So Many Mistakes

By: Mezi Matsuki demoncatmyshorelink.com

Disclaimer/Author's Note: I don't own Hikaru no Go. None of this is true, I made it up. Sai is telling the story just before SPOILER he goes 'poof' because he realizes he achieved his purpose. END SPOILER For anyone who doesn't know, komi is the extra points white players get because black goes first in a game of Go. It is usually 5.5 or 7.5 points, I forgot which, but it is 7.5 in this story. Also, to anyone who has read 'The Tale of Genji' by Lady Murasaki Shikibu, Sai's cousin Murasaki is a reference to 'Genji's young lady Murasaki' from the book. It was mentioned in the story that she was related to the Fujiwara line.

'So many mistakes I've made
I wouldn't try to recreate.
But alas- I would.'

There are so many things I need to make sure Hikaru knows. He won't listen though. I need to let him know that I am going to be leaving soon. It is hard to explain, but I need to make sure that he is ready to go on without me. I cannot go until I'm sure. I've made so many mistakes, done so many things that I regret. I won't let myself regret this, just like almost everything else in my life and afterlife.

The first thing I actually remember regretting would definitely have to be going to Heian-kyo. That sounds selfish, since i did it to restore my family's former rank, but I now look at it like this: was it not selfish of my family to throw me into the lion den that was the Imperial Court? I was nothing more than a happy, childish boy who liked to play a board game... I tried to so hard to please my father, but everything I did always seemed to make into my father's shame. It is his fault that everything happened in Heian-kyo, not the fault of the board game that I loved, and still love, so much.

I want to make very clear that I never once have thought that my life (and death) would have been so much better if I had never played Go. Without Go, I would have never had the pleasures of dealing with Hikaru and Shusakuu. In all actuality, despite the regrets of my life and death, I am glad for all of its existence. Without one piece, the rest never would have fallen into place like it did. Without my father's shame of me, I would have never went to Heian-kyo, but without going to the courts, I would have never eventually gotten to play so many incredible talents as I have. Some of my actions would have just caused equally negative reactions. For example, my if I hadn't gone to the courts to try to make my father look at me as something worthy, I wouldn't have drowned myself. Instead, I probably would have died another way, a worse way, one without my wanderings, all because my home life was so horrible.

As a boy, my mother adored me, possibly more than she loved my father. That may be why he never seemed to accept me as his only child, let alone his only son. The closest thing I had to any siblings was my cousin, Murasaki. She was also the closest thing to daughter that my mother had. She loved both Murasaki and I equally, which took up most of her time. Murasaki was every bit as bright as her brothers, but at a young age, her mother (my father's sister) passed away. Little Murasaki was sent to live with her grandmother, a nun, and her brothers went to live with their father. Afterwards, I seemed to get all the affection from my mother.

One day, I was wandering around, as all five-year-old little boys do. I came across two servants, sitting on the ground with a grid and some rocks scratched out in front of them. When I asked what they were doing, one servant told me that it was 'too complicated for small children.' The other servant, however, (she was one of my mother's maids) sat me down next to her and showed me the rules. Then she was even kind enough to allow me to try to play against her. It took a few games, but finally I managed to beat her. (Although I didn't know it at the time, she wasn't including our territories or the komi. She would have most definitely beaten me if she had.) I was so thrilled with myself, and I automatically ran to try to show my father, perhaps he would think it something to be proud of me for. I didn't know that beating a servant on a board drawn in the dirt wasn't anything.

As soon as I stepped foot into the house and found my father, I was reprimand for being covered in dirt. Then I found out that my father had in fact noticed that I had not done anything but spend my day being idle. By the time he finished his lecture, I didn't even want to talk to him, but he made me tell him what was so important that I had to come in the house as dirty as I was. Once I finished telling him about my playing Go with the servant, he smirked and went over to a cabinet. He pulled out a gorgeous wooden box, and two wooden bowls. It took me a minute, but I eventually realized that the box had the same lines drawn on it as the grid in the dirt. Suddenly I was snapped out of my thoughts when the box was lain down in front of me. I was handed a bowl, and my father took one. He told me to take a handful of stones and just lay them on the board. After he counted them, he told me I would be black. Slightly confused, I nodded. I sat there, silent, for almost two minutes. Eventually, he snapped at me to make a move already. Then I realized we were playing Go. Finally I put down a piece, and looked up and grinned at him. The smile was returned as a glare.

