Monogatari Series - Volume Ex - Chapter 8

008 

It seemed that the truth of the matter was that the mysterious board state that had been suddenly sent to her was actually a love letter from the correspondence partner to Oikura-san. 

To me, who from the beginning hadn’t realized at all that the correspondence partner was a boy, this was an unexpected result, and an answer I couldn’t digest as such. 

“Concealing the sex of the pen-pal was out of a consideration for privacy, and so as not to give you any funny ideas about their relationship. That was an error in judgement on my part. I’m sorry. Thinking about it now, I should have noticed something was off when Oikura-san said that she perfectly remembered the contents of a letter that she tore up and threw away.” 

When she said that, Hanekawa-san’s powers of recollection were also crackling with a feeling of something out of place. Hanekawa-san had memorized a board state from hearsay, but since her guesses so far hadn’t failed at getting to the bottom of all this, I put up with it. 

“ ‘suki’ wasn’t ‘gap’, or ‘spade’, but ‘love’.  In order to decode it as such, ‘kiss’ was the only code word he thought of that would make her associate the two.” 

Is what Hanekawa-san said, but I had a feeling she was overthinking it. Even if she wasn’t, I can try to come to a conclusion— to be frank, I may be overthinking it too. 

“If this was a normal conversation through letter exchange, it would have ended much more quickly, you predicted that, right Hanekawa-san? But since it was correspondence shogi, they could keep it going for longer one way or another—if so, then the boy who was the correspondence partner could only confess through the shogi board? That’s why he sent such an intricate and roundabout cipher where you have to turn the board around and around to solve it—” I understand that. 

The act itself of the boy who chose to go beyond “conversation through shogi” to “confession through shogi” was itself speculation, I don’t think I can find fault with it. For example, if it didn’t get through, or in reverse he brought fierce anger upon himself—because to him it was something he had to do. Not making a conceited code that limited the theme to shogi, but also mixed in math, you can also read it as a smart consideration—maybe it was it due to his results, the math that was mixed in was in the scope of arithmetic, so it was fun. 

But what I didn’t get was the timing. 

Why all of a sudden, without any indication as if he had just thought of it, did he send this kind of board state? At least, if there was some sign, then Oikura-san might not have taken it as a declaration of severing ties—why did this misunderstanding occur? 

“Hmm, I can’t really say anything about that. Since I’ve also made spectacular mistakes in my timing of confession a number of times.” I made spectacular mistakes time and time again. 

Compared to this person, it might be easier for an unknown male correspondent, a middle school boy who loves shogi, to imagine those feelings. 

Putting aside Oikura-san’s perception, if we think about him, that series of correspondence shogi was like a slender thread that connected them like it was a long-distance relationship—if there was a reason he couldn’t be satisfied with just that, what was it? 

Not a reason, but an excuse? 

An excuse for not being satisfied, an excuse for why he couldn’t stand it. 

An excuse for wanting to confess. 

I kept thinking, when I remembered that next year, Hina-chan’s classmate will be going to a high school in Shikoku—it came to me when I remembered the first time I talked with the baseball boy.  We connected. 

The happiness I felt then.  

That happiness, so great that tears would come out. 

And if he also felt that— 

“…… That’s why he used that timing.” 

“Huh? What do you mean?” 

Hanekawa-san reacted to my realization. 

I wasn’t confident that I could explain it very well to Hanekawasan, who didn’t know about shogi, this “happiness”, this emotion that wasn’t a sensation, but I felt here I had to respond to the expectations of the girl who relied on a pro with the real meaning of his timing. “This board was sent to Oikura-san with the timing indicating that a new game was about to start. If we put it another way, directly after the previous game ended.” 

“Yeah. That’s right. So?” 

“Despite that, the black player, the correspondence partner who was supposed to be an experienced shogi player, started the match— ” 

Basically, in shogi, it’s said that the black player has the advantage. Therefore, in a match where there is a difference in ability between the players, to have a fair match, there were many cases of the stronger player conceding black to the weaker player—or in the event that there were to be multiple games, the loser of the previous game can choose to be black, or such. 

If so, then the fact that the boy was the black player—we can assume that the winner of the previous game was Oikura-san, who only had an interest in math, and would definitely never have an interest in shogi, won a splendid victory against her opponent, her male friend whose hobby was shogi—just what was he feeling at that time? 

Obviously frustration. 

It was obviously so frustrating that he could squirm. 

But that definitely shouldn’t have been all it was. 

You could also say her partner, separated by a long distance, spending a long time purposefully studying, the moment he realized he lost, even if it was by some fluke, he probably felt like he was “understood”—so he told her and became happy. 

Feeling like he wanted to tell her more. 

Wouldn’t he want to be understood even more? 

So—he chose this timing. 

“…… So that’s how it is. I see. He wasn’t discouraged—he just didn’t know what else to do.” 

Hanekawa-san nodded, with an uncharacteristic frown, as if unsure whether or not she was satisfied with my explanation—no, I had no basis for saying something was “uncharacteristic” of a girl I had only just met. 

Thinking about it, she definitely wasn’t celebrating, when we deciphered the message included in the game board—she was all smiles, dazzlingly wanting to tackle the final challenge board of our code-breaking trip, but when we reached the answer, she seemed to just be simply exhausted. 

Even now, she seemed to be sighing. 

“Haaaa.” 

And hanging her head in defeat. 

“Even looking at it from Oikura-san’s perspective, she could only think that her pen-pal had a sudden change in his attitude as soon as he lost—she probably just felt like he had physically flipped over the game board. That’s why she tore it up and threw it away. And with that, no response came, and the pen-pal thought he had been dumped—he wasn’t understood and was cut off. Yeah, he really wasn’t understood. Even if the message was unbreakable, even if his feelings got through to her, Oikura-san may have come to the conclusion that he was impure because he brought these emotions during their match—that girl is a genius on whom people’s kindness is wasted. It 

never goes how you want. For everybody.” Speak properly. 

I couldn’t decide if this was or was not like her, but Hanekawasan’s grumbling seemed to be expressed more apathetically than violently, there was absolutely no amusement in her words. 

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13  These three words are homonyms: 隙 (suki, “gap”), 鋤 (suki, “spade”) and 好き (suki, “love”). 
14  He’s referring to Hina's middle school crush, Takahashi Yuusuke. Kiriyama is acquainted to him through meeting him with Hina at a fast food place. Takahashi asks why Kiriyama pursued a career in professional shogi, to which Kiriyama expressed his wish of having the memory of "not running away or giving up”. Takahashi expressed an understanding of Kiriyama's situation and compared it to his desire to make it in baseball.