."
"I think it's the right call. We're not in an era where old styles can survive."
As she spoke, Mary turned her attention to the girl cornering Aoi—Nagisa.
What Mary had been watching all along were Nagisa's moves. Seeing Nagisa calculate without a hair's breadth of difference from her own reading from the very first move to the present, Mary took a rare interest.
"That girl has no impurities."
Prompted by Mary, Akari narrowed her eyes at Nagisa. In barely a few seconds, she grasped Nagisa's playstyle.
"Pure optimal thinking, huh? Akari and the rest of us are fakes after all. I guess what people really mean by the 'Third Generation' is someone like her."
Mary gave a sidelong glance at Akari, whose words could easily be taken as sarcastic.
"Please, you're unmistakably 'Third Generation' too. With how young you are, how many years do you think you have before you even become an adult?"
"Wahahaha!"
Laughing carefree, Akari dashed off as if fleeing. Outside the hall, their instructor, Yukari Sawaya, was handing out canned juice to the players, and Akari seemed to have gone to grab one.
Mary cast one last glance toward Nagisa. Facing Aoi, who was clutching her head in agony, Nagisa remained cool and collected, without breaking a single drop of sweat.
Which way the evaluation tilted went without saying, and who would emerge victorious was a question Mary could answer effortlessly.
"Well, if you could win solely with optimal moves, nobody would ever struggle."
◇
Twenty minutes from the start of the match. The intricate maneuvering between the two continued.
Aoi was lost on what move to make, while Nagisa deliberated carefully to prevent even the slightest chance of a reversal. Though their approaches differed, deep down, both had arrived at the exact same conclusion. They already had a rough sense of how the outcome would unfold.
There are no miraculous one-turn reversals in shogi. One is only permitted to feel the balance slowly tilting away, realizing with dread that defeat is looming.
Even so, she steeled herself, refusing to simply accept defeat. Sinking into long, grueling bouts of deep thought, Aoi continued searching for a path to turn the tables.
All while quietly giving up on holding a time advantage—
Discarding lines, discarding lines, she maintained formations that merely avoided the worst-case scenario. And within that, she prayed a sliver of hope for a comeback would emerge.
"...!"
Through the state of the board, Nagisa's cold eyes saw right through Aoi's thoughts.
A common pitfall strategists succumb to is the habit of calculating based on the assumption that their plan will succeed. Even when ahead, one must stay vigilant against reversals; the real battle begins once you seize the advantage—that principle itself was not incorrect.
The issue was that they failed to calculate how to recover if that plan fell apart.
Nagisa had prepared "contingency plans" in case her initial strategy didn't pan out. Even if Aoi switched openings or unleashed newly researched novelties, Nagisa had measures in place to firmly seize a strategic advantage in the opening phase.
Preparing countermeasures against everyone was difficult. But if the pool of potential opponents was narrowed down, one could craft targeted plans to a substantial degree.
In contrast, Aoi hadn't thought about what moves to make after failing. Her research had focused primarily on positions where her plan had succeeded, or at least gained a solid foothold.
To begin with, Aoi's strategies weren't designed to accommodate failure. By deviating from book theory from the outset, she was already sacrificing some evaluation score. Since her goal was to steer the game into branches only she knew, she had to at least surpass her opponent's advance preparation.
When someone matched her stride at the exact same blistering speed like this, the game was already out of her hands.
...I messed up.
Aoi's face twisted. She felt the terrifying presence of Tennoji Kaito oozing from Nagisa's playstyle. Even if he hadn't reached Gensui's heights, she keenly realized that the title of "son of a prodigy" was no exaggeration.
I completely blew it...!
A sorrowful voice echoed in her heart. Pointless lamentation, a cause of defeat entirely of her own making. The one pointing an accusing finger at her was her past self.
Dragging her opponent into positions only she knew—that was Aoi's greatest weapon.
Yet it wasn't working.
Ghh...! This is no time to mope. I have to think, I have to read...!
After several minutes of exhausting every ounce of thought, Aoi bit her lip and played her move.
—A second later, the response landed.
Ah... Aaaagh!
A crack fractured through her enduring spirit.
Nagisa's clock barely depleted at all. That was because she spent Aoi's turns calculating.
The more desperately Aoi thought, the higher the precision of her next move became, bringing it closer to the optimal line. And the closer it drew to optimal, the more easily it was ensnared by Nagisa's calculations, which operated on optimal logic.
—It was an unnatural feat. The opponent before her was by no means a professional. She was a player on the same standing as herself, competing within the amateur circuit.
Why... Why, why, why, why—?!
Searching for reasons was meaningless. The only key that could alter the situation was a single move born of her own mind.
Yet even if she calculated that move, she would simply fall into her opponent's trap.
Aoi lifted her head.
