Hikaru No Go Fan Fiction ❯ Balance ❯ Part 1, Spiritual 3/4 ( Chapter 3 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

BALANCE
A Hikaru no Go Sekkushiaru Roman Series
By Sailor Mac

PART ONE: SPIRITUAL (3/4)


* * *

Hikaru was in his room before his goban, having a strong sense of dŽjˆ vu.

*Just like the night I made the Honinbou League,* he thought. *I'm sitting here, looking at my phone, wondering if I should call Touya.*

He opened the baskets of stones in front of him, but he didn't start laying them out. Instead, he dipped his hand into the white one, picking up a handful of the cool, smooth pieces and letting them slide off his fingers back into the go ke.

He hadn't found Sai when he got home. He'd actually considered going out on a hunt for him, like he had the day after he'd disappeared, but realized it would probably be fruitless.

Sai had never been in Hikaru's dreams when he was manifest in this world. Only that one time, only after he'd gone away . . .

But why was he in *Touya's* dreams, and not his? It made no sense. Sai had never appeared before Touya before -- except when he was hiding behind Hikaru.

"What are you doing, Sai?" Hikaru said aloud.

This time, he reached into the go ke with the black stones, withdrew one and placed it on the board with a sharp *pachi*. He imagined his teacher sitting at the other end of the board, tapping with his fan to show him where the white stone should go. Stone after stone followed, recreating one of his old games with Sai.

*The look on Touya's face,* he thought. *The way he was trembling . . . those dreams were doing *something* to him. Something pretty bad.*

He sat back and studied the board again, his eyes wandering over the patterns of black and white. *If only you could speak to me through this game,* Hikaru thought. *If only you could tell me what to do, what's going to happen next . . .*

And suddenly, he *knew*, just as surely as if Sai were standing before him, speaking to him.

"I'd promised to tell Akira about you someday," he said aloud. "I think someday is now."

* * *

*Maybe*, Akira thought as he lay down on his futon, *now that I've told Shindou, I won't have any more of those dreams. Maybe Fujiwara no Sai will leave me alone.*

And when he first went to sleep, it seemed that way. No clouds of mist were there, no feeling of being ripped away from reality.

Instead, he was walking down his own street, his bookbag slung over his shoulder, looking for something, someone . . . who? Was he looking for Shindou?

He saw a house in the distance . . . a traditional looking Japanese dwelling, pure white. A feeling of confidence was swelling inside him . . . yes, this is what he was looking for.

He went up the walk and reached for the door . . .

And there was a voice in his head . . . no, not a voice, it was just *words* forming without sound.

*You can't go there. There is more you need to see.*

Akira whirled around. "Stop this! Why is it so important that you do this to me?"

But there was no reply. Instead, the clouds of mist were starting to form around him again. Akira began to run down the walk, away from the house, trying to get away from it.

But it followed, and swirled around him rapidly, becoming a cyclone, pinning his arms to his sides, lifting him off the ground. He tried to shout in protest, but his mouth felt sealed shut as well.

His feet hit the ground, and this time, he felt something push him from behind, forcing him to walk forward.

He staggered on, wobbling a bit, and found out that he was walking down the corridor of the royal palace again. But it seemed different this time. Many of the statues from before were gone. Others were in their place. There were more standing plants, and a painting of a distant mountain that wasn't there before.

He wandered out to the courtyard where he had been before, and wasn't surprised to see people playing Go. But their costumes were different. Gone were the tall hats, the flowing robes. Most were in formal kimonos.

*Why am I seeing this?* he thought. *What has this got to do with what I saw before . . . with Fujiwara no Sai, and Shindou?*

And then, his eyes were slowly drawn to a game taking place in another part of the courtyard. One participant was a man in his late 20s, with a bulky build and a pushed-in face not unlike a pug. The other several years younger than him, much slimmer, with a serene look on his face.

But there was someone standing behind the younger man -- a shadowy figure, unsubstantial, like a wisp of smoke barely hanging on before being blown away. He was wearing Heian dress, and his face . . .

Akira felt his heart speed up. There was no doubt who the ghost was. "Fujiwara no Sai," he whispered.

The ghost was pointing to the board with his fan. The younger man took a black stone from the go ke and placed it where he was pointing.

