Paper Cranes

Chapter 1

It took two years for things to truly begin to change, and it began with his holiday.

Hikaru booked off the week of May 5th two months in advance, making certain that the Institute would schedule nothing official for him in any way during those seven days. This meant that when people bugged him to attend the Go Institute festival occurring at the start of the month, he could shut them down as thoroughly as he wanted. Over the weeks leading up to his time off, Hikaru had to do this frequently and insistently, as people refused to believe that he would miss any sort of easily accessible Go event. This was to be expected, considering normally you couldn't keep Hikaru away from Go events any more than you could bully a river into flowing the wrong way.

Of the many people Hikaru had to defend his time off from, Waya was the first. He began the whole fuss at lunch approximately one month before the festival, asking "are you teaching at the festival? I heard Touya is. But he's, you know, five dans higher than you, so." The boy smirked at him, apparently ignoring the fact that he was the same official rank as Hikaru and therefore just as many dan grades inferior to Touya.

"Not for long," Hikaru vowed fiercely, adding "but nah, I'm not teaching."

"So what, you're just going to wander around criticising other people's games again?" The boy crossed his arms, looking half amused and half annoyed. Hikaru was good at provoking that expression.

He grinned at the words, because that was pretty much his standard operating procedure at Go events where they'd failed to enlist him as a teacher. He'd invite himself to the games between amateurs and bully them into noticing the flaws in their hands, with the players often torn between getting very offended and getting very appreciative. Half of them tended to leave the event calling him 'Shindou-sensei', and the other half bitched at him to stop interrupting their games, sometimes very loudly. He'd even accidentally got one guy thrown out of the event once, by annoying him into making too large of a disturbance.

"I would totally do exactly that," He agreed, preparing himself to drop the bombshell. "if I were actually going to the festival. Which I'm not." He sat back and waited for the inevitable reaction.

Waya stared at him for a moment uncomprehendingly. As expected, he seemed entirely unable to register the possibility at all. "Don't be stupid, of course you're going to the festival."

"Nah." Hikaru refuted.

"You go to every damn festival in Tokyo, no matter how stupid or insignificant. Of course you're going." He sounded very certain.

"Noope."

"Shindou, don't you lie about something so dumb, there's no way you're not going!"

"I'm totally not."

He pretty much spent the entire lunch break reciting variants of 'no', 'nope', and 'hell no', chasing Waya away so that he could go back to the match the scheduling guys had managed to cram in around his holiday time. The whole thing had amused him so much that he spent the entire second half of the game grinning maniacally, tapping his fan against the goke rapidly. His opponent seemed more than slightly disturbed by it and didn't play nearly as well as he had before, which was disappointing, but oh well.

Waya sure as hell didn't stop bugging him, which meant that word spread, which meant that Touya heard, and of course his rival flatly refused to believe that he would miss any Go event. This disbelief was compounded by the fact that the Young Lions tournament was approaching, and apparently, Hikaru would never dream of missing it.

As such, Touya remained very confident in his assessment that Hikaru was simply lying, and made certain to say so whenever they saw each other, which these days was reasonably often. His surety on the matter lasted approximately four days, dying a swift death after Hikaru's name failed to appear on the match listings for the Young Lions tournament. After this, the nanadan became belligerent and suspicious and started demanding his reasoning and did not stop.

"What could you possibly be doing? I checked with the Association, you have the whole week booked off!" They were, as they often were, in his father's Go salon. This time, however, they'd not even started playing before they started arguing. The other patrons watched with interest, aware that this was a break from the usual routine, and perhaps one which wouldn't end with innocent Go stones being flung.

"Well, you see, sometimes people go on holiday, Touya." Hikaru explained slowly and kindly. "And, you see, pretty much everyone who works is allowed time off for holiday. Especially in Golden Week. That's kind of the point of Golden Week, actually."

"What could you possibly want a holiday for?" Touya demanded, sounding honestly baffled and indignant at once. Hikaru would call him a Go-obsessed freak for not understanding why anyone would want a holiday, but that would be slightly hypocritical of him. Just a little.

"I'm going on an epic journey." Hikaru replied instantly.

"To where?"

"Wherever the wind takes me." He proclaimed, enjoying the sight of his rival getting steadily more and more riled up.

"Shindou! Just tell me why you're taking holiday time!"

"I have to find myself." He answered, solemnly.

Flatly, his rival said "that doesn't even make sense."

"I'm going on a beautiful journey of self-discovery." Hikaru declared. "It will change me. I will come back an enlightened man, in touch with my innermost self and the forces of nature."

Touya looked enraged. It was beautiful. "You are doing no such thing," he accused. "You're going off to do something ridiculous and you're being reticent because you know it's idiotic. That's it, isn't it?"

"Touya," Hikaru said, slowly. "I didn't know you hated enlightenment so much, and that's very sad. But you shouldn't let your hatred hold other people back from attaining inner peace."

An incoherent snarl emerged from Touya instead of words. It was a very satisfying sound.

Hikaru was very good at annoying people. He was also quite good at bullshitting. These skills combined nicely to deflect all attempts to get him to attend the festival or to question him on his holiday. Hikaru stuck firmly to his claim that he was going on a week-long journey to 'find himself', interspersed with occasional commentary about cosmic forces and the bounty of nature, as well as the occasional proverb about self-knowledge.

