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“Bye, Osomatsu-niisan! Have fun losing at pachinko!” Jyushimatsu waves his flapping sweater sleeve at him, genuinely wishing his brother a good time.
“Oi! You don’t have to say it like that!” Osomatsu snaps, pouting at his little brother.
“Osomatsu-niisan, we all know you lose ninety percent of the time. Everyone does. It’s a game with horrible chances of winning, and you’re a dunce,” Choromatsu adds calmly, not looking up from his book.
“You losers have no faith in me! I don’t have to put up with this, I’m leaving!” Osomatsu swivels on his feet, marching out the door which he slams behind him.
“No, and neither do we,” the green-clad Matsu mutters with his eyes squinted in annoyance.
Jyushimatsu, still not entirely sure why Osomatsu was mad, does a backwards somersault to roll away from his position of leaning upside-down against the wall, and hops up, bounding over to plop down next to Choromatsu on the couch. Well, actually, he sat on his legs, as Choromatsu was laying across the whole sofa.
The third eldest Matsu peers over his book, eyebrow raised, at Jyushimatsu sitting up straight and proper on his bony shins (which certainly couldn’t be comfortable). “Do you need something, Jyushimatsu?”
Without moving an inch, Jyushimatsu says loudly, “Well, since Ichimatsu is out with his cats, Karamatsu is picking up imaginary girls, Osomatsu is losing at pachinko, and Todomatsu is somewhere probably, I figured we could do something!”
Choromatsu lets out a light sight, bringing his book up to cover his face. “You’re welcome to keep sitting where you are, Jyushimatsu, but I want to read my book.”
The second youngest brother flops his sleeve-covered hand over the top of Choromatsu’s book, pushing it down so he can look at him. “You look bored, niisan.”
After a few seconds of intense staring, Choromatsu drops his annoyed look, replacing it with an obviously forced exasperated expression. “Alright. I suppose the plot is a little slow going. What do you want to do?”
Jyushimatsu ponders his question for a moment, and then claps his hands together, proclaiming, “Checkers!”
Choromatsu raises an eyebrow, asking, “You know how to play checkers?”
Continuing to smile at him, Jyushimatsu lets out a simple “Nope!”
Choromatsu chuckles, finally closing his book and setting it on the table next to him. He sits up—or, tries to, with a large weight pinning down his legs—and, with hands folded in his lap, declares with a very serious expression, “Very well, my young pupil. I shall teach you the ways of the noble game of checkers.”
Jyushimatsu lets out a laugh that could shake the house, and bounds up off of his older brother with his hands raised in the air. “Success! I won’t let you down, Choromatsu-sensei!”
Choromatsu lifts himself off the couch, crossing the room to the game shelf. He pulls out the box of checkers, and upon seeing all the dust the lid accumulated, blows on and wipes at the top of it. “I wonder if I’ve ever even played checkers using this set. Do any of our other brothers know how to play checkers?”
Jyushimatsu shrugs intensely, excitedly answering, “No idea! I’ve never seen them play it, so probably not!” Seeing his brother sit down at the table setting the box down, Jyushimatsu folds his legs under him to sit down criss-cross applesauce and asks, “So how do you play?”
Choromatsu begins explaining as he pulls the board and pieces out of the box, “Well, the goal of checkers is to capture all of your opponent’s pieces by jumping over them with your own pieces.” He starts stacking the pieces by colour as he continues, “Each person starts with three rows of their pieces, but you only line them up on the black squares, and you can only move on the black squares. So, your only form of movement is by moving forward diagonally.” He slides three stacks of neatly-aligned red pieces over to Jyushimatsu. “Here, you be red, I’ll be black.”
“Why do you only move on the black spaces? What’s the point of the red spaces if you never use them?” Jyushimatsu queried with a hand thoughtfully placed on his chin.
“I—Well, I’m not sure, to be honest with you,” Choromatsu answers, a little flustered at having his explanation cut short. “The red spaces are there just to give extra space in between the black ones. But it’s not important, so moving on—”
“Well don’t you think the red spaces feel left out? The black spaces get plenty of attention, let’s play on the red spaces this time!” Jyushimatsu nods as if that’s the only proper way to go about playing the game.
Choromatsu shoots him a look of disbelief, then shakes his head and replies, “Okay, sure, fine. I wouldn’t want to hurt the red spaces’ feelings, so we can play on them this time.”
“Yay! Okay, keep going niisan, sorry for interrupting!”
“Alright, so, where was I…” Choromatsu leans his head in his cheek, trying get his train of thought back on the right track. “Ah, right! You can only move forward diagonally, one space at a time, unless you jump an opponent’s piece. So say you have pieces aligned like this,” he takes two of Jyushimatsu’s pieces and one of his, and places the two red pieces next two each other, a black square in between them. He puts his piece directly in between the two on the red square closer to him and goes on, “I can take my piece and hop over either one of your pieces, and then that piece leaves the board.” He demonstrates jumping over both pieces one-by-one. “However, if your pieces were like this,” he realigns the right piece to be behind the left piece, a black square in between them vertically. “I can double jump your pieces, since if I hop over the first one to the right, I then have access to the one behind it, and I can take both of them.” He jumps over the two pieces, and looks up at his little brother. “Are you catching everything so far?”
