☖ WITH ONLY ASPIRATION
“I just finished talking with the association, to tell the truth,” Master says to Ai once we arrive in a fifteen-by-fifteen-foot tatami room (twelve mats on the floor).
We sit around a small table.
“You are Ai Hinatsuru, yes?”
“Y-Yes!”
“Do you remember me? We’ve met before.”
“Um … Was it, at the Ryuo title match …?”
“Yes, but we met a long, long time before that.”
“Huh?”
“You must’ve been two, maybe? Met you at a title match hosted by Hinatsuru. Back then, I got to see you as a little tyke.”
“Oh … I um, I see ……”
Looks like Ai doesn’t remember a thing, curling up into a frightened ball like that. Well, she was two, so I can hardly blame her. Actually, it’d be scary if she did remember. It’d be unnatural, like a Big Sis playing Shogi as a two-year-old.
“I also attended your grandfather’s funeral. Now then—.”
Master straightens his back and says, “Ai. I don’t care how much you want to play Shogi, runnin’ away from home is never the answer.”
Say what!? She ran away from home!?
“…………”
Ai’s face goes pale and she looks away. Her little hands are balled into shaking fists …… Well, looks like that’s exactly what happened.
“Yaichi. What did she tell you?”
“Haaa … That her parents were very understanding.”
“And you believed that crap? How stupid are you? Brain about to explode?”
Of course, Big Sis lets me have it right away, but now that I think about it, no parent on earth would ever send their nine-year-old daughter to live with a man. And even if they did, they would’ve contacted the association first.
“And, seriously, Brat had a school backpack with her. Shouldn’t that tip you off?”
…… Her choice of words too.
“Elementary schools finished up classes yesterday, meaning they’re on spring break. Sounds like Ai came straight down here without going home. Her parents are saying that she’s been planning this for some time, keeping a change of clothes and whatnot at school … This true?”
“……”
Nod. Ai bobs her head in resignation.
“But why did the association call here?”
“Cause Ai’s parents knew that she’s been strangely hooked on Shogi since the Ryuo title match. So, they had a hunch … And there you go.”
“But Yaichi’s of all places? Ai, you sure know how to pick ’em.” Master chuckles to himself, saying these things out loud.
I don’t think this is a laughing matter at all ……
“Ai. Why didn’t you talk to your parents first?”
“……… Because I knew they’d definitely say no …”
“They wouldn’t let you practice Shogi? Or they wouldn’t let you come to Osaka?”
“……… Both ……”
Ai said she was learning how to play between chores.
While her grandfather loved Shogi, I guess her parents didn’t feel the same way. Did she feel like she couldn’t let them see her playing so much that running away from home was her only option? I can relate, if that’s the case. People like us can’t live without Shogi.
(1) Air. (2) Shogi. (3) Water. That’s what we need—and in that order.
“Master.”
I straighten my back and explain everything that led up to this point. “This girl … Ai’s got real talent. I’d like nothing more than for her to continue playing if possible. Could you speak with her parents on my behalf? If there’s anything I can do, just say the word. I have a promise to keep ……”
“Let’s seeee. Could drop the Kanazawa branch a line and see if a school up there would take her—.”
“No, no, no!!” Ai screamed, her face turning bright red.
“I, I …… I, I want to be Yaichi Kuzuryu’s apprentice!! No one else!!”
“…… What makes this so special?”
Big Sis snatches my ear, pulls me over, and calls me this.
Ai answers without missing a beat, “Because he was so cool!!”
“Did you hit your head or something?”
Hey, Ginko, be nice.
“At the Ryuo title match, watching Shogi for the first time …… Seeing him get so absorbed, fighting so hard he could barely stand … So majestic sitting in front of the board, moving one piece after another, fanning himself, going in and out of the hallway, everything! Everything about him was so cool!!” Ai says, making my whole body burn with embarrassment.
“That’s why I wanted to play Shogi! To become like Master … It was the first time I’d ever wanted to be a professional Shogi player, and I’d never wanted anything so bad before ……!”
Ai grabs hold of her shirt, pulling and scratching at the collar.
I’m …… embarrassed but happy at the same time. Really happy.
That she likes Shogi this much because of me, flawed as I am, seeing my match lit this fire.
I’m also surprised. Ai’s interest in Shogi sounds an awful lot like ……
“Okay, so you want to turn pro then?”
Big Sis’s gray eyes bore into Ai’s.
“……?”
Ai makes a whaddat? kind of face. Like a marshmallow.
“You want to be like Yaichi, yes? That means you want to become a pro Shogi player and win titles and all that, yes? Or do you want to enter the Women’s League? Which is it?”
“???”
“Hold up … Don’t tell me you don’t know the difference between the two …?”
“O-Of course I do! I know that much!”
That’s exactly what a clueless kid would say.
“Um …… Wo-women’s League? It’s for women, and pro Shogi players are all men? Yeah?”
“Master.”
Big Sis cuts off Ai’s rambling.
“Brat isn’t interested in playing Shogi, she’s just a grade school girl aspiring to be her idol. She’d never make it through training. There’s no need to take her as an apprentice. You should send her home.”
