Chapter Text
The last time Shuu had played Sai, he'd lost as usual, but Sai had been excited about his progress. Every day, he rejects Sai's (by now perfunctory) requests for him to become a proper student, but Shuu can admit that he's growing to like Go more than he expected, though of course nothing will replace his bow. Still— he's improving.That's why this morning he's made a point to wake up early and give Sai a game before they visit Takigawa's shrine, but for some reason Sai, even if he covers it well, is upset.
"Are you nervous because you let me put down too many handicap stones?" Shuu asks, drumming his fingers on the table. It's a little rude— Sai really brings out the childish side of him.
"I'm not nervous," Sai insists, but he isn't really smiling, "and you're a thousand years too early to win against me." He points to his desired position. Shuu places a white stone as directed, effectively killing a group of his black.
"I really don't think I could win," he concedes, eyeing the board. He thinks he'll have to resign faster than he anticipated, which is… unusual. Sai likes to play slow teaching games, despite Shuu's lack of investment in Go. The thing about Sai is, he doesn't know kyudo enough to mentor Shuu in that area, but he does know Go. He genuinely wants Shuu to grow, to understand Go and through it understand himself. Maybe it's because of the Fujiwara blood that runs through their veins, living and dead. Maybe it's that Sai is remembering a different time with a different person. Maybe that's just how Sai is. Whatever the reason, Shuu is quietly glad for the care. It's why he knows something's wrong today— today, Sai is playing to crush him.
They're barely into the mid-game and already he can tell he won't be able to have any sort of a good fight; he might even have lost much earlier in the game and not noticed it because he can't read that far ahead. He places an oogeima toward the center anyway, and Sai actually frowns. Shuu can see why. It's an unnecessarily large jump to make when there are other, more effective ways to defend. Ordinarily, this would be where Sai draws out the run to show Shuu how he could recover in other circumstances, or just tell him outright because it isn't a serious game. But Sai only points, and Shuu cuts his own oogeima with one neat tsuke.
"You're upset," Shuu says, his hand still on the white stone. His read isn't very strong, but he knows enough to be aware that he can't run much farther after this. "Are you going to tell me why?"
Sai glares at his unmoving hand, then slumps. "I should never have taught you how to play," he complains, tucking his hands into his sleeves. "You get that awful knowing look on your face and you're still only a child."
"I already knew how to play," Shuu points out, graciously ignoring the comment about his age.
"Not properly, " says Sai, and Shuu has to admit his ancestor has a point. Where it was a simple strategy game before, now he can almost grasp the way Sai treats it like a conversation. He did notice Sai being upset, after all. He also knows that Sai is trying to distract him.
"Is it Takigawa-san?" Shuu asks. Sai turns to look out the window, which Shuu takes as confirmation. There's nothing to look at outside; it's getting colder but the leaves haven't started changing colour yet. "We don't have to go. I only agreed because you were so curious." Which is not entirely true. Shuu is interested to see Takigawa shoot, too.
"It's just…" Letting his sentence trail off, Sai floats over to Shuu's bed and rolls around on it. He isn't really on the bed, because the sheets are still undisturbed, but then Shuu never understood the way Sai interacts with physical objects. "No one else ever saw me. Before."
'Before', Shuu understands, means before Sai ended up with him. He never really talks about that period, especially after he asked about the goban in Shuu's grandparents' house, which according to grandmother has been a family keepsake for at least all throughout her lifetime. Shuu doesn't know what that goban has to do with anything, but it seems to be difficult for Sai to talk about, so he's never pried. That doesn't mean he'll let it slide when Sai's the one to bring it up, though. "I remember you saying so. Why is it so surprising? Takigawa-san does work at a shrine."
Sai is quiet for so long that Shuu begins to clear the board, and only then does he speak. "The boy I was with before I met you didn't handle me well, at first. You're always so calm, or at least you look calm on the outside. He was the opposite of you in a lot of ways." Sai turns so that his back is facing Shuu. Shuu doesn't know what to say, but Sai just continues speaking. "He wasn't part of the Fujiwara clan, you know. He was a Go player— someone special even among Go players. Someone who could birth the Divine Hand into the world. I knew, eventually, that my purpose was just to set him on that path, so I— I had to leave. I didn't have a choice. But I believed when I did that my time as a spectre was finally done. My purpose fulfilled, at last."
This time, the silence stretches until Shuu can't help but to break it. "And now?"
"I can't help but think," Sai says, slowly, "that my coming here was never meant to happen. That this shrine priest catching sight of me is a sign that I should be sent on. The goban wasn't even— I have no purpose here. Your path isn't toward the pinnacle of Go, even if Go can help you in your journey."
Shuu puts the last black stone in its goke, closes it, then goes to sit on the bed. Sai is a pocket of cold at his back, and he tries not to shiver. He can see Sai moving to sit up out of the corner of his eye; he can't, however, hear the expected rustle of cloth. Something like this would have been more fuel for the hallucination idea that Shuu had initially, but now he knows that Sai is no figment of his imagination. Now, there is no one in Shuu's life who can say they know him better than Sai, which on its own should be a scary thought. They have only been together for half a year. In that whole time, they haven't spent a single second apart. Shuu should feel suffocated by the constant presence beside him. And yet, the idea of Sai leaving is somehow abhorrent.
"Do you want to be— to be sent on?" Shuu has to force the words out. But he needs to know, before they go to the shrine, before he actually talks about Sai to another human being. Before he gets so attached that he won't be able to let go.
"Do you want me to leave?" Sai asks him back, instead of answering.
"No," Shuu says, quietly. He turns his head. Sai is watching him. "But I will never be a Go player. If you need to move on, I won't be selfish enough to keep you here."
Sai holds his gaze for a moment too long, and then he laughs, rolling to his feet, his sleeve whipping through Shuu's head. "Perfect! Because I'm selfish enough to want to bother you for your whole life!"
The tension goes out of Shuu's shoulders at this. Sai-san, he thinks, can be selfish all he likes. "Don't make me change my mind," he says anyway, smiling when Sai pouts at him. He lets Sai complain about the cleared board for a while, and then he asks: "What was his name?"
Shuu can almost hear Sai's hesitation. But he does answer, in the end. "Hikaru," he says, so soft that Shuu has to strain to hear it. "Shindou Hikaru." He says it like it's something infinitely precious. Shuu wonders if one day Sai will say his own name like that too, to someone else, all over again.
"You can tell me about him any time, if you want," says Shuu, getting up to close the window. He doesn't have to look to know Sai is giving him that particular expression he has when Shuu makes a clever move on the Go board, all sweet and fond and embarrassing. His ears feel hot. "But now we should go and see what Takigawa-san wants."
"He probably wants to exorcise me," Sai moans, with exaggerated distress. Or perhaps not so exaggerated, Shuu realises, considering the conversation up to this point.
"I'll protect you," he replies, solemnly. "Maybe I won't have to, though. I think he's scared of you."
"He did look a little pale." Sai covers his mouth with a sleeve, definitely hiding a smirk. "Should I—"
"Sai-san," Shuu interrupts firmly, "if you terrify him he will never shoot at his best when you're around, which means I won't get to see it."
"Spoilsport," his ancestor sighs, putting his cold ectoplasmic hands through Shuu's arm. Shuu makes the requisite annoyed shoo-ing motions, but secretly he thinks, even that cold feels a little warmer than it used to.