Hikaru No Go Fan Fiction ❯ Sequence ❯ Unexpected ( Chapter 1 )

Title: Sequence 0/?

Author: Ore
Rating: PG-13 in the long run
Pairings: future Akira/Hikaru
Disclaimer: Hikaru no Go does not belong to me. Simple and so bittersweet.
Comments: Dealing with Yashiro being kicked out of the house and the consequences of shoving him, Hikaru, and Akira into one apartment. But let's not forget the romantic tension building between two of the roommates.

Given a quick beta by my Chev' and Middles, since my main beta seems to have been eaten by Easter.

C&C welcome. ^_^

*****

The weather report had said nothing about rain.

But it had rained and it had rained hard. One moment Hikaru had been walking home under an innocent blue sky and then dark clouds had rolled in, greeting him with a sheet of rain. He had paused in both movement and thought, shocked by the sudden drenching before letting out a surprised -- and tardy -- shout and dashing down the street, hoping to make it the three blocks home before he was completely soaked. That hope had drowned within his first five frantic strides. Literally.

So now he stood in front of the door to his apartment, looking like something the cat dragged in, a puddle of water rapidly forming at his feet.

Hikaru leaned his forehead against the door and fumbled to get his key out of his pocket. Except he couldn't find his key. Had he put it in his backpack? Swinging it off his shoulder and shoving hands deep into its pouches did not provide him with the wished result. Nonononono! He must have left the key on the kitchen counter in his rush to leave this morning. In trying to make it to his tutorial on time -- shoving legs into pants and searching for a decent, clean shirt -- he that one important detail had escaped his mind.

"Let me in," he whined at the door in some absurd hope that it would magically open. Certainly no one was going to open it. His old roommates were long gone and his new roommate had yet to move in. "Please?"

The door wasn't responding to his plea. There was only one thing left to do.

Thump, went his head against the door. Thump. Thump. Thump.

He let out one last irritated sigh and pulled away from the door, deciding he would have to track down the landlord before he died of hypothermia or contracted pneumonia or something.

Of course, that was when the door decided to open with a very familiar face poking out from behind it.

"Hikaru, what are you doing?" Akari asked him.

"Akari, you're here!" A scattered recollection of agreeing to have her meet him at his apartment pulled itself together. She had wanted to go over her kifu with him, but due to their schedules it had been decided that it would be easier for her to meet him at his home. And so he had passed a spare key to her during one of their brief meetings. "I-I- nothing!"

"I found a set of keys on the counter, so I left the door unlocked behind me." He winced. That was Akari speak for 'stupid Hikaru!' and this time he couldn't quite deny it . . . not that he was ever going to admit it to her. "You're soaking wet."

"I got caught in the storm." He stumbled by her, kicking off his sneakers next to her neatly lined up shoes.

"Looks like it. Go change and I'll make some tea."

She shut the door behind him and he meandered down the hall, sniffling and wondering if he was catching a cold. "The tea's in -"

Hikaru frowned. Something strange had happened to the little kitchen while he had been away at his game. "Akari, what did you do?"

His childhood friend bounced past him, long chestnut hair in a high ponytail swinging back and forth. In her high school years she had matured and `become so pretty and kind' as his mother liked to put it. Hint, hint. Hikaru wasn't that dense, but his mother just didn't get it. Akari was Akari and when he could remember her sitting on his stomach at five-years-old, wielding pink lipstick and dark blue eye shadow in chubby hands, well, it put a damper on any notion of her as a girlfriend. He was content with her as a girl friend, not as a girlfriend.

"I cleaned." He tacked on an unsaid `you're messy, Hikaru' to her words, because he knew that was what she was getting at.

"I was going to clean, but I've been busy." Games, conventions, shidougo.

"Sure." She waved a hand at him, already digging through one of his cupboards. "I know where the tea is. Go change before you get sick."

Would she like it if he bustled his busy body into her house and started butting in? Hikaru added another reason why he and Akari were better off as friends while he shuffled himself off to his room, lacking the energy to object or argue. Not that he had any reason to object to Akari removing a hassle for him; it was just the principle of the whole thing.

Tossing his damp backpack on his bed, he scrubbed his hand across his face. Not the sort to have patience in dealing with beginners, Hikaru found that holding on to that virtue while teaching a giggling girl who wanted to get to know him was mentally tiring.

Right. He was freezing to death in wet clothes. If he stood around any longer, he was going to be a Hikaru-popsicle. Scrounging about in the pile of clothes that resided upon the floor, he managed to dig up a somewhat decent shirt and a pair of pants. They would do for now. High up on his list of things to do: laundry.

