Archive of Our Own ^beta

It isn’t possible to love and part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love,
ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that
the poets are right: love is eternal.  

— e.m. forster 

Yura no to wo
Wataru funabito
Kaji wo tae
Yukue mo shiranu
Koi no michi kana.

— sō ne-yoshi-tada

// S.

All of the formalities of matches – bowing, saying thank-yous, and taking 15 stopwatched minutes of memorization time – are comforting to her. After years of repetition it all takes on a ritual quality, the familiarity given power by the intention behind every gesture.

Shinobu saw her loss coming about midway through the last game of three. It’s very possible that to everyone else, it was visible earlier, but she’d never been on the other end of a match that played out like that before. Even when she was a child, just playing because she liked the pictures on the cards, she never experienced being beaten down by an opponent’s merciless rhythm in quite that way, even by Arata. The fire in Chihaya’s eyes never dimmed, not once.

The matches end, and her skin prickles all over when she has to pose for photos behind Chihaya, not because of ill sportsmanship, but because she never seriously considered that this could happen. The other girl looks stunned – her eyes shine, luminous, as cameras go off – and Shinobu can only see Chihaya in glimpses, from sideways angles, but it’s enough to tell that she practically radiates. Despite her discomfort, Shinobu stands up straight, behind her; her obi is too tight for her to slouch.

The worst part is when she’s stepped back and it’s just Arata and Chihaya, standing next to each other with twin looks of shock on their faces, and how lovely they look together, like the moon and the sun. It’s like Shinobu and Hisashi Suo, in reverse, but much more photogenic. Shinobu can feel, palpably, the relief of the tournament officials that they finally have a Meijin and Queen pair they can work with.

After the formalities are all done and she’s given the obligatory courteous sound bites to reporters, her mother drives her home. Shinobu counts the road signs they pass, and takes a tally for each one on a scrap of paper spread over her knee. She can barely hear the words coming out of her mother’s mouth, though there are many.

-

Grandmother is waiting for her when they arrive at the house. Every year for the past three years she has watched the broadcasts, not because of any love for karuta, but the pathological need to know the outcome as soon as it arrives. The lines around her mouth are drawn deeply.

“Sit down,” she intones measuredly. Shinobu is still in kimono, stiff and uncomfortable. She sits on a floor cushion, layers of prismatic silk spilling onto the hardwood floor. The sun is behind the horizon already, and the room is dim. Shinobu’s mother hovers around the edges of the room, directing her attention everywhere except at the girl and the old woman looking at each other across the table.

The steam from Grandmother’s tea rises in no-nonsense streams, straight up. She pours it into three cups, and says, “I thought you were hoping to become an Eternal Queen.”

“I am.” A cup is placed in front of her to drink from, but Shinobu doesn’t take it. Her hands rest in her lap, the very picture of contrition.

Elegant eyebrows rise. “Oh? If you lost to this girl today, what makes you think you can beat her again next year?” Her grandmother sips her tea, eyes not leaving Shinobu’s face.

Shinobu presses her nails into the flesh of her palm, hard enough to leave crescent-moon marks, red and inflamed. “This wasn’t my first time playing her, Grandmother. I’ve always beaten her before.” She considers for a moment before adding, “I think it was this kimono. It’s too tight. It’s not meant for karuta.”

Still placid, her grandmother’s expression doesn’t flicker even as she replies, “I don’t want to hear excuses.”

Saying nothing, Shinobu just turns her head to stare at her mother, who in turn is looking out the window at the darkened city.

Her grandmother sets her tea down on the glass table surface. The contact causes an ugly noise. “Are you listening to me?”

-

Later, in her room, Shinobu strips out of the layers of fabric, leaving the silk in a pile on the floor. She settles into the window seat in her cotton pajamas, a now-cold cup of tea in one hand, the piece of paper with her road sign tallies clutched in the other. Kyoto is on her way to bed. Tokyo never sleeps, but Kyoto is an old woman that needs her rest, even if it’s fretful.

The Meijin and Queen matches are on the second Saturday in January, every year. She can sleep in tomorrow. Through the window pane she can feel the chilly night air, and with every breath the glass gets more fogged, until it’s impossible to see the city as anything more than blurred shapes of darkness and blacker darkness.

She sets the cup and paper down on her nightstand so she can let out her hair. It hangs around her shoulders, crimped from the pins and hairspray. She could shower tonight, but she doesn’t have the energy.

Chihaya is probably home in Tokyo by now. It’s a long drive. She might have fallen asleep on the way back. Her car must be packed with friends, family, people from Shirinami Society. Some people, upon a victory like that, would spend the night out drinking, but Chihaya can’t be old enough for that, yet. They are the same age.

Her mind is elsewhere even as she picks up a pencil and scribbles in the remaining white space on the tally paper, Chihaya Ayase, just to get see how the name looks coming from her own hand.

She can’t think of anything else to write, so the piece of paper goes at the bottom of a desk drawer, and Shinobu goes to sleep under her familiar sheets and blankets, as if the world hasn’t changed.

// C.

The January sun has already risen and is shining through the window blinds when Chihaya wakes up in her bed, safe and sound, out of her hakama and in her pajamas.

It’s like any morning, except it’s not. Her limbs still feel heavy, groggy with sleeping-in, and familiar muscle aches throb warmly along her thighs and abdomen and arms, almost like bruises.

The morning is clear and too beautiful to get up. There’s something she knows about, but she doesn’t want to think about it. She tiptoes around it in her mind, until she’s run out of distractions - the weather, her messy room, her aching joints, all the chores she has to do today - and has to face it.

She’s the Queen.

It’s not like it’s a bad thing to realize, exactly. Just difficult. It doesn’t feel real. The memories of the day before have bled together. She was so close to Shinobu she could see trickles of sweat run down her temples, which wasn’t in itself unusual, but Shinobu hadn’t been that hard pressed in any of their previous matches. It was obvious that she had been uncomfortable since the beginning. There were too many cameras in the room.

Taichi had held Chihaya’s hand while she fell asleep between the first and second match. Arata was there, in the room, with her, too, and she had managed not to even think of him, although she didn’t not think of him. They were still playing together in the same hallowed hall, after all, even if they weren’t playing against each other.

She hadn’t dreamed while asleep, which was also unusual.

-

It’s a day for pajamas.

Chihaya tiptoes down the stairs. It’s a Sunday, and a bright one, but she feels still half asleep. Maybe she should be bouncing around the house, screaming for joy, but somehow that seems like the wrong way to go about things.

The house is unchanged. Chitose reads gossip magazines while laying upside down on the couch with her legs hanging off the armrest into the air. Their mother washes dishes in the sink; she turns when she hears Chihaya’s footsteps (she can never be quiet! Even when tiptoeing), and looks at her daughter only briefly before going back to the task in front of her. With her back turned, she says, “Poor Taichi had to carry you out from the car, you know. They all said you wouldn’t wake up even when they were poking at you.”

Chihaya flushes and slides herself atop a counter stool. “I don’t remember that at all!”

Her mother gives her another glance over her shoulder, still scrubbing a pot deftly. “No, I guess you wouldn’t. Chitose refused to go change you out of your clothes, so I had to do it, and you didn’t wake up then, either.”

There’s a box of crackers on the counter, and Chihaya shakes out a handful and munches them noisily, staring at nothing, taking in the familiar space. She has to keep reassuring herself it’s the same as always. She has to process this new way of being.

She’s so absorbed in her thoughts that she almost doesn’t hear her mother the next time she speaks. It’s quieter, this time. “So, how does it feel, Chihaya?”

Chihaya swallows her cracker, which takes a long time because bits and pieces keep sticking in the corner of her mouth and making it dry. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I feel any different.”

Her mother nods, sagely. “Well, just give it time. It’s a lot to get to used to.” The dishes clink softly under her hands, accompanied by the gentle sloshing of sudsy water. “You and Arata. Pretty amazing.”

She shivers. She’d nearly forgotten about Arata. Everything really has changed.

// A.

Arata wakes up late for work the day after the Meijin match, which isn’t something he’s ever done before, even though his first job was in fifth grade. He lives in a system of routines, juggling karuta and a job and school and family, but occasionally things slip. He slept like the dead, and must have pressed snooze without actually waking up.

He’s supposed to open the store on Sunday mornings, but by the time he gets to the bookstore the OPEN sign is already on. Clearly his boss beat him there. Arata’s bike is old, and creaky, and not meant for being pedaled up hills as fast as he can make it go.

Sunday mornings in their town are never busy shifts, but Arata still shuffles through the door, attempting to make as little of a ripple as possible, which is difficult with his height. When Arata enters, his manager is manning the counter, flicking through a photo book; not one of Chitose’s, but another girl, one of her co-stars. His boss doesn’t spare him a glance. “Well, look what the cat dragged in.”

“I’m really sorry.” Avoiding having to look at him, Arata shuffles some books on the nearest shelf that he can hide behind. His hands move them into their proper order mechanically, since the sorting system by now is as familiar as tying shoelaces.

A chuckle comes from the general area of the front desk, behind where the shelf shields him. “Don’t beat yourself up about it.” Flip, flip. Cough. “So, I heard from your parents that you might be quitting soon.”

Arata leans out from the aisle to face him, eyebrows squashed together. “What? I haven’t told them anything like that.”

The manager still doesn’t look up from his reading material. “Aren’t you going to school in Tokyo?”

The winter sunlight is only now beginning to crawl through the storefront windows, and he has to squint through the glare from his glasses. Arata doesn’t retreat back between the shelves, but moves to straighten some items on the magazine rack, trying to sound nonchalant when he says, “Oh - yeah, I am. I guess I just didn’t realize that means I’ll be quitting here.” Trying his best to squeeze a few more loose copies in the end of a row - being careful not to scuff the paper edges - he adds, “But I guess it does, yeah.”

His boss casts him a glance, finally, and shakes his head. “Maybe you’ll learn some common sense in university!” Almost as an afterthought, he laughs at his own wit. “I’m joking, I’m joking, of course.”

-

Even though it’s mostly full of books, the back room smells like a surgery, ten different kinds of clean chemical scents and an undercurrent of plasticky sweetness. Arata’s been uncomfortable in hospitals most of his life, one of those things he’s never grown out of.

His phone vibrates in his apron pocket, but he can’t check it right now, he’s working; or so he tells himself. There aren’t any cameras in the back room. He checks his email on the desktop all the time.

It’s been going off all day, messages of well wishes stacking up from people he’s surprised even know about the outcome of the match. He hasn’t heard from Chihaya since she muddled her way through the post-Queen match interviews. The last time he saw her - only last night, he realizes, though it seems like a million years ago - she was getting dazedly into the back of a car along with some other people he knew from Tokyo. Taichi was there. The two of them looked at him through the window as the car pulled away, he remembers, eyes still wide, neither really smiling. They looked like they were in shock.

After the match, but before they left, there had been interviews. They were harder to get through than they should have been. Arata’s never liked talking to crowds, and winning the Meijin title feels like it should be a bit sacred, rather than something where microphones are shoved in your face before you have a chance to breathe.

The actual interview was a painful experience. Chihaya always says aloud the first thing she thinks of, while Arata tries to talk slowly enough that his brain can keep up with his tongue, though the stuttering is inevitable.

For now, he’s back to regular life as if he only dreamed up everything that happened yesterday, and the people on the other end of his phone messages are just in on it too.

-

After lunch break, when Arata’s back to work, he hears his boss cough into his hand before speaking, in an entirely different tone than earlier. “No, but really, though. I’ll miss you when you’re gone. I’ll have to train a new shelf boy! And I doubt any of these kids these days will remember anything half as well as you.”

Arata pushes his glasses up modestly, still occupying himself with the shelves. “I’m sure you’ll find someone great.”

“I hope so.” His manager closes the photo book and sets it back on top of the stack of magazines next to him, then chooses another. “To be honest, I always knew you’d leave for the city eventually. A kid like you - you might come back, but if you didn’t leave here now you never would. I see it all the time.”

He has no idea what to say to that, but he’s saved before he has to give an answer. A synthetic chime rings out; a customer. Arata wipes the book-dust off on his apron, gives his boss a cursory nod, and gets ready to greet the woman at the door. He doesn’t let himself think again about the last night’s match, or it’s outcome, until his shift ends and it’s time to go home. There will be time enough for thinking about karuta in the coming year. He’s the Meijin, after all.

// T.

Taichi has been in the process of growing up for quite a long time. Growing up, it turns out, is a system of feeling humiliated until you wisen up about something, or several somethings, or someones.

One such growing-up lesson: Taichi has eventually started to learn that all of the things worth anything are things he has to chase. The things that won’t come easily.

That’s why he’s here now, having made karuta the defining aspect of his now-concluded high school life. Taichi will never be a genius at it, like Arata (or Wakamiya, or Suo), will never have that effusive thing they call talent, like Chihaya, but he’s stuck with it all the same.

Taichi told himself a long time ago he’d try to stop being a coward. That doesn’t mean not running, it just means running toward things, instead of away from them. It’s funny that you can spend your life rushing forward in pursuit of some unnamable something you felt, years ago, and instead of feeling futile it feels like the most worthwhile thing you’ve ever done.

-

His uncle is back from his yearlong stay in Munich, where he did a tenure teaching neurochemistry at a research university. Mom called the whole family - herself, Taichi, Rika, and even his dad - to a dinner with a bunch of extended acquaintances from both his parents’ jobs, the sort of family meal that only happens a few times a year, and almost always to celebrate some accomplishment or other major event that can be discussed at length over the table.

Taichi was a little excited for school to begin when he got his acceptance letter, even though the process of writing entrance exams and passing them barely merits any emotional reaction from him for its own sake, now that he’s gone through the motions so many times. He always passes. There’s still weeks to go until he begins university properly, and he wants it to get going already so he has something to do, and to end the limbo of break time.

It’s hard not to be ambivalent when it’s all anyone wants to ask him about. Once all the adults, plus himself and Rika, have started to eat, it only takes about half an hour of uncomfortable small talk before one of them - a woman he doesn’t recognize - brings it up. She's several seats down from him, and has to lean over a bit for her voice to reach him. “So I heard from your father that you’re going to be starting at Todai soon?”

Taichi rests his hands between his knees, casual as can be, and responds the same way he’s already done at least five times, to different people. “Uh, yes. My enrollment’s already been confirmed.” A semi-practiced pause, and then, “My mother’s an alumna, so she’s very proud.” Hisashi Suo still goes to Toudai, he remembers, absently. Maybe Taichi will be the one to graduate first.

The woman oohs and nods and turns back away from him, clearly satisfied with having made at least an attempt at feigned interest in the hostess’ family. Must be nice, she must be thinking, to have a charmed life. Or, at least, he would be, if he were her.

In his pants pocket, his phone vibrates, and he takes it out under the table, just like he’s back in class. It’s Chihaya.

mizusawa oldies need to meet up soon
ive got some exciting news too !!
but arata might have already told u

Immediately, his brain jumps to a variety of conclusions, all of which seem like potential worst-case scenarios, which he's pretty sure is a selfish thing to feel. Rather than replying to her, he turns his phone off. Sometimes taking the easy route is justified. (This may not be one of those times, but so be it.)

-

Taichi isn’t called upon in the conversation again for almost an hour, by which time the food is all cold anyway and the adults are just drinking, and he can let the talk wash over him without really listening.

It’s his uncle, sitting next to him, who asks, out of politeness: “Taichi, do you still play that game - the one with the Hundred Poets, right?”

Across the table, Rika rolls her eyes almost imperceptibly. If he were any further away from her, he wouldn’t notice, but they two of them are still shunted together at the kids’ end of the table.

“Uh, yeah. I do.” Talking about karuta with people who don’t play still makes him self-conscious. He meets his uncle’s eyes for a second and then looks away, glancing in turn at all the table settings and different people in the room; not their faces, just their hair and clothes.

In an undertone, his mother chimes in, “But who knows if he’ll be able to for long, with university.”

Taichi could argue with her, but it wouldn’t be worth the energy or the inevitable guilt and embarrassment about making a big deal out of it in front of people. Instead, he nods noncommittally, not in agreement, just out of compliance.

// S.

