Chapter 3
Starburst could only stare in complete shock at the shogi board in the hands of one of the brothers, light from the open door cascading in shades behind the two of them, making them look like something that Starburst could never achieve.
“What . . . is that?” Pinkie asked, staring at it with a look of utter confusion, leaping out in surprise as Starburst stood up suddenly, and looked at the two brothers with an expression of fear.
“A... shogi board.” He answered her, his hands shaking furiously, and his eyes darting from object to object.
“Yes, it is a shogi board! One of you two will play me, or my brother, in a simple game of shogi.” Starburst’s pupils seemed to dilate at that statement of Flim’s
“What’s the catch?” Pinkie asked, her brows furrowed in suspicion. Though, there was another question that was nagging her at the back of her frivolous subconscious, and that was, "Just what is shogi?"
“If we lose, we will not set foot in this here establishment ever again.” Flim said, making a huge show with his hands, moving them back and forth.
“But if we win, you must sign over the Sweet Shoppe to Flim and Flam’s Everything Under the Sun Emporium and all of its subsidiaries,” said Flam, stroking at the tip of his mustache, “so that we may be able to turn this place into the second branch of the Flim and Flam’s-!”
That statement of Flim snapped Starburst out of his fear, cutting him off, his tone full of questioning at this ludicrous and absurd challenge of theirs, “On what merits are you basing that you can simply take the Sweet Shoppe away just like that? And what’s stopping us from kicking you out?”
The two brothers simply chuckled, Flim pulling out a piece of crumpled paper that looked suspiciously like a legal document, with a smirk.
“It is here, under Ponyville Law, Section D-13, under Property Management. Note this: 'Any property, or properties, owned under this town, can be signed over from their respective owners from a game of the challenger's choosing, though, if the owners are not present, then the tightly-knit employees of the establishment may participate. This exception is given to the superbly magnifique Flim and Flam's Everything Under the Sun Empori-"
“That’s enough, dear brother.” Flam hushed him, feigning a forced smile for the two suspicious employees.
"Right," He faked a cough. "And so adhering to this law, either one of you must play against us. You will be a representative of the owners, considering they are away, it seems."
Pinkie raised her brow in suspicion, crossed her arms in suspicion, staring at the two awfully sweating brothers in suspicion with a bundle of suspicion, “Soooo, you’re sure that’s a credible legal document?”
Their explanation rolled right over her head, going from one ear to the other... but she could faintly remember reading some of Ponyville's set rules as a pastime when she was younger, out of sheer boredom, and she could discern that the document Flim read from wasn't believable in the slightest.
“It is a perfectly credible legal document!” He said as-a-matter-of-factly, jamming the document within the depths of his pockets.
“Right, it totally is.” Starburst muttered, a piece of lint on his shorts distracting him slightly.
“Now, who will play against us . . .” Flim asked once more, gazing around the Sweet Shoppe, stopping his fruitless gazing about the establishment at Starburst, looking right at him with a knowing smirk, and subtle superiority.
“. . . or maybe you would like to play, Starburst, professional shogi player?” He added, deepening his smirk, his brother following suite.
He felt a shocking sensation travel up his spine, followed by something stirring within his stomach, festering wildly. He looked at the two brothers with an icy, glazed look, unable to completely fathom what they had said, and unable to accept what they had just said.
“Starburst?” Pinkie asked them, her voice tinged with an incredulous tone. “A professional shogi player? I don’t think he fits the description... whatever that description is.”
Thanks, Pinkie. I so needed that.
“Oh, but it is true, young lady.” Flam justified, pointing to Starburst. “He is a professional shogi player . . . or at least one who had gone professional during his freshman years of high school.”
“I – hold on-!” Starburst put in, being interrupted by Flam once more.
“He is one of six who have gone pro during high school, and the other five have gone on to become masters.” Flam ended with a slight mocking bow to Starburst, who gritted his teeth, clenching his open hands into a pair of fists.
“Starburst?” Pinkie asked, astounded, “You never told me that! That’s amazing, if I knew what it meant!”
“Oh, do not worry. What he did, means a lot to the shogi community.” Flam answered.
“It’s a shame, really that he left-”
Starburst slammed his palms on the countertop, startling the three, and he defended himself, “I did not leave shogi!”
“Then what would you call it? Taking a leave of absence for a certain amount of time?” He taunted, his words only meant to provoke him.
And they worked.
He clenched his fists harder, till they were completely white, till he could see crescent shaped slits in the middle of his palms.
“Then why don’t you play with me, just one game?” He laid down the board on the table, his eyes glinting with eagerness. “Then we’ll see whether you’ve improved.”
