Chapter 2 — Nanzenji Gyokuran (Part 3)

I sat at the side of the brook that runs through the Tadasu Forest. Twilight was descending over the forest, and the lights of Shimogamo Shrine gleamed brightly beyond the shadowy trees.

In front of me was Father’s shogi board, which I had retrieved from the hollow in the elm tree. I was carefully sitting up the pieces, listening to the babbling of the brook, when a firefly came drifting down onto the board, bringing my gaze onto the bitemarks which Yaichirō had left behind.

By and by Yaichirō poked his head out from the grass.

“Yasaburō! What have you done with Father’s shogi board?”

“It’s right here. If you want it back, you’re gonna have to apologize to me.”

“Apologize for what?”

“Don’t feel like apologizing? Fine, we’ll play for it. If I lose, it’s all yours.”

“Shogi? Don’t be absurd.”

“What, you scared of losing to me?”

Yaichirō scowled at me for a moment. But eventually he came over to the edge of the brook, apparently having calculated that there was no risk of actually losing to me, and sat down reluctantly on the other side of the board.

Come to think of it, this was the first time I’d ever played a serious game of shogi with Yaichirō. My brother played with the utmost caution, as if he was testing the waters with each piece, while I selected only the most maverick moves.

“Be serious about this!” he snapped.

“I’m trying a new strategy,” I countered.

As the board grew ever more convoluted, a look of unease grew on Yaichirō’s face. All I was doing was playing fool’s shogi, but inside that hard head of his Yaichirō was driving himself wild trying to find my hidden stratagem, to the point that he’d lost the thread.

Before long he closed his eyes and started to ponder.

This was the moment I’d been waiting for. Taking care not to make a sound I slipped away from the shogi board and swapped places with Gyokuran, who’d been hiding in the brush nearby. She composed herself and sat down, glaring at the chaos of the board.

Naturally Yaichirō was in for a shock when he opened his eyes.

“What are you doing here? What happened to Yasaburō?”

“Yasaburō’s beaten a strategic retreat.”

“Curse him, what’s his game? I must apologize for all that trouble.”

“Never mind,” Gyokuran said softly. “Let’s play some shogi.”

“Please, not that.”

“Why won’t you play with me?”

“...I never want to disgrace myself like that again.”

“I won’t ever lose on purpose again, I promise. I just want to play shogi with you.”

Gyokuran looked deep into the shogi board.

Finally Yaichirō pulled himself together and sat up straight again.

Nanzenji Gyokuran must really have been visited by the god of shogi, for even amongst the confusion of the board which I had worked so hard to create she seemed to have seen a ray of light. She hunched over the board as she moved her pieces, and with a look of determination on his face Yaichirō answered each one.

The shogi pieces glimmered faintly in the darkness of the evening.

Move after move, neither Gyokuran nor Yaichirō had eyes for anything but the board, not uttering a word even when I emerged from the bushes and sat down by the board.

The firefly illuminated the board with a pale greenish glow, then took flight once more.

Looking at the two sitting at the side of the brook, I thought back to the days when Gyokuran had used to come to the forest to play. Gyokuran and Father and Yaichirō had been glued to the board, even after it got so dark that you couldn’t see the pieces anymore. Looking at them, I had often thought to myself, _What’s so interesting about shogi? _Every time Father bowed his head to Gyokuran and muttered, “I concede,” I always felt like I was seeing the most ridiculous thing in the world.

As Yaichirō’s position crumbled in the endgame, his breathing grew labored. He glared at the board, and his back began to swell outward in the fading light. He seemed to have forgotten himself, and in his tiger form, I was expecting Yaichirō to sink his fangs into the board any moment now. On the other side of the board, Gyokuran’s furry shape enlarged into that of a tigress. She couldn’t afford to give ground either.

Now just as Gyokuran reached out a furry paw to delicately move a piece, I heard an odd _snick _sound like a clasp coming undone.

“What was that?” Yaichirō frowned.

