Touya Meijin has his second heart attack after playing first hand tengen in a game against nobody.
Touya Akira is in his father's go salon yelling at Shindou Hikaru when it happens. This is predictable: at any given moment of the day odds are pretty good that Akira is yelling at Shindou over something, somewhere. Today it is a peculiarity in one of Shuusaku's kifu, the study of which has become routine for Akira and Shindou ever since the Hokuto Cup, and Shindou's spectacular loss to Yongha in his desire to defend Shuusaku's good name.
"Honestly, like you're some kind of avenging white knight or something," Akira had griped at Shindou afterward. "I mean, really, since when are you such a Shuusaku fanboy? Have you ever even studied his kifu?"
"Maybe," Shindou had said, looking cagey. Akira had just sighed, and started bring Shuusaku's kifu to his study sessions with Shindou, and tried, as usual, not to be distracted by the way Shindou was always, always hiding something.
So Akira is saying Shuusaku would have been better off playing komoku and Shindou is telling him he's an idiot when Ichikawa-san hangs up the phone at the front desk and tells Akira in a soft, worried voice that she needs to take him to the hospital right away.
So she does, and there he waits with his mother through a battery of tests with deja-vu familiar names - cardiac catheterization, angioplasty, echo-cardiogram. The sun is threatening to come up by the time the doctors declare Touya Meijin essentially out of the woods. Akira's mother sends him home, insisting he get some rest before his match that day. He feels like a zombie on the train ride back from the hospital, hollowed out and exhausted. Tendrils of first light soften the landscape and make his thoughts seem muted and slow, so when he finds Shindou Hikaru asleep on his front porch, at first he thinks he's hallucinating.
"Shindou?" he says, and it comes out louder than he intends. Shindou bolts upright, looking bedraggled and confused.
"Ehhh?" he says, squinting blearily at Akira. "Ohh, Touya. Oh!" He blinks a couple of times, owl-like, takes in his surroundings. "Rats! I must have fallen asleep out here. It's morning already? Ohhh, my mom is going to be so pissed at me." His expression becomes stricken. "Your dad! Is your dad all right?"
"The doctors say he'll be fine," Akira says stiffly. "Shindou, what on earth are you doing here?"
"Oh, well." Shindou scrubs a hand into the hair at the nape of his neck. "I was only going to wait for you for a little while, just in case they took care of everything quickly, I guess. But I guess I fell asleep or something. Jeez, I can't believe I slept all night on this stupid porch. My poor neck." He moves his head tenderly from side to side.
"Idiot," says Akira, and he's tired so it sounds more affectionate than he intends. "Well, if you're here, come in, at least."
Akira is pretty used to coming home to an empty house, but today the silence and echoes seem larger than normal, so he's actually grateful for Shindou's clattering, imprecise presence behind him. Shindou's been to his house a handful of times before, but he pauses at the doorway, looking around as if he's never seen it before.
"Hey, Touya."
"Hm?"
"Where's your mother? She didn't come with you?"
"No, she's staying at the hospital awhile longer." Akira feels silly just hovering pointlessly in the foyer of his own home, so he moves towards the kitchen to make some tea. "I came home to get some rest before my match today."
"Eh?" says Shindou. "Touya, you're not seriously going to your match today, are you? You're exhausted. You'll lose for sure."
"The only way I'll lose for sure is if I forfeit the game, Shindou," Akira points out. He begins running water into the kettle.
"Yeah, but at least this way you'll lose with some dignity." Akira thinks Shindou trying to lecture anyone about dignity is the most ridiculous thing ever, but he doesn't say anything. "Besides," Shindou continues, "you can forfeit a lot of games and not screw up your career too badly. Trust me, I know."
Akira tries to smile. It's funny; he should smile. But it doesn't come out quite right. "Yes, well," he says, reaching to pull a teacup from the cupboard. "I'm still going."
"But, Touya..."
Akira feels his fingers tighten around the handle of a cup. Shut up, Shindou, he wants to say, shut up shut up shut up, but he knows it will come out at a yell if he lets himself so he presses his lips tight together instead. Angry is not an appropriate emotion for this situation. Sad, anxious, hopeful, maybe, but not angry, and Akira worries that if he lets himself yell at Shindou all the other inappropriate things he is thinking will show through somehow, things one shouldn't think about one's father, like reckless and thoughtless and stubborn pigheaded old bastard and selfish, selfish, selfish. So instead he just says "I'm going" and keeps his voice perfectly steady and his hands perfectly steady and sets the teacup down on the countertop with such care it makes almost no sound.
It doesn't matter. Shindou is staring at him anyway. "Touya," he says, and Akira braces both palms against the counter as well, dropping his head between his shoulders so he won't have to look at Shindou, and the silence stretches between them.
Then Akira senses rather than sees Shindou straightening himself, squaring his shoulders as if he's shaking off a mantle. "I'm going to make you some tea," he says with conviction, and it's such a funny, grandmotherly sort of reaction to grief that Akira can't help but laugh, startled.
"Shindou..."
Shindou waves him off. "If you insist on playing your match today, you should be as well rested as you can. Go sit down. I'll bring you your tea. Food, too. Are you hungry? You should probably eat something."
"You can't cook," Akira points out. Granted, he has no hard evidence to back up his assessment of Shindou's culinary abilities, but he would bet good money that he's correct.