Most people were very easy to deflect, on account of the aforementioned skill Hikaru had at being annoying. Some were a bit savvier. Ogata asked about his holiday time, once. Upon being promptly greeted with the now well-practiced enlightenment explanation, the title-holder rolled his eyes and didn't ask again. His mother asked, and being well used to his bullshit, nagged him until he admitted that he was going to a couple of places, Kyoto included, and was staying with Yashiro in Osaka. This was, of course, mostly true – he was staying with Yashiro for a day, but that was pretty much a decoy.

Akari, also being very used to Hikaru's bullshit, went straight to his mother and found out about his travel plans, and would only be sworn into silence in return for the admission that he was planning on spending basically the whole week in Kyoto. When questioned about his plans for the city, Hikaru promptly went straight back to the enlightenment spiel, adding for flavour that he planned on visiting many shrines, which was actually true.

Being the she-devil that she was, Akari demanded daily assurances that he was alive, as well as photographic evidence that he was visiting at least three different shrines. As she could inform his friends about his destination, and therefore set the combined might of the Kansai branch upon him, he reluctantly agreed to her terms and shooed her out of the house.

As the days leading up to his trip went on, the people who actually knew Hikaru discovered precisely how stubborn he could be, being regaled repeatedly with the reasoning behind his decision to seek enlightenment. He became pretty damn good at it, to be honest, and even discreetly visited a library to leaf through a few books for verbal ammunition. Enough so that he could keep an entirely straight face while he bullshitted and appear very resolute while he did it.

"I've realised lately that I don't know how to live in the present." Hikaru said solemnly to the latest person to ask him about the festival, a new first dan who hadn't come through Insei. She was pretty good for some random former-outsider, and nice too, but probably too gullible to survive interacting with him for long. "I can never just enjoy the moment, you know? And there's some other stuff as well…even if a week isn't enough time to reach enlightenment, I can still get some advice on how to start trying."

"O-oh," The shodan, who was named Yamada Suzume, said. She looked a bit confused. "That's…nice? I'm happy for you."

"Shindou, you are so full of shit." Waya informed him, having arrived with Isumi a minute before. He turned to Yamada and told her "don't listen to this guy, everything he says is a lie."

Hikaru frowned at his friend. "Waya, I don't understand why you're being so weird about this! What's so bad about me trying to improve myself?" He managed to sound a little indignant and hurt. All the bullshitting was good for his acting skills.

Yamada looked between them, also frowning a little. "Waya-san," She said, hesitantly. "It's not very nice to belittle people who are trying to better themselves. It's not my place to say, but…maybe you should be more supportive of your friend."

Hikaru's expression became somewhat fixed as he tried desperately not to laugh.

"Oh my god." Waya said, staring accusingly at Hikaru. "This is unbelievable."

Yamada looked like she was going to comment, but Isumi stopped her, smiling very kindly. "Yamada-san," He said, and the girl pinked a bit. Maybe she had a crush on Isumi; such was not an uncommon occurrence among young Go-enthusiast ladies. "I assure you, Shindou-kun enjoys tricking people and is not telling the truth in the least. Even so, it is very kind of you to say such things. If you would leave us with Shindou-kun for a few minutes?" The young man was exceedingly polite, easily charming the poor gullible girl out of the conversation and over to a nearby colleague, where he swiftly arranged a game between the two, and left them to it.

"Isumi, that was obscene." Waya said to their friend, and then to Hikaru "and you, you are way worse."

"It's very sad that you're still not over this. I'm starting to think you're worried I'll get too enlightened and leave for a monastery." Hikaru replied, considerably less straight faced than he'd been before.

Isumi, who was encountering this for the first time, raised an eyebrow and glanced at Waya questioningly. The brown-haired boy looked back and nodded. "Yeah, I told you."

Hikaru had recently realised that many of his friends were as stubborn and belligerent as he was. He wasn't entirely certain how that had come to pass, but was starting to believe that to get good at Go one had to be stubborn and occasionally belligerent about it. Waya demonstrated this stubborn belligerence, by saying, with relish "Isumi said this might be a Hokuto cup thing! That you were so humiliated by the memory of your defeat that you couldn't stand to be here on its anniversary!"

"Waya, that is not what I said." Isumi sighed as Hikaru stilled a little. He did not enjoy the memory of that loss, occurring as it had on the anniversary of losing Sai. His expression soured.

"It's totally true though, isn't it?" Waya asked, unperturbed. "That's why you're not doing it this year."

"It totally isn't." Hikaru disagreed, feeling a little thrown-off.

Isumi and his unwholesomely sharp eyes seemed intent. "Actually, I thought what happened two years ago might be more relevant." He said, and Hikaru…tried not to react, and simply fixed his expression in place. It felt quite artificial. "That was when you retreated from Go for two months, if I recall."

Hikaru, after a moment, rallied admirably and declared "exactly right! That's what I've been talking about! If I can't take my mind off my past mistakes, then how can I appreciate the present? I need to spend time in contemplation to come to terms with who I am, or I will never be at peace."

"You wouldn't know the meaning of peace if it came up to you and slapped you in the face with a live fish." Waya said. "So if it's peace you're looking for, you might as well give up, cancel your holiday, and come to the festival. You're doomed to failure."

"I suppose none of us can truly understand what peace is," Hikaru mused, deliberately ignoring the bulk of his friend's statement. "It's something I will have to meditate on at length on my journey to enlightenment."

