A/N: Chapter 7 here. Hmm... Did my writing improve any?
Disclaimer: Because fate is a fickle mistress...
Because destiny hates those who repelled him...
Because life generally sucks.
Therefore I do not own Hikaru no Go.
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Chapter 7
They tried their best to never speak of the time Daisuke spent in the hospital.
They didn't want to be reminded of it.
They were ashamed.
Ashamed that they had given birth to an abnormal child.
He had been five years old. He liked the beach and loved to laugh. But a single statement changed everything.
'Your son has Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia.'
The doctor's words shattered her world.
What exactly was this… this leukemia thing? Didn't it only ever happen to people in the television? How could Daisuke... how could her son. Their son, get such a disease?
The immense sense of fear and shame. She never wanted to feel them again. She feared that she would lose one of her sons; her own flesh and blood. For a period of time, she hated kami. She hated them for placing such a curse on their family.
What had she done to deserve that? What had they done?
Was it… was it because of her?
She watched with her own eyes as the world around them abruptly changed to hell. Laughter transformed to tears. Visits to the amusement park became visits to the hospital.
She watched with her own two eyes how Daisuke wasted away. She saw the light in his eyes growing dimmer with the number of days he stayed in the hospital. She bore witness to how Hikaru – still innocent and young, tried to diffuse the atmosphere of despair while getting increasingly upset day by day.
But then the doctor threw her another bombshell.
He told her that her Hikaru would be able to save Daisuke, just by doing a simple surgery.
A stem cell transplant, they said. Hikaru was Daisuke's twin. Who better than him to be the donor?
They said it as if everything would be okay as soon as they got the permission, as if it things were ever that simple.
But she was horrified.
As if seeing one of her son waste away wasn't enough, they wanted to raise a knife and cut into her other son?
How could she do that to Hikaru? She couldn't!
How could she give them the permission, the possibility of causing her other son's death? There was a chance of the operation failing, a probability that instead of losing one son, she would lose both of them!
She didn't want to take that chance. She just… couldn't. No matter how small the percentage, no matter how paranoid she was told she was being. She knew she was being selfish and she admitted her selfishness.
The doctors would perhaps, have mistakenly believed that she didn't care about her Daisuke at all.
It was unfair to Daisuke, not giving him the chance to live at all.
It was cruel in fact.
But oh Kami. She would kill herself before letting both her sons die.
If only she could be the donor. That, she didn't mind. But to have to risk her other five year old son going into the surgical room and never coming out the same again…
She couldn't do it.
Instead, she chose to pretend that Daisuke's savior wasn't standing mere meters away. She chose to let her heart being torn to pieces as she saw the Daisuke's face that was... heard his screams for the pain to stop, while she waited outside the ward, one hand covering her mouth to stop herself from crying out loud at the same time. She would rather torture herself and wished fervently that there could be another donor.
Anyone. Anyone but her other. Please.
It was Hikaru that helped her to make the decision that salvaged everything.
"Mom?"
"Yes, Hikaru...?"
A hesitant smile lighted up his face.
"There's a surgery that can help Daisuke right?"
Shock was the only feeling she felt… 'No... He can't be... How..? How did he know about that?'
"Mom..?"
"Hikaru... You don't understand... It's not something so simple... I... You..."
"I want to help Daisuke, mom!"
And somehow, the stubborn expression on his face, the jade-green eyes that was so identical to Daisuke, the small frown... They made the decision for her.
'They look so much like their father...so much...'
The day of the surgery dawned bright and sunny, and even the wind felt as if it was humming a prayer of hope.
"Mom?"
"Daisuke... Hikaru..."
"Don't be scared, mom! See? I'm not scared, so you must be brave too, okay?"
And she couldn't help the tears that fell, couldn't help but hug both of her sons as if her life dependedon it, her eyes never leaving the both of them as the doctor wheeled them into the operation room.
Finally, Mitsuko allowed herself to fall into her husband's arms, sobbing as the door swung shut.
"Daisuke will be fine, Mitsuko... They both will be... We must believe..."
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"Please have another game with me!"
"Why should I?"
The shocked expression on Touya Akira's face was probably mirrored by the one on Hikaru's. Word tumbled out from his lip without any conscious thought as to what he was saying, as if someone else controlled his lips. The moment Hikaru's eyes rested on Touya Akira's youthful face, his stomach sank in a dawning realization.
It was that defining moment when Hikaru began missing his own world.
This boy in front of him wasn't his rival. He could be, perhaps, in the future. But right now, he wasn't the person that he had been chasing and running with all the time. Right now, he wasn't the same person that pushed him to want to learn Go.
