Hikaru No Go Fan Fiction ❯ Balance ❯ Part 1: Spiritual 2/4 ( Chapter 2 )
[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]
By: Sailor Mac 
Akira's strange dreams continue, and they're beginning to affect his everyday life -- and his relationship with Hikaru.
Anime/Manga: Hikaru No Go Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Hentai / Drama | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 10.30.2003 | Pages: 7 | Words: 7.3K | Visits: 2.3K | Status: Work In Progress
Akira's strange dreams continue, and they're beginning to affect his everyday life -- and his relationship with Hikaru.
Anime/Manga: Hikaru No Go Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Hentai / Drama | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 10.30.2003 | Pages: 7 | Words: 7.3K | Visits: 2.3K | Status: Work In Progress
BALANCE
A Hikaru no Go Sekkushiaru Roman Series
By Sailor Mac
PART ONE: SPIRITUAL (2/4)
Akira finished up the last of his homework and closed his word processor. He rubbed at his temples . . . he was beginning to have one of the headaches that came upon him from time to time.
There was no need to ask why. Between the dream the previous night and the fight with Shindou, it was a miracle his head didn't feel ready to explode off his neck.
He had a private tutoring session in a few minutes. He was grateful for the distraction. He just wanted to think about anything else.
*It was really no different from any of the other fights we've had,* he thought, shutting down his computer and heading to his closet for a coat. *It's normal now, really . . . we scream at each other, go home and cool down for a couple of hours, then things are back to normal.*
But he didn't feel any cooler. The anger and annoyance was bubbling away inside of him steadily, like a pot left consistently on the flame.
He went into the living room, quietly. His mother was in the kitchen, making a cake. His father was in the Go room, as he so often was, studying kifu.
He didn't feel like talking to either of them at the moment. He just called out "I'm leaving for awhile," closed the door behind him and headed out into the early evening, the darkness just beginning to truly settle as a thin line of sunset was still visible at the edge of the horizon.
As he started to walk, an image began to fill his head, one that had been in his mind's eye so much throughout the day . . . the figure in Heian dress.
*Is this why the fight is bothering me more than usual?* he thought. *Because I'm still wound up about that dream?*
* * *
Hikaru folded his arms on the table and rested his head on it, his cup of hot chocolate sitting neglected at his elbow. The dim light of the coffeehouse wasn't helping his mood any.
Across from him, Waya was spooning up the froth on top of a huge cup of chai, dropping it back into the cup and spooning it up again, chattering away about the 3-dan he had played that afternoon.
". . . and it was really starting to annoy me. I mean, I'm used to guys playing with fans during games, or twiddling their thumbs when they're thinking, or making noises . . . but the guy was pulling on his own hair *constantly*."
Next to him, Isumi was adding a little cinnamon to a latte. "Are you sure he wasn't doing it on purpose?"
"Nah, I've seen people do stuff just to mess me up." Waya raised the huge cup and took a long swallow, then wiped away the foam mustache. "They do it, and then they stop, and then they do it again. This guy . . . he didn't stop at all. Hey, didn't you play him too, Shindou?"
There was silence from the other end of the table.
"Hey!" Waya said, banging his cup down. "What's wrong with you? You've been quiet all night!"
Hikaru sighed, drawing himself back up to full height. "Touya," he said.
Waya and Isumi exchanged knowing looks. That was a name they'd heard far too much of during their friendship with Hikaru. He was always saying he was Touya's rival . . . he had to catch Touya . . . and then, later, he'd had another fight with Touya . . .
"Shindou," Waya said, "why do you hang around with that jerk?"
Hikaru let out another sigh. He knew Waya didn't like Akira . . . but for some reason, hearing him describe their fellow pro as a "jerk" was annoying. Which confused the hell out of Hikaru, because wasn't he just brooding about their fight?
"You fight more often than not," Isumi added. "And it's not as if there's a shortage of people for you to play with."
"Yes, but . . ." How could he put this into words? That he felt he *had* to play Touya? That he and Touya were *meant* to play together? That they simultaneously attracted and repelled each other like magnets? He very often didn't quite understand these feelings himself.
"I don't know," Hikaru said, and it wasn't entirely a lie.
"Look, why don't you come out with us next time you have an afternoon free, instead of going there?" Waya said, spooning up the remaining froth in his cup again. "We haven't played as a team in salons in a long time."
"That's because when we used to do that, it always ended up with you two going somewhere expensive to eat, and me paying!" Isumi said.
"That happened once!" Waya retorted, before taking another gulp from his cup. "The conveyer belt sushi place."
"And the ramen place. And the okinomiyaki place."
"Hey, *I* paid when we went there!"
Hikaru pulled his cup toward him and stirred the surface with a spoon, looking down at it as if he hoped to see the answers he sought among the ripples of the liquid.
*Why can't I stop being upset over what happened?* he thought. *We've yelled at each other like this before, and then the next day we just go back to the Go salon and things are back to normal . . . why doesn't anything feel normal now?*
* * *
Akira fell asleep almost as soon as he lay on the futon.
His last thought was, *Maybe I can get a nice, restful sleep tonight, and I'll feel better about everything in the morning.*
But then, there was that feeling of falling away again, and everyday reality vanished, replaced by swirling mist, which was surrounding him , twirling around him like a small tornado.
He wanted it to go away . . and at the same time, he wanted it to stay, so he could find out the answers to the previous dream. But no answer was coming, just a whistle of wind as the vapors moved faster and faster.
Then, there was a bump as his feet hit something, and all at once the mists were gone.
He blinked and looked around. He was in a hallway of some sort, in some kind of large building, it felt like.
Slowly, he began to walk. Around him, statues of gods and previous emperors seemed to follow him with their eyes. Servants rushed past, silently, their long robes swishing around their knees as they carried jugs of water or conveyed messages to and from their lord.
Something was guiding his footsteps, telling him without words just where to go. Yes, it was right out there, all he'd have to do was turn left and he'd be in the courtyard, just outside the doors of the palace.
In front of him, two men knelt before a Goban. One, who looked only a few years older than Akira himself, was dressed in the robes of royalty. The other was dressed in white, with a tall black hat, his long, long hair flowing down his back . . .
Akira gave a start. It was *him*. The figure from the other dream. It just had to be . . . he had the same familiar air about him . . .
"Who are you?" he called out to the man. "Why am I here?"
But neither figure acknowledged him at all. They bent over their game, intent on their stones.
Akira frowned. He leaned over and put a hand on the side of the goban . . . yes, he could touch it, it had substance, his hand didn't pass through.
But he was casting no shadow across the goban, and he knew he was in the path of direct sunlight.
*Am I a ghost here?* he thought. *Or perhaps they're just ignoring me on purpose, so they can concentrate on the game? No, that's not it . . . if someone got in the way of a game I was playing, I'd chase them away.*
His eyes followed the patterns of the stones . . . both were very strong players, there was no doubt about it. And the playing style was definitely an old one. It reminded him of . . .
Suddenly, his heart dropped to his feet. His eyes skimmed over the stones again and again, not believing what he was seeing.
This game was identical to the very first game he'd played with Shindou.
The man in white, the one he'd seen before, was playing black, just like Shindou had. Same moves, same order . . .
"Why are you showing me this?" Akira shouted aloud. But it was to no avail, his words echoing away into an endless void.
He reached out toward the man in white, hoping to be able to touch him, to grab his attention, to force him to answer his questions.
There was a loud buzzing noise, and Akira wanted to fight against it, to resist it, to make it go away . . . he *had* to have his answers . . .
He sat bolt upright on his futon, gasping, his alarm clock still bleating away. He reached out with one trembling hand to turn it off.
Akira leaned forward, his head in his hands. *Why?* he thought. *Why that game? Why that person again . . . why do I feel like I should *know* him . . .*
He saw the robed figure in his mind's eye again, placing the stones . . . overlaid with an image of Shindou Hikaru, age 12, hesitantly placing the stones in the same patterns. Over and over, the image repeated itself.