Nagisa faced the board with an earnest expression. Sweat beaded on her forehead, trickling down her hair and dripping onto her lap.
The passion she brought to the board, the sheer volume of lines she calculated—everything was on a different level.
Aoi slowly brought her idle hand up to her own forehead.
Her fingertips touched her hair. It wasn't disheveled in the slightest, and not a single bead of sweat had formed.
I'm...
Touching her cold skin, devoid of even a hint of heat, anger welled up within her.
Clutching her hair in frustration, she commanded her brain to work. She poured every fiber of her soul into surpassing her opponent.
Even so, Aoi's calculations never eclipsed the girl before her.
A few minutes passed. Aoi played a move after yet another long deliberation—only to have the counter landed within two or three seconds.
Nagisa still had thirty-five minutes remaining on her clock. In contrast, Aoi's time was about to run out.
Since Aoi hadn't played any blunders, there were no dramatic swings in the evaluation. Even so, the balance of power steadily tilted in Nagisa's favor. Aoi could only watch helplessly as her chances of victory withered away.
She had lost all plans and objectives. It was like running on empty.
And yet, Aoi had been hesitating all along to take the step she needed to take—
◇
It was a continuation of a day in the past.
In the lonely dusk after school, Aoi found herself alone in the clubroom with Mikado.
"Haaah... No matter how many times we play, I can't win. Why?"
Aoi asked Mikado in a low voice. Rattled by her endless streak of losses, she had forgotten all about playing nice.
"If you're asking why, it's because I'm stronger."
"...You're pretty blunt about stuff like that, Mikado-cchi."
"I don't think of myself as strong, but I'm not weaker than just anyone either."
Even when playing with the handicap of "preset opening conditions," where Mikado agreed to start from specific formations, Aoi's fangs never reached his vitals.
"There are two types of ability when it comes to shogi strength. The power to calculate moves ahead—'calculation ability'—and the power to grasp the state of the whole board—'positional sense.' Aoi stands out in the latter compared to most people, so I think building your game around 'positional sense' is the right way to go."
Mikado analyzed calmly.
"Positional sense..."
"This is just my personal opinion, but I really like how free and wild your openings are. If you ask whether it'd work in the pro world, of course it'd be tough, but for refining who you are right now, it makes total sense. That said, abandoning it halfway through is where I have doubts."
Aoi's underlying playstyle was originally quite ordinary. In the opening, she employed a ferocious style that seemed like total chaos, but once her strategy gained ground, she reverted to standard, orthodox moves.
Unleashing surprise tactics in the first half, then showing no openings in the second—an exceptionally rational shift in tempo. It rattled opponents in the best possible way, serving as a brilliant tactic backed by proven results.
However, it lacked consistency.
"...That's literally just because my research stops there-ssu. The playstyle of Aoi's that you're praising, Mikado-cchi, is nothing more than what Aoi preps beforehand. It's not like Aoi is recreating that style on the fly from her own head."
"But the First Generation played without research, didn't they?"
"True enough... That's why... in the end, Aoi's shogi is just borrowed goods."
Even if she could wield it, she wasn't doing so naturally. By drilling it into muscle memory as book theory, she was merely making it look as though she was using the moves of the masters of old.
Letting out a breath through his shoulders, Mikado leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling.
"If someone told you to become number one by following the same path as everyone else, I think that'd be hard. But reaching the top by walking a different path than everyone else... I'm still in the middle of that journey myself so I can't give a definitive answer, but I think there's plenty of hope, don't you?"
Aoi stared at Mikado in silence.
Even if she understood what he was trying to say, she couldn't bring herself to relate.
Returning his gaze to the board, Mikado lightly touched his King with his fingertip.
"If it were me, I'd advance the King here."
"Didn't we just discuss during post-game review that that's sudden death-ssu?"
"Sure, but it's a twenty-one-move mate. If this were in byoyomi, your opponent wouldn't be able to calculate it all out."
"...Are you treating this like a gamble-ssu?"
"A gamble? Playing optimal moves isn't the only thing that decides victory or defeat in shogi. If there's a move your opponent can't fully punish, playing it is just as correct. ...If all you want is to play pristine moves, you might as well just play against a machine."
It was undeniably persuasive. Coming from a boy who kept winning with his Zimetsu Style—a way of playing that couldn't be farther from optimal—his words carried unmatched weight.
However—
"...Aoi can't do that-ssu. Continuing to play this style into the middlegame and beyond... It's terrifying, and Aoi just can't do it."
"You can. After all, you make it work during the research stage at least. You thought it through, and you built it. You're the one who devised this playstyle yourself, aren't you?"
"..."
"—A person's true flavor comes out when they've lost everything they prepared in advance."
◇
Aoi couldn't take that final step.
Even though she understood it in her head, her hand wouldn't move.
