Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Interviewer: Shindou-sensei, thank you so much for finding the time to speak to us. It’s been only a few days since your latest victory made the front page of The Weekly Go, yet your schedule doesn’t look like it will lighten up in the near future.

Shindou Hikaru (9d): It’s no problem.

Interviewer: And may I say, I am so excited about one match in particular that’s in your line-up. How does it feel to be invited to play against one of the newly qualified pros in a Shin Shodan match? You must be the youngest title holder invited to play.

Shindou: Touya’s a couple of months younger, actually. And we’re both really excited about this. It’s not often we get to cross the same milestone at the same time. You know I have a reputation for playing catch-up. (laughs)

Interviewer: I wouldn’t say that’s what your reputation is these days, but yes, let’s talk about that. It would have been four years ago that you played your own Shin Shodan match, in a very unusual game against Touya Meijin.

Shindou: The then Touya Meijin. Because Akira’s the Touya Meijin now.

Interviewer: … Right. And then you disappeared off everyone’s radar for a while — until about the first Hokuto Cup, I would say.

Shindou: I didn’t do as well as I had hoped there.

Interviewer: But it was after those matches that everyone started to follow your progress closely. How would you describe the next year?

Interviewer: Like I said, I had a lot of catching up to do.

 

Reproduced from Gekkan Go World, issue #12, 2004

Touya Akira wins the Young Lions tournament for the third year running.

He overhears idle comments about it — something along the lines of this outcome being inevitable, with the caliber of players in his age group — and doesn’t bother to even acknowledge that kind of talk. People are too distracted by the pieces they can see to read deeper. Soon enough, the world will catch up, but it’s been an impatient wait for Akira.

Two years ago, the Young Lions tournament was the first official event that brought him and Shindou into the same room. Akira remembers the molten fury he felt at having to share the space with someone he deemed his bitterest disappointment. The year after, he awaited the same tournament with a polar opposite mood: finally, he thought, a meeting on equal ground, both of them pros now. Akira had to forfeit his first scheduled match against Shindou after he turned pro when Akira’s dad collapsed, so he counted the days until the Young Lions as their next chance to play. But on the day, Akira was denied his wish. He ended up playing with only half his mind on the matches, torn between rage and worry at Shindou’s inexplicable absence. Little did he know that this was going to be his usual state of mind for the next three months.

This year, Shindou is there. The record of their game from the second round of the tournament is one of the two that gets reprinted in The Weekly Go, alongside the kifu for the final match Akira played against Isumi. There is a part of him that wishes the luck had been on their side, and they could have started off in different brackets and played all the way to the finals, but Akira cannot bring himself to regret it too much. The game he plays against Shindou is vivacious, bold and thrilling all the way to yose, and Akira feels like he could stop the tournament right there, with his one and a half moku victory over Shindou. The semifinals bring him against Ochi, now a 2-dan but still fundamentally the same kind of player he tutored a year and a half ago. Akira takes a long pause during their match only once, when he catches himself thinking that the last half year has been so good, and he doesn’t want it to end when Shindou decides it’s time to disappear again.

The distress the thought brings blind-sides Akira. It’s an irrational fear, he tells himself firmly — just because something happened before, doesn’t mean it has to happen again. Shindou has come a long way from the boy who didn’t know how to hold the stones correctly, and his dedication to the game these days is palpable. But Akira has already accepted so many contradictory, illogical things about Shindou, what’s one more thing, really? He only stops spiralling during the final match, when he finds out the hard way that Isumi shodan is not someone who can be played at half strength: Akira makes a mistake in chuuban that nearly costs him the game, and it takes considerable focus to win back territory and end the game with a 3-moku difference.

The fear lingers, for all that Shindou is right there over his shoulder, the first to congratulate him on his victory in one breath and the first to launch into a stream of criticism about the game play in the next.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Shindou says, noticing that Akira has been staring at him a little too long. “You alright?” Shindou frowns and puts a hand on his own forehead, and then lays the same hand on Akira’s. “I don’t know what I thought I’d learn from this,” he says sheepishly and shoots him a grin. “Anyway, some warm food should do you good! I didn’t see you eat during the lunch break. We’re all going to grab a bite now. Come on, you’re coming with us.” Shindou grabs him by the wrist and pulls him forward, and just like that, Akira follows.

* * *

Akira knows, intrinsically and without a doubt, that Shindou and he are destined to have a part in each other’s lives. That entitles him to — he is not sure about the exact scope of what it entitles him to, actually, but he knows it’s something both important and intangible. Like the right to the deepest insight into each other, he thinks, or a tithe of each other’s time and space in each other’s thoughts.

But when it comes to having one’s life change because of an encounter with Shindou, Akira knows he’s far from being unique. Shindou’s presence sends ever-expanding ripples across the professional go scene, touching other people’s lives, forcing them to acknowledge him, and more often than not turning them into people who support him in his journey. The latter Akira does not begrudge Shindou in the least; if anything, there is a sense of deep satisfaction in seeing the world start to catch up to the fact of Shindou.

They still play most of their matches in different circles: Shindou’s forfeits from last year still slow him down considerably, while Akira has already progressed to more advanced leagues. At the same time, they start spending more time in the same spaces together, something Akira thinks is a natural consequence of their claim on each other as rivals: first there was his father’s salon, where they meet at least once a week, and now there is Serizawa-sensei’s study group on Mondays, as well.

Akira thinks he could be content with this. When he notices that apparently, things don’t stop there, he thinks he should have seen it coming: as usual, things snowball in unexpected ways where Shindou is concerned.

“Touya,” Waya waves at him across the hall. “We saved you a seat, Shindou will be here in a minute.”

Spending time with Shindou’s group of friends has mysteriously become a thing he does, nowadays.

“We tried to make him throw a party to celebrate his promotion to 2-dan,” Waya says as a way to fill him in on the conversation. “But apparently, his calendar is too busy for this kind of thing! So we’re just going to all get lunch after the event wraps up. If you are lucky, you can claim you are not his friend, and dodge the ramen bullet.”

Akira pauses mid-motion, caught in an absurd compulsion to demand that Waya confirm that he and Shindou are indeed friends. “I’m not sure anyone could dodge the ramen bullet,” he says instead, as he takes the offered seat. “I’m not feeling qualified for that.”

“Speaking of qualifiers,” says Saeki 4-dan. “Did you guys get your schedules for Honinbou prelims yet?”

Akira lets the conversation wash over him — he already knows that this year Shindou has to start again from the first round of qualifiers, and Akira will have to focus on clawing his way back into the Honinbou league after his loss to Serizawa-sensei pushed him down into the group locked in 3rd preliminaries. Instead, he ponders whether being considered friends is something that adds to or detracts from Shindou’s importance to him as a rival. He thinks of himself at thirteen, telling Ashiwara-san that he considers him a friend: a friendly exchange that made it abundantly clear that Akira doesn’t see Ashiwara-san as a serious opponent.

Whatever the answer, he can’t really imagine voluntarily choosing to be less invested in Shindou, Akira thinks as he spots Shindou across the room, heading towards their group with a smile. So his working assumption will have to be that friendship is not something reductive, he decides.

***

The summer is exceptionally hot and humid, which Touya normally avoids by keeping to air-conditioned spaces, but not on Monday evenings. They’ve gotten into the habit of walking to the train station after Serizawa-sensei’s study group, and Akira has repeatedly failed to mention his preference for taxis.

“… And anyway, I think it was a brilliant idea to break his formation without really breaking it, you know?” Shindou makes a stabbing motion through empty air, and Akira hides a half-smile. Shindou’s hands are usually the first to move in response to his strong emotions: Akira has seen it often enough at his matches, or during the heated discussions after. “I think being able to put pressure like this in an official match must be really great for goading the opponent into attacking early.”

Akira clearly sees the connection between what Shindou is saying and what prompted it: to date, the only 9-dan Shindou has faced in an official match was Morishita-sensei. He’s absorbing as much as he can through the study sessions, but they are no substitute for the experience that can be gained only in official matches. “You’ll meet more high-dan players now that you are in the second preliminaries for Judan and Tengen.”

“I know,” Shindou says, his right hand clenching into a fist; if his fan was on him, Akira knows he’d be holding it in a white-knuckled grip. “These games are only going to get better.” He relaxes his hand and grins at Akira. “I was hoping to stick it out with Oza second prelims, though. Catch you in the third one.”

Akira isn’t planning to stand around waiting while Shindou catches up, but the day is too hot to start a shouting match about it. Instead, he gives a small shrug — a move he regrets immediately. It echoes with a ping into his upper back: a reminder of all the hours he spent sitting in seiza today. He tries to discreetly move his shoulders to work out the kink, but the dress shirt limits his range of motion.

“You don’t really go out for breaks, do you?” Shindou says. “You didn’t use to eat lunch during the breaks before I started to drag you along, and I don’t think I’ve seen you do any exercises in match breaks or at study sessions. Did no one teach you that? Watch me.” He pauses on the sidewalk and stretches his arms. Shindou’s clothes sit much looser on him: he has no problem lifting up his elbows over his head and pressing them further back; the hem of his T-shirt doesn’t even lift over his belt.

“I don’t like the heat much,” Touya says, a bit embarrassed to be caught. “It’s too hot to move.”

“Used to the life in your cool, shaded traditional house,” Shindou sighs with exaggeration. “Us mortals have to do with fans, or breaking a sweat.”

Touya has seen him sit still for hours in front of a goban, completely immersed in the game, but Shindou looks happy to be moving, he thinks. This is a residential street, and there aren’t too many people at this hour, so the two of them are standing to the side, Shindou enjoying his spontaneous exercise, and Akira simply looking at him. The physicality of Shindou’s presence in his life takes him by surprise at odd moments like this; he has spent so many years chasing after Shindou’s phantom shadows, reading into game records and jealously collecting crumbs of second-hand information, that Akira’s brain sometimes forgets that Shindou is somebody tethered to the ground just like anyone else. That he is a boy his age, a little shorter than him, with sharp elbows and bony knuckles, and when one takes stock of him, actually smaller than the space he seems to occupy. That he isn’t an elusive apparition, but someone Akira sees easily three times a week.

He probably sees Shindou more regularly than anyone else, Akira thinks with surprise. Now that his parents spend more time abroad than in Japan, their family home is no longer the meeting ground for his father’s study group. And Akira’s schedule is too busy to go to the salon if Shindou isn’t coming.

The realisation makes him smile.

“What? Are you laughing at me?” Shindou stops his calisthenics and hugs his arms around himself defensively. “Not everyone has your shoulders and posture,” he says. His eyes take on a speculative look. “Touya Meijin is the same, though, isn’t he? Is that a family legacy or a family secret?”

How rich, Shindou accusing him of keeping secrets! “Don’t be absurd,” he snaps, forgetting about his earlier reluctance to pick any fights in this heat.

“Now that I think of it, you are taking after your father, aren’t you,” Shindou continues, clearly enthralled by the new subject. “Already so tall and, like… I just hadn’t really thought about it before. I was twelve when I first saw him, and he loomed so much over me I thought he was, like, a cloud dweller! A whole mountain, not just a person. And you’re going to be like that, too!”

“Don’t be absurd,” Akira repeats himself, a little embarrassed. Having grown at his father’s knee, Akira is still not immune to the gravity of his father’s presence, so he understands what Shindou’s talking about.

“Are you going to start wearing traditional clothes too?” Shindou grins at him, a warm appraisal in his eyes sending strange goosebumps across Akira’s skin. “You would certainly pull it off.”

“I’m going to start winning titles,” Akira tells him, now definitely too warm and keen to change the subject. “How about that for family resemblance.”

* * *

“What do you mean, you are not planning to go for the Agon Cup?” Shindou sounds borderline scandalized. “What is it now? You are too good to compete for something that’s not one of the big seven now, is it?”

