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Touya often thought of the day when Shindou would finally fulfill his promise to talk about the mystery of Sai. Maybe they would sit down somewhere quiet to have a long, serious talk. Or maybe Shindou would prefer to have the comfort of distance and choose to tell him over the phone. Or perhaps, Shindou would take him somewhere important that is connected to Sai and talk about him in a place full of memories. Touya doesn’t really know what he was expecting to happen. But he definitely did not expect Shindou to tell him about Sai in bits and pieces over the course of several years.
Touya remembers with striking clarity the first time Shindou said something about Sai. It was the day Shindou won the Honinbo league and earned the title for himself. It wasn’t Shindou’s first title, but his games against Ogata-san delivered the high-level plays that the fans greatly anticipated. Touya, of course, went to congratulate his rival.
“Congrats!” He said, offering his hand.
“Thanks!” Shindou shook his hand and flashed him a grin in response.
No one and nothing could seemingly wipe it off his face, but Touya would try anyway. “You just had to drag it out to the final game, though. If you didn’t make so many mistakes, you could have won after the 6th game.”
“I had to make it interesting for everyone.” The grin didn’t falter as the new Honinbo shrugged his shoulders. But after a while, it turns into a softer, more wistful, just as sincere smile. “I think— I hope he’s proud, anyway.”
“You want Ogata-san to be proud of you?” Touya made sure Shindou could see and hear his disbelief.
In turn, his rival just grinned again. “I meant Sai.”
Before the name could sink into Touya’s brain and make him react, Shindou and his grinning face had already waved goodbye to him and went off to receive more congratulations from others.
It was the first time since they were 15 that Shindou ever mentioned Sai. Not to mention, he said the name voluntarily. Touya wanted to hurry after Shindou and ask more questions, but it didn’t seem appropriate. In any case, Shindou allowed him this insight: Getting the Honinbo title meant something to Shindou because of Sai.
More than any of his previous titles, and more than any that came after, it was the title Shindou would come to be most strongly associated with, and the title he would continue to defend perfectly even against Touya.
-----
It doesn’t take two months after that for Shindou to mention Sai again.
Touya and Shindou were discussing their latest official game while they walked towards the Touya Go salon. The rain is showing no signs of stopping soon and Touya can’t wait to go inside a building and just be warm. Unfortunately, at the moment of that thought, a gust of wind passed by, causing the rain water to drench him from the waist down.
Beside him, Shindou lets out a groan. “I was doing so well staying dry until now.” Shindou continues muttering about how he managed to bring an umbrella for once, and a big one too, but that it’s all for nothing. He’s patting down his sides and wiping out rain drops from his arms, as if that helps to make his situation better.
“Sometimes I feel like there’s no point to using umbrellas.” Touya says as he resolutely continues walking. He wills himself to ignore the goosebumps on his arms and how cold his legs feel. Touya isn’t really the type to complain too much about things unrelated to Go. But you spend enough time with Shindou and you just can’t help but pick up some (bad) habits.
Shindou finally gives up attempting to dry himself and catches up to Touya.
“He also complained that umbrellas haven’t gotten that much better after so many years.”
“Who?” Touya sees the look on Shindou’s face, and thinks he might have an idea what, or who, this is about. If that eerily familiar soft, wistful smile on Shindou’s face is any indication, then—
”He didn’t believe me when I told him that man has been to the moon.” Shindou’s face turns into a grin and he’s laughing softly at something— an inside joke or a memory— that Touya doesn’t know or understand.
“By ‘him’ you mean…” Touya couldn’t help but confirm.
Shindou nods, as if he knows that Touya already knows. “Sai.”
Touya can’t help the sharp intake of breath at the name, even though he was already expecting the answer. Shindou doesn’t elaborate.
When the reached the salon, Ichikawa-san is horrified by their drenched appearance. She hurriedly retrieved some towels, and fussed over them as they dried off.
-----
The atmosphere in the room is suddenly tense and heavy. Despite the tatami flooring, Touya thinks he might actually be able to hear a pin drop in this silence.
Almost everyone in the room is seated in front of their assigned goban, waiting for the start of today’s games. It was supposed to be just another normal day for them professional Go players. But a bright-eyed young new pro, in his excitement or nervousness, bounded over to his assigned seat, and accidentally steps on Shindou’s signature white fan on the way.
Touya doubts anyone actually knows what that fan means to Shindou. He himself had never thought to ask the man why he keeps on bringing the plain, seemingly unremarkable object. He’s heard Waya and Isumi take turns making guesses about it once, so he knows they don’t have a clue, either.
What is clear, however, is that the fan has significance. Touya can’t remember Shindou playing a single game of Go without it since he first started carrying it around. At this point, there’s no one who knows Shindou in the Japanese Go world that doesn’t know about the fan. It’s become part of his image, one that the media insists on repeatedly pointing out as a representation of the duality of the usual cheeky Shindou versus the intimidating one in front of a goban.