She couldn't see the logic in playing it. If she played a move she didn't even understand herself, what could she possibly hope to gain?
There's no way I can do that...! This move is a blunder, a total blunder...! Sacrificing both my bishop and horse in a tense struggle like this is bound to wreck my evaluation no matter how you look at it. But even so, if I just play a quiet organizing move here, she'll clamp down on me and grind me down to nothing...
With her clock ticking down, Aoi's panic accelerated.
...Sacrifice. Right, my only option left is to sacrifice major pieces. If I'm going to make a break for it, the sooner the better. ...Except I can't find a follow-up. I can't see any future where I corner that King. ...Even if I sacrifice, I need to at least calculate a way to get two pieces in exchange—
Then she remembered that this exact approach—calculating toward the "optimal" path—was precisely what had been captured in Nagisa's web all along.
No, that's not it...!
It was agonizing. In an agony that transcended physical pain, Aoi's brain was reaching its absolute limit.
Whether she went left or right, every path led to a pitch-black future. If she couldn't see a viable route to victory, transitioning into that position would only leave her lost on what to play next.
On the other hand, aiming for a position where the next moves were obvious would mean walking straight into Nagisa's line of calculation.
She was completely trapped.
Ah... My time is almost up. While she... still has thirty-four minutes left...
Grasping the hopeless situation through blurred vision, Aoi lowered her head, resting her overheated brain that had been running at maximum capacity.
In a critical crisis where she had to think, her exhaustion had already peaked.
A droplet fell onto the back of her hand.
Though Aoi hadn't realized it herself, her forehead was drenched in sweat.
"...Phew."
Finding proof that she had indeed calculated countless moves, Aoi felt a faint sense of relief.
Her gaze dropped, landing upon the braided misanga wrapped around her left wrist.
"..."
The misanga had been woven from blue threads.
Unlike the yellow misanga she usually wore... it was an imperfect, handmade piece—with several uneven braids—and slight variations in the shades of blue—
Aoi's expression gradually crumpled, looking as though she were on the verge of tears.
Having received a gift infused with precious wishes, only to end the match without ever showing what she was truly capable of—her disappointment in herself and her bitter frustration overflowed.
That misanga was a gift from the children at the dojo where Aoi coached.
◇
Every time she was called "Aoi Onee-chan," Aoi turned around time and again.
Dojo brats. Their unbridled wildness was so unruly that the label fit without question, leaving Aoi slack-jawed and speechless back then.
Overturned shogi boards. Pieces jumbled together with random toys. Balloons suspended from the ceiling had deflated as if their duty were done, and Lego bricks of inexplicable origin were stuck straight through the dojo's paper sliding doors.
Watching a little boy cling to the curtains, hollering "I'm a monkey~!", Aoi had realized in an instant that this was impossible.
Calling them preschoolers made it sound innocent, but viewing them as dojo students, they were as terrible as it got.
She lost all confidence that she could handle it. Even so, the reason she knew she had to keep going was to honor the promise she made after losing to Mikado, when he told her: "Accept the penalty of inspiring others with dreams."
Having her hair yanked, her chest groped, her skirt peeked under, dealing with these wildly uncontrollable kids for weeks on end—. Familiarity truly is a terrifying thing.
Before she knew it, that place had become a home for Aoi.
"Hey, Aoi Onee-chan, is high school fun? Elementary school is sooo boring."
"Aoi Onee-chan, let's play hasami shogi!"
"Mufu~!"
Having grown used to the usual routine, Aoi scratched her head as she tended to the kids.
"Listen up, you little rascals, today we're gonna learn how to castle your King-ssu!"
"Cas-tle~?"
"I know that one! In shogi now, not castling your King is totally trendy!"
"Ah! I saw that too! 'Sitting King is the strongest! Castles are obsolete! Speed is justice!' That's the one, right?!"
"Hey! Quit picking up weird nonsense from the internet! Honestly..."
Aoi dealt with the kids in exasperation, prying pieces from the hands of a little girl clinging to her back and arranging them on the board.
Once the shogi lesson actually got underway, the children gathered eagerly around her. As unruly and free-spirited as they were, their love for shogi was unmistakable.
After teaching them shogi, she would cook dinner and treat the kids to a meal. Casting a chilly glare at Suzuki Tetsuro, who had somehow slipped into a seat at the dining table, she regaled the children with shogi stories over dinner.
Once the kids headed home, she played a quick match with Suzuki Tetsuro, collected her daily pay, and returned home.
—Aoi's everyday life was slowly changing.
The chaotic din of the children, which she had found so exhausting when she first started coming to the dojo, had somehow become something she looked forward to by the end of each day. The smile she used to force whenever she looked in the mirror every morning was now naturally on her face by the time she opened the dojo door.
When she felt the venom drain out of her and her body lighten—she realized it was the children who had changed her.
