The game began.
Tanaka opened with a Static Rook strategy, attempting to overwhelm Jin's defense. It was a "bully" move.
Jin responded with a Gangi (Rock) Defense. To an amateur, it looked disorganized; to a master, it was a trap.
"You're leaving your King exposed, Kouhai," Tanaka whispered.
Jin didn't look up. He moved a Pawn. Then a Knight. His movements were lightning-fast. He wasn't calculating.
Jin was recognizing patterns he had defeated a thousand times before. Ten minutes in, the other club members moved closer. Their faces grew pale.
Tanaka's front was crumbling. Every time he captured a piece, Jin used a "Drop" in a position that forced a retreat. It was like fighting a hydra.
"Wait... if I take that, then your Gold General..." Tanaka muttered.
"Then my Gold General takes your Rook, and you're in tsume (checkmate) in three moves," Jin finished.
Tanaka looked at the board, then at Jin's eyes. He didn't see a "clueless freshman." He saw a predator, hunting for Private points.
"I... I resign," he whispered.
The surrounding club members stood in stunned silence. How had their comrade lost so inexplicably? The match hadn't been a brawl, it had been a surgical extraction.
"Senpai, you can put your surprise aside for now," Jin interrupted the silence with a light, melodic chuckle, tapping his student terminal.
"You need to transfer the points to me first. A contract is a contract, after all."
"Damn it!" Tanaka growled, his hands trembling as he swiped his terminal. The notification chimed—a digital transfer of 100,000 points.
Jin didn't crush Tanaka head on with few moves, he leaves enough leeway for Tanaka showing the senpais' that it's a hard earned victory.
"Kouhai, don't get cocky. That was a fluke. How about another game? Another 100,000." The reaction also came easily. Their pride as third-year refused to bow down to a first-year newbie.
But actually it was Jin's carefully crafted trap. To be honest, Jin was afraid of scaring away these senpais and his point harvesting plan would be affected.
So in simple terms, Jin is pretending to be a pig to swallow the tiger.
Jin held up two fingers, forming a peace sign that felt more like a taunt. "That won't do. For the next round, I'm betting 200,000 points."
"200,000!?" The senpai's face drained of color. In the ecosystem of Advanced Nurturing High School, private points were the lifeblood of survival.
Losing 300,000 in a single afternoon was enough to relegate a student to a diet of free wild vegetable set meal for months.
Seeing the hesitation, Jin tilted his head, his expression shifting to one of "kind" concern.
"If Senpai can't afford it, then please, step down. I'm in a hurry to challenge the other members. I'd hate to waste time on someone who's tapped out."
The air in the room spiked in temperature. Veins throbbed on the foreheads of the three club members. The implication was a slap to the face, You aren't worth my time if you aren't paying.
"I'll play with you!" Another member stepped forward, his eyes burning with a cold, righteous fury.
"If you lose, you don't just give us the 200,000 points—you'll get on your knees and apologize for every word you just spat at this club!"
"That's fine," Jin replied, his smile never wavering. "Let's sign the contract under the School's Official Rules first, so you won't back out later."
With the Club Advisor acting as a reluctant witness, the digital signatures were etched into the school's server. The stakes were set.
The second match began with a flurry of aggressive moves from third-year Ishiguro senpai, desperate to reclaim the club's honor.
He played like a man possessed, his fingers clicking the pieces onto the board with thunderous force.
This time, Jin didn't play defensively. He employed a Quick Ishida style, an aggressive, high-risk maneuver that required absolute precision.
Ishiguro tried to counter with a Saginomiya Castle, a formidable defensive structure. But Jin's "Drops" were surgical.
Jin sacrificed his own Silver General to lure Ishiguro's Rook out of position, then dropped a Bishop that pierced through Ishiguro's entire defensive line.
The sound of the wooden pieces hitting the board echoed like gunshots. By the 40th move, Ishiguro was sweating. By the 60th, his hands were shaking.
Jin sat perfectly still, a silent statue of impending doom.
"Tsume (Checkmate)." Jin said quietly, placing a promoted Rook on the board.
Ishiguro stared at the board, his breath hitching. He had felt it—he was winning. He had been one move away from a decisive breakthrough.
But Jin had made a single, seemingly "casual" defensive move that, three turns later, had evolved into a lethal counter-offensive.