“Why don’t you try playing in a league first before making any accusations,” Akira snaps. He’s been trying to focus on the position of the stones on the board in front of him, but his mind keeps replaying fragments of his previous games of the day, getting in the way. Trying to read far ahead in this game to keep up with Shindou is taking all of Akira’s concentration.

When he hears no yelling back in response, Akira raises his eyes from over the go board to look at Shindou. His mouth is shut tight so much that the corners of his mouth go a little white, and a wave of guilt washes over Akira.

“Ah, I didn’t — “ Akira starts to apologize, but Shindou doesn’t let him.

“No, I understand, I haven’t earned the right yet,” he says, voice quiet but tension coiling behind his every word. “You made your way back into Honinbou league, and I haven’t cleared any second prelims yet.”

It’s not about the right, Akira thinks, exhausted. It’s never about any of the imaginary rights or wrongs that Shindou perceives, and then withdraws, deciding that he cannot engage until he has crossed some line in the sand that makes it okay for him to do so. Akira has learnt better than to demand any explanations, but it’s so much harder to tap into his patience reserves, and find the best words to articulate his thoughts, when he is so tired that he has to repeatedly check the positions of stones on the board to remind himself which game he is playing.

“I was looking forward to playing you in an official tournament, too,” he says simply, gaze firmly on the board as he carefully attaches his stone to Shindou’s black. “But I don’t think I’d be in good form for hayago. Reaction speed is the first thing to go when I’m chronically exhausted.”

This attachment should prompt only one possible play from any opponent worth their salt, but Shindou’s not rushing to place down any stones. Akira blearily scans the board again — did he miss another reading of the situation?

“Touya,” Shindou says, and Akira feels a cool palm on his forehead. “Touya, you are burning up. When was the last time you slept a full night?”

Akira manages to fight down an absurd urge to close his eyes and rest the weight of his head against that cool, dry hand — but it’s a near thing. “I don’t know,” he says, completely honest. “A week? Two weeks? I had three trains and a flight in the last week alone, and I’m still not through to the Meijin league, but I’m nearly there — “

“Touya, Touya,” Shindou says, probably aiming for soothing but really coming off alarmed. “Let’s get you out of here.”

“But our game,” Akira protests weakly. He is clinging to the certainty that he knows what the next move should be, and wants Shindou to play it, if only to show that Akira hasn’t made a mistake in reading this game.

“Never mind our game, I can reconstruct it for you anytime later,” Shindou says. “Ichikawa-san, we’re leaving!”

Akira takes his time packing his things, carefully tidies up the stones from their board even as Shindou intones ‘Come on, Touya, let’s go, let’s go’ over his shoulder. But Akira doesn’t want to make Ichikawa-san worry needlessly. He is fine, he just needs — he needs —

Having run out of things he can do on autopilot, he follows Shindou out of the go salon. He doesn’t remember if he says goodbye to Kitajima-san and other patrons; he thinks he remembers Shindou telling Ichikawa-san not to worry, that he’ll see Akira home, her shift isn’t over yet, ‘come on, Ichikawa-san, I’m a go pro, I pay taxes, surely I can manage a taxi’, and then Shindou ushers him into a car, and Akira closes his eyes and leans his head against the backrest.

Shindou’s palm presses once again to his forehead and pulls away. Don’t, Akira thinks. The coolness felt nice.

“You’re a pretty demanding patient, aren’t you,” Shindou says with a huff. “Here, lower your head a little if you want the cold hand, you’re too tall for me to keep it up like that forever.”

Wordlessly, gratefully, Akira lets his head slump against Shindou’s shoulder. Shindou shifts a little in his seat, to make the angle more comfortable for both of them, and Akira spends the ride home drifting off, the skin of his cheek pressed against Shindou’s shirt, and the weight of his head largely supported by Shindou’s hand.

When they get out of the car, Akira lets Shindou fuss because then he doesn’t have to come out of his slumber.

“Give me your keys, Touya.”

“Where is your futon, Touya? All of these doors look the same, I can’t remember the layout of this fancy house at all!”

“Touya, I’m not going to take off your pants for you. I’m going to leave the room and see if there is anything in your kitchen or the bathroom, like aspirin or something, and you’ll get out of your suit, take those meds, and then go to bed.”

Shindou leaves the room, and Akira says with as much dignity as he can muster, “No need to mention my pants, I am not an invalid.” He scrapes up the last of his energy to strip, gets into his sleeping clothes, and has put himself under the blanket by the time Shindou comes back.

“Drink this,” Shindou says, with ridiculous amounts of authoritativeness, and hands him some pills and a glass of water. “And sleep.”

Akira doesn’t need Shindou to boss him about that. He is asleep as soon his head hits the pillow.

When Akira wakes up, it’s with a startled feeling that he doesn’t remember setting an alarm, and worse, having no idea what his first appointment of the day is. Judging by the cool light coming through the blinds, it’s still early in the morning. He feels groggy, parched and stiff all over, yet at the same time better than he has in days, and wonders how that happened.

He sees a glass of water within an arm’s reach and forces himself to drink it in small sips instead of downing the whole thing down in three gulps. He remembers being so tired that he couldn’t even focus on their usual game with Shindou —

Shindou! The recollections come back, and Akira hurries out of his room. He doesn’t expect to find Shindou — he probably left after Akira fell asleep — but just in case, he checks every room.

He finds Shindou asleep in the study room, curled next to a game laid out on the go board, with a futon rolled out next to it but only half-occupied. He must have fallen asleep as he was playing through some game records, Akira thinks: only Shindou’s upper body is on the futon, curled up like a shrimp, and his legs are sprawled across the tatami. His cheek is smooshed against the duvet, and there is an unhappy frown on his face.

Is he having a nightmare? Akira watches him and debates internally whether he should wake him up or let him sleep, but Shindou’s frown isn’t smoothing out, so he decides to shake him out of it.

“Shindou?” Akira gently places a hand on Shindou’s shoulder and gives it a soft squeeze. It’s something his mother used to do to him when he was a small child, but not for many years now.

“Sai.”

Akira pulls away his hand as if burnt, his fingers curling into a fist. Shindou’s voice is small, barely audible, and full of so much hurt that Akira feels like he has trespassed on something private.

Which is ridiculous, he tells himself. He is in his own house, and he hasn’t been trying to extort any secrets from Shindou, and in fact, this secret is very much old news. Some days Akira feels like he could nearly tell its exact shape if he just mapped out all the negative space around it. But Shindou’s promise to tell him the full story some day binds Akira more powerfully than any oath to stop looking into it, and he chafes at it but lives with it. And because Akira doesn’t press, Shindou doesn’t guard his secret too vigilantly — because he can’t, or won’t, or simply enjoys tormenting Akira with scraps of information.

The truth of the matter is, this isn’t the first time Akira has seen Shindou speak of Sai of his own volition. But it’s the first time he can see how much Shindou’s secret tastes like bereavement.

Enough of that, he tells himself firmly. He doesn’t know the why, but he can see this is not a good dream. He puts his hand on Shindou’s shoulder again and shakes it more firmly this time. “Wake up, Shindou.”

Shindou opens his eyes with a silent gasp. “Touya?” His eyelashes are wet, Akira notices, and his bitter guilt grows.

“I thought I was passing out on my feet,” Akira says instead, deliberately aiming for levity for his own sake as much as Shindou’s, “and here you are, asleep even before you get into bed.”

Shindou cracks a smile and rubs his eyes with the heel of his hand. “Lost track of time. You were out like a light at like what, seven in the evening?”

That would explain why Akira’s whole body feels like it climbed out of a coffin. Twelve hours of sleep wouldn’t clear the accumulated sleep deficit, but they have revived him enough to realize how much they were needed. “Sorry about yesterday,” he says. “Between fighting to get back to the Honinbou league and my last prelims for Meijin, and all the expo work at the Central Branch the Go Association asked of me, I stretched myself too thin. I was running on fumes, I think.”

“And concealing it well. Not a hair out of place, how was I meant to know?” Shindou tsks at him like a disappointed auntie. “Really, where do you get so much pride? Does that run in the family, too?”

Akira rolls his eyes but lets him carry on like this for a while, and watches as the veil in Shindou’s eyes slowly lifts.

* * *

Akira doesn’t see much of Shindou through September and October. On his end, the third Meijin preliminaries and the Honinbou League keep him plenty busy, but more than that, Shindou has thrown himself into the Agon Cup with so much glee that Akira seriously starts to feel like he is missing out on life.

“… And then Yashiro had to leave, because his parents expected him home by eleven, can you believe it? But that wasn’t a problem, because Nagai-san is cool too. I couldn’t go to sleep right away, so he played another game with me, and in the morning I’ll go again to the Kansai Institute. Yashiro’s sensei has arranged for a few of their pros to play against us.”

“Sounds like you are having fun,” Akira says.

Shindou is spending the week in Osaka, because both he and Yashiro are in the finals of the Agon Cup, but Yashiro’s school exam schedules won’t let him come to Tokyo to train. Shindou, who lost to Kurata and was pushed out of second prelims for Tengen, decided that his time is best spent playing as much hayago as he can until the Agon Cup games conclude. Somehow in all of that, hayago has transformed from a fast-paced way of playing go accessible to anyone into Shindou’s exclusive “thing with Yashiro”, as Akira heard it fondly described over the phone. Akira has to repeatedly remind himself it was his own, very sensible (and much lamented) decision that made him abstain from this tournament.

“It was much easier to train with Yashiro at your house though,” Shindou says, in a tinny speaker voice.

“It’s really unfortunate that his parents are still not supportive of his career,” Akira says, his resentment giving way to gratitude. His own life cannot be more different from Yashiro’s in that regard.

“That, and also you were playing with us too.”

Warmth blooms in Akira’s chest, and washes away most of the last uncharitable thoughts he has been having about the Kansai Institute. It’s not very rational, but Akira’s slowly learning to accept that if there will come a day when he feels completely rational about things concerning Shindou, it hasn’t arrived yet.

“Ah shit,” Shindou gasps on the phone.

“What happened?”

“Akari! I completely forgot!” Shindou makes a frustrated sound. “She had asked me to come play with her high school club team this Thursday, they have some sort of district tournament coming up.” He groans.

The printout of his schedule for the week is on his desk, so it takes Akira only a moment to scan through his commitments for Thursday. “I could cover for you, if you’d like.”

“You?!” Shindou’s voice rises up a few pitches, and Akira holds the phone a little away from his ear. “Why would you even do it? You don’t even know who Akari is.”

Akira, who is still holding the phone receiver at a distance, gives it an incredulous look, which is truly wasted in this situation, and brings it closer to his ear again. “Shindou, of course I know Fujisaki-san. We’ve met.”

There is a pause on the other end of the line. “Are you secretly friends with Akari?” There is more incredulity than suspicion in his voice, which Akira finds immensely annoying.

“No, I’m secretly friends with you,” he snaps back. “Why is it so hard to believe that I want to help?”

“I don’t find it hard to believe you want to help, but this is Akari.” He says it in the same tone someone might say ‘pulling teeth’. “You are a professional go player.”

“So are you,” Akira says reasonably.

“I’ve known her since pre-school, our moms sometimes go grocery shopping together, and I’m certain she still thinks she needs to remind me to be polite to teachers and wash my hands.”

“Sometimes you do need the reminder,” Akira says, now amused.

“You are wrong, by the way.” And before Akira can point out that he was there when Shindou called Kuwabara-sensei Old Man Honinbou within the man’s hearing distance, Shindou continues. “You can’t be my secret friend.”

“No?” Akira holds the phone tighter.

“No, because literally everyone knows about it.”

“Oh,” Akira says.

“We play at your father’s go salon every week, Touya.”

“Mm.”

“You hang out with my friends now, even when I’m not around.”

An overstatement, perhaps, but he takes the point.

“You are apparently hanging out with Akari these days, too.”

