STEPPING STONES

1

your number one fan

By most sixteen year-olds' standards, Akira Touya was incredibly neat. His bed sheets were never tugged less than flawlessly straight, his newly-washed clothes never strayed from their proper hangers, and his parents never, ever needed to remind him to clean up after himself. Akira, after all, was not a child who tumbled into mud puddles or scuffed his new shoes against the cement. Instead, he busied himself combing his hair into impeccably shiny sheets or ironing the most minuscule creases out of his school uniform.

In some sense, Akira disdained errors in etiquette almost as much as sloppy mistakes on the goban. Realizing, at a very young age, how wholeheartedly most adults appreciated good manners, he had taken pains to perfect his genial smile and gracious speaking voice. In many cases, his diligence had paid off.

"Ah, the young Touya boy is so polite!" the grownups would whispered. "Why can't our own children be that refined?"

"Refined? Yeah right!" Shindou liked to retort. "Touya, you idiot, obsessive neat freaks like you make me look bad! Mom's always going on about how 'Akira doesn't bleach his hair' and 'Akira didn't drop of out school' and 'Akira doesn't leave his frickin' fan mail molding on the table for months'!"

"Maybe you should follow my example," Akira replied icily. "Don't you realize how irresponsible it is not to answer your mail?"

And because Akira Touya had propriety down to a precise art, and because Shindou winning any argument, no matter how trivial, was immensely annoying, Akira found himself hunched over the kitchen table far past midnight, his normally sharp eyes glazing over with exhaustion. Forcing back an unseemly yawn, the teen Go prodigy reached back towards his voluminous pile of mail and dragged out the nearest envelope.

Dear Touya-san, he read through bleary eyes, I'm your number one fan, and I have a very important question for you! The question is how do you get your hair so nice and shiny? My friend says that it looks girly, but I want to make my hair nice and shiny, too. Any secrets to share?

With a weary sigh, Akira yanked out a new sheet off his stationary pad and began composing a response. Dear Number One Fan, he wrote, rubbing at his eyes with his free hand, I would be glad to help you. My technique involves two bottles of shampoo, lemon juice, a handheld iron, and…

Several fistfuls of mail later, Akira's fatigue had only worsened.

Akira-kun! his current fan letter began in swirling red font. I think you are really sweet and cool! Your eyes are so pretty, and I love how you are always so nice on TV! Will you go out with me? I'm your number one fan!

Akira blinked several times before he was able to read the paper in front of him. Dear Number One Fan, he scrawled out at last, I sincerely appreciate the high esteem in which you hold me, but I am afraid that I must reject your offer. And no, it does not have anything to do with Hikaru Shindou. Please tell people to stop asking that.

There was a stream of letters along very similar lines, and Akira did his best to give each one a sufficiently coherent reply. He answered (as politely as possible) a couple more "number one fans" asking his opinion on the latest pro games, and a couple others telling him to hook up with Shindou. By the time Akira glanced up at the clock again, it was three hours later, and he had worked less than a quarter of the way through his weekly mound of fan mail.

Suppressing a groan, Akira eased a tattered envelope out from under the still daunting pile. This piece of mail had apparently lain there for quite some time –several deep creases crisscrossed the front, nearly obscuring the sender's unfamiliar address. Prying up the flap, Akira peered down and gingerly extracted the letter's sole contents: a thin square of notebook paper that had been folded in two.

As he flipped open the sheet and smoothed it out on the table, his eyes swiftly regained their alert green glimmer. With its wobbly, smudged lines and badly crinkled surface, the drawing was decidedly amateurish, but that was forgivable in light of the artist's intentions.

Akira was looking down at a crudely drawn goban, and his opponent had already made the first move. A lopsided white circle, outlined in pencil, hung faintly over one of the star points.

A half-smile tugging at the ends of his lips, Akira neatly drew in a black stone at the other end of the board. Now feeling a little more awake, he refolded the makeshift board and promptly sealed it into a fresh envelope.

The match that followed was incredibly slow. Akira often had to wait days between individual moves, and tried not to be unnerved by how much time he had to analyze the plays. Unmitigated by the tense, perpetual actions of a normal Go game, possibilities and premonitions danced endlessly through his head. Should he play this position, or would a chancier move to the other side present a more formidable attack? What if his opponent chose to follow him there? Would it be better to gather his defense in the same location? The black and white stones churned themselves into a dizzying grey plain as scenario upon scenario flitted across Akira's mind's eye.

His opponent, for their part, also seemed to deliberate extensively over each placement of a stone; every time the paper goban resurfaced on Akira's kitchen table, it had acquired a whole new network of wrinkles, smudges, tears, and blotchy red eraser marks.

