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Kaori Saejima -2021- -

She pulled on her coat. It was too large—her mother's, from a decade ago, the wool frayed at the cuffs. She did not own an umbrella. She did not own a phone that worked.

"Sit, Kaori Saejima. Let's finish the game you started in 2014." Kaori Saejima -2021-

The apartment was silent save for the arrhythmic drip from a leak in the corner, where a red plastic basin collected rainwater. On the low table in front of her, beside the empty chessboard, lay a single white envelope. It had arrived that morning, slipped under the door by the landlady, who never looked Kaori in the eye. She pulled on her coat

The old prefectural library stood at the edge of the abandoned tram line, a granite mausoleum of a building with gargoyles that had eroded into featureless blobs. The chains on the gate had been cut. Not recently—the rust on the fresh break was already orange—but cut nonetheless. The gate swung inward with a sigh. She did not own a phone that worked

She moved a silver general in her head. 27. Silver to 4c.

The rain fell in vertical sheets over the port city of Nagasaki, turning the cobblestone slopes into mirrors of blurred neon. In a cramped, fourth-floor walk-up that smelled of old paper and dried herbs, Kaori Saejima sat cross-legged on a tatami mat, her back to the wall, her eyes fixed on a chessboard that held no pieces.

Outside, the rain fell on Nagasaki like a held breath finally released.