Akira rolls his eyes, but he is smiling now. “I can if you tell me the time and the place.”

“You are not allowed to become her new best friend, though.”

“Because that’s you?”

“No, because you are not allowed to hear all the dirt she has on me. Even my mom can’t compete with her.”

“Shindou, I don’t even know where your house is. How would I even meet your mom.”

“Huh. You’re right.” Shindou sounds surprised. “I just didn’t think… Do you want to come? It’s pretty boring.”

“When you’re in Osaka? Probably not,” Touya says with a laugh. But the prospect, for some reason, thrills him. “I'd rather wait for you to be in the room when the embarrassing stories are told.”

“NEVERMIND! You are never seeing anyone who knew me before you did.” Shindou’s shouting again, but Akira refuses to let him have the last word.

“I’ll tell Fujisaki-san you said hi, then,” he says, confident, and hangs up.

Fujisaki, unlike Shindou, clearly remembers that they had met.

“Touya Akira!” she exclaims.

“Fujisaki-san,” Akira says, feeling a little embarrassed. His appearance at Haze Middle School must have been more memorable than he realised. “Good to see you.”

“Argh, Hikaru is the worst communicator!” she says, flailing. “When he said he asked a friend to cover for him, I didn’t think it would be you.”

“Has he asked someone else before?” Akira asks, wondering. Waya, perhaps? Isumi-san?

“Of course not!” she says with tearful laughter. “We are a high school go club of seven people with a budget of fifty yen and a shoestring. We cannot afford to pay pros for tutoring sessions!”

“I’m not charging you for this class,”Akira says. He has guessed as much, that Shindou was doing this pro bono. “I’m asking for the same rate as Shindou, no more,” he says with a smile. “Please treat me as his friend.”

She gives him a dubious look. “You are Touya Akira 3-dan, and the club room is full of teenagers who likely have newspaper clippings with your face.”

“And Shindou’s?” Akira asks, genuinely curious.

Fujisaki laughs and points at the corkboard in the room, where among kifu with go problems and other scribbled notes there are few photographs of the go club members - including one where they are clustered around Shindou. His grin is sheepish: Shindou looks happy to be pulled into the group but as if unsure he ought to be in the picture. Quite different from any memories Akira has of Kaio, and much better for that.

Akira offers to play Fujisaki first, but she demurs, stating that they should not hold him for long, and they end up arranging boards for simultaneous games with all club members. They are not even insei levels, and Akira doesn’t expect them to be, but there is a lively joy about how they all play, and he finds the experience very relaxing and enjoyable. When they go through the games at the end, they have no trouble keeping up with his explanations, and a few of them have interesting takes of their own to share.

“Shindou’s influence?” he asks, glancing at Fujisaki, and she brightens up. The younger club members are clearing the tables, and a few of them are clearly gearing up to ask Akira something — for an autograph, he presumes — but haven’t worked up the courage yet. Akira takes a sip of tea out of a cup that Fujisaki offered him earlier, and pretends he doesn’t notice the commotion.

“It’s amazing how much everyone picks up from him!” Fujisaki says in response to his earlier question. “Hikaru is a surprisingly good teacher — though if you had told me that a few years ago, I’d have laughed in your face.”

Akira’s curiosity gets the best of him. “He used to be bad at shidougo?” Akira has observed several of Shindou’s teaching games: he does the job professionally at the events, and is a particular hit with old men. He cannot guess if in the past his track record with shidougo was as inexplicably sketchy as his regular game record.

“I’ve no idea if he was good or bad, because he simply refused to teach me!” she huffs, real annoyance in her face. “He is so focused on going ahead that he forgets to look behind.”

A shiver goes through Akira at these words, and he forcefully dismisses it. Even if a day comes when he will try to do the same to Akira, Akira simply wouldn’t let him. As Shindou moves ahead at one turn, Akira will make sure to take over at the next one.

Some of these thoughts must have shown on his face, because Fujisaki catches herself and offers an apologetic smile. “Sorry, you must think I’m talking badly behind Hikaru’s back. I used to get mad at him for throwing himself into go and refusing to wait for me to catch up, but that was before I understood how quickly he’d be getting good at it.”

Akira badly wants to ask more about how exactly — at what point, at which velocity — Shindou threw himself into the game so hard it changed the gravity of Akira’s world. “I wasn’t thinking that,” he says instead. “I know you — you are Shindou’s old friend.”

Fujisaki laughs and crosses her arms. “Right? We went through elementary and middle school together, and I have never seen him be interested in any lessons before or after he discovered go.”

“That’s not uncommon among the go pros,” he says, diplomatic. “We tend to be single-minded, somewhat.”

“I think I’ve only seen him seek out a school teacher once,” Fujisaki says. “But I suspect that, too, was about go.”

“A school club advisor?”

“No, our adviser was a Chemistry teacher. Hikaru had some heated conversations with a History teacher, actually.”

“Was it about Shuusaku, by any chance?” Akira asks, trying to keep his voice nonchalant.

“Shuusaku the famous go player?” Fujisaki shakes her head. “It wasn’t that. He was asking for books on someone from the Heian era. Some politician? Or courtier? He wouldn’t explain when I asked, of course. And the only reason I had asked was because the name sounded a little like mine… I don’t remember what it was now exactly, only that it had the same Fuji for wisteria.”

Shindou’s interest in the Heian era doesn’t really connect with his fixation on Shuusaku, but Akira knows in his bones that these things must be connected. That one day he might hear how. Until then — he files the knowledge away in his mind, where it burns like a coal in his pocket.

Breaking him out of this train of thought, one of the students says, “Will you come again, sensei?”

“I might,” he says, and adds as an afterthought, “Unless Shindou decides otherwise.”

“Don’t let Hikaru bully you,” Fujisaki tells him, in exactly the same tone she was telling off the younger students earlier. “You do what you want. And leave an autograph for the club before you go, please.”

* * *

“Do you think someone new is in charge of facilities this year? I can’t believe the Go Institute was dragged into this century which has tinsel and Christmas trees and apparently a Christmas party.” Honda-san has to shout to be heard, but to be fair, so does everyone else.

Akira is squished into a seat behind a table with five other people and what feels like more knees and elbows than should be biologically possible. At least ten of those belong to Shindou, who is warm and high-spirited and pressing him with his whole body into the wall on the other side as he’s waving at someone to come join them. It’s very crowded and loud, and if asked just a year ago, Akira would have said he wouldn’t be caught dead in something similar, and yet here he is. Overly warm, keenly aware of every bit of Shindou’s body pressed into him, a drink in his hand with ice melting faster than he can drink it, and actually enjoying it.

It’s Nase, with several drink bottles in her hands. “Here you go,” she says, putting them on the table, and then grins at the group and points to a person coming to join them as well. “Have you all met Jin Ae?”

Akira shakes his head, and so do a few others around the table - including Shindou, he notices. “Nice to meet you,” he says, which probably goes unheard, because Shindou says over his head, “Are you a Korean pro?”

Nase says, “Honestly, Shindou!” and Jin Ae raises an eyebrow. “Hello to you too, Shindou 3-dan. I’m an insei with the Kansai Ki-in, actually.” There is a little bit of Kansai-ben in her Japanese, otherwise flawless. “Or used to be. My dad changed jobs and the family moved to Tokyo, so I’ll be transferring here, as an insei.”

“Among other things,” Nase says, with a wink. Akira watches, fascinated, as Nase reaches out a hand to hold Jin Ae’s, their fingers loosely interlaced. He turns to see if Shindou has noticed, but Shindou looks mortified by his mistake and all caught up in apologies. “I just got excited about the prospect of playing more against the Koreans. They are strong players. But how come I didn’t see you when I was staying with Yashiro? I met so many folks at the Kansai Institute!”

She gently snorts. “I think you were too busy playing through the ranks of all Osaka-based pros when you weren’t in the tournament matches. Good games, though.”

“It was loads of fun,” Shindou says with a huge grin.

“Still came second,” Waya says.

“Are you still bitter I kicked you out right after the preliminaries?” Shindou asks, and steals a bite off Waya’s plate. “I’m not going to apologise for that.”

“Then maybe you should apologise for stealing my food,” Waya says, but without much heat. Akira wonders if, because they were insei classmates, and passed the pro exam in the same year, Waya is trying to keep a friendly competition with Shindou, a tally of wins and losses, and feels a brief twinge of pity for Waya.

“I watched the matches live, in Kyoto,” Jin Ae says, catching Shindou’s attention again. “Quickplay isn’t my thing, but a whole room of people playing hayago just has this zany energy.”

“Right? It was great fun. Pity I lost to Kurata in the finals, I felt I was going to nail it.”

“That’s because you lost control,” Akira says, twisting in his seat so that he can poke Shindou in the ribs. “That’s your problem with hayago. You think reading deep and fast will carry you through, but it’s not a fool-proof strategy. Against players of a certain level, it won’t be insight but control that gives you the edge.”

Shindou yelps and catches Akira’s hand in a grip to stop him from poking. “Yeah? You know better, don’t you? I didn’t see you there winning the game!”

Before Akira can loudly enumerate again all the reasons why he sat out the Agon Cup, or distract Shindou by pointing out all the title tournaments he could be joining in if he wasn’t gallivanting around — Waya boos loudly and shoves two fresh drinks towards them.

“Here, kids, play nice.”

“I am perfectly nice,” snaps Akira, still looking at Shindou.

“I did warn you,” Nase says to Jin Ae, who just smirks.

Akira huffs and shuffles closer to the wall, nursing his drink in his hand. Shindou carries on with the conversation, and Akira wonders if he forgot that he still has Akira’s wrist in his grip. He doesn’t mention it either.

Chapter Text

Interviewer: And the year after, of course, was the year of big changes.

Shindou: You mean when they scrapped the ooteai matches?

Interviewer: Yes. In April that year the Go Institute introduced the new promotion system that replaced ranking matches. What was the feeling at the time?

Shindou: Well, everyone was sure talking about it non-stop. I couldn’t go into Kawai-san’s salon or meet Kitajima-san without getting an earful about it.

Interviewer: These are… your friends, I presume?

Shindou: Kawai-san is — hi, Kawai-san! — but it would be very uh, inaccurate to say Kitajima-san likes me very much (laughs). He feels it would be disloyal to Touya, or something.

Interviewer: Right. Well, when the reforms were announced, it wasn’t only pros but the whole community of fans and amateur players who were abuzz with speculation. Some people were worried that it would slow down the growth of younger pros significantly, because of the sheer number of victories in official matches required to get to the next dan. Others said the opposite, that awarding immediate promotion to higher dan to players who qualified for major title leagues would be a welcome change, because it would open up avenues for jumping through the ranks… What did you make of it?

Shindou: Honestly? I didn’t think about it too much, once I figured out it meant more games against stronger players. In my first two years as a pro, I didn’t get to play stronger dan in ooteai at all: it was only by progressing through title preliminaries that I got to play higher dan pros in formal matches.

Interviewer: Are you saying you didn’t think it was your chance to catch up to Touya in big leaps?

Shindou: I would be trying to catch up to Touya anyway, reforms or no reforms.

Interviewer: You were made 3-dan just before the new system went live, right? And you won the Young Lions Tournament that May. The gap between you was steadily getting smaller.

Shindou: Dan is just a number. If Touya had managed to hold on to the Honinbou league all the way into April, he would have automatically been promoted to 7-dan. The way it worked out, he had to settle for 5-dan in April — which also meant he was no longer eligible for the Young Lions that year, of course.

Interviewer: Were you looking forward to a rematch?

Shindou: Always. (laughs) But there were other opportunities. My progress through preliminaries finally picked up pace, and with Touya pushed back down out of the Honinbou league, we were finally in the same bracket for title matches. That was something worth getting excited about.