*Oh, gods,* he thought. *The person in the dream . . . he felt so familiar because . . . because he had a distinct air of *Shindou* about him. But why?*
Again, he began to wonder if he was reliving a past life, if he and Shindou had some unfinished business centuries ago. Was that why they were so drawn to each other, why they had such an intense rivalry?
*I can't do this,* he thought. *I have a game today. I have to focus.*
He got up, still shaking, and rolled up his futon as fast as he could, shoving it in the closet fiercely, as if he could shove the dreams away with it.
* * *
As Akira headed into the door of the Go Institute, he saw a familiar person pass him -- a man in his early 30s, with slightly wavy dark hair and a soft, friendly face. It was Ashiwara, the youngest of the pros in his father's study group.
"Oh, Akira-kun!" the older pro said. "I didn't realize you were playing today."
"Good morning," Akira said, bowing politely. "Yes . . . I'm playing Fujisaka three-dan."
"You won't have any problems there. He's one of those players who's barely a pro. Passed the pro exam by the skin of his teeth, just wins enough games to keep moving up the rankings, slowly . . ."
"Yes, and most of his games were only won by a couple of moku," Akira said. "I read up on him."
"Take it easy in this game, and save your strength for the Honinbou League games. It ought to get interesting, with Shindou involved now."
Akira looked away. Shindou . . . Again, he saw the pattern of stones from the dream, overlaid on how it had looked in real life.
"I know it will," he said, quietly.
The older pro leaned against the railing, regarding Akira thoughtfully. "You've always been afraid of him, haven't you?"
Akira's head snapped toward him as if it were on a spring that had been twisted and released. *Fear,* Akira thought. *Fear of being caught . . . is that what brought the dreams on? But I'm not going to let him catch me! And even if I was fearful . . . why would the dreams present themselves as they did?*
Aloud, he said, "He is my rival . . . but I won't let him get ahead of me."
"And I know you," the other man replied. "You won't. You have that determination . .. more than anyone else I've ever seen. Well, I'm going on a donut run . . . and then I'll be back to give lessons. I'll see you later!"
Akira got in the elevator, pushing the button for the tournament floor. He took a deep breath, focusing, getting ready for what lay ahead.
As he changed his shoes, he overheard a conversation between other players at the schedule board.
"Touya? He'll crush him for sure."
"I don't expect the game to last an hour."
"Why's that kid still playing lower dans anyway? You'd think he'd be playing Ogata by now . . ."
He tossed his head back, the long hair softly waving away from his face. He didn't play upper dans because he was still only a four-dan himself, despite being in the Honinbou League. He respected the system of advancement, which had been in place for centuries . . .
Again, the image flashed in his mind of the figure in ancient dress, laying the stones out in the exact same patterns Shindou had.
*No,* Akira thought. *I can't think of this now. I can't let anything interfere with my game . . . because if I do that, Shindou *will* catch me.*
He headed for the game room, his head held high.
* * *
Ashiwara sat in the players' lounge, drinking his coffee slowly. He looked at his watch . . . he still had forty-five minutes before he had to teach. Like many players, he found himself drawn to the Go Institute even when he didn't have a game or a class right away -- it was their workplace, their clubhouse, their home away from home.
For some of them, it *was* their true home, and their houses and apartments were merely where they slept. At this level, Go was no mere game. It was life itself.
Nobody understood this better than Touya Akira, who'd grown up knowing nothing but the game. Ashiwara had been one of the players privileged to watch the boy grow from a little thing sitting on his father's lap before the board to the teenage genius whom everyone was already predicting would be one of the youngest major title holders in history.
A crowd of young insei walked past the room, chattering loudly and laughing. One of the boys had an open package of Pocky, and another boy kept trying to grab the chocolate-covered sticks out of it.
*Akira was never like that,* the older pro thought. *He was never really a *child*. From the time he could walk, he was either in school, playing Go or hanging around with older Go players.*
Not for the first time, he wondered if the boy had paid too big a price for his gifts. He never seemed to be with people his own age. His chances of finding companionship, or love, were very slim.
Ashiwara had discussed this with Ogata -- who'd observed Akira throughout his life more closely than anyone but his father -- more than once. He hadn't seemed concerned.
"Akira lives for his game," Ogata had said. "He doesn't need anything else."
"Does he?" Ashiwara said.
"Do you see him unhappy?"
Ashiwara thought for a moment. "Not unhappy, but . . . he seems to be looking for something he can't find sometimes."
"We all are," Ogata replied. "We're looking for the Hand of God."
He thought over Ogata's words. The Hand of God . . . the perfect move . . . it was indeed something they were chasing, something all Go players had chased since the invention of the game centuries ago.
Akira seemed to be closer to attaining that ideal game than anyone else. His mind sometimes seemed to be a satellite dish that could pick up his opponent's thoughts and access the records of countless games played over countless years all at once. Every move was made with absolute confidence, no hesitation.
No, what he was seeking was not Go-related. It seemed to be something more earthly.
Ashiwara's train of thought was interrupted when a woman with a heavily sprayed blonde pageboy, with the sturdy build of a female athlete and a steel-grey suit that didn't quite look like it belonged on her entered the room. She was a familiar face around here -- Shirakuro Ryoko, female pro and one of the favorites for the women's Honinbou title this year.
"Well, that didn't take long," she said, sitting opposite Ashiwara and pulling a pack of cigarettes from her purse. "The guy was hung over -- you could tell. He might as well have just tossed the stones on the board like tiddlywinks." She lit up and took a deep drag.
"Let me guess -- Ukiya?" He swallowed the last of his coffee.
Shrikuro puffed a long, grey stream of smoke toward the ceiling. "You played him too, huh? The only person who was as easy to beat as him was Fujisaka. But . . . I guess he suddenly got better."
Fujisaka? But he was playing . . . Ashiwara frowned. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that Touya Akira, of all people, is just barely staying ahead of him right now. I peeked over at the game as I was leaving. It looked like it was anyone's game."
Ashiwara suddenly stood up, tossing his cup toward the garbage. "Excuse me . . . " He rushed toward the playing room. She couldn't possibly be right . . . could she? Akira, getting beaten by someone like Fujisaka?
He crept into the room, quietly. Row upon row of heads were bent over boards. The air was filled with the sounds of stones hitting wood, and little else except the occasional cough or sniffle.
He knew which board was the right one immediately. It was the one with the small group of people clustered around it, looking like they couldn't believe what they were seeing.
Ashiwara approached the board and looked down. The game was in yose. Akira was black. And it was impossible to tell who had the upper hand.
The older pro's eyes traveled over the board. This was *not* the Touya Akira he knew. The patterns were haphazard, sloppy, as if something were constantly distracting him. There was no sign of the carefully calculated attacks that were usually Akira's forte.
The play stopped. The rearranging and counting of stones began. Ashiwara looked at Akira's face, to try to read any possible sign of trouble, but it was a blank mask.
He heard someone next to him say, "Touya won . . . by a moku and a half."
A moku and a half! Against an opponent he should have destroyed . . .
Suddenly, Ashiwara's thoughts of earlier came back to him. Could it be that Akira's lack of a childhood was finally catching up to him? Was he burning out?
Akira bowed to his opponent, said "Thank you for the game," and got up to mark his win. Ashiwara followed, wondering if he should confront his young friend.
He didn't have time to. Akira quickly turned and fled the room. Ashiwara started to follow . . . and then realized Akira wouldn't talk to him even if he did catch him.
* * *
In the elevator, Akira pounded the wall in frustration, then leaned his forehead on his arm.
The game was a disaster. An absolute disaster. Every time he tried to focus, his mind would call up those same images, over and over . . . the man in ancient dress . . . the patterns of his first game against Hikaru . . .
