Title: For Love Of A Game
Author: Rhoe
Disclaimer: HikaGo's not mine.
Author's Note: Wanted to write a KagaTsu but it took on a life of its own and changed all that. ::sigh::
For love of a game.
They say that love has different facets, Tsutsui
reflected thoughtfully. Take the love for a game, for example.
Tsutsui loved Go. Loved Go with that quiet sort of passion which simmers and stews in its intensity. It was the first game his father had taught him, and it brought warm memories of hours spent in front of the goban in quiet reflection, thinking territory-gaining strategies and counter-attacks. He enjoyed the thrill of besting the occasional opponent, but better yet, he loved the learning. He loved Go, loved it enough to be kind to it, to respect it, and to want others to feel the same.
How different it was from Shindo's own love for the game. Shindo's love for Go, unlike his, was intense. Brilliant, even. The energy he expelled when he played was as fiery and as hot as the sun itself. From what he understood from his talks with the younger boy, Shindo didn't come to love the game the way Tsutsui did. Tsutsui grew into it the way one did with a pair of cosy warm pajamas. Accepted willingly, happily, and regarded fondly. On the other hand, Shindo's was like trying to set fire to a heap of firewood. It took some effort at starting the first spark, at getting it to kindle, but once it caught hold, it burned as high and as bright as a raging bonfire. It didn't warm, it consumed.
How different it was from Touya's own love for the game. Touya's love was like a wild cat. It was as focused as a lioness setting sight on its prey – sharp, concentrated and dangerous. It was like a tiger in the grasslands, crouched and watchful of its opponents or its prey. It didn't trumpet its presence the way Shindo's did, but you knew that it was there, waiting to pounce, waiting to announce its presence. From what Shindo had given away of Touya, it was a love that was cultivated ever since birth. Like the way a lion or a tiger cub suckles on its mother's breasts and grows into greatness, Touya's was the same. And now it has become a force to be reckoned with.
And yet how different it all was from Kaga's own love for the game. Oh Kaga hated Go, or that was what he continually professed whenever Tsutsui suggested a game. But didn't they also say that love and hate were two sides to the same coin? Tsutsui suspected that Kaga's love for the game was like that of a dormant volcano. Shougi, Kaga's pet game, was the outer covering, was the crags, the slopes, the dormant mountain itself, so over-powering that it caught the eye that one sometimes forgot that underneath that imposing, dominating structure, lies the molten magma of Go, bubbling and seething in its own suppressed cage. But once in a while, the structure would crack and the magma would explode. There would be fireworks, hot air and ashes, but the game would be no less fiery, no less burning in its own intensity as that of Shindo's or Touya's.
They say that love has different facets, Tsutsui reflected thoughtfully.
... How right they were.
::owari::