Peeling the wet clothes off his body, he scrambled into his dry ones. He was still chilled, but he could turn up the heat. He had to get back out there before Akari stuck her nose somewhere else. It was his apartment, not hers.

Things still looked the same when he ventured out into the living area. Akari had the kettle and two cups situated on the living room table, wafts of steam from the cups. The girl, herself, was sitting cross-legged next to his goban, her hands dark against paper as she flipped through several sheets of kifu. Behind her, he could see though the rain-streaked windows and into the gray and wet world outside.

Hikaru sat himself across from her, grabbing a cup of tea with one hand and plucking the kifu out of her grasp with his other. "These are your games?"

"Ah, Hikaru!"

He took a sip of tea and grimaced. It was good, but still too hot. Setting the cup aside, he studied Akari's kifu. Not bad. She had definitely improved from the last time he had played her, but she was nowhere near the level of a pro. "You should have been more aggressive here and jumped three spaces instead of two."

"But doesn't that weaken my shape in the left-hand corner?"

"No. The shape has a lot of influence so even if your opponent tries a tsuke here, you can use a nobi here or . . . " She was frowning at him, bottom lip caught between her teeth. Probably unable to visualize what he was going to explain. "Do you want me to show you on the goban?"

"Could you?"

He nodded and brought both go ke to sit in front of him, his fingers swiftly placing stone after stone, recreating the fuseki of Akari's game.

"Hikaru, do you want me to order some take-out? You don't have anything to eat in your fridge or cupboards."

Was nosy Akari's middle-name? Sure, he hadn't been out to shop for a while, but he hadn't been home all that much. "There's ramen."

"That's not food."

She was worse than his mother. "Yes, it is."

"Not when you eat it for every meal."

"Fine, order out!"

Akari frowned, "You don't have to be so mean about it."

"And you aren't my baby-sitter."

"Are you sure Isumi-san and Waya-san weren't, though?" Brushing aside her bangs, she gave him a look. "Are you really all right living here by yourself?"

It did get quiet at night with his old roommates gone, but he wasn't exactly going to be alone in a few days anymore. "Yes! Would you just order?"

"Have it your way," she said and reached for the phone.

Which decided to ring the moment her hand wrapped around the receiver. She shrieked and jumped away from it, tripping over her own feet and falling on her rear with a loud thud.

Hikaru felt it appropriate to laugh.

"Scare you?" he questioned, reaching to pick up the ringing phone himself.

Akari glared, "It's not that - nevermind."

"Hello, Shindou Hikaru here," he spoke into the phone, afterwards sticking out his tongue at Akari.

She reciprocated the gesture in his direction.

"Shindou-kun?" The voice was rough at the edges, but Hikaru knew it. "This is Yashiro . . ."

"Yashiro-kun! Are you coming out to Tokyo soon?" Hikaru leaned back, cradling the phone against his shoulder. The Kansai pro usually managed to visit once a month and always announced his arrival a week or two ahead of time by phone call.

"I-I . . . you mentioned that you were going to have room once Isumi-san and Waya moved out, right?"

"Yashiro?"

"I was wondering if I would stay with you for a few days. It wouldn't be longer than a week or two, just until I find an apartment-" Yashiro's voice was strangled, as if he has being choked by a noose, sounding very unlike the usual confident pro Hikaru knew.

Akari was looking puzzled and he waved her off. Despite her obvious concern, Hikaru didn't think this was a conversation she should listen in on. She tilted her head, then nodded, getting to her feet and wandered onto the kitchen, cradling her cup of tea in her hands. Hikaru could still see her, drifting through the kitchen and checking in cupboards while sipping her tea. Anything to keep her mind off of listening to him, he assumed. There were a few good things to be said about being friends for as long as they had been.

"What's wrong?"

" . . . I got kicked out of the house. My grades were dropping and Father told me I needed to stop wasting my time and get serious about school and not mess around playing some stupid game. He told me to stop. We got into a big fight and . . . and then he kicked me out and said I couldn't live under his roof until I came to my senses."

Hikaru tried to find something to say. He had known that Yashiro's parents didn't think that being a go pro was a decent job or a job at all and he had known that over the past year or two, Yashiro and his father had been having difficulties over it, but for it to have gone this far . . . it left a heavy weight in the back of Hikaru's throat. Yashiro's situation was a strange affair compared to Hikaru's own home-life.

"I have room, but are you sure you want to come all the way out to Tokyo? I mean, don't you have games? It's a long way to travel. Is there anyone you can stay with out there?" That came out wrong.