Waya, easily distracted, was successfully derailed from the line of inquiry. Isumi, however, was watching too sharply – but he didn't say anything, and that was good enough, really.

Finally, Hikaru's stubbornness paid off and he reached May 1st with only his mother, Akari, and naturally Yashiro aware of any part of his travel itinerary. His time off was Thursday to Thursday, leaving him with a good few days before the anniversary itself. His train was quite early, so it was half-asleep and bleary-eyed that he dragged his nearly empty suitcase to the station and boarded. He promptly fell asleep and didn't wake for the vast majority of the journey, the rest of which he spent playing NetGo under his nick of 5, which he was still amazed had been available. The internet version he could access from his phone was absolutely appalling, but it was better than nothing on long journeys.

The login details for sai were used only often enough to ensure the account didn't get deleted, and every time Hikaru logged in was a punch in the gut that he preferred not to dwell on.

The train arrived in Osaka just after midday, and Yashiro was actually waiting for him. He hadn't expected that.

"What, you thought I'd waste time letting you wander around that you could spend playing Go?" The other boy asked when he mentioned his surprise. "You're only here for a day, Shindou."

It was more or less inevitable that a pro Go player would be surrounded by people just as obsessed as they. Hikaru had pretty much resigned the first day of his holiday to the cause as soon as he knew he'd be staying with Yashiro, and honestly he was perfectly okay with that. Yashiro might not be a second dan yet, but he had a tendency for really eclectic plays which were lots of fun to deal with. It was a bit like playing himself, actually. They were both tricky bastards.

"Yeah, yeah. Let's get on with it. You have a goban at home?"

"It's a pretty cheap one, but yeah." Yashiro grimaced. "My parents are still weird about the Go pro thing, so they won't let me buy a better one." He reached for Hikaru's suitcase experimentally, and blinked. "Have you actually packed anything, Shindou?"

"Not a lot. I'm planning on buying some stuff in Kyoto." He answered. "Sucks about your parents, though. Don't they know how much money you're getting already?" It wasn't like theirs was the highest paying job in the world, but it certainly wasn't bad.

"Of course they do. They're making me put it all in a savings account. Dad's even talking about investing."

"Sucks for you," Hikaru said sympathetically. "Now, how are we getting to your place?"

Hikaru discovered several things that day: Yashiro's goban really was cheap, his parents really were very dubious about Go, and Yashiro really had improved since they last played in person.

On the parents' insistence, they were playing in the sitting room. The goban itself was an exceedingly old table-top folding sort and the stones were all glass, a couple were even chipped. It did the job though, and within minutes of nigiri both he and Yashiro were staring intently at the board. Hikaru got out his fan almost automatically, flexing it absent-mindedly as potential hands streamed through his mind. Neither of them were unduly distracted by their audience – it was just something you got used to pretty early on, even if most audiences did tend to be much more Go-savvy than this one was.

The room was quiet except for the exchange of hands, stones clicking onto the board. It wasn't as satisfying a feeling to play on this sort of board when he was getting used to kaya, but it was alright. They lost their audience at some point near yose, but neither of them cared in the least.

Hikaru won by five-and-a-half moku, feeling thoroughly satisfied. He sat back and stretched, saying "Good match. Want to discuss it?"

"Yeah, definitely." His opponent agreed, and they cleared the board to replay the game from memory.

Their audience returned five minutes into the discussion, at least half of the audience anyway, and that half asked incredulously "Are you replaying the game you just did?"

"Nah, mum, we're just discussing it." Yashiro replied, looking up.

"But you remember the whole thing. All of those moves." She said, sceptically.

"Yeah, but that's nothing special at our level." He confirmed. Hikaru considered saying something, but decided against it. He was too much of a smartass, and didn't want to accidentally piss off Yashiro's mother and make her swear a blood feud against Go or something.

"Hmm." The woman pursed her lips. "Well, dinner will be in an hour. Be sure to have the table cleared before then."

Hikaru turned to Yashiro. "Discuss the game, or speed go?" He asked.

The other boy considered it. "Discuss." He decided. "We can play speed go after dinner."

They nodded, and returned to what they'd been doing.

The next morning was an early one, though not as bad as the one before. Hikaru bade farewell to his gracious hosts and allowed Yashiro to escort him back to the Osaka station.

"What are you even doing in Kyoto, anyway?" Yashiro asked as he helped him onto the platform.

The response was damn near reflexive by now: "I'm on a journey to get in touch with my inner self, and understand how to be one with the universe."

Yashiro rolled his eyes. "Yeah, sure."

Kyoto was more or less just as cliché and historical as he'd expected, and also completely packed with tourists. He stared around like a bit of a tourist himself as he navigated towards the cheap hostel he'd booked a room in, reflexively noting the presence of two Go salons along the way. One he noticed while on the bus, the other wasn't far from his accommodation, and he probably wouldn't be visiting either of them. Probably. Maybe. He might do? But only if he had time.

When he booked into the hostel and paid his deposit, he was informed of when he had to be back at night, when breakfast could be obtained, and what was forbidden. Among the forbidden activities was smoking, but incense wasn't mentioned, so score! The bathroom for his section of the hostel was shown to him, and there were two old computers that could be used to access the internet. Hikaru signed his agreement to everything, quite impatient, and was shown to his room and presented with the key.

