What Company We Keep

In retrospect, Isumi could say with perfect accuracy that Kaga didn't look like Waya at all, but first impressions weren't about accuracy.

His first impression of Kaga involved hair-dyed bright red, sticking up wildly, which wasn't an uncommon style, but it made Isumi think of Waya's milder mess of brown hair, and it reminded Isumi that he hadn't seen his friend in months, and that he missed him. So Isumi stood there for a moment, a single body standing still among the swarm of high school students, among the clamour and buzzing activity of Club Appreciation Day, to stare at this boy who was not Waya.

The boy who was not Waya had eyes that were too narrow, features too sharp, shoulders too broad, and he was more than anything just far too tall-but there was something Waya-like in the quick surety of his movements, the easy way he carried himself.

Or...maybe it was just the yelling?

"Ooooiii! Join the shougi club or I'll kick your ass! Ooooiiii! Who are you and what are you staring at?"

Too late, Isumi realized he'd been caught as the boy leveled his scary narrowed eyes at him. He averted his gaze quickly but it was impossible to stay unnoticed now.

"You wanna join the shougi club?" asked the not-Waya. He was standing behind a table covered in shougi boards, shougi pieces, and mountains of shougi propaganda. He was also holding a white folding fan, which he whapped against his hand authoritatively. Despite the noise level in the gym, Isumi could hear the fan striking his palm easily enough. "You look geeky enough. What class are you in? How come I don't know you?"

Isumi looked around, hoping that one of his classmates would come along and save him from being converted into a shougi player. "Well, actually, I'm a third year."

"No way. You don't look like a senior. You look like...hey, fuck, you look like..."

At this point, the person Isumi would come to know as Kaga did something very Kaga-like and grabbed the glasses off the face of a boy standing next to him ("O-ow! What the, what are you-Kaga!") and hoisted himself up and over the table to land, terrifyingly, nose-to-nose with Isumi. And on Isumi's nose he placed the stolen glasses, after which he backed away a step (not far enough, in Isumi's view) to observe the results of his decorating job.

"What the hell. You look exactly like someone I knew in middle school."

"Really?" said Isumi, not sure what the appropriate response was to this kind of situation. Whatever this situation was.

"Yeah," said the (apparently insane) shougi propagandist. "Exactly like him. Well, a little taller. And your hair is a bit different. But otherwise, you're him."

"KAGA!" yelled another shougi club member from behind the table. "Get back the hell over here if you still want to be in this club!"

Kaga flipped open his fan, which was emblazoned with the characters for "shougi king."

"I'm not going over there unless it's to take the club presidency from you," said Kaga with an affected yawn. "I'm gonna take my break. Need to talk with my old friend from middle school."

"Well, actually," Isumi began before Kaga dragged him off by the collar to do who knew what. Isumi found the whole situation very unclear. Probably because he was still wearing the (very thick, high-prescription) glasses.

As he was dragged through the crowds, he heard a girl say, "Hey, isn't that Isumi-senpai, the go player? The one who's too good for the go club? What's he doing with that first year?"

"You mean, what's that first year doing to him," another girl replied with a giggle.

Isumi might have imagined it, but he could swear Kaga's grip tightened at the words go player.

Yes, Kaga's grip had definitely tightened at the words "go" and "player."

"Hey, sorry about that." Kaga patted Isumi on the back way too hard. "I guess I shouldn't go around choking my senpai."

"No problem," Isumi wheezed. "Always wanted to know...what it was like...to be strangled by a...shougi player."

Kaga quirked an eyebrow. "You have some interesting fantasies. Typical weirdo go player, huh?"

"Yeah," said Isumi, finally catching his breath. He managed to get a good look around him at the empty hallway he'd been dragged into. No one around-just him and Kaga and a bunch of abandoned dust mops. Great. "Go players are generally a pretty strange bunch."

"No kidding," Kaga gave him an amused look. "So, what's your name?"

"Isumi Shinichiro. And you're Kaga...?"