Okayama finally recovers from his shock and apologizes profusely to Shindou, bowing low and sincere. To the surprise of everyone in the room, Shindou just carefully picks up the broken fan, places it even closer beside him, and waves off Okayama with a gentle “Don’t worry about it.”
Despite Shindou’s reassurance, Okayama must have still been affected by the accident because he lost his match badly. Granted, it was only his second professional game and it was against a 3-dan, but he resigned relatively early. Shindou, on the other hand, breezed through his match against a 7-dan.
“Can it be fixed?” Isumi asked as they both approached Shindou who was inspecting the damage. If the fan is sentimental like he thinks it is, getting it fixed is still an (unnecessarily expensive) option. But frankly, Touya thinks he’d be better off buying a new one. The base is not only broken, but the flat material is also ripped.
To his surprise, Shindou agrees with him. “I’ll go visit Touya-sensei after I buy a new one.” He’s already putting the broken one in his bag pocket.
Touya ends up going with him because apparently, Shindou is buying a fan from the souvenir shop in the institute building. There is a shelf full of fans, and several of them look a lot like Shindou’s old one. Touya realizes he’s never actually been to this souvenir shop in all the years he has been coming to the institute.
“I bought the old one from here as well.” Shindou says, as he plucks one fan that looks exactly like his old one and tests it.
This is a surprise to Touya because he assumed the fan was a gift, and he says as much.
“It was a gift, kind of.” And what Touya wouldn’t give to punch Shindou when he’s being deliberately, annoyingly vague. “I like to think so, anyway.”
“What, you had a dream about receiving a gift and so you bought it for yourself!? A fan, of all things!?”
Shindou laughed. “Close, but not quite.”
Touya narrowed his eyes. “This is about Sai, isn’t it?” Whenever his rival is being serious and more mature than usual, it’s always about Sai. Shindou’s smile is answer enough.
“Since we’re here, let’s buy a gift for Touya-sensei! It must be boring in the hospital.”
-----
One random afternoon, Touya is distracted from his study of one of Kurata-san’s games because of a realization. Ever since Shindou started telling him numerous, random, and vague information about Sai, he’s been imagining the legendary Net Go player as a different person. But Touya knows he played Sai when he first met Shindou. So how can that be?
Clearly, Shindou talks about him as a separate individual. From the stories about Sai that Touya has heard thus far, he knows that Sai lived in Kyoto as a tutor, that he wore “ridiculous and old-fashioned” hats, that he enjoyed looking at the fishes in aquariums, that he taught Shindou Japanese History, and there was this story Touya couldn’t quite understand that included drowning in rivers. It was always about someone who clearly lived his own life.
With a loud, frustrated groan, he flops onto his bed and tries to sleep it off. He knows so many useless facts about Sai now, and he’s nowhere nearer to figuring out this mystery than he was when he was a kid.
-----
Touya enters Shindou’s apartment the moment he hears a loud “I’m in my study area!” being yelled from inside. He knows by now that the blonde doesn’t exert effort to properly welcome guests, especially when it’s Touya. He has visited this apartment enough times to know it as well as he knows his own home.
He’s surprised when he enters the study area to find Shindou in front of the goban, about to place a stone on the board, and a stack of folders next to him.
“I thought you said you had some kifu you wanted to discuss with me today.”
“Yep, kifu!” Shindou repeatedly taps the top of the stack beside him, while his other hand continues placing stones.
Touya takes a seat across him and takes a folder from the stack. There’s nothing written on the folder at all. No label, no memo, no post-it, nothing. He opens it to the first page and finds a kifu with only a date and no player names recorded. Black played horribly and, in Touya’s opinion, dragged the game on too long. He flips through the pages and realizes that all kifu only have the date they were played written on them. And in all of them, Black lost.
He takes the next folder from the stack and finds the same thing. Page after page of kifu where Black lost and only the game dates written aside from the game record.
“What are these games, Shindou?” He looks up to find that Shindou has seemingly finished placing stones on the board and has been watching him look through the folders. Touya can’t remember the last time he’s seen Shindou this nervous. There’s no mistaking the forced smile on his face and the slight shaking of his hands that are now curled into fists on his lap.
“These are all the games we played.” Shindou’s voice is shaking. He clears his throat and says, more steadily this time, “Between me and Sai.”
Touya can’t see his own face, but he can feel his eyes widening. He can feel his throat drying up. He can feel his heart beating faster. “Games between—” He can’t get any more words out of his mouth. Belatedly, Touya only now realizes that despite the numerous stories he has heard, Shindou has never told him anything about Sai directly related to Go.
Until now.
In front of him are folders of kifu that Sai has played. Somehow, Touya knows that even if there are no names recorded, he’s the first person besides Shindou who has seen these games.