Spring nights are still chilly, and under layers of blankets Shinobu finds herself on the threshold of sleep, replaying the same moment over and over: the last game of the Queen match, when her fingertips brushed against Chihaya Ayase’s for a single moment on the surface of a card, knowing in her heart that she was a moment slower. Love that burns like Ibuki’s mugwort was the verse. Chihaya knew that she got the card, too. Victory was written plainly on her face. Even the people watching at home could have seen it.

For someone so painfully straightforward, Chihaya is an enigma. Her playing style is a hodgepodge of techniques lifted from the best players of the karuta world, and she picks up techniques and drops them out of nowhere in the middle of a match. She takes cards urgently, ungently. She is nothing like Shinobu, who is tied to each card by the strings of fate, like child to mother.

Her temperament is as nonsensical as her approach to the game. Shinobu’s wrists can still feel Chihaya’s fingers laced around them on that day at nationals, years ago. Chihaya had promised to meet her next at the Queen match. She followed through, in time.

-

The knowledge that she’s no longer the Queen settles in over a period of weeks. At first it’s easy to forget, so a few times each day she has the realization again, each just like the first time, until eventually, after about a fortnight of these small double takes, it becomes just a fact.

For some reason - she doesn’t know when she started, let alone why - Shinobu begins to write letters she’ll never send, on the back of grocery receipts and in the drafts of her email, never with any written salutation but still very much addressed to someone, name unspoken.

How is the weather in Tokyo? I check online often, but I’d rather hear it from you.

Have you given up practicing with your society now that you’re Queen? Most do, more or less, or at least they stop putting their hearts in it.

You told me once that you think about me often. Is that still true? Was it just because I was an obstacle you needed to overcome? I wish I didn’t wonder this as much as I do.

She can’t translate anything she’s feeling into words in a way that doesn’t sound false. Never before has Shinobu done anything like this. Her desk drawer is full of scraps of paper with half-written sentences on them, I wish - I wonder if - Do you - I want - When will we.

Life was easier to understand when Chihaya Ayase was just an odd girl she beat in a few tournaments. There’s no explanation for why she thinks about Chihaya as much as she does. Shinobu contemplates her in the most mundane circumstances, at the strangest of moments. Somehow, dreaming up images in her mind of Chihaya biting her lip and struggling between two choices of noodles at the supermarket is intoxicating, and Shinobu feels as if she’s pried into some dark corner that should have been kept private, even if it’s just a fantasy, and a fleeting, innocent one at that.

-

Shinobu’s grandmother has been waging a small war against her granddaughter’s hair for years now. It hangs around her shoulders in perpetual tangles, because Shinobu dislikes brushing it and hardly pays attention to it, most of the time. Occasionally her grandmother will sit her down and force a comb through the worst parts of it, usually before important guests are supposed to come by. Wincing whenever the teeth pull at an especially matted portion, Shinobu feels a bad temper grow steadily until she says through gritted teeth, “Did you think I’d be Queen forever, Grandmother?”

Her gaze is fixed on the table portion of the vanity, so she can’t see her grandmother’s face when she asks, “What?”

“I was going to lose eventually.” Restless, she squirms in her seat. She hadn’t wanted to sound so petulant. Crossing her ankles beneath the vanity, Shinobu busies her hands by fiddling with a keychain she found in her pocket. Anything to avoid looking up.

“I’m not upset that you lost the match,” her grandmother says. Shinobu, then, braves a glance at the mirror just to look at Grandmother’s face, trying to see beyond the mask of genteel wrinkles. “I am disappointed you seem to be taking it so lightly.”

“I’m not taking it lightly.” Looking back down, Shinobu resumes her detail study of the keychain, scraping away some of the paint in a plastic groove with her fingernail.

Setting the comb down, her grandmother starts to work away on the worst of the knots with her fingers, still sprightly for her age. “Shinobu - you must understand how serious this is. You need to continue with karuta.” After a pause, she adds, “It’s a very important thing for me.”

Casting another look at the mirror, Shinobu’s surprised by herself. Her hair is curling around her ears in a way that makes her whole face look softer, less angular, like a doll with only a passing resemblance to the person it’s modeled after. “I haven’t forgotten.”

// C.

The five original members of the Mizusawa karuta club decided, after a few uncomfortably quiet weeks out of school, to meet up at Taichi’s place for an afternoon to catch up and practice all together again, just like old times. It just happens to be the last day of February. It’s a leap year.

His sister Rika is the only other person home, and she stays out of their way, for the most part. Chihaya never really warmed to her; she takes after Mrs. Pressure in looks and that’s enough for Chihaya to not want to interact with her more than she has to.

Chihaya stands, hand on her hip, in the Mashimas’ overwhelmingly large kitchen, holding the fridge door open and letting the cold air out. She can’t tell if she’s actually hungry or if she just wants something to do. The fridge is full of carefully plastic-wrapped and labeled leftovers, and Taichi had just sort of gestured at the kitchen and said they could help themselves if they were hungry, but the thought of actually taking any of the stuff in the fridge out of its wrappings makes her kind of uncomfortable. She still feels a bit like a trespasser in this house.

In the living room, there’s a match in progress, between Tsutomu and Nishida, from the sounds of things. Even though she’s on the other side of a doorway, Chihaya can just tell by the sounds of their breath and movements. Kana is reading for them - she’s the best of all of them, by far - and Chihaya isn’t sure where Taichi is, unless - yes; she turns around, and he’s standing in the empty door frame between the kitchen and the living room, leaning against the door jamb, looking at her, arms crossed.

She lets go of the fridge door too abruptly, and it swings closed with a smack. “You aren’t playing?”

He shakes his head, just a little. “Nah, I’m taking a break.”

“Okay.” Not sure what to do with her hands, she laces her fingers together behind her back, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet. She couldn’t possibly stand still. “We could play each other later if you felt like it, we haven’t done that in a while.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Taichi pushes himself off from the doorjamb and walks into the kitchen. “You should go hang out with the others for a bit instead of hiding in here. You probably won’t see them for a while.”

She looks away from him, even though they weren’t making eye contact anyway. “I know.”

“I’m going to the store. Do you want anything?”

She opens her mouth, ready to say something, but nothing comes. “No, I don’t think so.”

He nods, expression blank. He should be smiling on a day like today, she thinks, but she isn’t smiling either.

-

Chihaya finds it easier to think of people in units, all contributing to a common identity. It’s why she likes playing in teams. In a team, you know who you are. Your victories are shared.

They stopped practicing when Taichi came back with takeout, and now they all sit on the floor of the living room eating off disposable plates. All five of the formerly senior members of the karuta club are there, but part of the team is missing, all the underclassmen. Maybe that’s why she feels a little hollow, even if the other four are with her.

Nobody really says anything. She gets the sense that maybe no one knows what to say. Maybe no one needs to say anything. They have places to be, all of them, and the hours tick away, the sun already behind the horizon outside the living room windows. They can’t stay here forever.

The break between high school graduation and the start of university terms ends in just a few weeks, and they’ll all be splintered, some leaving for other parts of the country, some just moving to different parts of the city, and Chihaya can’t help but be reminded of the end of 6th grade all over again. The team had a good run, and she’ll see them again, it doesn’t have to be goodbye forever, and they all have phones and computers. As long as they all keep playing karuta, they’ll meet again on the tatami at some point, anyway.

After a few bites, she sets down her food on the floor next to her. Her throat hurts and her eyes sting. It’s been a long day. “You all have to promise to come visit us when me and Arata have moved into our place,” she says. “It won’t be right until all our friends have come.”

Mentioning Arata’s name sends a chill out over the room, and for a moment no one moves, until Tsutomu, his eyebrows arched, says, “Of course we’ll come, Ayase.” His glasses are a little askance. It makes him look cute.

“Yeah, you don’t need to beg,” mumbles Nishida, somewhat bashfully. Kanade, the most composed of all of them, kneeling primly between Tsutomu and Taichi, just gives her a small, exasperated smile. Taichi’s mouth is set in a firm line, and Chihaya has an urge to poke and tease him just like she used to - until he’d sigh at her, smiling just a bit - but now wouldn’t be the time. She’s been getting better at not doing the first thing she thinks of.

In that moment, she feels just as happy as she always imagined she would be after the Queen match. For a little while, she has familiarity again. She’s with her team. This is the most comfortable place she’s known for a long time. It remains true, however, that despite that happiness Chihaya can’t help feeling like something is slipping away from all of them and she doesn’t know what it is, let alone how to clasp it.

For now, she shakes that thought out of her head. Her throat feels almost too tight to cry.

// A.

On the day Arata moves to Tokyo, his parents flutter around him with hands aquiver, asking him if he’s forgotten anything, disappearing only to return moments later bearing artifacts from the attic he hasn’t seen in years and telling him to find a box to fit them in. He’s an only child moving out into the big city, so maybe he should have expected it, but his parents have never been the clingy types. It’s not until he assures them that yes, he’s got everything and no, he hasn’t gotten the address wrong that he’s able to climb into the passenger seat of the moving van next to the gruff driver and settle in for a long ride.

The two of them fade into the distance slowly. The driveway flows into the long, straight main road seamlessly, so he can see them getting smaller and smaller in view until they aren’t anything more than just another tree on the horizon, albeit one shaped like two middle-aged people, one clinging to the other’s arm and pressing her face into his shoulder. The view is pure summer, green and dusky golden with splashes of pink flowers swaying in the breeze. He understands what the Hundred Poets saw in all this, even if he doesn’t quite get the process of turning the view of the landscape into characters on a page.

All his boxes are stowed safely in the back of the van, except for one, which sits on his lap. This box holds Arata’s karuta things and a framed photo of his grandfather. He doesn’t let go of it until he arrives at the apartment, even when he falls asleep on the drive.

-

He could have waited to move until closer to the start of his first term, but he wanted to have some time to find a job before the beginning of classes. Grandpa’s money left enough to cover the few months of extra rent, and Chihaya had been saving too, so they agreed on it together. She would be moving in by stages, only ferrying over as much of her belongings as could fit in Chitose’s car at one time.

Both of their parents had been shocked when they broke their idea to them, until they’d had a series of deeply awkward phone calls that confirmed they had exactly the same qualms about their children moving in together, which was somehow comforting to all involved. The facts of the matter made it seem like a sensible idea, when seen open-mindedly. The two of them were to be attending the same university, which was an hour’s commute away from Chihaya’s parents’ house; neither Chihaya nor Arata knew another student of the same gender who was looking for a roommate in the same area (Taichi’s mother had found him a single-bedroom apartment near Todai already); and they were childhood friends. It was convenient. They could both be trusted. More wholesome teenagers could hardly be found.

It’s still deeply surreal, though, when the day after he arrives Chihaya appears on the doorstep - their doorstep - with her arms full of household supplies, and looking as radiant as she does in his memories. No, more. Imagination pales before the reality that is Chihaya Ayase. Her hair blows even though there isn’t even really any wind and she looks at him without any hint of guile. It’s so startlingly ordinary a situation – she’s carrying a bottle of window cleaner and some towels, the kind of stuff that gets put in a bathroom cupboard and forgotten about until it’s needed – and she’s so unassuming about it, yet it makes him incapable of speech, the fact that she’s right there.

(Forget the landscape, this is what the poets wrote about. This is why it all still makes sense a thousand years later.)

-

One of the good things about Fukui was that it had a karuta culture in a way Tokyo never has, and a relatively small population. When it comes to Tokyo, the average person is far less likely to know much about the game, but on the other hand the population is so much larger that there ends up being more competition anyway.

It’ll be harder to get to most tournaments, now, he knows, but he wouldn’t be Meijin if he weren’t willing to deal with it. Chihaya putters in and out of his line of vision, carrying boxes to and fro from different rooms, making a racket even when he can’t see her. He sits on the living room couch, laptop over his lap and cell phone held to his ear with his shoulder as he types.

“Hey - yeah, I was just calling about registration for the Class A division.”

Amid some office background sounds, the shuffling of paper and clicking of pens and pencils, a man’s voice says, “Can I get your name?”

“Oh - yeah, of course.” On his computer screen he’s already pulled up the online portion, waivers and other formalities that are always identical between tournaments. “Wataya, Arata.”

There’s a second of silence before the man on the other end registers it. “Oh! The Meijin! Of course, pardon me.”

A little quieter, and amid the scratching of a pen, the man on the phone says, “First Shinobu Wakamiya, now the Meijin. This is usually a smaller tournament, but we might actually get some press this year.”

Arata’s eyebrows rise a little. “Shi-” He catches himself. “Wakamiya is registered?”

“Just a couple hours ago, yeah.” He looks up, and Chihaya is standing in the hallway, frozen in her tracks, still holding a box. She meets his eyes and mouths, Shinobu?

Trying to nod back without sending the phone slipping out from between his head and shoulder, Arata looks back at his computer screen, still attempting to enter the necessary information on the online form while listening to the man on the phone. Chihaya disappears from view only to return a few seconds later without the box she was holding.

“I think that’s about all I need from you for now, Meijin Wataya, but I look forward to seeing you there!” Shinobu once mentioned to him how much she disliked people calling her Queen, and he brushed it off at the time as one of those things Shinobu says that you never know whether or not to take at face value, but he thinks he gets it, now.

“Yeah, thanks for your help,” he says, and hangs up. Setting the laptop down on the couch beside him, Arata looks up at Chihaya, who has dust clinging to her t-shirt and wisps of hair floating around her head, having escaped her ponytail.

Her forehead is wrinkled from having her eyebrows raised so high. “Were you talking about Shinobu, just now? Is she going to be there?” He nods again. “I can’t believe I have to miss it.” She pulls her hands down over her cheeks, tugging the skin under her eyes away so that he can see the red part underneath. “It’s not fair.”

She grumbles for a little longer, and he laughs, though talking about Shinobu with Chihaya feels strange. They exist in different places in his brain, though maybe that doesn’t make sense. They’re both Queens, even if they are like night and day.

// T.

When Taichi moves out of his parents' house and into his apartment, it’s utterly uneventful. He’d imagined that when the day finally came, there would be more of a ruckus.

The place is tidy, between 5 and 10 years old, and when he steps through the door for the first time it’s utterly empty, except for himself and all his belongings. His mother hired people to unpack all his things for him so he could focus on preparing for the start of classes. Maybe he would mind the invasion of privacy if he owned anything of personal significance, but he has virtually nothing like that; anything he might care about being looked at, he packed earlier in a couple of duffle bags that he shoved under his bed. Even then, that’s mostly the kind of junk that lives at the bottom of a closet, like some certificates and a faded, child-sized red t-shirt.

The unpackers already finished and left, so it’s quiet and still inside the apartment, and he walks through the handful of rooms slowly, trying to memorize where all of his belongings have been put in the same way he’d study anything important. Unlike in a match, he won’t have to forget it all in an hour’s time, so it’s easy in comparison.

For a one-bedroom, the apartment’s not big, not small. The countertops are granite and the kitchen units are chrome. The compact stove has a glass cooktop. It’s something you’d expect to see in a flip-book of interior design work, or at an open house where no one’s actually looking to buy, just network, whatever that means, and there are waiters with snack trays.

-

Arata moved to Tokyo a few weeks earlier. He’s living with Chihaya. It’s not like no one saw it coming. They sent him a few texts, asking him to come by, but he’d been so busy with preparing to move and start school it was easy to find excuses why he just couldn’t. Really, he had been too scared. So much for growing up.

He’s not even afraid that he’ll finally, finally get the confirmation that they’re a couple. He’s made his peace with that, mostly. Inevitable, not worth getting mad about, etc etc. Two years ago, maybe, but he’s matured since then. Chihaya isn’t his, or anyone’s, and will never be, and Arata never deserved any of his anger just for - for what? It was never just about getting the girl, anyway, if that cliche can even be applied to them.

No, Taichi’s scared of what he’ll feel when he sets foot in their place, because he can already imagine it so easily. There will be Chihaya’s stray socks and manga volumes strewn about the place, a few dirty dishes in the kitchen, and dust on some of the top shelves. The couch cushions might be slipping out. It will looked lived in, and warm, and anyone who goes inside will know it’s a home.

Taichi’s not sure he’s ever had a home, like that. He wants that feeling, and he doesn’t think he’s ever going to get it, and it’s really hard not to be jealous. Even when it’s of your two best friends.