Something was struggling to come to the surface of Akira's mind, something he thought he should *know* from watching this scene, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it.

The opponent studied the board for a long time before placing his stone. The ghost was much quicker in making his reply. And the older man stared at the board again.

Finally, he bowed his head and said, "I resign."

The younger man bowed in return, and said, "Thank you for the game." He began to pick up the stones and return them to their go kes.

The other let out a small, deep laugh. "You know, I didn't believe what I'd heard about you. I had to find out for myself."

"What did you hear?" said the other.

"That absolutely nobody could beat Honinbou Shuusaku in the palace games."

And behind the younger man, the ghost seemed to be chuckling to himself, as if he had a secret, and was very amused by it.

Akira felt his heart drop to his feet. "Shu -- Shuusaku?" he said aloud. This was Shuusaku? But . . . why the ghost? Why Fujiwara no Sai?

There was a loud buzzing, repeated, insistent, and he sat bolt upright. He leaned his elbow on the floor beside him, and his head on his hand, fumbling for the alarm clock with the other hand.

This was the most baffling dream yet. Why dream of Shuusaku? He certainly knew of the 19th century Honinbou . . . his father had made him study his kifu from the time he was a small child. Touya Koyou considered him the greatest player of all time.

But why was Sai standing behind him?

Could the meaning of the dream be that Shusaku was actually a *reincarnation* of Sai? He knew that the style of the Sai on the Internet had been so much like Shuusaku . . . at least one person had described him as "like Shuusaku trying to learn modern Go."

But why would Shuusaku be in the modern world, playing Go over the Internet? And dammit, why did he *still* think of Shindou every time he saw Fujiwara no Sai?

Unless Shindou was yet another reincarnation of them both.

He remembered rushing to an Internet cafŽ after playing Sai over the Web and seeing Shindou sitting there. He had claimed to have nothing to do with Sai, that he had been just reading Web comics.

*If Shindou is the reincarnation of Shuusaku . . . of Sai . . . then he was the Sai on the Internet,* Akira thought. *But his playing at that tournament, just a few weeks before then . . . it had been nothing at all like Shuusaku.*

He sighed, deeply. Just when he thought he had the solution to the mystery, it just seemed to get deeper and deeper.

He jumped out of bed and started to dress. It was Saturday, he had an abbreviated school day. He knew it was going to feel like it was two days long.

And as soon as it was over, he was going to see Shindou.

* * *

Hikaru was not at all surprised to see Akira, in his school uniform, on the other side of his door. He figured he'd be there within an hour of class ending.

"Hello, Shindou," Akira said, quietly. "May I come in?"

"Sure," Hikaru said, watching in silence as the other boy stepped out of his shoes and into the guest slippers the family kept by the door. He followed Hikaru up the stairs and to his bedroom in silence.

*The house is quiet,* Akira thought. *His mother must be out. Just as well, I don't think I'd want her barging into the room in the middle of this discussion.*

They walked into the room and automatically headed for the goban, as if that were the most natural place for them. But they didn't touch the stones. Each was waiting for the other to make a different kind of first move.

There was silence for a long moment. Akira tugged absently at his right cuff. Hikaru rubbed the back of his head and looked down at the board.

Finally, Hikaru took a deep breath and said, "Yesterday . . . you asked me who I was. I think its time I told you."

There was another pause. Akira just fixed him with a steady gaze, his hand tugging at his cuff again.

Hikaru ran a finger along the edge of the board. "Um . . . I'm not sure how to say this, but . . . well . . ."

*Oh, just come out and say it, Hikaru!* he told himself. *What's the worst that can happen? He'll call you a liar? He can't, now that he's seen Sai himself.*

He swallowed hard, looked down at the board again, and said, "Until a year or so ago, I was the channel for a ghost named Fujiwara no Sai."

Akira snapped to attention. A *channel*? Not a reincarnation? He'd heard about people who had the gift of communicating with spirits before, but . . . Shindou was the last person in the world he'd expect would have a talent like that!

"How did it happen?" he heard himself saying.