The room itself was small and very basic. The bedframe was a cheap metal one, and the mattress quite thin. There was a small desk and a window, with a stool beside it. Hikaru removed the stool and set it next to the bed as a bedside table of sorts, then put his suitcase under the bed. He checked himself for wallet and mobile phone, and left the hostel.

Hikaru visited his first shrine on the way to somewhere the maps claimed was a shopping district. It was a very small thing, pretty much just a really old tree with the traditional rope around it and a basic Shinto-Buddhist structure nearby. Hikaru couldn't take any pictures of it on account of not having bought a camera yet, but maybe he would on his way back to the hostel.

After a moment of hesitance, he located the kannushi and did what he came to Kyoto to do, pretty much. Making an uncharacteristic effort to be polite, he said "excuse me?" and the kannushi turned to see him. The clothes were…startling. He'd seen them from behind, of course, and that was bad enough, but…

The shrine keeper looked at him dubiously. Hikaru was fully aware that the bleached bangs and bright clothing did not especially fit in at a shrine, and were found on delinquents more often than respectful do-gooders. The expression on the man's face was, therefore, one he was very familiar with. Hikaru was still a bit distracted by the clothes. It wasn't as if they looked the same – the colours were all wrong, to begin with, and there were several small differences in style – but it was certainly a greater similarity to Sai's apparel than he tended to see in Japanese formal dress.

"Yes, young man?" The kannushi asked politely.

Hikaru considered his words, and decided it would be odd to dive straight in to what he wanted to ask. So instead he said "Can you tell me a little bit about this shrine?"

The man looked somewhat surprised. "I certainly can." He said. "It is good to see a young person like yourself taking an interest. Now, you see this tree here…" For a while, Hikaru listened and half tried to take in the information about the shrine's history and the tree kami it had been built for. It did take around five minutes, but the kannushi did conclude his 'brief summary', and smiled at him. "Was that what you wanted to know?"

"…Yep," Hikaru answered, his considerable experience with bullshit making him sound actually sincere. He paused before asking what he'd actually come there for. "I was also wondering, though…what can you tell me about spirits?"

"Spirits? Are you referring to the kami?" The kannushi asked, startled.

Hikaru hummed doubtfully. "No, not really. Sort of. A lot of kami started as ancestor spirits, right? So they used to be human?"

The man didn't seem to understand what he was getting at. "I suppose some of them were, yes."

Hikaru went for it. "So, would you say it's possible for humans to become spirits?"

The kannushi stared for a moment, and then sighed. "You are asking about ghosts, aren't you?"

"…Yeah, pretty much." Hikaru admitted.

The shrine keeper looked away, and was silent for several moments. "Young man," He said, at last. "I believe it is possible that humans, even today, leave lingering spirits. But if they do, I know of no way to detect them, or communicate with them, and I have heard no plausible story of any who does."

It was pretty much what Hikaru had expected. "I guessed as much."

The kannushi hesitated. "If you have lost someone, I am truly sorry for you." He said, and the words were unexpectedly painful. Hikaru flinched, and swallowed quickly. "But as far as communicating with their spirits…I can only suggest visiting the grave, or perhaps praying at a household shrine."

"Pretty much what I'd planned." Hikaru sighed. "Well, thanks for your time, anyway."

"You are very welcome." The kannushi said, now looking quite sad.

Hikaru turned and left without looking back, stepping under the torii and back into the town.

He hadn't been lying; praying at a household shrine was definitely something he had in mind. Or something close to it, anyway. He'd wanted to for a while, but something like that wasn't exactly easy to do at his house. His mother would notice, Akari would notice, and everyone would want to know who he was mourning. It would be a huge pain in the backside.

Here, though…

It took a while to find what he was looking for in full. The cheap incense burner was easy, as were the candles. He smelled a variety of incenses, dubiously, not really sure what he was looking for there. The place he got the burner was kind of small, with little variety in incenses, so he left the incense unbought. He could always come back for some later.

It was in a much larger shop that he found the right incense, as well as the rest of what he was after. The contents of the store were predominantly wooden – carvings, sculptures, even some furniture. There were a lot of items with a distinct Shinto feel to them, and many more clearly Buddhist. A large section of the room was set aside with rows and rows of incense, some elaborate incense burners nearby, and there was even a corner of the room with a number of interesting bowls. He approached them and inspected them, discovering that they all seemed to have batons next to them, and the storekeeper approached him shortly.

"Is there something I can help you with?" The woman asked him, eyes running over the hair with curiosity. Shindou Hikaru was never something people expected, especially not at shrines or in stores like this.

"I was sort of wondering what these were." He replied promptly, picking a bowl up. It was metallic, and very very gold. The gleam of it was intense, though the surface wasn't perfectly even.

The storekeeper held her hands out for the bowl, and he passed it over. She placed it back on the small cushion he'd taken it from, took the baton, and with a practiced motion hit the baton lightly against the side of the bowl.

The sound rang out, clear and resonant. "A bell?" He asked, surprised.

"Of a sort," She agreed. "They are sometimes called 'singing bowls'. Some of them, if you stroke the baton around the edge, make a high ringing sound that can become very loud."

He listened to the sound fade out. "Pretty." He commented. "Not what I'm here for, though."

"What can I do for you, then?" She asked, lips quirking.

He glanced around, back to the wood carvings. He wasn't sure she'd have any, but…oh! "There!" he said, and strode briskly over. There were a number of kamidana there, some impressively large and elaborate.

