Chapter Text
Kazuta Shiraki 3-dan was not a professional shogi player. Yet, he was my opponent. This much was not extraordinary. Many high level shogi tournaments are open to qualification by amateur players. Notably, even the coveted Lion King title could conceivably be won by an amateur player — should they manage to emerge victorious at each stage. However, for us professionals, who stake our lives on the quality of our shogi, the thought was unimaginable.
Despite such adversity, the Lion King tournament was precisely where I had first met Shiraki 3-dan. He had made a blistering run through the Lion King Class Tournament. He managed to reach the finals for the overcrowded Sixth Class. Just a step further and he would have qualified for the top eleven, and participated in the Lion King Challenger Tournament. This was the same Lion King Challenger Tournament which I had concluded with a particularly shameful defeat; and the same as had brought the leader of my shogi workshop, Shimada 8-dan, to his knees.
It was not an exaggeration to say that me being who I am today was tied up in my first encounter with Kazuta Shiraki. Had Shiraki 3-dan completed his storybook-like push for the Lion King Challenger Tournament, my life might well have remained the same as it was before I met Shimada 8-dan. However, between then and now, I had not seen or heard any news regarding Shiraki 3-dan. As far as I was concerned, he had disappeared from the world of shogi.
The idea that such a promising talent would suddenly disappear from the world of shogi seems unimaginable. But, given the specific circumstances of Shiraki 3-dan, it would hardly be surprising. The title of 3-dan is most common among young players who aspire to be professionals. These young players are apprentices who compete in the “3-Dan League” in order to qualify as professional players. I vividly remember competing with Nikaidou in that same league back in junior high.
The problem for Shiraki 3-dan was that, since it was a den of vipers who aspired to make competitive shogi their livelihood, the 3-Dan League had strict age requirements: Specifically, those above the age of twenty eight were barred. This was obviously impossible for the thirty one year old Shiraki 3-dan. The only way for players above that age requirement to ascend beyond the ceiling of 3-dan was a gruelling challenge known as the Professional Admission Test, where the aspiring professional would have to battle against a mix of top amateurs and active professionals in order to prove their worthiness.
Frankly, because one had to play against professionals who could far exceed the skill of any players in the 3-Dan League, this test was unfair. It was designed to be so. The Shogi Association was against the idea of anyone “jumping the queue” of the 3-Dan League, and so they demanded that players who opted for direct admission prove that they are beyond the skill of that league.
Ordinarily, this would have been little more than trivia for me, who had long ago surpassed worrying about the world of amateurs. However, that all changed when Chairman of the Shogi Association Takanori Jinguuji called out to me after one of my matches at the Shogi Hall. ‘Yo, Kiriyama, get over here!’ he hollered, brashly.
Despite warning signs flashing in my head, I acquiesced. Chairman Jinguuji had a troublesome streak, but he had always been a good, helpful man. So, I silently walked over to him. I did not know of any official business he had with me, which only heightened my anxiety. The Chairman could be level-headed when the conversation was purely concerned with professional matters, but the risk of chaos increased exponentially when he reached out without a clear reason. As it turned out, he did in fact have a clear reason. ‘Kiriyama. How’s school going?’ It was, however, a very unexpected question.
‘School? Uh… very well, Chairman.’ In reality, school was, for the first time, an overwhelmingly exciting word for me. Just the other day, Hina had experienced her first day as a student of my high school, which carried with it a mood of joyful pride. However, I was still unsure exactly what the Chairman was trying to inquire about.
‘No, no, no. I mean your attendance, Kiriyama.’ I quickly caught on to what he was asking and why. My previous years of high school had been marred by a troubled attendance record on account of my obligations as a professional shogi player. The only reason that the Chairman would check on my attendance was if he intended to modify my match schedule in some way. Likely, he was intending to increase my number of matches. He had never consulted with me about attendance before doing so before, but I supposed he must have felt partially guilty for the fact I had suffered on account of that in the past. However, his timing could not have been more baffling.