Hikaru exhaled a long breath. *He believes me,* he thought. "Well, when I was twelve years old, I went into my grandfather's attic . . . I was looking for something I could steal and sell." The words sounded like they were describing another person. He couldn't believe there was actually a time in his life that Go wasn't a part of. "And there was this old goban . . ."

He began to talk about how Sai came out of the old board, and how from that moment on, he shared consciousness with Hikaru. "He came back because he wanted to play Go again . . . he wanted to find the Hand of God. He'd been a Go player at the royal court in the Heian era, it was his whole life, but . . ."

"He was accused of cheating," Akira said, quietly, "and was banished from the court . . ."

Hikaru's jaw nearly hit the board. "How did you know that?"

"I saw it," Akira said, fiddling with his cuff again. "It was in one of my dreams." He looked back up at Hikaru. "He drowned himself after that, didn't he?"

"Yes," Hikaru said. "And then, he decided to come back . . ."

"As Shuusaku?"

Now Hikaru nearly fell over. Just how much had Sai shown Touya in these dreams? Did he already know the secret behind the games they'd played together?

"N-no, Torajiro -- Shuusaku was like me. Sai lived in his mind, and when Torajiro would play Go . . . Sai would tell him where to place the stones."

He paused, looking for any reaction from Akira, any flicker of recognition. But his expression was unreadable.

Taking another deep breath, Hikaru said, "He did the same thing with me . . . at first."

And then, images rushed into Akira's mind like water bursting from a dam. That very first game . . . Hikaru not knowing how to place the stones, pausing at odd points during play, yet making moves like a genius . . .

Oh, no, he thought. No . . . it can't be . . .

"That wasn't you?" he said, in a voice barely above a whisper. "I wasn't playing *you*?" He began to tremble slightly, his face reddening, his voice choked with barely-held-back tears. "The Shindou I've been chasing all these years was a *ghost*?"

Another memory hit him, his confrontation with Hikaru after the Internet game with Sai -- and dammit, that meant it *was* Shindou behind that computer all along, at least him and that ghost of his . . .

Shindou had said, "If you keep chasing my shadow, someday the real me will catch up with you."

This was the shadow he was referring to. *Sai* . . . the other person in Hikaru's Go . . .

The tears began to pour from his eyes, forced out by feelings of hurt and betrayal.

Hikaru waved his arms in front of his face, backing off as if he expected Akira to hit him. "At first, at first! But I wanted to play myself, and I started to learn, and . . ."

Akira rubbed furiously at his eyes, as if doing so would stop up his tear ducts. "Is that what happened at the Junior High tournament?"

"Sai started the game," Hikaru said, quietly, running his finger along the edge of the board again. "But I wanted to play you, myself . . . and I took the game away from him."

"That day," Akira said, playing with his cuffs more rapidly than before, "I was devastated. I thought you were . . . were . . ."

"You said you thought you'd seen the Hand of God in me," Hikaru replied.

"And when you turned out to be just a regular player . . . it broke my heart. And I went off to take the pro exam . . . I just wanted to get away from you, and anything that reminded me of you."

"That's when I decided I wanted to be an insei," Hikaru replied. "I worked at getting stronger. And then kept working." He looked up at Akira. "When I was an insei, and a pro . . . that wasn't Sai. That was all me. Except . . ."

Akira frowned. "Except?"

"That beginner dan game against your father. That wasn't me. It was Sai. He wanted to play your father so badly, he saw him as his main hope of reaching the Hand of God . . ."

"He played him on the Internet, didn't he?"

Hikaru dipped his hand in the black go ke and let a stream of stones fall back in the basket. "Yes. The Sai on the Internet was Sai. I worked the computer and he called the moves." He grinned sheepishly and rubbed the back of his head. "I'm not good at the Internet. I had to get my friend's sister to help me."

There was another pause, as Akira sat with a hand under his chin, looking as if his mind was trying to digest everything he'd just heard.

"When you quit playing . . . did that have something to do with Sai, too?"

Now it was Hikaru's turn to be silent. He didn't want to talk about this . . . it was still painful . . . but he knew he had to.

"That's when he left me. He just vanished one day, about a month after I became a pro." He buried his hand deep in the go ke and pulled out another handful of stones, dropping them in one by one this time. "He kept telling me he was afraid that he was going to vanish, and I . . . I didn't take him seriously. Then, one night, there was a Go marathon, and I helped out with it . . . and when I went home, we started to play a game and I fell asleep. When I woke up, he was gone."

