Hikaru wiped the smear of cream from his lips with a smirk and fell satedly back onto the tatami.
"That," Waya agreed from his own prone position on the other side of the table, "was exquisite."
Akira raised an eyebrow at Isumi, as if to say "Too bad that neither of them has ever learned manners."
Isumi, also still eating the apricot-and-cream dessert, replied with an arched eyebrow of his own, one that seemed to answer an ironic "Can't trade them in--no resale value--and we haven't a backyard to bury their bodies in. We're stuck with them."
Akira nodded in agreement, and returned his attention to his own dessert.
The phone rang, and Hikaru, who was closest to it, pulled himself up with a dramatic groan and crawled over to the instrument. "Hello, Shindou-Touya-Waya-Isumi residence," he answered. He changed the order of their names every time he answered the phone. "Yes, Shindou speaking." Akira, eyes closed and blissed out by the taste of fresh fruit and cream, didn't notice anything odd until Hikaru spoke again a minute later. "Yes, I'll be there. Thank you." His voice sounded strained, which made Akira open his eyes.
Hikaru set down the receiver and without a word or a look at any of them, left the room.
Akira, Waya, and Isumi exchanged glances. Akira set down his bowl. "I'll be right back," he said, and followed Hikaru out of the room.
By the time he got to their bedroom Hikaru already had both pots of Go stones by his knees and was laying a recreated game out across their Go board. Akira sat down to one side, next to Hikaru rather than across from him, and waited.
Hikaru's eyes were on the game, but not with the frightening shale-hard focus he tended to get when his whole mind was centered on the play of black and white. Instead, his hands were gentle as they set down the stones, one at a time. Akira didn't recognize the match he was replaying, but knew it couldn't have been a game with another pro. The black was too weak for that.
Hikaru played the match to the end before he looked at Akira.
"Who called?" Akira asked.
Hikaru looked back at the board and reached out to touch the last black piece he'd set. "This... is the last game I played with my grandfather." He picked up the black stone between a thumb and finger. "I was supposed to play him tomorrow." The stone rolled almost hypnotically between the two digits. "Now I..." He didn't say anything more.
Akira's eyes widened as comprehension sunk in. "Your grandfather's... gone?"
"Like Sai," Hikaru said quietly, still looking at the marvel of a stone he held.
One Precious Thing
by K. Huntsman
first released 25 December 2003
Hikaru was tall and lanky and somehow his suits never looked quite natural on him. He always looked like a kid playing at being a grownup. But his expression was anything but childish as Akira wrapped his tie around itself and snugged the knot up to Hikaru's collar.
"You don't have to come," Hikaru said finally. "They'll be happier if you don't."
"You'll be happier if I do," Akira retorted. "Aside from which, I liked your grandfather. I want to pay my respects to him." The elder Shindou had virtually adopted Akira as a second grandson over time. As Akira's own grandparents had all passed away when he was very small, he hadn't minded in the least. He took a step back and critically examined Hikaru. It was the bleached bangs, he decided, that gave the eternal impression of some kind of schism with the business attire. But Hikaru looked as proper in the suit as Akira could make him, and he knew his own suit looked well on him, so he decided they were ready. Hikaru really should have been wearing formal mourning kimono, but he didn't own any. While Akira did, he wasn't a part of the Shindou family and had decided to match his lover's level of formality by wearing a black Western suit of his own.
"Shall we go?" he asked.
"Yeah." Hikaru nodded and headed for the door of their room.
Isumi and Waya were waiting for them at the front door. While they hadn't been as close to Hikaru's grandfather, they'd met the old man several times and had insisted on being allowed to attend his memorial service. Hikaru hadn't argued. Privately, Akira thought it was a good idea. If Hikaru was going to have to confront his parents this afternoon, it was best that he be surrounded by his friends... by people who cared for him for who he was rather than what they expected him to be.
Akira found Hikaru that evening on the basketball court near their apartment building. The blazing sunset turned the other young man's bangs strawberry blond as he dribbled, a hollow metallic echo sounding inside the plastic ball each time it bounced. Then with a little jump and a particular hook of his wrist that Akira had yet to figure out how to duplicate, he sank a basket from several feet away.
"He left everything to you," Akira said as Hikaru went after the ball. He'd been in the apartment since they'd all returned, parsing through the legal language of the packet of documents that the lawyer had pressed on Hikaru.
"I don't want it," Hikaru said, face determined as he returned to his position, turning his back to Akira. "All I want is Sai's goban from the storehouse. My parents can have everything else."
"I'm sorry," Akira said, walking closer. "I'm sorry it went like that."
"Not your fault. I should've known--shouldn't've hoped."