“What makes you think I’ll go through with this? What’s stopping me from just walking out that door, or calling the cops?” He challenged, anger lacing his tone. Pinkie was starting to shrink back from Starburst, not used to seeing him like this, her eyes and her shocked look slightly off-kilter.
She’d never thought that he could feel anything other than nothing . . . she was presumptuous with her first thoughts about him.
“That wouldn't be very gentlemanly of you? I thought you were a professional!” Flim taunted even more, followed by the snickering of his brother beside him.
“Fine.” He uttered out plainly, unclenching his fists and walking towards the both of them. He pulled up the chair towards him, plopping into it with a silent rustle of his shirt, giving the unfortunate brother a placid stare.
“Let’s play.”
The shogi board, its glossy wooden surface composed of eighty-one rectangles set in a rectangular outline. Nine rows, nine columns each. The pieces, twenty for each player, wedge shaped and in varying sizes, comprising of mainly the king, the rook, the silver general, the gold general, the knight, the pawn, the bishop, and finally, the lance. The rules ... force the opponent to surrender, or somehow, though it was extremely unlikely and hard to do, stop the game at a stalemate.
Starburst analyzed all of this, as he struggled to remember what he had forgotten.
What he had nearly forgotten, he corrected himself.
“Let’s start then.” Flim said, his words falling on deaf ears as the two looked at the shogi board. Starburst had chosen black first, being the one who was challenged, and Flim having chosen white, waited for Starburst’s turn to move.
“Why isn’t Flim moving first?” Pinkie piped up out of curiosity. “Didn’t he choose white?”
“In shogi, black moves first.” Flam answered, concentrating on the board, on his brother’s face, on the veins pulsing through his brother’s neck.
“Oh . . .”
Starburst began, moving his pawn, and with this first move, the game began.
Flim’s playing style was untrustworthy, full of cunning and risk-taking, and riddled with opportunities for Starburst to strike where he was weakest. Starburst moved his pieces exactly where he had planned them to without fault from the start, each satisfying click of the pieces against the hollow board bringing him closer and closer to the endgame.
“How have you been all these years?” Starburst heard Flim ask out of the blue, barely hearing his words as he moved his piece to the next tile, his expression as placid and cold as ever before. Suddenly, the unruly hair, the cold cocoa brown eyes, and his general appearance made sense to Flim now.
Starburst’s playing style reflected his personality, his self.
“I’ve heard that you stopped playing, using the ‘I’ll get better at shogi’ excuse, after you surrendered during one of your important rank-deciding matches.” He spoke, trying to cut into him with a knife, and Starburst retaliating with nothing but his willpower.
Click. Click. Click.
The sun outside had set, but the two kept on playing. Now, the sky was blanketed in a lavender, and the two spectators ate pastries while the two fought.
Flim asked his brother for a pastry, and he complied, paying for one and handing it over to his brother. Starburst on the other hand, remained as still as he ever was. Minutes ticked by as the both of them had a silent showdown, under the watchful eye of Pinkie and Flam, and whichever being was watching them at the moment.
Click. Click. Click.
Gold General to 9-F? Bishop to 6-G? What is this boy thinking? Flim thought furiously as he tried his best to battle Starburst’s offense.
Click. Click. Click! Click! Click!
Each click of the pieces began to increase in fervor and intensity.
Click! Click! Click! Click! Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.
Flim looked at the board with a knowing smirk on his face. He was going to win, the odds were in his favor.
Click. Click. Click.
. . .
Click.
With one final click, Starburst hit the nail on the coffin, and shut it completely. Flim’s king was defeated. After over eighty-nine moves...
Starburst won the game.
The knot of tension that was tightening within his stomach like a noose finally loosened, until it felt like it had never been there before. But it would always be there, lingering. He let out a breathless pant, heaving in and out air as his concentration led him to hold his breath in.
“Great . . .” Starburst panted. “Now . . . get out . . . of this café.”
Without so much as a single word, Flim picked himself up, and adhering to the terms of their agreement, the two brothers walked out of the café, board and a pouch filled with pieces in hand. Before they both walked out however, they turned to Starburst, and said in disjointed sentences once more, Flim uttering the first, Flam the second and vice versa:
“You may think that you have won –“
“- but it is you who has lost.”
“The next time we meet –“
“-I will destroy you.”
“What do you mean you will-?”
The sound of the door slamming cut Flam's trailing sentence right off.
And with that, the two brothers walked out of the Sweet Shoppe, sullen and defeated, bickering futilely among each other. Pinkie still stared at the window, even after the two brothers had left, just to make sure they wouldn’t go back on their word.