Time passed, and the day of the prefectural tournament arrived.
With the weight of the winning streak she had carried from the district qualifiers held close to her heart, Aoi opened her front door with the morning sunlight warming her back.
Parked at the edge of the private driveway was a familiar car. It belonged to Tetsuro.
Before Aoi could even register her surprise, the car doors flew open. Leaving Tetsuro yawning in the driver's seat, the kids spilled out one after another, running straight for her.
"Aoi Onee-chan!"
Leading the charge was Shinonome Haruka—the dojo's youngest, a little gem of a boy.
Tumbling right behind Haruka came the oldest boy, the twin sisters, the little brat who was always trying to flip her skirt, and the rest of the familiar faces.
"Whoa, careful! Don't run—"
Before Aoi could finish her sentence, Haruka crashed right into her chest and held out both hands.
Clutched tightly in his tiny palms was a blue braided misanga.
"Here! For you, Aoi Onee-chan! It's a present!"
Aoi crouched down, bringing her face to eye level with Haruka.
"Is this... a misanga?"
"Uh-huh!"
Haruka nodded vigorously with a beaming smile.
"We made it together so you can win the championship, Aoi Onee-chan!"
"I helped braid it too! It got all messy at first, though."
"It was super messy!"
"...When did you even make this?"
Aoi quietly held out her palm. Haruka gently placed the misanga into it. Thin threads had been woven together over and over to create the blue bracelet. Was it inspired by her name, Aoi? Or did they just want to give her something different from the yellow misanga she always wore?
"Aoi Onee-chan is super strong, so maybe you could win without it, but..."
"If you wear this, you'll be even stronger! You'll be the strongest ever!"
Aoi was at a loss for words. Never once in her life had she received a present from anyone outside her family.
Shogi was a solitary world. When aiming to turn pro, there were all the fewer allies around you.
She had assumed she would only ever be on the giving end, never the receiving end.
Yet now, resting in her hand was something she had truly been given.
A lump formed in Aoi's throat from the sheer emotional weight placed into her palm by children so much younger than herself.
"So do your best at the tournament, Aoi Onee-chan!"
"Win the championship! You gotta win!"
Their voices overlapped one after another.
Aoi moved to tie the misanga around her left wrist.
Seeing this, Haruka reached out, shouting, "I'll tie it! I'll tie it!" and knotted the misanga around her wrist with clumsy little fingers. It was slightly uneven, but tied securely enough that it wouldn't come undone.
"Yeah. Thank you."
Aoi stood up, glancing over at Tetsuro checking his watch.
Then, she turned her gaze back to the children.
"...I'll win the championship. Definitely."
It was against her nature to make promises she couldn't guarantee.
Even so, Aoi said it as she patted each of their heads.
—She had stated it with absolute certainty.
◇
The thread of tension holding Nagisa taut finally snapped the moment Aoi ran out of allotted time.
With such a massive lead on the clock, a comeback should have been impossible by any measure.
The brawl was drawing to a close. The murky state of the board was finally emerging from the fog into the light.
(...Phew. Looks like I managed to pull through.)
Nagisa caught her breath and began to reflect on the match.
"—"
A reaching hand lunged deep into Nagisa's territory.
Watching Aoi's hand snatch a Knight from her camp, Nagisa's mind raced to process which piece had captured it—
She had sacrificed her Bishop.
Nagisa reflexively recaptured the Bishop. It was a no-brainer sequence, eliciting no reaction on her face.
Without missing a beat, Aoi's hand reached out again.
This time, she sacrificed her Horse.
(Huh? What...?)
An abrupt sacrifice of two major pieces. It wasn't a favorable two-for-one piece exchange, nor had Nagisa overlooked anything.
In other words, it was a move that amounted to a blunder or a dubious move.
Nagisa hadn't read it. Of course she hadn't. Given that anything other than the optimal move could be dealt with as a mistake, the only moves worth reading were those most troublesome for herself—her opponent's absolute best moves.
(...Has she gone reckless? No... don't panic. Stay calm.)
Though caught off guard, Nagisa calmly reexamined the state of the board.
Just as things had settled down, a sudden chaotic skirmish erupted. The match had leaped straight toward the endgame, but the position was still well within her ability to control.
Carefully. Yes, as long as she thought it through carefully, there would be no problem. Maintaining her posture, Nagisa took a deep breath and prepared to enter deep contemplation to calculate the long sequence of moves—
(...Wait, no?!)
Snapping her head up, Nagisa glanced at the game clock.
(The only disadvantage Rena-senpai has right now is on the clock... This isn't just reckless play. It's a move designed to make me sink into deep thought so she can buy time to think—!)
Before she could even curse herself, Nagisa immediately switched gears.
