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In the empty elevator, Hikaru finally releases the yawn he’s been holding back for an hour. His spine cracks as he stretches. That stupid match against Kida, third dan, was tiresome rather than hard. He could swear 3rd dans were more talented back when he was one.
He pulls out his phone. What do you think about dinner?
Akira’s reply comes before the elevator has even reached the ground floor. I think it’s essential to maintain regular meals and healthy nutrition every day.
Hikaru snorts. He should have known better than to phrase anything in the normal way if he wanted a normal answer.
A second message comes in. That being said, we still have various leftovers. No need to shop. Come home.
Striding through the lobby of the Go Association, Hikaru smiles as he pockets his phone. Well, then. He’ll just go home.
A girl is lurking near the empty reception of the place, half-heartedly flicking through the brochures lying out there that advertise go lessons and list rules for insei entry examinations. Hikaru spares her an idle glance. She must be ten or eleven. Probably waiting for some children’s go club, he thinks.
She looks up suddenly and stares straight at him. Her gaze sticks to him like glue as he walks through the lobby, first towards her and then past her. Maybe she’s a fan? Hikaru is used to those by now and gives autographs and interviews with grace, but this naked staring makes him so uncomfortable that he picks up his pace. Shortly before he reaches the exit, the little girl suddenly springs into action. "Sumimasen! Excuse me! Shin... Shindo-san?"
He sighs inwardly. Okay. He'll give one autograph and he'll smile while he does it, he tells himself. There's no need to snark at little girls who are excited about go, just because he's tired. Putting a grin on his face, he turns around. "Yes?"
She's staring again. "Shindo-san... It's you."
He'll lose patience quickly if this is all she does. "Can I help you?" he says politely. "Are you here for one of the children's study groups?"
She shakes her head. "I'm just looking around."
"Okay," he says. Somewhat lamely, he adds: "I'll just...-" He gestures towards the exit.
"Can I play against you?" she asks.
He chuckles. "Sure. I give shido-go on Tuesdays. There's actually a children's group that...-"
"No, I mean, can I play against you? Please?" She glances at the empty space to her right and bites her lip. "Now?"
Hikaru sighs. "Right now is a little... I'm on my way home. Maybe if you talk to the reception? They'll have my schedule...-"
"Please!" she says, and for some reason she sounds almost frantic. She glances at the space to her right again. "You won't regret it. Please. It's important."
Hikaru tries not to laugh. Important? A shido-go match against a little girl? He wants to rub his temples. Actually, he wants to go home and eat his leftovers and take a bath, that's what he wants. He looks at the girl again and opens his mouth to tell her no again. Akira would say yes. "Okay," he says, and promptly wants to kick himself. "Fine. Let's go in there."
He's spent three decades going in and out of this building that he considers his second home, so he leads the girl not into the public match room but into a smaller study room that is unused at this hour. If it looks dodgy for a forty-six year old man to seclude himself with an eleven-year-old girl, well, Hikaru Shindo has never made the smartest decisions outside of a match of go. Wanting to get this over with quickly, he chooses one of the go-bans and settles himself on the cushion. "How many ishi handicap would you like?" he asks politely. "Have you been playing for long?"
"Tagaisen, please," she says.
He blinks. He can't have heard that right. Maybe she doesn't know what the word means. "Listen," he says carefully, "I'm... uh... a very experienced player." One of the best two players in this country. "It would probably be...-"
"Tagaisen," she says again.
Hikaru gapes at her for a minute and then shrugs. At least he'll get home quickly, after all.
He opens his go-ke to do nigiri. She guesses incorrectly, so she'll get white.
He opens the fuseki with 17-15.
She counters.
He places another stone in another corner.
Hikaru can tell quickly that she's got at least some experience. Very new players tend to play their first stones closely together, but she immediately opens up multiple battlegrounds all over the board, even including the sides where gaining territoriy is more difficult. When Hikaru is about to play his eighth stone, he pauses. Something about the arrangement on the board looks famliar. He's played this match before, he thinks, but he can't remember when. He's played so many thousands of matches by now that it's hard to remember them all, especially this early in the game. It's probably just a coincidence. Early game strategies all look the same to some extent. He stifles a yawn behind his hand.
Another five moves later, he has to revise his assessment – she's good. She's very good. It's strange, really, because at the same time she's a bit of an insecure player. Every time she makes a move, her hand hovers over the board for a few seconds as if searching for something and then places the stone very carefully on the grid. But her strategy is more than sound.
Something niggles at the back of Hikaru's mind. He feels as if there's something he has forgotten. Something he ought to know. Something he ought to be seeing.
He pulls out his phone to shoot Akira a quick message, telling him that he's been detained and will be late. When he turns back to the board and looks at the arrangement of their stones again with fresh eyes, a feeling rises inside him like a swelling tide. He can't even quite place it yet. There's excitement before he even knows why. It dawns very, very slowly.
During his professional go career, Hikaru Shindo has become something of an expert on Shusaku Hon'inbo. Most likely there is no one in the country who has studied Shusaku's surviving kifus more often than Hikaru has. He would recognize him anywhere.
And this...
But... No. It can't be.
But...
The pieces click into place.
"Sai," he breathes. "Sai."
The girl's face breaks into a wide smile. "He said you'd recognize him by playing. I didn't believe him."
Hikaru gapes at her. She says 'he' as if she knows... as if she can see... Hikaru can't think straight. He shakes his head because something is jammed in his brain. "Sai," he says again, his voice shaky. His eyes travel around the room as if his mentor might suddenly materialize if he just speaks the name enough times. But he won't, because Hikaru has tried that countless times in the past thirty years.
The girl nods her head towards a spot in the air above her head to her right.
Hikaru stares at the indicated spot and sees nothing. His heart is thumping as if he's running a marathon. Is he really there? Really? His Sai? He can picture him so clearly in his pale robes with the ridiculous heian-era sleeves. His expression that oscillates wildly between the two extremes of steely and adorable. Hikaru misses him so much. Still.
"You can see him?" he whispers to the girl, still staring at the place where he can see no ghost. There is a definite lump in his throat.
"No!" she calls, and at first Hikaru thinks this is a strangely passionate answer to his question, but then he realizes that she's looking at the empty space too. "Don't cry!"
Sai's crying?
"Sai's crying?" Hikaru says helplessly, wishing so badly that he could just see him. He tries and utterly fails not to be jealous of the little girl who is apparently being haunted by his own mentor. Was she chosen by fate like he was? Is she the next great prodigy of the go world? Does she know how lucky she is?
"He says," the girl blushes. "He says he's proud of you."
The lump in Hikaru's throat suddenly tightens and his eyes spill over. It's humiliating to be crying in front of an eleven-year old girl over a go-ban, but he can't help himself. He hides his head in his hands. Only now he realizes just how much he's wanted Sai to be proud of him. The rush of it is overwhelming.
"He says you needed to complete this match." The girl gestures to the board.
Hikaru's eyes follow her small hand automatically, and he registers that the first six moves, the ones that felt so familiar to him in the beginning, are the fuseki of the final match he played against Sai. The match they never finished.
Tears stream down his face.
"He says you might win."
Hikaru laughs sharply. "I don't know about that."
"We've watched all your recent matches on stream," the girls says serenely, "and we've looked at your kifus. I think he knows what he's talking about."
"I would never win against Sai," Hikaru protests.
The girl scowls and crosses her arms. "He said might. Not would. You're not even in yose yet."
Hikaru laughs, then he sobs and wipes his face messily on his sleeve. "Oh, Sai." He hiccups, sadder and happier than he's been in years. "I have so much to tell you."