An older waiter with wiry hair, deep wrinkles, and an avuncular voice ushered Hikaru and Akari to a booth by the window. His name tag had "Shingo" written on it in red marker. He probably had a kid or two.

The big cardboard hamburger patty still stood guard by the doorway and urged onlookers to try the triple deluxe bear burger. The television fixed to the ceiling in the far corner was tuned to the 24 hour news channel. Two American soldiers died yesterday from a roadside explosive. A man was arrested for fixing boxing matches. Air Japan's stock plummeted by 2% after a mid-air collision over Siberia. How come most news is bad news?

Shingo seated them and left them with their menus. Hikaru had a slight headache, but everything else seemed just dandy. Thank you, Dr. Tanaka.

"Hikaru," said Akari, "you're not, like, on amphetamines or anything, are you?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Let's put it this way. You would probably lose a game of Jenga on the first turn."

"Oh, am I that jittery?"

"You didn't notice?"

"It's NetGo, Akari. NetGo."

"And what happened on NetGo?"

"Something exciting."

"That's just a tad cryptic."

"I'll tell you about what happened today."

"Fine."

"Remember that game against Shusaku going on? Well, he played on the tengen. And I wasn't there to witness it, but right after he played that, all of NetGo just went nuclear. Fwooooom. A thousand posts per minute. Chaos. A few people thought it was a bad move, but most users agreed that the center was probably a good spot to play on. I mean, no one would actually play there, but everyone knew somehow. You just don't question something like that."

"Well, I guess that qualifies as 'something exciting'," she said. "So what happens next?"

"Don't know. Lots of people wanted to keep attacking the corners, some wanted to contest the center. It's all a mess. I think that move did more to deplete NetGo's morale than it did to actually improve its position. Now that we know that Shusaku is capable of positional play, everyone's a lot more nervous. No one really knows what's going to happen next. The only thing that NetGo can agree on is that we're in for a hell of a game."

Shingo returned to the table with two glasses of ice water. He set them down and then whipped out a pen and pad like a gunslinger. "What'll it be folks?"

"Oh! Gimme a sec." Hikaru scrambled for the menu and began to thumb through the laminated pages. Akari simply said, "We'll start with the potato skins and spinach dip. Can you take our entrée orders once the appetizer is ready?"

"No problemo," said Shingo, scribbling the order onto the notepad. "Any drinks?"

"No, thank you," she said. "By the way, is Betty working today?"

Shingo pointed with his pen to a table two booths away. "She's a bit blue today, lass. Don't really know what happened. I think she needs someone to talk to." He winked and then disappeared into the kitchen.

The two of them peered gingerly at the hunched-over figure.

She sat, face angled downward, skating on a plate of French fries with a fork. The tines screeched against the ceramic and the sound it made spawned in the same sonic space as nails-on-a-chalkboard and styrofoam-rubbing-against-styrofoam. It didn't seem to bother her. She just continued to scrape the dish in a figure 8. She looked gloomy, as if invisible clothespins had puckered her face at all the wrong corners. Sunken eyes. If body language were sonant, hers would recite an elegy.

"Betty," called Akari.

She didn't look up right away. It was as if any audio input had to travel through a thick plasm she could interpret the signal. When she did peer up, the fluorescent light explored the spaces under her eyes and excavated a puffy redness. She tried to switch on a cheerful expression.

"Hey," she half-said, half-whispered, "the high school gal who's dating the Go pro. Am I right?"

"Oh, we're just friends, just friends." said Akari.

"Excuse me then, but you two did look like an item."

"Betty," she said, "is something the matter? What happened?"

She sighed and chewed on a French fry. "It's my grandmamma. She got sent to the hospital last night. I mean, it was on the horizon. We all saw it coming toward us for a long time, but when it actually happened, I didn't think it'd be so hard, see."

"Oh, I'm so sorry," said Akari. "What happened? You don't have to tell me if you don't want to. I don't want to pry."

"No, no. It's fine. You're not prying. I just have trouble controlling my emotions sometimes. I bawl every time at the end of Steel Magnolias, even though I've seen it, like, a billion times, you know?"

Akari knew. "Just take it easy, Betty. A little at a time. Start from the beginning."

"If I started from the beginning, I'd be talking for an hour, and I only have five minutes of break time left."

"Why don't you ask your manager to give you the day off?" asked Hikaru. "I'm sure he'd understand."

"Like I said, it's a long story. So I'll give you the Sparknotes summary of it." She carried her plate over to their booth and scooted in next to Akari.

"My grandmamma has never had a strong body. She had to go on a strict diet and take a whole suite of medication since she was just a girl. Really ruins your social life when you can't drink alcohol, right? Anyway, she did everything the doctor told her, but they said that eventually, her kidneys would shut down. She had something called polycystic kidney disease. She was born with it. From the start, her death clock was ticking faster than everyone else's. They showed me pictures of a kidney from someone with that disease, and I got sick just looking at them. It was like someone shot a handful of pebbles into the kidney and then let it macerate in a jar of acid.

