Author's Notes: It's been a long time hasn't it? Life got the better of me for a while, and I think I was discouraged when I saw a similar fic come out that became more popular than mine. It had slash in it, and as mine's gen, I became bitter. Sorry. Haha, I'm such an insecure, conceited person. I promise to try to be more consistent in my updates this time.
As always, comments, and criticisms are always appreciated. If somebody feels a need to flame, be my guest. Enjoy.
Chapter Three: Sai's Rival
"Sai…has come back?" Touya Kouyo said, hesitancy and disbelief etched in every single syllable. His wife Akiko sat on the sofa behind him, knowing that whoever Sai was, he can only be related to go. Only go can induce the kind of passion and excitement that she was witnessing before her eyes. She walked back to the kitchen and began to prepare dinner; mealtimes were a good time to talk, and her husband was going to want to after he was done with the phone. Kouyo may normally be a man of few words, but judging from the way his eyes positively glowed, his behavior was going to be an exception to the rule today. She was right. By the time he finished, night had fallen, and she was setting the table.
"What is it, anata?" she said, placing the chopsticks and waiting expectantly for an answer.
"Akiko, I know you had been looking forward to sightseeing and a bit of shopping after I finish my tour with the Chinese go team," he began.
Akiko smiled in understanding. She knew that if she pushed the matter, he would stay, just for her, but that would be selfish, and Akiko was anything but that.
"Anata, this has not been our only trip to China. There will be many more future trips to China, and I can always do my shopping and sightseeing then. If it is something important, then we should go back. Besides, I miss…"
"Akira, yes. I know how much you dote on him."
"As if you don't do the same," she teased, rewarded by Kouyo's brief smile, as rare as the desert rain.
"He is a good boy. A good go player," he said, high praise indeed coming from the former Meijin.
"So who is this Sai you are so eager to play?"
Touya Kouyo fell silent, but Akiko knew that it wasn't because she had offended him. Her husband often kept quiet council, not because he didn't feel that she could understand, but because he too was trying to understand himself. He was not the type of man to explain things before he had thought it through completely. For a man as careful as her husband, this could take a while. Akiko waited patiently for his explanation.
"Do you remember the time I asked you to leave me alone at the hospital…?"
The first thing that Hikaru wondered about after the game with Ogata-sensei was where Sai lived. In the excitement of yesterday he had forgotten about it, and Sai had been adamant about making Hikaru go home.
"I am not going to disappear. Your parents are going to worry," he'd scolded. Still struggling with the numerous insecurities regarding the sudden appearance of his dear friend, Hikaru had whined, but then obeyed. When Sai wanted something Hikaru later remembered grudgingly, he often got it.
Today, as they walked together out of the go salon toward Waya's tiny apartment, the subject of living space inevitably came up.
"What kind of place to you live in Sai?" Waya said, attempting at small talk. Unfortunately it backfired.
"Live?" Sai repeated, surprised .
Hikaru turned around with a start, just as surprised.
"Well…" Sai said. He paused on the sidewalk for a few seconds while Hikaru and Waya waited curiously for an answer. "I live in an apartment just like yours Waya!" He smiled happily.
"Y-you do?" Hikaru said in slight disbelief.
"Not that I haven't seen Waya's apartment," Sai said thoughtfully. "But I do live in an apartment. Interesting isn't it?"
Waya gave Hikaru a questioning look, being the only one ignorant of Sai's past nature. Hikaru didn't say anything, but he pondered Sai's answer throughout the walk to Waya's.
Little had changed in Waya's apartment since the last time Hikaru was there, which had been just over a week ago. The walls were still old and crumbly, and the room was just as bare and plain as it was before. Waya's unmade bed stood against one wall, and the low-rise table in the middle room was only slightly taller than the go board and go stones standing next to it. In fact, if there was anything that could be said as neat, the go board and the go bowls would be the only items that came close to matching that description.
"Ooh! Go board!" Sai said. He raced to the go board like a child and ran a pale hand across its surface. "With legs!"
"Sai!" Hikaru shouted. As if a year had never past, he reacted to Sai's enthusiasm the same way he used to. "It's not like you've never seen a go board before!"
"But I haven't touched one…a real one in so long!"
At this Hikaru fell silent, and the two shared another silent glance of mutual understanding.
"Yeah. You haven't, have you? Not one with legs. I've always had to hold the go stones for you," Hikaru said quietly.
"Why?"
"Eh?" The boy did a double take, and grinned nervously, having temporarily forgotten where he was. Waya stood in the doorway, confusion written all over his face.
"Why couldn't Sai hold the stones by himself?" Waya asked again.
"Er…why? Ummm…that's because Sai was…Sai was…"
"Sick!" For a moment there was panic that was almost comical on Sai's face. "I was sick for a very, very long time."
"Oh." The answer sobered the atmosphere rather quickly. Waya removed his shoes and closed the door behind him. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to…" Waya flushed, looking around the room idly before remembering that he was to play a game. He took the seat at the opposite end of the go board, but his eyes did not quite dare to meet Sai's eyes.
"Oh no, it's okay! Everything became all right once I met Hikaru," Sai reassured him cheerfully. "Hikaru was always very kind, helping me when I wasn't feeling…too well."
"Heeeeh, I wouldn't have thought that of you, Hikaru. You're too clueless."
"What does that have to do with me being kind!" Hikaru demanded. Scowling, he took his place behind Sai.
"You're right, it doesn't," Waya agreed amiably. "Still, I wouldn't have thought you to be the type of person to help someone sick and ailing."
"Well…I didn't exactly have a choice in the matter," Hikaru said, this time careful to let only Sai hear. Sai ignored the grumbling, his shining face only on the go board before him.