“I didn’t know whether I was going to win.”
“Huh?” Pinkie looked shocked at his sudden statement, and marveled at how he was still able to talk, despite him looking as if he ran a marathon, or like he just came back from a war zone.
“I didn’t know whether I was going to win.” He repeated, more to himself than for the benefit of Pinkie.
“I didn’t mean ‘huh?’ as in ‘huh?’ I meant ‘huh?’ as in, ‘you still have enough energy to talk?’” She corrected.
“I do.”
Pinkie shook her head, headed over to the counter, plucking out a pastry from the display cabinet and handing it to Starburst.
“Here, take it. You look like you need it.”
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t look like you’re fine.”
“I really am.”
“Look, Starburst . . . if you won’t do it for yourself, at least do it for me.” He looked up at her with an innocent expression, as if he still wasn’t exposed to adolescence at all, despite his age and despite his maturity. Starburst was shocked, but he barely showed it. The lamplight behind her was almost overshadowed by her hair, it seemed to be glancing off in pointed rays behind her.
Her face was cast in a slight shadow, so slight that even he didn’t notice it.
He bit his lip, his brain hesitating, but his fatigue blocked all other thoughts off declining her offer behind, and he reluctantly accepted the pastry, biting into it with a patient manner.
Pinkie took a seat beside Starburst and asked him, “So you were a pro-shogi player? I never knew that.”
He stopped munching abruptly and gulped down, “I never wanted you to know, nor Mr. Cake and Mrs. Cake.”
“Why? You were amazing.” She tried to come up with similar words that meant ‘amazing’ off the top of her head at that moment, but failed,
“Even though I didn’t know what was happening, you still looked amazing.” She said with a slight grin in his direction, Starburst staring at the half-eaten slice of cake in his hand.
He felt his response choke within his throat, refusing to leave, refusing to escape the safe confines of his mind and into the world, for if he did speak; it would forever remain etched in stone.
“I wasn’t amazing . . .” He answered her response, unwilling to look her directly in the eye, and biting into the cake, feeling it drop heavily into his stomach.
“No.”
“No?”
“No. You were amazing. Better than Flim.”
He did not have the audacity to scoff at Pinkie, nor did he want to at all. “Flim was . . . an amateur player. That’s the only difference . . .”
“What’s the difference?”
“He plays shogi for fun. Professional shogi players . . .” His voice faltered, staring at the half eaten cake, as if it understood him completely, as if the next sentence he spoke would seal his fate entirely. The gears in his mind stopped to a grinding halt as he felt time stop for him.
“. . . sacrifice everything to play shogi.”
“What did you sacrifice?” Pinkie asked with a curious look. Even though that question sounded harmless, to him, it sounded insensitive, and brash of her to ask him that. She didn’t know, nor would she ever know what he had to sacrifice, and what he now wouldn’t have to sacrifice.
“Nothing.” He answered her in a cold tone, standing up abruptly from the chair, stuffing the last bits of cake within his mouth and munching them forcefully. “I sacrificed nothing to become a pro-shogi player.”
“W-wait! What do you mean by that?” She walked up to him, keeping her distance, as if he was a bomb about to explode.
He let out an exasperated sigh and turned back to her, one hand firmly gripping the doorknob, the other clenched into a fist. “Exactly what I meant. Nothing.”
He stormed out of the shop, adamantly refusing to take a glance behind him, ignoring Pinkie’s pleas and rushed apologies. His shoes hit the pavement angrily, his hair being violently whipped across his face from the wind, the moon shining brighter than it ever had before, brighter than the stars itself combined.
Storm clouds dangerously drifted in, and the rumbling of thunder in the distance worsened, threatening to bring down rain as he walked.
Pinkie’s apologies soon become nothing but dust in the wind as the rumbling turned into a deep, earth-shaking, sound.
“What did you sacrifice?”
Everything. I sacrificed everything.
And then, with a pull of the drain plug, all the water rushed out. He felt droplets of water sting his face, splashing against his face in tiny explosions.
His shirt was cold, his hair was dripping with rain, his shoes felt slushy, and his breathing became ragged and heavy.
A flash of white against a dark night sky.
The scrape of his shoes against a cold linoleum floor.
The ding of the elevator.
The creaking sound of his apartment door opening.
He stepped in, taking off his shoes without much care for it, closing the door behind him and took only a few steps forward, before crashing onto his mattress, feeling the cold spread through his body like some disease. He shivered pathetically, pulling his legs close to his body.
