Chapter 10
The Free Gold

The position had grown complicated. It was even turning wild.

At one point, my beautiful opponent leaned toward me and I saw her advance her gold general, with her graceful arm, right into my lines.

She has just entered your camp, she had murmured, her eyes shining with a gleam of triumph. I can now set her free.

At these words she leaned in even further, as if to kiss me, while her eyes never left mine. Was she toying with me?

Without letting go of the piece, she turned it over. The reverse was bare. No character, nothing but pale wood.

In shōgi, the gold never turns over, she breathed. Here, it is called the Free Gold.

Then, with deliberate slowness, I saw her take her wedding ring between her thumb and forefinger and slide it along her ring finger, lingering at each knuckle, as if to prolong this improbable moment.

And in this ballet of nimble fingers, she took off the ring and calmly laid it on the blank face of the piece, where a name should have been engraved, before straightening up at last, upright as a princess.

I sat there open-mouthed, contemplating this living work of art that she had just made before my eyes and served, quite literally, on a platter.

How beautiful she was. I caught myself dreaming of seizing her, of capturing her.

A sudden noise in the bar brought me brutally back to reality. I blinked, trying to gather my wits. The creature's gaze was fixed on me.