If the time deficit was going to be the deciding factor of the match, then naturally—it was entirely foreseeable that Aoi would try to buy time.
Simply playing a purely good move would play right into Nagisa's calculations. Sacrificing two major pieces to avoid that was a move that drastically altered the dynamics of the board.
The moment she grasped Aoi's intent, Nagisa looked up at her as if to confirm it.
Her eyes caught Aoi wearing a relaxed, gentle expression, as if she had just been liberated from immense agony.
(I won't give you time to think—!)
Nagisa cut short her calculations and opted for minimal defense. Handed the turn, Aoi had zero time left on the clock, trapped in the prison of the forty-second countdown.
Nagisa was afraid.
If Aoi played a move that surpassed her own calculations, it could easily provide an opening for a turnaround. To escape that faint dread, Nagisa sped up her play to whittle Aoi's thinking time down to the absolute limit.
—A period of silence settled in.
No heat lingered in Nagisa's hands. The focused gaze she was supposed to pour into observing, deliberating, and ruminating was nowhere to be found.
The abrupt severance of that intense momentum stemmed from Aoi's bizarre behavior—she was leisurely scanning the board from one end to the other.
(What... is she...)
The clock was ticking down. It was doubtful whether Aoi even had time to calculate a few moves ahead right now. Furthermore, with the game deep in the endgame, a single mistake could bring about an immediate conclusion.
Under those conditions, Aoi methodically organized the state of the board as if moving at a snail's pace. It seemed foolish, absurd, and like nothing more than sheer resignation.
With five seconds remaining, Aoi reached out toward the board.
She couldn't have calculated it. She couldn't possibly have had the time.
Yet, having broken free from myopic vision, her thoughts soared serenely across the sky.
Nagisa's grand blueprint—to complete her defense and transition into a counteroffensive—crumbled in an instant.
"—Huh?"
As if forcibly cashing in on the groundwork laid by tossing away all her major pieces, Aoi channeled her slender attacking lines into the reckless outrage of an unreasonable all-out assault.
Aoi had taken the plunge. For a third time, a fourth time—no, from here on out, she was going full throttle without looking back.
(Have you lost your mind...?!)
She had indeed. Aoi had lost all reason.
To hell with the optimal move. To hell with her opponent's calculations. The step she took, relentlessly pursuing only her own game, transcended the terror and agony of moments ago to overpower the moves right in front of her. Her spirits soared as if she were running barefoot over jagged rubble.
—Could something like that really be "correct"? Could such a thing ever be permitted?
The style of an unmatched prodigy took root within her. Succession—the vessel that had constrained her talent during her preparatory research shattered to pieces.
Nagisa tried to calculate deeply to punish Aoi's move... but the lines refused to compute properly.
The tug-of-war that had maintained equilibrium up until now had been unilaterally let go, throwing her move calculations into complete disarray.
(She's out of her mind...! Throwing out gamble-like match moves like this...)
Amid the muddy rapids, Aoi swam with effortless grace, unbothered by the turbulence. Her moves, liberated from suffering, splashed whatever colors she pleased across the board in the name of freedom.
A relentless barrage of match-deciding gambits, one after another. Not a single slack move among them—just a succession of blunders practically daring her opponent to punish them if she could. Over and over, they crashed down.
"Ngh!"
Nagisa let out a soundless shriek.
"The only time an ordinary person can surpass a genius is while the genius isn't displaying their true ability."
Her master's words flashed across her mind.
From the girl before her, who barely seemed mortal anymore, the unmistakable aura of Tennoji Gensui bled forth.
The only ones permitted to wield the whole-board positional sense as a weapon were those who could naturally read their opponent's moves without even actively trying. That was what she had been taught. And that wasn't the kind of exceptional talent one simply stumbled upon by chance—
"Well, don't worry, Nagisa. Geniuses are a dime a dozen, but only a tiny fraction ever sprout. It's not something that blooms so easily—"
Preconceptions dull one's whole-board positional sense. Yet an instantaneous first instinct remains untainted by stray thoughts.
(Ah, I finally found it—)
In the endgame brawl, Aoi didn't miss the single slack move that slipped from Nagisa, punishing it immediately.
"No way...!"
With that single move, the board where Aoi was being overwhelmed tilted slightly, returning to a merely disadvantageous state. The lead Nagisa had built through immense knowledge and calculation had been wiped away so effortlessly.
Fatigue was accumulating within Nagisa.
Yet the same had to be true for Aoi.
(Then why does she have such a composed look on her face—?!)
Aoi wasn't calculating much at all. She was playing almost entirely on intuition.
Of course, pulling off such a feat was impossible without genuine skill. Drawing upon her sharpened whole-board positional sense, Aoi was scrutinizing how the flow of the board could be turned to her advantage. What she deliberated in that brief forty seconds was a bird's-eye elimination of all preconceptions. Rather than searching for the single best move, she was solely discerning the flow of the game.