-

No one in his building talks to each other. They don’t even make eye contact. Most of the suites have laundry units inside, so the tenants hardly need to see each other except in common passageways, like the outside steps or in the cramped hallway space on each floor. It’s not like he holds it against any of them - he doesn’t acknowledge any of them either - but still. He could go missing and no one would even notice for days.

In those times when he does end up in close confinement with one of his neighbors, like the brief elevator rides between floors, he keeps his eyes fixed firmly to the digital numbers on the display screen, watching them decrease as they descend. The knowledge that there’s so many other people in the same apartment complex as his own, just on the other side of his walls, at all times, is a little threatening in a way that’s difficult to rationalize.

The walls in his unit are pretty soundproof. If he looks out the window but not at the ground below, he could be living in a suite floating in the sky, with nothing on any of the few rooms' sides.

// S.

Her mother drives her to her first day of university like she’s starting kindergarten.

Legs tucked up in front of the dashboard, Shinobu presses her knees together, trying to figure out if it’s possible to give yourself bruises with your own knee bones, and says, “I can take the train tomorrow. You don’t need to bother.”

Pursing her lips, her mother squints into traffic and replies, “I was just trying to be thoughtful.”

The university building looms up a few hundred meters ahead. It’s a traffic nightmare; there are students jaywalking and hundreds of cramped cars inching forward on the street. Shinobu grips the strap of her school bag and opens the passenger door. “It’ll be faster if I just walk.”

“Shinobu, wait -” Her mother doesn’t get to finish her sentence before she’s out of the car and the door is closed. The cars are going so slowly it’s easy to weave between them and get to the crosswalk. When she looks back, she can barely distinguish her mother’s car from the rest of them.

-

A girl from Shinobu’s class stops her after their very first classical literature lecture. “Excuse me, is your name Wakamiya?” The girl is short and chubby, with a soft voice and calm manner. She holds her hands behind her back, and adds, “I’m sorry to disturb you if you need to get to another class right now.”

It would be easy to lie and say she’s in a rush, but their lecture is small and it would probably be a bad idea to begin cementing a negative reputation on her first day. Most people here don’t know who she is. In high school, she didn’t care about being seen badly, but she told herself university would be different.

Shinobu looks at the girl closely, trying to remember if she’s seen her at any tournaments before. She’s beaten so many mediocre players that they all sort of bleed together. “No, I’m free for an hour.”

The girl smiles, and inclines her head. “It’s nice to meet you. My name is Kanade Oe. I’m studying classical literature here.” Oe takes a moment to adjust her satchel strap, collecting her thoughts. “This is my first day. Are you in this field as well?”

“Yes.” Shinobu is still unsure about her, but Oe’s been perfectly polite so far, and Shinobu can’t shake the feeling she knows her from somewhere.

They’re the only people left in the lecture hall. Oe smiles at her, tentatively, and asks, “Would you like to walk with me for a few minutes? I’d like to look around the campus, and wouldn’t mind some company.”

The urge to refuse the invitation is almost visceral. A few years ago - months, even, maybe - she wouldn’t have blinked before turning her down, but cautiously, she replies, “I’d love to.”

-

They walk at a polite, formal distance from one another. Not far, not close. Oe walks in silence for much of the time, and it’s surprisingly comfortable. Shinobu feels a bit unsure how she should behave. She hasn’t done something as simple as this, just walking and enjoying the company of someone her own age, in years. Maybe a decade, maybe longer.

It’s an overcast day, and they’re just one of many small groups of nervous students wandering the open-air corridors. Shinobu reaches across her chest to grip her forearm, feeling like she needs to minimize the space she takes up in the face of Oe’s quiet, solid smallness. “Why did you decide to talk to me? Why not someone else?”

There’s all the ambient noise of a hallway filled with a few dozen students, but Shinobu can still make out the sound of their feet on the floor, two different beats that are just out of time with each other. Shinobu’s stride is a little longer. “I’m from Tokyo, so I don’t know many people here yet,” Oe says. “But I play karuta and recognized you, of course.”

Of course. Shinobu narrows her eyes. “Were you with a society?”

“Oh, yes.” They turn off of the corridor into a shaded garden area with a glass roof, like a greenhouse. A few students sit eating lunch off of picnic tables. She wonders if Oe knew where they were going, or it they’ve just stumbled on this place by accident. Oe continues, “I’ve been part of Suihoku Society for three years now, but it’s back in Tokyo. I first joined karuta as part of the Mizusawa High School team, though.”

Mizusawa. It takes Shinobu a few seconds to remember, but it comes to her eventually; high school nationals. Mizusawa was Chihaya’s team. She can feel her pulse running at a rabbit’s pace through her neck, and isn’t really sure why.

“Do you… know Chihaya Ayase, then?” The two of them stop walking at a picnic table in front of a flower bed. When they sit down on opposite sides, Shinobu makes sure all her limbs are held in close enough to her body that she’s at no danger of touching Oe by accident under the table.

Oe laughs softly. “Oh, yes. Chihaya is one of my dearest friends.” Shinobu's blood is running as if she’s suddenly taken in caffeine even before Oe adds, “She talks about you all the time, you know. Shinobu this and Shinobu that, for years. Maybe I shouldn’t have told you that, though, it might be rude.”

Shinobu casts around for something to look at, because she can’t trust herself to make eye contact. She couldn’t expose herself like that, right now. Her eyes land on the raised bed in front of them, fixing on a single petal on a single flower. “Oh,” she says, finally.

-

They talk about things other than karuta, after that, like the campus and their other classes, even exchanging phone numbers, “in case we need to give each other notes,” Oe says.

It doesn’t come up again until it’s almost time for Shinobu to leave for her next class. She’s packing up her now-empty lunch box when Oe coughs delicately. Shinobu looks over at the other girl, who looks at her in turn a little nervously. “You know, Wakamiya,” she says, “I did a little research last week. I don’t want to join a new karuta society, but I still want to have people to practice with, and apparently our school has a club. I’ll understand if you’d rather not, but if you were interested I’d love to join with you.”

In her mind she hears her sensei’s words, Shinobu should not practice with people her own age, but she isn’t a child anymore, and Shinobu pretends not to hear them.

“I don’t know if I’ll join,” she says, “but I’ll come to a practice with you, if you like.” Oe smiles, then, and no matter how painfully amateur the karuta club turns out to be, Shinobu’s glad then that she could make Oe smile, even once. It’s almost like having a friend.

// C.

When Chihaya sleeps, she dreams the same dream about every other night.

She kneels on the tatami, Shinobu across from her. On the other side of the room, Arata and Taichi are opposite each other in exactly the same way. All four of them bow to each other, to the reader, and then wait, staring each other in the eyes and all standing by patiently to hear the preludes of sound.

As regular as the dreams themselves, Chihaya wakes before any of the matches begin. She’s glad; she doesn’t want to know how they will go, or who will win. She wishes they could just stay like that forever, the four of them, poised on the edges of their dreams.

-

Chihaya never wanted to become Queen for the attention, or anything like that. She just wanted to have proof she could be the best at something. All the fuss, and the way some people treat her differently, now - she never wanted any of it.

She hasn’t talked to Taichi, really talked to him, in almost a month. They text back and forth, little details about their schedules and complaints about traffic, but Chihaya hasn’t heard his voice in what feels like a long time, let alone seen him in person. This is what Chitose said happens after high school, but Chihaya hadn’t believed it. It would be different, she’d thought, for them.

Talking has never been hard for Chihaya, because there have always been things to say. This was true when it came to Taichi, especially; there was club business and tournaments and school and the odd late-night conversation about friends and families that he’d pretend never happened in the morning. She’s not sure what’s different now, or, really, which of all the things that are different is responsible for the feeling of distance. It feels wrong. He used to be just a fixture of life that she didn’t have to struggle for things to say to. He just was.

-

Practicing feels strange, these days, even though Chihaya can still see flaws in her game. There’s no way she could have peaked at 18.

That’s the nature of dreams, maybe. Once you’ve achieved them, you can’t keep going on the same way you did before. You have to invent new ones. That’s the hard part.

When she practices at Shiranami Society, the game is just the same as always, but Chihaya still feels a little restless. She can’t wait for the school year to really get into swing, and to be bogged down in homework for a while, something she never thought she’d want for any reason.

Taichi and herself are rarely ever at the society at the same time. The others tell her, once, that Taichi usually comes to practice late at night, a couple hours before closing, in the time slot populated by people who work odd hours. Chihaya likes to practice while the sun is still out. It reminds her of afternoons slipping into evenings at Mizusawa, when the sunset was just starting to reach its fingers into the sky.

The two of them do cross paths at the dojo sometimes, though. Tonight, he arrives as she’s preparing to leave. Harada is reviewing technique with some other players, so there’s a bit of a lull. Taichi looks peaky, she thinks. His cheeks are a little more sunken than usual. This is what people say your first year at a top university can do to you if you’re not prepared, of course, but she’d imagined it would be different for Taichi. He’s always been good at making it look like things are easy for him, whether or not it’s true.

His eyes go wide when he sees her, but it fades into a kind of borderline tired expression of familiarity. “Jeez, Chihaya.” After a moment, he says, “Are you heading home?”

She pulls the loose hair hanging from her ponytail outwards on either side to tighten the slipping elastic. “Yeah, I was. I can stay for a bit longer if you want, though.”

He looks away from her, quickly, and towards the dozen people milling around the hall. There’s no recordings playing, no matches in progress. “It’s fine, I don’t want to inconvenience you. You’re busy.”

She wants to take him by the shoulder and shake him a little bit. Taichi was an assured part of reality for so long that Chihaya nearly forgot what it had been like in middle school, when she saw him 5 times a year, if she was lucky. High school made her spoiled.

“No, really, I’m not, I want to see you,” she says, and grabs his forearm through his jacket sleeve.

At that, he looks back at her, his eyes burning in no small way with that look they get sometimes, usually in matches, that she’s never been able to place as any one emotion. It doesn’t scare her, of course, because he’s just Taichi, but it sends some chills down her spine.

He laughs, then, and the tension leaves. She was being dramatic and silly, of course; they’re just Taichi and Chihaya, in the dojo they’ve been going to since they were kids. They’re familiar faces to everyone around them. None of that changes, no matter what else they’ve got going on.

-

(A bit later, when they’re sitting down, there’s a moment of silence between the two of them that gets right under her skin, itching at her palms, until she says, “Feels weird that we aren’t club captain and president anymore, right?”

Taichi chews the inside of his cheek, like he does sometimes, and nods.)

-

After she comes home from practice, she showers and changes into pajamas before crawling under blankets in her bed, where she curls up, boneless, the clock reading 11 pm. Not too late, but not early, either.

Sometimes when she’s in her room at night she can hear Arata’s footsteps going up and down, restless, on the other side of the wall. It’s not annoying, though she wishes he could find some rest for his own sake. Chihaya wonders, Was he always like this? It’s so different from how he is the rest of the time, so steady and sure of himself in his unassuming, shy way.

It’s still surreal that she can see Arata, talk to him face to face, whenever she likes, now. He was so far away before. Not too long ago were the days when she wrote hundreds of unreturned emails, none of them saying much of anything; no matter what they actually said, it failed to communicate what needed to be expressed. Most of the time, she didn’t know what that was.

She gets out of bed and goes to stand in the open doorway between the hall and the living room. Soft music she’s never heard before is playing from the stereo. Arata stands in the middle of the living room, looking away from her, out the window down to the city below.

He must have heard her, because he turns around to face her, looking surprised and a little sheepish. “I didn’t wake you up, did I?” He musses his hair with one hand.

Unconsciously, Chihaya’s mouth twists into a smile. She feels a little floaty, half asleep, with still-wet hair sticking to her neck. “No, I haven’t even gone to sleep yet.”

Arata nods. She steps closer to him until they’re standing side by side, looking out the living room window at the city at night. It’s never truly dark out in this part of town; artificial light illuminates the bottom of the cloud cover with a sickly glow, bright enough to distinguish telephone poles and electrical wires running across the horizon.

Talking to Arata is so comfortable, so natural, but she still finds it hard to find the right words, especially when they’re standing close enough to each other to touch. The proximity is a little dazzling, still. She settles on, “Do you miss Fukui?”

Slowly, he nods. “I guess. I miss my parents more.”

“Yeah. Mine too.” Chihaya sighs, “I need to visit them soon. I miss Chitose!” (Her sister had moved out briefly a year earlier, but moved back in within a few months, much to their parents’ chagrin.)

She flops down dramatically on the armrest of one of the couch chairs and chews her lip. If she was at home, her mother would scold her for ruining the upholstery. Her pajama shirt is stained with toothpaste splotches and Chihaya idly tries to scrape some off with one of her thumbnails. “I wonder if Shinobu’s awake.”

“I - I don’t know.” He sounds a little surprised, either at her or himself, though Chihaya’s not sure why he would be. She’s always wondering about Shinobu. Maybe she’s never told him.

// A.

When Arata thinks of Shinobu Wakamiya, he still thinks of her as the Queen, most of the time. It takes him a moment to correct himself; no, Chihaya’s the Queen. He’s the Meijin, and Chihaya’s the Queen. Shinobu’s just another Class A player now, one of the many.

He doesn’t dwell on Shinobu often, but she finds her way into conversation more often than not. Chihaya brings her up casually, almost as if she’s trying to call upon her for good luck, like an invocation. Shinobu’s been a rival to both of them, though he wouldn’t call her just that when it comes to himself, and maybe not when it comes to Chihaya, either. Arata never quite understood the relationship between those two. He wouldn’t really know how Shinobu feels about either Chihaya or himself, for that matter. He and Shinobu don’t talk except for when they end up at the same place at the same time.

-

Arata has been awake for a while. He used to get insomnia pretty badly, mostly around the time his grandfather passed away. These days it’s mostly better, but sometimes at night he still imagines all the people he’s ever known dancing through his mind while he lies awake, staring at the ceiling. When he’s on the edge of dreams and consciousness, they say things to him in languages he can’t understand.

For a long time, it seemed as though everything good were far away, and that was the other thing that kept him up at night. He hasn’t stopped thinking this is the case, it just seems like distances aren’t as far as they used to be. Or maybe he’s just gotten better at crossing.

A late night call. Taichi picks up on the third ring.

“Hello? Arata?” His voice sounds so different over the telephone. Staticky. A little bit more aggressive.

From his bed in the dark, the ceiling looks almost like street concrete. Arata sets the phone to speaker so he doesn’t have to hold it to his ear. “I didn’t wake you up, did I, Taichi?”

Taichi laughs, the sound filling Arata’s bedroom, and it sounds a little hoarse. It’s just the phone signal, but for a moment Arata ponders whether he could have started up a smoking habit. “No, god, no.”

Arata shifts on his elbows, trying to get comfortable. “I was just wondering if you wanted to meet up and go over school stuff together. Chihaya’s asleep, and -”

“- No one can study with Chihaya. I know.” There’s an awkward pause, like Taichi doesn’t know what to say next, and Arata can just hear faint crackles of breath. He understands what it’s like, but it still makes you wonder about them; they’ve known each other for seven years and still can’t string together a conversation without floundering over small talk.

At last, Taichi says, “My place or yours?” They’re only a handful of minutes’ train ride away from each other, but it feels like the other side of the country, sometimes. “If I come over, will it wake up Chihaya?”

Arata laughs. “Do you think?”

That gets a short laugh out of Taichi, too. They both stop after a few seconds, suddenly uncomfortable with having laughed together for the first time in years. (For a moment, they were eleven again, lying on their backs in piles of leaves, or on the grass outside school, or in snow piles. All that’s missing is Chihaya between them, laughing the hardest. She makes everyone brighter, like they’re borrowing some of her lightness.)

-

Even though they go to different schools, a fair amount of their material is the same, so they can quiz each other if they just exchange notes. Taichi studies in all of the traditional, diligent ways, with piles of neat flashcards and flowchart diagrams written in a small, cramped script.

Taichi belongs in their house. It’s so natural to see him sitting on his and Chihaya’s couches, even though this is the first time it’s he’s been there. It could just be the way he's sitting, but Taichi’s limbs seem to go on forever without making him look gawky in a way Arata could probably never manage. In general, he looks put-together while studying at 1 am in a way no one should be able to.

It’s actually kind of distracting. He and Chihaya would make the perfect pair; people have been saying it since Mizusawa High School made their tournament debut. While Chihaya looks beautiful just by existing, seemingly without effort, Taichi makes himself look good as just another expression of his self-discipline, or his vanity. However you want to define it.