It was like walking into a spiderweb that you didn't know was there until the fangs hit your neck.
"200,000 points, please," Jin said, holding up his terminal like a merchant at a market.
"Damn it!" Ishiguro senpai surrendered the points, his pride shattered more than his wallet. He had signed the contract; in this school, breaking a witnessed agreement was a fast track to expulsion.
Jin turned his gaze toward the final student, the highest-rated player in the room.
"Don't look at me," the student said, holding up his hands and backing away. "There's no way I'm putting up 400,000 points. I've watched you play twice now, and I still can't see your 'tell.' I'm not a fool."
Jin sighed, looking disappointed. "How about I go easy on you senpais? I'll play against all three of you simultaneously. The three of you can pool your remaining points—let's say 400,000—and gamble against me one last time."
"Simultaneously?" The Advisor gasped. This wasn't just a challenge; it was an execution.
"To clarify," the last member asked, his voice shaking. "Are we three people playing one game against you, or are we three people each playing a separate game against you at the same time?"
Jin's eyes narrowed into feline slits. "The latter. Three boards. One of me. If the senpais still lack the confidence to face a lone freshman under those conditions, perhaps the Shogi Club should disband to save itself from further embarrassment."
That was the final straw. "Let's do it! If the three of us together can't beat you, I'll quit Shogi forever!"
"Don't make unnecessary vows you'll regret," Jin warned, though his tone suggested he already knew the outcome.
The contract was updated, Arima Andras Jin vs. The Shogi Club. Three games. If Jin lost even one, he forfeited 400,000 points. If he won all three, he took the pot.
The Advisor, acting as the referee, watched with cold sweat trickling down his neck. The scene was surreal.
Jin paced between the three tables like a grandmaster at an exhibition. He didn't sit. He didn't even pause to think. He would glance at a board, move a piece within a fraction of a second, and move to the next.
In contrast, the Shogi club senpais were agonizing over every placement. They consulted each other in hushed, panicked whispers, their faces slick with perspiration.
They tried to coordinate their strategies, attempting to drag the games into complex, time-consuming endgames to wear Jin down.
It didn't work. One by one, the "Checkmates" fell like hammer blows.
"Thank you for the gift, Senpais. I'll put these points to good use," Jin said, closing his terminal after the final 400,000-point transfer.
The third-year senpais looked like ghosts. "Are you even human?" one whispered. "You didn't even look at the third board for more than three seconds in the final stretch."
Jin paused at the door, looking back over his shoulder. "Sorry, Senpais. But in the world I come from, I'm just normal."
"Kouhai, wait!" the club captain called out, his voice desperate for an explanation. "How is your skill this high? We've been in the national circuit since elementary school. We know every prodigy in the country. Your name—Arima Andras Jin—it's never appeared on a single tournament bracket. Why?"
Jin let out a soft sigh, his mind drifting to a memory of a dimly lit study and a girl with sharp glasses and an even sharper intellect.
"Of course you wouldn't hear my name in the Shogi world. For me, this is just a forced hobby."
""""Forced hobby!?"""" Their faces were full of astonishment. It was clearly written on their faces that they want an explanation. So Jin obliged.
"I have a childhood friend," Jin explained, his smile tinged with a rare hint of genuine exhaustion. "She is obsessed with games of strategy—Chess, Shogi and Go.
Since no one else could pose a challenge to her, I was recruited as her personal 'grindstone.' I once spent twenty hours straight playing against her because she refused to let me leave until she won a single game. Compared to her, this... this was a vacation."
Jin waved a hand dismissively and stepped out into the hallway, leaving the Shogi Club in a state of existential crisis.
"A hobbyist?" the captain muttered, staring at his empty hands. "He beat three national school championship players at once... as a hobby?"
"He mentioned Chess and Go too," the Advisor added, his voice hollow. "If his proficiency there is the same... he's not just a student. He's a predator."
The third-year senpais refused to believe it. It was easier to think he was a secret grandmaster than to accept that they had been dismantled by someone who only played because his girlfriend was bored.
But as Jin walked toward the Chess Club to repeat the process, he couldn't help but chuckle. In this school, the truth was often the most unbelievable lie of all.
By the time Jin walked out, his terminal read 800,000 private points. He had secured a small fortune in a single afternoon.
As he walked toward the next battlefield, he thought of his classmates at karaoke. They were spending; he was earning.