A/N: I don't know what happened. These were supposed to be a paragraph each. Liz, this always happens when you're involved. I am extremely suspicious.
A/N part 2: SDFJKLDSJFKLDSJF MAXIMUM CHARACTER LENGTH FOR COMMENTS IS BULLSHIT
Shindou's a pretty awesome dude, Kiyoharu's decided. Shindou's the only other person he knows who dares: he'll play a redonk hand like second-hand tengen or start a ko war only seventeen hands in just so he can see what will happen. Shindou never hesitates to take the interesting risks, to follow the untrodden path, and best of all Shindou owns it, is focused and committed and determined to see things through instead of swaddling himself in caveats and excuses just in case his gambles don't pay off.
It's for that reason, Kiyoharu figures, that they do pay off. Not all the time, as Shindou's suffered some spectacular and public failures, but they're never boring. There's always something in his games worth picking apart and analyzing, worth replaying a dozen times, a hundred times, to see if Kiyoharu can't find the secret Shindou's missed.
And the frustrating thing, the thing that drives Kiyoharu crazy, is he often can't. It's hard enough to make connections between Shindou's strategies at the best of times, and sometimes it feels like Shindou's playing thirty hands into the future and it's only chance or the caprices of the God of Go that determines whether or not the futures Shindou sees come to pass.
There are other players who are stronger than Shindou like Touya Akira, whose play has a sense of inescapable inevitability as unstoppable as the train tearing towards you when you're tied to the tracks, but Shindou is undoubtedly the most brilliant. Kiyoharu'd thought to eye him as a rival but he makes an even better friend, which is why he didn't think twice about programming his number into Shindou's phone when Shindou asked.
Now he wishes he'd known better.
1.
Shindou always, every week, without fail, calls him thirty minutes into Yoshikawa-sensei's study session. The first time had caught Kiyoharu by surprise: his ringer, which Shindou had insisted on setting himself, started blasting out the current Naruto opening theme and it had been so startling that Kiyoharu had to fumble with his jean pocket for ten seconds that felt like ten minutes as he tried to pull the vibrating, ringing abomination out of its snug home. He'd ended up having to get to his feet and had accidentally kicked over the white goke, as if things weren't bad enough, and Tsusaka'd laughed at him the whole time as Kiyoharu'd stumbled his way out of the room.
That was the first time. He hadn't expected there to be a second time, since he very clearly and politely explained to Shindou about his weekly study session, but there is. And a third.
On the fourth time Kiyoharu's at least remembered to turn his ringer off. The vibration's hum is still embarrassingly loud, at least to his own ears, but he's able to hit the dismiss button with it still in his pocket and it's not that big a deal.
On the fifth time it happens, Kiyoharu stills his vibrating phone by hitting the dismiss button. But that only buys him a few seconds before it starts buzzing again. He dismisses it again but then it starts buzzing again, and it's kind of embarrassing to be almost fondling his pocket like he's got some kind of creepy complex, and then Yoshikawa-sensei very kindly asks him if he needs to take his phone call. He really, really doesn't, but he can tell he's being a disturbance to everyone so he excuses himself to go take Shindou's Extremely Important Phone Call out in the hall.
“Hey, 'sup?” Shindou asks. “So look, I was thinking about how else Ishibashi-sensei could have handled Kurata-sensei getting all up in his grill in their battle over the bottom right corner, and--”
“Dude,” Kiyoharu interrupts him before Shindou can work up a full head of steam. “I've told you this a million times, Tuesdays from three-thirty to five are verboten. I don't call you when you're at Serizawa-sensei's, do I?”
“Yeah, well, not like you call that much anyway,” Shindou shoots back, heaving an exasperated sigh that blows up way too loud with static in Kiyoharu's ear.
“Not like I need to call when you call me all the time,” Kiyoharu points out.
“Fine,” Shindou says. “I won't call. I'll never call you again,” he threatens, but Kiyoharu's not worried because Shindou's got the memory of a goldfish if it doesn't directly involve go.