Back in the real world, in their living room, Taichi leans forward a bit. “Arata? Hey, are you falling asleep?”

Arata blinks himself back to full consciousness. “No, no.” The couch is deceptively comfortable, and cell biology is boring. He wasn’t falling asleep, he was just lost in thought. About Taichi.

“The first step in in the electron transport chain is...?” Taichi isn’t even looking at the sheaf of notes in his hands, just at Arata, eyebrows drawn.

He tries to remember, but no matter what he does, he can’t direct his mind towards anything but the way Taichi looks on their couch. He looks comfortable. He looks - not quite relaxed, but not as tightly wound as he does in public. It’s strange. For such a long time, they only saw each other in situations where there were no chances to breathe evenly, or clear their heads.

They’re on separate couches, and Arata wishes they weren’t. The thought startles him, but it doesn’t go away. He wants to make Taichi feel comfortable. It’s exhausting to be around him, sometimes, because you can feel how much over-thinking he does before every movement, and Arata doesn’t want to study, he just wants to help Taichi let go for a little while, which is a bizarre thought to be having, but somehow it feels like a natural conclusion to come to.

Taichi puts the notes down on the couch cushion and narrows his eyes. “Are you okay, Arata? Should we stop here for tonight? You look… weird.”

Arata rubs his eyes with the palm of his hand, pushing his glasses up. “Yeah. Let’s call it a night. Thanks for coming out here so late.”

Standing up to go, Taichi looks down on him with eyebrows drawn, but nods. “It’s no problem. Anytime, man.”

// T.

It’s hard to make time for practice in between classes and after-hours studying sessions, but Taichi tries when he can. Most of the people who are there whenever he comes by Shirinami Society are the old regulars, people he’s known for years, but there are some rookies too, including a few kids who can’t be out of middle school. It’s the Queen’s karuta society, and the sensei challenged the old Meijin just the year before; there’s no better advertising.

In the end, Dr. Harada both did and didn’t achieve his dream of having Shirinami produce a Meijin. He lost his match, but Chihaya won hers just a year later. And there’s still time, after all. Maybe Taichi will unseat Arata this coming year. Ha, ha.

-

After practice, Dr. Harada calls him over for what he says is a “walk.” Harada’s walks are winding and longer than any 60-something’s casual nighttime strolls ought to be, so Taichi mentally prepares himself for another test of stamina, but you can’t say no to your sensei.

They pace the city block surrounding the dojo. It’s not quite autumn, yet, but too cold to really call it summer. A great yellow harvest moon hangs overhead.

The doctor waits until they’re a few buildings away before speaking, as though what they’re to talk about is of some grave and secret importance. “I hear the Meijin’s living with Chihaya, now. Talk about a fortuitous household!” Harada laughs his great, booming chuckle, the kind only appropriate for impressive old men. “What’s it like being in the same city as Wataya? Just like old times, eh?”

Taichi’s throat seizes around a sudden patch of dryness, and he needs to cough for a few moments before he can actually speak. When he does, it sounds rough and not at all like himself. Every conversation ends up being about them, these days: Arata and Chihaya. Everything leads back to one or the other. “I don’t know. I don’t see him that often.”

Dr. Harada looks straight ahead while talking instead of turning to address Taichi directly, which Taichi appreciates right now. “And would you like to?”

He examines his knuckles, which are faintly callused from balancing himself on them while leaning forward on the tatami. Someone once told him that he plays better when Chihaya isn't around. Maybe it’s all for the best. “I guess.”

“Hm.” They pass the dojo for the first time, and keep walking. “How’s school?”

“It’s good, uh. Really good.” The answer is practically rote, by now. “Hard, but I’m doing fine so far.”

His sensei nods sagely. “Lots of kids, bright kids, drop out of med school because they never actually wanted it. It’s not that they don’t have the brains, they just aren’t doing it for themselves, you see, and you have to do it because you want it.”

He nods, weakly. It’s a good thing it’s dark and Harada can’t see the shade of pale his face must be. This conversation has, for Taichi, so far been a game of insecurity leapfrog, so he tries his best to keep his face carefully blank. “Sensei, are you still talking about med school?”

They walk side by side for a while in silence, both of their hands shoved into their respective pants pockets. Harada has half a foot on him, but it’s gotten less intimidating than it used to be. “You tell me, Eyelashes,” the doctor says, and Taichi laughs sheepishly.

“I want to - I’m doing it because I want to. I’ll make it. You’re the one who told me not to say I couldn’t do it until I actually tried, remember?”

Dr. Harada chuckles. “Yes, I remember.”

-

When he writes his first midterm of the semester, there are several questions about the material he went over - or at least tried to - with Arata, that night, and it’s actually incredibly distracting.

Arata had been falling asleep on his feet, pretty much, so Taichi finds it hard to believe he genuinely wanted to study, but why else would he have called him up? Maybe he just wanted a pretext to make a late-night phone call, but why would he want to do that? It couldn’t have been loneliness. Taichi might live by himself, but Chihaya was under Arata’s roof the whole time; if he just needed human contact, he could have woken her up, but instead he called up Taichi, a handful of train stations away, and said he wanted to study.

To make things worse, the whole time he’d been there, Taichi had felt a bit guilty towards Chihaya, of all people. For some reason he couldn’t place, he felt like they were doing something behind her back. What that could be, though, he has no idea. Nothing happened. They just studied, inefficiently, for an hour, and then he went home, and the whole train ride he couldn’t stop thinking about certain tiny, irrelevant details, like the way Arata’s eyes kept glazing over from tiredness, and how he barely stopped looking at Taichi for a moment.

So now Taichi sits in class, paper in front of him, and tries to sift through the layers of emotions he’s too scared to put names to in order to come up with answers for the questions. It causes him more difficulty than it should. Everything else aside, he’s good at school. Even Arata can’t take that away from him.

// S.

Tokyo is too far away from Kyoto for her to want to visit often, but one of those novelty museums in the capitol was running an ultralight aircraft exhibition and Shinobu had arranged to make a trip for the weekend by herself.

The exhibit opens in the evening, so she has time to wander for a little while. She had planned on visiting some mascot shops, but the streets are easy to get lost on and she doesn’t want to look like a tourist, so instead of looking up how to get places on her phone Shinobu just follows the streets that she thinks look the nicest. She watches her feet move as she goes over crosswalks, trying not to get trod on by other people’s shoes. Her shoes are bold against the white rectangles and the bare pavement.

As things turn out, she never makes it to any mascot shops.

There are 35 million people in Tokyo, which means the chances were far less good than one in a million, yet it happens. She couldn’t mistake that face anywhere. Chihaya Ayase has been in her dreams for too long.

Shinobu stands still on the sidewalk, looking between people in the crowd, as Chihaya walks towards her, face bowed over her phone. People around her are grumbling and shoving at her. She can’t make her body move.

Chihaya is mere feet away when she looks up from her phone. Recognition is instant. Shinobu can see it plainly on her face; Chihaya has never been able to hide any of her thoughts.

She calls out Shinobu’s name. It’s far too loud, Shinobu almost cringes, but the people around them scarcely spare a glance. Tokyo people have better things to do.

Time moves slowly; Chihaya’s hands reach between the sea of bodies and wrap around Shinobu’s wrist. Her face bursts into a smile, and she exclaims, “It’s you! I can’t believe it! What are you doing here?”

Unless Shinobu’s mistaken, Chihaya’s fingers are quivering slightly. Before Shinobu can reply, she continues on. “My house is, like, a block away! Do you want to come over?”

After a moment, Shinobu nods. What else could she have done?

-

It’s a strange experience. The inside of Chihaya’s home is so much like her own space, back at home. There are telltale signs that the inhabitants are karuta players - certificates on walls, signature green boxes under the coffee table - and Daddy Bear merchandise is scattered around the living room. Shinobu thinks back to her tasuki, stuffed in a drawer back at home, and flushes pink.

The apartment is small but too big for just one student, and she doesn’t figure it out until she sees the framed photograph on the corner table of Hajime Wataya: Arata lives here. Chihaya and Arata, Queen and Meijin, live together. In Tokyo. She isn’t sure why that detail sticks out to her so prominently, but she’s taken aback to realize the distance between herself and Arata has increased by so much, and she didn’t even know. For months now, he’s been on the other side of the country. It’s a leaden sort of knowledge. She feels like she should have sensed it as it was happening, somehow.

It’s a lot to process, especially as Chihaya strolls through the apartment a few paces in front of her, casting glances back every few steps like she needs to make sure Shinobu’s really there. Chihaya clearly doesn’t know where she’s leading her, just prattles on with questions about the trip here from Kyoto, almost to herself.

In the hallway between the living room and the kitchen, Chihaya stops them both with a hand on Shinobu’s shoulder. “Shinobu,” she says, brows furrowed tightly, “If you wouldn’t mind, could I please have your phone number?”

Blinking twice, Shinobu struggles to remember how to string sentences together. “Of - sure. I guess.”

Chihaya breaks into a blinding smile and strains to extract her phone from her pants pocket. She’s not graceful at all, off the tatami, yet Shinobu can’t look away. She’s mesmerizing.

It takes Shinobu longer than it should to remember her own phone number, and her fingers, normally fluid, stumble over the touch screen’s interface.

As it turns out, Chihaya had already prepared an address book entry for her, under just “Shinobu.”

-

Chihaya’s hands look almost as if they’re trembling as she rummages through the kitchen cupboards, which seem to be only sparsely filled with different kinds of packaged snacks, which is maybe the kind of thing you’d expect from people who are still barely adults. Two mismatched mugs, one white, one black, sit next to each other on the countertop.

“I don’t know what kind of tea you like, Shinobu, but I think we might only have jasmine, so I hope that’s alright – I just hope I can remember where we keep it – neither of us are really big tea drinkers, you see.”

“That’s fine.” The water in the electric kettle burbles pleasantly, approaching a boil. “I’ll be happy with whatever you share with me.”

The other girl laughs – a sharp sound, too high pitched, it should be irritating but it isn’t – and withdraws her arms from the cupboard, a box of teabags in hand. Cheap, mass market stuff. Chihaya closes the cupboard doors and turns around carefully, as if not to bump into Shinobu, standing less than a foot away in the cramped kitchenette. Each mug gets a teabag. Chihaya asks her, “Do you want the black one or the white?”

“I don’t mind either way,” Shinobu replies, after a beat. It’s not that she’s never been so close to Chihaya before – she’s been within inches of her in matches, touched her several times, in fact – but now Shinobu’s looking at her within Chihaya’s own kitchen. Both of them have their hair down and they stand on the apartment tiles in their socks. It feels different.

Chihaya barely looks at her, tending to all the parts of tea making with excessive enthusiasm. The kettle dings, and she fills the mugs with hot water immediately. Doesn’t she know you’re supposed to wait a little while for it to cool down, as not to scald the leaves?

Chihaya doesn’t turn around this time when she asks, “Do you want any sweetener?”

Shinobu shifts her weight on her heels, and says, “No, I… don’t mind either way.”

Chihaya picks up both the mugs and offers the black one to Shinobu. Extra hair elastics line Chihaya’s wrists like bracelets. Shinobu’s heart is rushing. She feels like she’s spinning out of control, which is silly, because all she’s doing is standing in a kitchen.

Their fingers brush on the handle of the cup. Shinobu takes it, but just to set it back down on the countertop; Chihaya’s eyebrows rise a little in surprise, but before she can say anything Shinobu leans forward and kisses her.

Shinobu has never kissed anyone or been kissed, and all she knows about it is what she’s seen on TV, where it’s usually a boy kissing a girl and they both look like they know what they’re doing. At least Chihaya is taller than she is; if Shinobu were the taller one she really would be lost. Her hands are moving of their own accord, like in a match, when her whole body knows what card will be next and her mind doesn’t need to get involved. They fly up to Chihaya’s face, cradling her jaw and cheeks – Shinobu has not been this close to a person in years, maybe ever – as her lips press against Chihaya’s.

They jerk apart when a sound rings out. At first, Shinobu thinks it’s a gunshot, but in reality Chihaya dropped her mug on the ground. There are shattered pieces of china all over the tile, as well as all her tea. Shinobu leaps back before it can soak into her socks, and struggles to open her mouth. She can’t breathe. “I - Chihaya, I -”

Chihaya is looking from her hand - still held out in front of her, open, mug-less - to the wreckage on the floor, to Shinobu, and back in a cycle of horror. Her mouth hangs open; her eyes are glazed. “Shinobu,” she whispers.

The rest of whatever she wanted to say, if she was going to say anything else, gets lost. Shinobu turns around and runs, picking up her purse from the floor and kicking her shoes on before getting through the door as quickly as she can. The elevator is out of service, so she sprints down all three flights of stairs, heels flapping out of the back of her flats, until she’s out of the main complex doors and onto the street, where there are enough people hopefully Chihaya couldn’t make her out, even if she was looking down from the window above.

// C.

After Shinobu leaves, it takes Chihaya a while to remember how to do things, like moving.

The wet shards of the tea mug lie in a puddle on the ground in front of her feet, and after a few minutes she bends down to dab ineffectually at the mess with a tea towel. In the end, she picks the pieces of china up one by one and deposits them in the trash can until the only ones left are too small to see. They’ll just have to keep socks on in the kitchen for a while, her and Arata and any guests they might have. It would be bad to step on anything she missed and get splinters.

She needs to think about it; she can’t think about it. Mostly she sees the image of Shinobu’s hand, so small and pale, reaching out to cradle her cheek. It was just like how Shinobu is in a match, precise in all her movements. Her fingertips just barely touch her target. Her mind and body are perfectly in sync.

Chihaya has essays to write and tests to study for. Her schoolbooks are in piles all over her bedroom, upstairs, covered by dirty laundry that needs to be walked down to the washing machines on the ground level. There are lots of things she should be doing instead of squatting on the kitchen floor, replaying the same 30 seconds over again in her mind.

She doesn’t understand Shinobu, and she never has. The very first time Chihaya saw her, Shinobu was walking right through the gate at Omi Jingu, inside the part of the passage for gods' use only. Chihaya has never been able to figure out whether Shinobu didn’t know or didn’t care.

It’s why Chihaya felt drawn to her from the very first moment they met, for reasons that couldn’t be completely explained as the desire to beat her in a match. She wanted to understand what went on in that girl’s mind to allow her to play karuta so beautifully. If there’s one thing Chihaya’s learned by now, it’s that karuta comes from within; each person plays their own game, and someone who plays like Shinobu could never be anything less than amazing. It’s just a matter of figuring out what’s going on under the surface. That’s easier said than done.

Shinobu smiled, though. When Chihaya gave her the tour of the house, she did smile.

-

Arata gets home a few hours later. She hadn’t, until then, thought of how the situation would feel even more confusing once she included him, Arata who loves her; he confessed to her over a year ago, and she hasn’t told him anything yet. He’s waited on her for a while. When Chihaya starts thinking about putting her feelings (love is a scary word once it’s more than abstract, once it’s used outside of poetry) for people into words, everything becomes so much harder than it needs to be.

He walks through the apartment door, hair just a little damp and glasses fogged - hopefully Shinobu didn’t get caught in the rain, Chihaya thinks - and peers at her from the threshold. The way he looks at her makes the hairs on her arms stand up, sometimes, but not in a bad way.

Not very much earlier, Chihaya traded her seat on the kitchen floor for a spot lying face down on the living room rug, where she remains. Arata is still standing on the welcome mat, and he takes off his shoes and jacket slowly, hanging his coat on the hook and placing his shoes neatly in a row next to the door. He gives her a sidelong glance, and says, “How was… your day?”

She shifts so it’s only one of her cheeks that’s pressed into the musty carpet, and answers, “Oh, good. Good. Fine.” With no small effort, Chihaya pushes herself up on her hands and clambers into a sitting position before adding, in what she hopes is a nonchalant tone, “Shinobu came over.”

Arata pauses wiping his glasses with the bottom of his shirt to squint in her direction. “What? She was here? Did she call you before?”

“No, I just saw her on the street,” Chihaya replies, tucking her legs up and hugging them to her chest. It’s chilly inside; Arata must have let some cold air in.

He walks over to her from the entryway, finally comfortable in his socks and t-shirt, and looks down at her, inscrutable as ever. “Why are you lying on the floor?”

