The beginning starts out similar to the manga, but I promise that the plot deviates after this chapter.

Be warned. I'm not an artist, so do take what I say here with a grain of salt.

Shindo Hikaru had been drawing since she could hold a pencil. It was hard not to with an art teacher for a mother and an art appraiser for a father. Ever since she could remember, art had surrounded her family in more than just the paintings they bought.

Every painting had a story, her mother always told her as she helped her move the brush around the canvas. Art was a living this, full or life and emotions just like the people who created them. Each piece, whether it be a doodle or a life size sculpture, contained a piece of the artist's soul, mind and body. A world of possibilities was in front of her, waiting for her to create on the blank canvas. It was them that she decided that she would she too would create her own worlds. Her mother, seeing her daughter's talent, wasted no time in acquiring tutors and teachers to help her grow and nourish her skills. By the time she was ten, she had been considered an art prodigy by many of her teachers and her father's friends.

Hikaru had never felt more happy than when she was holding a brush, paint splattered on her smock and on the canvas below. There was nothing that she couldn't do with a brush in hand.

Except this.

The thirteen year old coughed harshly as she accidentally inhaled the large puff of powder, cursing to the heavens as it got into her mouth and all over the badly applied lipstick. She now remembered why she hated make-up. Sai laughing at her in the background was not helpful in the slightest.

"Will you shut up already? I'm doing this for you, you know?" She growled, wiping off and smearing the red blush with a napkin. "You could at least help me out here."

"I don't see how this is my fault, Hikaru." Sai said, concealing his giggles behind his large sleeves. Even though he had zero knowledge of the beauty standards for today, he could tell that Hikaru had no idea what she was doing.

"You're the one who wanted to go out to a go salon! I wouldn't have had to put this stuff on if you stopped bugging me about it." She said, trying to figure out how to open her mother's eye shadow palette.

Why wouldn't this crap blend correctly?

"But Hikaru, you and many women in this time go out without make up everyday."

"Which is what makes this a perfect disguise!" She said, grabbing a random brush thing from the container. What this for eye shadow? Well it was now.

Why couldn't makeup brushes be like her paint brushes? At least that was a language that she understood.

"Disguise? Why on earth would you need a disguise to go to a go salon?"

"Of course I need a disguise, Sai. Do you know how far my reputation would drop if my friends found out I play an old man's game? That's like, social suicide!" Hikaru sighed. "I think I'm done here."

"But Hikaru, you've been playing games with me, your grandfather and Akari for years now and they haven't said that there was anything wrong with it."

"That's because you guys-" She was interrupted by footsteps.

Just then, the door opened and her mother walked in.

"Hikaru, lunch is re- OH DEAR!"

Her mother looked absolutely horrified, though she quickly masked it. Her eyes looked over to her make up collection over Hikaru's floor, lingering more on her dirty brushes and opened bottles of foundation. Hikaru felt a bit of heat rise to her cheeks (though it was impossible to notice with all the powder on her face) are her mother walked over and took the eyebrow pencil from Hikaru's hand. Her shock was fueled again when she saw her daughter, her shorts and t-shirts loving daughter, wearing one of Akari's new shirts (that was somehow spared from the makeup disaster) and-were her eyes playing tricks on her?- a skirt. She was very tempted to ask her what was wrong, certainly something must be, put decided to focus on the more pressing issue at hand.

"D-Did you do your makeup, sweetie?" Her mother gulped, forcing a smile on her face. "Here. Let me touch it up just a bit."

Hikaru had nearly passed out when she saw herself in the mirror that morning. Her mother had scrubbed off the mess on her face and redone everything (something that she was secretly grateful for, but she would never admit it). Though, much to her dismay, her mother had gone just a tad bit over board and decided to curl Hikaru's hair while she was at it.

"I'll never know when I'll get the chance again." She had said.

With the new clothes that Akari had given her, even though they were as far from her style as they could possibly get, there was no way anyone would recognize her in the streets. She couldn't even recognize herself. Akari didn't even look at her when she sneaked past her (though that probably had to do with her running the other way the second she saw her).

"Go go go! We're going to go play Go!" Sai chanted, skipping beside her on their way to the Go Salon her grandfather recommended that she go to.

She couldn't help but start chanting along, even skipping slightly (tripping sometimes due to not being used to Akari's boots) as she followed the directions on the map. Sai's happiness and the new girly look was just something that she couldn't resist giving into. She clutch the small purse in her left hand tightly (curse this pocket-less skirt) so that nothing would fall out, while her right hand held her small sketch books and pencil.

As she walked, her eyes lingered throughout the streets of Tokyo, taking in all the shaped and colors of the building and streets, memorizing how the shapes were formed and how the colors blended in together. It was a habit she had picked up when she started drawing and it helped her improve the more she got older. Her hand twitched, fighting the urge to stop and sketch that really beautiful car that was parked a few feet away. She shook her head, continuing to hum along to Sai's song.