Akira could see the very real pain in Hikaru's voice talking about it . . . it was like watching someone describe the death of a parent, or a spouse. He had a sudden urge to reach out to the other boy and hug him . . . and then was immediately startled and baffled by his own feelings.

Instead, he said, softly, "Did you think you couldn't play without him?"

"I thought he'd left because of me," Hikaru said, letting the rest of the stones in his hand fall into the basket in a rapid stream. "Because I wouldn't let him play. I quit because of that."

"But you came back."

Hikaru looked up from the stones. "I realized that Sai never really left me. He'll always be here, in my Go. You sensed that yourself."

Akira remembered very well how he studied the board after that first pro game with Hikaru, sensing that there was *another person* in his Go.

"And so," said Hikaru, "when I want to find Sai again, I play."

Akira sat quietly again, thinking. It was the kind of thing he'd normally question, if not find outright ridiculous. But he had the evidence. He'd seen Sai. The ghost had invaded his dreams every night.

He looked up at Hikaru. "Why didn't you tell me all of this before?"

"Would you have believed me?"

Akira paused, then shook his head. "No. Not without some kind of proof . . . something I could perceive myself."

Hikaru frowned. Touya's expression was . . . strange. He couldn't tell if he were angry, hurt, or just confused.

"Are you mad at me for this, Touya?" he said. He wondered why he was so worried about the answer.

"I . . . I don't know quite what I'm feeling right now," Akira said, quietly. This wasn't a lie. There was an odd mix of anger, confusion and relief bobbing around inside him, something unlike anything he'd experienced before.

He stood up. "I think I need to go for a walk and clear my head."

Akira turned and fled down the stairs and out the door, grateful for the feel of the warm sun on his face. He'd gotten almost to the street when he realized he'd forgotten to change shoes, and had to go back to the house to do so.

He set off down the street. Shindou lived in such a *normal* suburban neighborhood. Here, a homemaker was hanging out her laundry. There, two children were playing baseball with a whiffle ball and plastic bat. Coming toward him was a teenage blonde girl walking a small dog that was almost completely buried in long, silky hair.

It was not exactly a place where you'd expect to find supernatural doings.

He turned the corner and headed down another street, very much like the one he'd just left. He realized that going for walks wasn't something he normally did. Under normal circumstances, he only walked to get somewhere, and that was to and from school, or his father's Go parlor, or the subway line leading to the Go institute.

He hadn't been faced with something like this before, though.

Images of Shindou passed through his mind. Age 12, that first game . . . age 13, looking startled when he was confronted in the Go parlor . . . age 14, playing that baffling game against his father (if Sai was playing, why did it turn out so bad? Unless Sai put himself behind a severe handicap . . .)

Another person inside him. A ghost. Shindou was the front for a ghost. Those early games were all a lie! Akria walked faster, as if to get away from the truth.

*Why didn't he tell me?* he thought. *Why didn't he give me some kind of clue? Why did he let me suffer after the junior high tournament, when I was wondering if there were even a reason to play Go anymore!*

But Hikaru's words of a few minutes ago came back to him -- "Would you have believed me?"

And if Hikaru had told him about Sai back then, Akira would have called him a liar, accused him of making up the story to cover up his own sporadic talent, maybe even thought he was crazy.

But now, that he'd seen Sai himself . . . the revelation somehow made him feel a lot better about everything.

*Maybe,* he thought, *it's because everything *makes sense* now. It's like a veil of mystery has been lifted . . . like I'm seeing him for the first time. Well, I am, because this is the first time he's been a *person* to me, not an enigma.*

He turned onto yet another street, past two little girls in school uniforms riding by on bicycles.

*And just what is it that I do see?* Akira thought. *What kind of person is Shindou?*

He found a bench at the side of the road and sat down. A woman pushed a stroller occupied by babbling, wriggling twins past him. A stray cat wandered toward the bench, sniffed at Akira's pants, and walked away.

He noticed none of this. He was deep in thought.

Shindou . . . without the mystery, without the baffling randomness of his talents . . .

