Title: Purpose of the Game
Chapter: Learning (1/3)
Author: Virgo
Author's Note: Okay, I was addicted to Hikaru no Go by a boy who I was on the Science Olympiad with at school. (Shows how much of a dork I am to begin with.) I read the entire manga in two days, and I actually did my homework during that time, though sleeping was optional. I fell in love with the characters. And then I tried fanfiction. And found HnG slash… and it vastly disappointed me because… well… it's the whole reason I wrote this fic. I still read the slash, I have nothing against it, but it just… doesn't jibe with how I see the characters.
Oh. And I know next to nothing about Japanese culture, and only what a computer game has taught me about go. Forgive me for any inconsistencies in anything, this is v. rough just because I wanted to finish something. I promised myself I would never post anything without finishing it.
Disclaimer: Not mine in the slightest.
Being the Honinbo challenger meant everything to Hikaru.
It was a chance to prove to himself that he was worthy of Sai, worthy to be his successor to Honinbo Shusaku. It was a chance to show the Go world that he was just as good as his rival, the current 10-dan. To show that he was only a year behind "the bright hope of the Japanese Go World."
He was tired of being looked down upon by Touya's followers. He would fight! He would study hard! He would devote his life to gaining that title!
But somehow, he was standing on a Tokyo subway car, leaning on a pole, on the way to teach at an international bazaar-thing at Komazawa University. Akari's University.
"Are you sure you don't mind teaching?" she asked for the fourth time. Her nerves were showing; she alternately smoothed her skirt, her hair, and yet still managed to hold onto the subway loop to remain upright. "I know the first of your Honinbo games is tomorrow."
Hikaru reached up over his head to scratch his neck, the picture of embarrassment. She seemed to have read his thoughts. "I promised to teach at your High School Go club and I never did; I figured it was time to fulfill a promise."
Akari smiled sweetly, her nerves forgotten for a moment. "The American students are going to love you!"
"I was just glad you didn't want me to wear a suit and tie," Hikaru mumbled. Akari blushed. She didn't like the formal, adult Hikaru that she so often saw pictures of in her copies of Weekly Go. She liked his un-tucked collared shirt and jeans as a reflection of his laid back personality. The look was more mature than the constant sportswear of their childhood, but it fit him better than the stiff suits his profession sometimes forced upon him. "Will there be food?" Hikaru asked, startling Akari slightly.
"Oh, yes," said Akari. "Lots of traditional Japanese food. And some very good ramen."
"Ramen? Why didn't you say so before!" Hikaru smiled and forgot about his opponent, his opening move, his title – for a while. He didn't get to see his childhood best friend very often any more, with her being away at school, and him being in his own apartment.
She deserved some of his time. Sometimes, Hikaru remembered his middle school days and cringed at the way he dismissed her as a common girl, rather than the friend she was. He didn't think he could make it up to her, but he was trying.
"We get off at the next stop," said Akari. She smiled. "I really hope you like my school."
It was only a minute or so until the subway car did stop. Hikaru stepped off first and then turned around to make sure that Akari minded the gap. He looked around for the stairs, but Akari, a regular to this particular subway line, pulled him in the right direction. "So," he said, trying to fill the silences, "Why did you pick Komazawa?"
"I wanted to study history," Akari said after a pause. "I wanted to study Japanese Culture and how it had changed since the beginning, or as near to it as possible. So I studied history and I studied literature." She reached the top of the stairs and entered the light, tilted her head into the setting sun. "I picked Komazawa because it was the oldest university trying to make new understanding."
Hikaru was silent for a moment, remembering history lessons of long ago. "Was there a particular era you specialized in?" He tried to protect his question, make it sound as if he asked it casually rather with any sort of ulterior motive by looking around, concentrating on the sidewalk, staring at the blossoms on the cherry trees along the path they were walking – but Hikaru was never capable of subtly, even in Go, and it was obvious there was a reason he was asking.
"Actually," said Akari, a pause in her voice, as if she had never considered something before. "You were the reason I chose the Heian. Go was perfected then, and features prominently in the politics. You introduced me to Go, and you showed me what I wanted to study."
Akari looked at Hikaru for some affirmation, some acknowledgement of the inspiration he had caused her. Hikaru smiled a soft smile and looked into the face of his old friend. "Thank you," he said softly. It meant a lot to him that she understood his connection to the Heian, even if she never knew Sai.
They walked in silence for a moment or two, and then Hikaru returned to his normal self. "We've been walking for five minutes! Where is your school?"
Akari laughed. "The other reason I chose Komazawa is because it allowed me to walk and enjoy nature before I had to hustle to a train station."
"You and nature," Hikaru sighed. "You and nature."
===
The foreign students that the entire festival revolved around finally begged exhaustion and retired to their rooms long before Hikaru was ready to go home. At some point during the evening, he remembered what he was to face in the morning, and though he had a train ride home, though he had wanted to go over some kifu, he just sat in front of the goban he had tutored on and stared at the juvenile shapes that lay there.
