"Do you have a shogi board and pieces?"
Maomao
received
from Insou
the shogi board and pieces. When you don't understand something, try moving your body first.
She arranges the shogi pieces on the board with a crisp snap.
"Um, '5-9 Silver' and—"
the written record—
she lines them up as written. But could it really be meaningless? She tries to place a pawn, but her hand stops.
"...Something's off."
Peering into the shogi board,
Suzume
leaned in too.
"That's
two pawns
in the same column."
"Ah, even I know that one. That's an illegal move, right?"
Li Bai joins in as well, sounding as though he has little interest in shogi.
"There are three dragons, too. Maybe they're not talking about the same game record."
Insou peeks in as well.
"Would knowing more about shogi help in a situation like this?"
Insou tilts her head.
"You don't know much about shogi?"
"It's not that I can't play, but look at where I've been assigned. You lose the desire to turn your hobbies into work."
Oshou gazed off into the distance.
"Yeah, I get that too."
Li Bai nodded in agreement.
"Why is that, Master Li Bai? I wouldn't think you'd have much involvement with it."
Li Bai was a military official, but he wasn't as tied to the eccentric strategist as Oshou was.
"Look at this shape. Doesn't it remind you of the map of the capital?"
"The map of the capital?"
"A neatly divided city, with the throne sitting right at the top. It's a dead ringer."
"So that's what it is."
In short, the grid pattern on the board was practically indistinguishable from the city layout.
(Technically it's a shogi board, so it's not quite the same.)
Still, it wasn't hard to grasp what they were trying to say.
"Well, let me lay out all the recorded pieces first."
Setting them down with soft clicks, the arrangement of pieces showed increasingly obvious imbalances.
"How does it look as a shogi game record?"
"I can't make heads or tails of it."
Lin Xiaoren also joined the conversation.
With Lord Lin and the eccentric strategist both asleep, the person who seemed to know the most was this Lin Xiaoren.
"If it's not a game record, then what could it possibly mean?"
Maomao raised her hand, completely clueless.
"Yeah, that's about right. The king's piece moved a whole heck of a lot."
"Sparrow thought the same. What a pushy king, honestly."
Maomao agreed with both Li Bai's and Sparrow's opinions. The king piece had indeed advanced all the way to roughly the center of the board.
"...King."
Maomao stared intently at the board. The other king's position was at the center of the northern side. And then there were the other pieces, scattered here and there with noticeable biases in their placement.
"Li Bai."
"What is it?"
"If you imagine this shogi board as the capital, what does it look like to you?"
Maomao turned the shogi board toward Li Bai.
"Hmm. Well, this king piece would be the throne, right? Thinking about that—"
He slowly extended a finger.
"The area where the pieces are clustered together would be the downtown, shopping district, or maybe a residential area."
"Then this 'gyokushō' piece?"
"Umm, an enemy, perhaps? A political rival? Or maybe the home of a powerful high official?"
Li Bai spoke without much confidence.
(Oh, so that's how it is.)
Maomao widened her eyes and looked at Suzume.
"Suzume, do you happen to have a map of the Western Capital?"
"Ha-ha, what are you saying all of a sudden? Of course, I don't have something like—"
"Yes, I have it."
Ignoring Li Bai's laugh, Suzume quickly produced a map. It was drawn on thick parchment.
"Why do you have it?!"
"Because you're Suzume, of course."
Suzume straightened up proudly.
It was precisely because she was Suzume that Maomao had asked, and she really did have it.
Maomao unfolded the received map and compared it to the shogi board.
"The position of this 'gyokushō' piece, when matched to the layout of the Western Capital, falls exactly on the location of this villa, doesn't it?"
『!?』
Everyone looked back and forth between the shogi board and the map.
The Western Capital was also a city built on a grid-like layout. They hadn't noticed because it wasn't divided as clearly as the capital.
"Then, this king piece..."
"Right now,
it's a
public office, but it's located where the Dog clan's mansion once stood."
Kobito Hayashi fills them in. Having a local around is reassuring—they figure things out on the spot.
"If that's the case, I can see why there are so many dragons. I'm sure there was a shop with 'dragon' in its name."
Dragon
motifs
are reserved for the imperial family alone, but many shops still include the character for "dragon" in their names.
"Then what about the pawns?"
Suzume points to the two pawns lined up side by side.
