His Name
by K.Huntsman
first released 20th November 2002
"His name was Fujiwara no Sai."
Akira looked up to see Shindou Hikaru standing in the doorway to his bedroom, hands at his sides. He met Akira's gaze firmly, though his own gave away nothing.
It took Akira a moment to realize what Shindou had just said--to process the fact that Hikaru was finally fulfilling the promise he'd made nearly two years before and telling him about the mysterious Sai, whose shadow he had seen within Shindou himself. Akira sat up slowly, turning to face Shindou.
"Tell me about him," he invited.
Hikaru stepped into the room, closing the door behind himself. The firm click of the latch gave Akira hope, even though Shindou settled on the far side of the Go board from him. An index finger bearing the calluses of holding Go stones every day traced across the wood. "He was my best friend, and my teacher. I'd never've started playing Go if he wasn't obsessed with it."
Akira suppressed a flash of jealousy--he was supposed to be Shindou's best friend.
"He was a courtier from the Heian era. He taught the emperor Go." That threw Akira for a loop. Was Sai a split of Shindou's personality after all? But, no, Hikaru was going on, and so he listened. "The emperor's other Go master, though, told the emperor that there was no need for more than one instructor at the court. He and Sai played a match. He cheated, and Sai lost. Sai drowned himself in disgrace." Shindou's eyes were lowered. He kept tracing the lines of the board, then stopped and looked back up at Akira.
"When I was in sixth grade, I was rummaging through the attic in my grandfather's storehouse. I found a Go board there, one with bloodstains only I could see. It had belonged to Honinbou Shuusaku, Sai's last pupil. Sai... woke then, I guess you'd say. He became my own personal ghost." Shindou's eyes were defiant. He knew, had to know, how crazy his story was in this modern age. But Akira had been right there for most of it. He could see how the pieces fit.
"So when I was playing you..."
"You were playing him."
"Until that match, the tournament."
Shindou nodded. "I wanted to play you."
The pieces all fit. Perfectly. "What happened to him?"
Lips narrowed and eyes glanced away. Akira could see the pain. "He vanished. I didn't even notice. I was too caught up in my own life, until he and I were in the middle of a match and I looked up and he was just... gone." There was a soft hitch in Shindou's voice, controlled but still there. It must have hurt a lot.
"Was that why you quit playing?"
Shindou nodded. "I thought he was mad at me... I'd been so selfish about playing myself all the time. I thought if I showed him I could stop playing for a while, he might come back."
"But he didn't."
Hikaru looked up at him again, gray eyes holding a quiet knowledge. "He didn't. He--what's the word--transmitigated?"
"Transmigrated."
Shindou nodded. "He's still here, but not like before. He is the game."
Akira could understand that. "He's in you."
"Yeah. Thus the fan."
They ended up on opposite sides of the board as always, playing a quiet game. It was no intense passionate match, as so many of theirs tended to be, but rather one whose moves were filled with longing and soft sadness. Akira watched the pattern develop, black and white, until he worked up the courage to say, when it was his turn, "You came back."
Shindou blinked and looked up at his face. It was all over his expression--unlike Akira he was no good at hiding what he felt--that he was surprised. "Why wouldn't I?"
Akira set his stone, using the time the move bought to consider how to answer. He settled on "Most men would run at the first sign of another man's interest in them." And his "first sign," a kiss and a blurted confession, had been incredibly, inexcuseably, painfully awkward and embarrassing. He'd felt just like a schoolgirl from a overwrought girl's comic book.
"I'm not most men," Shindou retorted automatically, then blushed to the roots of his bleached bangs as he realized what he'd said and how it might be interpreted. He reached for a stone, fumbling momentarily before recovering and setting it down on the board with a distinct pa-chi sound.
Akira decided to go easy on him. "I didn't expect you to be like me," he said, studying Shindou's move. "I'm not expecting anything. Really, I shouldn't have even told you." He set his answering stone down.
Shindou's eyes were hidden beneath his bangs as he studied the board. He took a long time about it. "It's not right," he said finally, selecting a stone.
"What's not right?"
"You shouldn't have to be alone," he replied. Hikaru's eyes raised back to Akira, full of fire and determination. The white stone was slapped down on the board and Akira automatically looked at it. He froze. The play and the words were the same, one of those patented Shindou Hikaru moves that came out of the blue and threw you off your game plan, altering your entire world.