“Look, just call me after. I'll be home by like six. Or I'll call you, whatever,” Kiyoharu says, remembering Shindou's complaint.
“Can't; I do that thing at the community centre until nine; this is like the only free time I have before Thursdays,” Shindou says.
“What thing at the community centre?” Kiyoharu asks, since he's pretty sure this is the first time he's heard of such a thing.
“The thing with Shirakawa-sensei,” Shindou says, exasperated. “Okay, so are you busy or what?”
“Yeah, I'm pretty much extremely busy right now,” he says, catching himself before he starts to pace about the hall. “Just text me; I'll get back to you when I can and then you get back to me when you can and then it's all good.”
“Okay, yeah, that works out pretty good actually; bye!” Shindou says, and he hangs up immediately.
Well, Kiyoharu reflects, that was surprisingly easy.
Problem dispatched, he heads back into the study room. Yoshikawa-sensei acknowledges him with a nod, and Kiyoharu manages to settle back down on his zabuton and has almost reacclimated himself to the game before his phone vibrates in his pocket--but just once, just for a moment.
About ten seconds later, it happens again. And about twenty seconds after that. At this point he can't help but count: twenty-two seconds. Then eleven. Then forty-five. Then twenty. Then fifteen. Then thirty-two. Then he's counted out for over a minute when Yoshikawa asks him what he'd suggest in this situation.
“What where?” Kiyoharu asks before he can think better of it, and as Tsusaka fails to stifle his snort Kiyoharu begins to deeply, deeply regret that he ever gave his number to Shindou Hikaru.
2.
Shindou always calls him literally the very same evening Kiyoharu's played a recorded game, and he always wants to rub Kiyoharu's choices in his face.
“So I was thinking instead of doing the katatsuki you could've done the degiri at 6-12, which would have made her build upwards,” Shindou says.
“I had to do the katatsuki; I was too vulnerable. If I'd done the degiri I would have lost the corner,” Kiyoharu says.
“But you did lose the corner,” Shindou points out, Captain of the obvious.
“Yeah, but it's not like I knew it at the time,” Kiyoharu shoots back, resisting the urge to grind his teeth together.
“You lost the corner like twenty moves ago,” Shindou says.
He absolutely has to call him out on that one “Bullshit!” he says. “I still could have turned it around; what about if I'd gone for the ko?”
“Nah, that'd be worse; I already worked that out and that would've given her another three and a half in there,” Shindou says.
“When? When did you work it out? When did you have time? How do you even know what the game looks like? How do you even get these? Do they get Weekly Go a week in the future out there in Tokyo or what?” Kiyoharu asks, exasperated.
“Pfft, they won't even run this one,” Shindou says dismissively, which wow, Shindou doesn't have to be nearly this much of a dick about it. “I'm friends with Toosaka-san; she faxes me a copy of your games.”
Kiyoharu pictures the squat, round, stern-faced matron of the archive and tries to imagine her and Shindou holding any kind of conversation that didn't end with her banishing him from the office after thirty seconds, and utterly fails. “Toosaka-san? How do you even know her?” he asks.
“When I was at your Ki-in for the second Shinjin-Ou match I ended up poking around and she helped me find a bunch of stuff and I mentioned we were friends and that it was a total pain trying to get copies of your games and she said she could help me out so that was totally awesome,” Shindou explains.
“So you just... asked her to send you my games, and she does?” Kiyoharu asks, wanting to get this straight.
“Oh yeah, she said it wasn’t any problem at all,” Shindou says, as if this is something that just happens.
“And that’s--Toosaka-san? She does?” he asks.
“Yeah, she’s super nice,” Shindou enthuses and yes, it’s official, Shindou doesn’t live on the same planet as everyone else, he lives on Shindouworld and of course this is why nothing he does ever makes sense.
“Okay...” Kiyoharu says slowly. “Look, I just got home like two hours ago, I just finished dinner half an hour ago, and I would really, really like to have a nap. Then I will call you back and you can continue to tell me just how much I suck.”