It wasn't until she reached the salon that she paused in her humming. Well, she ended up walking past it while humming and had to turn back, but it still counted. Taking a deep breath as she scanned the area for people she might know, she put on a charming smile and walked inside the little salon. It was surprisingly more modern looking inside than she was expecting, yet it still looked rather behind on times. Though the lighting was dim, she could clearly see the place was packed with old men around her grandfather's age or older.

Hikaru felt her eye twitch again, all the joy of her little chanting fit plummeting as she was reminded why she called go an 'old man's game'. This looked like a place that her grandfather would go to in his free time, a category that she really didn't want to be in.

'Look at all these old geezers.' She thought, earning herself a look of disapproval from the ghost with a scolding about respecting her elders. Luckily, in the four years she had known him, she had mastered the art of 'Tuning Sai Out'.

"Hello." The lady at the counter said. "Is this your first time here?"

Hikaru gave a polite (and rather forced) smile as she walked over to the desk. The lady grabbed a pen from the colorful jug and tapped the sign in sheet, which was nearly filled with names of what Hikaru assumed were the other customers. Hikaru nodded slightly as she grabbed the pen the lady, Ichikawa-san according to her name tag, handed her.

"Yes. This is all new to me." She admitted, carefully writing her name down on the sign in sheet. "Anyone can play here, right?"

The last thing she needed was for them to not let her in.

"Of course. How strong of a player are you? We could find you someone willing to play at your level." The lady gave her a polite, yet sort of plastered on smile.

'She thinks I'm a complete beginner.' Hikaru resisted the urge to frown and nodded her head instead. She may not be as good as Sai was, but she knew her way well enough around a go board.

It wasn't like she wasn't expecting it, though. From what her grandfather told her, pretty girls like herself (a rather untrue statement in her book) wouldn't usually be caught playing Go. Hikaru couldn't blame them. She wasn't really any better as she had resulted to a disguise for this.

"I've been playing for a while as a hobby with my grandfather. I just wanted to come out and test my skills against a real opponent this time." She said, ignoring the slight jab at her skill with a polite smile. "I think I'm pretty good."

"You think you're pretty good?" Ichikawa-san gave her an amused expression, like you would give a bragging kid. "Well, I'm sure we can wait for someone here to open and be able to play you. I think a few games in the front should be over soon."

Hikaru put down her pen (eye twitching at another jab to her pride), finding the price sheets listed on the counter on a taped down sheet. She felt her wallet cry as she reluctantly pulled out the 500 yen she had begged for her mother to give her and forked it over to the woman. Hikaru shot a side glare to the ghost, who was happily looking around the entire salon and trying to sneak a peak at people's games.

'This better be worth it, Sai. That was my allowance for the next two weeks.' She thought, more to herself than to the ghost.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something that caught her attention. A few seconds later, she made eye contact with a boy around her age who was playing alone in the back of the shop. Her smile brightened at the thought of playing against another kid rather than an old man. She waved at him, giving her most cheerful smile to get his attention. He seemed to notice her and pointed at himself, which Hikaru nodded to.

"Can I play him over there?" She asked, gesturing over to him with her sketchbook, who was now making his way over to her. "He's my age, I think."

"A-Actually, I think-" The counter lady was interrupted by the boy getting out of his seat and making his way over to them.

"Your first game against a new opponent, Hikaru!" Sai cheered like a mother watching their child on their first soccer game. Hikaru ignored him in favor of waving to the kid in front of her.

He was rather odd for a boy his age, as he was wearing a suit that reminded her of her father's clients and with an aura around him that made her want to keep her distance. Despite this, she couldn't help but notice how nice looking he actually was. His features were soft, but not so much as to look feminine, and blended together with his face to make a perfect model. His eyes were green and so beautiful to look at that she ended up running a mental checklist of all the colors she could use to replicate them. She had never wanted to draw someone so bad in her life.

"Are you looking for an opponent?" He asked, his voice making her realize that she had been staring. "I'm waiting for someone, but I can play you until then."

"Akira-kun! But she's-" Ichikawa-san didn't get to finish her sentence as he raised his hand up, which caused her to shut up.

Normally, Hikaru would have considered this kind of rude, but she was a bit too eager to start playing now that she had an opponent to notice. She would never admit it to Sai (she'd eat her own boot first), but she had been getting a bit tired of the same people every time.

"Shall we go?" He asked her. Hikaru nodded eagerly and began to follow the strange kid to the back of the room to the table he was sitting at.

Hikaru set her sketchbook and purse down on the corner of the desk, sitting down with slight difficulty in the lacy skirt and crossing her legs. A small shiver ran down her legs as they touched cold wood for the first time in ages. The boy sat down across from her and began to set up his side of the table. Hikaru followed in suit.