Sixteen going on Twelve
Plans tend to go awry.
"Hikaru, you promised." Akari said, tugging on his arm.
"For the last time, I didn't!" He tugged back, forgetting for a moment that even though he was smaller than Akari, he was still a lot stronger, and nearly unbalanced her when she refused to let go of his arm. They were making a bit of a scene, as some younger grade-schoolers passing them by on the way out the doors were looking at them and giggling. A precocious first-grader made a kissy-face. Hikaru growled at them, making them laugh and scatter from the shoe-alcove out the doors into the sunlight beyond.
"Aunty told me this morning you did. She said I could come too, if I wanted. So I'm coming. And you didn't wait for me this morning. So there!"
"What kind of logic is that?" Hikaru protested.
He had forgotten how stubborn Akari could be when she had decided something; because if he had, he would have made a break for the door a little quicker instead of taking the time to explain to his friends why he couldn't come with them to the arcade after school—especially when the 'S' word was involved.
"Ugh, why would you want to come anyway? It's not like you need your hair cut," Hikaru finally pointed out when the argument continued to degenerate.
Forget my freaking hair! I want to go see Sai! Hikaru thought a bit desperately. Why did I have to make that stupid promise when I was still under the impression this was all a dream?!
"Shows what you know, Hikaru." She used her free hand to finger the ends of her shoulder-length hair and eyed it thoughtfully. "I need a trim. Maybe a few millimetres. And I need new stockings."
Unconvinced, Hikaru muttered: "It looks fine to me."
"That's because you're a boy, Hikaru," Akari pointed out.
"T-that's gender discrimination!"
"Gender Discrimination?" Akari sounded out, the skin of her forehead crinkling.
"A-anyway," Hikaru continued doggedly, before Akari could question him about his sudden knowledge of strange expressions she wouldn't be learning until high-school. "Mom must have forgotten that I promised…that I promised I would go over to Gramp's place after school. I-I haven't visited for a while."
"Huh? Really?" Akari wondered, eyeing him like she always did when she thought he was lying to her.
"Uh yeah I'm…" Hikaru thought frantically. I need an excuse to go over to Gramp's place, but it's got to be one where Akari won't want to tag along with me. "Going over to play Go!" Akari didn't like Go yet, as far as he knew. In Grade Six Go was still 'that game old smelly men play'.
"Go?" Akari cocked her head curiously. "I didn't know you played Go with your grandfather."
"Uh…yeah! Oh course! Who else would I learn from but from the man who beat…uh…that guy…Iwase or sumthin' from Kut — er...Kutsuwa? or wherever—well, that's not important." Hikaru blustered. "The point is. If I beat him he promised to give me 1,000 yen."
Akari huffed at this, but her disbelieving look had disappeared. "It's always about money with you, Hikaru! I feel sorry for your grandparents if the only way they can get you to visit them is by tempting you with money!"
Yeah, at this age I was a mercenary little brat, Hikaru recalled fondly.
He tugged on his arm again. "If I don't leave now I'm going to miss the train."
"Fine! Then I'm coming with you!"
Arg! That's definitely not going to happen! The last thing he needed was another ambulance ride when Akari panicked after he fainted!
"Ugh! No way! What happened to your desperate urge to go shopping?" Hikaru demanded.
"There's no point if you're not going," Akari declared. "I hate going to the stylist by myself. We'll just go another day otherwise you'll never go."
This was another thing that Hikaru missed out on in the future: having Akari double-team him about stuff like this with his mother.
"But you don't even know how to play Go," Hikaru pointed out, glancing impatiently at his watch. "It might take hours. Are you just going to sit there doing nothing? You'll get bored and complain."
"No I won't."
"You will too."
"Then you can explain it to me on the way so I won't get bored!" Akari said.
"There's no way I can explain Go to you that quickly, stupid! Besides, if we're late you'll get in trouble with your parents."
"Hikaru! You're being stubborn!"
"I'm not being stubborn. You're the one who's insisting on coming!" Hikaru said.
Akari stomped her foot, but did grudgingly release his arm so she could cross her arms. "Fine! But you have to promise we'll go tomorrow."
Hikaru gave her a funny look. "What? To my grandparents? I didn't know you liked them so much."
"No, stupid!" Akari exclaimed, exasperated. "Shopping!"
"Oh—Don't call me stupid!" Why am I even involved in this totally juvenile argument? Hikaru wondered. Old habits die hard. "A-anyway, we'll see tomorrow. I gotta go or I'm going to miss the train. Later Akari!"
"Hikaru!" was Akari's frustrated farewell as Hikaru burst through the doors of the school and made a break for the train station nearest to the school.
Safe! A sweaty and panting Hikaru thought as he slipped through the doors of the departing train. Being short did have some advantages on the train, he could slip easily through the after-school crush to less crowded positions, and he took full advantage, shouldering and squirming his way through the sometimes sweaty, sometimes clammy, oftentimes stinky press of bodies to get a good spot near a pole he could lean his brace his weight as the train picked up speed out of the station.
