A Rival Story

by Sofia Dragon

A Different Beginning

Hikaru walked out of the train station, nearly bouncing with excitement. After two years in a hospital bed and a month of his mother's overbearing, overprotective presence he was finally allowed out and about on his own steam. It was his father's doing, and he was glad the man believed boys needed the freedom to make mistakes before they could learn anything about life. Hikaru wasn't out alone, though no one knew about his companion. The thousand-year old ghost was currently urging Hikaru toward a building jut in front of the train station.

"Look! Look, it say's 'Go,' Hikaru. It says 'Go!' Let's go inside!" Sai's elated voice called to the 12 year old boy. The ghost, who looked to be in his late twenties, was jumping around like a five year old. Tied to Hikaru's consciousness, he had been just as cooped up as Hikaru with the added drawback of only being able to converse with the young boy. No one else could see the flamboyant man with long black hair and indigo-black eyes, or hear him pitch his voice as high as his more solid compatriot. His gentle, perhaps beautiful, features were lit by the bright afternoon sun, but so was the young boy next to him as he cast no shadow.

Hikaru walked past the elevator – he'd had quite enough of waiting around doing nothing thank you very much – and took the stairs up to The Go Parlor, making a crack about the unoriginal name along the way. His grandfather had told him such places existed when he saw Hikaru playing Go online in the hospital room. Well, to be more precise, Hikaru's grandfather had exploded into a rant about how Go was a social game intended to be played with other people, preferably friends and rivals, in a cozy setting. The boy smiled as he reached the door to the parlor. From the outside it looked clean, respectable, and not at all like the smoke hazed places his mother complained about.

He took a moment to make himself presentable. Sai had told him so much about playing Go in the Imperial Palace, that the very idea of Go conjured images of high-class ladies and gentlemen having tea and wearing elaborate kimonos. He ran a comb through his long bleach-blond bangs and short black hair, straightening it after the experience of public transportation had tossed it around. He was wearing his best yellow soccer jersey with his favorite number on it and a long-sleeved black turtleneck underneath to hide the remaining marks the doctors left on him. He figured he was neat and clean enough for a casual place, so he tucked his comb back in his bag and walked inside.

The parlor was painted in shades of very light blue. It was so clean even his overprotective mother would approve. A young woman stood behind a counter in an apron. Her nametag read 'Ichikawa Harumi.' Hikaru had gotten good at spotting the little plastic tags from the constantly-changing guard of nurses and doctors he'd had to deal with. She was kind of cute with short cropped hair.

"Hello, is this your first time in a Go Salon?" she asked, and Hikaru realized he was looking around like he'd stepped onto an alien planet.

"Yep," Hikaru chirped, resisting a flinch as a phantom fan smacked the back of his head. Sai took it as a personal offence that Hikaru had such poor manners and had taken it upon himself to correct Hikaru's speech patterns. "I have played Go on the 'net a few times, Ichikawa-san," he continued, hoping to do a little better. It didn't exactly hurt when the fan smacked into the only solid object it could affect, but it did bother him enough to not want to get hit again. "Are there just older people here?" he asked sadly, looking at all the old men bent over table boards.

"Well, there is a boy who came in a while ago, but he and Toya-kun are playing each other." Ichikawa-san replied apologetically. "They should be done soon, but…"

"I can wait," Hikaru assured. "I'd rather play someone closer to my age than my grandpa's."

"How strong are you?" she set down a pen next to a clipboard with a sign-in sheet and gestured at a younger man who was explaining something to two of the old men. The young man looked over and nodded.

"I don't really know. I started to learn two years ago, but I've been in the hospital so…," Hikaru explained. He couldn't say that he'd been haunted by a Go obsessed ghost from the Heian era nobility and had been tutored by said ghost in everything from literature and poetry to history and economics. Sai had put all the blame for Hikaru's condition and subsequent inability to attend normal school on himself, and dramatically proclaimed it was his god-given duty to see that Hikaru grew in to a healthy, educated, and proper young man.