“What’s that doing here?” The very instant that Gyokuran pointed at the board a blast of wind howled up, and with that she disappeared into thin air.

Stunned, Yaichirō reverted back into a tanuki. “Gyokuran!” he shouted, scurrying around and around the board.

“Calm down, Yaichirō!” I said, turning my gaze to the corner of the board which Gyokuran had pointed at. A tiny hole was opened up in the board, and air was quietly whistling out.

Yaichirō put his front paws up on the board. “You don’t suppose she could have been sucked into this hole, do you?”

“You really think she could fit through this pinhole?”

The hole where the square on the board should have been was small enough that you wouldn’t have been able to fit a tanuki’s paw in there. Looking straight down into it, I spied a faint flicker of light down at the bottom of the otherwise pitch-black hole.

“Weird little hole, ain’t it?” I reached out to see what was inside, and the instant I did I was forcibly dragged into the hole like an ogre was wrenching my arm from the other side. The shogi board stretched out to fill my vision. I’m shrinking, I realized, but by that time my transformation had been removed and I was about to fall into the depths of the hole.

The last thing I heard before I went in was my brother’s shouting, which soon faded into the distance.

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Waiting for me at the bottom of the hole was the furry form of Nanzenji Gyokuran.

“Goodness, that gave me such a fright!” she remarked. “What’s going on?”

“We’re in the shogi room.”

“I’ve heard of it! Sōichirō’s secret hideaway, wasn’t it?”

“I guess it was hidden inside his shogi board. No wonder no one ever found it, the way Yaichirō had the board tucked away.”

I slid open the latticed paper door in front of me. Bright light slanted in through the large skylight on the roof of the 4½ tatami room, just as it had in the days when Father had taught me shogi here. Mysteriously, the sky beyond that skylight was still that unchanging hue of blue, and the persimmons that I had pestered Father about still hung there, as if time for them stood still.

But besides that, everything else had changed.

Father’s prized shogi room was almost unrecognizable now; in its present state it would more accurately be described as a garbage dump. After Father’s death no one came here to clean it, so a little dust would have been excusable, but that alone did not explain the devastation wrought here. The fastidiously organized books on the shelves had been bundled up with twine and dumped on the floor, and I opened up a mildewy cardboard box to find it crammed full of empty Akadama port wine bottles.

“How awful. This doesn’t seem like Sōichirō at all.”

“Well, it definitely wasn’t this filthy when I was a kid.”

At this point Yaichirō finally showed up. He got one step into the room before his jaw dropped in amazement. “Incredible, so this is where it was!”

“Yeah, but what I want to know is, why is it so dirty?”

“...How would I know that?”

In the center of the room amidst the heaps of garbage were a shogi board and a flimsy cushion, the latter still bearing what appeared to be indents from Father’s bottom. Beside them was a battered pipe resting upon a clay plate. Father used to pack that pipe with the remains of tengu cigars he obtained from Master Akadama and puff away. I could still clearly see in my mind the smoke curling up through the skylight and dissolving into the autumn sky.

Yaichirō and Gyokuran waddled around the room, still in their tanuki forms. Gyokuran happened upon a six-sided board, used for tengu shogi. Long ago, great wars had been fought over the outcomes of tengu shogi games, and for that reason the boards had been sealed away, no longer used even in the tengu world. We were all puzzled as to what such a thing was doing in this room.

Gyokuran sniffed. “I’ve been wondering, but why does it smell like curry?”

“Father loved curry,” I replied.

“Indeed he did. But how could the smell have persisted all these years?”

“Never underestimate the power of Indian food, Yaichirō.”

“I think it’s coming from here.” Gyokuran pointed to the garbage bags piled high up along a wall.

We began to excavate the heap, trying to discover the source of the smell, and before long something heavy rolled down to my feet with a thud. I reached down and realized that it was the flying _chagama _engine. It was the same engine that had powered Yakushibō’s Inner Parlor last year before it was lost during the Battle of the Daimonji Pleasure Barges last year. Master Akadama had given it to Benten, and it was only during the chaotic end of the previous year that we had managed to recover and return it to him.