"Kaga Tetsuo. You related to Tsutsui Kimihiro by any chance?"

Isumi shook his head. "No, I've never heard the name. Sorry."

"What are you apologizing for? That kind of attitude will get your ass kicked."

It was probably the glasses, which transfigured Kaga's face into a brown blob topped by a red mop, but Isumi was sharply reminded of Waya. Don't be so hard on yourself, Isumi-san! We have to keep our confidence up.

There was a dizzying ache behind his eyes; he felt a little nauseous. "Can I take off these glasses now?"

The blob answered, indistinct and unreadable, "Yeah, sure."

When Isumi's world finally become clear again, he saw that Kaga's expression really was unreadable. Not like Waya at all, really.

They were both staring at each other, Isumi realized.

"Um, why don't you take these back?" He held out the glasses like a peace offering.

Kaga waved a hand at him. "Nah, keep 'em."

"But don't these belong to..."

"Oh yeah. I guess I'll return them."

Kaga took the glasses, folded them up, then stuffed them into the pocket of his jacket, which was hanging open in that slovenly yet stylish way all the delinquents seemed to favour. Somehow, Isumi doubted the pair of stolen glasses would ever get back to its owner.

"So," began Isumi haltingly, wondering what sort of conversation you were supposed to make with a first year ruffian who'd kidnapped you from the gym on Club Appreciation Day and started comparing you to someone you'd never heard of. "I'm just wondering, how come I've never seen you around school before? You're...a pretty noticeable person. But I don't think I saw you at the first years' entrance ceremony."

"Oh, that's because I skipped it," said Kaga, who was digging around in his pockets for something. "And every other school assembly after. And half of my classes."

"Ah."

Kaga finally found what he was looking for: a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He took out a stick and grinned evilly. "Aren't you going to lecture me?"

"But I've just met you. I'm not going to lecture someone I barely know."

Kaga lit up and inhaled, obviously experienced at this. "Why not?"

"I'm not the lecturing type."

Again, Kaga's face was unreadable. "Yeah, I guess not."

The smoke was starting to choke the air out of the small room. Isumi liked it about as much as he liked a hand choking him by the collar. There was really no reason for him to be here. He turned toward the door and said, "I should probably get back to the gym."

"Wait," said Kaga. "Let's play go."

It was such a ridiculous thing to say that Isumi's hand paused on the doorknob. "You mean here?"

"Of course not here. In the go club room."

"I'm not a member of the go club."

"Neither am I. But I'll get us in."

"I'm sure you can. But...you play go?"

Kaga looked up at the ceiling, where the smoke was thickest. He blew out a plume of grey-white disease. "I used to, a little." He looked so dramatic and unncessarily cool, with his messy hair and untucked shirt and eyes slitted in remembrance, that Isumi couldn't help but let out a laugh that immediately turned into a smoke-related coughing fit. Probably for the best that we was unable to laugh-he didn't want Kaga to beat him up, after all, not in this empty hallway with no witnesses around. Not in a crowded hallway either, come to think of it. Isumi still valued his life, even if he was a failure of an insei who hadn't passed the pro exam and had no idea what he was going to do with himself.

Kaga was giving him a suspicious look, but it didn't seem like he was going to punch in Isumi's face. Yet. Maybe he didn't want to ruin Isumi's resemblance to that Tsutsui person he'd mentioned.

"So, you wanna play a game or what?" Kaga asked, voice flat.

Igo, Tsuitsui, let's play. The connection suddenly clicked in Isumi's head. "Is your friend who looks like me a go player too?"

"Yeah," Kaga answered. "Funny, isn't it? Anyway, that isn't what this is about."

Sure it isn't. "Then why do you want to play go with me?"

"I heard those girls talking. Said you were too good for the school go club. You an insei or something? Not every day you get to play one of those."

Isumi had stopped going to insei classes since he'd failed the pro exam. He hadn't been playing much at all since the pro exam, in fact. "I used to be an insei," he said shortly.

"Used to be? Are you a pro now?"