"Ashiwara-san can test your kyu level, and if you plan on coming often we can set up a score card for you. What is your name?"

"Oh, sorry, I'm Shindo Hikaru," he blurted out, trying to block out Sai's lament of his manners.

"Well, write it in here. The student fee is 500 yen," she explained, urging the young man from before to come over. The cheerful-looking adult was a good twenty years younger than anyone else Hikaru could see, so maybe it wouldn't be so bad. He plopped his coin down on the counter.

"I kind of wish I could play another kid, though," he mumbled, barely remembering not to say 'kinda' even to himself. "I hang around adults all day already."

"That's understandable," the young man agreed from right behind him. Hikaru jumped; startled that he'd been crept up on so suddenly. The man looked like he was about to continue with some sort of consolation, but the sudden sound of a hand slamming on wood and voices straining with barely contained emotions interrupted him. Hikaru looked around the corner for the first time and saw a boy about his age with curly black hair thrusting himself out of a chair and ignoring whatever the other boy was saying. The other boy, soft-spoken with longer steel-straight black hair, seemed really disappointed and hurt. Hikaru wasn't great with emotions, but he had seen the look on his doctor's and family's faces often enough to recognize it. Normally it would pop up after he said or did something that made it terribly obvious he was still struggling with the after-effects of his illness.

"What poor sportsmanship!" Sai lamented in his typical emotional voice. "I was watching, and that rude boy is storming away just because he lost a game. Hikaru, play that boy! Play him and show him how a graceful player acts – in victory or defeat!" That was always a big deal to Sai. It wasn't important if you won a game or not, it was how you played that mattered most. It figured, since Sai invariably won. Hikaru had been forced to get good at losing gracefully.

"You must be a really terrible player," Hikaru growled as the boy drew even with him. It wasn't just Sai's indignation, Hikaru hated the guys on the 'net who cut off a game after losing a few stones since there was no thrill of a proper victory in the aborted mess they tended to leave behind. The two employees (he thought they were both employees) tried to stop him, but he kept going. "Only the worst players storm off like that after a loss."

"What did you say? I'm the child Meijin tournament winner. Who the hell are you?!" the boy shouted.

"I'm Shindo Hikaru, and I don't care who you are, if you act like that you suck." It was brutal language, and Sai disapproved, but the ghost agreed with the sentiment too much to mention it. Hikaru figured he'd be lectured later; Sai might act carefree, but he didn't let things slide when he knew Hikaru knew better.

"Uh, perhaps you should calm down," Ashiwara offered and was ignored.

"Then how about I show you?" The boy grabbed Hikaru's arm and pulled him back into the room.

"Rude much?" Shindo asked, aware of the current hypocrisy but unable to contain himself, "This is what I mean: you are a bad player."

"I'll show you how strong I am. Nigiri." The boy grabbed some white stones out to the wooden cup. Shindo blinked at him.

"Do what?" Hikaru mumbled.

"It means 'choose for color.' This is how you decide who will be black or white in an even game without the magic box making a random choice. Put down one or two black stones, you are trying to guess if he has an odd or even number of stones in his hand right now," Sai supplied. "When we play I give you a handicap so you have to go first."

"Oh, yeah…." Hikaru pulled out a single black stone and set it down on the board. The boy dropped his stones and lined them up in two rows. There were nine. "Please," Hikaru said and bowed as Sai had taught him to, even if the opponent was on the other side of the internet. The other boy didn't bother and just glared at him until Hikaru set down his first stone.

"Are you playing around?" the boy asked. He clicked the white stone down with a flourish, holding it between two fingers. Hikaru picked up his next stone, wondering how you could possibly hold a stone between your fingertips like that. He dropped the stone down in another corner of the board. "Hahaha… you can't even hold the stones right and you say I'm a bad player?"

