Hey all, so, I know I marked this as finished, and it still is, but many months ago, I got a review suggesting that I separate this into chapters. I didn't want to separate them into their actual chapters, because my chapters are quite short, but I did manage to switch it to three sections. I kept the chapter titles in because sometimes the time/place jumps would be weird without them. Thank you all for your wonderful reviews!
Chapter 1: The Looming Horizon
Touya Akira was far from happy. In fact, he was so far from happy that if a passerby were to glance at the eleven-year-old's normally unreadable face, they would describe it as particularly unhappy, or even angry. The reason for his unhappiness was the train that he was on, which was carrying him far away from his home, his family and, most importantly, his goban.
It just so happened that both his parents had to go away, no one who usually watched him was available and he was still considered too young to stay home on his own. Which was why Ogata-san was escorting him on a long train ride to the middle of nowhere, so he could stay for four weeks with grandparents he had never met, excluding the time when he was three months old.
His mother had tried to assure him that staying with her parents wouldn't really be all that bad, and he could even try to teach them go on the plastic foldable board he had brought with him. He would have brought an entire full-sized goban, but his mother had insisted that he needed room in his suitcase for clothes and other apparently necessary things.
Anyway, he didn't want to just teach go, he wanted to play go. He wanted to be challenged.
Touya tried to glare a hole through the window.
His only comfort was that there might be someone at the school he would be attending who played go, and maybe even a go club. He hadn't been able to find out, because the town where his grandparents lived was so far away from anything that he couldn't find any information about the school, let alone whether it had a go club.
It wasn't that he was really that far away from anything. Seeing as his grandparents did live in Japan, it was kind of hard to be far away from anything at all. As it was, he could always ask his grandfather to drive him the day-long car trip to the nearest relatively large town that might have a go salon, but part of him wondered if his grandparents even owned a car. From what his mother told him about her childhood, he wouldn't be surprised if everyone travelled around on foot or something.
He sighed deeply and closed his eyes, leaning against the window. This only earned him a slightly amused look from Ogata-san, who had been taunting him about his four mostly go-free weeks looming on the horizon. In a small, smothered part of Touya's brain, Touya wished that one day he could see Ogata-san faced with weeks of no go. With that guilty thought, Touya let the train lull him to sleep.
His grandparents picked him up at the station, presenting him with the first of probably many grandparent-ish gifts, a brand new bike. Touya was charming as always, accepting the gift – as well as the "oh look how much you've grown" fawning – graciously and courteously, as he always did. Though the appearance of the bike seemed to confirm his suspicions that he would not be travelling very far from town.
As for the town itself, it could probably be more accurately described as an ancient village.
Ogata-san patted Touya on the head with a big smile on his face.
"Good luck, Akira. Have fun."
Why Touya ever would have suspected he would receive some sort of comfort from Ogata-san was a mystery, but he was a bit surprised when the older pro simply got back on the train and continued on to one of his matches without properly saying goodbye. After all, Touya normally saw Ogata-san every week for the study group, and now he would be gone for four weeks!
Touya sighed and loaded his bags into the basket on the back of his new bike. It was really just luck that he knew how to ride a bike at all, and he was sincerely thankful for the fact that the first thing he did in this new place was not humiliating, such as falling off the bike.
He followed his grandparents down the dirt path that they for some reason seemed to think was a street. It would be a long four weeks.
Chapter 2: The Kid with the Bleached-blond Bangs
The first three days were awful. He had come on a Friday, so he would have to wait to officially meet his classmates, though he had certainly seen them whizzing by on their bikes. He wasn't too upset about not getting to know kids his own age, seeing as socializing with his peers wasn't exactly Touya's strongest point, but he wanted to know if anyone played go. He had met plenty of his grandparents' friends, and even some extended family he didn't know he had, but none of them played go. In a way, it was very surprising, seeing as go was, in fact, mostly played by the elderly.
It wasn't so much that he wasn't playing go. He had taught his grandparents, and so he played with them, but playing with absolute beginners wasn't going to be much fun for several weeks. He had to count on his schoolmates.