“What? No! Dude, you were amazing today; I was reading a bunch of Onohama’s kifu and she is crazy brutal; did you know you’re the only person under 5-dan she hasn’t made resign in like almost two years? She is a demon, and I’m so glad she’s going up against Ogata-sensei in her next match in the Ouza prelims so hopefully he’ll knock her out so I don’t have to chance facing her when I get there next year,” Shindou says, which really? In two years? Kiyoharu had lost by six and a half, which he’d thought was pretty crap at the time, but hey, at least he made it all the way through yose with his dignity still intact.
“But yeah, go nap or whatever and call me back, because we have got to get to your right side. I have no idea what you were even thinking; you basically had that on lock before she started gettin’ all sassy so you have got to tell me exactly and in great detail exactly what the plan was because I cannot even fathom what was going on in your head and--” Shindou blathers on, and it doesn’t appear he’s going to approach a stop any time soon.
“I’m hanging up,” Kiyoharu interrupts him, clicking the dismiss button before tossing his cell on his desk and flopping down on his bed.
He has only time enough to close his eyes and think about trying to get to sleep before his cellphone starts to vibrate. And vibrate. And vibrate.
Then it falls off the desk and hits the floor. And vibrates some more.
Kiyoharu takes a deep breath and counts to ten, and when he exhales slowly he contemplates what life would be like if he hadn’t given his phone number to Shindou and how peaceful such an existence would be.
3.
When Kiyoharu’s phone bill is suddenly over budget one month by almost six thousand yen he sits down and adds up all of his call counts and makes a horrifying discovery: of the time he spends on the phone, over seventy percent of it is with Shindou. Seventy four point three percent, if his calculator is to be believed.
He doesn’t. So he runs the numbers again, and in the process discovers he missed the third sheet somehow.
Correction: eighty five point nine percent of the time he spends on the phone is with Shindou.
Then he looks at his texts.
Midway through, his phone rings. He doesn’t need to look at the display to know who it is.
Kiyoharu’d never been quite solid on what feeling “rue” was supposed to indicate, and then he thinks back to his cheerful naïveté the day he gave Shindou his number and oh, there it is; so that’s what that is.
Five reasons Yashiro won't answer Hikaru's phone calls any more, 1-3
A/N part 2: SDFJKLDSJFKLDSJF MAXIMUM CHARACTER LENGTH FOR COMMENTS IS BULLSHIT
Shindou's a pretty awesome dude, Kiyoharu's decided. Shindou's the only other person he knows who dares: he'll play a redonk hand like second-hand tengen or start a ko war only seventeen hands in just so he can see what will happen. Shindou never hesitates to take the interesting risks, to follow the untrodden path, and best of all Shindou owns it, is focused and committed and determined to see things through instead of swaddling himself in caveats and excuses just in case his gambles don't pay off.
It's for that reason, Kiyoharu figures, that they do pay off. Not all the time, as Shindou's suffered some spectacular and public failures, but they're never boring. There's always something in his games worth picking apart and analyzing, worth replaying a dozen times, a hundred times, to see if Kiyoharu can't find the secret Shindou's missed.
And the frustrating thing, the thing that drives Kiyoharu crazy, is he often can't. It's hard enough to make connections between Shindou's strategies at the best of times, and sometimes it feels like Shindou's playing thirty hands into the future and it's only chance or the caprices of the God of Go that determines whether or not the futures Shindou sees come to pass.
There are other players who are stronger than Shindou like Touya Akira, whose play has a sense of inescapable inevitability as unstoppable as the train tearing towards you when you're tied to the tracks, but Shindou is undoubtedly the most brilliant. Kiyoharu'd thought to eye him as a rival but he makes an even better friend, which is why he didn't think twice about programming his number into Shindou's phone when Shindou asked.
Now he wishes he'd known better.
1.
Shindou always, every week, without fail, calls him thirty minutes into Yoshikawa-sensei's study session. The first time had caught Kiyoharu by surprise: his ringer, which Shindou had insisted on setting himself, started blasting out the current Naruto opening theme and it had been so startling that Kiyoharu had to fumble with his jean pocket for ten seconds that felt like ten minutes as he tried to pull the vibrating, ringing abomination out of its snug home. He'd ended up having to get to his feet and had accidentally kicked over the white goke, as if things weren't bad enough, and Tsusaka'd laughed at him the whole time as Kiyoharu'd stumbled his way out of the room.