 

Reproduced from Gekkan Go World, issue #12, 2004

“For a smart person, Waya can be such an airhead sometimes,” Shindou says apropos of nothing, as he cleans the stones off one of the playing boards in Akira’s house. “Did you know, he asked me today if I remembered there were more than two players in the Honinbou prelims?”

Akira is contemplating the game laid out on the second goban, which they were discussing before they slipped into playing their own game, so he says absently, “There are 36 players total in the third preliminaries alone.”

“Do you think he’s still bitter about his loss in the Young Lions finals? It was a good game. I think he’s really improved.”

Distracted from the stone formation enough to hear what Shindou is actually saying, Akira has to admit Waya was likely commenting on the amount of time Shindou spends at Akira’s house as they play each other. Has he been monopolising Shindou’s time? They do have a good reason, though. “Did you miss a study session at his flat?” he asks. Their calendars get busier the more they progress in various leagues, so Akira wonders if Shindou has skipped some get-togethers to make time for more games together. Akira definitely has. “Or — do you want to invite him to come here?”

“I asked him once, but you know how he gets. He thinks about Morishita-sensei’s feelings more than about his own progression sometimes.”

Akira smiles. “Maybe we should invite Morishita-sensei over first.”

Shindou gives an exaggerated shudder. “No way. With your father back in the house, I’m not staying to watch this one-sided rivalry. Too much pressure, Morishita-sensei!”

With a gentle sound, the door to the room slides open, and Akira’s mother peeks in. “Dinner’s ready, Shindou-san, Akira-san. Your father is wrapping up his call with Korea, and joining us as well.”

“Thank you, we’ll be there in a minute,” says Akira. He throws another glance at the laid out game and wonders if they’ll have a chance to go back to it after dinner. “You are staying the night, right? Let’s replay that one again.”

Shindou hesitates. “Is that a good idea? Your parents have only come back from Beijing this week. Maybe they want to have some time with you without strangers in the house.”

The idea of Shindou being a stranger in his house is downright laughable, so Akira doesn’t even bother to acknowledge that. “Do you think anything can stop my father from doing what he wants?” he says, with a small smile. “Or make him do what he doesn’t want.”

“Like father, like son,” grumbles Shindou. “No reasoning with either of you.”

“I’m perfectly reasonable,” Akira says. Their bickering carries them all the way to the dinner table, but they both fall silent when Akira’s father joins them.

“Ko Yeong-ha sends his greetings,” his father says. His face is impassive, but Akira recognizes the twinkle in his eye that says he knows exactly the effect the words would have — and right on cue, Shindou’s face sours. “He regrets that neither of you were able to join the Hokuto Cup this year.” They started rotating the host country, which was a great publicity success, but made arrangements trickier.

“He sure didn’t look too upset when he gave that interview about the Korean team’s victory,” Shindou says. His genuine sorrow at being unable to secure an official victory over Ko to date has a tendency to manifest in occasional pettiness, which Akira privately thinks is an improvement over heart-wrenching tears. “What is he these days, 7-dan? I’ll catch up to him soon. Or Touya will.”

His father gives Akira a level look over the bowl of rice in his hands. “I heard from Ogata-sensei that you brushed off all suggestions from the Go Institute to consider a promotion for your time in the Honinbou league before April.”

Akira tenses up: he has been expecting this to come up eventually, just didn’t know when. Last month he declined the Institute’s suggestion to apply for a promotion to 7-dan on the basis of his recent time in the Honinbou league. His father didn’t ask him about this over the phone — Akira assumed it was because he would prefer an in-depth discussion once he was back in the country. He doesn’t think his father would disapprove, but he would be within his rights to question Akira’s motivations. Yet now that the subject has finally come up, his father doesn’t sound remotely interested in that: there isn’t anything in his words besides a simple acknowledgement of Akira’s decision.

His father, once again, trusts that Akira knows what he’s doing. The understanding makes Akira sit a little bit straighter, suffused with the solid sense of support he has always felt from his father.

“That’s because Touya knows he doesn’t need that,” Shindou says authoritatively, startling Akira. “Soon enough, they’ll have no option but to promote us to 7-dan because we’ll enter the Honinbou league this year. Yeah!”

Akira is too charmed at the thought that Shindou has just tried to defend him to his father; he isn’t sure anyone has ever attempted that before, both because there has never been any need, and because too many people are simply too intimidated by Touya Kouyo to argue with him. Too charmed, in fact, to point out to Shindou that Akira might get there faster if he qualifies for the Kisei league next month.

Touya Kouyo gives a thoughtful nod. “Your Juudan tournament,” he says next, addressing Shindou. “Have you thought about how you’ll face Ogata-kun?”

Shindou blinks at him. “There is still a whole year until the title matches, assuming I’ll get there. The tournament has just started.”

Conventional wisdom says not to ignore your present opponent by thinking too much about a future one, but his father isn't interested in dispensing conventional wisdom. He stirs the miso soup at the bottom of his cup with a steady hand, and tells Shindou, “You cannot avoid thinking about Ogata-kun if you are serious about going for the title. Or avoid playing him.”

Shindou squirms in his seat but holds Touya Kouyo’s gaze. Akira looks between the two of them, wondering what kind of history his father is privy to there. Something Sai-related, no doubt. Akira knows that Shindou isn’t very comfortable with Ogata-sensei, but he has simply accepted it as one of Shindou’s idiosyncrasies. In retrospect, he should have given it more thought: after all, it was Shindou’s habit to make friends with all sorts of strange adult men, not to studiously avoid them.

Akira tells himself to be patient, and swallows the questions that rise to the tip of this tongue. If this is related to Sai, he will get to hear about it — Shindou said so. He believes Shindou. He just doesn’t like it.

“You are taking the Honinbou matches more seriously, even if you are further away from challenging there,” his father continues. “Why is that?”

Shindou mumbles something unintelligible into his meal. His father waits him out, so in the end, there is nothing for Shindou to do than to say, more clearly, “Honinbou’s different. And Touya’s in the same bracket as me.”

Neither Akira nor his father miss the fact that these are two separate reasons; neither of them comments on it. Touya Kouyo nods. “As time goes by, you will meet in title matches more often. It will become more familiar. Do you think you’ll need to play each other less then?”

Akira catches Shindou’s eyes across the table, and they both shake their heads. His father nods, considering his point made. “Think about what is different, then,” he says.

The rest of the conversation is smooth, peppered with anecdotes from his parents’ travels. The Hokuto Сup this year was held in Beijing, where his father’s current contract is, so they talk about that, and the international sensation that was, apparently, Waya vs Le Ping match. Akira’s sure they will hear about it in full detail the next time they hang out with Shindou’s insei friends. Maybe that’s why Waya is bitter about Shindou spending most of his time here.

When they return back to the study room, Shindou exhales and lets his whole body slump. “I’m relieved you don’t take after your father in everything,” he says. “If you were in the business of having cryptic conversations with me, we wouldn’t get very far.”

“Between us two, you have that one covered,” Akira says, not bothering to hide how he feels.

Shindou gives him a wide-eyed, betrayed look. “I thought we didn’t talk about that. It’s like, one of our unspoken rules.”

“How unspoken can it be,” says Touya, incredulous, “if you literally told me yourself that you won’t explain yourself, until some indefinite time in the future?”

“I tell you things, sometimes,” Shindou says, stubborn.

“Some cryptic things.”

“And we get along,” he says, a little pleading. “Without it, I mean. Don’t we?”

“We do,” says Akira, suddenly too tired for this. “But it’s always on your terms, Shindou. Because with you, it’s either that, or nothing.”

Shindou stares at him in silence. Akira resolutely ignores his kicked puppy look and gestures for him to sit down and nigiri. Shindou has secrets, yes; they do get along, also yes. But, Akira thinks, if Akira can be expected to play along on Shindou’s terms, then Shindou can very well continue keeping his secrets knowing how Akira feels about it.

Akira wakes up in the middle of the night, a headache drumming against his temples, and an uneasy feeling in his heart that he can trace back to the silence that hung over his last game with Shindou.

The clock shows seven minutes past three. Unable to go back to sleep right away, Akira gets out of bed and walks to the kitchen for a glass of water. He expects the house to be dark and fast asleep, but there is a light on in the study room. Is it his father? He has a habit of contemplating in front of a goban when he cannot fall asleep, especially after his travels, but Beijing and Tokyo are only one hour apart…

Before he can slide open the door, he hears Shindou’s voice filter through, which stops him in his tracks. “We didn’t get very far.”

His father hums in response. “The game could still develop in many different ways from here. I see now why you didn’t want to show me Sai’s last game. It doesn’t have much of him in it.”

“I can see it, though,” Shindou says, his voice cracking. “I can.”

“I believe you,” Touya Kouyo says. “Do you want to finish playing it?”

Akira’s whole being seizes up in a powerful protest he doesn’t understand. It’s only when Shindou says, “No, I don’t think so,” and there is a soft sound of stones being swept off the board, that Akira notices he has clenched his fists so tightly his nails are digging into his skin.

Why is Shindou talking so openly about Sai with his father, when he wouldn’t talk to Akira? When he promised he would tell Akira one day?

Akira stands in the dark behind the closed door, caught between shame over eavesdropping and anger, unable to move. The silence stretches on, like a sticky nightmare.

“Touya-sensei,” Shindou starts off, and then doesn’t continue for another while, until Akira feels ready to burst through the door and demand that Shindou just spit it out already. “Touya-sensei, how come — you never asked for more details, after you learnt that Sai would never play you again?”

“Because that answered what I most wanted to know,” his father answered in his usual measured tone. “Because what I want above all, selfishly, is to play that person again.”

“Right,” says Shindou, his tone clearly miserable. “I mean, who wouldn’t.”

Another silence, broken only by the soft clacking of stones against the kaya wood. The knot of feelings inside Akira grows more complicated.

“I don’t know about everyone else,” his father continues, eventually. “Personally, I wanted to play him, because I feel that in the whole world, I have not met anyone else who could get me as close to the hand of god as Sai. Is that the same for you?”

“Me?” Shindou’s voice is full of bewilderment. “What’s that got to do with me?”

His father doesn’t answer this question, but Akira understands. Akira knows Touya Kouyo doesn’t answer a question if he believes the student can get to the answer on their own.

His father is talking about Akira — Akira knows that even if Shindou doesn’t. What his father refuses to spell out is that Sai could be to him what Akira is to Shindou. Which in turn is an invitation for Shindou to consider that Akira isn’t trying to find Sai for the same reason that others are — and for once, Akira feels too mortified to be understood by his father so wholly.

Akira desperately wants to understand the way this person, who remains in the shadows, shapes and influences Shindou. But if it takes his father to explain that to Shindou, Akira thinks he will cry. He doesn’t need an intervention out of pity. He needs Shindou to trust him.

“I understand selfishness, I guess,” Shindou says, a note of defensiveness in his voice.

“Your own, probably,” his father agrees. “Don’t assume you know every man’s selfishness, though. You might be surprised.”

“I don’t know what you mean, Touya-sensei.”

“Your game has improved.” In the dark, Akira is torn between relief and resignation; he feels wrung out by the conversation he wasn’t even a part of.

Shindou, however, sounds all too happy to let his father change the subject. “I win against Touya every two matches out of five these days! The third is always a toss. Here, let me show you something cool that happened in a game we played the other week.. ”

Akira withdraws as quietly as he possibly can; in his room, he lies still, sleep completely gone, going over every word of the conversation. Every time he mentally replays Shindou’s ‘Who wouldn’t?’, Akira feels a dull stab, like an ache from an old splinter, and he worries at it, and worries at it.

* * *

“Your dad is the most embarrassing person on the planet! How did I not know this about Touya-sensei? How does The Weekly Go not report this about Touya-sensei?!”

Shindou is lying on his back on the tatami in Akira’s room like a beached whale, or a starfish, and the only thing that keeps Akira from sliding down from his seat against the wall is the thought that if he lets himself relax, then he might fall asleep right there, and that would be the end of today. And Akira doesn’t want today to end.

