Miyu is nineteen again, high on her first victory against Makishima. She has celebratory drinks with Mother at the Okiya, even sees Nanami and Kikyo before they move on to entertain at their parties.
Miyu is nineteen again, the streets are filled with the lantern lights of the spring festival, and sake burns through her veins. She weaves her way through the crowds along the usual path to Rin’s club, brimming with excitement and elation.
Miyu is nineteen again, watching, frozen, as Satsuki raises a hand and settles it gently against the man’s face. Time slows as she watches them, as Satsuki leans in and kisses him softly, the way she kisses Miyu, and –
.
Miyu wakes with tears in her eyes and an ache in her throat.
Not again.
She doesn’t want to dream of heartbreak anymore.
Not again, please, gods.
But with every passing day, her trepidation grows. She knows how she feels about Itachi. She even thinks she might know how he feels about her.
But gods, is it much to ask that he helps her understand her role here?
She’s used to knowing all the pieces, understanding the moves they can make and the space she has on the board. But now? Now she feels blind. She can hear the pieces shifting around her – rumours, gossip, confrontations and - actions, deafening in their absence.
None of it is sliding into place. None of it makes sense. If Itachi would just - just talk to her, maybe she would feel less like an amateur in a field of experts.
Miyu gets out of bed, and goes through her morning routine. Surprisingly, she’s alone when she steps out into the kitchen. Itachi hadn’t come in last night, but part of her had been hoping to catch him in the morning.
She silently goes about making tea, and takes it with her to settle on the cushion she sets before the coffee table. Her shogi board is well into the midgame she’d been playing out last night.
Miyu reaches out and resumes play, forcing her full focus into each side of the board, pushing herself into corners again and again.
It’s an exercise in mental flexibility that she’s never tired of, not since she was a girl.
She takes a sip of too-hot tea, and wishes all things came to her as easily as shogi.
.
“Would you be so kind as to answer a question for me, Naruto-san?” Miyu asks as he guides her to the tea house.
“Depends on what kinda question you ask, ya know?” He grins at her, hands linked behind his head as his sky-blue eyes crinkle with mirth.
“If you are unable to help, I understand,” she begins mildly, “I was… hoping you would be able to provide some insight on a particular engagement.”
His eyes are sharp now, despite the smile still gracing his lips.
“Unfortunately, this engagement is a sore topic with someone rather dear to me, you see,” she pointedly shifts her gaze to the road ahead, giving him time to contemplate without her observation. “But as of recently, it’s begun to affect me here and there. Nothing major, but enough to make me curious.”
There. Enough to imply that she’s prying about Itachi’s engagement, enough to tell him about her concern over the Inuzuka confrontation, but definitely not enough for prying ears to make something more.
Naruto, though? He understands immediately.
“Ne, Miyu-chan,” his voice is light, “I don’t really think it’s my place to say. There’s enough intrigue surrounding them in the first place, what with their attempt to call it off last year and all.”
Her breath catches in her throat at that and she struggles to keep her head from reflexively whipping to face the blond beside her.
“Their clan bounced their request twice, which isn’t really fair, hey?” he yawns briefly, “Started all kinds of rumours about the lengths they’d go to in order to get it called off, if ya know what I mean.”
Unfortunately, she does.
Gods, the clan must think her a convoluted attempt at ending things for a – third? – time.
The nature of the rumours Chikako had gathered in the first few months of correspondence between her and Itachi suddenly makes more sense.
Swallowing down the mild nausea rising to the surface, Miyu turns to Naruto and offers him a smile.
“Thank you.”
He only gives her a charming grin, gesturing to the traditional exterior of the shop they’re approaching.
“Here’s the Jasmine Dragon. Ensui’s inside! He’ll help you home if you need it, Miyu-chan. Have a great day!”
He disappears, and Miyu thinks she might finally be acclimatising to the eccentricities of ninja. Would it be so terrible for them to walk like normal people in the safety of their own village?
Shaking her head fondly, Miyu enters the tea house. The attendant smiles and leads her further into the building without so much as a ‘hello’. They stop in a hallway and a door slides open to a room. Only one of its three occupants turns to acknowledge her from where they’re admiring the display at the alcove.
Miyu finds herself smiling at Ensui as she bows in thanks to the attendant and eases onto the tatami.
“Miyu-san,” Ensui’s tone is warm despite the lazy blink he offers her. “You look well.”