A move made by abandoning wishful thinking bordered on a wish in its own right. She could have simply watched to see if it bore fruit—yet Aoi intervened through sheer force.
(This isn't all I've got... I can still read deeper. Mustering courage isn't the same as giving up on thinking...!)
A desperate struggle masked behind composure. The situation was still disadvantageous. Even if the momentum was with Aoi, the evaluation of the board remained in Nagisa's favor.
Thinking she had accomplished something with a pathetic cling that barely qualified as an awakening was utterly laughable. Even while pouring every nerve into her whole-board positional sense, Aoi reached further, attempting to calculate long sequences of deep moves.
(I promised them. I promised those kids that I'd win the championship—!)
Her brain, its limiters long since removed, screamed in protest, but Aoi couldn't care less. She silenced it and forced herself to sprint onward.
(So—!)
Nagisa's defense was beginning to reach its breaking point. Cracks appeared in her once-ironclad defensive formation.
Aoi's offensive, sniping across the board from one corner to the other, showed no sign of slowing down—it only accelerated.
(This time... I won't lose!)
Watching Aoi's hand, Nagisa pressed a hand to her chest. She hadn't even been physically touched, yet the shockwaves radiating from each move set her heart racing.
Could this really be the line of calculation of a human being trapped in a forty-second countdown prison? It blatantly transcended human sensibilities. It seemed as though common sense had been abandoned somewhere along the way.
(Rena-senpai, why did you suddenly get so strong—?!)
There was no answer to her question, and the position plunged into an extended endgame while both players remained locked in a fierce struggle.
(My remaining time... I still have twenty minutes left...! But Rena-senpai's attack is...!)
In the middle of this deadly trade of blows, Nagisa was brought to a crossroads.
She arrived at a spot where she could adopt the same tactic as Aoi—going on the offensive when she ought to fall back on defense. Gensui would surely have played that way in this position.
Yet—Nagisa couldn't do it.
Ahead lay a cliff. Before her eyes was an abyss. Anyone could see that taking that step would directly decide victory or defeat.
Doing so without hesitation would be tantamount to sweeping away all the accumulated dust meant to tip the scales and abandoning certainty altogether.
Nagisa didn't take the bait; she couldn't. Charging into an unpredictable darkness where anything could happen was pure madness.
As long as one always played correctly, one would win. This wasn't running away. It was the right choice. Nagisa had chosen not to dance to Aoi's tune. She had chosen to play the optimal move.
—Then what was the optimal move here?
Looking at the complicated board before her, Nagisa acutely felt how drastically its complexity exceeded her current ability.
Even if she didn't know the absolute best move, she could at least find the second best—and so she played within a range that wouldn't worsen her position too much.
And what came back in return was a move based on pure intuitive first instinct. A torrential flood of unconstrained moves with neither calculation nor rhyme or reason.
(This isn't how it's supposed to be...!)
Just when Nagisa thought she had dealt with it by burning clock time, Aoi's counterattack—read deeply in advance—bore down on her from directly above.
Unlike Gensui, it wasn't a style born of pure prodigal genius alone. Where she lacked, she compensated with deep calculation. For that very reason, Aoi's style might well have surpassed Gensui's.
A dozen moves into the complicated board, Aoi's offensive showed no sign of stopping. With the momentum of someone who had seen through everything, she launched a pincer attack from all sides, surrounding her completely.
There was no consistency to her battle tactics. Not once did her lines of calculation align with Nagisa's. Like a fighter jet indiscriminately bombing a battlefield, Aoi's moves danced wildly across the board.
(I can't... see her moves...!)
Driven by a blend of intuition and calculation, Aoi's moves were now impossible to classify as optimal or mistaken, leaving Nagisa unable to even tell what her own evaluation of the board was.
Facing a one-sided assault that wreaked utter havoc while obscuring its true aims, Nagisa was gripped by sheer terror.
Knowing she couldn't go on like this, Nagisa desperately tried to calm herself down.
Calm down, stay calm... The only thing that could resolve this situation was numbers, which never lied. Only the optimal move, pointing to the very top of those numbers, could save her.
Nagisa calculated. Not for one or two minutes, but sinking into five, six minutes of deep thought. If she thought long enough, she would eventually reach the optimal move. If she thought long enough, she would find the move to break through this situation.
Yet as she pondered, the previous anxiety—that she was giving Aoi time to think right before her eyes—swelled to an unbearable degree.
Unable to bear it any longer, Nagisa played a move.
It was a blunder.
"—Ah."
She realized it only after releasing the piece. As if she had been waiting for this exact moment, Aoi cleanly snatched away Nagisa's undefended piece.
She had been angling for a mistake. Rather than assuming the opponent would play the best move, she was assuming the opponent would play the worst move. To Nagisa, it was an unfathomable way of thinking.
