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The service is almost over when she stops.
Today is the day that Tamura Akiko becomes Touya Akiko. Today is simultaneously the best and worst day of her life.
The best, because...
She will finally be joined in marriage, to someone of good background, strong, powerful. Someone well-spoken and educated, someone stately, graceful, someone beautiful. Someone she loves. Someone who loves her.
The worst, because...
Fear, mostly. Fear of such a big change. Fear of failing in the duties of a good wife, keeping a respectable-enough house, being a gracious-enough hostess. Fear she can't satisfy him as a companion, fear that he'll become tired of her. Fear of being second-best. Fear of being unsatisfied with second-best.
For Akiko knows that his love for her will never, ever surpass his love for a game.
Yet she also knows her love for him will never, ever be surpassed by anything.
And now, in the middle of the ceremony, it strikes her -- it surprises her how she doesn't know which one frightens her more. It makes the gentle smile on her painted lips fade, makes her knees lock, makes her eyes dart to the audience as if crying for help. As if they could help her. As if.
Her family says they trust her to do what she thinks is right, but she knows they wonder about her happiness.
Her friends think she's a fool, say she's throwing her life away.
Even her fiance has asked her, through a long courtship peppered with extended absences, or sometimes in whispered words while she feigned sleep, if she was certain.
And maybe she wasn't, she hasn't been, she has just been so enamoured of the idea of marriage, of a stable future, of being with him that she hasn't properly thought of the reality of it.
But as she stands before the priest, heart thumping and stomach churning and kimono feeling much too tight, she realizes, just breathe. She realizes it's that simple. She realizes she's never been so certain of anything in her life.
And she nods and smiles.
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Hikaru no Go copyright Shueisha, TV Tokyo, and Studio Pierrot, among others. Created by Hotta Yumi & Obata Takeshi.
eme 28.jan.04