Waya Yoshitaka blinked as Shindou pulled a folded-up section of the newspaper out of his backpack and opened it. He craned his neck a little to see what it was. "Classifieds?" he asked.
Shindou nodded, absently taking a drink of his soda. "I'm looking for an apartment," he explained. "My mother's kicking me out."
"What? Why?" Yoshitaka demanded.
Hikaru shrugged, not looking up. "She doesn't like something I'm doing." And that was an avoidance if Yoshitaka had ever heard one, but he decided to let it slide.
Isumi slid in next to Yoshitaka, setting his tray down. "What's Shindou doing?" he asked.
"Apartment-hunting."
"They're all so expensive," Shindou mourned.
Inspiration struck. "Hey, why don't the three of us get one together? I'm getting sick of my place. It'd be fun to live with friends."
Shindou lowered the paper and stared at him. "Share an apartment?" he asked.
"You don't have to say it like it's a death sentence!" Yoshitaka raged. He picked up his own soda and sucked furiously through the straw.
"It's not too bad of an idea, actually," Isumi said, sounding thoughtful. "If we got an apartment together, we could get something larger for less money each. Maybe even something more convenient to the Institute. May I see that paper, Shindou?"
Hikaru handed it over and picked up his burger, began eating while Isumi scanned the ads.
"Hmm," Isumi said thoughtfully. "What do you think about this one?" He tilted the folded paper towards the two of them, finger tapping at one ad. Yoshitaka took the paper and read it closely.
"Less than I'm paying right now," he decided, handing it off to Shindou, who took it and swallowed what he was chewing. He nodded.
"I think I can afford that. So do we call them up, or...?"
The apartment was perfect. Two bedrooms and a living room that connected to the small balcony and kitchen, it was on the third floor of its building and looked out over a pedestrian street. It was within the budget the three of them had allotted to rent and only one subway stop from the Institute. The landlord was willing to let them have it immediately, but Waya and Isumi still had a few weeks to finish out on both of their leases, so Hikaru moved in first and swallowed the first month's rent. His budget at this point could cover it.
His mother hadn't been kidding when she'd said that he wasn't allowed under her roof another day, so until they'd closed on the apartment he'd been crashing in Waya's tiny space. Having his own room again (even if it was much the smaller of the two, and about half the size of his bedroom at home) was a luxury Hikaru enjoyed. Especially the closing door and the fact that if anyone came in he'd hear their key in the lock.
Touya spent a lot of evenings with him those first few weeks, playing Go and laughing at his attempts at domesticity. He even gave Hikaru a cookbook as a half-mocking housewarming gift. Hikaru was tempted to throw it at him, but in the end was forced to admit to himself that he really did need help in that area.
Touya, of course, was good at cooking. Life just wasn't fair.
Still, Hikaru decided that things were going well. He had hopes that his mother and father would eventually come around, and his grandfather apparently could not care less who he was seeing.
Isumi Shinichirou looked at the filled section of the bookcase. The Tale of Genji? He pulled it out and flipped the book open, then froze in shock.
Classical Japanese? Shindou read classical Japanese?
"Isumi-san, should I leave these here?" Shindou set the second box of Shinichirou's own books down at the other end of the bookcase.
"Please." Shinichirou looked back at the book in his hands and closed it. "Shindou, is this yours?"
Shindou glanced at it. "Tale of Genji? Yeah." He took it back from Shinichirou's hands and settled it back in its place. "Why?"
"You read classical Japanese?" Hell, he couldn't do that, and he'd been through high school. Shindou'd quit formal schooling right after middle school.
"Yeah." Shindou nodded. "I'm going to go get the next box."
Numbly Shinichirou watched as Shindou left the room, then glanced back at the bookshelf. A couple comic books, a few modern novels, a whole row of Go books... and a section of classical Japanese literature. Apparently in classical Japanese. Waya came in then, bearing his own box of books. "What is it, Isumi-san?" he asked, setting it down.
Shinichirou waved his hand at the books. "Did you know Shindou read classical Japanese?" he asked.
"What? No way!" Waya grabbed one of the texts--The Pillow Book of Sei Shounagon--and opened it.
His jaw dropped.
"...real mastery requires concentrated effort, and it is true too that in every art worth mastering (though of course that word "mastering" contains all manner of degrees and stages) the evidences of effort are apparent in the results. There are two mysterious exceptions, painting and the game of Go, in which natural ability seems to be the only thing that really counts," Hikaru read quietly.