For an instant Yashiro didn't answer him and all Hikaru could hear was the pounding rain and Akari's faint muttering combined with long, stuttering breaths on the other end of the line. "Here? They have roommates . . . or families and I don't want -" Yashiro paused, as if reconsidering something and finally responded with a weak "-want to intrude. Forget it, I shouldn't have called-"

"No! No. It's all right. You can stay here. Please."

"You're sure?"

"I wouldn't say it if I wasn't serious!"

Hikaru thought he heard a frail chuckle on the other side. "I know."

"Uh, but what about your games and lessons?"

"I only had a few lessons scheduled this week, but I've already canceled them or had someone else take them. There's a game, but that's the only thing I really need to be at." For a pro, that was a sparse schedule, especially since their income depended on tutorials and the like. "School, you know. It didn't leave much time for anything except studying."

"Oh." How lucky had Hikaru been with his own parents. With no knowledge of the world of go, his mother had still granted him his freedom, even if she worried herself gray hairs.

"I should be going. I'll see you in a few hours . . . and thanks. A lot."

"It's nothing! Do you want me to meet you at the station? It's raining pretty hard." As if backing up his words, the rain intensified and he looked out the window, studying the rolling clouds that grew ever darker.

"No, I'll be fine. I know my way to your place. Later." And then Yashiro hung up.

Hikaru stared bewildered at the phone for a few seconds before fumbling to hang up himself.

"The tea's probably cold by now, Hikaru." Akari crept out of the kitchen and it struck him that she might have been eaves-dropping despite the distance she had placed between them. Her dark eyes were worried.

He smiled weakly back at her, still reeling from Yashiro's unexpected call. "Yeah."

Silence in the room grew thick, before Akari let out a sigh. "Okay, tell me."

"Tell you what?"

"Why you're acting like . . . that?" Thankfully, he struck out the idea of Akari eavesdropping in the face of her question. "Is everything all right?"

She wouldn't stop annoying him until he told her and in the long run, it wasn't like she was going to find out eventually. To let her know swiftly was going to be more painless then keeping it from her. "I'm fine. But Yashiro-kun got kicked out of his house and is coming over here to stay until he can get his own place. It's only going to be for a week or two at the most."

"Who's Yashiro?"

"A pro my age. He's a 3-dan from the Kansai Go Institute."

"Does Touya-kun know him?"

A distant alarm went off in the back of Hikaru's mind. "Why?"

" . . . Hikaru, isn't he supposed to move in with you?" Under Akari's expectant gaze and words, everything fell into place. "Don't tell me you forgot."

"I didn't forget!"

"You forgot."

"I would have still said yes."

Akari grinned, " You should call up Touya-kun to tell him."

"I'm going to. Sheesh." It took a moment for him to pick up the phone again and another one to remember Touya's number. Caught in the process of dialing, Hikaru barely caught the flicker of movement that was Akari opening the door into what had been his old room. The apartment consisted of two bedrooms. One was big and one was small. Waya and Isumi had shared the larger room -- leaving Hikaru by himself in the smaller one -- but when they had moved out, he had quickly transferred his stuff over to the big room. First come, first serve had been his thought at the time.

"What are you doing?" he hissed at her, listening to the dull ringing on the other end of the line.

"You aren't going to have him sleep on the couch, are you?" she said, poking her head into the bedroom. "What are these boxes doing in here?"

No one was answering at Touya's house, so he hung up and started dialing what he knew to be Touya's cell number. "Waya and Isumi are storing some of their stuff here until they get back from China."

"Well, you're going to have to move them off the bed and somewhere else. Is there room in the closets?"

"I don't know." Touya's cell was turned off. He was probably busy with his study group. Did that take place today? Hikaru decided that he would have to speak with Touya tomorrow, after he got his scheduled games of shidougo out of the way. They were planning to meet at his father's Go Salon afterwards, so he could catch him there. Preparing to hang up the phone, he could only gape in surprise when Akari snatched it out of his hand.

"Why don't you find somewhere to put them other than the bed, then, and I'll call for takeout!" she chirped at him.

He twitched. "This isn't your house."

"You're just going to leave all those boxes in there for Yashiro to deal with?"

"No!"

"Then move them. A person can barely walk in here."

"Are you calling?" he shot back at her.

She crinkled her nose. "I will. What do you want to eat?"

"Ra-"

"You know what? I'll just order for all of us and extra for your friend when he finally gets here."

Why did he put up with her?

The rain dashed against the window, causing it to rattle and Hikaru to startle. He stared out into the dark and wet of outside and bit his bottom lip. "Do you want me to walk you to the station when we're done?"

He felt the warmth of Akari's body on his back and saw her reflection in the window come stand behind his own, the phone clenched in her hand. "That would be nice."