The game played out, eventually getting to the end. The final score was 35 to 217.5, with the territory and his komi added in. Fighting back tears, I received another lecture. 'You can't brag about winning a game of Go if you can't even win against your father. Come play again when you can beat me.' He said. This has so many upsetting effects to a five-year-old, so many that I can't even begin to describe. I immediately went straight to my mother, and I was in tears by the time I reached her. She thought it very unkind of my father to upset me like that, and she decided she was going to play with me until she thought I could beat him. We played after that almost every day for some years. When I was thirteen, I decided to play my father again.

This time I still lost, but not nearly as bad. The final score was 125 to 85.5. After that, I kept trying more, until I thought once again that I could beat him. I won, that time. It was 112.5 to 110. I only won because of the komi, but I still won. At that time, I was 15. I continued to play against people in and around our village, until I got extremely good. One day my father saw me playing against someone, and he was bewildered by my skill. He decided I would play one of the men from His Majesty's court. I defeated him easily. Afterwards, the man took my father into another room to speak privately with him. I had a feeling these matters concerned me. I decided that I would wander around in the courtyard while they talked, and while I was out there, I came across my mother, sitting on a tatami mat leaning on a tree.

She was just looking at the sky, and I didn't want to disturb her. As I turned to leave, she asked me why I was not still playing against the man from Heian-kyo. I told her that I had already beaten him. This had mixed reactions from my mother. She knew I had great skill for she watched me play quite frequently, so she wasn't surprised, and she was pleased, since I had won. But there was another expression, hidden behind the pleased expression, one I didn't understand until I look back on it now. I now see what she already knew when I said I had won already. She knew the man would eventually want to take me to Heian-kyo. At the time, seeing but not understanding why she was sad made me sad, because my mother had always been the supportive one. I turned and started to walk away, and I just kept walking until I reached the house, where my father and the Heian-kyo man were waiting for me. Both men looked angry, which meant something bad had just happened. The man muttered a formal goodbye, which obviously wasn't sincere, and turned and stiffly walked out of our house and away.

That night, I heard my parents arguing. I knew it had to do with me, because my mother was yelling as well, which she never did unless my father wanted to do something with me that she didn't approve of. Eventually, I got up and went to sit in the courtyard, but before I did, I heard enough of the argument to know that the Heian-kyo man wanted to take me to Heian- kyo with him and introduce me to the Emperor. My father was all for the idea, because the disgrace that our family suffered to exile us out of Heian-kyo could be redeemed if I 'played my cards right', as Hikaru puts it. My mother didn't want to let me, since she thought I was too childlike to handle the pressure of the courts. She didn't want to subject her 16- year-old son to the mental abuse that comes with the courts. She also just didn't want to loose her child, since she had already lost her niece. Automatically, when I heard my father speak of the 'redemption of our family honor', I wanted to go to Heian-kyo. I didn't bother to think about my mother's side of things, I just wanted to finally make my father proud.

My mother came out of their room, sobbing. She didn't see me sitting there (she had come out of the house by way of the door between my parents' room and the courtyard, and the door was in a position where I was not visible.) and went to her tatami mat sitting by the tree. She continued to cry, until eventually I couldn't bear to see her do so, and I went over to her. Unfortunately, it made her cry harder. When I tried to make her stop, she was silent for a minute, touched my face, and smiled. Then she told me what was going on. She told me that she didn't want me to go to the courts, and how much it would hurt her if I did. I wasn't listening though. I had already heard my father speak of being proud of me, and I had decided to go. When I told her that I was going to go, she stared at me for a minute. Then she made a small squeak, and slapped me. Nothing cut so deep as that, ever, even my father crushing me so badly at Go when I was five. Nothing ever, ever hurt me so much as that slap did. I can still feel that pain, even though I no longer have a real body.

