Title: In Which You and I

Rating: PG

Warning: This is Shounen-ai (obviously, if you read the summery you'd know that) And if you don't know what that is, I'm sure if you keep reading you'll figure it out.

Disclaimer: If I owned Hikaru no Go the blatant infatuation Hikaru and Akira have with each other would actually go somewhere.

Chapter One: In which Akira learns

I suppose you could say it all started when my girlfriend dumped me. Well, more accurately, it was the things that she said. And now that I think back on it, she had every justification.

I didn't really like Tomoko. But at the time I didn't know that liking someone was a criteria for dating them. I was seventeen, and she asked me out. I figured that at seventeen, having a girlfriend was the proper thing to do, so I said yes. I figured that was all I really had to do and everything would be fine.

But then one day she got really mad at me.

She was really annoyed when I met her for our date. I was a little late, but I explained to her it was because the game had run late. So we sat there eating our lunch in a tense surrounding. Since I didn't really have anything to say to her and she was to busy glaring at me to say anything, I pulled out the issue of Weekly Go I had picked up before I met up with her and started reading.

"Oh!" I exclaimed. "Shindou won his match against the 5-dan."

"That's it!" She exclaimed unexpectedly, slamming her hands on the table and jumping up. "I am so sick of hearing about Shindou, and I'm sick of hearing about Go. Do you even know what day it is?"

I blinked, trying to follow her mental leaps. "Umm…the twenty-first?"

"It's our anniversary! Our one month anniversary? Do you even remember when we started dating?"

I had enough sense to figure out that 'No, should I?' would be a bad response, so I just looked up at her and stared blankly at her.

"Oh, for the love of God! I knew you weren't in love with me, but you don't even think about me! All you think about is Go and Shindou Hikaru. Well, this is it Touya Akira, I am not putting up with this anymore. If you want to date someone who interests you, go date Shindou!"

I blinked again. "Date… Shindou?" I said, very confused. "But he's a boy…"

This was probably not the answer she was looking for. She threw up her hands in the air. "I didn't believe my friends when they said it, but now I'm sure of it, you really are gay." She turned around and stomped angrily a way.

I stared at the spot she'd left, still very confused. "I'm what?" I wanted to call back to her and ask her what exactly 'gay' was and if it was possible for a boy to date another boy, but with the unerring instincts of a Go player, I decided that this was not the best move to make.

So I decided to look it up in the dictionary. 'Gay' was defined as "adj. gay·er, gay·est 1. Of, relating to, or having a sexual orientation to persons of the same sex. 2.Showing or characterized by cheerfulness and lighthearted excitement; merry. 3.Bright or lively, especially in color: a gay, sunny room." Given her comments, and figuring that I had never really given her the impression that I was a particularly 'merry' kind of person, she clearly thought I had a
"sexual orientation to persons of the same sex."

Well. This certainly changed things. A lot of things. Why hadn't someone told me earlier that I was gay. That might have saved me a lot of trouble. But then I got really confused, because I didn't know that I had a "sexual orientation" to begin with, so how was I supposed to know if it went to girls or boys? And if there were people out there who were gay, how come no one ever mentioned it before?

And then I started realizing that there was a whole world outside of Go that I really wasn't familiar with. And that if I wanted to know what my "sexual orientation" was I'd have to figure out what exactly that even meant because there was a limit as to how far a dictionary could tell me.

I thought very hard on a lot of things and finally thought about something else that Tomoko had said before she stomped off angrily. I was thinking so hard about all the questions that I had that I didn't even notice Ashiwara-san sit down next to me.

"Akira-kun!" He said cheerfully. "You're sure concentrating hard or something. Did you just play a difficult game?"

I looked up at the older man and then focused my eyes on him completely. Yes… Ashiwara-san would be the perfect person to ask my questions to. "Ashiwara-san, what does it mean to be in love with someone? How do you know if you are?"

I was treated with the rare opportunity of seeing my friend look completely slack-jawed and dumbfounded. "Wh-what?"

"In love. I remember vaguely people talking about it, and it was in some of the movies Tomoko would take me to. So what does it mean?"

