Episode 2 · March Comes In Like a Lion

March Comes In Like a Lion

He made professional in middle school. That is the whole story, as far as the shogi world is concerned: a kid who skipped ahead of everyone and now sits alone in the hall with his board, barely eating, barely talking to anyone. Rei moved into his own Tokyo apartment at seventeen, which sounds like freedom until you see the place. No food in it, no friends calling, just a tense adoptive family he is trying to put some distance between himself and the game that made him useful to them. Then one night he wanders into a small house by the river. Three sisters live there with their grandfather above a wagashi shop, and the noise is unreal: laughing, arguing, a cat somewhere, the whole place about to burst. Akari, the oldest, takes one look at this thin quiet boy and starts feeding him. Hinata and little Momo just treat him like he has always been around. It is the opposite of everything his life has been. He keeps going back. That is the problem, and also the point. He has a career to hold onto, matches to win, a head full of things he cannot say out loud, and now three people who expect him at dinner. Can someone who learned to survive by needing nobody actually let himself be needed?