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It starts with an article when he’s twenty-five.The headline reads: ‘’Conspiracy theory: Do The Middle School Debuts Not Age?’’A picture of both Souya and his debuts, and their current appearances beneath it. There’s no difference except for the fact that the two of them are in kimono in the second one. They look decidedly better in them than the dark middle school uniforms.It’s funny. How quirky, that both of them never really got that last growth spurt. Rei doesn’t think much of it.Rei’s thirty-four when he realizes Shimada-san is fifty-eight and showing it when Souya is still as snow-haired as ever. He hasn’t lost a single of his snow spirit-like qualities, his childlike appearance included.Smith jokes that it looks more like Souya and Rei are the same age than Souya and Shimada. It rankles Rei. Shimada-san can’t help his premature ageing- he’s dealt with chronic pain since his teens. That leaves marks.It’s just a case of premature ageing on one hand, and a baby face on the other.That’s what he tells himself.Souya’s voice cracks sometimes. It’s a thing that simply belongs to him. The sky is blue, Shimada-san has chronic pain, Nikaidou is extra and Souya eternally speaks like a teenage boy. It’s not because he’s deaf.Not that Rei can say much- his voice never quite dropped.Rei’s thirty-nine to Souya’s sixty-three when he hears the other competitors whisper. They talk about a presence. They talk about the wind, about sakura blossoms, about the rustling leaves that slowly grow on the trees. They talk of a fresh breeze.They’re talking about him.Where Souya buries his opponents in snow, the world narrowed to only those snowflakes, the silence of a world made of ice, Rei is called the Spring. He is March, spring in its infancy, growing larger as the shogi season goes. He is Spring, so Winter is there before him, just like Souya.His A-rank presence has finally arrived and isn’t that strange? To be considered a flurry of leaves, the calm and steady presence of growth, the hesitant first signs of life after an eternity of winter. The river bank, trees growing at its side.Souya becomes Touji. Rei sometimes lies awake at night and whispers it to the stars. ‘’Touji.’’They twinkle.‘’Touji.’’They shine.‘’Touji.’’Warmth begins to grow in him like the sun slowly appearing behind the clouds of nourishing rain.One day, the clouds will break apart and there will be a rainbow in that sky. Not today, but… Someday.Rei’s forty-four when Souya, sixty-eight, steps in front of him, soundlessly shielding him. It’s a light movement, like a snowflake fluttering in the wind, but… It’s deliberate. There is force behind it. It’s not an avalanche but it is definitely displacement, and it feels strange.It isn’t so strange when Souya begins to sign to the man in front of them. Rei can only just see his hand movements, but it’s clear enough. ‘’What are you doing here, sun?’’ The ‘’sun’’ sign confuses him for a second before he realizes what it is: a name sign.The man, all sunny smiles, cocks his head. ‘’No introduction, Tocchan?’’Souya wrinkles his nose. He doesn’t shrink away from the bright light the man’s very presence seems to emit, but Rei kind of wants to. He’s comfortable behind Souya, if quite curious who the hell would talk to Souya like this.The man, towering above them quite a bit, notices. ‘’I’m Natsuki, nice t’ meet ‘cha!’’The name flurries through Rei’s head, but however the wind turns, he can’t quite figure out why that name is so familiar, nor why it should be important to him.It’s clearly important to Souya, though. That makes it important to him too.Meanwhile, Souya keeps signing. ‘’Go away.’’‘’No time for your poor senpai these days?’’ Natsuki holds a hand over his heart like he’s wounded, pouting.‘’Senpai?’’ It leaves Rei’s mouth before he realizes it.Natsuki looks so young- he can’t be much older than eighteen, maybe a young twenty at the most.Souya says nothing.Natsuki laughs, ‘’I may not look like it, but I’m like you and Souya.’’Rei racks his brain. A shogi player? But he’s clearly familiar with Souya, enough to butcher his first name even, and Rei has never seen him before. Then it hits him like lightning, electricity crackling over his skin. ‘’You’re one of the players that went pro in middle school.’’‘’That’s one way of saying it,’’ Natsuki shrugs, ‘’I still think I’m off better than the most of us, though. Early growth spurt and all.’’