In order to meet Sai, all Hikaru had to do was borrow his grandfather's spare storage shed key (kept in a jar in the kitchen) and find the old Goban stored on the second floor. An idle remark about the strange bloodstains and Sai 2.0 should load back into his head. Well…that's the easy part. Hikaru rubbed the furrowed skin between his eyebrows as he thought.
If he remembered correctly (and it was difficult to remember as the memories he retained from the time following Sai's disappearance were mostly a jumble of desperation, longing, and agonizing regret) Sai had known he was disappearing before it had happened. He had first mentioned it the day after grandpa's storage shed had been raided, when he claimed the bloodstains were fading.
Having the old Goban around would allow him to monitor the bloodstains, but actually removing it without his grandfather's agreement was out of the question. Putting aside the transportation issues involved in lugging the solid kaya Goban via the train during rush-hour, the Goban itself was one of the few mementos that the Shindo patriarch had of his deceased brother. No matter how much begging or cajoling he had done in the future, his grandfather had stubbornly refused to be parted with the cursed Goban (although his concern for Hikaru getting cursed may have also played a role in his habitual refusal). Hikaru could only imagine what sort of ruckus he would have caused had his initial plan to pawn the Goban for money succeeded. His Grandfather probably would have strung him up by his heels and flayed him with a heavy sock full of go stones.
He made and discarded several plans to wrangle the Goban out of Heihachi's hands legitimately, but none of them sounded any more promising than the plans his future self had already attempted; not to mention they were all further complicated by Hikaru's regressed age and perceived immaturity. Betting with his grandfather for pocket-change was one thing, but he doubted the old man would ever put up the board as collateral—especially since Hikaru wasn't exactly known for the meticulous care of his possessions at this age.
Sai didn't start worrying about disappearing until after his online victory over Touya's dad, Hikaru thought idly as he watched several uniformed high-schoolers with sports-bags shove their way to claim prime spots near Hikaru, one of whom noticed Hikaru's bland examination and smiled his own brand of nostalgia. So I have at least that long to figure stuff out assuming I don't mux things up too badly.
Sai had never really explained what it was about that game that had begun the countdown. Was it the fact that Hikaru had declared that he wasn't going to let Sai play publicly any longer? Or had Sai somehow realized something about his own existence he hadn't been aware of earlier? Was it satisfaction or hopelessness that had driven him away?
It was hard to say that the blood disappearing and the Meijin-Sai game were related, because they hadn't paid the Goban a visit beforehand. Had the blood been steadily disappearing since Sai took up residence inside his consciousness? Like a timer ticking down the last minutes of Sai's existence on this plane? Or was there an event that made the blood and by association, Sai, disappear? (or at the very least hasten his disappearance?) More importantly, was there a way to stop Sai from disappearing?
Hikaru licked his lips as this line of thinking brought up a completely different set of questions. Why was Torajiro's blood the key to keeping Sai around? Sai had indicated that he possessed the Goban before his first host. So if Sai had been possessing the Goban before Shuusaku died, why was the blood on the Goban so important?
His mental reasoning hit a bit of a dead end there, and so Hikaru decided to make a rough mental timeline from what he remembered from Sai's explanation:
(1) Sai dies in the Heian Period, around 1000 years ago, give or take a century or two, having been accused of cheating at Go in front of the Emperor. Presumably, Sai drowns himself in a pond and unable to rise to heaven, possesses a Goban.
(2) Many years later in the mid nineteenth century, Sai meets a young Kuwabara Torajiro and possesses him. Together, with Sai, their talent rises to legendary proportions. Eventually they would become known as Honinbo Shuusaku, one of the greatest Go players to ever live.
(3) August 10, 1862, Torajiro dies tending cholera patients within the Shuusaku household. His death would leave bloodstains on the Goban that have something to do with Sai being able to possess the Goban after Torajiro's death.
(4) Present Day: Hikaru spots the bloodstains Torajiro left on the Goban. Sai possesses him.
(5) For some reason, around four years later, the bloodstains eventually fade, and with them, Sai.
It was clear that Hikaru was missing several pieces of information to tie all those events together. The first being: what made the Goban special in the first place? What allowed Sai to possess this Goban? Why did he need the Goban at all when he was possessing Hikaru? It almost seemed like he wasn't really possessing Hikaru, but just using him like a car to get around town while his home remained inside the goban.
The second piece of information he was missing had to do with Torajiro. How had Sai discovered that Torajiro could be possessed? In Hikaru's case, he had been able to see the bloodstains that Torajiro had left on the Goban, but those hadn't been there before Torajiro, had they? Sai had clearly told him they belonged to his previous host. So how had Sai discovered he could possess Torajiro after 800 and some years of nothing? And furthermore, did the way in which Sai had possessed Torajiro differ from how he had previously possessed Hikaru?
And finally, was the vanishing bloodstain the cause of Sai's disappearance, or was it merely a symptom of some greater illness — some greater wrong?
Even if he can't answer why he disappeared in the future, Sai should be able to at least give me answers to the first two questions, Hikaru thought. And those answers may even suggest why or how Sai might disappear. Hikaru was quite sure something had gone wrong. Why else would the spirits send Hikaru back in time? He couldn't imagine the manipulation of time and space was done whimsically.
Although, having never met a divine spirit, maybe coming to such a conclusion was a bit premature.