So he pokes Shindou’s shin with one socked foot and says, “Who knows, maybe they tried. Maybe that article had to be taken down at the last minute, under ominous circumstances.”

Shindou rises up just enough to prop himself on one elbow and peers at Touya. “Now I know you are joking, because you are a good son, but I genuinely believe if there was a person to blackmail The Weekly Go, it would be your father.” He flops back with a groan. “He has no shame!”

Akira grins and pokes him with the foot again. “It wasn’t that bad. I really enjoyed myself.”

“You would,” Shindou groans. “I was so embarrassed during that dinner that I forgot we were actually there to celebrate.”

“My father thinks it’s important to celebrate achievements,” Akira says, struggling to tamp down his smile. “Making 7-dan on your seventeenth birthday surely counts as one.”

“Yeah, but why bring my mom into it? Scratch that — why send Ogata-san, in his ridiculous tiny little red sports car, to pick my mom up on the world’s shortest notice possible and bring her to a swanky uptown restaurant? I thought I’d have a heart attack, or she would!”

At that, Akira can no longer suppress a grin. “You mom did, ah, seem a little overwhelmed. Ogata-san can have that effect on people.”

Shindou mutters something unflattering about Ogata-san. Akira can make out ‘married’ and ‘old flirt’ in it, and gives Shindou a serene smile in response. Shindou might have twitched and fidgeted his way throughout the dinner, but flustered though she was, his mom seemed really pleased to be invited to celebrate her son’s birthday with his ‘work friends’, as Ogata-san apparently introduced himself. “You should have told me it was Akira-kun’s family,” Shindou-san said on arrival, shaking their hands, which earned Akira a raised eyebrow from Ogata-san.

His parents were genuinely interested in getting to meet Shindou's mother. His father started off with congratulations to both Shindou and Akira for making the Honinbou league, but once it became clear that Shindou-san was embarrassed by not understanding much about her son’s professional life, Akira’s mother gently took over the conversation, steering it towards more general subjects. It was a very warm, lively evening.

“I was happy you could come, on such short notice, too,” his father said to Shindou-san at the end of the dinner. “It was selfish of us, but as we’re in the country only for a few days this time around, we were happy you could indulge us.” And then a taxi picked his parents up to drive them straight to Narita, for a flight to Taipei. Ogata-san offered to drive Shindou-san back home, and Akira and Shindou took the train back to Akira’s house.

Overall, the dinner was a success, Akira feels. Even if it is somewhat his fault that Shindou’s mom got roped into it last minute — his father hadn’t known it was Shindou’s birthday until Akira let this slip, to which his father reacted by making it a two-family celebration… and no matter what bone Shindou has to pick with Ogata-san, the man has been an honorary member of the Touya household since before Akira was born.

Shindou groans again, but doesn’t make a move to stand up.

“Too full?” Akira says, without much sympathy, and leans a bit more comfortably against the wall.

“Of regrets,” Shindou says, insincerely. “The food was great, though.” A thought must occur to Shindou, because he raises himself on an elbow again to shoot Akira another accusatory look. “You realise my mom will want to respond in kind, don’t you,” he says. “She might want to try to invite your parents to our house, even.”

“Would it be so bad?”

“Am I the only one who finds it weird?” Shindou mutters, looking into the middle distance. “Have we, as a species, moved past being embarrassed by our parents?”

“Your mom is lovely,” Akira says. “And you know my father.”

Shindou sighs in defeat, and weakly kicks Touya back in his shin. The silence in the room feels peaceful and sleepy.

“How are you feeling?” Akira asks. “We’re both in Honinbou league now.”

Shindou grins. “It feels like we’re finally on a level field. That promotion was sweet. Eat that, Kitajima-san! What are you gonna say now that we’re both 7-dan?”

Because he is relaxed, and because it’s in the past now, Akira confesses, “I was worried a little, before.”

“About Kitajima-san? He is an awful nag, and he didn’t need to rub it in my face that since you got into Kisei league in June, I was miles behind you again in terms of rank, but what can you do, throw the old man out of the salon?”

“No, I was worried about you. I didn’t know if you would decide that having a 4-dan difference was another of your” — Akira makes a vague hand gesture, but comes up short for words — “reasons to disappear.” He is surprised to hear his voice wobble a little on the last word.

“Touya,” Shindou says, sitting upright, but Akira presses on.

“That one day I will come to Serizawa’s class, or the salon, and find out you are not there because you decided, in the most obstinate one-sided fashion possible, that I could not play you until you bridged that distance.”

“Touya,” Shindou’s repeats, more urgent, but Akira isn’t done yet.

“Because it’s not like I get early notices for these kinds of things, do I? They always come when I least expect it: when you started forfeiting your matches as a shin shodan, or when I was announced the first board for the Hokuto Cup, and you wouldn’t play me until you made the cut as well, how was I to know this was going to be any different? It’s not like I could ask you!” Akira’s voice cracks. “Because god forbid we ever talk about your secrets! When you can just punish yourself and me by refusing to play!”

“Touya, Touya.” Shindou scrambles to stand up, and the next thing Akira becomes aware of is Shindou’s hands on his face, thumbs gently stroking his cheeks. Akira’s trembling a little under the touch, and even more so — under the old tension that has taken over his body. “Touya, I’m here. I’m not going to disappear. I’m definitely not going to disappear because Kitajima-san was mean to me!”

Akira tries to take a deep breath, but the sound comes out too wet. “But I don’t know that,” he says, quietly, stubbornly. “How am I ever supposed to know that?”

Shindou bites his lip, because they both know there is truth in Akira’s words. Shindou scoots even closer, his hands now bracing Akira’s head so that they look straight at each other, faces only a hand’s width apart. Akira can clearly see the flecks of green in Shindou’s eyes, wide open, a sheen of sweat on his temples, and a bit of split skin on his bottom lip.

“Touya,” Shindou starts again. “I’m not going to disappear on you. I will get mad sometimes — often, actually — and stomp out. But — so will you, you know? Because it’s a simple truth, it’s like, in the rule book somewhere, that we will always find ways to come back again and have another game, or another fight, or — anything. Touya, I thought you knew that.“ Shindou is looking for something in Akira’s eyes, and he must not find it there, because he takes a big breath and continues, a strange smile on his face. “Touya, you know me. Better than anyone. You’ve definitely seen me at my worst, and you know it for a fact I am too much of a coward. I know for a fact that drives you mad.”

“That’s not what drives me mad,” mutters Akira.”It’s not knowing that does.”

“That’s because I’m a coward, Touya. I’m not telling you things not because I enjoy driving you nuts” — Akira snorts at that, and Shindou’s smile grows a bit less fragile — “but because I’m a coward. Selfishly, I keep them to myself, because I’m scared of what will change if I do tell you. Because I’d like to be able to come back — for another game, for another fight — again and again. Because I know how much it sucks, to want more, and to never ever get it again.”

Shindou’s voice falls, the weight of the grief in it palpable. Dots connect in Akira’s mind, and he exhales. “Because Sai has disappeared on you. That’s how you know.”

“That’s how I know,” Shindou says, without dodging. The admission is so simple for something so big, thinks Akira in bewilderment. “That’s why I wouldn’t do the same to you.”

Akira holds the pause, trying to sort through his thoughts. “I believe you,” he settles on saying. “Believing you has never been the issue.”

Shindou swallows. “That’s why I’m afraid of what you would think, once you hear the whole story.”

Try me, Akira thinks, but doesn’t say anything out loud. It’s not an explanation, not by a long shot, but it’s more than Shindou has ever said about what keeps him back, and that helps loosen the knot around Akira’s chest.

“I suppose if you haven’t bolted under the stream of criticism from Kitajima-san, that’s a testament to your resolution,” he says. It’s not a very inspired joke, but Shindou grins, relieved, knowing it for the peace offering it is.

“That, and also the fact that there is simply no longer possible for you to walk around for what, half a year?” — “Five months,” Akira corrects him, — “at four dans above me.”

“What if it’s four titles?” Akira says, just to needle him.

“Keep dreaming,” Shindou scoffs. “What am I, chopped liver?”

* * *

This year, the younger pros knew to look forward to December festivities at the Go Institute, and made it their business to take it to the next level. Nase, who has passed the pro exam this year, and Jin Ae have taken it on as their mission to make the turn of the year as memorable as they could: there are crackers, competitions for all sorts of things, a Secret Santa exchange, a betting pool on who is going to win the Christmas Sweater contest, and threats of bodily harm if on the designated day anyone fails to show up in one.

“We’re not even Westerners,” Ochi tries to register his protest on multiple occasions, but is promptly overruled every time. But even Ochi diligently shows up in a reindeer sweater of his own with twinkling LED lights on it — to get the prize for the best one, as he informs everyone. He definitely throws a spanner in the works of betting pool runners.

“He could have looked a little more cheerful, though,” Shindou says. “I don’t know why he keeps glowering at me, I don’t think I even played against him recently.”

“I think he’s actually looking at Yashiro,” Akira says, pointing behind Shindou’s back. The gathering brings together new pros from the Kansai Institute and the Central branch, and Yashiro is here as well. Jin Ae is currently trying to goad him into a karaoke sing-off, and they are caught up in choosing a song they both like. “He did win the Agon Cup this year, and got his 7-dan promotion as well.” Ochi, still a 4-dan, is prone to taking these kinds of things personally.

Shindou pouts. “That’s because I was too busy to participate this year. I couldn’t have dropped third preliminaries for Ouza if I wanted to challenge you for the title next year. And Juudan matches were hard, too. I barely recovered from beating Serizawa-sensei, and then Kurata nearly wiped the floor with me. I couldn’t make time for hayago at all. Kinda get why you didn’t do the Agon last year, actually.”

“I am so sorry your life is full of such hardships,” says Waya insincerely. “Would you like to talk to me about that? Let me check my busy, busy schedule and see if I can find some time to commiserate with you two.”

“I’m sure you’ll always find time for friends, Waya,” Isumi-san says, draping an arm around Waya’s shoulders. Very soft-spoken and calm, Isumi 5-dan has an admirable ability to diffuse tension by simply refusing to engage in it in the most sincere and disarming way possible. “Congratulations on your title, Touya Oza,” he says, nodding at Akira.

“Thank you,” Akira says. “Though I think if you start referring to everyone by their rank, the quality of the conversation might suffer somewhat.”

Shindou snorts. “Modest, Touya.”

“We’ll just have to work hard next year to make you stand out less,” Isumi-san says, all smiles. Waya says, “Ouch,” in tones of utter admiration. Akira raises his glass at both of them.

“That’s next year, though!” Nase comes up to them, a big bowl of snacks in her hands. “This has been a good year, thank you everyone for the hard work, now let’s please not talk about anything more professional or competitive than the best way to score at karaoke until the end of the evening!”

“Bring it on!” Shindou and Waya shout in unison. Akira shares a look of unspoken understanding with Isumi-san, and they are all roped into drawing lots to determine their turn at karaoke.

It’s utter chaos, and Akira’s ears promise to be ringing well into the next day. He kind of loves this.

Chapter Text

Interviewer: And this last year… How would you describe last year, actually?

Shindou: It was a good one.

Interviewer: (holds a pause, but no elaboration comes). Well, on the one hand, your accomplishments speak for themselves, but don’t you think you gave us all another scare, about half a year ago?

Shindou: Did I? (surprised) Well, there was no need to be worried. It all worked out in the end.

Reproduced from Gekkan Go World, issue #12, 2004

In February, Shindou wins the right to challenge Ogata-san for the Juudan title. He studies for the upcoming matches against him with utmost seriousness and looks firmly on track to give it his best shot. Which is why it comes as a shock to Akira when he picks up on the fact that when Shindou is scheduled to play Ogata-san in Yuugen no Ma, it will be the first game they will have ever played.

