"Coming... coming..."
Hiroshi desperately wanted to complain but he held back. She was a customer, and he couldn't risk a bad review.
"Thanks for the help, Hero. The Evil King's True Eye will remember your kindness."
Hiroshi lifted her small, stocking-clad feet, helping her climb up.
He waited until she'd pulled the rope up before slowly stepping away from the balcony.
But just as he reached for the bathroom door again, a faint camera shutter sound clicked. It wasn't loud, but in the quiet room, it pierced like a needle.
"Oh no..."
Facing the bathroom, Hiroshi rubbed his forehead helplessly. That sound was all too familiar, it practically triggered him.
In the next second, he turned around with a bright smile, looking eagerly at Ginko standing in the bedroom doorway.
"Ginko, what's wrong? Can't sleep? Or are you hungry? Want something to eat?"
Despite his warm tone, Sora Ginko didn't reply. She just flipped through her phone, giving him a cold, piercing stare.
'I'm doomed…'
Hiroshi's shower plans evaporated. Sora Ginko was his biggest patron right now. He was certain she'd seen his exchange with Takanashi Rikka, which explained her icy mood.
"Predator! Pervert! Go to hell!"
"I'm calling the police right now!"
Ginko kicked his knee, and Hiroshi crumpled to the floor in pain.
'What predator? Rikka had been my friend since junior high, only a year younger than me.'
Sora Ginko, though? She was a year younger than Rikka.
Despite his inner protests, Hiroshi kept his face neutral, enduring the slight ache in his knee.
Forcing a smile that mixed pain and patience, he said, "No, Ginko, you've got it wrong. Rikka and I are just friends."
"You jerk, who asked for your explanation?" Ginko pressed her folding fan against his chin, her face dangerously close, as if she might bite him.
"Because Ginko is so important to me..."
Hiroshi's tone was earnest, his expression innocent yet pained, but his smile held firm. With his striking features, anyone would feel a twinge of sympathy.
Even Sora Ginko softened. She stepped past him with her bare feet and sat at the shogi board he'd just set up.
She always did this; good mood or bad, she turned to shogi to sort things out. In her life, shogi ranked second only to one thing.
As for what ranked first... she cast a subtle glance at Hiroshi, then pointed to the opposite side of the board.
"What are you standing there for?"
"Alright... coming..."
Reluctantly, Hiroshi sat across from her. What choice did he have? She was the client.
Honestly, he didn't get why Sora Ginko was so upset. It wasn't just this time, every time he had the slightest interaction with another girl, she'd sulk and look ready to murder.
Thankfully, they didn't go to the same school. If she'd seen him simping for Sawamura Eriri for two years, she might've kicked his head clean off.
But it wasn't entirely her fault. In her mind, Hiroshi was already hers. Seeing "her lover" touched by someone else naturally sparked her anger.
She'd told herself to give him space, but she couldn't help it.
Hiroshi watched her make sharp, precise moves on the shogi board, the pieces clacking against the wood.
She was still mad, he could tell. To ease the tension, he tried starting a conversation.
"Ginko, do you remember why I started playing shogi?"
"You once said it was because of a classmate..."
"No, no, it was for survival..."
Seeing her confused look, Hiroshi smirked inwardly, ready to share his philosophy of survival.
Hiroshi had written the word "survival" countless times in his life, yet he never felt he had truly grasped its meaning. Sitting across from Ginko, he moved his shogi pieces with a calm precision, each one landing on the board like a soft raindrop.
"As you said, Ginko, I first got into shogi because of a classmate in elementary school," he began, his voice gentle, as if recalling a distant memory. "I had some talent back then, and playing against others at school was like bullying them. I made several of them cry."
He paused, his gaze drifting to the board. "After that, I remember one student's parents stormed over to me, scolding me harshly. They accused me of using underhanded tricks. Later, I found out that one of the kids I beat had been playing shogi since he was two and a half years old. No one around him could defeat him. His parents, relatives, friends all saw him as a prodigy. But after losing to me, he locked himself in his room. Even though he was just an elementary school student, he started thinking about suicide."
Hiroshi's tone remained soft, almost detached. "That's when I realized that in shogi, you don't always have to win. Sometimes, losing brings more benefits and is easier."
"What do you mean by 'you don't always have to win'?" Ginko asked, her fist tightening. She had been playing shogi since she was two, and by four, she was already competing online, where she met Hiroshi and her current master, Kiyotaki Kosuke. For her, touching a shogi piece meant one thing: victory. She pursued it relentlessly, using every means and all her strength.
Now, hearing Hiroshi suggest that losing could be more important than winning, she couldn't accept it or even understand it.
Seeing her reaction, Hiroshi smiled faintly, as if he had expected this. "Ginko, human nature can be terrifying… especially jealousy."
"Even so, I still don't understand what you mean by losing being more important than winning," she pressed.
"Wait, let me continue," he said, glancing at the flying chariot piece in his hand. His thoughts drifted back ten years.
"After that incident with the classmate's parents, I never played shogi at school again. But rumors spread, and it became quite a big deal around the school. Then, the people at the orphanage started challenging me to shogi from time to time. The outcome was predictable. Everyone who came to play left with a bitter face. I didn't hold back; no one could last more than a hundred moves against me. In the end, they'd force a smile and praise my talent. But more than once, I heard people bad mouthing me behind my back out of jealousy."
He hesitated, his voice dipping slightly. "They'd say things like, 'He's an orphan with no parents; all he can do is play this stupid game.'"
A fleeting sadness crossed Hiroshi's face at the mention of his lack of parents, but it vanished quickly. Though he had no biological family, he was surrounded by people who cared for him; the orphanage director, a few elderly residents so he didn't feel truly alone. But Sora Ginko, watching him closely, saw something different. Knowing he was an orphan, she interpreted the smile that followed as a mask of forced bravery. Her grip tightened on her folding fan, making it creak, though Hiroshi didn't notice as he continued.
"After I beat everyone at the orphanage, no one challenged me to shogi anymore. Well, that's not entirely true. Except for a couple of elderly people near retirement and the orphanage director, no one else played with me. Jealousy is a powerful demon in people's hearts. After that, I noticed some people subtly excluding me, but I didn't care. Those people weren't worth befriending anyway."
He looked up at her, his expression softening. "Then, I met you online, and for the next ten years, you're the only one I've played shogi with."
"Ginko… you say I have extraordinary talent, but I never thought so, because you're not the first to say that. The others wore fake smiles that made me sick, but you were different. I could feel that you were genuinely happy for me. So, I'm willing to keep playing shogi for you, to keep accompanying you in shogi."
Hiroshi's words were slow and deliberate, each one carrying a quiet weight. Ginko froze, her shogi piece and fan slipping from her hands to the floor. She had heard similar sentiments from him before, but never had they felt so sincere, so real.
Shogi was everything to Ginko. Playing with Hiroshi was one of the most important parts of her life. She stared at the piece she had dropped, realizing that something so essential to her had caused him so much trouble in his childhood. Yet, despite that, he continued to weave shogi into his daily life, just for her.