*Well,* Akira thought, *he can be downright annoying at times, that's for sure.* How many times had he insisted on going for ramen, when there were so many other types of restaurants near the Go Institute? Or forgot to turn his cell phone on when Akira said he was going to call?

*And you went to the restaurant with him anyway, didn't you?* he thought. *And you yelled at him for not turning on the phone . . . but you still kept calling him.*

It suddenly struck him that his relationship with Shindou was not that of typical rivals. He'd known plenty of men in his father's study group who were involved in rivalries with other players. They'd never seen them away from the goban.

*My relationship with Shindou has never been typical,* he thought, his fingers absently tugging at his collar. *He came into my life like an hurricane, and nothing was the same afterward.*

The cat ran up to his bench again, circling it as if looking for food. Akira's eyes followed it for a moment, but then closed, as he concentrated on his own thoughts.

*My whole life has revolved around him from that first game, hasn't it?* he thought. *All I could think about was playing him again . . . and then making sure I stayed ahead of him.*

But if their relationship was *just* about Go . . . then why did they have those phone conversations? Sure, they were mostly about Go, but they'd talk about their families as well, and Akira would talk about school, and Shindou would launch into some ridiculous story about how he once got chased out of the Go club room at Haze by another club who thought *they* were entitled to use the chemistry lab . . .

And why did they go to lunch together even if they were playing other people, and sometimes linger at his father's salon long after their game was over, talking over Akira's green tea and Hikaru's Mountain Dew Code Red?

*Because I genuinely like being with him,* Akira thought. *He's rough-hewn . . . not always a hundred percent thoughtful or tactful, but . . . he's sincere, and spontaneous, and warm.

He stood up, smiling quietly to himself. Oh, yes, Shindou was a huge part of his life. And it was a relief, really, to be rid of Shindou-the-mystery, because now he could explore his relationship with Shindou-the-person more.

Akira began to walk back in the direction of the Shindou house. *Where do I want that relationship to go?* he thought.

A possibility was rising in the back of his mind. He wanted to push it away . . . but it rose up again, undaunted.

The possibility of a *romantic* relationship between them.

Somehow, the idea didn't strike him as strange, even though they were both boys. It felt . . . natural, really. Akira had never had any interest in girls. Of course, he'd been so focused on his Go that he hadn't really been interested in *either* gender.

Shindou didn't seem interested in girls, either. He had that friend of his from when he was a child, Akari . . . but she didn't seem to be anything more than a friend to him. He certainly didn't seem to drop everything to seek her company.

Akira shook his head and increased his step, wrapping his arms around his body as if to hold in his thoughts. Ridiculous, really . . . he shouldn't be having such thoughts. He wondered if he needed to get away from the game some more, spend some time with other people his age.

But he knew he couldn't do that any more than bees could stop taking nectar from flowers. Go defined him, it was what he was.

*Shindou is the other side of my Go,* he thought. *Maybe Shindou is the other side of *me*, as well.*

When he rounded the corner to the Shindou house, he was surprised to see Hikaru sitting on the steps, obviously waiting for him.

"Shindou . . . why are you . . ."

Hikaru looked up at him. "Are you okay now?"

Akira nodded, slowly. "I just needed some time to think, that's all. I feel like everything is different now."

Hikaru looked down . . . was that a look of severe disappointment on his face? "I see."

"What's happened . . . I think our relationship is changed for good."

Hikaru suddenly leapt to his feet. "I don't want it to be different!" he cried.

Akira just stared at him, dumbfounded. The last thing he expected was for Shindou to act that extremely.

Hikaru suddenly look flustered, as if he'd just surprised the heck out of himself. He blushed slightly, and his face wore a look of panic as he struggled for the right words. "That is . . . um . . . I want us to keep playing together, and, um . . ."

And suddenly, without realizing what he was doing, and why he was doing it, Akira walked up to Hikaru with a smile on his face. "We can make it better," he said.

His arms wrapped around Hikaru, and he pulled the other boy against him, his lips touching Hikaru's softly.

Hikaru froze for a moment, his eyes snapping wide open, a look of momentary panic in them . . . and then they softened, and his body molded itself to Akira's as he began to kiss back, eagerly. Their lips parted for a second, then joined again.