“Niisan, I can play Mahjong. This is like learning how to ride a bike with training wheels!”
Choromatsu chuckles, replacing the pieces into their respective stacks. “Fair point. Okay, last thing I have to tell you is about kings. If any of your pieces manage to make it all the way to the other side of the board, you say ‘King me!’ and your opponent has to take one of your pieces they captured, and place it on top of the piece that made it to the other side. Kings can move either forward or backward, but they can’t jump more than one piece per move. Any piece can jump a king.”
He looks up to see Jyushimatsu staring intensely at the board, nodding at a speed that would rival the number of times a hummingbird’s wings beat per minute. “Okay, I got it! Let’s play!”
They set up their pieces on the board, and Jyushimatsu lets Choromatsu take the first move. Choromatsu isn’t sure if he should take it easy on the strategizing since this is Jyushimatsu’s first time playing, but after a few moves he quickly realizes he needs to up his game. His yellow-clad brother is a fairly formidable opponent.
Jyushimatsu reaches the opposite end of the board first, and announces, “King me!!” with a level of exuberance that rivals that of a lottery winner. Choromatsu places a piece on top of his brother’s newly-proclaimed king, and makes his move.
Unfortunately, Choromatsu forgot about Jyushimatsu’s rampant rule-breaking when he got too excited, and after a couple more moves, Jyushimatsu tries to triple jump three of his pieces with his king. He laughs and goes to take the pieces off the board, but Choromatsu grabs his hand to stop him. “Jyushimatsu, you can’t do that, remember? A king can only jump one piece at a time.”
The younger brother pouts, complaining, “Aw, but that’s no fair! If I jump one of your pieces, you’ll jump my king but I can’t make any other good moves!”
Choromatsu smiles, letting go of his hand and agrees, “Yeah, I know, but the rules are rules, yeah?”
Jyushimatsu moves his king back to its original place, and huffs, “Well yeah but the rules are dumb! A king should be more powerful! Just because it can move backwards now doesn’t mean I should have to trade out multiple jumps! What kind of king can only jump once anyway?”
“Well, if you think about it, a king sends his men into battle to fight for him, and no one wants the king to die, so he mostly strategizes and fights very little. That’s probably why he can only jump one person per turn,” Choromatsu replies with ease, making it sound like a rehearsed answer.
Jyushimatsu sniggers, ducking his face into his hand, and lets out a snort. “You think too much, Choromatsu-niisan! The king can probably only jump one piece at a time because kings eat too much!”
Choromatsu lets out an embarrassingly indignant squeak, crossing his arms. “Just because kings are normally portrayed as fat in historical movies does not mean that’s why kings in chess can only jump one piece! Chess is an honorable game not based on stereotypes!”
“Haha, relax, Choromatsu-niisan. I’m sure whoever made up the game was just as thoughtful as you!” Jyushimatsu laughs, humouring his brother’s probably made-up reason. I’m sure they were just as weird as you, too, but that’s okay!* “Let’s just finish the game, I promise I won’t do it again!”
They go on for another ten minutes, trying to find each other’s weak spots, until there are only two kings left on the board. Somehow, Jyushimatsu makes his last mistake, and Choromatsu hastily picks up his king and jumps his little brother’s before he can even realize his error.
Choromatsu jumps up and does a little victory dance, his fists up next to his head as he wiggles back and forth. “I won! I did it! There was almost no chance of victory, but I did it!”
Jyushimatsu lets him revel in his success for a few more seconds, before piping up, “Eh? Choromatsu-niisan, do you always get this excited when barely beating a beginning player at their first game?” Choromatsu freezes and stiffens, slowly turning to look at Jyushimatsu. “N…No?”
Jyushimatsu bursts into loud, ugly laughter. “That’s okay, niisan! I think I’m a pretty good player anyway! Let’s play again!”
Choromatsu kneels back down at the table and clears his throat. “Jyushimatsu, I was going easy on you in the beginning there. If you want to play again, I’ll probably beat you a lot easier.” No sense in sugar coating it, right?
“Hey, that’s okay! I just wanna play games with you, Choromatsu-niisan!” Jyushimatsu gave him a closed-mouth smile, bouncing up and down in his position on the floor.
The corners of Choromatsu’s mouth upturned slightly, and he and leaned across the table to ruffle his little brother’s hair. “Alright, then. Let’s play! Just a couple more games, though.”
In the end, they played for another hour and a half, continuing even after Osomatsu came back from losing at pachinko (He did, in fact, lose), because Jyushimatsu kept asking to play again and god knows Choromatsu can’t turn him down.
Of course, Jyushimatsu never won a single round. But at least he had fun?