He knew that the people who had been watching were probably asking each other "What's the matter with Touya?" right now. And he didn't even know the answer to that himself.
The elevator arrived at street level. He walked out rapidly, not wanting to meet up with anyone he knew.
*I have to talk to Shindou,* he thought. *I have to . . .*
He reached the subway stop and flew down the stairs. At the bottom, he brushed past a young couple, not even realizing he was pushing them out of the way. They glared at him. He was oblivious.
As the train arrived and he climbed on, he realized that talking to Shindou would be ridiculous. How could Hikaru possibly know about his dreams? It wasn't as if he had transmitted them!
But Akira still couldn't shake the feeling that there was some kind of *connection* between Shindou and the dream figure. Shindou's past incarnation? But even if it was, he wouldn't be consciously aware of it. And why would *he* be dreaming about *Shindou's* past life?
He leaned over, his head in his hands. He hadn't felt so knocked off-balance, so thrown into a tailspin since those first games against Shindou, a seeming eon ago.
*Why always him?* he thought. *Why does everything that does this to me have to do with Shindou?*
But he was no closer to the answer than he'd been at any time since he was 12.
* * *
Hikaru was at his goban, a print of an ancient kifu laid out on the floor next to him. He studied it for a moment, then began pulling stones out of the two go kes before him, laying a few out, then stopping to examine and contemplate the patterns.
It was a Shuusaku game. He hadn't recreated one of these in awhile . . . but he needed to tonight. When he was unsettled, it always helped to have a tangible reminder of Sai.
He'd felt unsettled ever since the fight with Touya. And he couldn't quite figure out why. It wasn't as if fights between them were anything out of the ordinary.
His eyes wandered from the goban to his cell phone, lying just to the right of it. Something in him wanted to pick that phone up and push a familiar speed dial combination.
*No,* he thought. *If Touya wants to talk to me . . . then let him come to me.*
He began to lay out stones again. He usually didn't recreate games right after playing, and he'd just come from a match against Isumi at Waya's place.
But that game had felt so . . . unsatisfying.
*Waya and Isumi are great players,* Hikaru thought, *but they just don't challenge me like Touya. Nothing else is like playing him.*
Only with Touya was there a sense that his opponent was trying to probe his brain, to figure out his thought patterns before Hikaru knew them himself. And Touya was the only opponent whose brain Hikaru would try to probe.
"Sai," he said aloud, "I felt so empty when you left me . . . like I'd never be whole again. But when Touya and I started playing together, I thought I was all right again . . ."
He finished that thought silently. And now that he and Touya had their falling out, he was once again feeling empty.
They were supposed to have their usual game at the Go salon the next day. Hikaru wondered if he should still show up. *Let him call me if he wants me to come,* he thought.
He looked at the cell phone again, as if willing it to ring. It didn't.
He took a deep breath, and went back to recreating the game.
* * *
Akira had been afraid to fall asleep.
He went through the motions of getting ready for bed as usual, and lay down on his futon . . . but he didn't want his eyes to close.
He didn't want to get drawn into that mist again, be ripped away from the reality he knew, be deposited in another time, another place that would haunt him and disrupt his life.
But fatigue won out. His limbs felt like lead, his eyelids even heavier. He tried to force them open, but to little avail.
And then, he was drifting through clouds of vapor again. He waved an arm as if he could banish them, but they swirled faster and faster about him, as if to taunt him, to tell him he couldn't fight what was happening.
His feet hit the ground, and then he was walking down the same palace corridor again.
He knew where to go, as if someone was whispering in his ear. A turn to the left, and he was in the same courtyard where he'd been before.
There was the same goban, with the same two players bent over it. Akira felt his heart sink. It was the same dream all over again.
Then, he realized that the actual game was different.
He approached the board and leaned over it, once again not casting a shadow. The two players didn't notice him, didn't break their concentration.
His eyes followed the pattern of stones, and he drew away with a gasp.
This was the *second* game he'd played against Shindou. The one that had ended swiftly, and ruthlessly.
"Why?" he cried aloud. "Why do you keep showing me . . ."
He suddenly felt the ground lurch, and the clouds of mist began gathering around him again. The scene before him dissolved into a whirl of colors, great streaks of pink and blue and white and black swirling all around him like a tornado.
The whirling stopped, the clouds went away. He was looking at the courtyard again, but at a further distance. The goban was still there, and the person he'd seen over and over was still sitting at it . . . but there was a different person sitting opposite him, a harsh-looking man with shifty eyes above his drooping mustache. They were surrounded by a group of other men, all in the tall hats and robes of the period, all looking intently at the board, including one in the robes of the emperor kneeling front and center of the group.
There was no sound but the *pachi* of the stones. Akira crept closer, intent on seeing the board, wondering if this time, he'd see his third game against Shindou, the one where his rival had played so incredibly badly.
Instead, he saw something much more disturbing.
The shifty-eyed man slipped his hand into the go ke while his opponent was intend on the board, took out two stones and slipped them up the sleeve of his robe.
Akira looked around, frantically . . . surely somebody had to have seen this man do that? But nobody batted an eye.
"Hey!" he shouted aloud. "This man's a cheater! Didn't any of you see that? Hey!"
Silence. And it continued to be silent as the men began to count up their stones at the end of the game. It looked like even with the cheating, the one who'd been haunting Akira was going to win.
And then, his opponent stood up, pointed at him, and shouted, "He cheated!"
The other looked flustered. "No . . . no, I didn't! It was him that . . ."
"Liar! He's just covering up for himself!"
The man looked at the emperor, his eyes pleading. "Your majesty, you know that I would never. . ."
The emperor stood up. "Otaka-sama has been at this court for many years. I consider his word to be most trustworthy."
"But sire, you know that I . . ."
"I only know that you are a Go player, and a good one at that . . . although it seems you rely on untrustworthy methods to win. I cannot have that at this court."
The man from Akira's other dreams got up, walked over to the kind and flung himself on his knees. "My lord, I beg of you . . ."
"There will be no begging! I will not have a dishonest Go teacher at my court! Fujiwara no Sai, you are banished!"
The name hit Akira in the gut like a cannonball. *Sai*. The Sai on the Internet , who'd defeated his father right before he retired . . . the Sai he'd suspected was Shindou, who he thought he'd seen in Shindou's Go.
The one called Sai was running away from the courtyard now, sobbing. Akira rushed after him, shouting, "SAI! I need to talk to you! Who are you? Why do I keep seeing you? SAI!!!"
And then the clouds of mist were coming upon him again. Akira frantically tried to wave them away -- how was he going to find Sai? -- but they were coming thicker and faster, until they obscured his vision and seemed to be physically pressing in on him.
When they cleared, Akira was on a different part of the palace grounds, surrounded by greenery. *It must be the back gardens,* he thought.
A glance at the position of the sun in the sky revealed it was morning. It had been late afternoon before. Clearly, Akira had been taken to a different day.
*But where is Sai?* he thought. He began to feel more annoyed at not being able to catch Sai than anything else that had happened in those dreams -- if he were to catch up to Sai, if he were to talk to him, he'd have the answer to mysteries that had plagued him for years.
*Maybe,* he thought, *if Sai is in control, he brought me out here to talk to me. He may be in another part of the garden.*
He began to walk, then run through carefully arranged greenery, past arrangements of sand and stone, until he came upon a river . . .
Fujiwara no Sai was floating in it, lifeless.
Akira just stood at the banks, his heart pounding, his breath coming in gasps. He'd killed himself . . . he couldn't stand the idea of not playing Go at the court anymore, and he'd killed himself . . .
"NO!" he shouted "You still have to tell me . . ."
There was a loud buzzing sound, and Akira's eyes snapped open.
He reached over and slammed the off button of the alarm clock, then sat up, trembling.