And my grandmamma had that. She had two of them inside her body. Oh God, Oh God, Oh God…"

"Slow down, Betty, you're stammering. Here, have some of my water."

"Thanks, hon." She took a sip and then methodically inhaled through her nostrils like in a yoga breathing demo. Her eyes were glassy with tearlets.

"Last night, I had the late shift. 6 PM until closing time at 2 AM. At about midnight, I get a call from my papa. Says, 'We found your grandmamma unconscious half an hour ago. We're at the hospital now. The doctors took it from there, but the rest is up to her.' And I could hear his voice cracking like crème brûlée. Then I starting crying – sorry I'm telling you this – I started crying in front of the customers. Oh, it was humiliating. I felt like a child. Boss told me to take off, so I did, and I took a taxi to the hospital.

And there she was, hooked up to a machine at a thousand different places. You could pull on any one cord and she would just expire. The doctor told me she was on dialysis. I didn't know what that meant, so I asked him. He said the kidney's job is to filter blood, but since her kidneys were no good, she needed a machine to do it for her. Then he showed me the pictures. Ugh. I always knew she had some kind of kidney condition, but I didn't think it would happen so suddenly."

She dabbed her eyes with Akari's napkin and downed another sip of water. "I'll get you some more napkins."

"Don't worry about it," said Akari. "Is there anything we can do for you?"

"Just listen."

"Okay."

"You asked me earlier why my manager didn't give me a day off. That's because I asked to work today. I want to make some extra money so I can at least buy her a nice going-away present."

"Betty that's—"

"She's on dialysis, but that's not gonna last long. A year, maybe two, says the doc. She needs a new kidney, but that's out of the question. Even if one of us was a match, it would cost a fortune." She shot a quick glance at the clock. "Look, my break time is up, but thanks for listening."

She offered them an appreciative smile as she got up, retied her apron and disappeared into the kitchen with her plate of half-chewed fries. Hikaru and Akari looked at each other for a moment, dumbfounded, and before they could start another conversation, Shingo emerged with their appetizer.

"Jeez, kids, that was impressive," he said as he set the dishes on the table. "I'm sorry if your appetizer's a bit cold. You'll have to forgive me. I was watching you guys from the back, and I didn't want to interrupt. It looked like that was really cathartic for Betty. She hadn't smiled all day until now. That really was Eighth Wonder of the World on her face just then."

"Man, her story took something out of me, though. I sort of lost my appetite," said Hikaru.

"If you still feel that way after you've tried the spinach dip, then I'll believe you. When I bring food home, this is what I take. And trust me, pal, I know the menu." Shingo served them the appetizer and then asked if they had decided on their main orders. Turkey club. Good choice. He departed to take another table's order. The sun limboed down at a shallower and shallower angle on the horizon. Laughter broke out over at the adjacent booth. The anchorman on TV had switched from talking about world news to stock markets. Google looked like it was going to be a big hit in the future. Incidentally, the spinach dip was pretty good.

"Akari," said Hikaru, "you okay? You've been silent for a while."

"I don't know. It's all sort of … depressing."

"Betty's grandma?"

She nodded.

"Want me to tell you more about NetGo, then?" asked Hikaru. "Maybe that'll distract you."

"Not really. NetGo … I don't know. I guess I'm just not as passionate about it as you are."

"Then let me tell you a story."

"A story? What kind of story?"

"You'll like it. Just listen."

"Okay."

"It starts with a boy. He's young, and he's brash. He's in sixth grade. He likes to play … Shogi. There's also a girl that's friends with him. They're both tiny little fries, and they adore each other. Sometimes, they hang out together after school and play Shogi with the other kids. Well, one day, someone enters this little boy's life."

"Who?"

"Just a stranger. He hangs out in the neighborhood. No one really sees or hears him except the little boy."

"So, like, a hobo?"

"Uhhh, well, not exactly, but I guess you could call him that. Anyway, this person likes to play Shogi, too. In fact, he's really good at it. So, the boy swings by where the guy lives every day and learns how to play Shogi from him."

"Isn't that kind of dangerous?"

"What's kind of dangerous?"

"A kid playing Shogi with a hobo every day. And where does this hobo live? In a cardboard box?"

"Akari, you're asking too many questions. It's just a story."

"I know, but some of those details are a bit ridiculous."

"Oh, you have no idea," Hikaru muttered.

"Huh?"

"Nothing. Just keep listening."

"Fine."

"So, the boy spends more and more time learning to play Shogi with the … hobo. He gets really into it, spends less and less time with the girl. She sort of just grays into the crowd. He barely plays with her anymore."

"Tragic!"

"One day, the Shogi master just ups and disappears. No one knows where he went. After all, no one really cared about him except the boy. Maybe he traveled to a new place, maybe he wanted to teach someone else how to play Shogi, maybe he just evaporated into thin air.