He opens the first folder again. The date, he realizes, is a little after their first meeting. This horrible Black player is… most likely Shindou. The moves are so bad, he can hardly believe these are games Shindou played, especially knowing the incredible level of skill his rival now possesses. His eyes skim through kifu after kifu after kifu. He can see that despite the continuous losses, Shindou improves in every game with frightening speed.
Sometimes there’s only 1 kifu for a day. More commonly, there are 3-4 dated the same. Sometimes there are as many as 15 kifu for a single day.
By the last folder, Shindou’s skill has improved so much, to the point that if he didn’t know better, he would have thought these games were played by a different person from the first ones. Somehow, though, the stronger Shindou gets, the easier it is to see just how much better Sai is. The last entry is dated May 1st on the year Shindou became a professional.
Shindou is quiet the whole time it takes for Touya to go over the stack. When Touya closes the last folder and finally looks up, Shindou is no longer watching him. Touya follows his gaze to the goban in front of him.
“This is the last game we played.” Shindou’s voice is hoarse from the 2-hour silence while Touya looked through the kifu. “We weren’t able to finish it, though.”
The game barely even begun. “Why?” He couldn’t help but ask.
“He disappeared.” It was a quiet whisper.
Suddenly, Touya realizes this is why Shindou quit Go for months that year. He’s willing to bet this is why Shindou always goes on a trip somewhere every year. He allows himself a moment to let that sink in.
“So,” he says when he decides he’s had enough of the silence. “Which horrible plays of yours are we discussing today?” He gestures to the stack of kifu.
To his relief, Shindou cracks a smile at that. “To be fair, I was a total beginner. I think I did pretty well.”
“You did pretty well continuing with Go despite being crushed multiple times a day.”
“Nah, I knew it wasn’t gonna do me any good to compare myself to someone who’s been playing for a thousand years.”
“Good on you.” Touya said unthinkingly as he deliberated on a kifu to discuss. He wouldn’t know for a while longer just how literally Shindou actually meant that.
“How about this legendary game that ended in 35 moves?” Touya presented the kifu.
“Hey! That was when he wanted to find out how fast he could beat me!!”
“So, let’s discuss it.”
“What about this one? I made this pretty genius move mid-game!”
“Your loss was actually guaranteed by the 20th move but you held out resigning until the 35th.”
“Listen to me!!”
“At least you ended up recognizing the futility of your efforts.”
“TOUYA!!”
-----
Discussing Sai’s games become a regular activity after that day. Whether it’s one of his numerous games with Shindou, or matches played in Net Go, or even the games played against Touya.
Now that he knows more about Sai, Touya thinks that maybe Shindou’s play style isn’t influenced by Shuusaku like he originally thought, but rather by Sai. It’s a lot more difficult to notice now that Shindou already has his own distinct play style. But the influence is definitely there, if you know what to look for.
On that note, he remembers that someone once noted how Sai’s play style is like Shuusaku if he learned modern Go. But the similarities between the two are uncanny. And Touya remembers his first ever game with Sai (Shindou) and that definitely felt old-school. Together with Shindou’s near-obsessive love and respect for Shuusaku, Touya can’t help but be suspicious. There has to be some connection there.
It’s no longer awkward to mention Sai’s name when it’s only the two of them. Breaching the topic doesn’t feel taboo like it used to. But Touya still doesn’t ask questions. No matter how he’s doing it, Shindou has been keeping his promise to talk to him. Touya can afford to wait more.
-----
“A ghost started haunting me when I was 11.”
Touya looks up after he makes his move. They’re having a casual game to relieve some stress. Touya lost the Ouza title to Kurata-san yesterday, and Shindou lost his Juudan title to the man earlier in the year. Kurata-san is still in his peak. And he will be for a few more years, if not even longer.
“If that’s your attempt at distracting me, it won’t work.”
Shindou makes his move and takes a sip of beer. In Touya’s opinion, 10am is too early to be drinking by himself. But Shindou hardly drinks and they’re both frustrated from their respective losses so he doesn’t even bother giving his infamous lecture on the bad effects of alcohol.
“He was a Go-loving ghost, you know.”
Touya places his move and makes sure to show Shindou his unimpressed face. Shindou sees it and laughs.
“When he was still alive, he was the emperor’s Go tutor during the Heian period.”
“Was he any good?” He decides to humor Shindou’s ridiculous ghost story, as they continued placing stones in turns.
“Of course. The emperor’s tutor can only be the best.”
“Right, of course.”
“He committed suicide by drowning, though.”
“I thought this was a happy story about a Go-loving ghost.”
“Well, he had to have died in order to become a ghost.”
“Right.” Touya doesn’t know why he even bothers listening to half the crazy things that Shindou says.
“Anyway, the ghost haunted someone else before me and played Go through that person.”
