Pa-chi. Pa-chi.
There was a friendly silence over the board, both players concentrating on their stones and the patterns that formed. There were two observers: Sai's blue-and-yellow songbird, and the black-and-gold one that had appeared shortly after Hikaru's arrival. Engrossed in their game, neither of them noticed when a third person came and sat down in the grass. The newcomer and his animal, a feline creature with black fur and yellow, human-shaped eyes, watched the board intently.
The game ended, and the players began to count their territory. "White--104.5 moku, with komi. Black--105 moku." The boy sighed. "I'll beat you one of these--GAH!" Pointing at the watcher, he exclaimed, "Dammit, Touya! Stop doing that!"
"Hello, Shindo."
"Oh, Touya-kun. Hello."
"...Ah. I'm afraid I don't know you. And I'm not sure how you know me..." He paused, looking over at Sai. "Actually, given that you appear to be from the Heian period, I'm not sure how you know Shindo, either."
"I think Hikaru could probably explain that better than I could..."
"Oh, come on. Why me?"
"You know what's happened since..."
An awkward silence fell. Hikaru and Sai tended to skirt around that topic, avoiding it if possible. Finally, it was broken by Akira.
"I'm still here, you know."
"Fine. I'm not sure I can explain it either, but I'll try."
Akira tilted his head curiously. "Go on..."
"...Okay. This," Hikaru began, pointing, "Is Fujiwara-no-Sai." Akira sat quietly through the long explanation, made even longer by Hikaru's anecdotes.
"Then, the first time I played you..." Akira's face was a mix of confusion and disbelief.
Hikaru grinned. "Yep. That was Sai."
"...Shindo..." His expression darkened rapidly. Hikaru paled, bracing himself for the explosion. "Eep."
And, right on cue. "WHY THE HELL DIDN'T YOU LET ME PLAY HIM?!"
"Because you didn't know he wasn't me!"
"And what difference does that make?!"
"You were chasing him, but I was chasing you!"
"So?!"
"So, if you thought me and him were the same people, you'd never have acknowledged me, even when I was playing and not him!"
"That's incredibly selfish, do you know that?!"
"I wanted to play, too! You know how it feels, you're as obsessed as I am!"
"That's no excuse for keeping another person from playing!"
"I let him play as often as I could! Someone would have noticed if my playing style changed to something completely different at random times! And, oh, what do you know, Shindo's alternate playing style happens to be identical to that of sai, the mysterious 'Net Go player! You noticed anyway!"
"…"
Hikaru couldn't help but feel a small sense of satisfaction at the won argument. Lowering his volume, he continued, "Anyway, does that really matter? We're all here now. You can play as much as you want. So can he. So can I. We can all play. And we can find other people to play, too. Just think about it!" His face lit up with childish excitement. "This place has every person who's ever existed! And we've got eternity!"
Akira's eyes slowly widened as he realized what this meant. "We can play… Everyone. Everyone who's ever touched a goban. All the great players."
"See?" Hikaru was grinning manically now. "Isn't it great?"
"Everyone…" Akira seemed lost in thought, as if there was an idea just on the verge of becoming a thought. He looked over at Sai. "Fujiwara-no-Sai, your name was?""Yes, that is my name."
"Sai-sensei…I know someone who desperately wants a rematch with you."
"That was… interesting." Hikaru shook his head, trying to clear the sense of wind rushing past. "What was that? Teleportation or something?"
"No," answered Akira and Sai simultaneously. Sai continued, "The afterlife is a very large place, so there has to be a way to move quickly. That was it."
Hikaru considered this. "Takes a hell of a lot of getting used to."
"It does." Sai and Akira agreed.
Hikaru turned his attention to the area now in front of them. A traditional-style Japanese house, it stood in sharp contrast to Sai's wild grassland. "Somehow, it doesn't surprise me that this Is Touya-sensei's." He glanced at Akira. "Especially because it's an exact replica of your place."
"It is rather obvious. Shall we go in?"
"You're sure it's okay?" Sai looked slightly nervous.
Akira nodded. "Otou-san will not be expecting you, but I hardly believe that he will be opposed to my bringing you here. You are his rival."
"Ri…val…" Sai spoke the word slowly, as if he didn't quite understand it. "He won't be angry?"
Both Akira and Hikaru blinked at this. "Why would he be angry?" They spoke together.
"I'm young. Younger than him, anyway … And I won against him…" Normally bright, the spirit's eyes darkened slightly. He looked away.
Hikaru figured it out first. "You're thinking of the Cheating Bastard, aren't you?" He glared at Sai. "You really need to forget about him, because he is a Cheating Bastard. He is not and never was your rival. Maybe he could have been, but he's not, because no one who cheats—" Hikaru spat the word— " can be anyone's rival. Your rival is Touya Meijin. Nobody else. The fact that you were born about a thousand years apart has nothing to do with anything." His expression morphed briefly to thoughtful, then a kind of predatory grin. "Hey, that reminds me. Cheating Bastard'll be here too… I'd like to take a few chunks out of him."
"Cheating Bastard?" asked Akira. Sai and Hikaru glanced at each other.
"You explain," said Hikaru. "It's your story."
Sai sighed. "It's something I'd rather not discuss."
"Feh," muttered Hikaru. "Well, I don't know that much about it except for what you told me, and somebody's going to have to explain it at some point, so it might as well be now and it might as well be you, because you were there."
"I suppose so…" Sai started, quietly at first, to explain about his status in the Heian court, and his might-have-been rival. Akira's expression darkened slowly as it went on, morphing into a full-on snarl. When Sai reached the part of the explanation that detailed the cheating itself, Akira couldn't keep quiet.
"The—bastard! " he hissed. "No one should even be capable of cheating like that. And then claiming that Sai-san did it." He paused for a moment, face becoming eerily emotionless. "Shindo."
"Yeah?"
"I believe you wanted to, I quote, 'take a few chunks out of him'?"
"Hell yes."
"Can I help?"
"…First we have to get Sai his rematch."
"Of course."
Hikaru grinned at Sai. "Now that that's settled, let's go in."
Sai smiled back, slightly nervously. "Yes. Let's."
A/N: For those of you who find these things incredibly annoying, I'm not planning on adding many. I just think I should explain something about this afterlife:
Each soul has a space. They rearrange themselves—weather, wildlife, furnishings, general landscape—depending on how a soul is feeling, or how the soul wants it to be. "Young" souls tend to hang around on the space of someone familiar to them until they have the afterlife mostly figured out.
Each soul also has an animal. These animals need not necessarily be existing animals, like Akira's human-eyed cat. The animals are a manifestation of the soul, although they have a certain amount of self-awareness (hence Sai's bird being able to play with a different style from Sai's own.) Generally, their actions mimic those of their souls—e.g., while Hikaru and Akira were arguing, Hikaru's bird and Akira's cat were having a peck/claw fight. They are also not subject to the laws of spaces—they do respond to their souls, although not always, and not necessarily by mimicking.
As to Hikaru's behavior—I may be digging my own grave in pointing this out, but oh well. Technically, he should be acting like an old man, because that's what he was. The only explanation I can give for why he's not is morphic resonance. Hikaru feels like a twelve/thirteen year old, so that's how he acts. (Plus, I don't even know how to begin writing Old!Hikaru.)