Sai. The figure in his dreams was *Sai* . . . but how could it be the same Sai from the Internet, if he lived and died hundreds of years ago? And why was he playing all the games he'd played against Hikaru?
Again, he remembered the first time he and Hikaru had played each other as pros, how he'd suddenly felt he saw *another person* in Hikaru's Go, how he'd recognized the moves as being typical of *Sai* . . .
Could it be that the meaning of the dreams was that Hikaru had really been Sai all along? But then, why all the ancient imagery?
Was Hikaru a reincarnation of this Sai? Did his past self sometimes materialize in his consciousness while he was playing?
He rubbed his temples. His head was starting to hurt again.
It was going to be another awful day.
* * *
Hikaru stepped onto the familiar elevator at the Touya Go salon, wondering why he was there at all. *He may not even bother to show up*, he thought.
The doors opened, and he stepped out. Ichikawa seemed a bit nervous as she glanced over to him. "Oh, hello . . . Akira-kun is in the back . . . he didn't say a word when he came in today."
"Nothing?" said Hikaru, taking a look around the room to locate his rival.
She picked up a cloth and began methodically wiping the counter in front of her. "He's been quiet these last few days, ever since the last time you were here." Her eyes seemed shadowed with worry.
*He has?* Hikaru thought. *Did our fight have that big of an effect on him?* But he knew that he, himself, hadn't exactly been his energetic self since then, either.
"Has he been coming around here every . . ."
"Shindou!"
Hikaru looked up. Akira was standing in front of him, eyes burning like coals, hands clenched at his sides. He looked like he was about to play a major tournament, not a routine game.
"Touya?" Hikaru suddenly felt uneasy. He'd been at the receiving end of Akira's meanest game-face glares more times than he could count, but there was something different about it this time . . . like those eyes were trying to bore into his skull and read his mind.
"Let's play. Now."
Akira whirled about on his heel, his hair fanning out around his head, and stalked toward the back of the room like a leopard on the track of prey. Hikaru followed, a bit sheepishly.
He could feel the eyes of the other players boring into his back, hear their whispers. Clearly, they were all aware this was not just another Shindou/Touya game.
He sat down at the board, picking up a go ke and taking off the lid. "Touya, Ichikawa just said that you've . . ."
His rival slammed the other basket to the goban with a thud, yanked off the lid and said, "Nigiri. Now."
Hikaru swallowed hard as he reached into the go ke. He and Akira had always exchanged words before playing, no matter what the circumstances. This was just not . . . normal. He could hear another buzz of murmuring behind him . . . the attention of everyone in the salon now seemed to be focused on the two of them.
He pulled out two black stones and dropped them to the board. Akira put down a handful of white ones, then began to count them. Was it Hikaru's imagination, or were the other boy's hands shaking, just a bit?
"I'm black," Hikaru said, quietly.
They bowed and said "Please," and the game began. Hikaru laid his first stone down and watched as Akira reached into the go ke to answer it . . . it wasn't his imagination, his hands *were* shaking. In fact, he was trembling all over.
Hikaru thought of the day of the junior high tournament, the game that Sai had started and he had insisted taking over, when Akira had been so filled with nervous excitement at the prospect of playing Sai again that he'd dropped the go ke lid and had barely managed to pick it up.
*He's just like that now*, he thought. *But why? We play together all the time . . . and he knows how *I* play, different than Sai did . . .*
They moved swiftly through the fuseki stage of the game, as always, but . . . something still felt not quite right. *Focus on the game itself*, he thought, *don't think too much about Akira, or what is going on with him . . .*
But it was hard. Ichikawa had looked genuinely worried, and they were still drawing an uncomfortable amount of attention from the other patrons -- they'd gone back to their own games, but they kept glancing over. And Hikaru was beginning to understand why.
And he was only half-paying attention to what he was doing, letting his instinct take over the game. Akira was playing as fast as ever, and his decision process didn't seem to be muddled, but . . there was that air that something was *wrong* . . .
Hikaru reached for his next stone, put it down on the board . . . and suddenly realized what he had just done. The pattern he had just formed . . .
Kosumi. Old-style Go. And all he could think of was Sai . . .
Akira blinked at the pattern. He seemed to just stare at it, his face so pale his skin seemed translucent, his breath caught in his throat.
"Touya?" Hikaru said, leaning over the board. "Touya? Are you all right?"
Akira stayed stock-still, his eyes fastened on the stones, and the trembling grew faster.
Then, suddenly, he slammed both hands to the goban with a force that made all the stones hop, and shouted, "What do you know about a Fujiwara no Sai?"
Every head in the room turned. Conversation and the clink of stones stopped.
Hikaru felt like he was suspended out of time and space, somewhere in a nightmare zone.
Did he hear that right . . . not just Sai, but *Fujiwara no Sai*? How could Touya know that? He'd promised the other boy some time ago that he'd tell him his secret, but it was a promise he hadn't kept.
*Oh, gods,* he thought, panic rising rapidly in his throat, *what do I do now? I can't deny knowing about Sai, he'll never believe me when I tell him the truth if I do.*
Taking a deep breath, he said, "Why would you ask something like that?"
Akira sunk back down in his seat, seeming to collapse like a blow-up toy with a rapid air leak. "I heard it in a dream," he said in a quiet, dull voice.
A buzz of whispers filled the air as the other players fastened their full attention on the two again. Hikaru's heart started to pound. He heard Sai's full name in a dream? Did this mean . . . Sai had been in his dream? Was Sai active in this world again? Was he coming back?
A flush of excitement filled Hikaru at the prospect of coming home, opening his door and seeing Sai sitting there at the goban in his bedroom, the sight he'd so longed to see in those awful days and weeks right after he disappeared.
*But,* he thought, *why is Sai appearing in Touya's dream, and not mine? I haven't dreamed of him since the night after my first game with Touya.*
Akira remained slumped over in his seat, staring down at the floor.
"I've been having these dreams," he said, quietly. "Every night. Ever since you made the League. A man . . . tall, with very long hair, in robes and a tall hat . . . he was playing Go. The same games I played with you."
Now Hikaru was clutching the sides of the Goban in excitement. This *was* Sai! He knew for sure now! He wondered if Akira could see the pure joy that was rising in his heart reflected in his face.
"He reminded me of someone," Akira continued, not moving. "There was an air about him . . . I couldn't put my finger on it at first, but when I saw those games, I knew what it was. That man felt like *you*." He looked up, slowly. "But . . . all along, I don't think I've ever known who *you* are."
Hikaru sat back in his own chair. Now *he* was trembling with emotion. *I have to get hold of myself*, he thought. *I have to talk to him about this, find out more about how Sai contacted him.*
"Touya," he said, "let's go somewhere. I can explain . . ."
But Akira just kept talking. "Everything about you, from the day we met, has been a mystery that I can't figure out. When we first met . . . why did you play like a genius when you couldn't even hold the stones right? At that tournament . . . why did you start brilliantly, and then make terrible, sloppy moves?"
Hikaru just sat, rooted to the seat, dumfounded.
Akira looked up at him, slowly, beginning to rise to his full seated height, his voice rising in volume and pitch along with him. "Why does it always feel like there's *another person* inside you? What was this *secret* you said you were going to tell me, but never did?" He leapt to his feet, thumping the goban again. "Who ARE you, anyway?"
Now the room, which had fallen into total silence, burst out into frenzied conversation, a jumble of voices like people who were witnessing an disaster and unable to believe what they were seeing. One man said, "Has Akira-kun lost it?"
The man in the waiter's uniform approached Akira, trying to lay a comforting hand on his shoulder. Akira threw out an arm to wave him off, shooting him a glare that made the man back away rapidly.
Hikaru didn't know whether to cry, to shout back, to start throwing stones. His vocal cords felt paralyzed, there was no way he could answer.