(I did it. I really messed up... I'd never make such a careless blunder normally...)
The blood drained from Nagisa's face.
Even though it was a free capture, it wasn't a fatal blunder massive enough to decide the outcome outright.
Even so, the psychological toll on Nagisa far outweighed the damage to the board—
(Normally... I'd never...)
From that point on, Nagisa's hand froze.
(I never... would have...)
Several seconds passed, then tens of seconds. By the time a full minute had elapsed, even Aoi began to realize that Nagisa wasn't calculating anything at all.
"...?"
Aoi looked on with suspicion.
Nagisa's gaze was fixed on the board. Yet her eyes were not following the position.
She was staring endlessly at a single point—the spot where her stolen piece had just been.
(Am I going to lose...? Am I really... losing...?)
Nagisa looked away from the board toward the far left—toward Tennoji Kaito. Locked in a ferocious struggle against the Emperor of Self-Destruction, Tennoji wore an expression tinged with precarious uncertainty.
Beside Nagisa, Tennoji Dojo's semi-ace, Fukashima Daiki, was also staring grimly at his board in agony.
—Nagisa's eyes widened in horror.
"I was never really cut out to be an instructor. ...Even the old man lost interest in keeping the dojo going once his own dream was out of reach. So if you guys can't produce results at this tournament, I'm thinking of retiring as an instructor. ...Not to sound pathetic, but maybe my era's just passed."
A single tear rolled down Nagisa's cheek.
"...!"
Aoi gasped. Before that reaction could even register on her face, Nagisa's hand was already moving toward the board.
A radical shift in playing style at this juncture—tantamount to blowing away all reason in favor of pure emotion, it was a move that overturned the very premise of the battle between good and bad moves.
Nagisa abandoned defense entirely and went straight to tearing down Aoi's formation. Using the Bishop she had received from Aoi, she forcefully pried open the tightly locked wall of Two Golds.
(What a pain...!)
It was a reckless attacking line. Aoi started to fall back on defense, but immediately realized that would be a slack move. By the time her thoughts shifted, she was already launching a hellish thrust that dragged the game into a battle at the King's head.
Nagisa, on the other hand, completely ignored Aoi's move. A hellish thrust that was two moves too slow to punish directly might put Nagisa's King in danger, but it couldn't mate it.
In that case, the only option was to attack. Nothing but relentless attack.
(Break open, break open, break open, break opeeeen—!)
With tears streaming down her face, Nagisa brought Aoi's defensive line crashing down. Through repeated piece trades, Aoi's piece stand swelled with an abundance of Gold generals.
It was a blatant overextension. Yet Nagisa, despite knowing full well that defending was the correct move, continued to follow the instinct that sought to deny it.
"Ngh...!"
For Aoi, that was actually the most troublesome choice of all.
(I won't lose...! There's no way in hell... I'm going to be the reason Sensei retires...!)
Driven by Nagisa's frenzied onslaught, Aoi's King was dragged upward into the higher ranks. Fortunately or unfortunately, the earlier hellish thrust allowed an escape route to the upper board, though Nagisa didn't know Aoi had planned that far ahead. Nor did she care.
On the expansive Tennozan vantage point—a position devoid of ally or foe with the best and worst possible view—Nagisa slammed down a meteorite of a Gold from the sky above.
(Fall, Rena-senpai! —I'm going to mate you right in the capital!)
If considering the optimal approach in the current position, theory dictated falling back to defense and snuffing out Aoi's attacking resources one by one.
Therefore, anticipating that Nagisa would make that choice, Aoi had planned to unleash an acrobatic series of brilliant moves she had calculated leading up to this point. She had intended to erect gravestones etched with defeat to shatter Nagisa's fixation on optimal play at its core.
Yet Nagisa had sidestepped it. Nagisa's instinct had chosen the most pragmatic solution over the textbook optimal move.
This was a line Aoi hadn't anticipated. Nagisa's style had shifted so drastically that responding required recalculating everything from scratch.
Aoi glanced at the game clock beside her.
She had no time to calculate.
(Like I give a damn about such a clunky attack—!!)
Leaving her own precarious King unattended, Aoi's style—which had been devoted purely to fleeing—abruptly pivoted. She launched into a ferocious pursuit against Nagisa's King, which still needed a move or two to corner.
Aoi once again stepped through the gateway of fear she had crossed countless times already.
(There's no way a move like that will work now! You've finally shown an opening—!)
Nagisa, too, pressed forward with decisive timing. Normally, she would have prioritized certainty by defending, but doing so would leave her opponent with a chance for a comeback.
Now was the time to finish it. Nagisa established a complete encirclement, tightening the pincer on Aoi from all directions.
The anxiety regarding her own King lingered. Even so, Nagisa played the move.