“He must really like Go to have become a ghost just to play.”
“Yep. Not just playing. He liked anything that had to do with Go.”
“Like washing the stones?”
That stops Shindou midway to placing his next move. “I’m not sure, actually. He couldn’t touch the stones as a ghost so I don’t know. But I bet he’d still be happy to if he could.”
To Shindou’s credit, he really looked like he thought properly about it.
“When he started haunting me I didn’t let him play, though. Go just didn’t seem interesting at that time.”
“So he left to haunt someone else?”
“Nah, he couldn’t leave me for some reason, so he bugged me about playing Go until I promised to go to a Go salon.”
“Uh-huh.”
The game is finished and they’re now counting their territories.
“The ghost’s name was Fujiwara no Sai.”
At that, Touya paused. He looked up from the board but Shindou just continued counting as if he hadn’t said anything. Okay, this is ridiculous. There are no ghosts, so this has to be a joke. Shindou is probably drunk.
Touya continued to count his territory. It’s his win by a half moku.
Shindou leaned back in his chair, gulping down the remaining beer.
“The person he haunted before me was Kuwabara Torajirou.”
This time, Touya drops the bowl of stones he is holding. He hardly felt pain when it lands on his toes. He doesn’t even move to pick up the spilled stones, and neither does Shindou.
Over the years they have known each other, Shindou has said the name ‘Torajirou’ enough times that it is impossible for Touya not to know who he is. Kuwabara Torajirou, the birth name of Honinbo Shuusaku.
Shindou is still leaning back in his chair, but he’s looking directly at Touya with a serious face, as if he’s gauging Touya’s reactions. (He probably is.)
Touya tries to backtrack to everything Shindou said about the “Go-loving ghost” that he only half-listened to, as well as all the other things he’s been told about Sai. If Shindou wasn’t making things up… If Touya accepts he might be a little crazy to even consider this as the truth… If this was actually real….
Sai was a ghost. A Go-loving ghost who haunted Shindou. When Touya first played Shindou, it was Sai playing through Shindou. Because he can’t touch the stones as a ghost. He didn’t know about the komi because the last person he haunted was Shuusaku who lived and played before that rule was added. Sai and Shuusaku’s game plays are similar because, according to Shindou’s ghost story, Sai played through Shuusaku.
Touya didn’t realize he was breathing heavily until he attempted to speak. “I must be out of my mind.”
Shindou jolts in his seat at that. “You actually believe me?”
Touya takes a deep breath. “Were you lying?” He asks pointedly, as if he already knows the answer. Because he does. Shindou is always serious when it’s about Sai. Shindou doesn’t drink much, but Touya has seen him stay sober through a dozen bottles so he can’t be drunk from a single can. Touya doesn’t know Sai but he knows Shindou.
A laugh escapes out of Shindou’s mouth. Then another. And then another. Now he’s grinning from ear to ear. His eyes are watering, from joy, but mostly from relief.
“No.” Shindou is gripping his fan, the smile still on his face. ”No, I wasn’t lying.”
-----
The mystery has been solved. Touya now knows the truth, despite how absurd it sounds. He finally understands every confusing thing he’s always wondered about Sai and Shindou.
Shindou was super good at the start even when he couldn’t even hold a stone properly because Sai played for him. Shindou was terrible after that because he decided he wanted to play himself. Sai only plays NetGo because he’s a ghost and they wanted to avoid making people suspicious of Shindou’s fluctuating skill level. Sai played all of Shuusaku’s professional games. That’s why Shindou often reads kifu of Shuusaku’s games. That’s why the Honinbo title means so much to Shindou.
Once Touya crosses the difficult bridge of accepting the “ghost” part, everything starts to make sense. The world is right again. All the random little stories about Sai have been to prepare him for this moment.
But just because the key has been found, doesn’t mean the lock has been opened. There is more to Fujiwara no Sai, the Go-loving ghost.
-----
They don’t talk about Sai any more than they used to. But when Shindou does decide to share a random story, it is with a considerably more open and relaxed countenance.
Shindou talks about all his attempts to get rid of the ghost when he was first haunted. He talks about the fan Sai carried around and how he chose his fan based on the similarity to Sai’s. He talks about how tiring it was that he had to place all the stones by himself when they played each other. He was complaining, but there was an unmistakable tinge of nostalgia.
It can be two stories in a month, or it can be one story for 3 years. Shindou still continues to fulfill his promise.
Years after knowing the truth about the ghost, Touya learns about the old goban in Shindou’s grandfather’s attic, and how his rival met Sai.
Even more years after that, Touya finally finds out that when Shindou travels every year on Sai’s disappearance anniversary, he actually goes to Innoshima.
It is longer still before Touya finds out that the only time Shindou ever let Sai play for him in an official match was in his game against Touya’s dad as a new professional player.