3-gatsu no Lion 98

Ugh. Ok finally finished this. Such a busy last few days. So sleepy now. I'll press onward tomorrow.

[3-Gatsu no Lion 98 Translation by Kewl0210]
Page 49:
Title: Chapter.98
Soft Wind

Page 50:
Handwritten: Momo. Age 1 year 7 months. Her Onei-chan made her that bib with a towel handkerchief.
Bib: Umipan Man

Page 51:
Rei: ----...
Huu...

Page 52:
Rei: I guess everyone's in
Kyoto right now.
Haya: ----Yes, sooo
how 'bout you make a bit more of a remorseful face?
Even if you don't actually feel that way.
You saw that bitter smile the homeroom teacher Sakkisaka-sensei had, right?
Like a 'It kinda didn't seem like he felt bad at all...' kinda smile?
Rei: Sorry.
SFX: HUU...
Haya: Well,
on another note, I really feel like I should say 'congratulations'.
Congrats on making it to the finals of group 3 of the Shishi-Ou Championship!
The finals are in the middle of a school trip day, so I guess you won't be able to go to that, huh?
Rei: Yes...

Page 53:
Haya: But I saw the notations on the Internet,
and that was a real battle! So you were up against Hachiya 5-dan?
SFX: HAWAAA Do your best, Kiriyamaaa!
Haya: You even managed to form that statich hisha anaguma you barely ever play!
That was some great dang perseverance!!
That's the first time you've done that in an official game, isn't it?
Even on the Internet everybody seemed surprised. Like 'I've never seen this sort of Kiriyama!'
Rei: Ah... Er, well,
I'm humbled.
Haya: And no sooner had you launched that battle formation you weren't used to that you got into a huge difficult battle right after the mid-game.
A kin, gin, and uma charged into your camp
and you managed to hold out until the time was counting down and made a huge comeback!!
Handwritten: UOOOOOO
SFX: DON DON
Haya: I sensed a strong 'I don't want to go on that field trip no matter what.'
----feeling coming from that play, Kiriyama!!
Handwritten: YEP
CLEAR AS DAY.
I'm... really sorry...
SFX: KAAAA... GOHO GOHO GOHO (COUGH COUGH COUGH)

Page 54:
Haya: So it looks like
the 3 years of your redoing your high school life
is going to end without ever once
going on an overnight field trip...
Rei: Yeah.
Haya: Then what's with
that look of relief on your face?
Rei: I mean, well,
I think I'm okay with it this way.
Yeah.
There really weren't any changes at all, though.
Haya: No,
I wouldn't say that, right?

Page 55:
Haya: That's not true...
Lots of stuff happened.
---A whole lot, don't you think?
Rei: ...
Yeah.

Page 56:
Rei: -----In the end, nothing changed.
In this quest I kept hurling myself at it thinking 'I've got to clear this!'
that got me hurt a ton and made me cry
in the end, finished with
an endpoint I had never considered,
'Well, I guess that's fine.'
The thing that made me feel relieved even without going on the field trip was,
although this wasn't different from my 1st, 2nd, or 3rd year,
I'm not feeling pangs of guilt anymore.
Haya: What you wanted to clear
was not the quest itself,
it was probably
finding a place to put your feelings.

Page 57:
Rei: ----Yes, this place is probably
the end point
of my tear-stained and snot-stained grapple with
this thing called school.
What you'd call
the 'point of compromise'.
It's kind of a, uh, pitiful final scene, but----
the fact that
I feel so oddly cheerful is interesting to me.

Page 58:
Pres: Oh,
doing okay, Kiriyama? What? You have a match today?
Rei: Uh, no.
SHimada-san and Kumakura-san have a match today
so I thought I might use it as a chance to study a b it.
Pres: Oh, I get ya.
You sure are enthusiastic. Or rather,
you guys all seem to like Shimada a bit too much, don't ya think?
That waiting room's a packed house.
Handwritten: Nikaidou and Shigeta and some other guys are there...
Rei (Handwritten): Ah, I thought so...
Sorry, I just...
Ah!
Right, here.

Page 59:
Rei: The candy store owners that are always helping me with things said 'Help yourself to these tea cakes'.
Pres: Huh? What? Are you sure?
Mikazuki-Yaki? I was just getting hungry!
Heey, guys! We've got some snacks heeere!
Guys: Ooh!
I would love some!!
Pres: Mmm. These are great! The skin's all soft...
Akari: Please, Kiriyama-kun! We have so few orders for June...
Rei: If you order dorayaki, you can even get your name printed on them.
T/N: Dorayaki are confectionaries made of two castella sponge cake pancakes around adzuki bean paste.
Rei: They told me feel free to use them for celebrations and that sort of thing.
Handwritten (Left): I'll just leave a flyer for them right here.
(Bottom): Business Smile
SFX: SASAH
Pres: Get your name on them? Sounds nice.
SFX: MOGU MOGU
Pres: Want some, Souya?
Here.

Page 60:
Rei: Huh?
Don't drip any on those rank diplomas.
Put the brush down.
Rei: Oh,
hello.
Haven't seen you in a while.
----Not since that typhoon in Sendai...

