A/n: Inspired by Forlorn Story Teller's "Disciple of Honinbou". I can't tell you how much I adore her fics ;_;
For 'Of essence concerning our familiars' readers, I will update more regularly once I'm finished with my exams ^^; Please forgive my tardiness.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
A reason to be
(1)
On a rainy day of July Akira found a boy curling up under the cherry tree in his garden – a clothed bundle hugged close to his tiny chests. Leaves scattered on the boy's figure, and raindrops seemed to soak through his garments. The child lied there so still that he looked like he was barely breathing.
There had been urgent shouts for assistance and a hurried change of the boy's location to the nearest guest bedroom after Akira got out of his startled silence. A rush call to the doctor had also been made. An hour and a half later, the wizened, old family doctor diagnosed the upcoming of a fever, but luckily – no pneumonia. Relief settled so heavily in him that Akira almost knelt under its weight. Though, he kept his composure, efficiently showed the doctor to the door and thanked him for his help.
Minato-san - his housekeeper - came up to meet him while he was mid-way returning to the guest room, in which the unknown boy was currently residing, "Akira-sensei, I've washed all of the boy's things; they should be dried the next day... Oh, and, I'll bring him some of my son's old clothes tomorrow. I think they'd fit him just fine."
"Thank you, Minato-san. I greatly appreciate it, but I'm also sorry for bothering you," Akira said truthfully.
"Shush, it's nothing, Akira-sensei," Minato-san smiled with a motherly tilt to her lips, seeming well-prepared and empirical as if children's turning up suddenly in your house was usual happenstances. But as quickly as her smile appeared, a sad wondering frown replaced it. "Poor child, though. I can't imagine how long he had been out in the rain, and how he could end up in such a state."
Unable to say anything to her honest words, Akira just nodded in agreement and excused himself. Once he stepped into the guest room, his eyes immediately landed on the features of the unconscious boy and the goban laid adjacent to his futon - to the right of his pillow. From the way the child had held tight to the go board, which had made it very difficult for Akira and Minato-san to fry the thing off his clutching fingers, Akira guessed the goban was something precious to the little boy - who was certainly no older than eleven. Hopefully, when the boy woke up, he would be able to catch sight of his possession right away. It might reduce some of the foretold panic and confusion.
Akira moved to sit next to his unexpected young guest and darted his gaze to the goban again in order to observe it more carefully. Although he was no expert, from visual assessment, he was sure that it was a valuable antique: the lines were beauteously done, the playing surface in perfect condition - on close inspection, indentations from the placement of stones could be seen, but none of them was prominent -, and the wood undoubtedly that of Kaya. The warm aged patina and the well-played-yet-well-kept top grid made Akira marvel at the character the goban seemed to emit and the stories (history) behind. Many games - many beautiful games - definitely had been played upon it. It was a solace, then, that the cloth used to wrap the goban was actually water-proofed, so the item was unharmed from exposure to the earlier rain. And not for the first time that afternoon, Akira wondered at what the boy could possibly have to do with such a worthful goban, and the fact that a mere child had truly been attentive in his way of handling the thing.
Had the kid stolen it from somewhere and coincidentally winded up in Akira's house?
Or - was he, too, a Go player? But his sporty attire (properly laundered by Minato-san) and his bleached blond band suggested a complete disagreement to the notion. Nevertheless, Akira was too experienced to let appearances deceive his judgements.
All he could do now was to wait.
It might have been midnight, or early morning - Akira was not certain. But the sound of sobbing woke him up anyway, and guided his feet to walk through the haziness of disturbed sleep. Clearity came to him instantaneously when Akira found himself face to face with the guest room's shoji doors, from which teary hiccups could be heard. Confused and restless, Akira opened the door with one swift and decisive movement, and was met by the sight of the child - whom he had rescued from the downpour of summer - hunching over the antique goban and shaking terribly. At the noise of the door's sliding, the child immediately looked up, his face red in feverish daze and stained with flowing fat tears.
Before Akira could utter anything, the child snapped assertively and angrily, "You are not Touya-sensei. Where is Touya-sensei?" And it took Akira a moment to realize that the child was refering to his father.
"Touya-sensei, my father, is not here. I'm his son, Touya Akira. Why must you ask of my father?" Akira tried to answer as clearly and calmly as could, not wanting to frighten the boy nor to show the fact that he didn't have any idea of how to deal with these situations, except for his unwavering resolve and intensity. It was strange - to witness such fierce expressions on such a young face, and to talk to a kid less-than-half-of-his-age in the controlled, formal way of communicating with people much older. It left his mind reeling in apprehension.
"I-," the boy's previous firmness quickly turned into quivering uncertainty that sent his small stature into a bout of awkward crouching. Akira worried he would cry again, yet the posterior straightening of the boy's back after the prior ambiguity and embarassment was adverse to the older man's fear. Akira glimpsed a determined glint in those bright green eyes when the boy glanced up at him and gave a request - which, as the twenty-five-year-old Go pro would reflect much later, would change his (their) life forever.
"Play a game with me," the child said - with the conviction and fierceness of a loyal warrior - even when his little hands shook under the harsh grip of fever, and his body was stiff with desperate wishes. Akira couldn't help but be drawn to all of it, disbelief and awe warring inside him as he stared at the boy in wonderment.
A game between a little boy and the current Meijin - how inequitable. The result was too predictable to speculate. And Akira was in his sleeping garbs, rumpled and tired after being forced out of his slumber - not an adequate state to take up an offer of a game. But looking at the boy - whose name he didn't even know -, feeling the fire burning in that childish figure, Akira couldn't stop himself from agreeing. The child's expression instantaneously changed into something much more jovial at Akira's reluctant acceptance - he looked more of his age with his guard down and boyish cheerfulness apparent.
"What's your name?" Akira carefully enquired after returning to the guest room once more with two goke in hands, watching the boy jumping a little from his seiza-sitting position before the goban - the flush on his cheeks stood out against his pale skin indicating a still-unabated pyrexia. Akira wanted to get the boy back to his rest, albeit his attempt had been strongly denied and brought to a temporary end by a ferocious, despondent 'please'.
"My name is Hikaru, Shindou Hikaru," the boy - Hikaru now - answered in a low, distracted voice as he stared at the 19x19 lines of the goban and refused to elaborate further. Resisting the urge to exhale a resigned sigh, Akira seated himself on the opposite side of the Go board.
"Onegaishimasu."
The first few clicking sounds of placed stones were heard merging with the stillness of a late night that seemed to stretched on endlessly, as if awaiting for something to happen.
Morning came with the chirping of birds and rays of tender sunlight passing through the papered screens of the shoji doors. Akira distantly caught the sound of Minato-san's arrival greeting and the soft breathing of Hikaru - dwarfed by oversized pijama - in an exhausted fitful sleep. He stared at the game that he had replayed so many times he couldn't recall exactly, and wondered whether this was real or not. Fresh was his remembrance of those tears rolling down Hikaru's face when the game came to finish, his pained whispered 'It's not enough' and Akira's own trembling exhilaration and stunned surprise.
It had been an extremely beautiful game that torn Akira's perspective asunder. A child of that age could not play to such a level of complexity and skill - could not play in the hands that had defeated Akira himself, and then his father, three years ago. Akira just wasn't able to comprehend it, even if the evidence was a hard, cold truth laid out in front of his eyes - stones and stones formed in formations that deserved the greatest of appreciation.
It was Sai.
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