I often sat across the shogi board from my father to keep the bored man company. Since we were both lazy by nature, we would keep warming ourselves under the kotatsu, place the board atop the frame, and whenever we moved a piece, we would bother to slip our hands out from under the quilt. Sometimes we would lose a captured piece and remain unaware of it until the next game came around. There were comical moments when my mother would find one in the ashes and lift it out with the fire tongs.
"With go, the board is too high and your feet are in the way, so you can't play it over the kotatsu, but shogi is perfect here—you can play so comfortably like this. It's just the thing for lazy people. One more game."
Father would always say "one more game" when he won. Yet he also said "one more game" when he lost. In short, whether winning or losing, he was a man who wanted to sit by the kotatsu and play shogi. At first it was novel, and this retiree-like pastime gave me considerable interest, but as a little time passed, my young spirit could no longer be satisfied by such slight stimulation. I would stretch the fist clutching a gold general or lance above my head and occasionally let out a tremendous yawn.
I thought of Tokyo. And in the depths of my swelling heart's blood, I heard a pulse beating on and on, throbbing with restless energy. Strangely, that pulse seemed, from some delicate state of consciousness, to be strengthened by the master's power.
In my heart I compared father and master. To the world, both were so quiet it was hard to tell if they were alive or dead. In terms of being recognized by others, both were zeros. And yet this father, who wanted to play shogi, was unsatisfying to me even merely as a partner in amusement. The master, who had never once gone out for pleasure, had without my noticing given my mind an influence beyond any intimacy born of convivial fellowship. But since "mind" is too cold a word, I would rather say "breast." Whether one said the master's force had bitten into my flesh, or the master's life flowed in my blood, it did not seem in the least exaggerated to me then. I deliberately laid before my eyes the clear facts—that my father was my true father, and the master was needless to say a total stranger—and was astonished, as if I had discovered some great truth.
Around the time I began to grow sluggish and dull, in my parents' eyes too I gradually became commonplace, after being a novelty till then. I suppose this is the feeling anyone who returns home for summer vacation and such invariably experiences: for the first week or so you are treated with utmost indulgence and fussed over, but once you pass that peak as regularly as if by ruler, the family's warmth slowly cools, and in the end you are apt to be handled carelessly, as if your presence or absence hardly matters. I too passed that peak during my stay. Moreover, each time I returned home, I brought back from Tokyo some strange something my father and mother could not understand. In old terms, it was like bringing the smell of Christianity into a Confucian scholar's house; what I brought back harmonized with neither father nor mother. Of course I hid it. But since it was something inherent in me, even when I resolved not to show it, it sooner or later caught my father's and mother's eyes. I grew simply bored. I wanted to return to Tokyo quickly.
Father's illness fortunately remained as it was, with no sign of worsening. Even when we took the precaution of summoning a competent doctor from far away for careful examination, no abnormality beyond what I already knew was found. I decided to leave home a little before the end of the winter break. When I announced I was leaving, human nature is a strange thing—both father and mother objected.
"You're going back already? Isn't it too soon?" said mother.
"You could still stay four or five more days and make it, couldn't you?" said father.
I did not shift the departure date I had fixed.