"The kamidana?" The woman asked, having followed him. "What size were you looking at?"

Hikaru pondered them, musing on the size of his suitcase. "It'll have to be small." He said. "I'll need to get it in my suitcase. One of these, maybe?" He touched one of the second smallest ones – not the miniaturised thing that the littlest was, but still a lot smaller than some kamidana could be. This one was still smaller than a lot of the household ones tended to be, being only about forty centimetres wide, but it would still take up the vast majority of his suitcase. He inspected it, carefully. It wasn't just an imitation, it had the beautiful golden inlay and everything. It was probably hideously expensive. "How much is it?"

She answered, and he winced. It was worth it, though.

"Yeah, I'll have it. I'd like to look at the incense you have as well, though."

"That's great," The storekeeper smiled. "Will you be needing ofuda for the kamidana?"

"…I don't think so. It would need to be pretty specific." He declined, after thinking. Ofuda were, pretty much, protective charms that called to certain gods. He wasn't asking for protection, and he wasn't asking any gods, either.

"Of course. Let me know when you're done."

Hikaru nodded to her, and wandered over to the incense. There was seriously a lot of it. So many different scents – it was outrageous. And he still had no idea of what to buy. There was actually a specific section for ritual incenses, even those suitable for use as funerary incenses. He had a look and sniff at all of them, but still wasn't sure what he was looking for. He might get one of those if he didn't find anything else, though.

He wandered down the display, inspecting the various containers. One actually stood out to him – in the woody section, there was one called kaya, meant to evoke the scent of that particular wood. Hikaru laughed a little, and took a box of the kaya incense, having a sniff. It wasn't as though he went around sniffing gobans, so he wasn't sure how accurate it might be, but the scent was sort of nice and woodsy.

Hikaru turned to go to the cashpoint, kaya in hand, but paused. He glanced at what had caught his eye, and went still. In the section dedicated to flower scents, there was an innocuous row of boxes labelled fuji. Wisteria.

He paused, then hesitantly reached out to take a box. He sniffed it, and nearly swayed in place as memory hit him like a tidal wave. It wasn't like it was exact, the smell was a bit too sweet for that, but it was familiar. Maybe it did smell like wisteria, and that was the smell he recognised, but he didn't really give a crap about that because it smelled like Sai, and he'd completely forgotten what that was like.

He'd read something once about smell being more strongly connected to memory than any other sense, but he'd never really felt it so keenly before. For a disorientating second, it was almost as if Sai was there, pouncing on him in excitement as he'd often done. Hikaru lowered the incense box from his face and inhaled the smoky, many-scented air of the shop to clear out the whiff of the fuji. It took a few deep breaths before he gathered himself, and reached for four more boxes of the incense. He wasn't sure what his mum would think of all the incense burning, but she'd learn to cope.

Somewhat impressed that he'd managed to keep composed through that, Hikaru made his way to where the store keeper lady had been wrapping his kamidana for transport, his hands straining around one tube of kaya and five of fuji.

"These as well, please." He said, handing them over for her to scan. She nodded, and six beeps later, she read him the somewhat painful total. He was glad his mum didn't micromanage his finances like Yashiro's did. "Thanks." Hikaru told her, putting the handles of the paper bag of incense over his wrist so that he could carry the kamidana's box properly.

The walk back to the hostel was much more annoying than the walk from it, while toting the damn box with him, but that was life.

The receptionist at the hostel gave him an odd look as he walked in, but obligingly gave him his key, the ring of which he hooked around a pinky finger for the remaining distance to his room. He had to put the box down to open the door, but he managed to clatter into the bare accommodation eventually. He put the box and the bag on the desk, and fished the long box with the incense burner out of his back pocket as well. He stared at the lot with consternation, not sure what to do with the stuff now that he had it, and slowly decided that he'd set it all up on the actual anniversary, and not before.

Hikaru woke with a sore shoulder, graciously bestowed upon him by the lumpy mattress, and set about his Saturday with single-minded determination.

It was a Saturday filled with entirely too much commuting for his liking, but that was how getting around a large city worked, unfortunately. True to his pact with Akari, he purchased a cheap disposable camera early on and meticulously photographed all of his destinations.

These destinations were, without fail, shrines. All of the shrines. All of them. Hikaru systematically went through every shrine he could find listed in Kyoto, though naturally he wouldn't be able to do them all in one day. Maybe not even the whole week. In every case, he took photographs, and harassed the kannushi about spirits. In some cases, the kannushi were too busy, so he spoke to the miko while he waited for an opportunity to interrogate the priests. In other cases, the kannushi were too busy to be waited for, so that was a colossal waste of time.

None of them seemed to have any better insight into ghosts and spirits than the first had, so it wasn't looking good. Maybe he really would have to start trying for exorcists and 'spiritual masters' once he ran out of shrines.

Late in the afternoon, armed with a full camera worth of photographs and no useful knowledge whatsoever, Hikaru got some ramen from a nearby stall and headed back to the hostel to play NetGo on its computers. He ran into Waya online, gleefully immersed himself into a proper game that he naturally won, and then completely ignored the post-game bitching the other pro sent at him for 'disappearing like that' in what was meant to be the post-game discussion.

It was a pretty good evening, even if the day hadn't really been all that fruitful.

