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“This is how your world ends,” Hong He said. “One day, you’re living your ordinary life, you’re playing Go, and your friends are talking about yesterday’s games. The next thing, your phone rings, your uncle tells you to go home, then you know that there’s a stroke left your father paralyzed one side of his body, and your life as you know it goes into suspected animation.” He told the story of himself after the final match of the National Bei Dou Trophy, on his way to hospital. A few days later, he withdrew into his shell, feeling ridiculous, refusing communication. His father, who had always complained about his career, was sleeping silently. He wasn’t old yet, but at this very moment, Hong He couldn’t recall how old he was. He had changed a lot since the last time they met. At last, Hong He realized he was no longer a child, and how difficult it was going to be, but he must try, “I don't know what you have encountered so I can only tell you my own story. As for you, wait until you're ready, then tell me.”
Since Chu Ying disappeared, Shi Guang had lost the feeling he had all his life of being blessed and chosen by the God of Go. Perhaps Hong Ha realized, although he tried to cover it up with his usual smiles and jokes. There was a pandemic of mental injury deep inside, he thought: It impossible for him to play Go anymore without feeling his soul was torn apart. The things left inside his soul was an open window, a regret about his own behavior, and a promise he had failed to keep; but at the same time, only when he heard the sound of the chess pieces touching the wooden surface clattering, did he fell that Chu Ying was always by his side and his soul was somehow being pacified.
What a miserable paradox.
Shi Guang no longer was on sofa rapidly tapping the buttons of his controller to steal a car in GTA and instead in front of the chessboard randomly putting black and white stones to recall his invisible opponent. All he did after the tournament was to sit in front of the board for hours, all night long, replaying his old matches with Chu Ying.
"If Go turns into a burden for you," His mom asked as she closed the window in his bedroom, "should we stop playing?"
Since Shi Guang moved out, he and his mother rarely had time together like this. The day before yesterday, there was heavy rain during the night. Rain splashed through the open window and wetted all the blanket, but Shi Guang did not realize it. Wait until he woke up, he started to have a fever. At first, he only wanted to put on a new blanket to sleep off his headache, but the situation got worse and worse. Shi Guang coughed so much that Hong He panicked and had to call Shi Guang's mother to force him to go home immediately.
“Mom, you’re overthinking.” Shi Guang laughed, “I play as I want to. There’s no burden here.”
His mother sighed. Their conversation came to a standstill as always.
"If you need anything, just let me know, okay?"
The house was quiet, only once in a while did Shi Guang's coughs sound interrupt its silence. Half a cup of honey lemon tea was still warm, placed beside the Go chessboard in his bedroom, and sometimes he took a sip in the middle of a break. In that multivarious Go chessboard, Shi Guang and Chu Ying had built the armies for themselves, they owned bastions, they had somehow become The Messiah, created stars for their Go universe. Go created a marvelous new land that he had recently discovered, like some Christopher Columbus of the soul: the land of being unattached and free.
Because Go was always Go, no matter where you were, no matter who you played with, but Chu Ying made things different: the coolness of chess pieces between his fingertips felt freezing, the chessboard a completely different shade of brown, and even the sounds themselves had particular, unfamiliar echoes reminded him of Chu Ying. Then he tried to recall the candy he used to hide in his pocket, the fragments of memories sunk his mind, things to be cherished all his life: the smell of oak chessboard in his room early morning, the seesaw in alley park where they used to play hundreds of blind games, the Internet cafe recording Chu Ying's unbeaten record on Weida, and a white figure wandering about the ancient streets with him...
The moonlight still shined through the window, but the candy he hidden in his pocket had been stolen.
Shi Guang was so dizzy that he could not see the lines on the board, but he didn't call his mother. She was working. Shi Guang didn’t want her to know that he’d thrown all of the medicines out of the window. Shi Guang hated taking drugs, hated injecting, hated infusing, hated everything related to hospital, except for his mother.
"Have you taken medicine yet?" Jiang Xue Ming's call came right after the message telling Shi Guang to stay at home until he totally recovered from He Hou. Her voice filled with anxiety. "Do you cough a lot?"
“Yes,” Shi Guang tried to suppress the cough, but his voice was still husky, “and no.”
"Don't fool me!", this time her voice turned grumpy, "Wait, I'll be right there."
Without her mother nagging about why she could not waste her studying time for university exams, Jiang Xue Ming would have appeared in front of Shi Guang's house after only five minutes. She only gave up after Shi Guang assured her that he would stop playing Go and go to bed early.