The boy was sad. He'd taken his presence for granted. He cried for a long, long time. He still sees him in his dreams, but he never speaks and never moves. And now he was gone."

"Hmph. Good riddance. I didn't like the hobo anyway."

"Okay, let's stop calling him 'hobo'. Call him 'Shogi master' instead."

"If you insist."

"Yeah, so where was I? Oh, yes. Well, there was a silver lining when the Shogi master vanished. The boy began to see the girl again. He realized he'd been so preoccupied with him that he forgot all about her, or at least most of her."

Hikaru crunched on a potato skin. The anchorman was now talking about a heat wave in Kagoshima.

"And what happened to the girl?" asked Akari.

"She grew up. She was by his side the whole time, and he never noticed. The boy was blind."

"And this story…. Does it have a happy ending? Do the boy and girl end up together?"

As Hikaru opened his mouth to reply, a hearty call interrupted him.

"Two turkey clubs for you two kids!" Shingo brought the two sandwiches on a tray and laid them down in front of them. "Anything else, I can getcha?"

"Ah, nothing for now. Thanks," said Akari, a tinge of disappointment in her voice.

"Ok, then." Shingo smiled his waiterly smile and then disappeared. They were alone again.

Hikaru never understood confessions. Those characters in all those movies and books and TV shows made it look so easy. All you had to do was utter a few words. Easier than frying an egg. His rational mind knew it wasn't a big deal. You tell her you like her, and she either says yes or she says no, and if she says no, what's the worst that could happen? But his emotional mind was afraid. The fear of rejection hovered over him like a cartoon thunderhead.

So, what should I say?

A thousand reams of clichés and quotes about love rolled through his brain in flash frames. Letters sallied forth from the yellow-tinted pages and mingled together in an infinite alphabet soup. Some of them linked to form words, some of those words formed sentences.

Love is patient, love is kind. Love is blue. Love is blind.

And here was a boy in love with a girl but didn't want to tell her. A grown-up could do it, thought Hikaru. But a child can't. I can't. Not now.

"So what happened at the end of the story?" asked Akari. Rays from the retiring sun winked off of her iris.

Hikaru flinched. "I-I don't know. The person who told me never got to finish."

"Oh."

So, they talked about homework instead. And as they ate, they talked about the weather and how it's getting hotter and what they would do when school started and they talked about their teachers and gossip and rumors and pop culture and cool shows on TV and upcoming movies and the latest manga and their favorite animes entering pre-production and all the while the anchorman on TV punctuated their conversation with his baritone voice skirting the latest scoops on business and money and world news and politics and sports and entertainment and technology and an exclusive report on how alarm clocks might cause cancer ("This is not too farfetched," said the voice-over. "After all, even oxygen can cause cancer.") and outside in the city the sky blushed a ruddy red and a few cars switched on their lights and the windows in apartment facades lit up like checkerboards and streetlights flickered to life and it was too dark to see a hockey puck on asphalt but bright enough to see a baseball on grass and Tokyo entered the time of day when it was socially acceptable to greet someone with either "Konnichiwa" or "Konbanwa". They did not talk about the boy and the girl.

When they were done eating, Shingo brought them dessert.

"And this is for you kids." He placed two bowls of vanilla ice cream in front of them. "Betty wanted to thank you, but she's a bit shy about it. Wanted me to do it instead. Guess she's not shy about bossing poor ol' Shingo around, eh?"

"Oh! Give her our thanks," said Akari. "And also our well wishes for her grandmother."

"Right, that reminds me," said Shingo. "There's one more thing I wanted to tell you. I don't know if she told you, but her granny's really crazy about Go. She plays all the time at the salon across from the big mall. Or she used to. That's the thing. Betty told me that her granny feels quite lonely at the hospital and that she hasn't found anyone to play with her. Betty also mentioned the Go pro she served the other day with the yellow and black hair, so I recognized you right away as you walked in.

Anyway, I'm not requesting you do this or anything, but I think it'd really make Betty happy if you played a few rounds of Go with her grandmother. Of course, you'll have to ask Betty about that, but I just wanted to give you guys the heads up."

"It certainly sounds interesting," said Hikaru, "but the world of Go is spinning very, very fast. There's lot of stuff going on, and I don't know if I can—"

"Hikaru!" said Akari. "I think you should ask Betty about it! It would be so easy for you to play a few games."

"No, no, no," said Shingo, waving his hand defensively. "Please don't worry about it. It was kind of an afterthought anyway. No big deal. Just enjoy the ice cream. It's good. I promise. It's made fresh every morning."

Hikaru tried it and as the delicious ice cream melted in his mouth, he silently scolded himself for missing his opportunity to tell Akari how he felt about her. Later, she would construe his odd behavior to mean that for some inhuman reason, he did not like vanilla ice cream.