"I'd rather not talk about it."

Kaga gave him a knowing look, which just made Isumi even less inclined to spill his life story.

"Heh, everyone's got a sob story. Especially go players. I'm not gonna pry."

Isumi waited a moment for Kaga to break his word and start prying, but when that didn't happen, Isumi nodded and said, "All right, I'll play you."

Kaga grinned, a wide devilish grin with lots of teeth. "Knew you'd come around."

"Yeah, just put out that cigarette."

"Isumi Shinichiro!" exclaimed the lone go club member manning the science classroom that served as the go club's headquarters. "The insei! Oh my gosh! Are you going to join us? Please join us! Can I play you? I'll take a handicap. I'm fifteen-kyuu!"

Kaga cuffed the boy's ear.

"First of all," Kaga said with a bored expression, "insei can't join go clubs. Second, he's a third year and the third years have quit all their clubs already. Third, your club is pathetic and there's no way he'd join it when he could join the awesome shougi club instead."

"I'm not joining the go club or the shougi club," Isumi sighed.

"Now get outta here." Kaga whapped the boy on the back of the head. "We got business in the go club."

"But you just said-"

"Don't try to think about stuff you don't understand," Kaga broke in. "Get out before I give you a different kind of handicap."

"Are you going to play a game? Can I at least watch?"

"OUT!" Kaga switched from bored to demonic so quickly that Isumi couldn't tell whether it was an act or not. Judging from the way the go boy scurried out of there, if it was an act it was a very convincing one.

"Now," said Kaga, suddenly normal again (or what passed for normal for him), "If I were an idiot captain of a lousy go club, where would I hide their supplies

They found the gobans in a low cupboard filled with racks full of erlenmeyer flasks and test tubes. "What is it with go clubs and science rooms?" Kaga grumbled, almost knocking over a rack of test tubes as he pulled out a board.

The go stones were cheap plastic ones-Isumi knew the school team didn't play very seriously, but it disquieted him all the same.

"Crappy school, crappy club," Kaga monotoned, as if he'd said it before. He gave Isumi a look.

"It's not a bad school," Isumi protested, not sure why he was even bothering to defend it.

"But you could do better, right? You look like the kind of guy who'd go to one of those prissed-up prep schools."

"Ah, well, I never had much time to study for entrance exams."

"Hm," said Kaga. Isumi was irrationally annoyed; he felt like he was being judged against an invisible standard of Tsutsui-ness.

Well, he would have to let his igo speak for him. He might be out of practice, he might not have played a serious game in months, but Kaga's dismissal made him feel ready to play one now.

He sat down and asked, "Do you need a handicap?"

Kaga, who'd been waving his fan absentmindedly, looked up when Isumi spoke.

"You're different," he said, "in front of a board." He looked at Isumi, as if studying his face, then said, "Let's play an even game first. Isumi-senpai."

"Please," said Isumi.

They played one even game; the school bell rang but no one came to tell them to go to their homerooms. They played a second game, with Kaga taking a two-stone handicap. They played yet another game, three stone handicap. Isumi won every time.

"Not bad," Kaga admitted.

"Same to you," Isumi replied, and meant it.

And then there was the awkward silence of strangers. What else could be said? There was nothing to connect them other than these games. Isumi wondered if he should try to take his leave.

But Kaga was not done yet. He leaned forward on his elbow and said, "There's just one thing I want to know, and sorry if this is being nosy." Isumi braced himself for the prying questions that Kaga had promised he wouldn't ask. "Have you ever met an insei named Shindou Hikaru?"

Shindou? That was definitely not a name Isumi had expected to hear. It was a name that was far too close to the matter of the pro exam, and Isumi's failure to pass it, though of course Kaga couldn't know that.

"I know Shindou," said Isumi cautiously. "We were insei together for a year. He's...a good friend. How do you know him?"

"Middle school," Kaga answered. "He was in the go club."

"You were in the go club?"

Kaga snorted. "Never. I was the shougi captain."

"Then why...?"

