'Ne, Hikaru?'

Her son looked up from his cereal, eying her curiously.

"Who is Sai?"

One eyebrow was raised, but he shrugged, dark green eyes turned back down to his breakfast.

"He is an internet 'Go' player. Some say he is a god of the game. The only thing anyone knows about him is that no one knows who he is."

She watched her son stir his cereal with a forlorn expression, pausing to spoon a few more pieces into his mouth.

"No one knows what he looks like?"

He glanced up at her face with an inquisitive expression, shaking his head negative.

"Are you sure we are talking about the same sai here?"

He smiled, nodding again. "There is only one sai that I know about, O-kaa-san."

She hmmed to herself, before nodding absently and going back to scribbling a letter that she started earlier.

She watched Hikaru go off to school, before digging out the photo album. After seeing such a sad face again today, she really needed to see some of that happy-go-lucky sunshine that once hung around her son.

Riffling through the photographs, she stopped at a picture just after her son started to play 'Go'. He was in the middle of rolling his eyes one hand raised as if to brush something from his shoulder instead of posing for the picture.

She noticed the playful smile on his face, and smiled herself, slipping the picture out to look at it more closely. A shadow of something stood just behind him, blurred too much for her to make it out. Probably just a fluke in the film or something.

In the next few pictures, however, she grew increasingly more alarmed. In every picture, there was a pale /something/ just behind and beside her son. She noted that the blur dissipated in the more recent pictures, when his mood turned down. She glanced at a picture that Hikaru took during the pro tests, to show her what it looked like in there. When she first saw the picture, it was filled with determined people, the anticipation of an upcoming match showing clearly on their faces.

Now, however, she stared at it in horror.

The white blur dabbed nearly the entire photo!

She stared at it for a minute, wondering what on earth had happened.

Then, she looked closer.

The shape almost resembled something she recognized, with the strands flowing off the top... tall pillar... tall hat!

She stared at it again, remembering the picture Hikaru had made, that she saw in his room.

Her gaze sharpened as the picture's blur seemed to sharpen, colors bleeding into it.

She stared at it, looking to the other pictures with the blur.

All of them had changed, now featuring a certain purple-haired man with mischievous, yet serious eyes.

She breathed one word, before shuffling the pictures back into place, closing the album with a snap and depositing it back on the shelf.

'Sai'