Touya Akira lay across the tatami listening to the liquid language of Shikibu Murasaki's magnum opus. "You really can read classical Japanese," he commented.
"'Course I can," Hikaru retorted with a snort, shutting the book. "Please. I lived with Sai every second for almost three years. And he was so goddamn happy when I'd get these books." He lay down beside Akira.
"I don't agree with the passage, though," said Akira, who had understood enough to glean the meaning if not the particulars.
"Me neither. He also thought the author didn't know her subject completely. I mean, there's talent, yeah, but you have to train it too. It's not an either-or situation."
Akira turned his head to look at Hikaru. "I'm sorry you got kicked out of your house," he said for what seemed like the thousandth time. It seemed like all his fault.
"Will you quit saying that? Look, it's not your fault, it's mine. Or my parents', really, but it's my life and I'll live it with who I want to. If they can't handle it, that's their problem. They'll come around eventually."
"You could have lied."
Gray eyes met Akira's. "No, I couldn't have."
And Akira understood that. It was one of the things he loved about Hikaru, his innate honesty both with and about himself. He didn't hide.
"Waya, will you go tell Shindou and Touya that dinner is ready?" Shinichirou asked, absently fishing a single strand of spaghetti out of the pot. It drooped limp from the fork and he bit through it, confirming that it was indeed perfectly al dente.
"Sure." The video game in the living room was put on pause and Shinichirou could hear the sound of the younger man getting up and going down the hall. He turned the stove off and grasped the pot carefully by its handle, pouring its contents into the colander in the sink. Steam rose as hot water and slippery noodles came into contact with cold plastic and stainless steel. He stirred the pasta aimlessly, then reached for the first of four plates he had stacked on the counter.
He was filling the third when Waya came back, unusually quiet. "Did you tell them?" Shinichirou asked, twirling a last few noodles onto the plate.
"No." Waya's voice was strange. Shinichirou looked up at him.
"Something wrong?" he asked, setting the plate down. Waya looked stunned.
"Shindou... and Touya..." Large-eyed and troubled, Waya was utterly unlike himself. That and the fragment made the source of his distress plain. Shinichirou considered how to proceed.
He settled on asking "Were they fucking?"
If possible, Waya went even more strange, mute as he shook his head 'no.'
"Ah, good." Shinichirou stepped past Waya and stuck his head out into the hall. "Shindou, Touya," he called, "stop making out! Dinner's ready." Then he stepped back into the kitchen and resumed dishing out the noodles onto the last plate.
By the time the two came down the hall, flushed and possibly embarrassed, the table was set.
Dinner was spaghetti and tea and both smelled good, but Akira had no appetite.
They knew. Shindou's roommates, his friends, their contemporaries--they knew. It hadn't been a joke when Isumi had called down the hall, it had been sure knowledge of what Shindou and Akira were doing.
Shindou's door had been open a crack. It was a mistake Akira was never going to make again.
Waya was looking shell-shocked, sneaking glances at Shindou and Akira. Isumi, meanwhile, was smiling bemusedly at Waya's reaction.
Shindou finally sighed and set down his fork. "Out with it, Waya," he invited in a casual tone, resting his chin on a fist, head tilted just slightly to one side.
"You--you two--are together!"
Akira let Hikaru take the lead; it was his home and his friends.
"Yeah," Shindou replied bluntly. "So?"
"Why?!" Waya demanded.
Akira exchanged a glance with Shindou. "I didn't think either of us was that repellent," he demurred.
"It's not that!" Waya slammed his hands onto the table. "Why are the two of you dating each other instead of girls?"
"I like Touya," Hikaru replied simply. For him it probably was as simple as that. It wasn't for Akira, but in the end it did boil down to something similar, so he let his phrasing mirror Shindou's.
"I like Hikaru," he said firmly. It took him a few minutes to interpret the three odd looks given to him. Then he realized he'd called Hikaru "Hikaru" aloud and not "Shindou." He felt his face catch fire and quickly dropped his gaze to his hands.
"But... why not Nase? Or that old girlfriend of yours, Shindou?"
"Akari?" Hikaru seemed gratifyingly surprised by the thought. "She was never my girlfriend." He picked up his fork again and twirled it in the sauce-covered noodles. "Besides, by now my mother's probably let her know I'm a faggot." Akira winced. "Sorry, Touya, but that's the word Mom used."