Sunday's mission was twofold: one, go on all the touristy tours of the Imperial Palace he could manage, and two, investigate the shrines on the Palace grounds if that was possible. Hikaru pondered his agenda shortly before 10am, having hastily made his way to the hostel cafeteria just before its breakfast window closed. He successfully absconded to a table with a pastry, some toast, and a mini-packet of butter, setting about his meal with relish. It might not have been anything fancy or even all that good, but it was food.

He finished in good time and set off to buy a new camera before heading for the Palace. Having done a lot of walking and commuting the previous day, Hikaru felt somewhat more familiar with the city, and arrived at the Imperial Palace with very little fuss. However, upon arriving there he discovered that there weren't actually any tours on Sundays, so he was very much out of luck for both of the day's missions.

Hikaru stared at the tour schedule and booking sign with disgust, half annoyed at his poor planning and half annoyed at the schedule itself. Feeling thoroughly put-out, he made his way to a nearby tourist memorabilia type place and bought some information books on the Palace, which he sat down with on a bench to read while he sulked.

The material therein was actually somewhat surprising. Turns out, the Imperial Palace that you could tour in Kyoto wasn't actually what had been used in the Heian era – that one had been abandoned, and had burnt down in the 1200s. It was unexpectedly jarring. Hikaru had always sort of assumed that he would be able to come to Kyoto and walk on the same ground that Sai had, a very long time ago. Maybe even see the same buildings. But…apparently not.

What a waste.

Day's plans ruined, Hikaru toured a couple more shrines throughout the city and then located a reasonably large library, where he located books on the Heian era and distractedly leafed through them for several hours. The boring political stuff didn't stick with him at all, but some other stuff did. He somehow hadn't expected to see the name 'Fujiwara' in the history books, but it was in basically all of them. The Fujiwara clan, it seemed, had been anything from hugely powerful to outright ruling Japan throughout most of the Heian era. He wasn't sure whether Sai had been the same sort of Fujiwara as that, but considering he'd had access to the emperor's court in that era…it seemed likely.

He tried to look through some Fujiwara family trees but they were pretty useless, he couldn't make heads or tails of them. If Sai had been a Fujiwara, either his name hadn't been recorded, or it wasn't easy to find. Considering he'd been disgraced, and killed himself so young…well, maybe there weren't any records left to say that he'd ever existed. Damned depressing, that Hikaru might be the only person who knew that Fujiwara no Sai had once lived and breathed.

The whole thing had depressed him enough that, screw everything, Hikaru went back to the area of the city he was staying in and made a beeline for the Go salon he'd noticed when he arrived.

It was mid-afternoon by then, and most small Go salons weren't always populated at that time – it often tended to be more of an evening thing. It was a Sunday, though, so there was a surprising number of people in the place, despite how smoky and tiny it was. He looked around curiously as he walked in, eyeing the patrons as they eyed him. The admittance guy, who'd apparently been watching a game in the corner, came over to peer at him. He was old and pretty fat.

"You here to play, kid?" He asked, clearly wanting to go back to watching the game. "It's 400 yen for children."

Hikaru was sorely tempted to advertise himself as the pro he was, because this guy at least clearly didn't recognise him, but he was sort of looking forward to shocking some old guys with curb-stomp matches, so… "Yep." He nodded, and handed over the yen.

"All good." The man muttered, quickly counting the money and putting it away in a nearby box. "What level are you? Do you know?"

Hikaru paused for a moment, though to hell with it, and said "Nidan."

"Yeah, right. I'll put down twenty kyu, alright? And don't cry to me if you get beat."

And yeah, okay, Hikaru could feel himself cheering up more by the second. This was going to be hilarious. "Sure, whatever you want." He agreed, and walked into the salon. "Anyone not playing?"

One of the spectators of a game in the corner snorted at him, amused. He was actually reasonably young for this sort of place, only thirty or so. "If you're twenty kyu, I might be a bit strong for you." He said.

Hikaru grinned, and said "Bring it."

The poor sucker tried to give him a handicap, but Hikaru wasn't quite cruel enough to allow that. He insisted on nigiri with every ounce of stubborn brat he had in him, and eventually managed it, his opponent sighing. Hikaru got white, which was a small mercy for the other guy, and set his goke next to the cheap folding goban. The bow and "onegaishimasu" were basically instinct by this point, but the formality did seem to surprise the guy a little as he bowed back.

Hikaru watched the guy more than the board, because it was funny as hell to watch as he steadily realised how monumentally outclassed he was. It was this look of confusion, to begin with, then consternation, and a few flavours of disbelief mixed in, and then finally the guy looked at him with a suspicious grimace. Hikaru grinned at him impudently, and the game went on.

The guys in the corner finished their game and came to watch. The younger of the two, a forty-something guy with premature balding, whistled as he saw the board. "You're white, kid?"

"Yep." Hikaru nodded, drawing out the word with satisfaction. It was much more amusing to dominate games in person than on NetGo, because the reactions could get excellent.

"You've already lost, Yamakawa." The older of their spectators observed. "Might as well resign now before it gets embarrassing."

Hikaru's opponent scowled. "He's just a kid!" He protested.

"He's a pro, you idiot." The old guy retorted. "Honestly, am I the only one who reads the magazine in this damned place?"

Several sets of very startled eyes went to Hikaru. He grinned at the lot of them, noticing that the five other guys in the room had heard and were also looking.