Akira knew that people thought he was cold sometimes. If they had seen Hikaru's face at that moment, though, Akira thought, they would have known that his reserve had nothing on Hikaru.
The other side of passion was ice.
"Just give them some more time--"
"I've given them five years, Akira," Hikaru snapped, turning to face him, lowering the ball held in both hands. "They're not going to change. They're never going to change. They hate me, and that's that."
Akira didn't say anything, just walked closer.
The crack of Akira's palm across his cheek was like lightning. Hikaru held a hand to that cheek, dazed, as he looked at his lover, whose face was contorted by anger now. "You're just giving up?!" Akira demanded. "You're quitting without even trying? Fine, be that way! I thought the Shindou Hikaru I know was stronger than that!"
It had been so very long since he and Akira had yelled at each other and meant it. Hikaru opened his mouth to yell back, then felt the impulse quietly die in his chest.
Akira was right. Hikaru had never given up on his parents before Didn't everyone say how he never gave up on anything? Well, they tended to use other words, like "pig-headed" and "stubborn," but the result was the same.
Akira was right; giving up was too easy.
"Sorry," he muttered. Akira stared at him. He supposed he didn't say he was sorry very often. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Look, you're right. I shouldn't give up. So I won't."
Akira was still staring at him. "Who are you," he asked quietly, "and what have you done with Shindou Hikaru?"
Hikaru scooped up the basketball that rolled at his feet and aimed it at Akira.
Akira smiled.
Hikaru smirked. "Game?" he offered.
"Oh no," Akira refused. "I always lose."
"That's because you suck."
"I do not suck! I'm just not a dumb jock like you."
"Face it, Touya, you have no coordination whatsoever once you're off the Go board."
"I have plenty of coordination!"
"Then prove it!"
"Fine!" Akira snatched the ball from Hikaru's hand, turned towards the basket, eyes blazing, and threw the ball. It sailed through the burning air in a clean, pure arc, barely touching the net as it fell neatly through the hoop and bounced on the tarmac.
Akira stared.
Hikaru laughed delightedly. "Man, if only I'd known all I have to do is get you riled up to play well, we'd've been kicking Waya and Isumi-san's asses for months now!"
"Did I just...?"
Hikaru whooped and spun his shocked lover around. "I knew all that one-on-one training would pay off!"
It wasn't until much later, well into the night, that the subject of Hikaru's inheritance came up between them again.
"You should keep it," Akira opined. "He left it all to you because he loved you."
"I know. I just... I like living here, with you and Waya and Isumi. Grandpa's place is so far away from the Institute."
"You don't have to live there... you could rent it out."
"Put all of Grandpa's stuff into the storehouse and lock it up?" Hikaru thought about it.
"It'd be a good source of income."
"I already have a good source of income," Hikaru pointed out. "Kicking your ass on the Go board."
"You just wish, Shindou. In any case, owning property never hurts."
Hikaru ended up drafting all three of his housemates into helping him clean out the house so it was rentable. He also phoned Akari, asking her to tell his parents what he was planning to do with it. "Tell them if there's anything they really want we'll be packing it all up and putting it in the storehouse on Sunday," he said as well.
Akari sighed over the line. "Why can't you just tell them yourself, Hikaru?"
"Akari, you were there at the memorial service, weren't you?"
She sighed again. "I just wish they weren't being like this."
Hikaru smiled thinly. "That makes two of us," he admitted, looking up at Touya. Silently his lover tapped his wristwatch. "I've got to go, Akari--"
"I'll stop by on Sunday," she broke in. "I'll make lunch boxes and come and help clean, okay?"
Hikaru felt his smile stretch into a real one. "That'd be great. You make the best lunch boxes. I'll see you Sunday, then." He hung up the phone. "Satisfied?" he asked Akira.
"Perfectly. Come on, we'll be late for the study group."
Hikaru was examining the loft in the storehouse to see if anything could be shifted so they'd have more space to put boxes when he felt a shadow behind him. He whirled, his heart beating fast, a half-buried hope--
Akira looked solemnly at him. "It's here, isn't it?"
"Y-yeah." Hikaru faced away again, going to the chest to his left. He opened it, lugged out the heavy old goban and set it down on the ground between himself and Akira.
Akira dropped to one knee opposite him, running a single finger across the board. Though its sides showed its age, the playing surface of the board was silken, its grainlines smooth. Hikaru had made a point of cleaning it every few months. "Shuusaku's board. Sai's board." His eyes, dark teal in the dusk of the storehouse, slanted up to meet Hikaru's. "Is it coming home with us?"
Hikaru caught his lower lip between his teeth and thought about the question. He didn't want to risk the board getting stolen out of the storehouse, but... did he really need it?