"Remember to close the windows properly!", said Jiang Xue Ming.
At night, under the street light shining through the window he had just opened, Shi Guang mined the warehouse. Not being able to play chess made him feel like a fish out of water. Finally, Shi Guang dug up an old picture of him and Chu Ying. He took it out of the album and put it in a picture frame. In it, Shi Guang, who had yet to won and got into the tournament, smiled brightly next to his invisible friend. The behind story of this photoshoot was funny, but since when Shi Guang had contemplated it over and over, he was unable to control his tears. It was winter at first, then spring, then summer, and already fall, Shi Quang and Chu Ying were company for each other. Though no one could reach Chu Ying and their only shared reality was Weida, and his impressive number of wins, Chu Ying had never given up playing Go. “Shi Guang” was his name, but it was also the expression Chu Ying used, which meant “I wanna play”. Shi Guang refused him again and again, but the really regretful part, as far as Shi Guang was concerned, was when Chu Ying asked him, “How about me?”, and Shi Guang said, “You still have time.” Later, only after Chu Ying disappeared did Shi Guang understand that Chu Ying had been left alone in a reality he believed was shared. Chu Ying had been abandon there, while Shi Guang and the others had departed to a cruel reality in which a person could survive without being seen or touched or recognized.
Shi Guang lay on bed. He had slept for a while. There was a sound like a knock on the door, or someone was coming into the house. Shi Guang held his breath. His heart was beating like a drum. And at that very moment, when that white figure entered his room, Shi Guang blurted out the name that had become a taboo to him, “Chu Ying?”
“Chu Ying?”, asked suspiciously.
“Yu Liang?”, Shi Guang awoke a bit, “What are you doing here?”
“What am I doing here?”, Shi Guang could undoubtedly point out that Yu Liang was irritable, not to mention his raising eyebrows, “Then who called me on the phone saying he was going to die?”
Shi Guang had no impression of that conversation, but the glass of hot water on the nightstand was real, paracetamol Yu Liang gave him was real, the coolness from an antipyretic sticker on his forehead was real, the closed window was real, and even the warmth from Yu Liang when he sneaked into blanket, crammed with Shi Guang on his narrow single bed, was real.
“Take medicine, then go to sleep.” Shi Guang heard Yu Liang grumbling.
“Are you sleeping here?” Shi Guang tried to swallow the pill that was stuck in his throat, and then coughed a few more times.
“It’s almost twelve o’clock at night, Shi Guang. It’s still raining. How can I go home now?” Du Luong turned his back to him, the back of his shirt rubbed against the sleeve of Shi Guang, emitting a very tiny sound of static electricity.
At that time, Shi Guang noticed that Yu Liang wore a white turtleneck sweater and a light grey pair of cotton trousers that did not look like his street style, on the contrary, it was more like his pyjama. Shi Guang pursed his lips. He didn't ask why Du Luong knew about the open window, about the clothes that had not been changed, nor about how he found a cab to his house at midnight. .
“Yu Liang,” Shi Guang lay on his back, looking up at the ceiling. There was something lodged in his throat and he couldn’t swallow it.
“Huh?”
“Chu Ying, he--”
“He’s your master?” Yu Liang replied, completing his unfinished sentence.
“He taught me to play Go, played Go with me… He was always by my side. He…” His voice was husky and broken, “Then he gone. And suddenly I don’t know what to do now...”
“I’ll be with you.”
“Huh?”
“You still have me. I’ll play Go with you.” His voice covered Shi Guang, softly as a cotton blanket, “You should go to sleep now.”
Under the moonlight, Shi Guang looked around his room. The cup of honey lemon tea his mother made for him was still placed beside the chessboard. His cellphone was charging on top of the cabinet, filled with his friends’ messages asking after his health. On the nightstand, in the picture frame, he and his friend at Yi Jiang Hu were smiling brightly together. And beside him, under his warm blanket, Yu Liang was breathing slowly and steadily as if he had fallen to sleep.
Shi Guang closed his eyes. This time, he heard the voices of his mother, Hong He, Yu Liang, Jiang Xue Ming, Chu Ying, and those who loved him, in his head, not his ears, “Everything will be all right.”
The rain was still falling outside the window, but Shi Guang was not afraid anymore. The window he opened for Chu Ying, over and over again, would be closed one day.