"…What?" His opponent, Yamakawa, uttered weakly.

"I remember seeing his Shin Shodan picture a couple years back." The old guy explained. "The hair's pretty distinctive. Don't remember your name, though." He turned to Hikaru on the last comment.

"Shindou Hikaru, second dan." Hikaru introduced himself, enjoying the muffled curses going around. "I'm on holiday, but eh. You want to discuss the game?" he asked his poor, hapless opponent.

"I…I'll leave it, thank you." Yamakawa said, looking somewhat shell-shocked.

Hikaru shrugged. "Suit yourself." He looked around. "Anyone want some shidou-go? I've got a couple of hours to kill."

In fact, everyone wanted shidou-go, and so his afternoon concluded much more pleasantly than it had begun.

Hikaru left the Go salon in the late afternoon, and procured a burger from a nearby fast food place to have for dinner. The hostel did breakfast, but you only got dinner there if you cooked it yourself. Hikaru, being a fifteen year old with a doting mother, did not have cooking experience, and had no wish to get any at this point in time.

He commandeered the hostel computer for another evening foray into NetGo, this time encountering Yashiro's nick on there, and had another very enjoyable match that lasted pretty late. Trying very hard not to think about the impending day, Hikaru brushed his teeth, sent his obligatory 'still alive' text to Akari, and made every effort to fall asleep quickly.

He did not succeed.

Hikaru woke up early, feeling barely rested.

He'd done a pretty good job, these last two years, of bull-headedly focusing on things, anything he could, to distract himself. Go really was a miracle in that regard – if he spent all his time playing, and really immersed himself in the games, it almost felt normal. But he couldn't do that today.

Today was May 5th.

The desk by the window was too low for traditional kamidana placement. They were supposed to be above eye level, if possible, but it couldn't be helped. Hikaru hardly thought Sai would have minded, anyway.

…Sai.

Hikaru blinked rapidly as he unpacked the kamidana from its box, picking away the packing material meant to pad it during transit. He set it far back on the desk, arranged a couple of candles around it, and put the incense burner to the side, too. In place of the shintai, the object containing or representing the kami to be venerated, he opened the paper fan he carried with him everywhere and carefully balanced it there. It was the best physical representation he could manage.

He placed the tube of fuji near the burner, but didn't place a stick or light it. He lit the candles, using a lighter he'd pilfered from home, but suspected the scent of the incense might mess him up magnificently and he didn't want that just yet.

With all of the objects positioned, Hikaru sat down on the floor in front of the desk in seiza, which was now so familiar to him.

"So." He said aloud, in an attempt to clear his head a little. He wasn't sure it worked.

He had come to Kyoto this week for a reason. To remember and respect Sai, of course, but not only that. He had come to Kyoto, on the anniversary of Sai's disappearance, because he was starting to suspect that something was wrong with him.

Hikaru knew that grief was normal when you lost someone close to you, and Sai had certainly qualified. Even if he'd been a brat about it, there wasn't any way to avoid becoming seriously attached when you spent two years in the constant presence of someone as kind and genuine as Sai. It only made sense that he felt the absence, that he grieved. And even without the grief, it wasn't easy to adapt to being alone when you'd literally never been apart from someone for that long.

Those first two months had been an absolute nightmare. He'd spent every moment with Sai's absence screaming at him. When he looked around, there wasn't a white-robed figure there, not anywhere. Many times, he reflexively commented on things aloud, even addressed comments to the ghost, and there was no reply. There was nothing. Even worse was when he thought at Sai, as he'd been doing for years – the spirit was possessing him, after all, and had always been able to hear targeted thoughts. Hikaru shuddered, remembering intensely the sensation of reaching out with his thoughts for someone who wasn't there.

It had been just…completely awful. Everything felt wrong. He'd been so horribly guilty for Sai's absence, as well, convinced it was his own selfishness that had exiled the spirit. Every waking minute was evidence, again and again and again, that Sai wasn't there, and he just hadn't been able to cope at all.

Hikaru was very thankful to Isumi to helping him snap out of that mess. Once he'd found that vestige of Sai's presence in his own Go, once he'd thrown himself into games again…it had been better.

He had, over months and months of practice, made an art of avoiding certain thoughts and emotions. Intense immersion in passing moments, in games, in anything he could find were invaluable in helping him cope. Especially early on, when he still had the habit of speaking to Sai or reaching out with thoughts.

It was easier now that those habits had faded, and he didn't expect to see Sai whenever he glanced to the side, and had no impulse to speak to someone who wasn't there.

But Hikaru still felt it, dammit. It wasn't like it only hurt whenever his thoughts wandered to Sai, or he was reminded of Sai, or anything like that. The emotional pain was pretty much constant, and the best he could do was try to distract himself from it. He woke up every day with something missing, he passed every minute of every hour of those days trying not to let himself dwell on the constant aching absence of Sai. He could feel it, always, no matter what he did. It was impossible to forget that Sai wasn't there, and the only reason he'd managed to cope so well was his single-minded determination to not think about it.

Sai was the only person Hikaru had really lost, so it wasn't like he was an expert in grief and mourning. But he was pretty sure that, two years later, it should be better than it was. It should hurt when he thought of Sai, sure, but this incessant pain? It wasn't normal. It couldn't be. His method of coping had pretty much ensured he'd not really thought about it before, but…it was time to. Because it wasn't getting better on its own.