"Let's play, let's play!"
Hikaru suspected that Sai was resisting the urge to clap. The idea amused him, and he contentedly sat back to watch Waya's inevitable defeat.
"So, if I had gone here instead, then you would have been forced to respond…I see." Waya smacked his head in frustration. "Man, after all those years and I'm still not a match for you!"
Sai smiled. The game hadn't gone more than halfway before Waya resigned. Waya hadn't done badly, but as Sai can out read his every move, the conclusion was foregone before the game had even started.
"Hikaru hasn't beaten me either."
"No, I suppose not. If even the former Meijin lost to you, I don't think any of us can stand a chance," Waya said. "But still, I'd have liked to put up a better fight. Like Ogata Jyudan."
"Hikaru, how about a game?" Sai asked.
"Uhhh…"
"Ahah! You're just as frightened as I am," Waya said. He pointed a triumphant finger even as he stood up and moved to the side.
"Am not! Don't compare me with you," Hikaru snapped. Taking Waya's place in as dignified a manner as possible, he grabbed the go bowl closest to him and placed it down on the floor next to him. "Besides, I used to play him tons of times every night."
"So you were his student! Why'd you lie to me?"
"I wasn't!" Sai began to shake in silent laughter, and was rewarded with a dark glare. "Sai never taught me. He just likes crushing me to tiny little pieces whenever we play. That's not very teacherly if you ask me."
"But you didn't have to say you never knew him. I could have kept Sai a secret."
"I had to though!"
"Why?"
"Because he was…because he was sick of course!" Hikaru said, remembering Sai's earlier excuse. "What do you think would have happened if someone had overheard our conversation? They would have tried to look for Sai. Think of what would have happened!"
"Oh…" Waya frowned, taking in all the implications. "That would have been bad."
Now warming up to his lie, Hikaru gave an emphatic nod, and held up a finger to make another point. "Precisely! I couldn't have complete strangers mobbing Sai when he was too sick to even hold a go stone. That would have been horrible of me, and I'm not."
"I guess," Waya said, shrugging. "I'll forgive you. It still would have been nice to know though."
"Well, Sai's here now," Hikaru said with an air of an old man. Sai was still struggling not to laugh out loud. "Sai, nigiri."
"I think, Hikaru," Sai finally manage to say, when they had determined that Hikaru would be black and had placed their opening moves, "that if you hadn't become interested in go, you would have made an excellent, excellent lawyer." Then unable to hold it in any longer, he burst into open laughter, Hikaru's shout of outrage and Waya's blank look soon adding to the scene.
Eventually, the game resumed, but only after the occupants of the neighboring rooms started to voice loud complaints. Newly chastised and complacent, the three played go until four in the morning before one by one they dropped off in exhausted sleep.
Akira looked up from his replaying of kifu. The sliding of shouji screens surprised him from his study, as he couldn't, for a minute, quite figure out who would be coming to visit him so early in the morning. Then all too familiar voices floated from the doorway, leading Akira to abandon his books to stare in utter disbelief at the people he hadn't expected to see until two weeks later, at least.
"Otou-san? Okaa-san?"
"Ah, Akira-san. We're home," Akiko said. Standing around two small luggage cases, she smiled warmly at the sight of her son.
"Welcome home, okaa-san."
"Did anything happen while we were away?" his father asked, looking like returning two weeks early from a trip was a normal, everyday sort of affair.
Perhaps it was because the scene itself was already odd enough, but the odd tone of voice his father used to voice such a normal question keyed Akira to the answer for his parents' sudden return. Akira froze, realizing that Sai's reappearance would have been the only thing that could have driven his father to abandon other responsibilities.
"Ogata-san called you to tell you that he played Sai, didn't he?" Akira said.
"Ara, so you've met him?" Akiko said, correctly deducing the real answer from Akira's response. "What is he like?"
"Okaa-san? You know about Sai too?"
"Your father told me all about him last night," she explained, taking her shoes off and lining them up neatly before the step into the house.
"I see."
"Ogata-kun did call me last night, yes," Akira's father confirmed. "I look forward to seeing him replay the game for me later today."
"I was there too, otou-san. I can replay it for you."
"No, that is fine," Touya-sensei said. "I will see it later. There is no need to do it now."
Still standing awkwardly at the doorway, Akira suddenly remembered his manners.
"I'll go make tea, unless you want me to help you carry anything in?"
"Oh no, Akira-san. We'll be just fine. I'll go make tea right now." With that his mother padded down the hallway, her light footsteps as she left them, the sound comforting in their familiarity.
"Otou-san, are you sure you don't…?"
"I'll be fine. I'm sure our sudden arrival must have interrupted your studying. I'll be all right carrying these by myself," he said, reaching to grab both cases by himself. "Next time I return from China though, you may have to help though. I promised your mother that we will make up the shopping missed this time by taking a longer trip for the next one."
Akira found himself smiling at the idea of his parents acting like tourists. His mother had always wanted to see the Great China Wall, and imagining her happy smile as she scaled its walkways with his father cheered him up briefly. He had in the beginning, like everybody else, worried when his father had announced his retirement, but by the way his father was enjoying himself, it looked like the choice for retirement was for the better.
"You know that Ogata-san didn't…he didn't play Sai on the internet, right?" Akira finally blurted.
The former Meijin carried the cases easily, the dignified expression on his face never changing as he headed toward the room he and his wife shared.
"I know," he said quietly, passing Akira by.
Perhaps it was effect of the pale morning light streaming through the white paper of the shouji screen doors, but to Akira at that moment, his father appeared younger than he had ever remembered him.