“Is aspiration not enough?”
“Huh?”
“Huh?”
Big Sis and I are taken aback by Master’s unexpected words. Even Ai is stunned.
Master Kiyotaki looks at us with beady little eyes, clearly enjoying the moment, and says, “Yaichi. Tell Ai why you became my apprentice in the first place.”
“Is … Is now the right time to tell?”
“What time would be better?”
“……”
“Master ……?”
He’s pressing and Ai is staring right at me, so I decide to just go ahead and say it.
“…… Once I faced Master, Kousuke Kiyotaki-sensei, in a match, I aspired to be like him. Master was a judge at a regional tournament and he accepted my request to play in a small room at the inn where the tournament was taking place. That was our first match. It was a great honor. After that there were exhibition matches where we played and I became his apprentice.”
Ai blushes, her eyes going wide.
“You did …?”
“Well … yeah.”
It’s a bit embarrassing so I’d rather not talk about it but ……
“Long story short, my father and big brother taught me how to play Shogi, and I got good enough to play in tournaments—.”
Whenever I went against Master in a match, I was blown away by his strength.
“I was six at the time, but I remember everything. Back in those days, I was going to Shogi classrooms and tournaments and absolutely destroying the competition. Everyone was calling me a prodigy and it went to my head. I thought I could take on a pro and win without a handicap. How about two down? he offered. But we settled on him playing without a Rook …”
“Did you lose really bad ……?”
“No. By just one move.”
“So it was a really close game!? You’re amazing, Master!”
“It wasn’t like that,” I say with a grimace and explain exactly what happened that day.
“He let me lose by one turn. All so that I wouldn’t get depressed after getting my butt handed to me.”
But losing that way was even more of shock than an ass whooping.
It’s much more difficult to win by a hair on purpose than steamroll an opponent. Not only did he accurately predict my every move, he acted like we were neck and neck until the very end. Only a real pro can pull that off.
Even a naïve kid like me could tell that Master’s style was so much more profound than any game I’d ever played. The matches in classrooms and at amateur tournaments weren’t anywhere near this exciting or inspiring, not even close.
One match stole my whole heart. I would’ve given anything to be like this person.
“After that …… After playing against him in that first match, participating in tournaments was nothing compared to playing against Master in exhibition matches.”
I would go anywhere in Japan if I heard that a city was hosting a Shogi tournament.
“I’d look for Master on arrival and instantly challenge him to an exhibition match the moment I found him. But I begrudgingly played in the tournament if he wasn’t there. Can’t tell you how many times surprised people called me a weird kid.”
“That kind of passion was really surprising, but it also made me really happy.”
Master chuckles again, looking a little embarrassed this time.
“So, yeah. I invited him. Wanna play Shogi at my place?”
“And that’s how I got to be his apprentice.”
I was six years old at the time. Just about to start elementary school.
I had no concept of what a pro was. I was just so happy for the chance to be so close to my idol, Kiyotaki-sensei, and playing Shogi was so much fun that I went right along with it.
It’s amazing how similar I was to Ai, who ran away from home with only aspiration and a love for Shogi as her guide, without knowing jack squat about the Shogi world.
Shocking as it is, I can relate to how she feels. Almost a little too much.
“Nearly jumped out of my socks that day,” said Keika as she came into the room to set the table for dinner. “My father leaves to be a judge at a Shogi tournament and comes home with a little boy and tells me, ‘He’ll be living with us starting today.’ And don’t forget, this was two weeks after he brought home a little girl!”
“Sorry about that ……”
I immediately bow my head. As for the girl who became his apprentice two weeks before me, she’s making a face like a cat that refuses to be friendly no matter how many treats you give her.
While my motivation to become an apprentice was all “aspiration,” Big Sis’s was “revenge.”
She lost to him in an exhibition match back when she was four and found Master’s address on the Internet so she could come here every day and challenge him to a rematch. She wasn’t tall enough to reach the train station ticket machine at the time, so the attendant had to bring out a stool for her every day. Her story has lived on as part of that station’s lore.
Of course, letting things continue like that was too dangerous, so Master talked with her parents and he took her under his wing.
“I made Yaichi my apprentice because I thought Ginko was looking real lonely. Just as I’d expected, the two hit it off right away and played Shogi all day every day from then on.”
Hitting it off wouldn’t be the way I’d describe the day I met the dev—, I mean Big Sis. There’s a mountain of objections I’d like to make, but I keep them in by the skin of my teeth.
“And now he’s a pro with his own title and bringing an apprentice home …… It all went by so fast,” Master says fondly while looking at the ceiling. He’s got tears in the corners of his eyes.
“Yaichi, I’ll have a word with her parents myself. Take Ai as your apprentice and train her for the Practice League Exam.”
Practice League … So Master wants Ai to enter the Women’s League?
Wait, the real problem here is—.
“You want her to be my apprentice!? Not yours!?”
“Yep. A live-in at that.”
“Ugh—.”
“What’s a live-in?”
“An apprentice who lives with their Master to train.”
Master answers Ai’s question while I’m too shocked to say a word.