"Your own mother called you that?" Isumi looked and sounded horrified.
Hikaru shrugged nonchalantly.
"Don't you care?" Waya demanded, indignant on Shindou's behalf.
"Of course I care!" Shindou snapped, clattering his fork back down. "But there's nothing I can do to change their minds and I'm not going to pretend to be someone I'm not just to make them happy."
Isumi played with his own dinner, spinning fork in noodles, for a moment before he looked up at Akira. "You haven't told your parents yet, have you, Touya?"
"No," Akira replied. The mood grew quiet for a moment.
"Ah, hell," Waya finally said. "Just let us know if we need to start looking for an apartment for four, okay?"
And with that the entire issue was finished and accepted. After dinner they played a mini tournament, in which Isumi ended up the winner.
Hikaru walked with Akira to the subway station. It was cold enough that their breath misted in the night air. Talking of nothing and of Go, they walked side-by-side so close together that their hands brushed with every step.
Touya had called him by name.
It was definitely some kind of first. Even more, it seemed like it had been an honest slip of the tongue. Did that mean Touya thought of him like that, so intimately? Hikaru could count on one hand the number of people who'd called him by his given name since he'd finished school. And two of them had disowned him.
They walked into the empty station entrance together, then stepped over to one side to finish their few last sentences. Touya already had his pass in hand.
Like himself, Touya's given name had no kanji, only the katanaka alphabet. If Sai were still around as a ghost at this point, he might've pointed it out as another sign of a karmic bond, a red thread that bound their destinies together. Hikaru would've argued, of course; Sai had always made too much of such things. Sometimes, though, it felt like one more similarity between them, when there were so many things in which they were different. He tried out the name in his mind. Like his own name, "Akira" was pretty common, but the katakana spelling gave it a little bit of a specialness.
Names meant something. Especially when said in a special way... by a special person.
"Akira," he said, voice low, and gently touched his lips to the other boy's, not caring who saw them.
Author's Schism
This is my first Hikaru no Go fanfic, though I've been reading the series for years. It began in discussions with my Evil Friend Jane (all my friends are evil) about the "shougakusei no kenka" ("elementary school student fights") that Hikaru and Akira apparently start having fairly regularly after book 17. One of us came up with the quip line for Ichikawa of "Ah, young love" to Akira after Hikaru's stormed out one day. Which led to Akira standing shock still and playing sick for several days while the truth of those words worked deep inside him. Hikaru, upon hearing of Akira's sickness, got directions to the Touya home (as well as cookies for Akira-kun from Ichikawa-san ) and visited Touya. Who by that time couldn't lie to himself any more and wasn't really successfully able to lie to Hikaru either. So an accidental kiss and a totally clumsy confession later, Hikaru bolts. This story begins in media res the next time Akira sees him.
This was something of an experimental piece in my determination to imply a lot more than I showed. The entire little back-story above, as well as Hikaru's parents finding out and disowning him, is not in the story--only the after effects. Kudos go to Sandpanther (Kitty) and Starshadow (Shi) for doing a quick edit on this piece. Apologies to N-chan for (once again) nicking a bit of her style.
The part about Hikaru reading (and speaking) classical Japanese is pure conceit and delight on my part. I'm taking a class on The Tale of Genji this quarter, and the excerpt comes from the end of the "A Picture Contest" chapter, translation by Edward G. Seidensticker. I am also taking a course in the classical Japanese language, which uses excerpts from Genji and several other texts. It's utterly fascinating to me, and so I chose to set Sai as being a contemporary of Shikibu Murasaki, Shikibu Izumi, and Sei no Shounagon. It made for this great little scene in my head where the first time he saw The Tale of Genji in a bookstore Sai was so excited there were new chapters out. The rest is history.
Though it's not present in this story, I admit to being a terrible snob about accurate portrayals of historical relationships. The Hikaru no Go manga, though not as much as my beloved Rasen no Kakera manga by Tachibana Kaimu, or so many fanfics, makes terrible cultural mistakes when it comes to portraying Heian era male-female face to face interactions. Historically, high-ranking women spent their lives behind curtains. They were never to be seen by men, not even their fathers or sons or brothers. They did not move in with their husbands when married, but were rather visited by them instead. Polyamory was perfectly legal, it was a sign of low class to be caught standing up, and while, yes, they did have the six-foot-long hair, they usually took baths (dangerous things, baths) about once a month. Perfumery as much as poetry or Go was a fine art.