That was the first time. He hadn't expected there to be a second time, since he very clearly and politely explained to Shindou about his weekly study session, but there is. And a third.
On the fourth time Kiyoharu's at least remembered to turn his ringer off. The vibration's hum is still embarrassingly loud, at least to his own ears, but he's able to hit the dismiss button with it still in his pocket and it's not that big a deal.
On the fifth time it happens, Kiyoharu stills his vibrating phone by hitting the dismiss button. But that only buys him a few seconds before it starts buzzing again. He dismisses it again but then it starts buzzing again, and it's kind of embarrassing to be almost fondling his pocket like he's got some kind of creepy complex, and then Yoshikawa-sensei very kindly asks him if he needs to take his phone call. He really, really doesn't, but he can tell he's being a disturbance to everyone so he excuses himself to go take Shindou's Extremely Important Phone Call out in the hall.
“Hey, 'sup?” Shindou asks. “So look, I was thinking about how else Ishibashi-sensei could have handled Kurata-sensei getting all up in his grill in their battle over the bottom right corner, and--”
“Dude,” Kiyoharu interrupts him before Shindou can work up a full head of steam. “I've told you this a million times, Tuesdays from three-thirty to five are verboten. I don't call you when you're at Serizawa-sensei's, do I?”
“Yeah, well, not like you call that much anyway,” Shindou shoots back, heaving an exasperated sigh that blows up way too loud with static in Kiyoharu's ear.
“Not like I need to call when you call me all the time,” Kiyoharu points out.
“Fine,” Shindou says. “I won't call. I'll never call you again,” he threatens, but Kiyoharu's not worried because Shindou's got the memory of a goldfish if it doesn't directly involve go.
“Look, just call me after. I'll be home by like six. Or I'll call you, whatever,” Kiyoharu says, remembering Shindou's complaint.
“Can't; I do that thing at the community centre until nine; this is like the only free time I have before Thursdays,” Shindou says.
“What thing at the community centre?” Kiyoharu asks, since he's pretty sure this is the first time he's heard of such a thing.
“The thing with Shirakawa-sensei,” Shindou says, exasperated. “Okay, so are you busy or what?”
“Yeah, I'm pretty much extremely busy right now,” he says, catching himself before he starts to pace about the hall. “Just text me; I'll get back to you when I can and then you get back to me when you can and then it's all good.”
“Okay, yeah, that works out pretty good actually; bye!” Shindou says, and he hangs up immediately.
Well, Kiyoharu reflects, that was surprisingly easy.
Problem dispatched, he heads back into the study room. Yoshikawa-sensei acknowledges him with a nod, and Kiyoharu manages to settle back down on his zabuton and has almost reacclimated himself to the game before his phone vibrates in his pocket--but just once, just for a moment.
About ten seconds later, it happens again. And about twenty seconds after that. At this point he can't help but count: twenty-two seconds. Then eleven. Then forty-five. Then twenty. Then fifteen. Then thirty-two. Then he's counted out for over a minute when Yoshikawa asks him what he'd suggest in this situation.
“What where?” Kiyoharu asks before he can think better of it, and as Tsusaka fails to stifle his snort Kiyoharu begins to deeply, deeply regret that he ever gave his number to Shindou Hikaru.
2.
Shindou always calls him literally the very same evening Kiyoharu's played a recorded game, and he always wants to rub Kiyoharu's choices in his face.
“So I was thinking instead of doing the katatsuki you could've done the degiri at 6-12, which would have made her build upwards,” Shindou says.
“I had to do the katatsuki; I was too vulnerable. If I'd done the degiri I would have lost the corner,” Kiyoharu says.
“But you did lose the corner,” Shindou points out, Captain of the obvious.
“Yeah, but it's not like I knew it at the time,” Kiyoharu shoots back, resisting the urge to grind his teeth together.