"Where on earth is this coming from?" Ashiwara-san said, still clearly surprised. "This isn't at all like you, Akira-kun."

I shrugged. "Tomoko said some things before she broke up with me, so now I'm thinking about them."

"Tomoko broke up with you?" Concern spread across his face. "I'm sorry."

"Why?" I said frowning.

"Because… oh never mind." He shook his head. "How do you know you're in love, eh? Well, you never did ask easy questions Akira-kun, and if I can't answer your questions on Go I guess I'll try to answer your questions about life. Let's see… well, love is a deep emotion you feel for people. Like, you love your parents, right?"

"Of course."
"But being in love is different from that. You know you're in love with someone when you they're all you think about, when the thought of them is behind everything you do. When just seeing them makes you happy, and if they disappear from your life it makes you sad. When someone speaks badly about the person that you love you get angry, and when something good happens to that person you feel pleased like it happened to you… does this help?"
I nodded. So, Tomoko was right, by the sounds of it, I was in love with Shindou. Huh. Interesting.

"Well, that's the main part anyway. And then there's… you know…" he blushed slightly. "When you… lust after them and stuff." He mumbled.
I frowned. "Lust?" I looked back at my dictionary and wondered if Ashiwara-san would take it amiss if I should suddenly start looking up his word.

"When you're attracted to them." I continued to frown at him, indicating that I was still confused. "You know…when you want to…that is, when you get the urge to…"

I waited patiently for him to finish but it really didn't seem like he was going to. "The urge to do what?"

"Akira-kun." Ashiwara-san said in a slightly whining voice. "You know what I mean."

"No, I don't!"

"Didn't your father ever talk to you about sex?"

I frowned. "My father talked to me about Go."

"…"

"They mentioned it in school." I said helpfully. "In the ninth grade, in health class. It's what makes children."

"…Akira-kun… haven't you ever… wanted to have sex?"

"No… why would I want to have children? I'm only seventeen."

"Oh… my…" Ashiwara-san shifted uncomfortably. "What the heck do you do in your spare time?"
"I play Go. Don't you?"

"Well, yes, but I mean, haven't you ever.. I mean at night, don't you… this really isn't an appropriate conversation for us to be having." He finished.

"What? Why not? Why isn't it appropriate?"
He shook his head. "Someone really needs to talk to your father about raising sexually-repressed boys…" he muttered under his breath.

"What?"

"Never mind. Look, Akira-kun, if you want I have some… books… that you can look at, and those might answer your questions."

"But… I have other questions…"

"I'm sure you do. Just come by my apartment later, and I'll give you the… books… just don't tell your father OK?"

I was so confused. "Ummm….OK… but after I look at the books will you answer my questions?"

He was bright red at this point. "Don't you have someone else?"

I thought about it. "Well, my father. Or Ogata-san."

"Yeah… asking them would probably be a bad idea. You don't have anyone closer to your own age?"

Well… Shindou. But since I was apparently in love with him it asking him about these things would be a bad idea. And really, it wasn't the kind of conversations we usually had. "You're the closest friend I have to my age, Ashiwara-san."

He sighed. "Ok. Yes, afterwards you can ask me all the questions you want." He gave me a funny look. "You know Akira-kun… you're the finest Go player of your age. You're probably the best thing that's happened to Go in a really long time."
"Thank you." I said politely.

"But… don't you think maybe Go has taken up a little too much of your life? I mean, at your age, you should be doing a lot of other things. Fun kid things. I'd never really thought about it before, but God Akira-kun, you don't even dress your own age. You're like a miniature adult. Who does nothing but play Go."

"And that's… bad… why?"

Author's Note: Ahh, poor, confused little Akira. He always struck me as someone who was a slow developer in life. He also seems very sheltered, thus, why he doesn't know about things like homosexuality and, well, sex in general. Ok, so it's not exactly realistic for someone to be seventeen and not know about these things, but this is my world, ok?

Oh, and the definition of "gay" came from I just thought I should mention that. In case anyone was wondering, or whatever…