Shindou starts yanking open cupboards at random until he finds what he's looking for. "Instant ramen," he says. "Even I can manage instant ramen. Now, go sit down!"
Bemused, Akira traipses obediently back into the living room and parks himself on the couch. He is, in fact, very tired, and by the time Shindou comes back in, proudly bearing a tray full of tea and instant ramen, Akira might actually be nodding off just a little.
"Look at you, you're falling asleep," says Shindou as he settles the tea-tray on the low table, sounding deeply satisfied at this revelation.
Akira snaps his head up. "No I'm not."
"Yes, you were. I told you you should stay home today. Never mind. Look, tea! Ramen!"
The tea and ramen are actually pretty good, or maybe Akira's just starving, and who can screw up tea and instant ramen anyway. Akira's too tired to think of anything useful to say, so when Shindou starts telling some long-winded story about that strange Go salon he likes to visit, Akira is perfectly content to curl up into the corner of the couch and let him ramble on.
He realizes this was probably a mistake when he wakes up with his face pressed uncomfortably into the upholstery and the sun noon high in the sky.
"Dammit, Shindou," he tries to yell, but his voice is still sleep sticky so it doesn't come out right, and when he manages to get himself to sitting Shindou's nowhere in sight, anyway. "Shindou?" He can't believe Shindou would actually run off after letting him fall asleep and miss his match, so he shoves himself to his feet and sets out padding through the house.
Of course, he finds Shindou in front of the goban.
"Oh, sure," Akira begins, "you don't wake me up for my match because I'll be too tired, but now here you are thinking I'll play against you, huh? Well think again, Shindou-" but that's as far as he gets before he realizes Shindou isn't rising to the bait. In fact, Shindou is sitting seiza, staring at the goban which has a single black stone placed square in the center, and god, it's like the bottom is falling out of Akira's world all over again.
"Were you playing a game?" Shindou finally asks, and the way his voice sounds makes Akira shiver. Shindou gets this way sometimes, where it's like everything about him is suddenly still, and old, and very, very far away, and Akira has never understood how Shindou, of all people, could have this hidden solemnity, but there it is.
"No," says Akira, and he works his tongue against the back of his teeth, not wanting to explain, feeling embarrassed for his father, but also wanting to break whatever spell has its hold over Shindou. "My father. I've seen him, sometimes, in here, like this." He gestures at the goban. "He plays first hand, and then nothing else. Just sits and looks at it for hours."
"Like he's waiting for somebody," says Shindou.
Akira says "Yes," and thinks Sai.
The silence stretches on again. Akira can't see Shindou's expression; it's shadowed into nothingness by those stupid bangs of his, but Akira knows what it looks like. It looks like Shindou's staring into the vastness of space, into nothing at all, like Akira and the goban and everything else aren't there in front of him, and suddenly he is so tired and furious all at once that he does the only possible thing: he shoves his fingers into the goke and slams down a second stone. Pa-chi, says the stone, and the sound of it seems to resonate on and on.
Shindou just stiffens, and Akira finds himself holding his breath, as if what Shindou decides to do next determines everything in the world. But then Hikaru reaches into his own goke, and plays third hand, and everything starts moving again.
It's a stupid game. Stupid and sloppy, unspoken speed go with nothing meaning anything. Akira finds himself getting sweaty and out of breath, which he hates, but still can't bring himself to slow down the pace of the game, pa-chi pa-chi pa-chi.
They enter yose and it's still anybody's game when Akira hears himself saying, in a hitched, wet-sounding voice that's not at all familiar, "I'm sick of it, Shindou, god, you and him, always chasing after ghosts. My go is supposed to follow yours, Shindou, but if you head down this path, I don't... how can I follow something I can't even see?" He's still focused on the game so he doesn't have to think about what he's saying, how pathetic he sounds, so he doesn't realize that Shindou hasn't placed another stone until he accidentally places two stones in a row, freezes and stares at the board because he can't remember the last time he did something quite that stupid.
"Touya," says Shindou, and when Akira looks up Shindou is staring at him, finally, with those stupid enormous green eyes that look like the end of the world.
"I'm right here, Shindou," is all Akira can say before all he can focus on is not bursting into tears like a complete and utter idiot.
"Touya," says Shindou again, and this time he sounds horrified, and then he is actually climbing over the goban, knocking aside constellations of stones with his knees and elbows, until he is at Akira's side and no longer seems to know what to do. Akira reaches out, blindly, and finds the front of Shindou's shirt, twists it into his fists as if he could physically tether Shindou down. Shindou reaches up, encircles Akira's wrists with his hands, and ducks his head, seeking eye contact.
"I'm not going anywhere, Touya. Not ever again. Hey. Okay? I promise." All of a sudden the dry heat of Shindou's hands on his skin hits him like an anchor, and Akira exhales, loosens his death grip on Shindou's shirt. He can't think of a good way to respond, so he just nods, once, and lets his hands fall into his lap, though Shindou keeps a hold of his wrists. Shindou actually laughs a little, a shaky, relieved sound. "Jeez, Touya," he says, but he squeezes Akira's wrists once, hard, before he lets them go, and scrambles back over the goban, as if the symmetry is important, knocking the last remnants of the formations aside.
"Our game," protests Akira. Shindou flaps a hand.
"You were losing anyway. Nigiri," he says.
Akira wins black, and plays first hand tengen against his eternal rival.