The world wears white today.
One week after Prazen’s defeat and incarceration alongside Vex Shimano, the Section continues to reverberate from aftershocks of treason and conspiracy. Many streets remain empty. Neon lights hang dim. Our great arena, the symbol of everything our world stands for, has remained shuttered since that night. Streams speculate as to the cause. Few draw near to the truth. Only a celebration of hope in future generations splits the tension that has frozen the capital solid.
Today, the winter tournament I trained an entire year for enters its first day of competitions to thunderous applause. And I could not be more bittersweet to miss it.
We watch the commencement from Ajax’s hospital room, just the four of us. Mori leaning against the wall, thumbing over that years-old university jacket. Jolie sitting at his left hand, clutching it tightly in her own. I hunch over a tiny stool on his right, losing my third chess game of the day on a wooden board the Champion had sent as a gift. Snow and sunlight paint us all in the brilliance of winter.
We pretend that tomorrow will come without change. That every day will be like yesterday. But to win our fight, Ajax gave everything he had left. And then he gave more. In the end, he did not embrace his fate. He exits my life as he entered it. The brightest comet in a sea of stars, victorious.
Now he lies between us a wistful reflection of himself. The last thread of his life frayed that night. All he waits for now is the drop. His eyes are clouded from staving off the end for just another day, and then another still, filling the JOY that now rests in my sister’s hand with innumerable memories for her to carry. Eyelids so heavy.
My sister holds him as he fades. Tears streak her face behind old glasses. She puts on a brave face for us all, but her lips tremble and her ponytail slips from a knot that shaking fingers tied. Ajax’s fingers brush through the rusty strands of her hair as a cold shudder runs through him. Trying to shush her worries. But the words barely come. Jolie nods and squeezes his hand tighter, unwilling to let go.
Ajax looks to the east and the rising sun, an old home and a cliff by the sea. Minutes pass before his hand brushes against mine.
“It’s a new month, Mars. Let’s have that last fight.”
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I can barely see the board through glassy vision when it resets between us. He was right. This is a game I cannot win by heart, and my heart is blind today. Pieces disappear over long minutes until so few remain. Another cough overtakes him, and this time, it does not let him go.
Ajax quiets it with a tearful smile as he nears checkmate.
His moves slow. His breaths become labored. Each inhalation deliberate, each exhale slower than the one before, until full heartbeats pass between. He swallows hard and looks at each of us with glistening eyes as tears escape down his cheeks.
His hand squeezes once.
“I am glad,” he whispers.
Like the wind, life leaves his callused fingers before I know he is gone.
His hand slips lifelessly from mine, brushing over the board, and as it falls, so too does the kingpiece.
-
Near to the ocean, far from my home, there is a rice paddy where a single apple tree blooms in spring. An age ago, the boy I was cast a fruit into the fields on a stormy whim. Now a different man lays the greatest warrior he knows to rest in its fledgling shade.
Ajax’s relatives, what few he had, lived far from the city that knew him best. I take him to his homeland and bury him beside that tree so that he will always be watched over. One day, I will build my house inside its shade. My children will play in it, their children will play in it, and in death, my friend will be surrounded by companionship he found too late in life.
I should have been able to do so much more for him.
When I am finished and the dirt is settled and seaside wind stirs the lonely grains around me, I rise, wiping my hands of their stains. With a chisel I carve his remembrance into the wood. With ki, I scar it into permanency.
Your final sunset
It is beautiful, Ajax
Know you were loved.
My sister watches the fading sun with tears in her eyes from a bike on the road. I join her as we chase the sunset beneath a tigerstripe sky of purple and gold, colder in the racing wind than ever before. The apple tree sways in the wake of our departure, its infant limbs already straightening from the core of Lungracian silver that beats within them.
I will return to watch it grow.
Until then, it stands resolute in a gentle grove where rice flowers without guidance, bearing the name of the warrior I called rival, champion, and friend.
AJAX LIONHART
THE INVINCIBLE