Author Note: My friend asked me one one day, if there was a reason for why Hikarus hair was the way it was. And this was the result.
Disclaimer: I do not own Hikaru No Go or any of its characters.
He Remembers
Hikaru remembers.
He remembers when he was five and digging around the attic. His mom wanted to clean and organize the junk they had collected over the years, but to a child it was all treasure. He ran wild and opened all the boxes that he could reach and touch. He peered inside all of them for the treasure he was convinced that was hidden somewhere.
What he found was a picture. In the picture was a gaijin. He looked around 17 years old with short yellow hair and blue eyes, and he remembers staring on with fascination. He tried to commit every detail to memory, because he had never seen someone like that before.
He remembers his mother calling for him, turning around to find her child staring at an old dusty photo. She had took the photo from him and told him that he shouldn't touch the photo with his fingers, the fingerprints stay. And then she finally looked at the photo, and saw the gaijin. He remembers that she hasn't said anything, but the look in her eyes stayed with him.
He never saw the photo again after that day. He went up to the attic again the next year and he tried to find the box where it had came from again, but it was gone. He spent three days searching the attic thoroughly, but he couldn't find it.
He forgot about it after that, until he grew older. A few years later, he looked in the mirror and something about the tilt of the chin, the smile, and the eyes reminded him of the photo. And that no one ever commented that he looked like his father.
And he remembers that his mother had married when she was 20 and had him when she was 21, and the man in the photo was but a teenager. And he remembers that he was born exactly in the 9-month frame, and how his mom said that he was late - almost. Yet as he grew older, the thoughts came more freely, and the look in his mothers eyes of that day in the attic had been buried in his memory, but not forgotten. The memory of that came back, and as he grew older, his mothers eyes sometimes became indiscernible when she looked at him.
So when he was 11 he stepped into a salon. The trend of dying ones hair to another colour had only just became in style. As he sat in the chair for an hour waiting for the dye to set in, he reminisced that maybe he had known this for some time. There had been no anger, no lashing out of scorn. He had been simply started saving up his allowance for the past while, and when the stylist asked if he had came for his usual cut he added, "And a little more."
He remembers the stylist talking about bleaching his whole head of hair, until he corrected her. Only half he said, and was firm when she questioned him. He supposes that it was to symbolize and remind him. Half and half.
"The front." He told them. So it was easier to see. Easier for him to see. So he could see it even without a mirror.
He had convinced his mother that he could go get his haircut alone, while she went to the shopping mall next door. When he walked out of the salon 1 and ½ hours later to find her, she was sitting in the food court. When she had looked up to see him, he saw her eyes widen and her body almost ridged with shock.
When he sat across from her, and gave her a cheeky smile, she blinked. He knows she wondered, but he never said anything. So she never asked, and he never answered. He believes she speculated about it for a while, but didn't know what to do about it because she was unsure.
Her only attempt had been a weak and withdrawn, " Why did you do that?"
" Its the new style." He was young, and so she didn't understand that he had evaded the answer.
When he had gone home he had endured a long lecture from his father, but he refused to dye it back. His mother hadn't said much and she had looked at him with unreadable eyes. It been a few years now and he hasn't changed it. He goes back to get it touched up every month or so.
His mom gave him the money for it after, or so she did until he became a pro and earned his own money. He knows she wonders about it, but she never asks, and he never asks her about the look in her eyes and what happened to the photo and the box, which held all the other things he had never gone through.
Its been a few years and hes moved out. His grandfather was a pretty well off man and he had found him a house instead of letting him rent an apartment. Hikaru pays mortgage instead of rent, because this way his money comes back to buying him something he could keep instead of a place for him to stay for only a month.
He has his own attic now, and when he went up there the first time after moving in, it was empty. The second time he went up, he had found the old goban that was supposed to be in his grandfathers loft, but was now in his attic. Hikaru placed it in front of the window so it would see the sun as much as possible because he felt it would be wrong for it to sit in the dark and collect dust. He makes sure to go up and clean it every so often and keep it in good condition, but he never plays on it.
It was too precious a memory.
He knows one day his fan would join it in the attic, and the small object would sit on its surface; both in the sun, both speaking of memories. He goes up to the attic as regularly as he could. Pulling on the string that lowers the staircase and walking its wooden steps up. And when he enters the triangular room every time, there is only a goban in its vast space. He feels that there is something missing, and he wants to ask his mother to give him the box that he had found in his childhood home's attic that he had only opened once. He wants to ask her for all the mementos inside the box that are surely collecting dust somewhere else that is not the attic. The things he had never seen, hidden away somewhere, but not forgotten.
He wants to ask, but he doesn't.
He's eighteen and he's used to it now. He not a child and he knows that when to push and when to stop. He's an adult and still growing. He's learning, but sometimes he wishes that he still had some of his childhood ignorances.
Its been a few years now and he used to it, and when people ask him now; "Why do you keep your hair like that?"
He replies. "To remember." Its all he has until his mother gives him the box (the box that's locked up somewhere) someday.
He knows that she'll give it to him. She's unsure right now, and he knows that he isn't helping by not saying anything, but maybe that's his anger, his lashing out that had never happened. He knows she'll give it to him, someday.
Just like how someday, he will explain everything about his Go to Touya.
And even though as Akira looks at him with a confused face to his answer he thinks: someday, but not today. And he thinks maybe, he'll explain this to Akira someday as well as the matter with Sai.
. : Owari : .