Despite their efforts, however, the other player was clearly no pro; they made many of the basic, solid moves commonly taught in Go classes, but rarely took risks, often overlooking excellent opportunities. Given the challenger's apparently timid nature, their lack of a handicap was a surprising gamble…or, more likely, as Akira swiftly decided, the telltale mark of a novice. As the game progressed, the young Go prodigy made a point of deliberately leaving openings in his own plays, in hopes that his more inexperienced opponent would gain some aggressiveness and insight.

In time, Akira's strategy seemed to work. The wispy, hesitant pencil lines, characteristic of the other player's opening moves, eventually darkened and grew more fluid. Additionally, the amount of eraser dust littering the bottom of the envelopes steadily diminished. When Akira began receiving the goban only one day after he'd mailed it, he felt a surge of satisfaction. His opponent was now making smarter, more confident decisions and, in doing so, was slowly closing the gap between the two of them. Akira, for his part, enjoyed anticipating how his new "student" would react to the most recent developments…and being pleasantly surprised when he turned out to be wrong.

Soon enough, the paper board became so cluttered with creases and smudge marks that Akira had difficulty seeing where his opponent…or even his past self…had already placed a stone. Furthermore, he was beginning to find pencil stains on his customarily clean hands.

"You won't believe how many crazy fangirls are sending me stuff!" Shindou complained the next time they met at the Go Saloon. "Stop bluffing, Touya. There's no way you actually like looking at that junk!"

It was with a smug…and surprisingly sincere…smile that Akira answered he did.

Snail mail Go, Akira knew, was a strange, whimsical, idea –why, after all, hadn't his opponent challenged him over the Internet or even in person? But he always nudged these thoughts aside as soon as he opened the newest envelope and jotted down his latest move. Whoever it was would surely have their reasons, but all Akira wanted was to play the game.

By the end of July, their strange match was gradually drawing to a close. Akira predicted that his student would win by several komi –he liked to leave his first teaching games on a high note, and he had a feeling that this new player would be encouraged by any win, no matter how slight. As he opened the envelope for what would probably be the last time, his eyes widened in surprise.

Tucked into the paper goban was a letter written on notebook paper nearly as crinkled and smeared as the sheet that surrounded it.

Touya-san, the letter opened in faint spidery script, you probably get a lot of mail, so I will try not to take up too much of your time. My name is Tomoko Kobayashi, and I am seventy-five years old. I started playing Go several years ago, shortly after I saw one of your televised matches. Ever since, I have always hoped to meet you.

When I first sent you the goban, it was because I had no idea what to write in a real letter. After all, I'm just an old woman without anything to say that might be even a little interesting to a bright young prodigy like yourself. Go was the only thing I could think of that we might have in common.

You can tell that I'm not very good. At the beginning, I made so many mistakes and took days to make a move. So thank you playing with me, Touya-san. Because of you, my daughter says I've gotten much better. In addition, I feel that I have learned more about you from playing Go than I ever would have from an eternity of TV matches, Weekly Go articles, or fan letters.

Touya-san, I have one last favor to ask, and I hope you will humor me in this. Please, please always play Go, even if it's not with me, because I believe that you really love what you are doing (you played the same game for months, didn't you?). This world needs to know that there are still people like that.

Your number one fan (at least one of them?),
Tomoko

P.S. Did I win?

When Tomoko Kobayashi received her next letter from Akira Touya, it contained two new sheets of paper: a freshly-drawn goban with a small leaf of stationary folded inside.

New game, Kobayashi-san, the old woman read with a growing smile. Yes, you won the last round, but this time, I'm not going to go easy on you.

Your newest number one fan,
Akira

Elsewhere, Hikaru Shindou was hunched over his own kitchen table, scribbling furiously across a cream-colored page of stationary with a sparkly pink gel pen. Hastily-drawn doodles of hearts and flowers lined the margins, framing Hikaru's messy handwriting.

Akira-kun! Akira-kun! Hikaru scrawled in huge, glittery, and ostentatiously flowery characters. I think you're SO CUTE! Marry me now, even though Hikaru Shindou is MUCH cooler and has way better fashion sense!

Leaning back, Hikaru shook several blond strands of hair from his narrowed eyes, his gel pen hovering over the very last lines of his letter. Finally, in the largest and showiest characters of all, he penned the message's closing words.

Your NUMBER ONE FAN,
Akari Fujisaki!

Emphatically jabbing his pen into the dot of his final exclamation mark, Hikaru surveyed his handiwork with a satisfied smirk. "More fan mail for you, Touya!" he cackled as he sealed the message into one of several identical envelopes. "Have fun!"