Akira just stood, fists clenched, breathing heavy, eyes burning. Hikaru actually felt a flash of fear, wondering if the other boy was going to do something strange, something violent, something unlike him.
Then, he whirled around. "I can't continue this game," he said, rushing toward the exit. Ichikawa called out to him as he passed her, but he ignored her.
___________
Hikaru no Go is property of Yumi Hotta, Takeshi Obata and Shueisha. No profit is being made from this fanfic.
A Hikaru no Go Sekkushiaru Roman Series
By Sailor Mac
PART ONE: SPIRITUAL (2/4)
Akira finished up the last of his homework and closed his word processor. He rubbed at his temples . . . he was beginning to have one of the headaches that came upon him from time to time.
There was no need to ask why. Between the dream the previous night and the fight with Shindou, it was a miracle his head didn't feel ready to explode off his neck.
He had a private tutoring session in a few minutes. He was grateful for the distraction. He just wanted to think about anything else.
*It was really no different from any of the other fights we've had,* he thought, shutting down his computer and heading to his closet for a coat. *It's normal now, really . . . we scream at each other, go home and cool down for a couple of hours, then things are back to normal.*
But he didn't feel any cooler. The anger and annoyance was bubbling away inside of him steadily, like a pot left consistently on the flame.
He went into the living room, quietly. His mother was in the kitchen, making a cake. His father was in the Go room, as he so often was, studying kifu.
He didn't feel like talking to either of them at the moment. He just called out "I'm leaving for awhile," closed the door behind him and headed out into the early evening, the darkness just beginning to truly settle as a thin line of sunset was still visible at the edge of the horizon.
As he started to walk, an image began to fill his head, one that had been in his mind's eye so much throughout the day . . . the figure in Heian dress.
*Is this why the fight is bothering me more than usual?* he thought. *Because I'm still wound up about that dream?*
* * *
Hikaru folded his arms on the table and rested his head on it, his cup of hot chocolate sitting neglected at his elbow. The dim light of the coffeehouse wasn't helping his mood any.
Across from him, Waya was spooning up the froth on top of a huge cup of chai, dropping it back into the cup and spooning it up again, chattering away about the 3-dan he had played that afternoon.
". . . and it was really starting to annoy me. I mean, I'm used to guys playing with fans during games, or twiddling their thumbs when they're thinking, or making noises . . . but the guy was pulling on his own hair *constantly*."
Next to him, Isumi was adding a little cinnamon to a latte. "Are you sure he wasn't doing it on purpose?"
"Nah, I've seen people do stuff just to mess me up." Waya raised the huge cup and took a long swallow, then wiped away the foam mustache. "They do it, and then they stop, and then they do it again. This guy . . . he didn't stop at all. Hey, didn't you play him too, Shindou?"
There was silence from the other end of the table.
"Hey!" Waya said, banging his cup down. "What's wrong with you? You've been quiet all night!"
Hikaru sighed, drawing himself back up to full height. "Touya," he said.
Waya and Isumi exchanged knowing looks. That was a name they'd heard far too much of during their friendship with Hikaru. He was always saying he was Touya's rival . . . he had to catch Touya . . . and then, later, he'd had another fight with Touya . . .
"Shindou," Waya said, "why do you hang around with that jerk?"
Hikaru let out another sigh. He knew Waya didn't like Akira . . . but for some reason, hearing him describe their fellow pro as a "jerk" was annoying. Which confused the hell out of Hikaru, because wasn't he just brooding about their fight?
"You fight more often than not," Isumi added. "And it's not as if there's a shortage of people for you to play with."
"Yes, but . . ." How could he put this into words? That he felt he *had* to play Touya? That he and Touya were *meant* to play together? That they simultaneously attracted and repelled each other like magnets? He very often didn't quite understand these feelings himself.
"I don't know," Hikaru said, and it wasn't entirely a lie.
"Look, why don't you come out with us next time you have an afternoon free, instead of going there?" Waya said, spooning up the remaining froth in his cup again. "We haven't played as a team in salons in a long time."
"That's because when we used to do that, it always ended up with you two going somewhere expensive to eat, and me paying!" Isumi said.
"That happened once!" Waya retorted, before taking another gulp from his cup. "The conveyer belt sushi place."
"And the ramen place. And the okinomiyaki place."
"Hey, *I* paid when we went there!"
Hikaru pulled his cup toward him and stirred the surface with a spoon, looking down at it as if he hoped to see the answers he sought among the ripples of the liquid.
*Why can't I stop being upset over what happened?* he thought. *We've yelled at each other like this before, and then the next day we just go back to the Go salon and things are back to normal . . . why doesn't anything feel normal now?*
* * *
Akira fell asleep almost as soon as he lay on the futon.
His last thought was, *Maybe I can get a nice, restful sleep tonight, and I'll feel better about everything in the morning.*
But then, there was that feeling of falling away again, and everyday reality vanished, replaced by swirling mist, which was surrounding him , twirling around him like a small tornado.
He wanted it to go away . . and at the same time, he wanted it to stay, so he could find out the answers to the previous dream. But no answer was coming, just a whistle of wind as the vapors moved faster and faster.
Then, there was a bump as his feet hit something, and all at once the mists were gone.
He blinked and looked around. He was in a hallway of some sort, in some kind of large building, it felt like.
Slowly, he began to walk. Around him, statues of gods and previous emperors seemed to follow him with their eyes. Servants rushed past, silently, their long robes swishing around their knees as they carried jugs of water or conveyed messages to and from their lord.
Something was guiding his footsteps, telling him without words just where to go. Yes, it was right out there, all he'd have to do was turn left and he'd be in the courtyard, just outside the doors of the palace.
In front of him, two men knelt before a Goban. One, who looked only a few years older than Akira himself, was dressed in the robes of royalty. The other was dressed in white, with a tall black hat, his long, long hair flowing down his back . . .
Akira gave a start. It was *him*. The figure from the other dream. It just had to be . . . he had the same familiar air about him . . .
"Who are you?" he called out to the man. "Why am I here?"
But neither figure acknowledged him at all. They bent over their game, intent on their stones.
Akira frowned. He leaned over and put a hand on the side of the goban . . . yes, he could touch it, it had substance, his hand didn't pass through.
But he was casting no shadow across the goban, and he knew he was in the path of direct sunlight.
*Am I a ghost here?* he thought. *Or perhaps they're just ignoring me on purpose, so they can concentrate on the game? No, that's not it . . . if someone got in the way of a game I was playing, I'd chase them away.*
His eyes followed the patterns of the stones . . . both were very strong players, there was no doubt about it. And the playing style was definitely an old one. It reminded him of . . .
Suddenly, his heart dropped to his feet. His eyes skimmed over the stones again and again, not believing what he was seeing.
This game was identical to the very first game he'd played with Shindou.
The man in white, the one he'd seen before, was playing black, just like Shindou had. Same moves, same order . . .
"Why are you showing me this?" Akira shouted aloud. But it was to no avail, his words echoing away into an endless void.
He reached out toward the man in white, hoping to be able to touch him, to grab his attention, to force him to answer his questions.
There was a loud buzzing noise, and Akira wanted to fight against it, to resist it, to make it go away . . . he *had* to have his answers . . .
He sat bolt upright on his futon, gasping, his alarm clock still bleating away. He reached out with one trembling hand to turn it off.
Akira leaned forward, his head in his hands. *Why?* he thought. *Why that game? Why that person again . . . why do I feel like I should *know* him . . .*
He saw the robed figure in his mind's eye again, placing the stones . . . overlaid with an image of Shindou Hikaru, age 12, hesitantly placing the stones in the same patterns. Over and over, the image repeated itself.
*Oh, gods,* he thought. *The person in the dream . . . he felt so familiar because . . . because he had a distinct air of *Shindou* about him. But why?*
Again, he began to wonder if he was reliving a past life, if he and Shindou had some unfinished business centuries ago. Was that why they were so drawn to each other, why they had such an intense rivalry?