I left for Heian-kyo about a week later. I didn't speak to my mother at all before I left. I did not even tell her goodbye. As the weeks went by, I felt horrible about it, but I never got to speak to her again. I will explain why in a moment. While I was in the Emperor's courts, I became the Emperor's instructor in Go. I wasn't the only one, however, and I seemed to be the most disliked. His Majesty liked me, as a matter of fact, I was His Excellency's favorite instructor, and all the ladies of the court seemed to adore me, but that was where my popularity ended. I never once complained about the intense dislike that everyone seemed to have for me, but it was extremely unnerving.

One instructor, in particular, was especially jealous of me. He wanted to be the Emperor's favorite instructor, and I couldn't help having that position. One day, he decided to challenge me to a game of Go. The conditions were that the loser would never play Go again... I was confident in my abilities. I never doubted them at all, until he did it... He cheated, and when I started to point it out, he said that I cheated. Of all people who love the game of Go, I would NEVER cheat at it. Everyone should have known that. Unfortunately, no one believed me. They all thought he was being truthful. His Excellence didn't see what happened, and everyone else disliked me. The simple fact that people actually believed that I could cheat at Go... that is what frightened me the most. I could not get that thought out of my head. In the end, he beat me because I was so distracted. When I realized what happened, my state of mind was almost completely shattered.

Disgraced, I went back to my quarters. I began to back my belongings (after all, what good is a Go instructor who can never play Go again?), when one of the ladies who waited on me came in. She said that I had a messenger waiting outside to see me. Dreading what it could be, I told her to let him in. When he first said he was sent from my old village, I was frightened. I admit that. My father never had any reason to speak to me nor did anyone else in the village, and my mother and I hadn't spoken since she slapped me.

Then he continued with his message. He read it from a scroll, one that I could tell wasn't my father's handwriting, it was the writing of someone who I did not recognize. The letter turned out to be from the local priest. He said that my father had just passed away, and I, being his only son, was to inherit our household. This struck me as odd, since as far as I knew, my mother would have been earlier in the line of succession than me, due to my father's everlasting shame of me. I didn't know the boy who delivered the message, but I assumed he was from our village. When I asked why did my mother not inherit it, he answered with a shrug and said that she had died a year before.

In my two years in the courts of Heian-kyo, my father never once saw fit to contact me. Not even when my mother died. As close as I was to her, he never even bothered to tell me that. That small piece of information was all it took. That little bit was all I needed to shatter. I was tired of all the fake-nice, tired of all the customs and rituals, and crushed. And of course, your weakest moment is when the bad decides to get worse. It was then, for the first time, that I ever felt truly alone. I had always thought that despite everything that happened between my mother and I, despite all my loneliness in the courts, that I could always go back to my mother, if I truly needed to. Suddenly, I knew I was completely alone, and I was afraid, so afraid... I thought at the time that I had nothing left, no reason to keep going, that I was broken. Even my principles, everything I believed in with Go, even they were broken.

With a single tear, I sent the messenger away. I went out into the palace courtyard to look at the lake, and hopefully clear my head. The minute I saw that lake, I knew what I had to do. Carefully, slowly, I made my way out about waist-level into the water. I stopped, and took a deep breath. That was the only time I even stopped to reconsider what I was doing. I only did that because I was so cold. I swallowed, and started to walk. It was a very deep lake, and I was wearing my full robes. I just kept walking, never stopping, until the drop-off. By that time, my robes were soaking wet, and heavy as lead. I closed my eyes, and then stepped over the drop-off. I felt myself sinking, and running out of air. It didn't hurt though. It was like a release from all of my problems, and it felt like falling asleep. Little did I know, it was only another beginning...