Kobayashi wasn't sure how it'd happened, but he knew he didn't like it.

"Put that down," he sighed.

"Jeez, you sure have a lot of trophies in here," said Kazuhiro, decidedly not putting anything down and getting his fingerprints all over ten other things in the process. At least he was wearing pants for once.

"They're not mine, they're my father's badminton trophies. He was nationally ranked or something years ago." Kobayashi shut the front door and shoved Kazuhiro out of the hall. "All my trophies are in my room."

Kazuhiro was sprinting down the hall toward Kobayashi's bedroom before he could be stopped, shouting, "Hell, there's even more in here! I know where I'm going if there's ever a brass shortage."

Kobayashi clenched his jaw. Yeah, Kazuhiro could run fast, and yeah, the team could probably use him, even if he did spend more time outrunning his clothes than scoring goals, but Kobayashi didn't care if Kazuhiro failed trigonometry. It wasn't like Kobayashi even liked lacrosse. But it was only supposed to be until Kazuhiro's next test, and that was only a couple of weeks away. Plus, Tsukada had asked him, and Tsukada could be very, very scary when he wanted to be.

He walked into his bedroom.

"Put that down," he sighed.

"How'd you get into shogi anyway?"

"My uncle had a set," Kobayashi said, watching Kazuhiro's moves with a combination of fascination and horror, "but he only plays a little, and no one in my family else does at all. After I learned the basics, I begged my parents for a coach."

Kazuhiro took Kobayashi's king. Kobayashi snatched it up and put it back on the board where it belonged. They should have been studying, but Kazuhiro had asked for a game, and even if the way Kazuhiro kept plucking at Yukihiro-san's purple workout pants was very worrying, Kobayashi could never turn that down. Of course, he'd only agreed because Kazuhiro said he knew how to play.

"So, why lacrosse?" asked Kazuhiro.

"My father doesn't think shogi is worthwhile."

"Aren't you, like, a pro?" Kazuhiro promoted a rook to dragon. Kobayashi demoted it again.

"I'm good," Kobayashi replied tersely. No reason to lie. "But my father wants me to play sports like a normal kid. If playing lacrosse for a year will get my father off my back so I can go back to focusing on what's really important, then I play lacrosse."

"Don't you like lacrosse?" There was a touch of horror in Kazuhiro's voice.

"It's all right, I guess."

"But you keep coming up with awesome plays! Even Captain Tsukada is impressed with you."

That made Kobayashi's cheeks heat up. "I like strategizing," he admitted. "Sometimes, I just think of the field as a big shogi board and all the players as little pieces. It's easy from there." He watched as Kazuhiro wobbily stacked one piece on top of another. "I thought you said you could play this! We're not playing checkers."

"King me!" Kazuhiro shouted delightedly. He looked up and grinned. "Sorry, what'd you say? I didn't catch that last bit."

"Nothing." Kobayashi flicked Kazuhiro's pieces apart again.

Kazuhiro studied the board and pointed. "What's this one called?"

"Ginsho," said Kobayashi. "The silver general. Shogi pieces are set up for battle--"

Kazuhiro clapped his hands together, startling Kobayashi. "Ginsho! That's you. Kobayashi-ginsho."

"Huh?"

But Kazuhiro was already caught up in his own rapture. Kobayashi just hoped he wouldn't streak around the house. "That's where you play and that's what you are! Seigaku's Silver General, leading the lacrosse team to glorious victory. Ganbatte!"

"That's stupid."

"It is not." Kazuhiro stuck out his bottom lip.

"It is too! The tiles move in shogi. The players move in lacrosse. It's stupid."

"Oh, lighten up, Kobagin."

"What did you just call me?"

"Kobayashi-ginsho's too long," Kazuhiro explained. "You can be Kobagin."

"I don't want to be Kobag-- that."

"Sure you do, Kobagin." Kazuhiro sat up straight, his eyes bright. "Okay, now where am I?"

"What?"

"Tell me where I am on the board! Is that me?" Kazuhiro pointed again.

"That's not you," Kobayashi said. Why was he even entertaining this line of thought? "You're not on the board. You're probably the suizo terrorizing the girls' tennis team."

"Suizo?"

Kobayashi raised his eyebrows. "Drunken elephant."

"That sounds about right," Kazuhiro laughed. He favored Kobayashi with a long look that had no place across a shogi board.

His face burning again, Kobayashi bent over and scrambled up all the tiles. They had to get to work.

"Did I win?" Kazuhiro asked.

Kazuhiro wrote with pink pencils with fuzzy toppers and had lavender graph paper. Kazuhiro couldn't sit still for two minutes, and he kept knocking against Kobayashi's knees. Kazuhiro kept touching everything in Kobayashi's kitchen, and he had clearly stolen his appetite from a boy at least three times his size. Kazuhiro thought that tutoring meant Kobayashi would do his homework for him. Kazuhiro kept calling him Kobagin.

Kazuhiro was driving Kobayashi crazy.

"You mean to tell me you always wear pants around your house?"

"Yes," answered Kobayashi for the tenth time. "Finish that last problem so you can go." Or I'm going to throttle you.

"You're no fun, Kobagin."

Kobayashi didn't bother answering. Instead, he launched into an explanation about sum identities, finally sketching what he wanted to say on a 9x9 grid.

"Oh!" exclaimed Kazuhiro in a tone that suggested his tangents, cosines, and sines had all come together in a holy convergence worthy of Pythagoras himself. He scribbled down a few formulas and showed Kobayashi his work.

"That's it," said Kobayashi evenly, squashing down the geek pride that curled in his belly.

Kazuhiro beamed.

"See you around, Kobagin!" shouted Kazuhiro, slamming the front door shut.

Kobayashi exhaled. He felt like he'd survived a hurricane and was now fully responsible for repairing the damage. He wiped down circles of juice from the kitchen table and swept away sticky crumbs. He went to put his homework away in his room and found a leaning tower of shogi tiles piled one on top of another sitting in the middle of the board. Kobayashi blinked. When had Kazuhiro done that?

He wandered back downstairs to dust his father's trophies off before his parents got home, and was making sure the door was locked when he saw a flash of purple outside.

Blushing, Kobayashi ran down the stairs and grabbed the purple pants stretched across his front walk. He crumpled them into a ball and ran upstairs to shove them into his bag.

The tower stayed upright, even after Kobayashi slammed his bedroom door and slumped against it. If shogi tiles could talk, Kobayashi would have sworn the silver on top of the pile was laughing.

It was then when it hit him: he hadn't survived the storm. It was just beginning.

"Wow, Kobagin!" yelled Kazuhiro in the hall the next day. About twenty people turned to look at them. "Thanks for giving my pants back!"

END.