“What’s the chagama engine doing here in the shogi room?”

Beyond the wall of garbage there was another sliding door. Unlike the door we had entered through, this one was badly ripped and covered in dark red stains. I smelled the sweet aroma of Akadama port wine, and the smell of fresh curry simmering in a pot wafted through the tears in the door. We all transformed into human forms and exchanged looks.

“Where do you suppose this door leads?” inquired Gyokuran.

“I believe I know the answer to that,” answered Yaichirō.

“Same,” I said.

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At that same moment, in the Masagata Court Apartments in the rear of the Demachi shopping arcade, Master Akadama was instructing my younger brother Yashirō to cook tengu curry for that night’s supper.

The secret to tengu curry was no different from that of tengu stew. All you did was throw the Master’s treasured stone in the pot, along with whatever delectables of land or sea you cared for as well as supermarket curry powder, and simmer the whole lot together. About twice a year the Master would petulantly insist on having tengu curry, but if you made it too spicy he would throw a tantrum and put all your effort to waste. On the other hand you couldn’t let him perceive it as being too mild, either, for Master Akadama saw eating mild curry as below his tengu dignity.

Yashirō stood intrepidly in the kitchen, wearing an apron and stirring a large pot of curry.

“It smells great, doesn’t it Master?”

“Hmph. Curry rice is child’s fare. Yet it is not so bad once in a while, when naught else will do.”

“Won’t the stone smell like curry?”

“Wash and dry it, and all will be well.”

“I love curry. Yaichirō likes curry, and so do Yajirō and Yasaburō. Mother likes it too. Basically, all tanuki like curry!”

As he stirred the pot, Yashirō sang a little song. “Cu-rry, cu-rry, yummy yummy cu-rry!”

“Stop that singing, now, and mind your duties!” Eagerly awaiting his curry rice, the Master tapped on the low table with a silver spoon.

“Co-ming!” Yashirō called, piling a plate with fresh, steaming rice.

“I want plenty of curry, and mix it well!”

Dutifully carrying out the Master’s orders, Yashirō mixed the curry and rice together, cracked a raw egg on top, then brought the dish in and set it on the table.

“This is tengu curry,” the Master declared.

Just as the two were about to dig in with their gleaming spoons, there was a loud crash in the closet. With screams and shouts, Yaichirō and Gyokuran and I fell through the sliding screen. Yaichirō stumbled into the table and tripped, sending the dishes flying. Gyokuran shrieked, “Aieee!” and batted the flying curry away, which splattered everywhere. The Master’s room was in shambles.

The distinguished Master wiped dripping curry from his beard, and brushed off bits of carrots and potatoes from his cheeks.

“What are you furry imbeciles doing!?” he thundered.

We all hastily prostrated ourselves on the floor.

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There once lived on Chikubu Island a tengu who loved shogi.

Master Akadama would sometimes go out to the island and play shogi with this tengu, who eventually presented him with the shogi board which contained the shogi room. The board was actually one of two, the counterpart in the possession of the tengu on Chikubu Island. Though Chikubu Island and Nyoigadake were on opposite ends of Lake Biwa, with these wondrous boards the two tengu could play tengu whensoever they pleased.

But as we have already seen with the tengu wars, when tengu play shogi, the battles tend to spill off the board. What started as a dispute over a game boiled over to the point that Master Akadama and the tengu on Chikubu Island refused to speak to each other for some time. As proof of how serious he was, the tengu sent Master Akadama the other board. Later on the two would reconcile, but as both understood that playing shogi again would only lead to another squabble, the boards stayed put at Nyoigadake.

Here Shimogamo Sōichirō of the Tadasu Forest makes his entrance into the story. Knowing how our father would engross himself in shogi, and having no use for the boards, Master Akadama lent him one of the pair as a wedding gift. Simply put, Father’s shogi room really belonged to Master Akadama.

The Master only told us of this history after we had wiped up all of the splattered curry and he had filled his belly with what remained in the pot. Once Gyokuran poured his cup full to the brim with Akadama port wine, the Master was finally content again.