It was worse than he could've imagined. Not only did the school not have a go club, but no one even seemed to know what go was. That is, that's what they told him. After laughing and giving each other meaningful looks. Which seemed to mean they did know what go was, but they weren't telling him. But that seemed just too strange, and so Touya ignored the feeling.
The first class was so shocking that Touya almost forgot to worry about go. The class itself didn't seem to be in any order, on any specific subject, or even to be taught by a qualified teacher. Despite the fact that there seemed to only be seven children in the class, there was one absence, which the teacher seemed to ignore.
The second class of the day turned out to be taught by the same person, with the same students, in the same disorganized manner. It was in this class, though, that Touya met Shindou Hikaru for the very first time.
Halfway through the class, a kid with bleached-blond bangs stumbled, out of breath, into the classroom. In addition to the rather shocking appearance of his hair, though, the kid seemed to be covered in mud from the waist down. He didn't seem particularly out of breath, though the flushing of his face seemed to suggest that he had recently been running.
"What class is this?" The kid burst out, a worried expression on his face. "How late am I today?"
Most of the class started laughing. Only Touya, the teacher and some girl (Fujisaki?) stayed silent. The teacher waited till everyone quieted down, then addressed the newcomer.
"We are halfway through our second class, Shindou. Now why don't you explain to the class why you are late."
The kid, Shindou, looked a bit sheepish when he stuttered out, "I… fell into the river and had a hard time getting out. I'm sorry, sensei, I should have been more careful."
This brought on another round of laughs, this time with the joined insult of the teacher obviously trying not to start laughing himself. Only the girl who didn't laugh earlier (Touya was now pretty sure her name was Fujisaki) seemed concerned.
"Hikaru," she said, eyes wide, "you should walk on the other side of the street. You could have been hurt!"
"Yeah, yeah," said Shindou, lurching from the doorway to the seat between Touya and Fujisaki. He sat down with a bit of a squelching sound, dripping mud on the already-dirty floor.
Shindou took part in the class discussions only twice. Once when the teacher asked him to solve an arithmetic problem, which he got wrong, resulting in a lot of laughing and teasing, even though other people got some problems wrong too. The second time was when he corrected the teacher on the beginning of the Fujiwara family's monopoly on the regent positions of the ancient Japanese government. No one said anything, but it seemed like several people changed their notes to Shindou's answer.
Halfway through the class right before lunch, Shindou gave a little jerk and abruptly put his head down on the desk. No one paid him any notice. Touya gave Fujisaki a questioning glance, but she waved her hand dismissively at him. Five minutes later, Shindou raised his head from the desk and turned to Fujisaki, who handed him what appeared to be the class notes she had been taking.
By the time lunch started, Touya was thoroughly confused, and a little bit angry. He had never been a huge activist when it came to social justice, and when there was an anti-bullying campaign at his school back home, he had to skip it to attend his father's study session. Ironically, that action had earned him some bullying over the next few weeks. No, Touya wasn't the most active in that area, but he was smart enough to know unchecked bullying when he saw it. The only mystery that remained was what Shindou had done to 'deserve' this type of treatment.
So, when lunch began, Touya sat down in the midst of his small group of classmates and asked the general group "So what's wrong with Shindou that makes him not worth your time?"
It was what they had been waiting for. They all began talking at once, but Touya raised a hand to silence them. Somehow, he'd always been good at silencing people. He pointed at some random kid. "You tell me."
The kid took a deep breath. Throughout his entire speech, Touya was more and more shocked at how narrow-minded his peers were. So what if Shindou Hikaru had epilepsy? So what if he was a little strange in the head? Touya had been called strange before by kids at his school who thought he was a social failure because of go. He was a social failure because of go, but that was beside the point.
By the time the kid finished speaking, Touya was genuinely angry. He didn't want to really cause a scene, though, so he just picked up his lunch and walked over to where Shindou and Fujisaki were sitting. They looked up at him with questioning expressions.
"Sit with you?" he asked, too mad to really form complete sentences. They nodded silently.
"Why are you sitting with us?" asked Shindou. He seemed more fascinated by Touya than actually interested, as if Touya was some other species.
"Because everyone else is a loser." Touya said briefly. He was surprised by his own harsh judgment, but shook it off and resumed eating his lunch.