*I can't do this,* he thought. *I have a game today. I have to focus.*
He got up, still shaking, and rolled up his futon as fast as he could, shoving it in the closet fiercely, as if he could shove the dreams away with it.
* * *
As Akira headed into the door of the Go Institute, he saw a familiar person pass him -- a man in his early 30s, with slightly wavy dark hair and a soft, friendly face. It was Ashiwara, the youngest of the pros in his father's study group.
"Oh, Akira-kun!" the older pro said. "I didn't realize you were playing today."
"Good morning," Akira said, bowing politely. "Yes . . . I'm playing Fujisaka three-dan."
"You won't have any problems there. He's one of those players who's barely a pro. Passed the pro exam by the skin of his teeth, just wins enough games to keep moving up the rankings, slowly . . ."
"Yes, and most of his games were only won by a couple of moku," Akira said. "I read up on him."
"Take it easy in this game, and save your strength for the Honinbou League games. It ought to get interesting, with Shindou involved now."
Akira looked away. Shindou . . . Again, he saw the pattern of stones from the dream, overlaid on how it had looked in real life.
"I know it will," he said, quietly.
The older pro leaned against the railing, regarding Akira thoughtfully. "You've always been afraid of him, haven't you?"
Akira's head snapped toward him as if it were on a spring that had been twisted and released. *Fear,* Akira thought. *Fear of being caught . . . is that what brought the dreams on? But I'm not going to let him catch me! And even if I was fearful . . . why would the dreams present themselves as they did?*
Aloud, he said, "He is my rival . . . but I won't let him get ahead of me."
"And I know you," the other man replied. "You won't. You have that determination . .. more than anyone else I've ever seen. Well, I'm going on a donut run . . . and then I'll be back to give lessons. I'll see you later!"
Akira got in the elevator, pushing the button for the tournament floor. He took a deep breath, focusing, getting ready for what lay ahead.
As he changed his shoes, he overheard a conversation between other players at the schedule board.
"Touya? He'll crush him for sure."
"I don't expect the game to last an hour."
"Why's that kid still playing lower dans anyway? You'd think he'd be playing Ogata by now . . ."
He tossed his head back, the long hair softly waving away from his face. He didn't play upper dans because he was still only a four-dan himself, despite being in the Honinbou League. He respected the system of advancement, which had been in place for centuries . . .
Again, the image flashed in his mind of the figure in ancient dress, laying the stones out in the exact same patterns Shindou had.
*No,* Akira thought. *I can't think of this now. I can't let anything interfere with my game . . . because if I do that, Shindou *will* catch me.*
He headed for the game room, his head held high.
* * *
Ashiwara sat in the players' lounge, drinking his coffee slowly. He looked at his watch . . . he still had forty-five minutes before he had to teach. Like many players, he found himself drawn to the Go Institute even when he didn't have a game or a class right away -- it was their workplace, their clubhouse, their home away from home.
For some of them, it *was* their true home, and their houses and apartments were merely where they slept. At this level, Go was no mere game. It was life itself.
Nobody understood this better than Touya Akira, who'd grown up knowing nothing but the game. Ashiwara had been one of the players privileged to watch the boy grow from a little thing sitting on his father's lap before the board to the teenage genius whom everyone was already predicting would be one of the youngest major title holders in history.
A crowd of young insei walked past the room, chattering loudly and laughing. One of the boys had an open package of Pocky, and another boy kept trying to grab the chocolate-covered sticks out of it.
*Akira was never like that,* the older pro thought. *He was never really a *child*. From the time he could walk, he was either in school, playing Go or hanging around with older Go players.*
Not for the first time, he wondered if the boy had paid too big a price for his gifts. He never seemed to be with people his own age. His chances of finding companionship, or love, were very slim.
Ashiwara had discussed this with Ogata -- who'd observed Akira throughout his life more closely than anyone but his father -- more than once. He hadn't seemed concerned.
"Akira lives for his game," Ogata had said. "He doesn't need anything else."
"Does he?" Ashiwara said.
"Do you see him unhappy?"
Ashiwara thought for a moment. "Not unhappy, but . . . he seems to be looking for something he can't find sometimes."
"We all are," Ogata replied. "We're looking for the Hand of God."
He thought over Ogata's words. The Hand of God . . . the perfect move . . . it was indeed something they were chasing, something all Go players had chased since the invention of the game centuries ago.
Akira seemed to be closer to attaining that ideal game than anyone else. His mind sometimes seemed to be a satellite dish that could pick up his opponent's thoughts and access the records of countless games played over countless years all at once. Every move was made with absolute confidence, no hesitation.
No, what he was seeking was not Go-related. It seemed to be something more earthly.
Ashiwara's train of thought was interrupted when a woman with a heavily sprayed blonde pageboy, with the sturdy build of a female athlete and a steel-grey suit that didn't quite look like it belonged on her entered the room. She was a familiar face around here -- Shirakuro Ryoko, female pro and one of the favorites for the women's Honinbou title this year.
"Well, that didn't take long," she said, sitting opposite Ashiwara and pulling a pack of cigarettes from her purse. "The guy was hung over -- you could tell. He might as well have just tossed the stones on the board like tiddlywinks." She lit up and took a deep drag.
"Let me guess -- Ukiya?" He swallowed the last of his coffee.
Shrikuro puffed a long, grey stream of smoke toward the ceiling. "You played him too, huh? The only person who was as easy to beat as him was Fujisaka. But . . . I guess he suddenly got better."
Fujisaka? But he was playing . . . Ashiwara frowned. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that Touya Akira, of all people, is just barely staying ahead of him right now. I peeked over at the game as I was leaving. It looked like it was anyone's game."
Ashiwara suddenly stood up, tossing his cup toward the garbage. "Excuse me . . . " He rushed toward the playing room. She couldn't possibly be right . . . could she? Akira, getting beaten by someone like Fujisaka?
He crept into the room, quietly. Row upon row of heads were bent over boards. The air was filled with the sounds of stones hitting wood, and little else except the occasional cough or sniffle.
He knew which board was the right one immediately. It was the one with the small group of people clustered around it, looking like they couldn't believe what they were seeing.
Ashiwara approached the board and looked down. The game was in yose. Akira was black. And it was impossible to tell who had the upper hand.
The older pro's eyes traveled over the board. This was *not* the Touya Akira he knew. The patterns were haphazard, sloppy, as if something were constantly distracting him. There was no sign of the carefully calculated attacks that were usually Akira's forte.
The play stopped. The rearranging and counting of stones began. Ashiwara looked at Akira's face, to try to read any possible sign of trouble, but it was a blank mask.
He heard someone next to him say, "Touya won . . . by a moku and a half."
A moku and a half! Against an opponent he should have destroyed . . .
Suddenly, Ashiwara's thoughts of earlier came back to him. Could it be that Akira's lack of a childhood was finally catching up to him? Was he burning out?
Akira bowed to his opponent, said "Thank you for the game," and got up to mark his win. Ashiwara followed, wondering if he should confront his young friend.
He didn't have time to. Akira quickly turned and fled the room. Ashiwara started to follow . . . and then realized Akira wouldn't talk to him even if he did catch him.
* * *
In the elevator, Akira pounded the wall in frustration, then leaned his forehead on his arm.
The game was a disaster. An absolute disaster. Every time he tried to focus, his mind would call up those same images, over and over . . . the man in ancient dress . . . the patterns of his first game against Hikaru . . .
He knew that the people who had been watching were probably asking each other "What's the matter with Touya?" right now. And he didn't even know the answer to that himself.
The elevator arrived at street level. He walked out rapidly, not wanting to meet up with anyone he knew.
*I have to talk to Shindou,* he thought. *I have to . . .*
He reached the subway stop and flew down the stairs. At the bottom, he brushed past a young couple, not even realizing he was pushing them out of the way. They glared at him. He was oblivious.