Something in his tone, curious and still a little hard to read, prompts something in her to move. Chihaya gets to her feet, ungainly, so she stands almost at eye level with him, and looks Arata in the eyes. She can’t pretend, to herself or to him, that nothing happened, or that nothing needs to be said. Knowing how to say things properly has never come easy to her, but she needs to try. If she doesn’t work up the courage this time she never will.

She balls her hands into small fists, still meeting his gaze, and says, “You know how you told me you were in - in love with me? That time?”

His eyes go wide, but after a moment he replies, “I remember.”

Chihaya thrusts her hands down into her pockets, looking for something to stop herself from fidgeting. She thrusts out her chin a little bit. From here, she can see herself reflected in the lenses of his glasses. “Do you still? Feel like that?”

“Yes.” He doesn’t even consider it. There’s a rush, from her toes to her head, like a warm wave breaking over her.

Her legs are trembling, yet she steps a bit closer to Arata. He looks fragile, she realizes, even though he’s so tall and stable, easy to lean on. It seems nearly impossible to believe she could make him fragile. She remembers being fifteen and writing notes on scraps of paper to deliver to him in Fukui, writing, to me, you are like a karuta god, and she takes her hand out of her pocket to put it on his shoulder, feeling shivers and not knowing from whom they’re coming.

He must have a little bit of god in him, after all, to keep himself looking so calm even at a time like this. Chihaya can’t look him in the eyes, she’s too overwhelmed, so she looks at her hand on his shoulder, focusing on the contrast of the black cotton against the warm tone of her skin. “I don’t know what to do, I still don’t, even though you told me ages ago,” she says, faltering over the words - they’re somehow coming out both too quietly and too shrill. “I don’t understand how people are supposed to - to figure out their feelings.”

It dawns on her that the two of them are alone, together, in the living room. This isn’t how it should be. The picture is still incomplete, but - she feels inklings of understanding, now, and what she thinks she wants is impossible. All her teammates were right, she’s too greedy. Aren’t people supposed to be able to decide upon one to love, or know how to tell love from friendship? She can’t have everything she wants, surely. She’s already been so lucky, and gotten so many of her dreams fulfilled. Mustn’t there be a place where she needs to stop, and just be grateful for what she’s got?

“See, this is - all wrong. You’re not wrong, Arata, you’re right, you’re - you’re perfect, but it can’t be just us, don’t you feel it? Things are missing.” She’s still staring resolutely at her fingers splayed on his shoulder. Chihaya wonders how it’s been for him, how he knew she was the one to pledge his love to. Why her? Why only her? “I, like -” Withdrawing her hand, she looks up to meet Arata’s gaze, still fixed on her face, and something clicks. Maybe it's just the fact that they're standing in a shabby living room, one that could almost pass for the one that three children went to after sixth grade graduation, to play one last game. “- Taichi. He needs to be here, too. Or else it won’t work.”

Chihaya isn’t sure what reaction she expected, but it wasn’t a nod, shaky as it is. If he looked fragile before, he looks positively unfounded now, though it’s only because she knows him so well. If she had just met him, she wouldn’t notice the things like the rate of his breathing, or the things he does with his hands when he’s nervous. In her mind’s eye, when she thinks of him, Arata is never nervous.

“I, I understand, what you mean, I think.” He looks away from her, which she can’t hold against him, and continues, haltingly. Only he would ever react like this to something as strange as what she thinks she’s asking, without really asking it; he flows, liquid, and reforms himself, with barely a ripple visible on the surface. “But… we need to tell him, and he might not react the way we’d like him to.” Arata’s mouth twists for a moment, more like a twitch than a smile, and he meets her eyes again. “You know Taichi.”

For a moment, she thinks to herself, do I? He gets harder to understand every day, but it’s still Taichi, so of course she does. It’s hard to imagine a world in which she doesn’t get to know him like a best friend. Some people are meant to meet, Chihaya believes, even in grade school.

Then she remembers what she’d forgotten, for a few short minutes. She breathes in, a steadying, karuta breath, but still feels like she’s walking on pebbles under running water and might slip at any second. She catches his wrist in her hand, just lightly, because she needs support for this. “Arata - when Shinobu was here, she.”

He looks at her sharply, and tilts his head a few degrees. “What is it?” When she doesn’t respond, he leans in a little closer to her and prompts her again. “What are you trying to say?”

In the smallest voice possible - they’re standing so close to each other, she doesn’t need to be loud - Chihaya says, “She kissed me.”

It takes a few moments for him to understand. When he realizes, his eyes go wide again and his forehead knits together. “Like - like on the lips?”

She laughs, a real laugh, but a bit too high and sharp all the same. “Obviously!”

Many seconds pass before Arata says anything. “Chihaya, I - you,” he stops. “This is so complicated,” he finally settles on, and scratches the back of his neck.

She nods, miserably, with her face in her hands.

“What are we supposed to do?” Arata asks, and she shakes her head this time, feeling her hair swishing back and forth like curtains in the wind. Petulant, like a child.

Then she feels it: his fingertips, touching the backs of her hands. Tentatively, she lets her hands fall away from her face. She’s taken aback by the way he looks at her then. Again she’s reminded of Shinobu in the kitchen, even if she stood a head and a half shorter than he does. Her eyes were entirely darker and less calm, and yet she is so much like him, in some ways, especially in the look that was on her face when her hands rested on Chihaya’s cheek and jaw. It was nearly identical, somehow, to the way Arata looks now, as he holds her face in just the same way Shinobu did.

Chihaya’s arms hang limp by her sides, and he leans in just close enough to press his lips to her forehead. She feels a warm rush of blood to the surface across her cheeks and arms, and she squeezes her eyes closed again, resting her face against his chest. If she didn’t know better, she’d think she’s done it before; it’s such a familiar place to be.

// A.

His parents have been telling him to phone them for about a week now, so on Saturday afternoon Arata goes walking in the park near the apartment. It’s not really near - it’s a fair walk, to be honest - but it reminds him of home. The cherry trees stopped blooming in Tokyo months ago, but he’s from the country and he needs to see some trees, once in a while, even if they’re bare.

It’s quiet enough in the park that he can hear his phone on the lowest volume. Arata sits on a bench and watches people walk by, as the phone rings and he waits for one of his parents to answer the call. It’s just cold enough to be scarf and jacket weather.

Mom picks up the phone, as he thought she would. (Dad still doesn’t really understand how technology works.) “Oh, Arata!” she says, in the way only middle-aged mothers are able to say things. “Sometimes I think you must be dead, for all the communication we get.”

“Mom -” he rubs the back of his neck, even though she can’t see it. “I’m calling you right now, aren’t I? And anyway, I’m busy with -”

Interrupting him, she says, “School and karuta, yes, I’m sure, like always, I know. And it’s good that you work so hard, but we miss you!” She drops her tone, slightly, conspiratorial. “Your dad is the one who really wants to hear your voice sometimes, even though he’d never say it. He gets miserable when he has to go get something from your old room.”

Arata laughs. “Yeah, I bet.” The bare branches of the trees across the path from him rustle, just a little, in the breeze. He hadn’t really realized how much he missed the sound of people who say their vowels the same way he does.

Her voice softens. “But how are things, Arata? Really. Are you doing well in your studies? Do you think you’ll get scholarships for next year? Grandfather’s money isn’t going to last forever.”

He pinches the bridge of his nose. “I know. Classes are going good. I’ll apply for everything I can think of.”

There’s a lull, and he tries to figure out a way to ask what he wants to ask her without saying it outright. As long as he talks generally, doesn’t say anything about things that have actually happened (or Chihaya, or Taichi, or Shinobu, or anyone else), he’ll be alright, probably.

“Mom.” He coughs. “This might sound kind of weird, but did you ever have something you needed to tell someone, where if you told them they might stop talking to you, but if you don’t tell them, you might lose them anyway?”

She’s silent for such a long time, he wonders if he dropped the call by accident. “I’m not sure,” Mom finally says. “I think we all have, at some point.” An exhale, like a small sigh. “Is this about Chihaya?”

“No.” It’s only sort of a lie.

Mom sounds softer, older than usual. “Well, Arata, ever since you were little, you never seemed to have a problem telling people the truth, even if it hurt. I don’t see why this should be any different.”

On some level, he knew she was going to say something like that, tell him to do it the hard way. He never intended to do it the easy way, anyway, whatever the easy way could be, but this is terrain he really has no idea how to cross. They need to tell Taichi something, but he doesn’t even know what that something is, and Arata doubts that Chihaya knows either. And then there’s Shinobu, he remembers, off in Kyoto, unreachable and unknowable. She set this all off, and she isn’t even here to pick up the mess.

“Yeah, you’re right,” he says to his mom, and tries to sound nonchalant. “It’s really nothing big, I just thought I’d ask.”

-

It’s not that he doesn’t understand Shinobu at all. Even if she keeps herself to herself, he’s gotten to know her pretty well over the years. She’s been strange ever since he can remember. Maybe that’s how Grandpa knew she was going to become Queen, someday.

Since Chihaya told him, he’s been trying to figure out in his mind what it could have looked like, Shinobu kissing Chihaya in their apartment. He must have run through half a dozen scenarios in his head. He didn’t want to ask Chihaya for details, because that’s weird, and he only wants to know because it seems like such a strange thing to have happened in the place where he goes through his day-to-day life. He needs to try to understand the topography of it, who was standing where, who was looking down on whom, all the angles and whether anything was said between them. What happened afterwards, too, because Shinobu wasn’t there when he came home.

Everything’s collided in different ways than he expected. He went through all of middle school sure that the next time he’d see Taichi and Chihaya, it would be in a match, and they would be dating. It turned out he was wrong on both counts.

Arata’s in the habit of using dirty tactics if they’ll help him win, as long as they’re within the rules, but there’s probably nothing like that available to him, now. When he pressed at Chihaya for clarification about what she was talking about when she said it can’t be just us, she just gesticulated wildly and said she just wanted to not have to choose.

Maybe the weirdest thing is that he gets it. He really does.

// T.

When Chihaya called him up a few hours earlier, she sounded odd. Odd is typical for Chihaya, really, but there’s usually a pattern to her weirdness and Taichi’s having a hard time figuring out where this fits into it (this being her and Arata asking if they can come by his place for dinner.) They said they would bring it over, too, which was even weirder, since neither of them are known for being cooks.

But he had no good reason to say no. He wouldn’t want to say no, anyway, he tells himself. They’re his best friends.

He still can’t deny, though, how strange it feels to be letting them - the two of them, at the same time - into his space. Years ago, he held Chihaya at arm’s length and told her she shouldn’t go in a guy’s room without asking. At least she asks, now, but he finds himself missing the days when she wouldn’t, when it was a given, in her mind, that he would be okay with her inserting herself into every aspect of his life.

-

The dinner they bring over is just boxed curry, but it’s the thought that counts.

After he lets them in (hands quivering as he presses the intercom, for some reason, when he buzzes them in, and his voice cracking slightly as he speaks into the microphone; he has no reason to be so nervous) the three of them kneel on cushions around the square living room table. The boxes of take-out are stacked in the centre of the table like a miniature altar, food made by strangers brought into a home without a kitchen god.

When he was younger, he never thought that this is how things would be. Back in middle school, Taichi was hesitant to imagine Arata at all, and Chihaya existed in his mind as an old friend he missed but might never see again. When he thought of what he would be like after high school, he imagined dating a girl his mother liked and hanging out with other pre-meds in student bars on the weekends, not getting anxious over having his grade school best friends over for dinner. Not wasting his youth on a sport he’s not naturally good at. Not being perpetually single because, Taichi’s realizing, he can’t imagine himself being with someone who isn’t glaringly better than him at something important. He craves the sense of inferiority.

Now that they’re inside, his suspicions have been confirmed: he’s not the only one who’s twitchy. Chihaya talks incessantly about nothing at all and shoves food around on her plate with chopsticks without picking any of it up. It’s less obvious with Arata, as everything is, but he hasn’t taken his eyes off Taichi once since sitting down.

“Taichi, we’ve got to talk to you about something,” Chihaya says, visibly steeling herself like she’s about to start a job interview.

He pauses with a bunch of curry halfway to his mouth, distantly recognizing that he’s the only one actually eating. “Yeah,” Taichi says, “what’s up?”

-

His first thought, after: where did he mess up? When did he become so transparent even Chihaya could see through him?

Because this is the thing with Taichi: he’s never just liked girls, ever, but for the most part it was ignorable. He didn’t like non-girls any more than he liked girls. The last three years of his life have been an exercise in willpower, in seeing how much he could mould himself into the kind of person he’d like to be. For the most part, he was successful, but clearly there are some things he couldn’t prune away.

At the table, he sits at the junction of the three of them, Chihaya on one side, Arata on the other, but it’s a wide enough surface there’s at least a foot between each of them, which he’s grateful for. Arata stares at Taichi, his hands lying calmly on the table in front of him, and Taichi can’t make out any expression on his face. Taichi envies him so deeply. He wants to apologize for himself: Sorry I’m such a coward. I’ve been trying not to be, ever since you told me I was one. It’s a difficult thing.

Yet apparently he’s not so much of a coward that they don’t want - he doesn’t know how to finish that sentence, even just within his head. He clenches his jaw and looks at Chihaya, the easier route. “What exactly are you saying?”

“I don’t know! But I can’t -” She looks genuinely distressed, half-leaning over the table, hands balled into small fists. “- I can’t... be with someone if that means I can’t be with anyone else either!”

He exists in his mind rather than his body, usually, but visceral panic is creeping up through his chest and there’s nothing his brain can do about it. It’s threatening to make him do something really, really stupid, but he’s not going to let that happen; he needs, more than anything, not to run away from this. He won’t be able to stand himself if he does.

He looks back at Arata, though it takes all his strength of will. Arata doesn’t even blink, just watches Taichi and waits; he can be so cold, yet he’s not condescending, either. Taichi’s grateful for that.

(At age eleven, after school, he handed Arata his stolen glasses and told him a transparent lie, and it might have been in that moment that Taichi knew he had a superior in ways other than just karuta.)

Jutting up his chin and looking back and forth between the two of them, Taichi says, “I don’t know how this is supposed to work, but… why not. What have we got to lose?”

-

Later, they sit, three in a row, on the steps outside his apartment complex. It’s raining, and they’re just underneath the edge of the overhead cover. Rain falls thickly a few inches in front of them, pouring out of the overfull gutter and hitting the concrete so loudly it drowns out even the sounds of cars.

The city is dark. Oil slicks of colour pool in the puddles, reflected from neon signs and headlights, mutating with every falling drop that disturbs the water’s surface.

He’s the one that breaks the not-silence. “How are we going to tell people?”

“Who would we have to tell?” Arata asks, his voice barely high enough to hear over the rain.

Chihaya hugs herself, arms snuck underneath her jacket. “I mean… what are we, exactly?”

None of them have an answer. It’s not as scary as it should be, though, even if it’s something they don’t know how to talk about yet. They’ll just have to feel it out.

// S.

When Shinobu comes to the next meeting of the university karuta club - she never joined, per se, but she attends most of the practices because it passes the time - Oe realizes something has changed almost immediately, even if the rest of her club mates don’t. Oe sends her several meaningful glances from across the room, but Shinobu doesn’t acknowledge them. She doesn’t want to. She couldn’t.

Instead, she focuses on giving her teammates the most brutal technical critiques they’ve ever received. It’s unfair of her, but she’s qualified. She’s a former Queen. As if anyone forgot.

-

In between classes, Shinobu scribbles rambling nonsense on the backsides of her notebook paper, all the things she would ask Chihaya if Shinobu was capable of that sort of thing.

Have you told Arata what I did? What did he say? Are you a couple? I’m sure of it, now that I’ve been in the house that you share. It’s funny; I always thought if there were ever someone for me, it’d be him. And look at us now.

(The kiss is stuck in her head, the same way a song would be: the cadence of breaths and the palpable rhythm of blood, pulsing just close enough to the surface of the skin to be felt by another person. Unless she’s just filling all the details in with her imagination. She really wishes she could forget it entirely.)

-

Arata phones her on a clear, cold day, and says he’s in Kyoto for a short while on karuta business.

They meet at a European-style cafe, and he insists on paying for her coffee and pastries, even though she has the money to do it herself. He has gotten so tall.