Fujisaki and Shindou glanced at each other and grinned. There was a moment of complete understanding between them, where they seemed to say "yes, we like this one," before they continued to discuss what appeared to Touya to be the court traditions of the Nobles of the Heian era.
Touya wasn't especially learned in this area of his country's history, but he attempted to participate. Shindou, on the other hand, seemed to know everything there was to know, and more besides.
"Where did you learn all this?" Touya asked, amazed.
"Sai told it to him." Said Fujisaki, a bit hesitantly. She was sitting across the table from Touya, and seemed to be giving him a specific look that was supposed to mean something, but Touya didn't quite know what it was supposed to mean.
Shindou's face lit up at the mention of Sai. He began to talk very quickly about the Fujiwara family and their importance to the growth of Japan. Touya didn't quite see this as being very relevant to his question, but his annoyance soon turned to concern when Shindou suddenly gave a little jerk and collapsed onto the table.
Fujisaki sighed and moved Shindou's head off of his lunch platter, wiping a bit of food from his forehead. "Don't worry," she said, "he does this all the time. You just have to give him a minute to wake up."
Touya nodded, thinking of his classmates' description of Shindou's epilepsy. "So, where did he learn all of that stuff?" he asked, "And who is Sai?"
"Sai is Hikaru's imaginary friend." Fujisaki replied. "Apparently, he's a ghost from the Heian period who lives in this block of stone near the river. Though it's not just a block of stone, it's a board of some sort. Some game Hikaru plays. Hikaru says that Sai used to teach it in the palace. Apparently, Sai taught him everything he knows. He's been visiting him since he was really young. I have no idea how he actually learned that stuff. I know Hikaru really well, and when he's not playing he's doing homework, and when he's not doing homework, he's drawing pictures of Sai. He says he wants to perfect the picture one day so I'll really know what Sai looks like."
"And I will perfect it!" Shindou declared, raising his head from the table. "I can show it to you too, um…" Shindou trailed off, leaving Touya to realize that since Shindou hadn't been in the morning classes, they had never been properly introduced.
"Touya." He said, extending his hand. "Touya Akira. Do you play go?"
Chapter 3: A Stone Goban
Most of what Fujisaki had said had gone unnoticed by Touya after she mentioned Shindou's game. Touya had made the connection between go and Shindou's game after Fujisaki had mentioned Sai teaching it in the palace. The little that Touya did know about the Heian period is that the Fujiwara family taught go to the Emperor. If his assumption was right, his weeks in exile may become more bearable.
Luckily for him, Shindou started bouncing with incredibly childish excitement. "Yes, go! He loves go! It's all he ever wants to do, do you play it, and will you play with him?"
Shindou's expression was so ecstatic that Touya had to fight down the urge to laugh, or maybe it was just his own hysterical relief. "Yes, I play go. Why don't you introduce me to Sai after school and I can play him then. I want to play you too, though. You play, don't you?" Touya had made the decision that the best way of dealing with Shindou's delusion of a ghost was to pretend that he actually existed. He had no idea if Shindou actually knew how to play go, or if he had just pretended that Sai loved it, but if he held such zeal for the game, it would be much more fun playing him, or even teaching him than it would be to play and teach his family members, who played just to appease his never ending need for go.
The day took forever to end. The classes seemed to drag on and on, covering the material they had already learned that morning. Or at least, it seemed that way.
By the time school finally ended, Touya felt as though he could run all twenty miles to the nearest go salon. But he knew the river wasn't quite that far away. He could easily ride his bike there in a few minutes.
However, in order to actually play go by the river, Shindou had to be there. And as Touya soon discovered, Shindou did not own a bike, and so they had to walk. When he thought about it, it made sense. Shindou passed out completely without warning at random times throughout the day. If he were to ride a bike, it would be extremely dangerous. Come to think of it, Shindou had probably fallen off the road anyway that morning, causing him to arrive so late and in such bad shape.
