Saejima -2021-: Kaori

Kaori's breath caught. Her left hand twitched inside the glove, a moth against a windowpane.

The rain fell in vertical sheets over the port city of Nagasaki, turning the cobblestone slopes into mirrors of blurred neon. In a cramped, fourth-floor walk-up that smelled of old paper and dried herbs, Kaori Saejima sat cross-legged on a tatami mat, her back to the wall, her eyes fixed on a chessboard that held no pieces.

She walked deeper. The air tasted of wet plaster and old secrets.

The figure sat down. Gestured to the empty chair. Kaori Saejima -2021-

"You came," the figure said. The voice was neither male nor female. It was old and young at once. Tired.

The rain had not stopped. It would not stop for three more days. The old prefectural library had been condemned in 2019—mold, structural decay, a stairwell that led nowhere. She knew because she had walked past it once, two years ago, on the anniversary of her mother's death. The gates were chained. The windows were boarded. A sign in faded red paint read: DANGER. KEEP OUT.

She moved a silver general in her head. 27. Silver to 4c. Kaori's breath caught

Someone had been listening to the game inside her head.

—The Caretaker

Outside, the rain fell on Nagasaki like a held breath finally released. In a cramped, fourth-floor walk-up that smelled of

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.

The game was about to begin.

Inside, a single sheet of heavy, cream-colored paper. The message was brief:

But the pawn she abandoned in 2014—that was real, too. A physical shogi piece. A single gold general she had dropped on the floor of the Nagasaki Youth Shogi Championship, her hand seizing mid-move, the piece rolling under a heater. She had been too humiliated to retrieve it. Too young to know that leaving a piece behind was a kind of curse.