“What do you mean you’ve never played him?” Akira splutters. “I thought you meant you had no official record against him, which is bad enough, but — no informal games either? Didn’t you, like, go to some events together for the Go Institute?” Ogata-san definitely mentioned something of this sort, but it was a while ago.

“I have never played against Ogata-san,” Shindou says, enunciating every word. It’s the way he says ‘I’ that makes Akira shut up and abandon this line of inquiry.

“And I know you don’t like him very much, but surely, in preparation for the matches it would be good for you two to play a few games? Get a measure of each other that’s a bit more up to date than old kifu.” Akira points to the stack of printouts and newspapers scattered across the room. “Do you want me to invite him over? Organise a study session?”

Shindou mutters something that sounds halfway between ‘over my dead body’ and ‘be my guest’, which Akira takes as a yes on a technicality and resolves to give Ogata-san a call.

To Akira’s surprise, Ogata-san proves even more uncooperative. He refuses to explain his motivations over the phone, but invites Akira for breakfast on a day when they are both free.

“You know I’m not going to tell you things about Shindou that you can discover for yourself,” says Akira over his toast, with more than a little bit of pride. “You could just play him and find out everything you need.”

Ogata-san smiles enigmatically and blows out a puff of tobacco smoke before taking a sip of his espresso. “I wouldn’t dream of pumping you for information,” he says. “I know where your loyalties lie, these days.”

Akira refuses to be goaded and simply pours himself more tea. “What did you want to talk about, then? You said this was about Shindou.”

“It is and it isn’t.” Ogata-san takes another drag and shakes the ashes into the ashtray. “I wanted to invite you to contemplate something else, first — a mythos, if you will.”

“A mythos,” Akira repeats. If Shindou were here, he thinks, he’d have definitely offered a comment that ‘Ogata-san is weird, Touya, doesn’t everyone see he is a big weirdo in a big white suit’, but Shindou isn’t here, and Akira has known Ogata-san his whole life. He knows Ogata-san is an intelligent man, and he trusts his professional intuition.

“Imagine — and there is no need to get hung up on hard facts here, just indulge me — that the greatest go player of all time has, by some miracle, manifested in our lifetime,” Ogata says, voice dreamy but his gaze very, very sharp. “Let’s not ask who. Let’s ask why.”

“Why?” Akira says, intrigued. “That’s an unusual question. Most people are preoccupied with ‘who’ when they think about Sai.”

Ogata-san gives him a slightly disappointed look over the rim of his glasses. “No need to name names, Akira-kun. Let’s keep to concepts. Follow an idea.” Akira nods and takes a small bite of his food to stave off his questions, and Ogata-san takes it as his cue to continue. “Many people have contemplated the ‘who’ question, and I don’t think anyone can confidently claim they have gotten to the answer. That includes myself, of course.”

Akira nods again.

“But what if we stop speculating who or what can possibly play on a level that can be described as the spirit of Shuusaku Honinbou come back to life, and instead ask ourselves why? Surely the answer can’t be as simple as ‘he came back to master modern joseki’.” Without any visible hurry to continue, Ogata-san finishes his tiny little coffee cup. “What do you think, Akira-kun?”

“That does sound a bit… superficial,” Akira agrees tentatively.

“And a bit random. Why now? Why not a hundred years into the future? The rules of the game are constantly being re-examined, because our understanding of the game keeps evolving. The value of komi has changed several times already, and will likely continue to do so. We’ve both just seen a massive reform in Japan that impacts the progression of young players — with time, the top-heavy structure, with old players who have been sitting at 9-dan, deteriorating with age, will erode under a new wave of players with very different strengths. And that’s even before we take into account things like artificial intelligence. You’ve met Yang Hai of China, right? A fascinating fellow, and there will be more like him. These guys will succeed — I believe, in our lifetime, even — in building a machine that can outplay a professional go player. So, I repeat my question, why now?”

Akira thinks about it again, genuinely absorbed by the question. “Some people might say it’s to play the strongest masters of today. Like my father.”

“Not a bad guess, Akira-kun. They say that to truly push the limits of their ability, the strongest players need a perfect foil, a player as strong as themselves — a rival. Many have nurtured the ambition to be Touya Kouyo’s rival, but somehow, no one can claim the title.”

Akira smiles. “My father’s enthusiasm for the game is not easily contained.”

Ogata-san laughs. “That’s a very filial way to say that Touya Kouyo’s one greedy bastard. Indeed! He won everything there is to win as a Japanese pro, and then decided that sandbox is too small for him. He retires, which is anything but a career-ending move. Now he is living and playing across all of Asia, and no venue is too big or too small for him. He happily bounces from the seediest parlours to seeded seats in international championships.” Abruptly, Ogata-san leans across the table, all humour gone from his face. “Now tell me, is this the behaviour of someone who thinks anyone in the world is his rival, or is your father someone who has found his rival — had his life-changing encounter — and is now chasing that spirit across the four corners of the world?”

Akira thinks back to the flashes of the conversation he overheard between his father and Shindou, and his heart squeezes painfully.

Ogata-san doesn’t seem to be expecting an answer from him, because he sits back in his chair again and lights another cigarette. “That’s kind of painful to consider for anyone, isn’t it. Even more so if it’s someone you care about, like your father. I’ve thought about it for a long time. And I’ve come to the conclusion that Touya-sensei’s story is actually a happy one.”

“How so?”

“Think, again, on the level of mythos. On a scale larger than one person’s story. If you were the spirit of the eternal master of the game, and you came back to play the master of a whole generation, would elevating one single person be your goal? Or would giving him an endless hunger, a striving to outgrow all possible boxes, have a larger, longer-lasting impact? An untethered Touya Kouyo, unleashed on the global go-playing community, absorbing every trick in the book and disseminating what he learns as he plays as widely as possible: isn’t this a smarter move? If you were the eternal master, wouldn’t your bigger goal be to advance the game, to make sure it touches the lives of more people, more powerfully?”

“I — I suppose so,” Akira says. He wonders if his father looks at it the same way, and if he will ever talk to Akira about it. Or is this the kind of thing he discusses with Shindou, perhaps? “How does Shindou factor into this theory, then?”

“I’m sure you know the answer to that one already, Akira-kun. After all, you are the person who has played Shindou the most — or should I say, the one who played Shindou the first? What did he tell you, when you played the first game against him?”

Akira doesn’t need to be prodded to recall that day in detail. A twelve-year-old Shindou, stumbling into his father’s go salon, excited to play someone his age. Telling Akira he was probably a pretty good player, and not knowing how to nigiri. Holding the stones like a person who had picked them up for the first time, and laying them down in a gameplay that Akira recognized, humiliated, as a teaching game. He remembers every move of that game; he is not likely to forget the day when his life changed course.

“It’s possible to look back on that first meeting and suppose it happened so that I would have a rival,“ he says, thinking out loud. It rings true, because, overnight, Akira lost his composure and gained a drive that propelled him forward faster and harder than he would have gone on his own. Even if their mutual chase has been anything but straightforward, there is no doubt in Akira’s heart that Shindou is that person without whom Akira’s game can never reach its full height or complexity.

But Ogata-san’s logic, unconventional as it might be, is also compelling. Considering the footprint of mythos, huh… Akira tries to look past his personal gravity well that is his rivalry with Shindou and look at its impact from a bird’s eye level. “Is this about finding a disciple? A go player who doesn’t think about letting others grow though the game is a poor player; it would make sense that this eternal spirit would be interested in passing on the knowledge.”

“Very good, Akira-kun,” Ogata-san nods, as if he expected nothing else. “Now tell me, why Shindou? And not, for example, yourself?”

For someone who spent his formative years obsessively thinking about Shindou, Akira finds this a hard angle to contemplate. Shindou just — is. An inexplicable force of nature, a ball of contradictions, somebody who has taken him and the whole world of go by storm — ah. “Shindou is disruptive,” Akira says. “I always knew I was going to play go. I can’t imagine being born in my family and not wanting to. But Shindou stumbled into our world like a man possessed,” — Akira refuses to be distracted by a knowing smile on Ogata-san’s face — ”and that sent such ripples across the go world that simply someone good — someone who has always been good, like me — could have never done.” He thinks of Fujisaki-san’s go club, which merrily continues despite any lack of tradition, and which might be fertile ground for something bigger in future; of Kawaii-san and other unexpected friends Shindou has made by brushing against them on a random tangent; of himself, who could have mechanically taken the pro test at age twelve and never known the thrill of the chase.

This is bigger than his rivalry with Shindou, Akira thinks, but not in a way that takes anything away from it. Instead, it puts them in a context of a wider story, one which is older than them, one that will outlive them. His heart aches, but it’s a good kind of pain; he doesn’t want to talk about it with Ogata-san. He wants to think about it, and when the time comes, he wants to talk to Shindou about it.

That reminds him. “Where do your matches come into this, Ogata-san? Why won’t you play him before the challenger matches?”

“Like a dog with a bone, aren’t you.” Ogata-san huffs and signs the waiter for a refill of his coffee. “I was hoping you’d have forgotten this detail. It’s nothing flattering, I’m afraid. Let’s say I’m still holding out for that magical moment of having my life transformed. I hate to think that I had my chance, but was too drunk to appreciate it.”

He must be referring to a game he played against Shindou, which Shindou himself doesn’t count. If Ogata-san had played Shindou at all in the last several years, he would know that Shindou’s games are very good. Some of his games are so brilliant they make Akira want to yell about them from the rooftops, but they are solidly Shindou’s. Not Sai’s. But something about the melancholy look in Ogata-san’s eyes stops him from saying it.

Choosing his words carefully, Akira says, “As you keep saying, we are talking ideas, not facts. Contemplating a mythos. And I don’t have the answers any more than you do. But if I have learnt one thing from playing Shindou, it’s that he has a habit of turning whatever ideas you have about him on their head.”

“You might very well be right,” Ogata-san acknowledges. “Time will tell, I suppose.”

* * *

March and April come and go like a summer storm. Akira challenges Kurata 9-dan for the Kisei title but loses in the seventh game; four out of seven is a more gruelling format than he expected. He doesn’t let this get to him, and focuses on advancing steadily in the Meijin league, his eyes firmly set on getting into the challenger seat by the end of summer. Shindou enters the main tournament for Oza and wins the Juudan title from Ogata-san in the fourth match out of five. It is his first title and his promotion to 8-dan in one go. Akira is fiercely proud of him.

But all of the above, somehow, pales in comparison with when he and Shindou come head-to-head about who gets to challenge Kuwabara for the Honinbou title in May.

It’s the eve of the decisive match between then, and they are spending it like they spent every evening leading up to that: playing against each other, going over the matches, replaying them again in infinite variations. They are in Shindou’s room, for a change: Shindou-san has heard (from Fujisaki and not her own son, as it turns out) that their big match is tomorrow, and insisted they both come for dinner instead of ‘playing until they pass out from hunger’. Shindou still likes to grumble about embarrassing parents, but the novelty has worn off so long ago that no one, not even his sensitive mother, is paying him any mind.

“You know what I’d like, for a change?” Shindou asks, staring out of the window. It’s not yet so late that they need to wrap up for the day, and there is still time for Akira to decide whether he takes a taxi home today or early morning the next day. But they are both still pleasantly full after the meal, and the game they have just finished playing was really satisfying in a way that makes Akira want to savour it, laying it out on the board by himself on a rainy day.

He doesn’t think Shindou actually wants him to answer his question, so he obligingly says, “What?”

“I’d like to play a game — a really good game — on May 5 this year.”

The answer is so unexpected that Akira blinks a few times, trying to divine any context, but nothing comes up. “Is this about your loss at the Hokuto Cup to Ko Yeong-ha from a few years back?” he ventures. That’s the only match he can think of that fell on the date.