And so, if simply for common courtesy, Touya walked his bike to the river. He had wondered why Fujisaki always looked so stressed out around Shindou, but he was starting to understand why. The boy had no consideration for his own safety. If they walked over a bridge, Shindou walked on the railing. If there was a hill to the side of the road, Shindou would walk as close to the edge as possible. In all of Touya's eleven years, he had never been more stressed. No game of go could match this anxiety. Was this what it was like to be a parent? Touya groaned inwardly when he remembered his parents telling him that he used to constantly attempt to run into the street as a toddler. He would have to apologize for that when he got home.
True to his worries, Shindou did fall off the bridge. Luckily, he fell not into the deep gulley with sharp rocks that they were crossing over, but instead he fell on top of Touya. Touya had never been so happy to be knocked down. He didn't die! Touya thought ecstatically. But after that, he refused to let Shindou go anywhere near the edge of the road. That made Shindou get kind of mad, but he wasn't dead, so, who cared what Shindou thought.
By the time they actually reached the river, Touya was beginning to wonder if he would start graying at an early age. He had almost completely forgotten about the promised game of go, a shocking revelation that came only when he almost tripped over Shindou's goban into the river.
It was made of stone.
Touya stared. It was a goban made of stone. Not only that, but the stone pieces seemed to have faded from their original colors, making them hard to distinguish. It would be like playing almost one-color go.
But all of that was okay, because it was a goban, and Touya could play go on it. Shindou was sitting to one side, talking animatedly to thin air.
"Sai, this is Touya. He came from far away for a few weeks, and he called the kids at school losers, and he plays go! And he wants to play with you!"
Great. Touya thought. I forgot about the imaginary friend. Touya had never dealt with imaginary friends before, having never had one himself, and so getting used to pretending Sai was there would be difficult. He would have to figure out how to do this quickly, so Shindou wouldn't get offended.
"Touya!" His thoughts were interrupted by Shindou jumping into his line of sight. "This is Fujiwara no Sai. He's a go master from the Heian period." Shindou pointed to thin air, the childish grin back on his face.
Touya sat in seiza across the goban, bowing to his unseen opponent. "It's nice to meet you, Fujiwara-san." He said, as if greeting one of his father's friends.
This sent Shindou into a fit of giggles. "You can't just call him Fujiwara-san! He's just Sai! Anyway, why did you say that, he was in the middle of telling you something."
Touya flinched. It hadn't even been five minutes and he'd already blown his cover. Well, he thought, I might as well tell him.
Clearing his throat, Touya announced, "Shindou, I hate to tell you this, but I can't actually see Sai. Only you can see him. So you're going to have to mediate between us so that we can communicate."
Shindou stared at him for a long time, then turned to the patch of space he called Sai and seemed to listen to something. His face broke out into a smile again. "I get it! Sai says that because he's a ghost, not everyone can see him. Actually, I'm the first person to see him since Torajiro lived here!"
Touya's head snapped up. That name seemed familiar. Where had he heard it.
Shindou snickered. "Sai thought you might know him. Sai taught him go, too. You probably know him better as Honinbo Shuusaku."
Whatever Touya was expecting, it wasn't that. Sai had taught Honinbo Shuusaku? That couldn't be right, Sai wasn't real. Shindou probably made it up. Though there was one way to test it. When in doubt, play go, as Touya always thought.
It was an odd set-up. Shindou refused to play him, claiming that Sai really needed to play more than he did. Apparently, go was all Sai lived for. And so, Touya had to face his opponent without having an actual opponent. Shindou sat to the side, proclaiming that he would place Sai's stones, as Sai couldn't touch them. Touya had difficulty with both the practically identical shade of the stones, as well as the unnatural sound they made on the stone goban in place of a wood one. But all of these cares completely vanished from his mind after the first few hands. Sai- or Shindou, since Sai wasn't real- was incredible. He was accustomed to one-color go, but this was unlike anything he had ever seen, excluding perhaps his father. Halfway through the game, Touya decided that if he ever did believe in ghosts, he would believe that this was indeed the ghost that taught Honinbo Shuusaku. He had studied enough of Shuusaku's kifu to recognize that Sai's style of play was almost exactly the same. When Touya resigned, Shindou told him in a quiet voice that Sai thought he was very good.