As the train arrived and he climbed on, he realized that talking to Shindou would be ridiculous. How could Hikaru possibly know about his dreams? It wasn't as if he had transmitted them!
But Akira still couldn't shake the feeling that there was some kind of *connection* between Shindou and the dream figure. Shindou's past incarnation? But even if it was, he wouldn't be consciously aware of it. And why would *he* be dreaming about *Shindou's* past life?
He leaned over, his head in his hands. He hadn't felt so knocked off-balance, so thrown into a tailspin since those first games against Shindou, a seeming eon ago.
*Why always him?* he thought. *Why does everything that does this to me have to do with Shindou?*
But he was no closer to the answer than he'd been at any time since he was 12.
* * *
Hikaru was at his goban, a print of an ancient kifu laid out on the floor next to him. He studied it for a moment, then began pulling stones out of the two go kes before him, laying a few out, then stopping to examine and contemplate the patterns.
It was a Shuusaku game. He hadn't recreated one of these in awhile . . . but he needed to tonight. When he was unsettled, it always helped to have a tangible reminder of Sai.
He'd felt unsettled ever since the fight with Touya. And he couldn't quite figure out why. It wasn't as if fights between them were anything out of the ordinary.
His eyes wandered from the goban to his cell phone, lying just to the right of it. Something in him wanted to pick that phone up and push a familiar speed dial combination.
*No,* he thought. *If Touya wants to talk to me . . . then let him come to me.*
He began to lay out stones again. He usually didn't recreate games right after playing, and he'd just come from a match against Isumi at Waya's place.
But that game had felt so . . . unsatisfying.
*Waya and Isumi are great players,* Hikaru thought, *but they just don't challenge me like Touya. Nothing else is like playing him.*
Only with Touya was there a sense that his opponent was trying to probe his brain, to figure out his thought patterns before Hikaru knew them himself. And Touya was the only opponent whose brain Hikaru would try to probe.
"Sai," he said aloud, "I felt so empty when you left me . . . like I'd never be whole again. But when Touya and I started playing together, I thought I was all right again . . ."
He finished that thought silently. And now that he and Touya had their falling out, he was once again feeling empty.
They were supposed to have their usual game at the Go salon the next day. Hikaru wondered if he should still show up. *Let him call me if he wants me to come,* he thought.
He looked at the cell phone again, as if willing it to ring. It didn't.
He took a deep breath, and went back to recreating the game.
* * *
Akira had been afraid to fall asleep.
He went through the motions of getting ready for bed as usual, and lay down on his futon . . . but he didn't want his eyes to close.
He didn't want to get drawn into that mist again, be ripped away from the reality he knew, be deposited in another time, another place that would haunt him and disrupt his life.
But fatigue won out. His limbs felt like lead, his eyelids even heavier. He tried to force them open, but to little avail.
And then, he was drifting through clouds of vapor again. He waved an arm as if he could banish them, but they swirled faster and faster about him, as if to taunt him, to tell him he couldn't fight what was happening.
His feet hit the ground, and then he was walking down the same palace corridor again.
He knew where to go, as if someone was whispering in his ear. A turn to the left, and he was in the same courtyard where he'd been before.
There was the same goban, with the same two players bent over it. Akira felt his heart sink. It was the same dream all over again.
Then, he realized that the actual game was different.
He approached the board and leaned over it, once again not casting a shadow. The two players didn't notice him, didn't break their concentration.
His eyes followed the pattern of stones, and he drew away with a gasp.
This was the *second* game he'd played against Shindou. The one that had ended swiftly, and ruthlessly.
"Why?" he cried aloud. "Why do you keep showing me . . ."
He suddenly felt the ground lurch, and the clouds of mist began gathering around him again. The scene before him dissolved into a whirl of colors, great streaks of pink and blue and white and black swirling all around him like a tornado.
The whirling stopped, the clouds went away. He was looking at the courtyard again, but at a further distance. The goban was still there, and the person he'd seen over and over was still sitting at it . . . but there was a different person sitting opposite him, a harsh-looking man with shifty eyes above his drooping mustache. They were surrounded by a group of other men, all in the tall hats and robes of the period, all looking intently at the board, including one in the robes of the emperor kneeling front and center of the group.
There was no sound but the *pachi* of the stones. Akira crept closer, intent on seeing the board, wondering if this time, he'd see his third game against Shindou, the one where his rival had played so incredibly badly.
Instead, he saw something much more disturbing.
The shifty-eyed man slipped his hand into the go ke while his opponent was intend on the board, took out two stones and slipped them up the sleeve of his robe.
Akira looked around, frantically . . . surely somebody had to have seen this man do that? But nobody batted an eye.
"Hey!" he shouted aloud. "This man's a cheater! Didn't any of you see that? Hey!"
Silence. And it continued to be silent as the men began to count up their stones at the end of the game. It looked like even with the cheating, the one who'd been haunting Akira was going to win.
And then, his opponent stood up, pointed at him, and shouted, "He cheated!"
The other looked flustered. "No . . . no, I didn't! It was him that . . ."
"Liar! He's just covering up for himself!"
The man looked at the emperor, his eyes pleading. "Your majesty, you know that I would never. . ."
The emperor stood up. "Otaka-sama has been at this court for many years. I consider his word to be most trustworthy."
"But sire, you know that I . . ."
"I only know that you are a Go player, and a good one at that . . . although it seems you rely on untrustworthy methods to win. I cannot have that at this court."
The man from Akira's other dreams got up, walked over to the kind and flung himself on his knees. "My lord, I beg of you . . ."
"There will be no begging! I will not have a dishonest Go teacher at my court! Fujiwara no Sai, you are banished!"
The name hit Akira in the gut like a cannonball. *Sai*. The Sai on the Internet , who'd defeated his father right before he retired . . . the Sai he'd suspected was Shindou, who he thought he'd seen in Shindou's Go.
The one called Sai was running away from the courtyard now, sobbing. Akira rushed after him, shouting, "SAI! I need to talk to you! Who are you? Why do I keep seeing you? SAI!!!"
And then the clouds of mist were coming upon him again. Akira frantically tried to wave them away -- how was he going to find Sai? -- but they were coming thicker and faster, until they obscured his vision and seemed to be physically pressing in on him.
When they cleared, Akira was on a different part of the palace grounds, surrounded by greenery. *It must be the back gardens,* he thought.
A glance at the position of the sun in the sky revealed it was morning. It had been late afternoon before. Clearly, Akira had been taken to a different day.
*But where is Sai?* he thought. He began to feel more annoyed at not being able to catch Sai than anything else that had happened in those dreams -- if he were to catch up to Sai, if he were to talk to him, he'd have the answer to mysteries that had plagued him for years.
*Maybe,* he thought, *if Sai is in control, he brought me out here to talk to me. He may be in another part of the garden.*
He began to walk, then run through carefully arranged greenery, past arrangements of sand and stone, until he came upon a river . . .
Fujiwara no Sai was floating in it, lifeless.
Akira just stood at the banks, his heart pounding, his breath coming in gasps. He'd killed himself . . . he couldn't stand the idea of not playing Go at the court anymore, and he'd killed himself . . .
"NO!" he shouted "You still have to tell me . . ."
There was a loud buzzing sound, and Akira's eyes snapped open.
He reached over and slammed the off button of the alarm clock, then sat up, trembling.
Sai. The figure in his dreams was *Sai* . . . but how could it be the same Sai from the Internet, if he lived and died hundreds of years ago? And why was he playing all the games he'd played against Hikaru?
Again, he remembered the first time he and Hikaru had played each other as pros, how he'd suddenly felt he saw *another person* in Hikaru's Go, how he'd recognized the moves as being typical of *Sai* . . .