…Rei doesn’t understand. Confusion bubbles up inside of him until the water reaches his ears, a feeling from within drowning him, until he’s gasping, trying to keep his head above the water. He doesn’t understand, but it’s important, and the river is taking him in. Burying him within its water, to protect him from this truth.He doesn’t know what it is.Souya takes his hand and walks away. Natsuki doesn’t follow.Rei doesn’t understand. Rei is not ready. Rei is protected- and for once, he is so god damned thankful for that.Souya embraces him, and for a bit, the entire world is silent. Snow envelops him, and yet, warmth blooms within. There is gratefulness. Gratefulness and something else- but that Rei isn’t ready for yet either.But that’s okay. It has to be.Souya turns seventy, and Rei can’t deny it anymore. They’re not ageing. They’re truly not ageing- Souya is seventy and he doesn’t appear to be a single day older than he was in his middle school photos. Rei is the same.They are the same.It breaks him a little, makes him want to run away when he realizes what it means. But he can’t leave Souya behind. Not ever.He rests gently against his side, leaning his head against his shoulder, huddled together underneath the kotatsu.He tries not to look at Akari-san, whose hair is getting grey. He likes looking at Shimada-san even less- his health has been declining, it’s been getting worse and worse and…. And Shimada-san doesn’t have much time left.It is this that makes him suddenly look up, lightning-struck, to burn the visage of Shimada into his very eyes. He can’t forget this. Can’t forget that gentle smile. Can’t forget that pained face. Can’t, can’t, can’t. Shimada taught Rei so impossibly much about life, and Rei cared about him. Not in a hundred years, not in two-hundred years, not in a thousand he would want to forget him.Rei is forty-six when he decides to spend as much time as he can with those he loves- for however long they have left.He is indescribably grateful for Souya. He is… So much. Not being alone means much. By now he understands that that original conspiracy theory was true- the shogi players who go pro during middle school turn immortal. He doesn’t know why. He doesn’t know how. But it is. It just is.Souya was aware of it. That much was clear from Natsuki’s visit a few years ago. Rei wonders why Souya never went to the other middle school students- being alone was a horror scenario to Rei himself. Then again. Souya’s always been painfully lonely in a way, partly because of his own wishes.Perhaps, he thinks, it is the understanding, after all. Perhaps, this silent connection that was there from day one was not simply this immortality, this sharing of fate. Perhaps it was just them. Them, and understanding each other.After all, Rei had not felt like Natsuki enchanted him the same way Souya did. Then again, that warm feeling for Souya had grown through the years as well.He’s just grateful. Grateful he isn’t alone.Rei is forty-seven, Souya seventy-one and Natsuki? Natsuki is ninety-nine.Rei wonders whether that means their youth is not only on the surface.Rei is fifty-eight to Souya’s eighty-two and they’re playing shogi. Souya stopped competing two years ago- at eighty, the immortal middle schoolers stop. At least, those who didn’t get tired of it. It’s not a rule. It’s not a thing. They just do. Disappear from the public eye.Natsuki’s been talking about going again, eventually. Maybe in twenty years, when others have aged enough to forget. About talking to the government. About living new lives, under new identities.Souya and Rei aren’t there yet. Not for many years.For now, Rei just competes, lives his life, and comes home to this mansion the middle of nowhere. To Souya. It’s quiet, calm, and just what they need most days. Out of the way, but not so out of the way their precious people cannot visit, and that’s just how they like it.So are their shogi matches on the days Rei doesn’t have to go to Tokyo. They enter their quiet space, the place where nothing but them and the game matters. Relaxed. Serene. Them. Wordless understanding, a place where hearing does not matter, a place where emotions won’t drown them, force them under the water surface.Rei loves Souya. It’s there. In between them, just like the board. And just like the board, it’s accepted. Quietly integrated into their day to day life. Momo, forty-four and still not losing her youthly vigour, asks them often if they’re getting married yet, and Rei can’t help but laugh.There is no question of married, there is no question of ‘’together’’. There is a warm hand in his, and a feeling of belonging. He and Souya just… slot together. Like two puzzle pieces perfectly made, they just get each other.That doesn’t mean it isn’t hard sometimes, but… They’re happy. Unquestionably, irrevocably happy. Together.Rei is fifty-eight and there is a possibility he’ll live beyond the thousand, and for all those years, he just knows he’ll hold this heart in his hands. Just as Souya does to his.(And if that thought makes him lean up and kiss Souya after dinner, well. The udon won’t tell)