It wasn't as though there weren't already two gobans in the apartment, one in his and Akira's bedroom, the other in the bedroom Waya and Isumi shared. Did they really need a third? Was there even room for a third?
He reached out to the board and traced remembered designs on it. Shuusaku's blood. Sai's tears. They were gone now, the marks, but he still knew their patterns. He could almost feel them beneath his fingertips. The wood, cool from long storage, warmed quickly beneath his touch.
Hikaru's long blond bangs hid his eyes as his fingers moved over the board's surface. Was he remembering games played against his master? Akira couldn't know.
"It's precious to you, isn't it?" Akira asked. The goban would be coming home with them. He'd known that all along. Sai might well have given Hikaru his life, he'd shaped so much of what Akira's lover had become.
That first meeting in the salon, so long ago... Hikaru had changed so much since then that he didn't even seem like the same person. Only the hairstyle (touched up by Hikaru once a month to keep his roots from showing yet somehow his treated hair was even softer than Akira's) remained the same. If Hikaru had ever let his hair go all dark, in fact, Akira doubted he'd even recognize that boy and this man as the same person.
Hikaru looked up, meeting Akira's eyes. "It is," he acknowledged. "But it's not the most precious thing."
Akira blinked. "But it's Sai's board."
Hikaru nodded, leaning back. "I never told you why I started wanting to play Go, did I?" he inquired. His tone was odd, holding something soft that Akira couldn't quite identify.
"Because of Sai--"
Hikaru shook his head. "Because of you."
"Me?" Akira blinked and felt stupid. "Why me?"
"We were, what, twelve when we met?" Akira nodded. "I was a kid. I really didn't do anything well and no one ever expected anything of me. You would've winced to see my grades. Then Sai came along and I ended up having to play Go for him to keep him happy, and I met you. And you blew my mind."
"How?" Akira asked.
Hikaru exhaled a long breath and leaned forward again, his fingers touching the board's surface. "You were so serious. You were like an adult, but you were still a kid like me. I mean, you cried after that second game. It hurt you. I'd never seen anyone my age who had anything matter that much to them. I wanted to have something like that. I wanted... meaning."
"I inspired you?" At some point, Akira found, he'd slipped into seiza style. He and Hikaru were facing one another across the board as though in a game.
Hikaru smiled. "Akira, you gave me meaning. I defined myself by you, and thus by Go. Sai taught me, Sai trained me, and, yes, Sai is very important to me, but Sai is not that which is most precious to me. You are."
Akira felt like he couldn't breathe.
Hikaru leaned across the board and touched his lips softly to Akira's. Drawing back, he smiled again. "After all, 'eternal rivals'."
"Shindou! Touya!" Waya yelled up the stairs, "quit making out."
"We're not making out!" Akira yelled back automatically, snapping out of his Hikaru-instigated trance.
"Good," Waya called back. "Where the hell are the boxes, and Shindou, your mom's here."
Hikaru blinked. "My mother?"
Hikaru went to the stairs and down them, followed by Touya. Hikaru's mother stood behind Waya in the doorway of the storehouse, her hands held quietly together. She seemed either nervous or upset. It was hard to tell from her expression with the way she was backlit.
"The boxes got put in the living room," Akira reminded Waya, who took the hint and left, though not without a long sidelong look at Hikaru's mother.
"Mom," Hikaru greeted her warily when Waya was back inside the house.
"Hikaru," she replied, nodding. "And... Touya-san?"
"Shindou-san," Akira replied. Hikaru saw the hint of a bow in his peripheral vision.
"I hope you don't mind... I'd thought I'd come help you sort out Father's things," she said, looking older than Hikaru remembered even from a week before. "There were some things he especially wanted you to have." There were dark circles under her eyes. "Your father doesn't know I'm here," she admitted. "He wouldn't be pleased."
"I'll bet," Hikaru muttered darkly. The words his father had said at the service...
"Shindou-san," Akira said, stepping forward and taking Hikaru's hand in his, "can you accept this? Us?"
She looked like a spooked deer about to run, but something in her, the same stubborness that probably ran in every member of Hikaru's family, made her straighten up instead. "I'm trying," she said. "I just... I need some time." Her eyes were big and desperate, and for the first time Hikaru realized he was an adult with the power to hurt his parents.
Hikaru thought about the goban up in the loft.
The wrong move or the right one made all the difference between a game of shidou-go and all-out slaughter.
Sai had taught him that, one of the very first lessons.
Sai had taught him that by breaking Akira. There was slaughter, and then there was... teaching.
"You'll have as much time as you need," Hikaru said to his mother.
Author's Schism
Thanks to Aishuu, who helped me figure out my unease with the original phrasing of the ending, and thanks also to Jeanne, my best feedbacker, who constantly pokes at me for more fic.