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hikarunogoAkira Touya was woken by a phone call from his father, who was in Amsterdam and not quite steady in the matter of time zones. It was light outside at least, and so Akira told him after he apologised for waking him and the commanded him into the deepest underbelly of the deepest storage closet in the house to look for the record of a game he had played in the nineteen eighties. Akira had spent the morning digging through cardboard boxes of games archived in various states of order, and it was all for nought.
At ten, he could excuse himself by having a scheduled game and felt his back ache as he stood up and looked toward the daylight in the hallway behind him. The archeological dig into his father's history had yielded
Akira Touya had always had a clear vision of what his life would be like: he would play Go like his father did. With that as the fundament, he could fairly well predict what kind of people he would meet, what kind of things he would be doing, and even what kind of house he would live in. This mental sketch was the map to how Akira envisioned his future and the decisions he had to make, and if it was rather lacking in detail, so what? The things that weren't there were trivialities. Akira Touya had fallen in love with the game of Go from the first moment he had been allowed to pick up a stone and felt the sound of it meeting with the board in his fingertips. At the age of four, he'd met the only love he'd ever need, and known the only thing that would truly matter in his life. His path from there had been clear ever since.
There were distorting elements, of course, but never big enough to become abberations. Hikaru Shindou was one such thing, a player utterly unpredicted by the pattern that Kouyo Touya had threaded upon his son's fabric of life. Akira's father had never had a person comparable to Hikaru Shindou step into his personal vision of the world and then turned it around by 180 degrees, but Akira was clever enough to recognise an improvement when he saw one. Shindou was a necessity in his life and his approach to Go, so Akira was ready to overlook the parts of Shindou that he itched to correct. His speech, his lack of tact, his hair, his reputation for never knowing the right people and instead cultivating friendships in the oddest places. The last part was probably true. Shindou, who had friends among construction workers and taxi drivers, was often stunningly ignorant of about the important players in the field of Go.
Ogata-san had said something of the same to Akira, once; something about paying heed to his opponents, even those who disappointed him. It was ill-mannered and arrogant to forget people's names before you had finished playing them. Akira had been fourteen, then, and disagreed; Go was what mattered to him, and he had no obligation to pay attention to people whose Go would never amount to anything.
This presumption boomeranged back to smash into his skull the day he sat down across the Go board during the preliminary to the Tengen tournament and couldn't steer his eyes away from his opponent.
Akira Touya did not usually take notice of other's people's looks beyond the barest of classifications - were they dressed for the occasion, did they wear outrageous hairstyles? But today, he found it hard to look away from the person sitting directly across from him. It felt, bizarrely, as if it was the first time he had ever seen another person. It was, beyond any doubt, the first time he had ever cared for another person without having seen their Go, but only - as was the case here - his hair (dyed?), his clothes (casual) and his face (unblemished), his eyes (brown). It was, incomprehensibly, as if nothing in this world was as important as this boy.
Which was patently untrue, but Akira found that any focus he could have spared to the game he was about to play was instead pulled towards the way this boy's fringe fell over his generous eyebrows, and Akira, so focused on facing Ashiwara-san in the third round, had already forgotten the name of his opponent in the first.
He almost placed five black stones onto the Go board when they chose for colour. He caught himself in time, but lost all sense of self when they swapped goke, and he looked up to meet those brown eyes.
The boy was staring at him, and Akira was overtaken by a rush of alien feelings that refused to let his brain make any decision for proper action to take.
"Hey, uh..." said his opponent.
"What?" said Akira, and his voice sounded strange.
The expression on the other boy's face was a combination of something that Akira couldn't identify. "I - sorry, just... keep still for two seconds, 'kay?"
"What?" said Akira again, and then -
- then the boy reached a hand out to Akira, who froze as he felt the fingertipes brush his chin
"Sorry," said the boy again, and shifted his hand around so that Akira could look into the curve of his open palm. A gangly, brown spider was trying to climb around its prison, but was caught and pushed back by the twist of a finger. "I, uh, I thought it'd be better than for you to have to run out to get it yourself. Oh geez," said the boy, and climbed to his feet to leave the room, still with his arm held out at an odd angle.