Hikaru breathed deeply, well aware that he was trembling but not especially capable of stopping it. Sai had been a ghost, a spirit. He had possessed Hikaru. Maybe not in the conventional sense – it wasn't as though he'd destroyed Hikaru's mind or controlled his actions or anything, but Sai had been connected to the world through his occupancy of Hikaru's soul. It was a pretty old memory, but he did remember passing out when it happened, and he remembered vomiting at first when the sensation of Sai's emotion overwhelmed him, and it had felt so weird in the beginning. That hadn't lasted, though. Eventually, Sai's presence with him had felt natural. Familiar and comforting, even. It had been normal to have that presence at the edge of his mind, which he could reach out to with a thought.

It made an uncomfortable amount of sense that, having adapted to the presence of Sai in his soul, Hikaru was now…missing something, somehow. Was there such a thing as spiritual scarring? Spiritual phantom 'limb' pain? What if Hikaru's own spirit had changed so much to adapt to Sai's that it now couldn't function properly without him? Had he become dependent on Sai to the point where it was impossible to adapt?

It wasn't easy to think about Sai at all, it was really difficult to sit there in seiza and actually dwell on the yawning pit of emptiness in his mind where, even now, he expected there to be something. But he kind of had to, because it was time to acknowledge that he might not actually be capable of accepting or moving on from Sai, whether it be mentally or spiritually or whatever. And of course, since he couldn't move on, he was still stuck solidly in grief so fresh he might as well have lost Sai a day ago, rather than two whole years. He didn't even want to move on from Sai, because that screaming emptiness in his head insisted that Sai should be there.

He needed to stop grieving for Sai but couldn't, and because he couldn't stop grieving he didn't want to stop grieving in the first place, and so he was always grieving and always having to cope by distracting himself and it was just a huge, huge mess.

Frankly, Hikaru considered himself exceptionally awesome for managing so well that his friends and family had barely seen any of his issues, though he knew Akari had noticed things, probably Touya and Isumi as well.

So, he was here in Kyoto. Partly to grieve properly for Sai, and pay him respect, because he couldn't afford to do that back home where people might notice. And also, to see if he could find someone who might know something about spirits, and spiritual injuries. Kyoto, where Sai had lived and died, seemed a good place to do both things.

The shrines were a good place to start, so he'd exhaust those first. If he had time left in Kyoto he'd look for exorcists and spiritual specialists, and if he still found nothing he'd start a tour of shrines and exorcists back home in Tokyo. If that still didn't work, he could tour the internet and try phoning more faraway people. The point was, there was something he could do, even if it seemed futile and hopeless at best.

There were a number of things that might help. Maybe it was possible to heal whatever wound Sai had left him with when he'd disappeared. Maybe it was possible to fill the absence with some other sort of power or energy.

But the solution Hikaru wanted, more than anything, was to find some way to communicate with spirits, with Kami, with anyone, and find some way to get Sai back to him.

Hikaru stood, briefly, and lit a stick of incense. The smell only hit him once he'd sat down again, and he shuddered in the face of it, it was so familiar. He could almost believe Sai was beside him, robes and hair flicking about whatever perfume it was that made him smell like wisteria incense.

I'll do it, Sai. Hikaru thought, intentionally reaching out into that horrible, empty void where his friend should be. He shook in place, fists clenching. I'll find you. Somehow, I'll find you.

end chapter.

Story Notes (07/07/17): Welcome to Paper Cranes. This story has been on ao3 for nearly a year now, and I've finally got around to posting the first chapter here. Currently, there are 14 chapters on ao3, and 15 on tumblr. I've just today finished chapter 16 so that will be going up on tumblr sometime this evening.

The current word count of 16 chapters is a bit over 135k, and the story is getting to maybe about half-way done. Chapters will be added here when they've been thoroughly edited and revised, which may take time. If you don't want to wait, head to my ao3 (Spontaneite) or tumblr (tenspontaneite). Chapters on tumblr are the first, rough editions, and chapters on ao3 have been given a fairly thorough editing. If you read on ao3, please beware: replies to all comments are public there, so the comments section contains a lot of spoilers.

To anyone coming here from ao3 or tumblr - thank you for showering Paper Cranes with love. You are all wonderful.

To new readers: I welcome comments, questions, and concrit. Lovely to have you.

Chapter Notes:

On Heian perfumes: nobles in the Heian era were quite fond of scents and perfumes, and used them extensively. Considering the connection to his clan's name, I think it perfectly possible that Sai would have used a scent derived from wisteria on his robes. While the exact scent wouldn't have survived a thousand years, the incense is superficially similar.

On olfaction: The sense of smell is very, very poignantly connected to memory. This is probably an adaptive trait, given it allows us to readily remember if smells herald something good (like food) or something dangerous (fire, poison, etc).

On Go: In this fanfiction, Touya Akira is a seventh-dan (nanadan). This has real-world basis. Not long after this point in the timeline in the real world, there was a change in how dan grade promotions were earned in the professional Go world. Namely, professionals who managed to enter certain prestigious title leagues like Honinbou would receive an automatic promotion to nanadan. If they managed to get through the league to challenge the title-holder, that's an automatic promotion to eighth-dan. While Touya entered the Honinbou league a little too early for him to get this promotion if it were the real world, I'm backtracking this policy change for the sake of convenience in the fanfiction.