(Just this one last move, and—!)
The evaluation swung overwhelmingly in Nagisa's favor. From advantageous to winning, from winning to decisive victory. The bell heralding guaranteed triumph rang out.
Nagisa's King could not be mated. Numerically, Nagisa's victory was painted in vibrant colors.
(Brinkmate!! I won...!!)
In that split second—a flash of light sparked.
Clutching a fistful of captured pieces, Aoi pounced upon Nagisa's King.
"Huh?"
To hell with the optimal move. To hell with evaluations and mathematical conclusions. No mate? Uncheckable? Such conclusions dissolved like bubbles before Aoi's next move.
(Haha, what are you celebrating for? If there's no mate, you just have to manufacture one—!)
Twice, Nagisa stared down at the board.
(If I mate you, you lose. In that case, I don't care if it's fantasy or illusion—I'll drag you into a mated position...!)
If it wasn't a mate, all she had to do was paint a position that was.
With a fierce, demonic expression, Aoi delivered check after check against Nagisa. The relentless rush of checks—often derided as desperate "souvenir checks"—seemed like nothing more than a futile final struggle before conceding defeat.
(It's useless. No matter how aggressively you deliver checks, as long as I respond with the optimal move, there's no mate. If I carefully untangle each move one by one, avoiding sudden death is—)
Nagisa abruptly glanced at the game clock.
Nagisa's allotted time had dropped below one minute. Beep. The warning tone signaling that time was running out echoed repeatedly in her mind.
"—Ngh!!"
Goosebumps erupted across Nagisa's entire body.
Amid the fierce struggle, she had completely neglected to check the clock.
—No. This had been Aoi's goal all along.
(Don't tell me... this was...?! This was—!!)
Nagisa's earlier deduction had been spot on. Given the initial time deficit, there was no way for Aoi to win. Whether aiming for a sudden-death blunder or forcing a razor-thin mate-or-no-mate battle, victory could never emerge under such a handicap on the clock.
So what was the solution? Whittling down Nagisa's time by any means necessary. Whatever method it took, whatever scheme she had to employ. Her only path to victory was weaving third and fourth threats into her moves while disguising her true objective until the trick was complete.
A true whole-board positional sense wasn't merely looking at the pieces on the board. Only by looking up at the sky from the midst of an open sea and grasping everything in the surroundings could one accomplish greatness.
For that was the very essence of Tennoji Gensui's prodigal style—the true nature of a "Trickster on the Board."
(No, wait—!!)
Time waited for no one. In a match, there was one entity whose flow no soul could halt. That was time.
The massive time gap between them vanished into flat ground. Unlike Aoi, who had been fighting under the forty-second countdown all along, Nagisa was locked into the countdown prison for the very first time.
Nagisa, accustomed to deliberating carefully whenever necessary, could not adapt her thoughts to blitz speed in time.
She had to scrutinize. She had to untangle every move one by one to determine whether it was mate or not.
Lost in confusion, Nagisa resorted to playing moves on raw instinct. Move after move, with every check delivered against her, she was forced to play within the forty-second limit. She had no other choice.
An endless barrage of checks. An endless attacking sequence. Thanks to Nagisa's reckless overextension moments ago, Aoi's piece stand was stacked with a lavish array of captured pieces.
Overwhelmed by the vast branching possibilities that even hinted at an Entering King, Nagisa finally made a mistake.
(Ah—!)
A single move. A slight mistake of merely one move. A careless error as simple as choosing left or right.
Yet shogi was utterly unforgiving.
The evaluation swung one hundred and eighty degrees from Nagisa to Aoi. —Sudden death.
(It can't be...!!)
Aoi did not miss the opening. Pouring every ounce of her remaining strength, she shifted her thoughts into a state of flawless, complete calculation.
Discarding the prodigy's style and switching back to Aoi Rena's own pure shogi prowess, oh, how simple it was—a mere nine-move mating problem.
Nagisa's King was cornered in the blink of an eye. At the very end, Aoi had brilliantly mapped out a phantom mating sequence exceeding thirty moves that shouldn't have existed.
"...I... concede...!!"
"H-haaah... Th-thank you... very much... for the game...!"
Drenched in sweat, both players saw the match to its end.
Her head bowed, Nagisa's breathing had yet to settle. Aoi was just as thoroughly exhausted.
Bowing deeply as joy radiated in her chest, Aoi's fingertips brushed against the misanga on her left wrist when it caught her eye.
Feeling as though the sweat-dampened threads were acknowledging her hard work in this match, Aoi let out a soft chuckle and relaxed her expression.
(...I'll do my best in the next one too, okay?)
Her undefeated streak that began in the district qualifiers continued. Aoi had secured victory against the East District and now the South District, marking down a flawless white star.
Post a Comment