Kaori Saejima -2021- 〈2024〉

Outside, the rain fell on Nagasaki like a held breath finally released.

As she stepped into the hallway, the light bulb above her door flickered and died.

The board in her mind was perfect. Immaculate. The 81 squares stretched out like a city grid, each koma —each piece—a living soldier with a name and a grudge. She was playing against a ghost. Not a real one. A composite of every master she had ever studied: a phantom grandmaster she called The Caretaker . Kaori Saejima -2021-

Kaori stepped through. The rain immediately soaked through her cardigan, but she did not shiver. Her mind was already arranging the pieces on the board of the library's foyer: marble floor (81 squares if you counted the tiles), a collapsed information desk (rook, immobilized), a staircase spiraling upward (lance, threatening).

It was 2021. The world had learned to live with the quiet hum of absence. Outside, the rain fell on Nagasaki like a

And somewhere deep in her mind, on the immaculate 81 squares she had built to survive the silence, the silver general she had moved in her apartment that morning began to glow with a cold, impossible light.

The Eighth Square is empty. The pawn you abandoned in 2014 still waits. Come to the old prefectural library before the autumn equinox. Bring nothing but your memory. Immaculate

"Did you?" The figure stepped forward, hat tilting back just enough to reveal a chin, a mouth that smiled without warmth. "Or did you simply forget that when a master plays alone for long enough, the ghost learns to play back?"