"Judging from their positions, they'd be along the main street."
"Could they be bookshops or paper merchants? In the sense of places where you'd buy the small sundries you need regularly."
"...Hmm, I can't think of any shops that match."
Li Bai groans.
Maomao checks which locations the remaining pieces correspond to.
"Suzume, I just realized—wouldn't a map from the current era be useless for this?"
She was right. After seventeen years, shops could have closed down, and new ones could have been built.
"Excuse me, I'll go fetch an old map! Could you watch my grandfather for a bit?"
Kobito stood up.
"Understood."
Maomao and the others were absorbed in cross-referencing the shogi board with the modern map.
That was why nobody had noticed.
"I think we've filled in just about all the ones we can figure out."
Maomao checks the spots they had overlaid onto the map.
"But this is taking forever."
Li Bai flips through the ledger and glances outside, probably watching the way the sun is setting.
"It's already been half an hour."
"A map from seventeen years ago isn't exactly something you can just dig up, you know."
That's what she had thought, but Maomao felt an uneasy premonition that her judgment might have been slightly off here.
"Fuaaah."
As if to pile onto that premonition, the old man with a monocle who had been dozing off while drinks were poured for him woke up.
"Morning. Still dreaming, am I? I can see Maomao."
The eccentric strategist, bleary-eyed from sleep. Insou hands him a cup to help him wake up. It probably contains fruit water.
"...Mmph! It really is Maomao!"
"Ugh, shut up."
Maomao couldn't help but let her voice escape.
She would have liked to ignore him, but nothing would progress that way, so she lines up food dishes in a straight line between herself and the eccentric strategist.
"Please don't cross past here."
"Wa-oh.
Just like Amami's
big sister."
It seems Suzume's adoptive older sister
also does similar things
to Gaoshun, apparently.
She has the shogi board placed in front of the eccentric strategist.
"I'll ask even if I'm not sure it'll help. I'd like to inquire about the Western Capital seventeen years ago. If this is the Genshu clan's mansion, and diagonally below that is
Lord Gyoen's
mansion, do you know where the other pieces were positioned? ...Right, I don't suppose you do."
"Miss, I haven't even given my answer yet."
Li Bai was treated as an old man even to his face.
"This pawn is a shogi hall. The pawn below it is a shop that sells shogi and go boards."
"Rakan-sama only remembers the things related to his hobbies."
"Oh, is that so."
Maomao responded to Inso's explanation with complete disinterest.
"This dragon is a restaurant. If you play shogi and beat the owner, the meal is on the house."
The eccentric military strategist rattled off the answers smoothly. It was easy to understand that the shogi-related facilities would overlap with the spots Lord Lin had pointed out.
(If this guy had pulled himself together from the start.)
Maomao had such selfish thoughts.
Sparrow also had his arms crossed, muttering "Guess I messed up."
"I don't really get this knight. And the promoted silver."
The eccentric military strategist admitted he couldn't recall only two locations.
"One of them seems to be a temple. The other appears to be in a residential district, so it might be the place where the game record was first found."
Sparrow marked circles on the map.
"So the temple that's left is the suspicious one, then?"
Just as they were about to reach an answer, the eccentric military strategist suddenly began looking around.
"What's wrong?"
Inso asked.
"Where is Lin Xiaoren?"
"He went to fetch some old maps."
"Oh, I see."
It was rare for the eccentric military strategist to show interest in someone else.
(Lord Lin is one thing, but Xiaoren...)
Maomao ruminated once more in her mind.
(Xiaoren...)
Maomao slammed her hand down hard on the shogi board.
Everyone turned to look at Maomao in surprise.
"What's the matter?"
Li Bai asked cautiously.
Maomao stared at the eccentric strategist with a twisted expression.
There are people in this world who possess rare, exceptional talent yet squander it completely.
"The 'xiaoren' in Lin Xiaoren—"
Maomao kept her glare fixed on the eccentric strategist.
"Does it mean 'villain'?"
"That's right, Maomao. He's a bad man, isn't he? He seemed like the lying type."
"..."
Still grimacing, Maomao dropped to her knees.
"Why didn't you say anything?"
"Well, it had nothing to do with us, did it?"
Yes — that was just the kind of person the eccentric strategist was.
After that, they hurried to the temple that had been deemed suspicious, but found nothing. The only thing left behind was evidence that someone had searched the place and taken something away.