"I'm sorry that they were no match for you," whispered Akari, sitting across the universe of lines from Hikaru and handing a steaming cup of ramen over the expanse.
"Oh, that's not a problem," said Hikaru. "They were just learning," he took the cup of ramen and the chopsticks Akari offered "and America is not very strong in Go anyway." They sat in silence for a moment, Akari from exhaustion of playing hostess and interpreter, Hikaru from the weight of responsibility he had begun to take on. Hikaru spoke first. "Thank you for being a translator."
"I remember your English scores," Akari replied slyly, and grinned into her ramen.
"No, I mean it." Hikaru looked right at her, right into her eyes. "You did more teaching than I did, really, tonight, because you knew the right words to say."
Akari could not hold his gaze. "Would you like to play teaching-go with me? That way you can earn your wage tonight, by your own standards."
Hikaru almost protested that he was taking no wage, that he was there as a favor to her, but he remained silent. He was glad she asked to play Go. He would have never offered, he would have thought she had given up on the entire topic, trying to forget him. But she hadn't. He handed her the goki with black stones. "Take your handicap."
"Shindo-6-dan against me, Akari who-hopes-she-is-10-kyu," Akari intoned, as if she were an announcer, someone to explain this game to a crowd. Arkari placed 16 stones, the supposed difference between them, but she knew it was wider. She bowed. "Please," she said, and bowed over the board.
Hikaru was surprised. 10-kyu. She had kept up with her play, she had come a long way from the 20-kyu that most causual players remain at – and where she was as a middle schooler. "Please," he said, and mimicked her action.
They took twenty, thirty turns in silence, Hikaru slowly gaining back the territory that had been handed to his opponent. Akari didn't care that she was losing, and she did learn a new move, a new idea here and there, but she was glad to be playing with Hikaru again. She loved the feeling of intensity directed at her whenever she played Hikaru, even when he was a mere beginner in junior high.
"You know," Akari said softly, "another name for the game of go is 'conversation with hands.'" Even though her voice was soft, Hikaru's head snapped up from surveying the board, she interrupted his train of thought. He was trying to read how to have Akari win by one moku.
"I didn't," said Hikaru. He smiled softly again, and turned back to the board to gaze at it causually. "I get yelled at all the time by Waya and Touya for knowing nothing about my job."
Akari's heart twisted inexplicably when Hikaru mentioned his job and his friends that he met in his job. She was not a part of that side of Hikaru's life, and she suddenly felt the need to be, urgently. She placed her next stone. It extended the liberties of her shape, and took her out of atari. She was playing defensively, a little recklessly, but it was only Hikaru. It wasn't an amateur tournament, it wasn't anything with stakes.
Hikaru himself was forgetting about stakes, relaxing in Akari's presence, forgetting again what lay ahead of him, loosening himself up, getting ready to take what he so rightly earned. What he felt he should inherit.
"Have you ever played with the stones, and made a perfect pattern?" asked Akari, remembering suddenly a long forgotten thought. "Have you ever played with yourself not to capture, but to fill the entire board, or nearly, so perfectly that nothing is captured or lost?"
"I've forced ties before," said Hikaru, confused. "I've played games where no stones were captured before."
"But those were with other people," Akari said, hands warming on her cup of Ramen. "You weren't in control of their actions, even if you were playing teaching-go and you were leading them. I'm talking about being in control of your own life, your own go."
"No," said Hikaru. "I guess I've never played with the stones all by myself. Why do you ask?"
"It's…"Akari paused, unsure how to explain this strange impulse she had once. "It's instructional, for lack of a better way to describe it." She sipped her ramen, contemplated her next move. "It helps you discover yourself."
Hikaru raised an eyebrow, but didn't contradict or belittle his friend as he had in the past. He placed a stone, and Akari's shape was once again in Atari. She stared at the board, unable to see a way to regain her moku she had lost. "I resign," she said, bowing again. She stood up, flexed to regain feeling after sitting in the formal posture, and gestured with her hand. "Come on," she said. "I'll walk you to the subway station. You should go home. You do have a game tomorrow, after all."
They walked in silence together, Akari leading Hikaru back through the turns and past the park they had seen from the other way just hours before. Hikaru was trying to figure out what she had meant by "playing your own game of Go," and it being instructive. He was trying to figure out why she resigned at that particular moment instead of playing until the end. He was trying to figure out why he wanted to reach out and take her hand, and he was trying to figure out why he was resisting the notion as well.
He hadn't learned anything by the time they reached the station. Akari waved. "I'm sure you can find your way home from here," she said, smiling softly. "I have to get back to the dorm." She watched until he disapeered in the depths of the underground, and then turned slowly, to walk back to her dorm.
Hikaru recreated games all the way home, staunchly ignoring the flashing lights as the train speed through stations, the clacking of the subway, as everything suddenly proved highly distracting. He climbed the stairs to his apartment, turned the key to get in, locked it behind him, and fell into bed. He slept dreamlessly.