It was all Touya could do to not grab Shindou and demand to know how he learned to play like that. It was completely impossible. No one in this town played go. It was possible that Shindou had somehow gotten hold of some Shuusaku kifu, self-taught himself how to read them, and then learned go from those, but no one could become this good by just reading kifu. Then again, Shindou wasn't exactly a normal person. Could his apparent handicap actually give him such skill? Touya had heard of people who for some reason mastered certain skills more than they should be able to.
All he could get out in the end was "How long have you been playing?"
Shindou thought for a while. "Well, I've only been playing for six months or so, since I refused to let Sai teach me before then, but Sai's been playing for around a thousand years, though the years where he couldn't actually play anybody probably don't count, so it's actually much much less."
Six months… Touya thought. It was too much. Too much skill for so little time.
His thoughts were interrupted again. "Sai wants to discuss the game. He was crying before, so he couldn't say anything, but he's calmed down now."
"Sai was crying?" Touya was confused.
"Well, sure. Go is what he lives for- well, er, lived for and died for, that is. He's been stuck playing me for such a long time it's probably a huge relief to play someone who actually knows the game a bit more. You should have seen him when I was younger and refused to play. He was so upset all the time." Shindou scrunched up his face in what seemed to be some kind of imitation. "'Hikaruuuuu! Why won't you play go with me?'" Shindou dodged an invisible slap and muttered something about how Sai owed him for bringing Touya.
The discussion of the game was almost as amazing as the game itself. Sai- Shindou, that is, didn't know about the komi, and his style of playing was very old. Touya managed to teach him some of the newer styles and how they changed the game. But other than that, Touya could feel himself getting stronger with almost every word that came out of Shindou's mouth. Shindou was a genius. A totally illogical, inexplicable genius.
They played several more games before Touya realized that he was very late getting home and his grandparents were no doubt very worried. He refused to let Shindou walk home by himself, though, since he was convinced that he would somehow die on the way back. Shindou had passed out several times in the middle of their games, and had one time very narrowly avoided hitting his head on the sharp corner of the board. As it was, he only passed out once on the way home. Completely at a lack of what to do, Touya picked him up- Shindou was rather small- and carried him for a while before Shindou woke up, slipped back down and continued walking. The whole time, he talked about how happy he was that Sai finally had someone to play. Touya had known that Shindou was a kind person, but he was struck by just how much he obviously cared about Sai. Though when he thought about it, other than Fujisaki, Sai was probably Shindou's only other friend.
Once they reached Shindou's house, Shindou insisted that Touya wait by the door so he could see one of the latest drawings of Sai. Shindou raced up the stairs, and it was all Touya could do to not find his parents and scream at them that it wasn't a good idea for Shindou to have to live in an upstairs bedroom. Didn't they know it was dangerous?
By the time Shindou finally came down the stairs, Touya was very anxious to get home. He had also realized that he had left his bike by the river, which he should have realized when he carried Shindou on the walk home. Saying a hasty goodbye, Touya took the drawing- Shindou said he could keep it- and raced back to the river. Once there, he unfolded the drawing and was shocked to find that Shindou was quite an artist as well. The man in the drawing was surprisingly realistic- albeit the fact that he was dressed as a Heian noble. The one thing that bothered Touya about the drawing was the fact that the man in the drawing was holding the stones correctly. If Shindou had learned go from kifu, he wouldn't know how to hold the stones. In fact, Shindou had placed the stones quite clumsily during their afternoon games.
Picking up his bike, Touya was just about to ride away when he thought he caught a glimpse of a figure sitting by the stone goban. A tall man with long hair and startling violet eyes, staring longingly at the empty goban, his hand attempting to pick up the stones he could not touch. The man in Shindou's drawing. Sai. But in a moment, he was gone. Touya shook his head. It must have been his imagination. But all the same, Sai's longing expression stayed with Touya all the way back home.
Chapter 4: The Difference Between Them
Over the next week, Touya and Shindou worked themselves into a pattern. Touya would meet Shindou on his way to school, and they would walk together. Because Touya walked with him, Shindou was almost never late. They would sit with Fujisaki at lunch and talk about Heian culture and drawing and go and Sai. Shindou could always talk about Sai. Then after school, they would walk to the river and Touya would play go games with Sai. He had asked Shindou whether his playing interfered with Sai's teaching Shindou, but Shindou assured him that both he and Sai enjoyed Touya playing more. Then they would walk back to Shindou's house, where Touya would leave Shindou at the front gate and head back to his grandparents' house.