"Long story. Let's just say Shindou had enough talent that I took an interest in him. Someone had to give him a kick in the pants and get him on the right path, and Tsutsui definitely wasn't the one to do that."

Again with this Tsutsui person. "Was Tsutsui the one who taught you to play go?"

Kaga gave him an incredulous look, then guffawed loudly. "Are you kidding? Tsutsui wishes he was good enough to teach me something. He was always glued to his go books, never used his own intuition. Pretty sad excuse of a captain. Stupid, stupid Tsutsui." He laughed, saying the name almost fondly, despite the harshness of his words. Then Kaga's eyes flicked to Isumi's face. "It was weird, playing against you. You're a thousand times stronger than him.

Isumi sighed. "I may look like him, but you don't have to keep comparing me to him."

"Yeah, I know," said Kaga, but Isumi got the distinct impression that he didn't mean it. "Anyway, so how's Shindou doing? Now there's a clueless guy if I've ever seen one."

"He's a pro now," Isumi said quietly. It was a hard thing to say.

Kaga whistled appreciatively. "No shit, huh. I knew he had talent, but damn. Can't believe he passed the pro exam that quickly."

He seemed to see something in Isumi's face, because he quickly changed the subject. "In middle school, I played in a tournament with him and Tsutsui. He was third board, Tsutsui was second, and I was first, of course."

Isumi stared. "Shindou was third board? ...Actually, now that you mentioned it, I think he mentioned something about that once."

"Those were good times." Kaga smiled, and it wasn't his usual terrifying smile. "There's nothing like crushing your opponents in a team game."

"Yeah," Isumi agreed. He was reminded suddenly of playing with Waya and Shindou, in all those go salons they'd visited over the summer. It had been for Shindou's benefit, those games-he'd been frightened of playing older men before the pro exam. It had been fun, winning together.

But-

What the hell are you doing! Why are you making a rival stronger!

Well, if Shindou passes and we both fail, then it's true. We will look like idiots.

Isumi wondered if they would ever go back to those salons again.

"Hey," said Kaga, "look, I'm sorry about kind of being an ass earlier."

Isumi, startled, realized that Kaga's black, evil eyes had a hint of compassion in them. But was it for him, or was it for this friend of his he'd left behind?

"It's obvious you're messed up right now," Kaga went on. "But I'm messed up too."

"Go players are messed-up people," Isumi told him, not for the first time today.

"Not just go players." Kaga raked his hand through his hair. "You probably think I'm crazy, dragging you here and making you play with me."

"I'm willing to forgive a little craziness for a good game of go or three."

"Yeah." Kaga was fishing around in his jacket pockets. "Yeah, a little crazy. How about a lot crazy?" He brought his right hand out from under the table, holding something.

He was holding the glasses in his hand, he was holding them out to Isumi.

"You really look like him," Kaga said, voice low.

If Isumi was reading this offer correctly, it did, indeed, constitute a lot of crazy.

But Kaga's hands were not steady, and his expression was wide open, without even a hint of irony. Isumi wondered how much it cost him, to leave himself so vulnerable.

Maybe it was the look in Kaga's eyes, the one asking Isumi to be the senpai, the one responsible for this madness. Or maybe it was the tiny resemblence to Waya that pulled at Isumi's memory and made him wish he could go back in time, make their paths intersect once again. Or maybe it was the fact that Isumi was a little crazy too.

He took the glasses and put them on.

Once again, Kaga transformed into a featureless blob. A featureless blob that was raising its hand to Isumi's face, touching him ever-so-lightly. The hand held itself there, motionless, for several seconds; and Isumi could almost imagine that the person in front of him was someone different, and that the warmth he felt was real, as simple and easy to accept as this.

Then the hand withdrew, and Isumi took off the glasses, which had never belonged to him anyway.

"You should give this back," he said, handing the glasses to Kaga.

Kaga's eyes were once again their usual unreadable selves.

"Yeah, I will. Souta must be pretty pissed by now."

"Yeah, I imagine he must be."

