Hikaru knew he shouldn't be here, but he couldn't resist the chance to explore everywhere. He found the box thing with the squares on it like the one in the house in a corner. It looked just like the one Grandpa didn't want him touching except that there was something spilled on it.
&!&!&
Fujiwara no Sai didn't know how long he had sat in this gray silence within his old Go board. Outside, the scenery was not much better, as it was an equally silent storage shed.
"Oops?" said a small voice as something poked the board where Torajiro's blood covered his tears.
"Can you see it?" he asked, excited to finally find someone who might possibly see him and therefore allow him to play once more.
"Hewo?" the small voice said.
"Can you hear me?" he asked, hoping beyond hope that he had found another like Torajiro who had seen him, heard him, and had freed him from the board for a few years.
"Hear? Hear?" the small voice said.
"Oh thank you Kami-sama for giving me this opportunity." he said as he rose from the board, prepared to connect with his new link to the living world.
When he had fully risen, he found himself face to face or rather shins to face with a small toddler. There was no-one else within fifteen feet of the storage shed.
"You can't be serious." he said.
"Up!" the toddler said happily, standing up and holding out its arms.
"Come back when you're older." he grumbled as he sank back into the Go board. There was no way in hell he was going to spend who knew how long seeing but not playing Go because his host both couldn't grasp the concept of the game and would be more likely to eat the stones than set them on the board. He'd made the mistake of trying to teach a toddler once before. He had spent a good part of two weeks smacking the kid on the back of the head to make it spit out the stone it had put in its mouth and carefully counting the stones after each session to make sure that it hadn't actually swallowed any. That had been pure hell. He'd rather stay in the Go board for another ten centuries.
"Mean!" the toddler shouted, his little gray/brown eyes misting over with tears.
That was the last thing he saw or heard until a decade later when a brat with larcenous intentions and very familiar eyes had seen Torajiro's blood.