It was surprising how quickly they got used to one another's presence. Touya had heard of those friends that just 'clicked' as the saying went, but he never had had one himself. It took him a long time to become close to a person his age- one of the reasons that he was not, in fact, close to anyone his age- but after just a few days, he felt like he had known Shindou all his life. Shindou was a very simple person, which Touya supposed helped. He was one of those people where the saying 'what you see is what you get' could be applied. If Shindou had something to say, he said it. No matter what. Even if it was something that no one wanted to hear. In a way, Touya relied on that. It was nice to have a friend who didn't have any secrets.
If there was one interesting character in the whole thing, it was Sai. Sai was similar to Shindou, but was obviously a completely different person. When Sai spoke, mostly to discuss their games, Shindou relayed his exact words, so he wouldn't accidentally leave something important out. Sai had a very different dialect than Shindou. Every once in a while, he would get sidetracked while talking about something and reminisce about some go game of his past. It didn't take Touya very long to realize that when Shindou had said that Sai died for go, he meant it literally. In fact, the stone goban they were playing on was supposed to be a marker of where the Fujiwara family had found the body of the young exile. Sai said that he had actually drowned a little farther up the river, but didn't really care where they put it.
Sai had a strange personality. He could either be a whining toddler, or a wise mentor. There was no in-between. Shindou had already told Touya that since he and Sai were already on first-name basis, Sai had started almost immediately calling Touya 'Akira'. Apparently after every game, Sai begged Touya for another game in the same whiny way he begged Shindou to play. Also according to Shindou, Sai often took advantage of Touya's inability to see him by hitting him on the head with his fan mid-game whenever Touya made a mistake.
Unfortunately, Touya didn't know that much about Shindou's condition. Nor did he know much about imaginary friends. He never had been one for psychology, and there had never been any reason for him to be interested in it. But now, he wondered. Was it really possible for Shindou to have invented a person as complicated as Sai? It was as if Shindou had a secondary personality that he had separated from himself.
It was unlike Touya to worry about such things. A person's go was all that mattered to him, that was all they were. But with Shindou… he wanted to know. He wanted to know who Sai really was and why he was there.
As it was, he spent little time with Shindou talking about things other than go. There were their lunches with Fujisaki, but Touya mostly let Shindou talk to Fujisaki by himself. He liked Fujisaki, but she scared him a little bit, mostly because she had cornered him after school one day and started crying, thanking him over and over for being Shindou's friend.
At the end of the first school week, Shindou told him that he absolutely had to come to his house the next day, since his mother made ramen on Saturdays. Touya had been vaguely aware that if Shindou cared about anything more than Sai playing go, it was ramen. He just hadn't really thought about it. The idea of spending the afternoon at Shindou's house alarmed him just a little bit. He'd have to deal with Shindou's parents for one thing, and it was doubtful that they were interested in go. Besides that, Shindou refused to play him personally. But in the end, he agreed to come.
As it turned out, Touya didn't really have to worry about Shindou's parents. They didn't say much, and didn't seem to be the right type of people to raise a high-energy, epileptic child. Even when Shindou managed to pass out face-first into his ramen bowl, halfway through explaining komi to his parents, it was Touya who moved his head to make sure he could breathe. He wasn't sure he quite liked Shindou's parents, though he did have the benefit of interacting for years with adults whom he liked on various levels. Personally, he thought he did a wonderful job of dealing with Ogata.
After dinner, Shindou went upstairs to get some stuff he wanted to show Touya. He would invite Touya upstairs, but apparently his room was too crowded for anybody else to come into it, so Touya sat awkwardly on the living room couch.
Shindou soon returned with blank and used paper, pencils, an old newspaper, a history book, a CD player complete with several CDs, a board game (not go), two stones from Sai's riverside goban and what looked to be several different books of manga.
"You read manga?" Asked Touya, at a loss of what else to say.
"You don't?" Countered Shindou.
"I could never get into them." Touya objected.