“What? Of course not. Why would I even waste my time thinking about that bastard,” Shindou scoffs, and then immediately backtracks. “Well, I mean… In a way, it is about that loss, too. It’s just — I’d like to do something that honours Sai’s game on the day, instead of losing a high-profile match and then bitterly crying about my shortcomings.”

Akira stills at the mention of Sai, his thoughts racing. It’s hard to know what to say when it’s Shindou’s secret, but it’s also Shindou bringing this up. Only Shindou can put him in a situation like this, he thinks with equal measure of aggravation and fondness, where by trusting Akira with more information Shindou binds him more firmly to the impossibility of pushing for more.

“Does it have to be on May 5?” Akira asks, trying to keep his voice gentle and non-committal. “You have played many really good games, and will play so many more, and I don’t think their date will be of lasting significance — unlike their records.”

Shindou gives him an owlish look, as if kind encouragement was the last thing he expected to receive. “I suppose,” he says, unsure. “I guess it’s not…very logical. You are right. It shouldn’t matter.”

“Except you want it anyway,” Akira says.

“I do,” Shindou says, longing clear in his voice. He is back to looking outside his window. There is something fragile in the lines of his body, from the neckline to the hunched slope of his shoulders, that pulls at Akira’s own heartstrings and makes him wish he was the kind of person who could offer full-body hugs. It is the shape of Shindou’s old grief, and Akira recognizes it, and wonders if there is anything he would ever be able to do to help him through it. Not if Shindou doesn’t let him, he supposes.

“It’s not long until the schedule of title matches is released. It may well be that one of them will be on May the fifth.” It’s the end of Golden Week, but the Institute often has to schedule matches on public holidays: the higher the rank of the players involved, the harder it is to find a day that suits everyone. With title matches having a yearly cadence, there simply isn’t much room to manoeuvre.

“Well, if it is, and it’s you playing against Old Man Kuwabara, I’ll just have to take my chances next year,” Shindou says, stretching his limbs as if trying to physically shake off his funk. “It’s not like I will stop trying to get the Honinbou title in the future.”

“Neither will I,” Akira says. This might be about Shuusaku as much as the date, but Shindou had better remember Akira is here as well.

Not even a month later, Shindou gets his wish. Akira’s half-moku loss to Shindou gives him the right to challenge Kuwabara for his title in the best of seven, and moreover, the first game is scheduled for the fifth of May.

Akira comes to the Institute as early as he can, to watch the game in person. When he gets to the room with the TV set showing a live feed from Yuugen no Ma, Ogata-san (no longer Juudan, but still Gosei and soon-to-be Tengen if he wins another match) is already there, and the room is thick with smoke. He nods in greeting and takes a chair opposite him.

“Kuwabara’s afraid,” Ogata-san says, his voice strangely flat.

“Do you think Shindou is going to win, then?” Akira asks. Ogata-san has good intuition.

“Quite the opposite,” he says, and Akira’s heart falls a little. “I’ve challenged him before. That old man is not above using every dirty trick in the book on a good day. He is good at psyching out his opponents, making them believe he is feeling threatened by them. I know what he looks like then. But before today, I’ve never seen him so plainly afraid.” Ogata takes a long drag, and Akira notices a slight tremor in his fingertips. “I saw him talk to Shindou this morning. I didn’t hear what they spoke about, but I can tell you this. He is going for the jugular.”

“Shindou is a strong player,” Akira says, even as his heart constricts with irrational fear. “He will play his best.”

“This year, his best might not be enough — because Kuwabara’s tricks won’t work on him twice. The old man knows it, so he is going to play this year for what it is — in all likelihood, his last year to hold on to the title. Kuwabara-sensei is not someone like your father, who can pivot after a defeat in a way that makes him a better player,” Ogata says with a sardonic smile.

Ogata-san’s words turn out to be prophetic: Shindou loses the game catastrophically. And he loses every game after that. The finals are concluded on the fourth game, which ends in chuuban with Shindou’s resignation. Shindou refuses to tell Akira what Kuwabara told him before their first match, or otherwise explain his disastrous gameplay.

One morning, however, Akira finds him on his doorstep with a light suitcase.

“Don’t freak out, Touya,” he says instead of a greeting. There is a frenetic energy about him that’s in stark contrast to the apathetic silence of the last few days. “I came to return the keys.”

With a distant roar in his ears, Akira feels his composure unravel at the mere sight of keys to his own house in Shindou’s outstretched hand. “What’s the meaning of this,” he says, aiming for calm and collected. A wave of hysteria rises in him. What is this, a break-up? They weren’t even together, not like that, not yet, he thinks, despairing. Surely Shindou cannot be dumping him and disappearing into the night like this is a prime time melodrama.

“Your house keys,” repeats Shindou, as if this explains anything. “Your dad called me. I’m leaving for Seoul in five hours.”

“Is my dad in on your disappearance act, this time around?” Akira asks, not at all placated.

Shindou gives him a demonstratively loud sigh. “Would I be taking a taxi to your house just to dramatically announce I’m dropping off the face of the planet? I told you I wouldn’t do that. Have some faith in me. But if I’m out of the country for a few months, I thought I’d return your spare keys.”

“What about the Oza matches,” Akira says. “Are you forfeiting those? No longer interested in challenging me for the title?” He has been looking forward to that for about as long as he held the title.

“Of course I am. I’ve spoken to the Institute,” Shindou says, unfazed. “I will have to prioritise if I want to change things up for myself without setting my record back like I did after the pro exam. I’m dropping out of the Gosei league this year, but we’ll schedule my Oza matches so that I can fly in to attend the three remaining ones. And if I qualify as a challenger — well, I don’t think it should be a problem then. I don’t think my ‘summer camp’ in Korea will last that long.” Shindou actually makes air quotes with his finger around the words, but Akira refuses to smile. “They already made me promise to do a bunch of things once I’m back, and allowed this trip only on the condition that I don’t dishonour them at the LG Cup.”

“You seem to have given it quite a bit of thought,” Akira admits with reluctance. If there is bitterness in him that all of this takes him by surprise, it is because Shindou didn’t deem it important to include him in this discussion.

Shindou nods, face serious. “I wanted to show you in a way that would make you believe me,” he says. “This funk — it is sliding out of control, and I don’t want it to get the best of me in a year that could be the best year yet. I wanted to show you that I can be trusted to manage myself and make the right arrangements, so I didn’t say anything until I had a solid plan.”

Akira tries to swallow around a lump in his throat, fails. “Keep the keys,” he says, after he’s sure his voice wouldn’t crack. “If you are likely to fly in for a day at a time to catch your Oza matches, I want you to be able to come here, no matter the time of day. If you want to. These are your copies, anyway.”

“They are?” Shindou says, and it’s ridiculous how much genuine surprise there is in his voice. “I didn’t know,” he says. He stops trying to jingle the keys in Akira’s general direction, and hastily puts them back in his jeans pocket. The tips of his ears turn red.

“No take backs,” he says, with a dopey grin. “Not even when I annoy you.”

“You annoy me every day,” Akira says, heartfelt. “Safe travels.”

* * *

Akira’s schedule for the summer is no less busy than it was for any other summer before, but with Shindou away, he is bewildered to find all these free hours that are at his disposal. He schedules in more Korean and Chinese lessons, takes to showing up regularly at a few different study groups, plays his way through the Meijin league, and yet the only days he feels are not weirdly oversized and loose around him are those he’s playing Shindou over the phone or on the internet.

Shindou doesn’t win the LG Cup, but doesn’t seem troubled by it. He has played against what feels like half of the foreign go professionals, with mixed results, but his trademark enthusiasm and joy for the game is back. He also plays against Akira’s father daily, because he’s staying with his parents. “These Korean and Chinese professionals, man! I can see why your dad decided that he’s outgrown the Nihon Ki-in.” (Muffled laughter, low tones of his father’s voice in the background.) “He wants it to go on the record that he never said any such thing. I’m not the press, Touya-sensei! He does say that if you can find the time, you should come visit for a few days. Your mom misses you.”

“Yeah?” Akira says, helpless to hold back the smile. “Is that all the reasons why I should come? I’m a very busy person, you know that about me.”

“Well I think you should come visit, too! I’ll show you the best noodle shops in Seoul. And I’ve got positively addicted to tteokbokki. We gotta upgrade your spice tolerance, build it up muscle by muscle!”

Akira makes a non-committal noise.

“Well, if that doesn’t convince you, I think I can get Ko Yeong-ha to send you a personalised invitation as well. Would that be good enough for you?”

“Well, if you put it like that,” Akira jokes. “Maybe I should come after all. See if he can hold on to his LG Cup then..”

One of the less expected consequences of Shindou’s ‘summer camp’ in Korea has been this friendly rapport he suddenly has developed with Ko Yeong-ha. Akira thought Shindou would enjoy his opportunity to reconnect to Hon Su-yeon, and he trusted his own family would do their best to help Shindou recover his footing, but before too long, it was ‘Ko said this’ and ‘Ko said that’. Shindou, as usual, was really unhelpful in providing any explanations for his change of heart. ‘Not much of a toerag after all’ was the best Akira could get out of him. According to his father, Ko sought Shindou out soon after his arrival into the country with a printout of Shindou’s Honinbou challenger games, they had a long conversation, and have been playing frequently since then. Akira is trying his level best not to feel replaced. It helps that Shindou calls him every so often to tell him all about everything.

“He speaks some Japanese now, can you believe it?” Shindou said over one of their earlier phone conversations. “Makes Su-yeon practice with him, apparently.”

“You could learn Korean or Chinese, too,” Akira offered back. “I could practise with you, if you wanted to. Would be good for me too.”

“As if we don’t have better things to do together,” Shindou answered. Akira said something vaguely rude in response, to cover up the fact that he misses Shindou like a limb.

He misses him now, too, Akira knows. He keeps smiling into his phone receiver as Shindou continues to prattle on about spicy noodles or something of the sort. He would have loved to come and visit him, Akira thinks, but with only a few league matches separating him from a challenger’s seat for Meijin, there isn’t enough time.

“Anyway, how are things back home? Did you win everything without me to keep you in check?”

“Well, let me see,” Akira takes a pause, pretending to consider his answer seriously. “Your grandfather insisted on playing me with only a nine-stone handicap — did you give him this idea, by the way? — while claiming this wasn’t to be a teaching game. Fujisaki-san’s club won the district round of their highschool championship, but they got eliminated in the first round of the city-wide preliminaries.”

“I thought they would go a little further than that, to be honest,” Shindou says. “My pride as a teacher is hurt. Don’t tell Akari that. But do tell my grandpa, if he starts demanding ridiculous things and showing you his certificates from a billion years ago, that it’s simply embarrassing at his age.”

“I will,” lies Akira easily. He will absolutely let Shindou’s grandfather ask whatever he wants in their next game.

“I’m actually thinking of returning in time for the last Oza tournament match at the end of August,” Shindou says, unexpectedly.

“Already?!” Akira says, startled.

“That sounds like you didn’t expect me until next year at least,” Shindou grumbles, which Akira supposes he deserved. “I spoke to the Go Institute this week. Wanted to thank them for allowing me this. I think I’m ready to come back.”

“You got what you needed out of this?” Akira asks, even though he thinks he knows the answer.

“I got something out of it, for sure,” Shindou says. “And sometimes, that’s all you need, to be able to go to the next place.”

Akira has Shindou’s return marked in his calendar, but on the actual day, he cannot be there. On short notice, he is sent to Sapporo to help at the opening ceremony sponsored by a major donor of the Go Institute, and even if there are no delays, Akira’s plane will get him home at least five hours after Shindou lands at Narita.

There is a burning urgency in him to see Shindou. He doesn’t seem to know if it’s new, or if it has always been there and has chosen to clamour for attention now. Now, when he has a time and a date for their reunion, after months of having too much time to think in a space that has suddenly become too empty.

