/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>>45401306
As the pieces were set, Momiji sat apart from either of them, acting as referee. She handed paper to both parties. “Write the names of two pieces and their original position.”

“Ooh, what do these do?”

“Those troops have bombs. They can explode to wipe out every piece in a 3x3 grid or your opponent’s prison.”

Putting aside the thought of blowing up the vegetable stall he used to frequent with Reimu, Anon marked his two sacrifices and handed back his roster. With both lists in hand, the wolf tengu allowed the game to begin.
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“Ote~” The tengu flashed a smug grin below her mask as she checked Anon’s king again. After a careful mid-game bombing, he had no pieces to drop. Checking Anon’s king over and over allowed her to slowly whittle away his remaining long-range pieces while pushing his king down an alleyway. It was a matter of time before she won.

“Pichuun!” Anon started smiling. Aya scanned the board for his pieces: None next to her attack force, none were close enough to blow up the environment for an escape route for the king, and the king himself couldn’t be given a bomb… then he started pointing at the onmyoji she had promoted to a flying horse and placed in the middle of her defenses. It wasn’t next to her king, but it was in a great position to exert pressure on slow pieces while being defended by multiple adjacent generals.

All gone in an instant, as Momiji confirmed that Aya had captured, converted and promoted a piece Anon marked before the game began. Not only was it a free action that allowed Anon to move his king out of check, it also opened up her own king to attack. It wasn’t impossible to recover from, however. All she had to do was move her promoted lion and she’d be safe. One diagonal past one of Anon’s pawns and-

“Pichuun!” Her lion was vaporized as well as Anon blew the last of his armed soldiers.

“Dammit, both in one turn?!” The situation was grim. Her king was defenseless, she couldn’t guarantee multiple checks anymore, and it would only take one or two turns for Anon to set up his own check against her. With her options limited, the tengu moved an ox piece, still disguised as a farmer, backwards to her king. She punctuated her final move with a heavy “pichuun”, taking her king on her own terms.

With his back-to-back victories secured, Anon lied down in his bed, mentally drained from the excitement and tension. The girls joined him, eager to relax after the stressful game.

“You know, if you had just clipped the school with the corner of your second bomb, the free king could have-” The wolf was quickly shushed by Aya, not wanting to spoil the human’s victory.

“You win some, you lose some. Besides, we still have a couple hours left. We can probably fit in a game of Magic Kingdom before the night is over.” As Anon groaned at what was undoubtedly another variant with more extraneous rules, Momiji excused herself to the bathroom, wanting nothing to get in her way once the game began. Aya began setting up the board again when part of the scenery sprang outwards, bumping her mask. The cheap fit fell from her face after the light impact, falling to the floor. As fast as she was, her hands were still trapped under the board, fiddling with knobs.

As Anon got up to retrieve the mask, he saw Aya’s head hanging downwards and the subtle bulge of a bandage on her cheek. “Aya? Are you okay?” When the tengu didn’t answer, he approached, turning her head gently until he could see the entire swathed area of her face. A thin red line bled through, spanning her nose to her right ear. “What happened to you?”

With the board set up, Aya bent over to pick up the mask herself. “I’m fine. You have enough to worry about as it is.”

“You’re hurt. You need to see Yamashiro now, or someone-”

“You weren’t supposed be worried tonight!” The tengu lowered her voice after the outburst. “You don’t get to have any good memories on this bed, but you have to sleep here every night. I just wanted to give you one fun night here. One night where I could help you forget about your worries instead of always having you help me with mine. But I had to and mess it up anyways… I’m sorry.”

Wrapping his arms around her, Anon stroked Aya’s back, careful not to make contact with the front of her head. “You don’t have to apologize. I had a wonderful time today with the three of you. I don’t think I could forget about tonight if I tried, anyways. Too many rules to remember.” The tengu chuckled at his lame joke, happy he wasn’t mad at her. “I just want you to make one more little promise to me: No more mask. I want to know whether you’re okay or not with my own eyes. I’ll have to assume the worst otherwise, okay?”

Choking up, Aya nodded and took her seat on the bed once more. There was one last game to play tonight, and she was going to make sure it was unforgettable.

(Part 55)