Disclaimer: Hikaru no Go is the property of Yumi Hotta and Takeshi Obata.
This is my first Hikago fanfic. Please read and review!
A Father's Touch
Touya Kouyo is seventeen when he becomes a pro. He never finishes high school. He is twenty seven when he wins the Meijin title, and he defends it for five years before losing it to Kuwabara. He wins the title back five years later and since defends it.
He is satisfied with his life—studying Go, playing Go, teaching Go—until he receives a grudging wedding invitation to Morishita's wedding at age thirty five. For the first time, the idea of settling down crosses Touya's mind.
Five years later in an omiai, he meets Akiko, who is twenty years his junior. Unlike the other women he has met, she understands that she will never be number one in his life, and she never tries to be. He marries her the same year they meet.
When he is forty two years old and defending the Meijin title in the fifth match—the deciding match since he and Zama-sensei have two losses each—he receives notification that Akiko is in labor. The game is postponed and Amano drives to the hospital where he witnesses the birth of his son. He smiles when Akiko holds the baby and kisses it tenderly on the forehead. It looks small and fragile, vulnerable even, but it's alive. After squeezing Akiko's hand briefly, he leaves the hospital to finish the remainder of the game.
Between Go matches and his studies, he never spends much time with Akira. When he and Akiko travel abroad, Akira is left in the care of his grandparents or Ogata Seiji. The boy never cries even though he is just over a year old, and Touya appreciates this.
Touya is surprised when Ogata tells him that Akira is watching. When Touya tears his eyes from the goban, he sees Akira peering through an opening in the shoji screen. Touya gazes at Akira for a moment, and the boy's curiosity becomes apprehension.
"Come in," Touya says gently.
Ogata opens the doors and takes Akira into his arms when the boy stumbles.
"Do you want to learn how to play?"
"Sensei," Ashiwara says. "The boy is barely two."
Touya is unsure if Akira understands the question, but the boy nods solemnly. Ogata sits the boy next to Touya, and Touya hands his son a white clamshell stone. Akira turns the stone in his hand before staring at his father. Touya takes the stone from Akira's hand and places it on the tengen with a resounding 'pachi'.
He then gives it back to Akira, who is so small that he needs to stand and lean over the goban to see the intersections. He holds the white stone between two clumsy fingers and half-slaps half-drops the stone onto the goban, missing an intersection altogether.
Touya never sees Akira peering inside the room again.
A year later, after Touya returns home from a late interview about challenging for the Kisei title, he finds Akira asleep in the Go room, sitting in seiza with his head resting against the goban. Near his bruised fingers is a single white stone on the goban.
It is on the tengen.
He invites Akira into the Go room the next morning, and watches in rapt fascination as the boy sits in perfect seiza across from him. Touya grabs a handful of black stones to teach Akira how to nigiri. Akira places the first black stone with a resounding 'pachi'.
A year later, Akira has memorized basic joseki. The boy is five, but he is a passionate and meticulous player.
When Akira is six, Touya takes him to the Go institute for the first time. They walk hand in hand, but Akria takes two steps for each of his father's. The falling sakura petals catch in Akira's hair in a soft contrast of green and pink.
"Father, do you think I'll ever be good at Go?"
Touya gets down on one knee to meet Akira's eyes and answers honestly.
"Good at Go? I know many things son, but unfortunately I don't know the answer to that question. What is evident to me is that you have two great talents in your favor. Akira, you seem willing to work harder at it than anyone else, and your heart is filled with a great passion for the game."
When Touya sees Akira's wide eyes, he believes that this is the most transcendent moment of his life, maybe even more so than achieving the Hand of God could ever be.
Touya is fifty five when Akira passes the pro exam. He nods in acknowledgement when Akira comes home. Akira smiles, but a desolate look flickers across his face, like a winter that has been stripped of everything but the cold.
Touya is fifty seven when he suffers a heart attack before his third Juudan match. He wakes up at Tokyo hospital with Akira and Akiko by his bedside. Akiko's eyes are red-rimmed from crying and Akira's knuckles are pale white. Touya looks at Akira and says, "You missed your game with Shindou."
"Father, there are things in life more important than Go."
Five years later, Ogata marries a woman named Mai. She gives birth to a baby girl later that year, and Ogata names her Megumi—and Megumi lives up to her name because she truly is a blessing in Ogata's life. Touya watches as Akira takes the baby into his arms and rock her with a tenderness Touya has never seen before. When Ogata fumbles with the cuffs of Megumi's shirt, his fingers briefly brush against Akira's.
"So that's what a father's touch feels like."
Akira's voice is distant and almost inaudible, but his words strike a chord in Touya's heartstrings that resonates in his soul until he almost can't breathe. A wave of emotions crashes over him—helplessness, shame, regret, sadness, nostalgia, loss, anger—and he finally understands the desolate look that flickered over his son's face seven years ago.