Ch. 2

Sai adored and breathed Go, he had died, and then continued living on for a thousand years as a ghost, caught in a goban, for it. But it wasn't all that he was.

He was definitely a product of his time, as such family honor meant everything to him, and part of that honor was in how he conducted himself as a noble at the court.

This meant that Hikaru was hit with slaps to the back of his head with the fan, yelled at and generally haunted every time he would slush in his seat, have a messy writing, or spoke informally to anyone not immediate family (luckily Akari was counted within that exception when Hikaru pointed out that she would find it weird for him to change the way he addressed her, considering they had been friends since they were 3 years old, and that that would defeat the purpose of keeping his obsession secret).

Even though Sai was after him for his supposed bad manners all the time, and even had him up at four in the morning to practice sword-fighting in the garden, with a sword that had been taken from his grandfathers shed, (good lord he had more old stuff in there than most middle sized museums) Hikaru had more fun, and was thus more relaxed, than ever since he discovered that school wasn't going to teach him anything he couldn't learn on his own.

He was being taught, as you would a young noble child of the Heian period, but with the expectations to keep up, Sai himself had had on his shoulders when he was Hikaru's age, or would have had, hadn't he had 3 elder brothers; one to take over as the head of the family, which was the part about estate and money management, and generally taking care of a household and a family; one to go to the army as an officer, this was the tactical training and sword-fighting, and would include bow and arrow shooting as soon as Sai found a way to instruct him within the immediate area; and one to become a state man, which was where his skills in writing and political maneuvering, including knowing the law and languages came in, it wasn't enough to know Japanese and English according to Sai. Speaking, writing and knowing the cultural differences of Korean, Chinese and surprisingly French, was also needed. The last language was included when Sai learned about the globalization, and of French being one of the big languages spoken the world over.

All that was taught to Hikaru, and also included was what every noble man, no matter their place in the family, must now, such as how to write a haiku poem, how to horseback ride, and wasn't that a weird thing to ask his parents for, how to walk, talk and sit in seiza, and, to Hikaru's great enjoyment, he would learn how to play all of the courts instruments, and on his own tentative inquirers he would also learn how to sew, childrearing, and all of the other things a noble, or indeed any, woman during that period would know how to do.

How Sai knew what a woman should be able to do, or indeed knew how to so well as to teach it to Hikaru, was a mystery that went unanswered.

All in all Hikaru's time was packed. And he wasn't allowed to slack on his school work either, although he could score as low in his tests as he wanted, Sai said with a satisfied smile. "Cunning" he said "is an important thing to train, without it you won't go far up in the world."

Through all of this he also had to convince his grandfather to play Go against him. A quest made much more difficult due to the fact that he had to come up with a convincing story for how he got as good as Sai was. Being the emperor's instructor wasn't for armatures after all. Meanwhile he would have to talk formally to his grandfather, due to him being, in Sai's eyes, the head of the family. Not an easy task at all. His grandfather was super observant, and seldom let anything go.

…o0O0o…

He was right in his suspicion that his popularity would take a nose dive due to his classmates thinking he wasn't all right in the head, after his exclamation during the test last week. Normally he would fix it all by going to the arcade with the guys or hand out at the McDonalds, convincing them that he was quite normal. But he still didn't get any allowances, and even though he had acted convincingly apologizing for his act of thievery in the shed, and thereby hadn't been grounded, his parents kept asking where he was going. Apparently they were very concerned over his health after his visit to the hospital.

Quite frankly he was at his wits end, and had absolutely no idea of what to do, to get his popularity back. It was only due to his habit of speaking to himself when he was in his room that he got help. He had forgotten that Sai was always there, and when he was grumbling over his new problem, he was interrupted by him.

After a short explanation, which shouldn't have been needed, as Sai had been there to see the looks he was given, Sai came with a solution.

Or maybe a solution was to strong a word.

He explained that when he had first come to court to be the emperors Go instructor, he had been seen as the weird kid from the countryside, and had had to work his way up in the esteem of the rest of the court-members eyes.

He told of how he slowly worked on the other nobles one as a time, and how he didn't overlook the servants, but worked on his esteem among them as well. How word of his character had spread among the servants first and that due to that it became easier to be seen as an upstanding man, among the nobles.

At first Hikaru didn't know how to translate court behavior to how to win over school children, but after having observed his classmates, and their actions in class, and the clubs, he understood.

He started helping the unpopular kids who were being picked on, started talking to the girls about their boy troubles, not that he understood why someone would want a boy- or girlfriend at the age of 12, and talked with the popular children, not as he had before within groups, but two on two, and instead of making jokes and only talking about popular subjects, he talked about what problems they had, and what their dreams were. And again and again he explained his little lie about his exclamation, and told them that he was yelling to god, because he was at his ropes end due to a persistent headache. A stupid story, but they all believed it. After all, he had never acted as if he wasn't right in the head or schizophrenic before.

Slowly but surely he became popular again. And this time it wasn't only among 'the cool kids', but also among the girls, the geeks and the losers. He was everyone's favorite person to go to, if you had a problem, or just needed a good time.

Hikaru became more and more happy to have Sai haunting him. He was a big help in his everyday life, and he helped him get the knowledge and skills to act like a Heian period noble, as he had wanted to, since he was nine years old and saw that old movie at his grandfather's place.

But he had a promise to keep, and as such, two weeks after his little trip to the hospital, and first meeting with Sai the ghost, he stood in front of his grandfather's house.