There was a bit of official rustle to that; their unstarted game was anulled and started over, and Akira played the most pathetic game up to that point in his professional career. When they counted for points, he had lost by two and a half.
"Hey, uh," said his opponent, and looked at Akira in a way that seemed apologetic, "You know... about that spider?"
"What?" said Akira and never wanted the other boy to stop talking to him.
"I'm the same with dogs."
"Right," said Akira felt absurdly elated because this boy whose name he didn't know was choosing to stay and talk to him about his fresh humiliation.
"And I think that's way more embarassing," said the boy lowly, his cheeks colouring before he turned around and left the room and left Akira standing in the spot and wonder if dogs regularly got caught in people's hair.
"That was unlike you," said a voice behind him.
He turned around while frantically trying to come up with some explanation for the unseemly staring, and there was Ochi-kun, looking unimpressed.
"I'd have liked to see that game," he said and pushed his glasses up as he walked past Akira. "You're really not yourself today, are you."
By the time Akira could have found the voice to reply, Ochi had disappeared, and Akira had had enough time to face himself and realise that Ochi had been right: Akira Touya wasn't the person he had been until the moment he sat down across from the boy with those eyes.
It would be so simple to know the name of his sudden nemesis; there were five steps back to where the game records were kept; a quick internet search would show up the game schedule.
Akira resolutely decided not to go there.
"So," said Shindou, "you're afraid of spiders, huh?"
"What?" said Akira, genuinely puzzled. "Where did you get that idea? I'm not."
"Sheesh," said Shindou and rolled his eyes, "Waya told me. Showed me the game, too."
"What?" said Akira, distantly aware that there existed a "Waya" who Shindou would regularly meet for lunch and utterly clueless as to why this person would know about that game. Shindou gave him a confused stare.
"The Tengen preliminaries," said Shindou, "the game you lost because you'd caught a spider in your hair because no way would you lose against Waya."
"Oh," said Akira once he found his voice again, "him."
"Yeah. You know, I'd say something but I guess even people like you'd have a weak point."
"What's that supposed to mean?!"
"Spiders."
"I'm not afraid of spiders!"
Shindou gave him a look that oozed of 'yeah, right'.
At ten, he could excuse himself by having a scheduled game and felt his back ache as he stood up and looked toward the daylight in the hallway behind him. The archeological dig into his father's history had yielded
Akira Touya had always had a clear vision of what his life would be like: he would play Go like his father did. With that as the fundament, he could fairly well predict what kind of people he would meet, what kind of things he would be doing, and even what kind of house he would live in. This mental sketch was the map to how Akira envisioned his future and the decisions he had to make, and if it was rather lacking in detail, so what? The things that weren't there were trivialities. Akira Touya had fallen in love with the game of Go from the first moment he had been allowed to pick up a stone and felt the sound of it meeting with the board in his fingertips. At the age of four, he'd met the only love he'd ever need, and known the only thing that would truly matter in his life. His path from there had been clear ever since.
There were distorting elements, of course, but never big enough to become abberations. Hikaru Shindou was one such thing, a player utterly unpredicted by the pattern that Kouyo Touya had threaded upon his son's fabric of life. Akira's father had never had a person comparable to Hikaru Shindou step into his personal vision of the world and then turned it around by 180 degrees, but Akira was clever enough to recognise an improvement when he saw one. Shindou was a necessity in his life and his approach to Go, so Akira was ready to overlook the parts of Shindou that he itched to correct. His speech, his lack of tact, his hair, his reputation for never knowing the right people and instead cultivating friendships in the oddest places. The last part was probably true. Shindou, who had friends among construction workers and taxi drivers, was often stunningly ignorant of about the important players in the field of Go.
Ogata-san had said something of the same to Akira, once; something about paying heed to his opponents, even those who disappointed him. It was ill-mannered and arrogant to forget people's names before you had finished playing them. Akira had been fourteen, then, and disagreed; Go was what mattered to him, and he had no obligation to pay attention to people whose Go would never amount to anything.