“Nara-san,” she bows, smile not leaving her face, “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance once more.”
“Perhaps it would be better to address us by our first names, Miyu-san,” says the eldest man in the room, turning to her with a smirk. “Might get a little confusing otherwise.”
“Shikaku-sama,” she bows low, “Shikamaru-sama. A lovely surprise to see you both.”
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When she rises all three of them are facing her.
She tamps down on her urge to blush as they bow in unison.
“It is an honour to be acquainted with the Meijin,” Shikaku says, as though he isn’t a clan head and she isn’t a nobody.
“Please,” she shakes her head, “I am not officially-”
“We all know that’s bullshit,” Ensui snorts, slanting a look to Shikamaru that she can’t quite place. “Now do we waffle around with pleasantries or do we play some shogi?”
Miyu laughs, and it’s not one she’s practiced a hundred times with Nanami. She’s excited, elated, even, to play competitively again.
“I don’t have a board,” she says, still smiling.
Three pops of smoke, and a low table along with three shogi sets manifest in the space between she and the clansmen. She can’t hide her smile any longer, and with joy she hasn’t felt since her last game against Makishima, she says – “Let’s play.”
.
Shikamaru thinks he might be a little enamoured.
The woman opposite him is small in stature, polite and calm and warm as she had been on that mission not so long ago. He had not forgotten her intense focus, nor her artful mastery of the eighty-one squares that make up the world of shogi.
Even as he, his father, and Ensui make three different openings, Miyu takes it in stride.
He keeps his focus on his own board, decidedly less cautious this game than he had been the first time he played her. He isn’t the first one to concede defeat, thankfully. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Ensui bow to her from where he’s seated on his father’s other side.
Swallowing down his nerves, he glances just briefly to his father’s board. Just in time to watch a pale hand manoeuvre a pawn and check his father’s king.
He refocuses on his game as she reaches over his board and, in a move he had ruled out due to it’s boldness, situates her general in a perfect position for capture. He should just pay attention to his game, but curiosity gets the best of him and he looks over to his father’s board.
His father is forced to take the pawn. As expected, it’s a simple matter for Miyu to press forward, her bishop providing an unrelenting avenue of attack.
Shikamaru looks at his own board again, and realises he has one of two options. Take the general, and fall into whatever trap she’s laid out. Or ignore it and let it wreak havoc on the defences he’s spent half of the game setting up.
He frowns at the pieces before him, mind racing with the possibilities of her next move.
The room is silent, aside from the quiet breaths of its occupants. Shikamaru thinks.
Ignoring the general is a path he may need to take. He could stage an attack himself, go for her less-protected kings-pawn and take her silver general when it no doubt moves in to block his attack on the king. And then what? She would have him surrounded, her attacking general still in play and he, down another piece.
With his mouth pressed into a grim line, he takes her general and wonders what pact he’s unconsciously signed. Resolutely deciding not to focus on his father’s game from here on in, he watches as she neatly takes the rook he had used to capture her general.
Ah, shit.
Of course her motives for a sacrifice would be simple. And here he’s been agonising over scenarios that she might not have been thinking – wait, no. This is Miyu. She definitely would have contingency plans for almost every move he could possibly make at any given time.
He spares a brief thought for the slip of paper she handed him at the end of that mission. On it, two games. One he recognised instantly as the Waterfall game against Ito, but the other had been new. He and his father had played it out in its entirety. Shikamaru, a little giddy at playing Miyu, had been awed at the surety of her play.
"Once in a lifetime, son," his father had murmured, staring, entranced at the board, "you find a player like this."
Sighing, he shifts his gaze to the board beside him. Interestingly, his father has gotten himself out of her pin, and is pressing a minor advantage with her captured piece.
His own board is looking grim. Taking in a deep, calming breath, Shikamaru presses the tips of his fingers together and rests his forehead on them.
Think.
There’s definitely time to get himself out of this. But every move he considers making is accompanied by an afterimage of a smooth, pale hand responding with unrelenting skill.
Don’t panic.
He’s been in real battles before, faced enemies who he’s certain could have killed him and his team.
But right here, right now, he feels hopelessness, heavy and churning in his gut. His eyes dart up to watch the woman opposite them. She’s sitting effortlessly in seiza, hands folded neatly on her lap as she waits for either he or his father to make a move.