“Ai, can you live away from home, live with Yaichi? At your age, it’ll be pretty tough!”
“I can!! I-I’d like nothing more than that!!”
“Ohh, that’s the spirit. Hang in there, kiddo.”
“I will!!”
“Ho-hold up a minute, please!” I frantically cut into the conversation these two are having to decide my fate.
“I’m still sixteen years old! A teenager with an apprentice!? It’s too early, no matter how you look at it! And I’m only in my second year as a pro. Bringing in an apprentice to live with a guy living on his own would be—.”
“Having a title proves you have the skill. There are pros who took apprentices in their first year too.”
Master didn’t budge.
“Ai came all the way to your place because she admires you! It’s your duty as a pro Shogi player to recognize that kind of commitment. What else could you do? Kick this cute, starry-eyed girl out onto the streets of Osaka all by her lonesome? Only the Kuzu Ryuo would do such a thing.”
“I’d be called trash a heck of a lot more for taking a grade school girl as my apprentice! …… And I’ve lost eleven matches straight …… I’m in no position to take care of a kid ……”
“Yaichi. You know what Gratitude for a Master is?”
“Beating them in a match, right? Like I did yesterday.”
“That wasn’t a league match, so it doesn’t count.”
Master didn’t budge.
“Real Gratitude isn’t beating your Master. That’s not a way to show gratitude or anything. What a Master really wants for their apprentice is to win a title and take on an apprentice of their own.”
“……! Take an apprentice ……”
The Master—apprentice relationship in the Shogi world is strange. The Master gets nothing from their apprentice. Quite the opposite. Raising an apprentice means they have to sacrifice their own time to train a future opponent.
There’s only one reason why pro Shogi players engage in this risky behavior … Because someone else took the time to train them.
So if Master is serious about me taking an apprentice, I can’t refuse. And of course, Big Sis has no room to object. His words aren’t binding by any means, but they’re far stronger than any rules or regulations.
“………”
I take another look at the girl who might become my apprentice—all to determine whether it was her admiration for me and her love of the game that drove her to run away from home, to determine whether her words and determination are the real deal.
In that moment, I caught a glimpse of the wrinkles in her skirt.
Just on the right side—the hand she holds pieces with, only the right side is wrinkled.
Seeing those wrinkles made my decision.
“……… Well, all right. I’ll apply for her membership to the Practice League as my apprentice.”
“!!”
Ai’s face lit up, but Big Sis is staring daggers at my neck like you wouldn’t believe.
“But only during spring vacation. I will train her as a live-in apprentice during the break, but she either goes home or I bring her here to live with you afterward. My point is, she will not permanently live with me. Is that clear!?”
“So, a live-in apprentice with a stipulation is it?”
“Master …… I thought you’d been spending a lot of time on your phone recently, but ……”
“It’s because I don’t make him pay for it,” Keika whispers into my ear, but that’s not what’s wrong with this picture.
“So, then …… That means I have a grand apprentice …… Keika! We’re celebrating tonight! Cook up the red rice!”
“Tonight’s dinner is okonomiyaki.”
Keika ignores her father’s words with incredible grace and fires up the hot plate with all the ingredients ready to go.
“I see …,” said Master, a little disappointed. “Then again, we’ve got a little one with us tonight, so okonomiyaki might be better after all,” he added right away in his usual tone. Pro Shogi players don’t get hung up on things for long.
“Isn’t this great, Ai. We’ll be seeing a lot more of each other.”
Keika lets out a long sigh even as she smiles, spreading bacon and egg out over the hot plate.
“Now that I think about it, Ginko and I are aunts now …… Sounds weird just saying it ……”
“Aunts?”
“Master—apprentice relationships are like a family. The Master is like a parent for their apprentices. Fellow apprentices are brothers and sisters. This is why I call Ginko ‘Big Sis’ while Keika is like my little sister, making you their niece, Ai.”
“…… When did I say Brat could join us?”
Big Sis is staring at me through the steam rising off the hot plate, her face wavering back and forth. Scary as hell.
“So Ai, what’d ya think of real Osakan flavor?”
“It’ss desficiousss!”
Says Ai, trying to chew the hot okonomiyaki and speak at the same time, a bit of the sauce on her smiling cheeks. Cute as hell.
Meanwhile, Big Sis is silently chewing her own okonomiyaki that’s drenched in dark sauce …… It’s normal for her to pour on the stuff until it’s black as night, but it’s a lot today, even for her. Ominous as hell ……
Being stuck between these two polar opposites is making me a nervous wreck. Without much of an appetite, I just munch on the dried bonito flakes for now. Things are really salty.
Keika starts cooking round two and says, “I take it everyone’s staying here tonight? Take turns in the bath once we’re finished here.”
“I, um, I’ve got a match tomorrow so ……”
“You’ll just lose anyway. Congrats on your twelfth straight loss. Hurry up and die.”
“Master won’t lose! Auntie Ginko should be quiet!”
“Who you calling Auntie, Brat!?”
“Ai, you can call me grandpa any time, okay?”
What happens now? I’ve got no clue …
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