A/N: Written for the Duel World Challenge, registration task: write about a character introducing themselves or being introduced.


Not-Name Changes

In retrospect, he should have changed his name. That way people wouldn't have been so quick to put two and two together after Hani-meijin reintroduced him to the shougi institute – but, in the end, that would have solved nothing at all.

It was the price to pay for deceiving them, but he had needed the money. He was just lucky people supported him: the friends he'd made through shougi, like Shion and Nikaido-san, other people he'd met along the way like Yasuoka-san, or before like Kamizono-dono…and, somehow or other, Hani-meijin as well.

But he saw how other faces, people he'd faced across the board but never truly bonded with, twist in disbelief and anger. And he couldn't blame them either. He'd tricked all those people for money and, even now, he couldn't regret it.

Helping his mother live for just that little bit longer had been worth every deception and every cent he'd been able to milk from it. The problem was now: now that that chapter had been closed, and he'd failed to ultimately save her. Now that the female kishi Saito Ayumi was dead, and the apprentice of Hani-meijin Saito Ayumi was being introduced in his place.

And no-one could say anything, because he was in Hani-meijin's shadow, that shadow protecting him. He could do that typical greeting he'd been doing all that time only with a different voice and a different attire. He could say his name, his same name, over and over the same way he always did…

But he'd never been the Saito Ayumi that was the female kishi, and she couldn't die completely because they shared the same name. A silly thing, in the end. But he couldn't ever be Saito Ayumi the male shougi player now, without Saito Ayumi the female kishi's shadow as well. If it had been another name he could have buried her…buried her from everyone perhaps, but not himself.

Hani-meijin's shadow covered verbal reactions…but Ayumi could still see those words reflecting in the eyes of fellow shougi players, and in his own reflection.

Truly, it would have been simpler if Saito Ayumi the boy had never existed…but with his father, he was sure that would have come with a train of other problems.


Post A/N: canon/headcanon explanation: Saito Ayumi is a sixteen year old boy whose mother was hospitalised long term because of some sort of illness. He played shougi as a female kishi (under the apprenticeship of Kamizono 9-dan who found out his secret super early) (professional shougi player) to earn money for her hospital bills and surgeries, because it was a faster trek and easier to earn money from (the female league is seen as easier than the male league, shortly put). But when Ayumi's mother died midway through the series, he throws aside that female persona and Kamizono renounces him and hands him over to Hani-meijin, the meijin of the shougi world at the time, as an apprentice because his reputation would protect Ayumi from the anger of the shougi world when they realise what he did. So he became Hani-meijin's apprentice Saito Ayumi (the boy).

While he was playing shougi for money for his mother, there was a brief bit on Ayumi's father…who hit him and "stole" the money Ayumi had been saving for his mother's operation for, I think, buying alcohol. Also, Ayumi has to do all the housework and work multiple other jobs as well, so my headcanon from there is that, if Saito was in fact female, his father might have gone a little further as well (prostitution or sexual abuse or something like that). This is purely hypothetical in this fic because Ayumi is biologically male, but that's what the last line is about.