When they were little, she remembers playing him at tournament after tournament, and how she entertained dreams in which they were secret cousins, somehow. They looked very similar, a pair of dark-haired, dark-eyed, quiet only children who clutched their trophies modestly in photographs.

If only the people sitting around them knew what celebrities they were in the presence of. A former Queen and a freshly minted Meijin. Queens and Meijins are, for the most part, looming spectres over the karuta world, people it’s rare to see in person. Many of them are eccentrics, to be sure, like Suo was, or they train alone, like Shinobu did. It’s an odd feeling, being at the peak of a world most people don’t know exists.

Across the small table from her, Arata drinks his coffee slowly. No, they don’t look like relatives anymore. The people around them probably think they’re on a date.

He sets down his cup on its saucer carefully, and says, “Chihaya mentioned you came by while I was at school a couple weeks ago.”

Reflexively, Shinobu demurs. “Oh, yes, just for a little bit of tea. Unfortunately I couldn’t stay long.”

“That was kind of you.” He looks so sincere about it. “She really looks up to you, you know?”

Shinobu clenches the handle of her cup. “Does she? That’s flattering.”

He gives her a searching look. “What kind of things did you guys get up to?”

She could say many things, here. She could say nothing of any substance and self-deprecate as poisonously as possible, the way she’s practiced for so long. She could tell Arata outright, say I kissed Chihaya and she broke a mug in shock and then I left her there like that. There are so many options.

Shinobu can’t think of any answer that won’t either be overtly condescending or just sound like something her grandmother would say, elegant and insincere. Choosing not to answer his question, she instead asks, “Arata, are you and Chihaya a couple?”

He blushes high on his cheeks. “It’s… kind of complicated.”

She nods, not sure what to make of that. “Well, if she trusts you, she’ll tell you eventually, right?”

Arata nods back, slowly. Talking is easy, but saying things is hard. For a long time now, Shinobu has been in the habit of hiding her thoughts behind empty politeness and oblique non-sequiturs. That doesn’t unlearn itself easily.

He understands her, though. He must understand what she really wants to say. For so long, it was just the two of them on each other’s level, and it seems a pity that as soon as he took his title she lost her own. It should have been just the two of them at the top, shouldn’t it? But Chihaya grew in between them, and Shinobu can’t blame either of the two for falling for the other. She would have done the same.

She pushes her half-eaten pastry to the side, appetite lost, and leans closer across the table to him, narrowing her eyes. “Why did you come to Kyoto?”

Arata blinks mildly, and responds, “I was asked to sit in on a Karuta Association board meeting. Just boring stuff.”

Shinobu doesn’t think she was ever asked to do anything like that. Maybe the chairmen never had a time where they felt the presence of a high school girl was necessary. “Why did you ask to see me?”

“Do I need a reason to catch up with a friend?” He sips his coffee.

Leaning back a little, Shinobu says, “I didn’t realize you thought of me as a friend.”

His eyebrows twist slightly. “We’ve known each other for ten years. What else would I call you?”

He’s right, maybe. At the very least, of all the people in the world who aren’t family, Arata may be the one Shinobu knows best. Warmth spreads through her chest, and she resists the urge to ruin it all with some tiny remark of cruelty, even though it’s force of habit. Physically biting her tongue for a few seconds, she releases it to cordially say, “I’ll probably see you next at Omi Jingu, I suppose, Arata.”

He smiles one of his rare smiles. It’s warm, and it’s not hard to imagine him, in that moment, in another life in another century. He is one of those timeless people.

Standing, he collects their dirty dishes, and gives her a small nod. “Yeah, you will. Good luck, Shinobu.”

// C.

They have a party on Christmas Eve. The past three Christmases, Chihaya’s been busy going to parties hosted by various school clubs, but this year she and Arata decided they should host their own. The apartment never got a housewarming, and she never made any of her friends from Mizusawa follow her up on their promise to come visit.

The apartment is so small, but it’s never looked smaller than when all their friends are packed in it. Nishida, Tsutomu, Kana (back from Kyoto for winter break), Sumire, Tsukuba, a few non-karuta high school friends, a couple of her new university friends, and some gawky guys she supposes are Arata’s university friends. And Arata. And Taichi.

It’s not very exciting, as parties go. There’s punch, and snacks, and smatterings of conversation throughout the room. Kana and Sumire sit squished together on the loveseat, Sumire braiding Kana’s hair, which she’s been growing out since Chihaya saw her last. Nishida and Taichi lurk together in the doorway to the kitchenette, nursing plastic cups of juice.

Not prompted by anything in particular - the sight of the floor in front of the stove, where they had been standing when it happened, maybe, or the presence of Kana, back from university, since for a while now Kyoto and Shinobu have been inseparably bound together in Chihaya’s mind - Chihaya wonders where Shinobu is. She could call Shinobu, she realizes. She has her number.

“I’m just going to get some more ice,” she announces to no one in particular. Arata gives her a glance, but doesn’t say anything.

-

Chihaya sits on her bed, cross-legged, and her fingers quiver over the call button. She’s never called Shinobu before. They haven’t exchanged words or seen each other since Shinobu was here, in her home. Chihaya has no small amount of regrets about that day.

She hits “CALL.” Her Daddy Bear phone charm swings back and forth from the shaking of her hand. The electronic tinkling noises ring out twice, and then Shinobu picks up.

“Hello.” Her voice is crisp and unmistakable, even though the background noises on her end are deafening.

There are long seconds of silence, punctuated only by breathing on Shinobu’s end. Chihaya’s own breathing is unsteady, and maybe even a little ragged. “Shinobu?”

Shinobu coughs, but it doesn’t sound like a prim one, more like her throat tripping over itself. “Yes.”

Leaning back on her pillows, Chihaya exhales. “Oh, good. I’ve never called this number and I was worried you’d changed it, or I’d written it in wrong, or…” She trails off. The night sky is beautiful through her window.

“No, it’s right. This – this is me,” Shinobu says. The faint rumbling and voices in the background of the call haven’t gotten any quieter, but Chihaya can’t seem to hear them. It feels like the beats in between cards, while the reader is still reaching into the box for the next one, and all she can hear is the absence of sound.

Chihaya runs her free hand through her hair, working away at imaginary tangles. “It’s so funny to hear your voice over the phone, because I’m used to mostly seeing you at matches.”

There’s a soft sound, like an extra-loud breath, that might be Shinobu laughing. “We have spoken before.”

She laughs, too. Somehow, talking to Shinobu feels so natural Chihaya wonders why she didn’t phone her before. “I know that! I just meant…”

“I know what you meant.” There’s a sharp burst of sound from Shinobu’s end, like shrieks and hollers.

“Where are you, Shinobu? It’s pretty loud.”

“Oh. I’m at a karaoke bar.” Suddenly, Chihaya can picture it based on what sounds she can distinguish: the rattle of chairs being rearranged in the adjacent room, people’s drunken singing, tinny electro-pop background tracks.

Chihaya laughs again, out of surprise. “What?”

“My university’s karuta club is having a Christmas party and I said I’d come.”

“Sounds like fun!” Imagining Shinobu singing karaoke causes a mysterious knot to rise in Chihaya’s chest. She rolls over her bedspread so she’s lying on her stomach and propped up on her elbows, kicking her feet back and forth in the air. “We’re having a party at our apartment too, just a few people over.”

“Oh.” Shinobu’s voice sounds tight, all of a sudden. “Is Arata with you?”

“Yes! He is!” Without meaning to, Chihaya’s voice spikes high. Her arms have tiny goose bumps rising on them from the December air.

Shinobu says nothing for one, two, three beats. “Tell him happy Christmas from me.” In an undertone, she adds, “And to you, as well.”

Nodding, even though Shinobu can’t see it, Chihaya props her chin on her wrist. “I’m glad I got to talk to you, Shinobu. I’ll see you in the Queen qualifiers, right?”

It’s sort of like how Chihaya can hear a sound before it’s formed; here, she hears the smile, a small one, without being able to see it made. “You will,” Shinobu says.

Chihaya sighs wistfully. Goose bumps line her arms from shoulder to wrist. It’s hard to think of words. She says, “I should get off the phone now and get back to the party – happy Christmas,” but her finger slips too early over the button, and she ends the call before Shinobu can respond.

Long minutes pass. For a moment, she considers calling back, but she decides against it. Chihaya places her phone on her bedside table, carefully, and then bounds down the stairs to rejoin the party. Arata bought a cake that afternoon, and it’d been sitting in the fridge all the time. She’d forgotten about it completely; time to bring it out.

-

When she falls asleep that night, after all the guests have gone home, Chihaya dreams a dream that’s strange only in how mundane it is. She’s preparing for a match, and Shinobu is there, and they’re both wearing matching t-shirts that look like the limited edition Snowhime ones you can only get from the actual shop in Osaka (Chihaya knows for sure, because she’d looked on eBay.) They’re about to play as a team; it’s one of those things that is never said, but she just knows by the logic of the dream.

All the verses sound garbled, like they’re being played backwards on a tape recorder, but somehow Chihaya can hear everything perfectly. Her arms move reflexively on the first syllable, every time.

// A.

It’s exam season, which also happens to be karuta tournament season, but Arata knew what he was signing up for. He hasn’t joined a new society yet, since he still hasn’t cancelled his membership in his one back in Fukui, so he practices at his school and at home, with Chihaya and Taichi and mutual acquaintances.

Usually, when it’s the three of them, one reads while the other two play, but they also have a pretty big collection of recordings when they pool all three of theirs together. They had decided earlier to forego live reading tonight because Chihaya had an exam coming up. (Really, they all did, but Chihaya’s grades are bad enough that the two of them together barred her from doing anything but study.)

Arata’s ears are, by now, so accustomed to the recordings of this particular reader that he can feel every sound in some place between his ear and his neck, like a sensory muscle memory. Maybe this is what it feels like to be Chihaya, all the time.

Chihaya herself is half-curled up on the couch, feet tucked under a throw cushion, in a bed of worksheets and notes. She always works so hard, these days, Arata thinks, and immediately Taichi seizes upon his moment of distraction to take a card from him. It’s so different from when they played as a team, except it isn’t, not really, not at all.

Playing like this is disarming, basically not even practice at all, but he doesn’t mind. After his hiatus, when he was just getting back into the game, he used to practice alone in a dark room. He wants to see people grow, Arata thinks. It’s energizing to see Taichi play him with a palpable seriousness.

(That means he’ll never be able to take it easy on him, though, but that’s hardly a bad thing. When Arata plays, he eliminates all soft-heartedness within himself. Besides, Taichi would never forgive him.)

-

Chihaya fell asleep on the couch around 10 pm. He and Taichi have played three games so far, with little to no breaks in the middle. There comes a time, in between adrenaline rush and fatigue, when players enter some kind of trance state. The two of them are feeling each other’s rhythm, moving with the same fluidity, no matter who gets the card in the end or how much their joints are aching. It’s more like a dance-by-cards than karuta in the competitive sense.

“I wish I could have been around when you decided to get good, Taichi,” he says, the effort of speech feeling foreign after hours spent just listening and breathing. It’s very rare for players to speak to each other mid-match about things unrelated to the game in front of them, once they’re out of the high school circuit, but this is an exception. No one’s around to see the slip in etiquette.

It takes Taichi a moment to be shaken out of reverie, and his hand fumbles, losing him a card to Arata in the process, but he laughs. “Yeah, me too. I’ve gotten a lot better, this year.”

Arata glances at him, but Taichi’s eyes are still glued to the field. “You’re right.”

There are only ten cards left: Arata has four, Taichi six. Arata can’t remember which poems were read three cards ago, let alone which remain in the invisible reader’s arsenal, but Taichi just might. It’s his specialty.

They’re playing in their day clothes, t-shirts and jeans, and through the numbness Arata can feel rug burn on his knees. “Hey, maybe we should stop here.”

Now Taichi looks up at his face. “What? Do you need to? Because I’m fine.”

Arata stares back at him, intently. “If you screw yourself up now, you won’t be able to play in the qualifiers.”

Taichi waits long seconds before leaning back off his knees so he’s sitting down, and he rubs at his forehead with the heel of his palm. “Yeah, you’re right,” he sighs, and looks over at Arata, face unreadable. The remaining cards are still on the ground in between them, and the reader’s CD is still playing from the TV, a disembodied woman’s voice sounding out poems they’ve both heard hundreds, maybe thousands of times.

Getting to his feet with not a little effort, Taichi puts his hands on his hips and looks down at Arata, who’s still kneeling on the floor as if waiting to take the next cards, though the recordings might as well not even be playing for all the attention they’re paying them. “Want a hand?”

Arata smiles, lopsided. “Sure.”

Their hands have matching calluses, and their movements are still in perfect tune with each other as Taichi pulls him up. Taichi’s only a centimetre shorter than he is, at most, so their eyes are mostly level, a detail that’s always stuck out to him ever since they both had their teenage growth spurts. Strands of hair are stuck to Taichi’s temples, and it’s probably the same for him, too.

This is what he’s thinking of when Taichi kisses him. It’s nothing major, nothing earth shattering, just a kiss from one of his best friends, and Arata thinks that he really is lucky, to have this without it ruining things for everyone involved. A year ago, two, maybe it would have. It could be too early to say, but he thinks this might be okay: they can have this and it won’t ruin anything. It might be possible. It’s worth a shot.

Arata doesn’t say anything, after, and he doesn’t need to, for a moment, until Taichi drops his hand - which he was still holding, Arata hadn’t even noticed - like he’s embarrassed.

“Don’t you have an exam tomorrow?” Arata asks.

“Yeah,” Taichi replies. He’s fussing with his clothes, something he’s always done when he’s nervous.

Arata stifles a yawn. “Do you need to crash here? It’s cool, it’s fine, if you do. We can just move Chihaya off the couch.”

Taichi shakes his head, skin still a little redder than can be wholly explained away by the matches played. “Nah, I’ll go home. But -” he looks at the floor, then up at Arata, right in his eyes, “thanks for the offer.”

-

Taichi heads home alone, even though Arata offers to go with him and make sure he doesn’t fall asleep on the train. “You can just phone me, if you’re that worried,” he says, and Arata knows he’s not going to get anywhere arguing with Taichi about this, so he lets it go. It’s a pride thing. However else he’s changed from the way things used to be, Taichi is still both proud and stubborn.

In the doorway of the apartment, when he’s on his way out - a foot still within the threshold and the other in the hallway - Taichi turns around to look at Arata again, for a moment, looking like he’s struggling to think of what to say. He settles on, “You should put a blanket on Chihaya, or something. She might get cold.”

Arata nods. “Yeah, man. I will.”

// T.

Explain the principles and flaws of Linnaean taxonomy.

Taichi stares at the piece of paper in front of him. Trying to remember the concept is like trying to swim through a flooded building; what he needs to know is behind a door, but all he can do is try not to drown, let alone go look for it. In the background, fans and overhead lighting drone dully, the industrial noise covering up all other sounds except pens scratching and the occasional cough. He can hardly hear his own breath.

Start from the basics, he tells himself. Taxonomy: naming and categorizing. Species, Genus, Family, Order, then Phylum or Class, he’s not sure which order, followed lastly by Kingdom. Explain the principles - what principles? Why does he need to know this? It’s first year biology, not philosophy. (Anyway, it’s useless, isn’t it? There will always be things that don’t fit in.)

He scribbles a vague answer about morphology and evolutionary relationships, and moves on to the next question.

-

The exam ends at 4 pm, which gives him enough time to check something else off his to-do list before going to the restaurant at 5:30. The paperwork to register for the Eastern Meijin qualifier tournament has been burning a hole in his backpack for about a week now, and it’s time to do something about it.

Taichi sits on a moving train with the forms on his lap, filling in the required information with a ballpoint pen, printing going wobbly with every rough patch of track the car drives across. If he hurries, he can mail it before the post office closes for the night, and then it will be done with.

He didn’t know if he was going to enter this year, until last night. Becoming the best was never his dream in the way it was for the other two, but having the chance to play Arata at the highest level and giving it his everything: that sounds like something worth doing. He’s always played karuta for Arata, anyway, really; without karuta, Taichi and Chihaya still would have known each other and been friends, of a sort, but without it Arata would remained just a boy with an accent who he casually bullied for a few months in sixth grade. It’s one of those growing-up realizations he’s had. On the tatami is the time that he and Arata truly meet each other.