"Who cares how I hold my stones?" Hikaru asked. "I'm talking about your attitude. Poor sportsmanship has no excuse." They played a few more hands, the curly-haired boy snapping his stones down with an authoritative pa-chi, while Hikaru's stones dribbled onto the board awkwardly.

"Don't let it bother you, Hikaru," Sai assured him, "The magnetic board we used was too small for me to teach you to hold the stones properly, but you are more than strong enough now to beat this boy. He is a very strong player, but I've taught you better than this arrogant, over aggressive style." The other boy, who Hikaru had forgotten about for a moment, pulled up a chair to watch the game after a minute.

"Ichikawa-san said you'd never been in a Go salon before," he said very quietly. "You don't have to do this."

"Someone has to," Hikaru turned to the boy, noticing his eyes were an odd aqua shade. He was tempted to ask if they were contacts, the color was so vivid. "It's a matter of honor. If I lose I will bow to my opponent and thank him for the game, not toss my stones in the bowl as fast as I can and treat him like a piece of crap. If someone is better than me they deserve respect. Winning is secondary to enjoying the game; games are supposed to be fun." He set down another wobbly stone after a glance at the board. "By the way, I've already said I'm Shindo. What are your names?"

"I'm Toya Akira," the quiet, long haired boy said with a shy smile.

"I'm Isobe Hideki, and I think you're an idiot," the curly-haired boy fumed, "Only weaklings believe all that warm fuzzy nonsense; the world of Go is cutthroat." Sai was desperately trying to hit the boy with his fan for the terrible blasphemy he'd spouted.

"That's sad," was all Hikaru could force himself to say without bursting into laughter at Sai's antics. The ghost then turned on Hikaru for not properly repeating the long speech about the importance of proper attitude and respect. 'Sai, you're going to make me mess up.'

"Oh, sorry," Sai apologized. He looked back down at the board, suddenly serious as he read deeply into the patterns of white and black stones. Hikaru took some time on his next move, not wanting to disappoint Sai. When he set down his next wobbly black stone he saw the ghost's face bloom into a brilliant smile. Hikaru was getting good at problems of life and death. It took a while, but after a time the curly-haired boy started looking desperately around the board, searching for something that Hikaru had forgotten or left exposed.

"What? You're just messing around aren't you? You are dropping your stones onto the board like a baby, just to make me look like a fool. I don't have to stay here and take this!" Isobe stored out without even clearing away his stones.

"I said 'who cares how I hold my stones;' all that matters is where I put them. Man, what a temper," Hikaru groaned, "Though, that's a case of the pot calling the kettle black, I suppose." Hikaru giggled, scratching the back of his head.

"That was great." Hikaru expected it to be Sai, but it was the quiet boy in the preppy uniform.

"Ah, thanks, Toya-kun," Hikaru blushed, unused to praise from anyone not biased by the experience of sharing a brain. "Want to play?"

"Yes, please," the thin boy jumped into the chair opposite him. They chose for color and bowed. Toya's eyes sharpened as he set down the first stone. Hikaru answered quickly and after a few hands the two boys were settled into a game of speed Go. Ashiwara and Ichikawa watched from the counter as the hands passed quickly over the board.

"Looks like Toya-kun found a good friend after all," the clerk commented.

"Seems so, but I'm not sure… I wish I could have watched his whole game with that other boy, but Kitajima wanted a teaching game before he had to head home. He could barely hold the stones. I wonder if a friendship can really form over the goban between a complete novice and a high-level player like Akira-kun," Ashiwara sighed.

"He said he played on the internet, and something about a hospital. Perhaps he never learned to handle the stones properly," she wondered aloud.

"Oh? Well, I suppose I should go over and look at the game; maybe help with the fallout in any case. A fiery personality like that isn't going to do well getting crushed by Akira-kun, no matter what he says about fair play," the perpetually chipper man mused.