Kaga tucked the glasses away then abruptly stood up. He waved goodbye as he left, not looking back.

The last school bell rang.

Isumi was due for a long, tedious lecture from his homeroom teacher, so he decided to leave for home instead. He recognized that this was a foolish decision, because it wasn't the best idea to piss off someone who was responsible for helping him get into university, but Isumi wasn't planning to go to university in the coming year anyway. He wasn't sure what his plans were, aside from some vague idea of studying for the pro exam on his own.

He needed to be thinking about his go, his future, but as he walked home he couldn't help but wonder about Kaga. Who was his friend, the one who had Isumi's face? What had happened between the two of them? A fight, a betrayal? Or was it merely time and distance, different paths taken?

Was it something Kaga had chosen willingly, this separation? Or was it something that had happened gradually, the slow dissolution of a friendship, and now Kaga regretted it enough to ask Isumi, a stranger, to pretend to be the person he'd lost?

Sometimes Isumi really hated having an analytical mind.

He was quite sure he would never get his answers. He would not meet with Kaga again if he could help it. He didn't want to have to look at Kaga and see his own regrets mirrored back at him, even from behind a pair of blurry lenses. He didn't want to have those regrets.

He dug his cell phone out of his schoolbag and typed out a message.

Hi Waya,
I'm sorry for not contacting you for so long. I've needed some time to myself. I don't know when I'll be at the Institute again, but I won't stay away forever.

The message sounded cold even to him, but he didn't know what else to write. I miss you just sounded like...something he wouldn't say. And what else was there to tell? I met someone today who reminded me of you, even though he didn't really look like you, and I played go with him. What nonsense.

He hit the send button on his phone, wishing he had better words to reassure Waya that he was coming back. Better words to reassure himself.

When he got home a few minutes later, he still hadn't received a reply. He stepped into his home feeling irrationally disappointed. Waya was probably busy, that was all.

He started untying his shoelaces in the genkan when he heard his mother calling him from upstairs. "Shinichiro! There's a message on the answering machine for you!"

"From who?" He felt a brief surge of hope and fear that it was Waya, or even Shindou.

"Something from the Nine Stars Club."

"All right, I'll get it."

It was probably better that it wasn't Waya or Shindou, he told himself. He didn't know what he'd say to them.

He finished taking off his shoes and went into the kitchen.

As it turned out, the message was about some trip to China.

-End-

Author's notes:

This fic is rather non-canon, seeing as how Kaga and Tsutsui apparently went to the same high school (as evidenced by their matching uniforms in the second character poll of the manga). Ah well, a girl can dream, right?

The basic idea of this fic-Kaga meets Isumi-was actually something I dreamed up dreamily while planning an entirely different fic about Isumi going to university. AU, obviously. It was going to be called "Fine China" and the reason Isumi was going to university was because he FAILED FAILED FAILED the pro exam yet again. He'd failed because he had not gone to China and not received training from Yang Hai. It was going to be a really boring fic, trust me. Isumi was going to be estranged from his go friends but he'd still try to take the pro exam every year and inevitably FAIL FAIL FAIL because he hadn't gone to China. Yeah, that's logical. And then he would get an annoying girlfriend who would ask him whether he loved her more than go and that he couldn't treat her like some game yadda yadda. And for some reason he'd get interested in Chinese literature, and at the end of the fic he would be on a plane to China. At the airport he'd see Le Ping, making his glorious cameo appearance. Yeah, I couldn't even keep myself interested in the fic.

Anyway, at some point during Isumi's third year he would meet up with Kaga (who was coincidentally going to the same university), who was promoting the shougi club, and they'd remind each other of Waya/Tsutsui and long for each other on that basis, just like in the fic you just read. Except...since the boys would be in university, living on their own, they could visit each other's dorm rooms/apartments and actually dress up as Waya/Tsutsui and have very silly cosplay smexing sessions. I eventually realized that this was just about the only thing in the Isumi-goes-to-university fic that interested me.

And thus, this fic was born.