This presumption boomeranged back to smash into his skull the day he sat down across the Go board during the preliminary to the Tengen tournament and couldn't steer his eyes away from his opponent.
Akira Touya did not usually take notice of other's people's looks beyond the barest of classifications - were they dressed for the occasion, did they wear outrageous hairstyles? But today, he found it hard to look away from the person sitting directly across from him. It felt, bizarrely, as if it was the first time he had ever seen another person. It was, beyond any doubt, the first time he had ever cared for another person without having seen their Go, but only - as was the case here - his hair (dyed?), his clothes (casual) and his face (unblemished), his eyes (brown). It was, incomprehensibly, as if nothing in this world was as important as this boy.
Which was patently untrue, but Akira found that any focus he could have spared to the game he was about to play was instead pulled towards the way this boy's fringe fell over his generous eyebrows, and Akira, so focused on facing Ashiwara-san in the third round, had already forgotten the name of his opponent in the first.
He almost placed five black stones onto the Go board when they chose for colour. He caught himself in time, but lost all sense of self when they swapped goke, and he looked up to meet those brown eyes.
The boy was staring at him, and Akira was overtaken by a rush of alien feelings that refused to let his brain make any decision for proper action to take.
"Hey, uh..." said his opponent.
"What?" said Akira, and his voice sounded strange.
The expression on the other boy's face was a combination of something that Akira couldn't identify. "I - sorry, just... keep still for two seconds, 'kay?"
"What?" said Akira again, and then -
- then the boy reached a hand out to Akira, who froze as he felt the fingertipes brush his chin
"Sorry," said the boy again, and shifted his hand around so that Akira could look into the curve of his open palm. A gangly, brown spider was trying to climb around its prison, but was caught and pushed back by the twist of a finger. "I, uh, I thought it'd be better than for you to have to run out to get it yourself. Oh geez," said the boy, and climbed to his feet to leave the room, still with his arm held out at an odd angle.
There was a bit of official rustle to that; their unstarted game was anulled and started over, and Akira played the most pathetic game up to that point in his professional career. When they counted for points, he had lost by two and a half.
"Hey, uh," said his opponent, and looked at Akira in a way that seemed apologetic, "You know... about that spider?"
"What?" said Akira and never wanted the other boy to stop talking to him.
"I'm the same with dogs."
"Right," said Akira felt absurdly elated because this boy whose name he didn't know was choosing to stay and talk to him about his fresh humiliation.
"And I think that's way more embarassing," said the boy lowly, his cheeks colouring before he turned around and left the room and left Akira standing in the spot and wonder if dogs regularly got caught in people's hair.
"That was unlike you," said a voice behind him.
He turned around while frantically trying to come up with some explanation for the unseemly staring, and there was Ochi-kun, looking unimpressed.
"I'd have liked to see that game," he said and pushed his glasses up as he walked past Akira. "You're really not yourself today, are you."
By the time Akira could have found the voice to reply, Ochi had disappeared, and Akira had had enough time to face himself and realise that Ochi had been right: Akira Touya wasn't the person he had been until the moment he sat down across from the boy with those eyes.
It would be so simple to know the name of his sudden nemesis; there were five steps back to where the game records were kept; a quick internet search would show up the game schedule.
Akira resolutely decided not to go there.
"So," said Shindou, "you're afraid of spiders, huh?"
"What?" said Akira, genuinely puzzled. "Where did you get that idea? I'm not."
"Sheesh," said Shindou and rolled his eyes, "Waya told me. Showed me the game, too."
"What?" said Akira, distantly aware that there existed a "Waya" who Shindou would regularly meet for lunch and utterly clueless as to why this person would know about that game. Shindou gave him a confused stare.
"The Tengen preliminaries," said Shindou, "the game you lost because you'd caught a spider in your hair because no way would you lose against Waya."
"Oh," said Akira once he found his voice again, "him."
"Yeah. You know, I'd say something but I guess even people like you'd have a weak point."
"What's that supposed to mean?!"
"Spiders."
"I'm not afraid of spiders!"
Shindou gave him a look that oozed of 'yeah, right'.