“You lost the corner like twenty moves ago,” Shindou says.
He absolutely has to call him out on that one “Bullshit!” he says. “I still could have turned it around; what about if I'd gone for the ko?”
“Nah, that'd be worse; I already worked that out and that would've given her another three and a half in there,” Shindou says.
“When? When did you work it out? When did you have time? How do you even know what the game looks like? How do you even get these? Do they get Weekly Go a week in the future out there in Tokyo or what?” Kiyoharu asks, exasperated.
“Pfft, they won't even run this one,” Shindou says dismissively, which wow, Shindou doesn't have to be nearly this much of a dick about it. “I'm friends with Toosaka-san; she faxes me a copy of your games.”
Kiyoharu pictures the squat, round, stern-faced matron of the archive and tries to imagine her and Shindou holding any kind of conversation that didn't end with her banishing him from the office after thirty seconds, and utterly fails. “Toosaka-san? How do you even know her?” he asks.
“When I was at your Ki-in for the second Shinjin-Ou match I ended up poking around and she helped me find a bunch of stuff and I mentioned we were friends and that it was a total pain trying to get copies of your games and she said she could help me out so that was totally awesome,” Shindou explains.
“So you just... asked her to send you my games, and she does?” Kiyoharu asks, wanting to get this straight.
“Oh yeah, she said it wasn’t any problem at all,” Shindou says, as if this is something that just happens.
“And that’s--Toosaka-san? She does?” he asks.
“Yeah, she’s super nice,” Shindou enthuses and yes, it’s official, Shindou doesn’t live on the same planet as everyone else, he lives on Shindouworld and of course this is why nothing he does ever makes sense.
“Okay...” Kiyoharu says slowly. “Look, I just got home like two hours ago, I just finished dinner half an hour ago, and I would really, really like to have a nap. Then I will call you back and you can continue to tell me just how much I suck.”
“What? No! Dude, you were amazing today; I was reading a bunch of Onohama’s kifu and she is crazy brutal; did you know you’re the only person under 5-dan she hasn’t made resign in like almost two years? She is a demon, and I’m so glad she’s going up against Ogata-sensei in her next match in the Ouza prelims so hopefully he’ll knock her out so I don’t have to chance facing her when I get there next year,” Shindou says, which really? In two years? Kiyoharu had lost by six and a half, which he’d thought was pretty crap at the time, but hey, at least he made it all the way through yose with his dignity still intact.
“But yeah, go nap or whatever and call me back, because we have got to get to your right side. I have no idea what you were even thinking; you basically had that on lock before she started gettin’ all sassy so you have got to tell me exactly and in great detail exactly what the plan was because I cannot even fathom what was going on in your head and--” Shindou blathers on, and it doesn’t appear he’s going to approach a stop any time soon.
“I’m hanging up,” Kiyoharu interrupts him, clicking the dismiss button before tossing his cell on his desk and flopping down on his bed.
He has only time enough to close his eyes and think about trying to get to sleep before his cellphone starts to vibrate. And vibrate. And vibrate.
Then it falls off the desk and hits the floor. And vibrates some more.
Kiyoharu takes a deep breath and counts to ten, and when he exhales slowly he contemplates what life would be like if he hadn’t given his phone number to Shindou and how peaceful such an existence would be.
3.
When Kiyoharu’s phone bill is suddenly over budget one month by almost six thousand yen he sits down and adds up all of his call counts and makes a horrifying discovery: of the time he spends on the phone, over seventy percent of it is with Shindou. Seventy four point three percent, if his calculator is to be believed.
He doesn’t. So he runs the numbers again, and in the process discovers he missed the third sheet somehow.
Correction: eighty five point nine percent of the time he spends on the phone is with Shindou.
Then he looks at his texts.
Midway through, his phone rings. He doesn’t need to look at the display to know who it is.
Kiyoharu’d never been quite solid on what feeling “rue” was supposed to indicate, and then he thinks back to his cheerful naïveté the day he gave Shindou his number and oh, there it is; so that’s what that is.