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 .
"You're not real," Kaori said. Her voice was a rasp she barely recognized. "I made you up."
The envelope had no return address. Just her name in calligraphy so precise it looked printed. Kaori Saejima -2021-
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 wood groaned.
"You came," the figure said. The voice was neither male nor female. It was old and young at once. Tired.
The figure sat down. Gestured to the empty chair. The board in her mind was perfect
The old prefectural library stood at the edge of the abandoned tram line, a granite mausoleum of a building with gargoyles that had eroded into featureless blobs. The chains on the gate had been cut. Not recently—the rust on the fresh break was already orange—but cut nonetheless. The gate swung inward with a sigh.