Lethargically, he crawled onto his bed, taking off his shirt that stuck to his skin, stripping himself down to his boxers and pulling the blanket over him, hoping that it would dry him off.
His head was throbbing, his mind aching with this one burst of thought, this one burst of random words connected together by context, before he drifted off into pained sleep:
I made a silent oath when I played shogi.
I thought I cut the thread to it.
I was wrong then.
And now, it’s bringing me back.
And I’ll spiral down even further.
Deep down . . .
. . . into its effervescent depths . . .
END.
Chapter 4
The cold still hadn’t faded away yet. It was still lingering around him, like some disease. His head felt heavy, his throat felt sore, his nose was runny, and his shoulders ached badly.
He was having a fever. He just didn’t want to admit it to himself.
He scolded himself for walking back home even though it rained heavily. He should’ve at least waited for the rain to stop. Though . . . he was silently asking himself another question.
How was Pinkie doing right now? She obviously had to wait for the storm to die down, and even if she told him that she used her hair as cover, he could slightly accept that as logic. Pinkie was illogical, like a burst of fireworks flying everywhere at once, not staying under one set path.
He shivered once more, pulling the blanket close to him, hoping that it would provide some semblance of warmth for him.
Was he sleeping? He didn’t feel like he was sleeping. The fever distracted him from it. It distracted everything else, as it always did.
He... He needed to get some medicine... he needed to go to work... he needed to get money... he needed to pay hospital fees... no, that thing could wait.
For now, those three things were important for him. For now, he needed to sleep to be able to do those any of those things at all.
The sun had barely risen then. The sky was in the middle of the twilight zone, some sort of middle ground between dawn and dusk.
He tried to sleep. He forced himself to sleep.
He couldn’t. He tried once more. He still couldn’t.
My body won’t let me sleep.
He tried again, forcing his eyes shut.
No.
He wiped his runny nose, distracting him.
I can’t.
He yawned involuntarily.
Sleep.
He turned in his mattress violently, groaning from the dull throbbing ache in his shoulder.
Please . . .
That one thought was the final thing that drove his body to accept sleep. Though he still felt the symptoms, at least he could finally sleep, even if he did sleep with the bridge of his nose crinkled, and his brows furrowed across his forehead.
He could sleep . . . that was all that mattered for him . . .
Sleep . . .
I have this constant dream every time I have a fever.
I don’t get a cold very often, but if I do get it, I try my hardest to get better, to avoid that dream.
The first time I had it was when I was still in middle school. I came down with a fever.
I struggled to sleep, to get rest. But I did it.
I am walking down a spit of sand in the middle of raging black sea, the waves crashing against each other, like gunshots in the night. Above, the skies crackle with lightning, and the sounds of booming thunder fill my ears.
A strong wind pushes me, pulling my hair back violently, trying to tear me away from that spit of sand and send me back to where I started.
Instinct over cold logic kicks in, and I push my way through the wind, even as it howls relentlessly past my ears. With every step I take, I feel as if I am reaching something... something that can... help me. Something that I need desperately, something I would leave home, get a job, contemplate my life for.
Waves crash against me, stinging me, and hampering whatever progress I had made. It washes away any footprint that I leave behind.
Holding my hands in front of me, I trudge forward, the urge to accept the winds permeating my thoughts as my hands sting from it.
I walk, and walk, and walk, the spit of sand seems endless now.
Finally . . . I make it.
Only, there’s no there. At the end, is just the end of the spit of sand, and all this dream is leaving me with . . . is this feeling of loneliness . . .
Being the only one there at the end . . .
I crane my head back, and find the spit of sand gone. It's an island of sand now. I’m stranded and there's no way back from here.
A huge shadow creeps up on me, enveloping the small island in darkness. I barely hear my own cries as the wave crashes onto the island, and sends me struggling into the depths of the murky, black water.
Completely opaque . . .
I hold my breath, and watch helplessly as bubbles of air drift around me. The water keeps dragging me down.
I feel myself start to asphyxiate from the lack of air, and my head starts feeling dizzy. I start hearing voices, voices of people that I’ve met and played shogi with in the course of my adolescent life, though...
...only one seems to be louder than the others:
“It’s your fault. It was always–”
“-your fault.”
Starburst opened his eyes, letting in sunlight into his half-closed eyes. He squinted, holding his hand out to block the light and standing up on his two feet.
He felt his sore throat worsen, and he was beginning to feel nauseous at nothing.
His still damp clothes lay beside his mattress, in a wet slippery stain on the floor.
He cradled his clothes in his hands, and walked over to the bathroom, his thoughts lingering on the familiar dream he had, before fading away . . .
. . . into absolute nothingness.
END.