Outside, a delivery scooter splashed through a puddle. The sound was a lance through her concentration. Kaori exhaled slowly, reset her internal clock, and opened her eyes.
"You came," the figure said. The voice was neither male nor female. It was old and young at once. Tired.
"You're not real," Kaori said. Her voice was a rasp she barely recognized. "I made you up."
She walked deeper. The air tasted of wet plaster and old secrets. Kaori Saejima -2021-
She moved a silver general in her head. 27. Silver to 4c.
The envelope had no return address. Just her name in calligraphy so precise it looked printed.
Now, she played blindfolded.
Kaori's breath caught. Her left hand twitched inside the glove, a moth against a windowpane.
The game was about to begin.
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 . Outside, a delivery scooter splashed through a puddle
The Caretaker. She had invented that name. She had never spoken it aloud. Not to her therapists, not to the one ex-boyfriend who stayed long enough to learn her tics, not to the mirror on the nights she wept without sound.
The ghost countered.
She did not sit. Not immediately. She stood there, dripping rainwater onto the marble floor, her useless left hand hanging, her right hand trembling at her side. The board waited. The ghost waited. "You came," the figure said