Notes: For lj user=aishuu as a birthday present. You requested it, and now you've got to read it. Hahaha! Hope your day is going well. ^_^ -
Yuuko looked up from her glass of water (as Watanuki had denied them all alcohol for dinner) and stared pointedly at the man who had walked in. Generally, people wanting wishes granted did not come at meal time, but this man had done just that. It occurred to her that the man must have a kind of life where meals don't always come at the same time from day to day.
"Hello," he called out, and she set down her glass and walked toward him. He was a man with a darker complexion than her own, but with pale hair for a Japanese man, and an awful white suit. He was looking around at everything in her home, and then he looked at her and she stopped. This man- she's never seen him before. But, those eyes were very familiar. iClow.../i
"I noticed your shop from the road. It says you grant wishes?"
She held her chin up and deigned him with the upturn of a corner of her mouth: the closest thing she gave her clients to a smile before hearing their wish. "I am the Time-Witch who does just that. What is your wish?"
He took off his glasses and reached into his pocket for a handkerchief which he began to polish his lenses with. "I want to play Sai."
"Sai?" She glanced at him once more, and Clow's expression seemed to pulse as she touched on the elements she remembered. This expression held no smile, though. What it held were answers. By gazing at him, she knew him now. He was a talented go player, and Sai... He had been a spirit of unrest centered wholly on the game. How had this man come to know of the spirit when she saw no such power in him? Some other force, perhaps; one she had yet to meet. "You can play Sai one more time. But, it will cost you a lot. I require something that is equal to the wish being granted. You know how badly you want your wish granted, and you know what else you care for just as much."
He pushed his glasses back on and tucked the handkerchief away. "Can't I pay you instead?"
"Money is worthless to people who have it." She looked outside and watched the sky grow darker as he stood there, silent.
"I'll come back," he said. Before she could turn her head back around, he was out the door. She took her seat at the table again and smiled warmly as Watanuki brought her a glass of beer and her dinner; reheated.
It was only the next day when the man was back. It was later on, though. He had probably seen he had been interrupting the previous evening. She was drinking in the back yard under the moon when he approached. "May I have a glass?"
She grinned a bit at him. "Sure." She whistled loudly and shouted over her shoulder, "Watanuki! Bring another glass and more alcohol!" She chided herself for letting herself become familiar, but he was so like an afterimage of Clow that she felt her judgement lapse. He was the white to her black in a game of chess, but at this moment, they were both novice players. She hoped he had come to a decision.
They drank for a while and looked at the stars that shouldn't have been so visible considering the number of street lamps just outside the grounds. But he didn't question it, and she knew how it all worked. When he finished off a third glass, he set his glass down heavily and turned to her. "I know what you want from me."
Setting down her own glass, but with a light touch, Yuuko poured the last of the beer into her own. He'd had enough. "It isn't what I want from you. It's what you have to give me to make me be able to grant your wish."
He grasped at the back of his neck and massaged the flesh there for a moment. "Is it worth it?"
"I cannot know that answer."
He grabbed her glass and drank half the contents before setting it down quickly and nodding. "Yes. Do it."
She hesitated. He was drunk, and questioning... But, she knew herself and knew the place she lived, as well. There was something here to bring out the truth in everyone, even herself. He knew the consequences, and made the choice anyway. "Tonight," she said as she pulled a packet from her pocket, "burn this sage before you go to bed. Sai will meet you in your dreams and your game will commence."
"Can't it wait until tomorrow night?"
Touching her finger to the rim of her glass, just where his lips had touched, Yuuko shook her head. "That will be too late. The transaction will be made tonight. It is your choice whether you accept what I give you, but I must take what you intend to give leave of."
"I don't want to play him drunk. I... I feel certain I've played him drunk before and I couldn't enjoy it."
"I'm sure that when you leave here, you'll feel better, and certainly on top of your game. That, too, is part of your wish, isn't it?"
He stood up to go and she joined him. There was a moment where she wanted to tell him that he might regret his wish, but he grabbed her shoulder and pressed a kiss near the corner of her mouth she'd first smiled at him with. As he left, she sat back down and sipped slowly at the last bit of her drink. She could almost taste him there-- in the corner of her mouth-- when she went to lick away the last drop. She didn't bother Watanuki to get her another bottle. She got it herself and didn't make it out of the wine cellar before opening it up and having the bottle one-third gone.
Two days later, it was in all of the papers. He'd jumped off the roof of the Go Institute. He'd left his shoes sitting at the top, and under one of the soles was a note claiming that he'd found Sai, though few of the papers knew who "Sai" even referenced.
When Watanuki came home from school that day, Yuuko sidled up to him. "Do you know how to play go, Watanuki-kun?"
He glared at her and went for his apron in the kitchen. "I do, but I'm pretty bad at it. Why?" He raised an eyebrow so it made his glasses look cock-eyed.
"I merely wanted to see how well I played. I used to be pretty good."
Beginning to peel a daikon, Watanuki's shoulders visibly relaxed. "I guess I could call over *that* guy for you, then. He knows all of that old stuff. He's already an old man, whether he knows it or not."
iAnd what a pretty, young wife he has,/i Yuuko thought as she watched Watanuki tie a bandanna around his head as he started to cook in earnest.
She had a go ban lying around here somewhere, perhaps in her treasure room, from the days when she used to play Clow, before... But Clow was gone, and had been for quite some time. She wondered how many of his parts had been scattered around as different souls. The biggest part of him had gone to where the cards where, but this one piece... his go... had stayed near her.
Before even mentioning alcohol, Yuuko asked Watanuki to have Doumeki come over to play go. She wanted to feel that power through her own fingers, for once, instead of admiring it in another. A piece of him had come back to her, and it was one that would never leave.
The End.