“But Master,” I interjected. “You still shouldn’t fill the shogi room with trash like that.”

“If you wish to clean it up I shan’t stop you.”

“So you’re just going to foist it on us, then.”

“The impertinence of you furballs. Without that room, Sōichirō never would have been wed. You furry lumps owe every hair on your hides to that room!”

“How do you mean?”

“Had not Sōichirō told you?”

“I did hear that you rendered him a service when he got married.”

“Outrageous. The granting of such a favor by one so distinguished as I should have been a tale passed down to his children, and his children’s children. Gratitude, indeed!”

In our clan there are two accounts of how Father and Mother were wed.

I have already told the tale of how Mother, once boldly known as the Stairmaster, and Father, leader of the Tsuchinoko Expeditionary Brigade, met in Tanukidani Fudō. A friendship had blossomed between them over the course of that turf war, but as they came of age a bashfulness sprouted up and they grew distant.

The way Mother told it, Father, unable to stop pining for her, had gone to Master Akadama and requested that he arrange a marriage interview between the houses of Shimogamo and Tanukidani. Father’s version was much the same, only it had been a lovelorn Mother who had approached the Master instead.

Since Father and Mother had refused to concede an inch to the other, the only point we brothers could be sure of was that Master Akadama had had something to do with it all.

“Bah! What drivel those two speak, Sōichirō and Tōsen!” And Master Akadama told us the truth.

In truth, the Master had become fed up of watching the glacial proceedings between Father and Mother from the sidelines. At any rate, he was the sort of tengu who would swoop down on the shore of Lake Biwa and carry off a girl if the fancy took him, the sort who believed in charging headlong into love.

“Damned furballs, waffling over love!” he snorted, and confined them to the shogi room. “Will you wed, or won’t you? Neither of you shall leave this room until you have made a decision!”

It was a rather unreasonable, unasked-for intervention, but thankfully for us brothers, Father and Mother in the end decided to wed.

“What helpless creatures you furballs are!” Finishing his tale, the Master eyed Yaichirō and Gyokuran beadily. Gyokuran hastily scurried off to the kitchen, and a flustered Yaichirō went after her to help.

“What airs you give yourselves. What is it but the course of nature that two tanuki should be intertwined?” The Master sighed, scraping around in his ear with a cotton swab. “But of course, he would take that from Sōichirō.”

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As he expounded the tengu theory of charging headlong into love, our benefactor’s tongue gradually grew thick from wine and fatigue, and eventually he nodded off into dreamland. Thanking our lucky stars, Yashirō and I pushed him into his futon, where he hugged his arms around a daruma.

Leaving the apartment, we walked through the Demachi shopping arcade. Yashirō was taking a Tupperware container filled with the remainder of the tengu curry back for Mother, and the gentle aroma of the mild curry trailed us through the silent thoroughfare, surely causing those who occasionally crossed our paths to turn their thoughts to hearth and home.

“No need to walk me home,” said Gyokuran when we reached the west end of the Demachi Bridge, bowing her head. “Shall we play again sometime, Yaichirō?”

“I should be delighted,” Yaichirō replied.

Gyokuran nodded to me as well. “Thank you, Yasaburō.”

“Not at all, Miss Gyokuran.”

“Enough with the ‘Miss’ already!” she scowled, before turning and crossing the bridge towards the lights of Demachiyanagi Station. At the halfway point she turned and waved at us, and with a _pop _like the cork of a champagne bottle, Yaichirō’s tail came shooting out. He waved back at Gyokuran with a solemn expression, holding down his tail and not saying a word all the while.

As I turned in the direction of the Tadasu Forest, Yaichirō murmured suddenly as if the idea had just occurred to him, “Do you two have time for a drink?”

“The night’s young, brother. I’m thinking we’ll have time for more than just one.“

“Drinks will be on me tonight.”

“I’ll drink to that!” I cried.

“Drink to that!” echoed Yashirō.