"Couldn't get into them?"
"They didn't interest me"
"They're all interesting!"
"I thought they were boring!"
"That's ridiculous!"
"They're not about go!" Touya finally exclaimed, exasperated. "I don't really do things not about go."
Shindou narrowed his eyes. "That," he said "is one of the saddest things I've ever heard. Even Sai does things not related to go. He was very interested in music and the arts."
That was an insult. Touya never thought he'd actually be offended by someone telling him he was obsessed with go, but Sai loved go more than anything else in the world. According to Shindou, Sai cried when he couldn't play go. So to be called even more narrow-minded than Sai was actually an insult.
Shindou glared at Touya some more. "Did you ever actually try to read a manga?"
Touya bit his lip. "Well… no, not exactly, but I read some summaries and they just didn't seem very interesting."
Shindou smacked his forehead, causing Touya to flinch and resist the urge to frantically ask if he was all right. "You take this and read it. You're going to enjoy it, that's an order. And while you read it, I'm going to draw you playing go, so that at least you can say that you played go while also reading manga."
It took all of Touya's concentration to not point out that just because someone drew something didn't mean it was happening, but then again, he was talking to the kid who had an imaginary friend who played go more advanced than most of the people Touya knew, so he decided not to say anything.
Shindou dropped a CD into the CD player and turned on some traditional court music- probably music that Sai had deemed close to Heian music- then sat down and started to draw. Without having anything else to really do, Touya opened the manga and began to read.
It was interesting, to be sure. Touya could understand why people devoted so much time to these things. Manga wasn't quite Touya's thing, though. He doubted he's get sucked in. After all, it might distract him from go.
"Touya, oi, pay attention." Shindou said thirty minutes later. "I'm finished with the drawing." Shindou handed him the piece of paper he had been working on.
It was without a doubt very skillfully drawn. Touya didn't exactly study himself in the mirror, but he could recognize that the drawing was detailed very accurately. The only surprising part was his expression. He had always assumed that he looked a bit like his father when he played go- the same serious, intimidating face. But this face looked more amused than intimidating. Did he really look like that?
"Sorry about the expression" Shindou said, seeming to read his mind. "I watch the game when you play Sai, and so I had to base your face off of what you looked like reading the manga."
They stared at one another for a moment before suddenly breaking out into laughter.
"Why are we laughing?" Touya said, gasping for air.
"No idea!" Shindou replied, laughing even harder.
By the time they had finished laughing, wiping tears from their eyes, Shindou was setting up the other board game. Touya glanced at the cover of the box- monopoly. He scowled at Shindou.
"I've heard of this game. People say it destroys friendships."
"You take what people say too seriously. The only reason they say that is because people get so into it that they get mad. You're going to be mad, because I'm going to make you go bankrupt."
"You most certainly will not!" Complained Touya, frantically trying to remember if he knew how to play monopoly.
By the time Shindou had discovered Touya did not, in fact, completely understand monopoly, they were already halfway through the game. From there, the game degraded into something other than monopoly, consisting of robberies, territorial wars and several acts of arson. They had gotten into so many shouting matches about which one of them had won the territorial wars that Shindou's mother ran into the room complaining about the noise, only to arrive just in time to watch Touya strike a match and set fire to one of Shindou's hotels.
They came to the conclusion that they should never play monopoly again.
As Touya got ready to leave, Shindou handed him the charred remains of Touya's houses and hotels. "I win."
"I hate you." Touya said.
"Hey, I knew you had a personality hidden in there somewhere!" Shindou said, grinning. "I should get a prize for drawing it out."
Touya turned up his nose and walked through the door. "I have no idea what you are talking about. I am an emotionless machine which only exists to play go."
"Yeah, yeah. See you on Monday."
Touya walked down the road, smiling to himself. Maybe Shindou was right, he should do things other than go. Though, destroying a game of monopoly wasn't exactly the type of thing he wanted to be interested in. He tried to keep himself from laughing when he thought of what his father would have said if he had seen the progression of the game.
Then his expression hardened. There was one thing he was sure of. That was who Shindou was. That happy if a little bit crazy child was Shindou Hikaru. And that left only one question- who was Sai?