Time stood still for both. Their minds were flooded with a curious mixture of ecstasy and confusion, one part saying "What the HELL are we doing?" and another saying "Why didn't we do this before?"

Akira suddenly pulled back, the full realization of what was happening hitting him like a ton of bricks. He was kissing Shindou Hikaru. He hadn't asked to, hadn't been invited to, he had just *done it*.

*What the hell must he think,* he thought. *He just said he wanted to play, and I did this . . .*

"I'm sorry," he said, quickly. He turned around and fled, practically running down the street.

"TOUYA!" He heard Shindou calling to him, heard footsteps as the other boy started to follow . . . then, they died out.

* * *

Akira's eyes slowly opened. He rolled over and looked at the clock, which said 8 a.m. It was Sunday -- no need to set the alarm.

*This is the first night in almost a week that I haven't had any dreams,* he thought. It didn't really surprise him, now that Shindou had told him about Sai.

He felt relieved, but . . . he also felt a strange sort of emptiness. Like something was missing from his life.

He began to run over the events of the last couple of days . . . the interrupted game, the confession, the kiss . . .

*Oh, gods, the kiss!* he thought, lying back down and crossing his arms over his eyes as if to shield himself from what had happened.

He wondered what Shindou thought of him now. He hadn't pulled away, hadn't resisted, hadn't tried to slap Akira across the face afterward . . . in fact, he'd kissed him back. But Akira had to wonder if he'd *liked* it, or had just let instinct take over in the heat of the moment.

And Akira knew that *he* had liked it, a lot. He had never actively thought about kissing Shindou before, but that didn't mean the thought hadn't been in the back of his mind.

*It felt inevitable,* he thought. *Like it was something that was going to happen, sooner or later.*

He got up from his futon and reached for his robe. He considered calling Shindou. *Maybe later,* he thought. *For now . . . I just want to be alone, and think.*

* * *

Hikaru lay on his back, holding his cell phone above his head, scrolling through the calls that had come in the night before. One from Waya, one from his grandfather, one from Akari . . .

He didn't feel like returning any of them right now. He tossed the phone on his nighttable.

After Akira had run off the night before, he'd closeted himself in his room, phone turned off. His mother thought nothing of this, as he usually spent hours on end studying Go.

He'd started to lay out stones, and then just sat there, brooding, the way he had after Sai left.

It wasn't Akira's reaction to the existence of Sai that kept running through his head. It wasn't the fact that he had finally let his rival in on his secret, that they were on a more even footing now.

It was that kiss, and the fact that Akira had run off so suddenly afterwards. And Hikaru realized that the latter bothered him a lot more than the former.

When it was happening, he'd been startled at first . . . but then had realized it felt *good*, and he *wanted* it. And it took him aback that it didn't surprise him.

He always knew he'd never share the interest in girls that other guys did. He knew he'd never like Akari as more than a best buddy. He'd blamed the former on his obsession with Go, and the latter on the brother-sister nature of their relationship -- anything sexual would feel like incest.

And, really, distinctions between gay and straight had never mattered much to him. He had a cousin who was gay, and he'd always accepted him as just another person.

*I think I was probably attracted to Touya all along,* he thought. *I didn't realize it because I was so focused on caching up to him. Could that be part of the *reason* I wanted to catch him so much? Was it that I wanted him to look at me and notice me?*

"And why aren't I panicking about this?" he said out loud. "Aren't guys supposed to freak out when they think they're gay?"

*Maybe,* he thought, *it's because of what my relationship with Touya is like. We're so . . . connected anyway. We're trying to reach the Hand of God together . . . and isn't that a relationship more intimate than sex?*

And then, a parade of *sex*-related images were suddenly flooding his mind. What would it be like to kiss Touya's bare skin, to caress him intimately, to make him moan and pant . . .

"AAAUUGGHHH!" Hikaru cried, leaping from the bed. He couldn't be thinking this way! Not when he had no idea if Touya felt the same way, or if the kiss was something that just . . . happened, and would never happen again.

"I've got to find out," he said aloud, rummaging through the closet for his clothes. "I'm going to go over there."

___________

Hikaru no Go is property of Yumi Hotta, Takeshi Obata and Shueisha. No profit is being made from this fanfic.