Could it be that the meaning of the dreams was that Hikaru had really been Sai all along? But then, why all the ancient imagery?
Was Hikaru a reincarnation of this Sai? Did his past self sometimes materialize in his consciousness while he was playing?
He rubbed his temples. His head was starting to hurt again.
It was going to be another awful day.
* * *
Hikaru stepped onto the familiar elevator at the Touya Go salon, wondering why he was there at all. *He may not even bother to show up*, he thought.
The doors opened, and he stepped out. Ichikawa seemed a bit nervous as she glanced over to him. "Oh, hello . . . Akira-kun is in the back . . . he didn't say a word when he came in today."
"Nothing?" said Hikaru, taking a look around the room to locate his rival.
She picked up a cloth and began methodically wiping the counter in front of her. "He's been quiet these last few days, ever since the last time you were here." Her eyes seemed shadowed with worry.
*He has?* Hikaru thought. *Did our fight have that big of an effect on him?* But he knew that he, himself, hadn't exactly been his energetic self since then, either.
"Has he been coming around here every . . ."
"Shindou!"
Hikaru looked up. Akira was standing in front of him, eyes burning like coals, hands clenched at his sides. He looked like he was about to play a major tournament, not a routine game.
"Touya?" Hikaru suddenly felt uneasy. He'd been at the receiving end of Akira's meanest game-face glares more times than he could count, but there was something different about it this time . . . like those eyes were trying to bore into his skull and read his mind.
"Let's play. Now."
Akira whirled about on his heel, his hair fanning out around his head, and stalked toward the back of the room like a leopard on the track of prey. Hikaru followed, a bit sheepishly.
He could feel the eyes of the other players boring into his back, hear their whispers. Clearly, they were all aware this was not just another Shindou/Touya game.
He sat down at the board, picking up a go ke and taking off the lid. "Touya, Ichikawa just said that you've . . ."
His rival slammed the other basket to the goban with a thud, yanked off the lid and said, "Nigiri. Now."
Hikaru swallowed hard as he reached into the go ke. He and Akira had always exchanged words before playing, no matter what the circumstances. This was just not . . . normal. He could hear another buzz of murmuring behind him . . . the attention of everyone in the salon now seemed to be focused on the two of them.
He pulled out two black stones and dropped them to the board. Akira put down a handful of white ones, then began to count them. Was it Hikaru's imagination, or were the other boy's hands shaking, just a bit?
"I'm black," Hikaru said, quietly.
They bowed and said "Please," and the game began. Hikaru laid his first stone down and watched as Akira reached into the go ke to answer it . . . it wasn't his imagination, his hands *were* shaking. In fact, he was trembling all over.
Hikaru thought of the day of the junior high tournament, the game that Sai had started and he had insisted taking over, when Akira had been so filled with nervous excitement at the prospect of playing Sai again that he'd dropped the go ke lid and had barely managed to pick it up.
*He's just like that now*, he thought. *But why? We play together all the time . . . and he knows how *I* play, different than Sai did . . .*
They moved swiftly through the fuseki stage of the game, as always, but . . . something still felt not quite right. *Focus on the game itself*, he thought, *don't think too much about Akira, or what is going on with him . . .*
But it was hard. Ichikawa had looked genuinely worried, and they were still drawing an uncomfortable amount of attention from the other patrons -- they'd gone back to their own games, but they kept glancing over. And Hikaru was beginning to understand why.
And he was only half-paying attention to what he was doing, letting his instinct take over the game. Akira was playing as fast as ever, and his decision process didn't seem to be muddled, but . . there was that air that something was *wrong* . . .
Hikaru reached for his next stone, put it down on the board . . . and suddenly realized what he had just done. The pattern he had just formed . . .
Kosumi. Old-style Go. And all he could think of was Sai . . .
Akira blinked at the pattern. He seemed to just stare at it, his face so pale his skin seemed translucent, his breath caught in his throat.
"Touya?" Hikaru said, leaning over the board. "Touya? Are you all right?"
Akira stayed stock-still, his eyes fastened on the stones, and the trembling grew faster.
Then, suddenly, he slammed both hands to the goban with a force that made all the stones hop, and shouted, "What do you know about a Fujiwara no Sai?"
Every head in the room turned. Conversation and the clink of stones stopped.
Hikaru felt like he was suspended out of time and space, somewhere in a nightmare zone.
Did he hear that right . . . not just Sai, but *Fujiwara no Sai*? How could Touya know that? He'd promised the other boy some time ago that he'd tell him his secret, but it was a promise he hadn't kept.
*Oh, gods,* he thought, panic rising rapidly in his throat, *what do I do now? I can't deny knowing about Sai, he'll never believe me when I tell him the truth if I do.*
Taking a deep breath, he said, "Why would you ask something like that?"
Akira sunk back down in his seat, seeming to collapse like a blow-up toy with a rapid air leak. "I heard it in a dream," he said in a quiet, dull voice.
A buzz of whispers filled the air as the other players fastened their full attention on the two again. Hikaru's heart started to pound. He heard Sai's full name in a dream? Did this mean . . . Sai had been in his dream? Was Sai active in this world again? Was he coming back?
A flush of excitement filled Hikaru at the prospect of coming home, opening his door and seeing Sai sitting there at the goban in his bedroom, the sight he'd so longed to see in those awful days and weeks right after he disappeared.
*But,* he thought, *why is Sai appearing in Touya's dream, and not mine? I haven't dreamed of him since the night after my first game with Touya.*
Akira remained slumped over in his seat, staring down at the floor.
"I've been having these dreams," he said, quietly. "Every night. Ever since you made the League. A man . . . tall, with very long hair, in robes and a tall hat . . . he was playing Go. The same games I played with you."
Now Hikaru was clutching the sides of the Goban in excitement. This *was* Sai! He knew for sure now! He wondered if Akira could see the pure joy that was rising in his heart reflected in his face.
"He reminded me of someone," Akira continued, not moving. "There was an air about him . . . I couldn't put my finger on it at first, but when I saw those games, I knew what it was. That man felt like *you*." He looked up, slowly. "But . . . all along, I don't think I've ever known who *you* are."
Hikaru sat back in his own chair. Now *he* was trembling with emotion. *I have to get hold of myself*, he thought. *I have to talk to him about this, find out more about how Sai contacted him.*
"Touya," he said, "let's go somewhere. I can explain . . ."
But Akira just kept talking. "Everything about you, from the day we met, has been a mystery that I can't figure out. When we first met . . . why did you play like a genius when you couldn't even hold the stones right? At that tournament . . . why did you start brilliantly, and then make terrible, sloppy moves?"
Hikaru just sat, rooted to the seat, dumfounded.
Akira looked up at him, slowly, beginning to rise to his full seated height, his voice rising in volume and pitch along with him. "Why does it always feel like there's *another person* inside you? What was this *secret* you said you were going to tell me, but never did?" He leapt to his feet, thumping the goban again. "Who ARE you, anyway?"
Now the room, which had fallen into total silence, burst out into frenzied conversation, a jumble of voices like people who were witnessing an disaster and unable to believe what they were seeing. One man said, "Has Akira-kun lost it?"
The man in the waiter's uniform approached Akira, trying to lay a comforting hand on his shoulder. Akira threw out an arm to wave him off, shooting him a glare that made the man back away rapidly.
Hikaru didn't know whether to cry, to shout back, to start throwing stones. His vocal cords felt paralyzed, there was no way he could answer.
Akira just stood, fists clenched, breathing heavy, eyes burning. Hikaru actually felt a flash of fear, wondering if the other boy was going to do something strange, something violent, something unlike him.
Then, he whirled around. "I can't continue this game," he said, rushing toward the exit. Ichikawa called out to him as he passed her, but he ignored her.
___________
Hikaru no Go is property of Yumi Hotta, Takeshi Obata and Shueisha. No profit is being made from this fanfic.