Her face is calm, but her eyes are sharp, sparked with life, burning with an expression he can’t place. He knows that no matter what he does, her face will not change. Her eyes will not change.
This woman knows no hopelessness, or defeat.
Even if he somehow managed to turn the tide of their game, she would be there – a lighthouse, still and steady amongst turmoil.
Unshaking in her competence, unyielding in her confidence, and completely within her rights to be so.
As crushing as it feels to be opposite her, he lets himself smile slightly.
At least she’s not ninja.
.
Miyu bows to the head of the Nara, letting a smile overtake her game-face calm as she rises from it.
“Well played, Shikaku-sama,” she demures as the scarred man gives her a crooked grin.
“You’re as terrifying as ever, Miyu-san.”
She laughs then, and lets herself enjoy the satisfaction of three games well-played.
“I didn’t realise your ruthlessness ‘til now,” Ensui is stroking his chin, a brow raised, “had me on the back foot from the get.”
Miyu raises a brow of her own and opens her mouth to reply when the attendant returns and begins the ceremony.
Sharing an amused look with Shikamaru, they watch the graceful attendant go through the motions of preparing their tea.
It gets set before her, and Miyu smiles as she inhales the scent of a gentle white tea.
“Silver needle?” she hums, more to herself than anyone else. The steam wafting from her cup reminds her painfully of Kikyo.
Ignoring the sudden tightening of her throat, she takes a sip and lets it soothe her.
“Will you resume playing in tournaments now that you are in Konoha? The winter tournament is in Tea this year, I heard.” Shikamaru sounds only a little bored, blowing on his cup lightly.
Miyu swallows down the surge of grief at the topic, and shrugs.
“Well… I cannot leave Konoha at this stage,” her voice drops an octave, and she schools her face into its polite calm once more, “and I… may never return to tournaments.”
Shikamaru blinks at her, uncomprehending.
She thinks it must be a rather novel expression to see on a Nara.
“Say what?” Ensui sounds as baffled as the younger Nara looks.
Holding tight to her composure, Miyu offers a tight smile.
“I’m assuming you’re unaware of the situation that led to me arriving in Konoha?”
Shikamaru speaks up, “A fire,” he says with a frown, “you lost your home.”
Her jaw clenches involuntarily and she barely restrains herself from saying, I lost far more than that.
“Yes,” she admits after a moment, “an unfortunate consequence of my game with the Daimyo at the Fire Festival.”
At this, Shikamaru goes very still.
Shikaku doesn’t react outwardly, but Ensui is scowling.
“The Daimyo is not aware that I’m alive,” she takes a sip to distract from the panic that stirs at the thought of roiling black smoke and crackling wood, “my appearance may not be welcomed.”
“So you’re in hiding.”
Miyu blinks at Ensui’s bluntness, and then shrugs.
“Not necessarily. I haven’t changed my name, and if one were to check they would see that my bank account has been active.”
She takes another sip of tea, sighing, “But I’ve yet to make plans to leave Konoha.”
There’s a brief, heavy silence.
“Miyu-san,” Shikaku begins, at there’s levity to his tone that makes her want to sit a little straighter, “surely there’s a solution to this.”
Miyu meets his dark eyes and knows he’s begun another game between them. Only this one is absent of shogi tiles.
“Oh?” her gaze flits briefly to Shikamaru, who slants his father an odd look before sipping at his tea. Ensui is frowning at the table before them, looking troubled.
“Perhaps the backing of a noble clan of Konoha would be deterrent enough for our honoured Daimyo.”
Miyu doesn’t express her curiosity at his words. Surely, he’s not implying what she thinks he is.
“Perhaps,” she says, setting her cup down with a smooth movement. She waits for him to go on.
“The Nara may be one such clan willing to risk the attention of our nation’s esteemed leader,” Shikaku’s eyes trail to Ensui only briefly. Miyu resolutely doesn’t let her own gaze be drawn away from the clan head.
“An interesting concept,” she comments, as though they’re discussing the tea and not something of great significance. “But with all respect, Shikaku-sama, why would the Nara take such a risk?”
A grin stretches onto his face and Miyu’s pulse jumps at the sight of it.
This man is the head of a respected clan, trained in the ninja arts his entire life. While she may have bested him in a few games of shogi, his experience in politics far outweighs hers.
“In the interest of shogi, Miyu-san,” he says, and his tone rings with truth, “there is little a Nara wouldn’t do.”