The post office is closed by the time he gets there, but he picks up a stamped envelope from a corner store and deposits the package in a mailbox for the next morning. He’s got time.

-

He’s a little early to the restaurant, so he sits at the table reserved for Mashima by himself and nurses an ice water. The people at the tables around him aren’t in tuxedos and gowns, or anything, but Taichi still feels under-dressed. Perhaps just under-prepared.

His mother arrives at 5:30 exactly - punctuality is a family trait - still in her work clothes, but not looking out of place at all; her work clothes are completely acceptable for a dinner date. He tells himself that jeans and a sweater are fine to be wearing - he came from an exam and didn’t have time to go home and change - but excuses he’s too afraid to speak out loud seem even more pathetic than regular ones.

All her movements look choreographed, even the shrug of the shoulder with which she takes off her purse. Under the table, he shuffles his feet.

They sit across from each other at a table for two in the center of the restaurant. Mom picks up her menu and unfolds it with manicured hands, scanning it without actually reading it. “Have you ordered anything yet?”

Taichi coughs. “No, uh - I wanted to wait for you to get here.”

“Could have at least gotten some appetizers going.” He opens his mouth to apologize, but before he says anything she cuts him off. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll get us something to start. Do you want anything to drink?”

“Uh, yes. I’ll have a - coffee,” he replies. She purses her lips and flags down a waiter the same way he would a taxi.

After she’s given their appetizer and drink orders, Taichi asks in as neutral a tone as he can manage, “How was work?”

“Oh, the usual. Our current client is being ornery, and I had to threaten to bring in upper management unless he consents to the tabled proposal.” She closes the menu and pulls out her smartphone, typing nimbly with her eyes on the screen. Each time her manicured nails touch the plastic, there’s a minute clicking sound. “I shouldn’t tell you too much about it.”

“Ah.” That’s that, then. Frantically, he casts about for the next conversation topic. “How’s Rika?”

Mother stows away her phone in her purse, and levels her full attention at him. He bites the inside of his cheek to stop from squirming. “Quite well. Top of her class, of course.”

He swallows and nods. “Of course.”

“She’s not been very talkative lately. She reminds me of you at her age - doesn’t know how to sort out any of her priorities.” She takes a sip of her water, and he can see the faint lipstick mark left behind on the glass. “I worry she’s got a boyfriend.”

The waiter comes back with the first of their dishes, still steaming from the oven. Taichi doesn’t take his eyes off his mother. “She’s 11.”

His mother looks at him over her fork, nonplussed. “And?”

There’s nothing he can say to that, so he blurts out, “I registered for the Meijin qualifiers today.”

She doesn’t set down her cutlery completely, but lowers it a little. “Again?”

He spins some of the food on his plate around in lazy circles, looking for anything to look at other than his mother. “Yeah.”

Her voice drops a few degrees. “I’ve already told you how I feel about that, Taichi, but you’re an adult now. You can make your own decisions.” She sounds so disingenuous that it would be easy to take her for sincere.

“You know,” he says, and afterwards he honestly won’t be able to understand why he said the next part of the sentence: “I think I might have failed my exam today.”

Across the table, his mother blinks at him languorously, and runs her tongue over her teeth, checking for caught pieces of food. “You must be joking.”

He says nothing. He’s maybe eaten a tablespoon of food since he sat down, but he keeps his fingers curled tightly around his cutlery. His mother continues. “How would you feel about getting cut off, Taichi? Just hypothetically. Because you know how much it would hurt me to do that, but I won’t pay for you to go to school and waste every opportunity that’s given to you because you’d rather chase karuta pipe dreams -”

“It’s not about ka-” Cutting himself off, Taichi changes tack. His head feels strangely empty, like he could float straight up to the ceiling if his legs weren’t under the table. “If you wanted to cut me off, I’d be broke, sure, but I wouldn’t be homeless, so go ahead and do it. I’d sleep on Chihaya’s couch, if I needed to.” He laughs, almost hysterically. Some part of his brain is going, careful, you’re making a scene, but it’s easy to ignore.

His breath catches in his throat for a moment, but he presses on, out of spite. He can’t pinpoint when exactly it was he went from being a model child to whatever kind of train wreck he is now, but he’s past the point of no return. “You never would, though. It would embarrass you more than anything I could do myself.”

His mother’s face has gone as white as the tablecloth, except for bright patches on her cheeks, like wine stains. Picking his backpack up from the floor under the table where it was tucked away, Taichi slings it over a shoulder and gets up to leave. There are people watching them, he realizes; about two thirds of the restaurant. None of them will even need to go out for a movie after this, he’s been dramatic enough.

“Taichi.” She sounds crystalline, her voice beautiful even now, and the last thing he sees of her before he turns around to leave is her chain of pearls around her collarbone, off-white, gleaming, and rising and falling with her laboured breaths.

// S.

Shinobu prepares for the Western Queen qualifiers with the university club. A couple of the others are trying for it, mostly guys who are aiming for Meijin, but there’s at least one other female student - a shy third-year - who intends to play for the Queen title, and she wishes all of them all the best success, sincerely. It’s impossible to play without getting to know other people on some level, she’s realizing, unless you only play in an empty room against a tape recorder.

Being a Queen incumbent means being exempted from the qualifier process, so the last time Shinobu prepared for the Western tournament she was still in middle school. A lot has changed. She’s a university student, now, and she’s just a challenger.

It’s liberating, in a way, even though it still stings. Queens have decorum they need to abide by; all players do, but when you’re Queen people are actually watching. You hide yourself inside your karuta.

Initially, she intimidated her club mates, and it was hard even to talk to them - it still is, sometimes - but they’ve all reached a sort of understanding. She tries to explain fine points of technique to them, even though there’s no way she can do it except in vagueness and metaphor, but after a while she usually manages to get the advice across. It’s a process of demonstrating, almost like mime, and talking enough about the feeling of a certain move or strategy that they start to get it, even if none of them are as connected to the cards - the heart of them - as she is.

-

After practice, a gentle hand on her arm stops her from packing up and leaving for the train as briskly as she usually does. It’s Oe, of course.

“Would you like to walk to the station together, Wakamiya?” Oe looks a bit nervous to ask, even though Shinobu thought she’d been a bit better, lately, at not taking things out on people from the club.

Shinobu nods, still kneeling on the floor and collecting the cards from her last game. Eyes fixed firmly on the cards, she says, “If you want, Oe, you can call me Shinobu.”

When she stands up and finally looks at her face, she sees that Oe is smiling. As they turn to walk out of the now-empty practice room, Oe says, “In that case, you can call me Kana, then - Shinobu.”

-

It’s only a few minutes’ walk to the station from their school, but it seems even shorter when walking it with someone else.

At first they walk in silence, only interrupted by a few passing cars, until Kana breaks the lull. “You know, Shinobu, I’d love to help you pick out a hakama from my family store, if you like. We’re considering starting a whole line of kimono just for karuta players!” She tucks some stray hair behind an ear, shyly, and continues. “It’s very important that they be fitted properly to allow movement and breathing while still offering core support through the obi. Designing kimono isn’t just an art, it’s a craft, you see.”

Kana digs in her bag for something, and finally pulls out a flyer, offering it to Shinobu. She takes it and looks it over. It’s a catalogue. Oe Traditional Clothing is written across the top in a tasteful font, but a picture of a beautiful girl in a green furisode takes up most of the front cover. Shinobu is startled when she looks at her face. “Is this Chihaya?”

Kana laughs. “Yes! I almost forgot about that. She kindly did some modeling for us once, and the photos came out so lovely we never bothered to get anybody else to do it. Did you know that her sister is an professional model, too?”

Shinobu opens the catalogue and flicks through the pages, just skimming them. “No, I didn’t.” Most of the women’s kimono are modeled by Chihaya; the photos must be a few years old, since she’s a little lankier in the pictures than she was the last time Shinobu saw her, and her hair is shorter. Chihaya-in-the-photos looks radiant, and her smile at the camera isn’t artificial at all. In most of them, she’s looking off to the side, or at an angle, as part of the poses, but there are a few where she looks straight at the viewer. Shinobu has to close it, and turn it away from her.

“My grandmother usually picks out my hakama for me,” Shinobu says quietly. “I’ve never chosen my own.”

Kana looks at her sidelong. “Well, what would you like from one?”

“Light, and easy to move.” Shinobu remembers playing the Queen match against Inokuma, and adds, “Short sleeves.”

“Well, I can talk to my parents about it, and tell them what you’re looking for.” There are distant sounds of construction and the squeaks of tires threaten to drown Kana’s voice out, so Shinobu steps a little closer to her in order to hear. “I’m sure it wouldn’t be any trouble to make. They’d be honoured.”

They walk through the entrance to the train station, and look at each other for a moment. Their trains are on opposite sides of the platform. Shinobu, still holding the catalogue, asks, “Can I keep this?”

Kana looks surprised she would even ask. “Of course!”

Shinobu tucks the catalogue away into her school bag. “I’d better go get my train,” she says, and turns to walk away before looking back over her shoulder at Kana’s figure, so small against the backdrop of the busy station. “Should I phone your parents?”

“The number’s on the back,” Kanade says, with a smile, and gives Shinobu a small wave before turning around herself to head the other way.

-

If she wins both rounds of the qualifiers, she’ll be playing Chihaya for the first time in exactly a year, Shinobu realizes later that night. It’s not like she didn’t know, she just didn’t think it through all the way. She hasn’t seen her face to face since that day, hasn’t talked to her since Christmas, and the thought of facing her in a match without having at least talked about what happened is terrifying.

Arata will be there too, in that room. This can’t be something that happens in other sports, she thinks, with her pillow pressed over her head in a futile attempt to be warm. There’s no way. Professional leagues couldn’t function if it’s usual for the top players to behave so messily off of the court.

// C.

The night before the Eastern Meijin and Queen qualifiers is spent with Arata and Chihaya’s mattresses pushed up against each other on their living room floor. The cramped living room has been cleared of most of the furniture, and instead she installed a ramshackle pile of pillows and couch cushions around the beds. Taichi sits cross-legged just to the side of where Chihaya is curled in a blanket in the middle of the mattresses. Next to her, Arata rests against the armrest of the couch, watching her watch Taichi.

Taichi’s the only one who’s competing the next morning, of course, but it just felt right to ask him to stay overnight. The nights before tournaments are hard for him to sleep through; she remembers just how many late-night texts she’s received from him before important matches. By the university level, there are barely any team tournaments, so she had to try and figure out a way to make him understand he’s not playing all by himself.

They decide against playing any practice matches. Taichi is taut enough with nerves already. In the morning, he’ll be packing up and heading to the tournament venue - hitching a ride from some people from Shirinami Society - while Chihaya and Arata take the train. It would look weird for the Meijin and Queen to escort one of the competitors to the tournament.

Usually, Chihaya doesn’t have any trouble trying to fall asleep, but tonight it feels nearly impossible. In the background, the TV is playing muted reruns of some soap operas, but none of them are watching. They just talk.

Chihaya gets the idea from the show on TV, which she glances back at every so often (you never know when Chitose might have done a bit part.) On screen, a couple are taking photos in a photo booth, and they look so happy in the fictional pictures that she’s jealous for half a second, before she remembers the existence of modern technology. She makes the boys squish closer on either side of her so that she can take a picture of the three of them. When it’s been taken, she settles back on her elbows to email copies to both of them, so they’ll have it whenever they might need it.

After a few minutes, she gets another idea. Chihaya walks over and opens the living room window, wide enough to stick her hand through, and she takes a picture of the moon, suspended in the crisp and clear night sky. You can’t see any stars, of course, but there aren’t any real clouds, just light pollution. She sends the picture to Shinobu, with the caption How r u feeling?? As an afterthought, Chihaya adds, Wish u were here!!!

-

Chihaya cards her fingers through Taichi’s hair, absently.

She’s barely touching either of them, but Chihaya is acutely aware of all of the ways their bodies are intersecting. After a while, they’ll get used to it, she’s sure, even if it takes a while to get comfortable to the idea that they’re sit-lying close enough to each other that their wrists or hips or calves might brush, without meaning anything by it. It’s dizzying.

It’s late by the time Shinobu texts Chihaya back. All the message says is, “That’s a nice view.”

Chihaya looks up at the patchy ceiling for some long seconds, and then murmurs, “I think I really like Shinobu.” The Earth doesn’t stop rotating, even for a moment.

Arata just looks at her curiously. “You should tell her,” he says, and on the other side of her Taichi groans.

“I cannot believe you guys,” he says, and Chihaya gently shoves his face into a pillow.

“Go to sleep, Taichi!”

After she lets go of his head, he glares at her for a moment, and then turns over so he’s looking at the wall instead of at her. He’s always been pouty. “Stop texting her,” he says a few moments later. “She’s playing tomorrow too.”

Chihaya can’t stop herself from grumbling, but she puts her phone away anyway.

The moon has been clouded over in earnest, by now, and the room is only lit up by the TV. It’s the middle of winter, and Chihaya feels the chill; she pulls the blanket (her bedroom duvet, layered over a patchwork thing Arata said was a hand-me-down) up to just below her chin.

The last thing she hears before she falls asleep is Arata’s voice, so clearly, since his head is on the pillow right next to her, saying, “Next time we should all just get a hotel the night before.” She nods, even though he can’t see it in the dark.

// T.

Taichi’s first match in the Eastern Meijin qualifier is against Akito Sudo, who Taichi’s managed to avoid ever running into at school so far, thankfully. Looking around the hall, there are other familiar faces, from various tournaments past; Tokyo regionals, high school nationals, and miscellaneous tournaments in other parts of the country.

He remembers being on the sidelines of the tournament where Chihaya made Class A. After she won her final match, she nearly dived through a window trying to get to him. That was right after Dr. Harada told him to put in the effort to try and become better than Arata. Somewhere between both those moments, his karuta career started in earnest.

Arata and Chihaya are both in the crowd, but he refuses to look at them or think of them, let alone interact with them, unless it’s between games. When he’s in the middle of play, there can’t be anything in his head except the orderly table he constructs of points and faults and sounds-that-have-sounded and sounds-yet-to-come.

-

He takes half of his memorization period between his first and second game to take a walk outside the player’s hall, to clear his head. There aren’t swarms of people, exactly, but it’s still busy in the outside rooms; coaches and hopeful family members who couldn’t get a seat inside - or preferred to be outside - mingle in sparse clusters, murmuring in undertones.

In one of the anterooms, they have a live video feed of the Western tournament, underway on the other side of the country. The scrolling text on the bottom of the screen reads Shinichi Murao, Shinobu Wakamiya favourites to represent the West, but still possibility of an upset?!? The camera spins across the dozen of players still in the running. Among them are many more distantly, vaguely familiar faces. Taichi wonders how many he’s played before, at one time or another.

-

At the very end of the day, he scrapes up the win. Standing after the first match is nearly an out-of-body experience; he can’t feel his knees, and he doesn’t have the energy to be excited. (Chihaya and Arata had to wait until he’d left the building before they could come up to him to say congratulations, because otherwise it would look like favouritism.)

Taichi goes home to his empty apartment completely exhausted, to the point of stillness. He doesn’t have the energy to eat anything, or even watch brainless TV until he falls asleep, so he just checks his email. In his inbox, there’s a [No Subject] from one Chihaya Ayase, dated the night before.

The content of the email is nothing except a single .jpg attachment, which he downloads and opens. It’s the picture from last night, of the three of them in Chihaya and Arata’s living room. He looks odd, in the picture; he never saw it after it was taken, and it’s an angle or expression or something he’s never seen on himself, before. He looks happy, and a bit stupid. He looks un-self-conscious.

It’s a desperately uncool thing to do, but he prints it out and pins it with a handful of thumbtacks to the otherwise bare wall in his room. Even though his apartment is empty except for himself, he’s not alone. It’s too bad he’s never managed to find any photos from their team match, all those years ago. He’d like to be able to compare them.

// A.

His postal box has mail that isn’t spam, for once. It’s a business envelope from his university. Arata opens it carefully, withdrawing a letter addressed to himself, informing him of a scholarship win. The amount isn’t huge, but it’s significant.

