A Little Game with You
Such a disfigured love will only
Go down very briefly in history, nothing longer than a flash
No wound is inflicted just for the sake of licking them afterwards
One's pride will easily be the other's joke
—KINGS, angela (trans.)
1: But Maybe You're Different
I was twenty-six then, watching the morning news and waiting for my everyday Oha Asa horoscope, when the mention of the most prestigious national shogi tournament for high school students was announced as a brief news item. I had associated many pleasant memories with that game during my middle school days—which was really quite a long time ago, now. Almost thirteen years have passed ever since I first entered the hallowed halls of the prestigious Teikou Middle School. Even now, when I was already out of compulsory school and studying medicine in a college in Tokyo, I still keep one set of the pristine, light-colored uniform that had marked me out as a Teikou student, deep in the farthest corner of my closet.
Well, it was not that everything I associated with shogi was pleasant, on the other hand. Shogi was one of the alarm clocks that awakened me to the reality of life—that however good I may get, there would always—always—be someone even better than me. And at that point in my musings, I find myself taking out my mobile phone and staring at Akashi Seijuurou's number in my directory, my thumb idling over the call key before I flip the phone closed once more and toss it on my black school coat, slung over a chair.
I never really call Akashi Seijuurou on my phone, even when the urge gets strong whenever someone mentions shogi within my earshot. After all, ever since we parted ways on our graduation ceremony from middle school, dressed in our pale uniforms, with rosettes pinned on our chests, we had made an agreement that said never to contact each other unless necessary. And in Akashi's vocabulary, a morning call made to catch up for old times' sake was not what he'd call a necessity.
Akashi had always been unsentimental like that, although somehow, that was his subtle way of telling me to not contact him until we've both reached what we wanted to reach. He was a study of opposites, a man both playful and oh-so-terrifying when he wants to be, a boy both childish and too mature when the situation dictates it. But then, rarely does a situation—or anyone or anything for that matter—dictate Akashi's decisions. That was one of his many pet prides in life. Every little thing that happens to him can be broken down into calculations. Nothing is ever not preordained with him.
And so, when I finally go to grab my phone and my coat from the chair to put it on, I realized something very crucial, something that I would have to curse (or bless?) for the rest of my adult life hereafter.
Somehow, during the time when I was thinking of Akashi, I missed the Oha Asa horoscope segment. And missed hearing about my lucky item for today.
Somewhere in the depths of my heart, Akashi Seijuurou still finds time to mess with me however indirectly, even after so much time has been lost.
And so, dreading my unavoidable bad luck for the rest of the day, I step out of the house and immediately immerse myself into a marsh of middle school memories.
He stood at the height of five feet two, about five months younger and seven inches shorter than I was, when we spent that day in the shogi club room, after the meeting had been over and everyone was filing out of the room noisily. He was one of the more exceptional students who had filed for an application to join Teikou's shogi club, instantly outshining the first-year that had been pitted against him in the casual getting-to-know series of games. Admittedly, I have been impressed by how he seemed to think more than three steps ahead, cornering the other freshman into a dead end even before the game had really started to lengthen.
I was not half-bad at mine as well, although he certainly finished his game at about half the time it took me to win mine. Although, being one of the taller freshmen, a junior had taken it in his head to see if I was any better than the rest of the bunch. In my last school, I had been one of the best shogi players in the entire student body and I had prided myself on that, so I accepted.
Akashi Seijuurou played long before my turn, his smooth and thrifty movements on the board an extraordinary thing of beauty to watch. He made shogi look like an art and a science at the same time, a thing that I wouldn't even hope to accomplish in a hundred years. It was evident that he stood on a different level, and being the hormone-charged teenager that I was back then, I couldn't help but be envious of the redheaded boy with the clear, sharply focused eyes—the eyes of an undefeated winner.
That was why I felt rather surprised when, after everyone has been dismissed, he approached me immediately and without hesitation, his gait confident, as though he was the tallest person in the room. His Teikou uniform, the crisp light blue shirt and the straight tie, all beneath a buttoned white jacket, with slacks as neat as though he had just walked out of his house, suited him perfectly like a military general out to saddle his best horse to war.
"Midorima Shintarou, correct?" Even then, his lack of honorifics in his speech and his extremely informal way of speaking had been characteristic. Akashi had never burdened himself with ornamental words, after all. "You might not have noticed me much, but I recognized you from the classroom."
"We're classmates?" I said stupidly, and then it hit me—he was the guy who boldly volunteered to become the male class representative, the one they called—
"I am Akashi Seijuurou," he supplied with a nod. I had noticed then as well that he introduced himself as though his name was a kind of title, like how one would say "I am a king," or "I am an emperor"—although, I have to admit, his name really was kind of elegant, in a way.
I nodded apprehensively at his introduction, my train of thought somewhere in the line of He's not going to approach me if he doesn't need something from me. "I see. What can I help you with, Akashi-san?"
"Please, don't bother with the honorific, I find it awkward since we're of an age," he said with a smile—Akashi can be rather charming when he bothers to make an effort—and looked at me appraisingly. "I saw your match earlier. You were pretty good."
If it had been in my personality to laugh easily, I would have done so at that simple compliment that he paid me, but I was envious of him, and felt that this was simply too much—a guy like him couldn't simply have meant that in the way one usually means it.
Maybe if Akashi hadn't shone brilliantly in that simple game, then maybe we'd have become fast friends right there or then—or not. Akashi has, after all, the disposition of a finicky cat, as I will soon find out.
But I cannot change those even in hindsight, so what I remembered saying next was, "That's something, coming from someone who beat his opponent quite quickly."
"Oh, that one was a total beginner, so I had thrashed him to save myself the trouble of having to endure seeing his sloppy moves." His famously sharp tongue having cut the remnants of the unknown freshman's pride into more pieces, Akashi's smile grew wider as he directed it at me. "But maybe you're different. Your opponent was no slouch, but you managed him pretty well."
"Thank you, then," I said cautiously, my curiosity about this strange student, who was refined and informal at the same time, peaking drastically.
"What if we play one game?" he proposed, idly caressing his tie. "Just one little game."
"Well," I glanced at my watch cursorily, noticing how his crimson eyes seemed to track my every movement. Evidently, he was watching me as closely as I was watching him. So our psychological war has started already, then?
"One game then," I decided, and that time was perhaps the first time I have ever seen him truly happy.
Now that I was thinking over that first meeting with him, I find myself wondering more about the enigma that had surrounded his character, the colors that he had worn before they finally faded into oblivion, the sharpness of his speech that had weathered down into a gentle, or almost gentle, point. I had never attempted to contact Akashi Seijuurou ever since the graduation ceremony, as I have said, and as I sit in a lecture about the workings of the cardiovascular system, I wonder, instead of listen to my professor's droning voice, about the young boy I had met in the reddening shogi club room and the young man that I had left in the empty grounds of Teikou Middle School.
What does he look like now? I mused. Did he become a professional shogi player, like what he had told me he'd become?
And then, as if on cue, my phone vibrated in my pocket. Against my better judgment, I slipped it out and flipped it open to see the screen.
For the first time in thirteen years, Akashi Seijuurou was calling me.