Page 61:
[The certificate is unreadable in parts and cut off in others and also really formal not really meant to be translated text, so leave it as-is.]
Rei: Signing rank diplo9mas?
I see. So you do that here, huh?
Pres: He's got quite a few of them to do.
It's a pain for him to move around a lot so when Souya is in Tokyo we have him sign them all here.
Left: Meijin
Souya Tou[Cut off]
Pres: Nice handwriting, ain't it?
And he's got thousands more to write.
His handwriting used to be really narrow like little sludge worms...
You really practiced, huh?
Well it is an important part of a Meijin's duties.
Handwritten: Moving it out of harm's way
SFX: SUSUSU.... BORO BORO... MOGU MOGU
Pres: When you become the face of the shogi world
you end up with a ton of jobs outside your main one.
Souya's in lots of commercials and stuff like that, too...
Handwritten: I can't tell you how thankful the companies that're sponsoring us are for that...

Page 62:
Pres: Sponsors...
............
Speaking of sponsors, Shimada....
Handwritten: HAAAAAA....
Pres: That guy got some amaaaazing good news, too.
Handwritten: Amazing?!
Nikai: Anija in a commercial?! Where?! What company is it?!
SFX: BYUNNN
Pres: It was a great, great company...
A national client, dangit!
And Shimada... that bastard... he turned them down!!
SFX: BURU BURU BURU.. (SHAKING)
Nikai: HUUUH?! Why?! Did he say why?!
Anija would make such an amazing face for the shogi world!
What company that offered it?!
Handwritten: I'll try to get him to change his mind!!
HAHHHH
Could he be talking about...
SFX: ZUIHH

Page 63:
Shima: I said I was humbled by their offer, but I don't think
I really need things like that yet...
Handwritten: Hahaha...
Pres: ----Can you believe he says that...?
It has plenty to do with him! It's right up his alley!
----He should've been saying something like 'This is the perfect opportunity!!' or somethin', right?!
Handwritten (Right): I told him what a huge sponsor that was, that idiot!! ["idiot" bold]
(Left): It was like....
An artsy and nature-ish kind of thing...!!!
T/N: Art Nature is a company that sells things like wigs and hair-growth products.
Rei: Aa...
SFX: KU.... OWWW AAA
Pres: Hey, would you two give it one more shot to try to change his mind?!
Ya gotta knock some sense into Shimada!!
Somebody: I'm going to have to humbly decline!!
Handwritten: WAAAAN!!
Bottom: Chapter.98 E N D

Page 64:
Top Right Small: An article by Senzaki Manabu
Top Right Big: Senzaki Manabu's Lion Shogi Column
Big Right: Regarding Title Match Sponsors
Article: There are 7 title matches in the world of men's shogi and the sponsers for all of them are newspaper companies. Specifically they are:
Ryuu-Ou Championship - Yomiuri Shimbun
Meijin Championship - Asahi Shimbun, Mainichi Shimbun (Disregard ordering)
Oui Championship - A collection of prominent local newspapers
Ouza Championship - Nihon Keizai Shimbun
Ki-Ou Championship - A collection of prominent local newspapers
Oushou Championship - Mainichi Shimbun, Sports Nippon
Kisei Championship - Sankei Shimbun
The back of newspapers have columns on shogi and go. They'll print game notations there which they pay the Japan Shogi Association money for and that money goes to the winners depending on how well they do and that's how we make out living.
Still, it's unusual for professional organization to have newspapers as sponsors. For games like golf, they're all businesses.
Having newspapers as sponsors is a bit complicated. After all, the people providing the financial backing and reporting the events are the same people. So if you look at the reporters interviewing the players from that perspective, they're both reporters and sponsors. Consequently the players pay more care to the reporters than the normal world does. Sponsors are absolute. But I believe that a comfortable tension should exist between the reporters and those being reported on, so it's a difficult subject. Though honestly, I'm used to it.
There are a lot of newspaper sponsors, but we have a long history. So I'll be speaking for experience here.
The period of rapid increase of sales of newspapers just before and just after a championship directly coincided with the time when the current systems the shogi world and go world were created. With shogi, we had stopped doing the hereditary system or the expert system we had done until that point and changed to a merit system of Meijin Championship and Go also had many really stimulating games going on at the time. This period, also called the cradle period in the modern shogi world, is where the newspapers have exclusive rights to the match notations which brought in lots of popularity. It went from a small group of intelligentsia reading them to huge numbers of people being able to read them. And that change in the newspaper was ideal for shogi and go.
And so, newspapers started sponsoring us one after another and here we are. It was in this period that the current system which I personally call the 'Go Seigen Regime'.
Go Seigen-san is a super-giant in the world of go and thanks to having exclusive rights over this man's go games, it's said that a certain huge newspaper became a success. Without appearing in any title matches of the time at all, Go-san said "If anyone thinks they can beat me, let's have a 10-game match and see who wins!" (So cool!) And so challengers came after him one after another and he crushed them all, so of course he became tremendously popular.
But now with young people starting to leave newspapers, I don't know how long the Go Seigen Regime will go on for. I want to offer my sincere thanks to the thoughtful businesses that support the 'combat of the mind' and 'the exquisite competition that combines knowledge and striving for victory' of shogi and go.