Taichi and Murao are going to be playing each other in the final preliminaries, which are just a few days away. Shinobu is playing as well, against a rookie from Sendai.

The very first time Arata met Shinobu, they were in a tournament. Class C, maybe; it was a long time ago, and some of the details are fuzzy. What he does know, even now, is that he beat her. She was easier to read, back then, and he distinctly remembers thinking that it was odd for someone to look so exhilarated over being beaten in a match.

Maybe that’s why she kissed Chihaya, he thinks. Maybe Shinobu, deep down, just wants people who will bring her down from the clouds.

-

They’re running low on food and the stuff they need is more than just one of them can carry, so he meets Chihaya at the grocery store.

Things are changing between them, turning into something they’ve always been, under the surface: a home, the kind that’s found in other people. He wants to take care of her for as long as she’ll let him, even though he hasn’t had the responsibility of taking care of anyone since his grandfather, and he still struggles to think about that without blaming himself for little things, most of the time. (Grandpa’s remains are in Fukui. He has to visit soon; he has to. Maybe after the Meijin match.)

No, maybe taking care of her isn’t accurate. Arata wants to be there for Chihaya - and not just her, but she’s the easiest, right now - so she can take care of herself. Once on the train, Arata carefully tucks their grocery bags under his seat.

They have school stuff that needs doing, and they can’t afford another trip to the tournament venue, anyway, so neither of them will be there for the final Meijin and Queen preliminary matches. Slumped over in her seat, Chihaya says, “We can hook the livestream up to the TV, maybe. It’ll be just like we’re there.” She adds, leaning on his shoulder, “We wouldn’t want to be a distraction, anyway.”

-

The elevator in their building is perpetually broken, so they have to carry all their grocery bags up the stairs, which Chihaya once said would help them build stamina. Maybe one day they’ll get a car together, and move into a building that has a working elevator, but those days are far off, if they ever come. For now, they have to make do with what they have. It’s not so bad.

Once they’re finally home, they team up to put the groceries away. He’s still getting the hang of where everything goes in the kitchen; Chihaya looks much more self-assured than he does, but from the looks of things she’s not abiding by any kind of system, just sticking things in cupboards at random.

When they’ve put everything away, Arata bends down to pick up the stray plastic bags and receipts on the floor, while Chihaya hops on top of the kitchen counter so she’s sitting on the linoleum with her legs dangling off the edge from the knees down. She sways from side to side, slightly, as if there was music playing.

He badly wants to kiss her, but he’s never tried. He’s pretty sure - nearly positive - that it would be okay, but he doesn’t want to assume. When he stands in front of her, like this, they are perfectly at eye level.

Her hands are curled around the edge of the counter, and he lays one of his over one of hers, just testing the waters. Chihaya’s eyes are so wide, it’s a bit startling when she closes them, and that’s the last thing he thinks about before their lips touch. It’s a little awkward; their noses bump against each other, jostling his glasses slightly. He can feel her breath against his face, and taste what must be lip balm. For a moment, he remembers what it had been like to kiss Taichi, and he would have blushed even deeper, if that were possible.

When they pull apart, he doesn’t stray far, just looks at her and tries to think of something to say. Her cheeks are bright pink. Eventually, he says, “Are you nervous for the title matches?”

She bites her lip, for a moment, and considers it. “No,” she says, finally, “because no matter what I’ll be playing with friends.”

That’s that, then. It’s true, when he thinks about it. No matter who wins the qualifiers, the two of them will be in the same room as each other, won’t they.

// S.

All throughout the Queen qualifier tournaments, Shinobu has hardly been able to recognize her own game.

She hasn’t been on a training hiatus or done anything else that would explain a qualitative difference. Her technique is the same, and she still sees the threads tying her to the cards, that vision no one else seems to know how to pick out. They each shine for her in a different way, and she comes for all of them in turn; she’ll never forget how to do that, it’s like breathing. But something remains different, now that she’s on the tatami in the tournament hall, even compared to her playing style in the Western qualifier barely a few weeks before.

It’s the second game of the match when Shinobu figures it out: she’s not just playing against the cards, but against her opponent, too.

She scores cards and defends them and feels neither boredom nor pity on behalf of the other player. It's easy to imagine the girl across from her - a high schooler from Sendai, people had been saying - in the karuta club at school. Shinobu can picture exactly what she would be like to play against in a different setting, during practice.

The girl still has lots to learn, though, and Shinobu has experience on her side. The poets know by now to call her by name.

-

The final winners of the Queen and Meijin challenger qualifier matches are Shinobu Wakamiya and Taichi Mashima.

She recognizes Mashima, vaguely, from the photographs Kanade showed her of the Mizusawa High School karuta club. He was probably in the audience at the last Meijin and Queen match, considering he and Chihaya are considered “great friends,” according to Kana, but Shinobu remembers very little of those sort of details from that day.

It feels good to have something to strive for again. It means Shinobu is no longer untouchable, of course, but that might not be a bad thing.

-

There’s a shop in Kyoto where Shinobu’s kimono have been bought for her since she was in her first tournaments. The owners are old friends of her grandmother, and it’s a very public patronship. Many of her hakama and kimono are hanging from clothes hangers in the attic of the Wakamiya family home, but the most important of them - the most ornate, or the ones Shinobu wore on the most special of occasions - are stretched out in glass cases, like tapestries or museum pieces, and mounted on the walls in the main rooms for guests to see.

When she comes home from the qualifier, the kimono from Oe Traditional Clothing is spread out on the table in the kitchen. It was clearly delivered when her grandmother was home, and she must have opened the package.

The kimono is beautiful. It’s a gradient of blues and purples, with a pattern around the sleeves of delicate pink roses. She runs one of her hands through a sleeve, feeling the texture of the silk. It’s thin and breathable, but the hems are sturdy and well concealed. The hakama itself is burgundy, and just from eyeballing it Shinobu can tell that they got the measurements right.

She picks up all the pieces of the garment, carefully, and stows them away in her room before she goes looking for her grandmother. She has to keep it safe. It’s hers, really hers. She bought it for herself. Shinobu still can feel adrenaline coursing through her system from the matches, turning her reckless.

-

Shinobu goes looking for her grandmother, but the house is empty. Not even her mother is home. She peeks inside Grandmother’s study to see if she’s inside, but all that inhabits the room are orderly stacks of paper and a desktop computer idly replaying its screensaver. There are framed photos of Shinobu on the desk, at age 5, 10, 15, all slightly dusty.

She’d wanted a confrontation about the kimono being ungraciously unwrapped without her consent. She’s never done anything like that before with her grandmother. Even the indulgence of a fit of rage is taken from her, because there’s no one around for her to take it out on.

The house is sprawling, much larger than a household of three women needs, and empty except for her. She needs to take it out on someone, but there’s no one around. Something has to give, at some point.

-

Her desk drawer contains layers on layers of notes to Chihaya, her invisible correspondent who never writes back. None of the letters are dated; she picks one up and glances it over. It was scribbled on the back of a clothing tag, just a single line written in dull pencil: the rain is coming early this year here. Shinobu doesn’t even remember writing it.

She seizes a fistful of notes, written on lined paper and napkins and pieces of cardboard boxes, and dumps them in the waste bin under her desk. Before long, it’s like she’s in a trance. Her nails scrabble the bottom of the drawer in her hurry to get rid of all of the evidence of her pining, all those nights spent lying awake and dreaming of being among friendly faces.

Maybe she’ll look into getting into a dorm, next year.

All the letters - grocery lists of missed opportunities, late-night half-delirious diary entries, love notes - are tied up in a garbage bag that she takes out behind the house and shuts away in the recycling dumpster. When she’s sealed them away she doesn’t head back inside, but instead sits on the street curb with her bare feet on the nighttime January concrete and pulls out her cell phone from her pants pocket.

The number has been in her address book since she received the call on Christmas. Shinobu calls, and the person on the other end picks up after just a few rings.

Shinobu coughs, and then says, “Hello? Chihaya?” After a moment’s hesitation, she adds, “I’ve got some things I’ve been meaning to tell you.”

// C.

Chihaya couldn’t care about decorum if she tried, at this point. Mrs. Oe drives to Omi Jingu with Arata, Taichi, and Chihaya all squeezed into the back seat of her aged sedan.

Sitting in between both of the boys, Chihaya’s knees bounce up and down. It’s hard for her to sit still at the best of times, unless she has something specific to focus on, but this is worse than usual.

No one says anything, choosing instead to stare out the window at the view they’ve all seen at least a dozen times before. Each of Chihaya’s hands are being held by the boy on either side, or else they’d be shaking too. Last night, Chihaya was so nervous she barely slept for four hours. Usually she doesn’t have that problem.

When they arrive, she steps out of the car on shaky legs, trying her best to be delicate or presentable and failing, mostly because Arata, Taichi, and she all have to clamber over each other to get out of the back seat, since only the right side back passenger door actually opens. Once both of her feet are on the earth, she doesn’t feel any less like she’s in a dream than she did in the car. She feels so immaterial she could float right off her feet, but she reaches out and grasps for both of their hands again, and they each take hers without question. In the end, they never stopped playing as a team.

-

The three of them, plus Mrs. Oe, arrive at the Hall of Learning early enough that there are several hours between the time they check in and the time the matches actually start. At some point, they’ll have to give interviews, but not until they’re dressed. At the registration desk, Chihaya asks if Shinobu has checked in yet. She hasn’t.

Once their attendance has been confirmed, they move into the dressing room, Mrs. Oe still trailing along with them. She’s come along to many tournaments with the Mizusawa club before, and she knows the drill by now; she flutters her hands over them, fiddling with their clothes and talking in an undertone, a running monologue of motherly advice and commentary on each of their kimono that they only half-listen to. She’s nervous for them, Chihaya knows, and trying to occupy their nervousness for them. It’s sweet.

None of them - she, Arata, or Taichi - really speak, they just look at each other occasionally, each one of them engaged in a two-direction back-and-forth. They need to conserve their energy for the matches ahead, and talking is draining.

Chihaya and Taichi played in their very first real tournament alongside Arata, in their homemade Team Chihayafuru shirts, Chihaya recalls. They can’t do that this time, they can’t play as a team, but they’ll still all be in the same room as each other, so it’ll be okay. Things can’t go too badly if they’re all there for each other, no matter what happens.

Mrs. Oe pauses her pedantic hem checking, for a moment, to check her phone. Her eyes light up. “It’s from Kanade! She says they’re here.”

Chihaya turns to look at Mrs. Oe curiously. “They?”

“She’s with some of her university friends, I think,” Mrs. Oe replies, and Chihaya’s body starts to put two and two together before her mind does.

Her hands are shaking. “I’ll be right back,” Chihaya says, and she slips out of the sliding door from the dressing room into the main corridor. There are people everywhere, and some turn to stare as she scampers through the hall, still in bare feet, holding her hakama up like a dress. This is not how one is supposed to behave in traditional clothing, but she doesn’t have the capacity to care. She needs to see Shinobu right now. Chihaya has to see her before the matches begin. It’s the most important thing in the world, maybe.

Chihaya sees Shinobu for the first time - it isn’t, of course, but in that moment it feels like the first time ever - across the hall in profile, already in her tournament clothes. It’s a kimono that Chihaya’s never seen before, of course, since Shinobu wears a new one every tournament, but this one is a bit different from the old ones. It’s sleeker, subtler. It looks a bit like Chihaya’s. In street clothes, Kana is by her side, half a step behind her, and a few other people Chihaya doesn’t recognize are walking a few paces at Kana’s heels.

They are just a few metres apart, by now. Chihaya wants to call out to her, just like she did on the street in Tokyo - the only difference is that this time Chihaya saw her first, instead of the other way around - but she can’t find her voice. She’s not sure how her legs are even moving. Shinobu finally sees her, out of the corner of her vision, and she only has time to do a quarter turn before Chihaya has reached her, virtually gasping for breath. She feels light-headed.

Shinobu’s eyes go wide for a moment before she composes herself enough to give Chihaya a small half-bow, appropriate for a challenger addressing the Queen.

Chihaya has no such self-control. She takes both of Shinobu’s pale hands in her own, and stares at her, frantically casting about for something to say but coming up with nothing; instead, she just stands looking at Shinobu, glassy-eyed, waiting for some hugeness to happen that she can react to, but there’s just stillness between them, even though they’re in the midst of the crowded room.

People are staring, and murmuring. It’s not as if everyone around them has stopped in their tracks to watch the scene, but still, she’s nervous and not sure what for. Kanade looks at Chihaya, then to Taichi and Arata, who, Chihaya realizes, are hovering a few feet behind, and then to Shinobu, before looking back at Chihaya and offering a small smile and ushering the others with her away down the hall.

After about 30 seconds of just looking at each other, Chihaya works up the courage to say, “Hey.”

Shinobu looks up at her, mouth a straight line. She has her hair down. After a moment, she replies, “It’s nice to see you.”

Still clutching Shinobu’s hands, Chihaya struggles to think of anything to say, so for a while - probably only a few seconds, but it feels longer - she just stares. Eventually, she spits out in response, “It’s nice to see you too.”

She’s very aware of the people around them, but Chihaya couldn’t possibly be expected to hold herself in just because people might be looking.

Tentatively, Chihaya leans across the scant inches necessary to brush the crown of Shinobu’s head with her lips, barely even a kiss. In her mind’s eye she is back in her living room, back when Arata kissed her on the brow for the first time, just like this. When she thinks of it like that, she’s only passing the kiss on. Kisses never belong just to one person, anyway; they’re to be held onto and shared again when the time is right.

Chihaya can’t stop herself, then, from embracing her. Her arms encircle Shinobu’s, pinning them to her sides. Their respective heights mean Chihaya is able to rest her chin on Shinobu’s shoulder. Her face feels hot, or maybe it’s just the fact that she’s so close to Shinobu, who looks so cold on the outside but, Chihaya knows for a fact, is warm to the touch just like anyone else.

After a moment, Chihaya becomes aware again that they’re in a public place, and she lets Shinobu go. Shinobu straightens herself, and then looks past Chihaya and nods cordially at Arata, and after a moment, at Taichi too.

Chihaya, too, turns around slightly to look at the boys behind her for a moment. They are both looking between each other, back at the girls, and at the people around them. Suddenly self-conscious, she turns back to Shinobu and says, “Sorry, I hope I didn’t embarrass you.”

Shinobu gives a small shake of her head, and responds, “No. No, it’s fine.” Her hands, now free of Chihaya’s grasp, worry at the edges of her sleeves. “I need to go check in at registration, but -” Shinobu looks at each of them again, in turn, and then once more at Chihaya, “- I’ll see you again soon.” She turns away to catch up with Kana, who waves at the three of them one last time, and then the two disappear through the doorway into the registration room.

Chihaya watches her walk away, acutely feeling the presence of the boys behind her, and thinks that they’re almost there. Almost.

“Let’s go to the media room,” she says to Taichi and Arata, next to each other in watercolour blues and greens, and she gives them a smile, just like Shinobu gave to her. “We don’t want to keep Shinobu waiting.”

-

(Last night, on the phone, Shinobu had started with an apology. Chihaya ended in tears, but she was smiling through them, so it was okay.

She hasn’t gotten any better at being able to spit out words that make sense, when it comes to this kind of stuff, so it sort of came out in a jumble ofit’s okay, you don’t have anything to apologize for and I didn’t realize for a long time but I sort of like you a lot but I also have other people I like too and you know them, kind of and sorry this is all so complicated.

Shinobu said, to that, It’s okay. We can talk more about it tomorrow.

I’ll see you there.)

-

There’s a palpable hush when Shinobu enters the media room. All the cameras turn to pan on her, for a moment. The former Queen returning as challenger; the people watching at home will love it.

They all stand, for the pre-match interviews, artfully positioned against a backdrop of calligraphy. Chihaya’s throat feels dry. There’s so much she has yet to say, to all of them, and it would be easier if she were able to reach out and touch any of them. They’re all just nervous overgrown children, never more than right now, standing in a line of four and pretending to be professional, ready to answer the questions given to them in an acceptable way.

There will be time for talking amongst themselves after. She can nearly hear the second hands of watches all around the room, running along. The matches will begin soon; there will be time for sorting out the intricacies of the four of them when they’re done. It’ll take some time to figure out, still, but they can exist in the world, as a - something. She’s sure of it.

Anyway, they have each other, win or lose.