‘Chairman, it is the start of term. It is too far off for me to guess how my attendance will pan out.’ It seems he had jumped the gun in trying to be helpful.
‘Good. That’s all fine then. Kiriyama, you’ll be playing in the next Professional Admission Test. Your opponent will be Kazuta Shiraki 3-dan.’
And so it came to be that Shiraki 3-dan would be my opponent in a professional shogi game.
Shiraki 3-dan was fundamentally an all-rounder, like myself. One could not count on him to develop the board in accordance with a single opening, a defined style, or any such trademark. If anything could be singled out as a habit, it was that if the early game proceeded similarly for both players, he would adjust his tempo first. By this I mean that when faced with a game where both players are defensive, he was the first to go on the attack: When faced with an opponent who quickly matches his own offensive formation, he would begin thinking about defence. He possessed an unusually ambidextrous mindset when it came to shogi. Even at the cost of more common sense moves, he was a flexible player who kept his options open.
Therefore, my strategy was premised on a careful, decisive midgame offensive rather than relying on any kind of stylistically favourable opening. I reasoned that, given his habit, a mirrored opening in regards to both of our rooks was liable to develop into a predictable stalemate. At that point, I could rely on his preference for flexible developments such as the Climbing Silver, or a Double Wing Attack with a Reclining Silver in the case of a Double Static Rook. In the case of a Double Ranging Rook, I expected that Shiraki 3-dan would opt for the mutual flexibility of an Ishida versus Mino castle formation.
Certainly, he was a hard player to predict, and he may instead develop towards a more defensive posture, contrary to my expectations. However, the important piece was preparing for a mirrored Rook position in the opening. This alone would give me an advantage in terms of preparation. When two all-rounders like us collided, one would expect to expend a great deal of energy preparing for conventionally flexible strategies which are common in the case of opposing Rook positions. The Fujii System, or possibly a Bear-in-the-hole strategy were both particularly worrisome in such a match precisely because they would put our preparations on equal footing.
I could also rely on Nikaidou and Shigeta, from my shogi workshop, who each specialised in one of these two Rook openings. In this way I could be sure that my preparations were targeted on the most likely outcome in this match, whereas Shiraki 3-dan would be unevenly focused on the contingencies I would be eager to deliberately avoid. Of course, as is my duty as a professional player, I also prepared for these contingencies. But this imbalance in our priorities could serve as an important path to victory for me before the match even begun.
When it came time for the match, I was quietly confident. One might argue that this kind of match is very low stakes for a professional, because the player taking the test is the one under pressure. But the opposite is true. Losing to an amateur is never an acceptable proposition for a professional. Not even against an amateur who intends to go pro. Shiraki 3-dan sat down at the board. He was a tall, but wild looking man. With uneven facial hair and an easy-going attitude. Were he not so lanky, and his hair so dark, he might well have been mistaken for Smith, another professional player.
Once we started, my preparations immediately bore fruit. In this case, I owe my thanks to Shigeta, because the match opened with Double Static Rook positions. Shiraki 3-dan was the Black player and opted for a Double Wing Attack with a hanging rook. From this point, I ensured the board developed towards a Mutual Reclining Silver, as hoped. Among the remaining standard moves, there was only a single outcome which was suited to Shiraki 3-dan’s M.O. His temptation towards flexibility would not allow him to simply continue a defensive posture, and he moved towards a Silver trade as expected. From there, I was able to take control of the tempo of the game and wait out an inevitable mistake from his overextended formation.
While Shiraki 3-dan’s aggressive move with his Silver General was the losing move, it was still a hard fought battle that continued late into the afternoon. However, even after I won the match, the post-match review had another kind of defeat waiting for me. We replayed a number of variations on possible developments after a Double Reclining Silver. Yet, suddenly, without the slightest of the warning he suddenly looked me in the eyes and frankly asked me:
‘Kiriyama 6-dan, do you have a girlfriend?’