Akira doesn’t have a plan, per se. He just wants the distance to be behind him, and then — and then he’ll figure it out, he thinks.

Of course, that’s when Hokkaido weather decides to show its temper with unseasonably early snow. Of all the days, thinks Akira, overwhelmed by the futility of waiting in the airplane cabin, strapped into his seat for over an hour as the plane is being de-iced. He worries that the flight will be cancelled and he’ll be forced to stay here for another night.

Realistically, he knows that if Shindou said he’s coming back for good, he won’t turn around and fly back to Korea only because Akira was not there on his return. He knows that. It makes no difference whatsoever.

Between the snow in Hokkaido and the Tokyo traffic, it takes Akira an additional three hours to get home. It dawns on him in the taxi, halfway between Narita and home, that there is no reason why Shindou has to be in his house, and not his own. The possibility somehow simply didn’t occur to him before.

At last, he is home. The sight of Shindou’s bright sneakers — a new pair, too, judging by the newly garish look of them — left by the entrance gives Akira a strangely triumphant feeling. “I’m home,” he calls out. “Are you back, Shindou?”

It’s nearly two a.m., so Akira is not too surprised when no one answers. He finds Shindou on the floor of the guest room, fast asleep next to the futon he has taken out of the wardrobe, but hasn’t rolled out.

“Now this is nostalgic,” Akira says, smiling helplessly. He sets the futon up properly, and tries to move Shindou so that most of him is on it rather than sprawled next to it. It takes him quite a while: once Shindou falls asleep, he doesn’t wake easily, but his body inside the oversized clothes feels boneless and about as easy to get a hold of as spilled liquid. Akira doesn’t want to do anything roughly, yet he cannot think of an easy way to grab enough of Shindou at a time to move him. Eventually, he settles for putting his hands around Shindou’s hips, doing his best not to pay too much attention to the warm skin above the belt of his jeans, and moves Shindou’s legs first. Then he gets his hands under Shindou’s shoulders and gently shifts his upper body. Shindou’s wrists, bony and familiar where they poke out of the sleeves, look like an artful arrangement over the bed sheets.

“I need to go to bed, too,” Akira whispers, and proceeds not to move an inch. Sitting in a dark room, knowing he is not alone in the house, knowing that Shindou will be around when he wakes up — the feeling settles over him like a cozy blanket, and before he knows it, Akira is asleep, too.

He wakes up some time later, with a terrible crick in his neck - that’s on him for falling asleep in the middle of his own guest room. But it’s not the tatami under his cheek — his face is on something warm, and he sees blue denim from the corner of his eye. He feels a hand stroking his head, very slowly and carefully, as if anything rougher would tangle his hair.

“It doesn’t tangle easily,” he mumbles, still half-asleep. The hand stills for a second, and then resumes its motion.

“Good morning to you too, Touya,” Shindou says. His voice is a bit raspy, the way it gets in the mornings. “It’s still very early, so you don’t need to move if you don’t want to.”

Akira doesn’t want to move, which he indicates by burrowing his face more firmly against the warm, denim-clad leg. He hears Shindou yawn, which makes him yawn in turn. “M’sorry,” he says. “Still tired. Long night.”

“That’s okay. There is still plenty of time for both of us to get some more sleep. I just wanted to say something first,” Shindou says, gently combing through Akira’s hair. “It’s not super important, but I’ve been wanting to tell you this for a while.”

Still more asleep than awake, Akira has the fleeting thought that this had better not be the Sai conversation. He wants to be a little more awake for that one, if that’s alright by everyone.

“I just completely love you, okay,” Shindou continues, as if he is talking about something truly mundane, like how his airport transfer was. “You don’t have to do anything about it. I just wanted you to know. In case this helps you stop expecting me to drop off the face of the planet, or some crazy shit like that.”

Akira sits up so quickly that he nearly clocks Shindou in the jaw, and gives himself a headrush. “What do you mean, I don’t have to do anything about it?” he demands.

Shindou looks at him, a little sheepish around his eyes, and if Akira’s eyes are not fooling him, a little red around the tips of his ears. His expression, however, is so soft and open like Akira’s never seen it. “Like I said,” he says, “I just wanted you to know. Nothing needs to change.”

“But what if I want it to change?” Akira says, with palpable belligerence in his voice. “What kind of non-committal, one-sided decision-making is this?” A classic Shindou decision, his brain supplies. “How did you even come up with the idea that I could just sit on this information and do nothing?”

“I don’t know if you are trying to pick a fight with me or proposition me,” Shindou says in a plaintive voice.

“Yes,” says Akira, puts his hands around Shindou’s now too-warm cheeks, and leans in for a kiss.

* * *

Pieces have fallen into place, and Akira feels on top of the world. He feels invincible. When it’s not even mid-November yet, and he has just won his fourth match against Zama Meijin, Akira finds himself vaguely surprised to be crowned Touya Meijin. The interviewers collectively lose their minds, and want his comments on what feels like every move he made in his last game. If Akira had known it would be his definitive match, he would have paid more attention, he thinks.

“Everyone is so excited that we only had to wait three years to have a Touya Meijin again.” Kosemura says, pointing a microphone to his face. “And you’ve made a 9-dan in the first four years of your career — this has to be the world record or something. You can probably take a break to rest on your laurels at least until next year!”

Akira’s knee-jerk reaction to this is ‘Are you joking?’ But this is not his first interview, so he says instead, “A title holder is only as good as their ability to defend it. The games for the Oza title are still underway.”

His first match to defend his Oza title is next week. It is against Shindou. On that day, they wake up together and leave Akira’s house together, headed for the Go Institute. It is a start of a day like many others before it, but the day itself feels brand new and shiny, like a newly-minted coin. It’s the kind of day that has a rhythm: a low hum that only permeates the air when one is playing in Yuugen no Ma. He and Shindou have played there before, but never against one another — that in itself feels momentous. A new stage. Akira has never been happier in his life, and he is mildly concerned that it is written all over his face. Looking at Shindou, he knows it’s not just him. Wherever this road leads them, they are on it together.

They play what feels like their best game so far. Akira wins, barely; they both look half-drunk by the end of the game, and struggle to string sentences together to answer the barrage of questions that their colleagues are dying to ask them.

“What was that, Touya?” Waya yells at him. “That was a Shindou move, the turnaround point peep, a Shindou move if I ever saw one!”

“It was not something I have seen you play before,” Ogata-san says, twirling a packet of cigarettes in his hands.

“It was a Shindou move,” Akira says, and grins. “It absolutely was. I couldn’t let him think he was the only one who could pull them off.”

That’s what makes it to the newspaper that week: his grinning face, and ‘Oza Defence: Touya Meijin Oza Snatches His First Victory and His Rival’s Signature Move.’

“That’s not what you said,” Shindou grumbles when he gets hold of that issue of The Weekly Go. “They made it sound like you stole something from me. You cannot steal what’s literally right there, if you have the skill to pick it up.”

“I guess not many have succeeded, before,” Akira flashes him a grin, still incandescent with happiness.

“Don’t get used to it,” Shindou says, sets the newspaper aside and tackles him back into bed.

Akira thinks he could get used to it, to this euphoria that has nothing to do with the outcome of their games, but the sheer fact of them. Between the two of them, there will be as many defeats as there will be victories, but it’s this knowledge that they still have at least three more matches of the Oza games next months, and then Honinbou play-offs again next year, and then Akira will make it his point to knock the Juudan title out of Shindou’s hands, and sometimes he will succeed and sometimes he won’t, but the cycle will not end. They will continue playing, and with every match, there will be a little more of Shindou in Akira’s game, and a little more of Akira’s in Shindou’s, and the thought makes him feel like the richest person in the world.

* * *

Shindou is trying to speak across the table, but the karaoke is so loud that anything short of a professionally projected voice has no hope of being heard.

“What did you say, Shindou?” Waya yells back. Waya has enviable lung capacity, which seems to improve from one Christmas party to the next. “It’d better be that the next round of drinks is on you, mister Two-Titles-In-the-Same-Year! Your purse can’t be too thin.”

“I was actually saying, if you guys don’t want to lose to Ochi in karaoke again, we could probably move this somewhere quieter. We could play some games at ours.”

“What’s ‘ours’?” Waya shouts back at him. “Are you inviting us all to Touya’s? Does Touya know about that? Touya, you know you can argue with Shindou. That’s still allowed.”

“Honestly, Waya,” Nase says, in her most expert exasperated tones.

“He doesn’t need my permission to invite anyone to the house,” Akira says, serene. “On account of Shindou lives there as well. Unless you mean my father?”

Waya gapes at him. It’s an unattractive sight, but it makes Akira’s heart sing with petty glee.

“Honestly, Waya,” Shindou says in what is a passable imitation of Nase. “Touya-sensei is still out of the country more than he is home. Don’t you read The Weekly Go anymore?”

“Since when is this a thing?” Waya demands to know. “Not like, I’m massively surprised or anything, but I thought we were friends, Shindou. I thought you would tell me!”

“I’m telling you now,” Shindou says, visibly entertained. “What did you expect, an announcement in the paper? The Weekly Go doesn’t care about me that much. Maybe when I’m at Touya-sensei’s level.”

Waya mutters something that gets swallowed by the noise of the crowd. Next to him, Isumi-san offers him a conciliatory pat on the back, and clearly mouthes ‘Congratulations’ in Akira’s direction.

“I think today might not be the day for having people over,” Shindou says straight into Akira’s ear. “I think today might be about letting Waya have his smelling salts.”

Akira shrugs. It was Shindou’s idea, originally, he is happy either way. “There will be more days. Or more Christmas parties,” he says, and feels Shindou squeeze his hand back in response.

Chapter Text

Interviewer: So what does the future hold for you, you think? Did you set yourself any goals that you’d like to share with us?

Shindou: Goals, you say? I’ll continue doing what I’ve been doing. One game at a time, I’ll play to connect the past to the future.

 

Reproduced from Gekkan Go World, issue #12, 2004

Akira’s first Shin Shodan match against a new pro is actually against someone he knows. Jin Ae, who passed the pro exam last summer, has a superb reading of the game, but a rougher grip on the flow than she needs to be able to take advantage of her insights. Their game is genuinely fun, and Akira is looking forward to seeing what becomes of her.

Once he is done with the match and the interviews, he finds Shindou waiting for him downstairs by the vending machines.

“Sorry I couldn’t catch your game in person,” he says, and offers him a can of warm tea. He already has both of their jackets collected. “Got caught up finishing my teaching appointment, and then got accosted by another journalist on the way here. How many outlets are interested in writing about go these days?” he grumbles good-naturedly. “Surely it was just one back when we started.”

“Kawaii-san tells me you didn’t even know of The Weekly Go before the summer of your pro exam. And yet you sound just like your grandfather,” Akira says, accepting the drink. “You’ve only played professionally for five years, too early to act like a retired old man.”

Shindou chuckles, but doesn’t argue further. “Walk with me?” he says. He doesn’t wait for an answer, grabbing Akira’s elbow and steering him outside. It’s a beautiful evening in January, not too cold, but with snow coming down in lazy white flakes. It lends everything a sense of festivity, without turning into wet mush the instant it reaches the ground.

“Do you know where we’re going?” Akira asks. He will follow, of course, but is already resigned that they will be inevitably getting lost and soaked through: Shindou has many strong points, but being able to find his way, with a map or without, is not one of them.

“It doesn’t matter,” Shindou presses on. “We’ll get where we’re going anyway.”

“What —”

“Just trust me, Touya,” Shindou says, giving his hand a squeeze. He is resolutely looking ahead, a small smile on his face. “I’m going to tell you a story. Many years ago, in the Heian capital of Japan, there was a royal instructor of go named Fujiwara no Sai. There are no records of him — I’ve looked — but he existed, and he was the best go player that has ever lived…”