The Touya Akira of his own world was a formidable Go player, holder of the Meijin and several other smaller titles.
This was just a young child that was a genius in playing Go.
Touya probably wouldn't have asked so politely anyway. He would've assumed that Hikaru wanted to play Go and immediately asked 'Black? Or white?'
A hint of humiliation clouded the young boy's eyes.
"Please... I beg you."
How ironic. Before this... way before... it would probably have been Hikaru asking the same of Touya. Hikaru had always wanted Touya to stop, even if it was for a while, but he continued to run.
'But he pulled you up as he ran pass didn't he?' A voice sound suspiciously like Sai sneakily said at the back of his mind.
Was it to be his purpose here then? To be the wave that pushes the Go players in this world, beyond their own limits, just like Sai had been in his world?
And he paused for a moment, before making his decision.
'Then I will pull you up. So that Daisuke will at least have someone... after I am gone.'
"So... Black? Or white?"
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'Hmm... What did Sai called Touya...? Was it a dragon? Or a tiger?'
Hikaru wondered as both of them stepped into the familiar Go salon. The familiar yet strange sight seemed to bring forth a wave of memories from his world. The first time he stepped into the Go salon. How rude he must have been to call all of the patrons old geezers...
'Though that's actually quite funny...'
A voice suddenly interrupted his musings.
'Eh? What's so funny, nii-chan?'
Startled, Hikaru nearly turned around... before realising that he must have proclaimed that particular thought out loud to Daisuke.
'Nothing, Daisuke,' he replied. 'By the way, I'll be late. Someone dragged me into a game of Go.'
'Okay! We are at the shopping mall near the hospital now. Mom says she wants to go and see the fish on sale...'
The said 'old geezers' all turned to stare at the two boys that just entered the Go salon; some with expression of surprise, some frowning at Hikaru.
He took a glance at young Touya beside him.
'The serious expression on his face... I can't just play shidougo with him., can I...'
Hikaru laughed inwardly.
'I' never thought there'll be the day that I would actually be playing a teaching game with Touya!'
"Akira-kun!"
Hikaru almost greeted Ichikawa-san, but barely managed to hold back.
"We'll be at the back." Akira intoned and rushed passed.
As they moved to the back of the Go salon, a low buzzing noise was heard as the patrons whispered amongst themselves. Some of them even stood up to follow them to the back of the Go salon.
Hikaru sweat-dropped slightly.
Really… Didn't they have better things to do?`
"Please, sit."
Hikaru glared slightly in annoyance at the people surrounding them (they were cutting off the fresh air), before sitting down, He opened one of the go-ke, only to find white stones contained in it. Silently, he pushed it towards Touya, while he grabbed the go-ke with black stones for himself.
'Now... Let's play.'
"Please."
A rather sad smile grazed Hikaru's lips as he thought about Sai... the Sai of his own world.
'Sai.. Are you watching?'
First stone...
The upper right kosumi.
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It wasn't a slaughter... No, it was something... much stranger than that.
To least to Hikaru it was. To Touya Akira, who was currently sitting on the opposite side, the word 'slaughter' would probably have summed up the entire game perfectly for him.
All the spectators of the game felt the tension that was tantamount to watching a match between two pros. They awed over each stone placed by the different party, gasped when the traps were sprung, frowned when they thought the players had made a mistake. They were drawn into the game itself, staring at the twisting and turning, merging shape that took a death-grip type of hold on their minds.
It had been like watching a title match.
And in perhaps more ways than one, that was somehow true.
To Hikaru, it just had been... odd. This Touya Akira hadn't developed foresight ability as much yet, and he had been tricked by Hikaru's subtler moves. Hikaru had first controlled the corners, then slowly gaining a territorial hold at the sides, eventually spreading his influence to the middle of the goban. In mid-game, Touya Akira bowed and admitted defeat.
Hikaru had half-expected that. What he didn't expect was how utterly... crushed he had looked when he lost, as if he had been told he could never play Go again. He even thought he saw tears falling, but... that couldn't be possible could it?
During the game, there was only once when Touya Akira had looked up from the goban. He had glared at Hikaru with a burning intensity that would have unsettled anyone to see such seriousness on a young boy's face...
This Hikaru was used to it. If he had been the Touya Akira of his world, Hikaru would probably have glared back. This time however, he merely met his eyes and held it there. There was no malice in his gaze. No challenge. It was broken when a patron knocked against a goban, causing a loud clack to resonate around the Go salon in the unnatural silence as a white go stone fell.
"Touya... You played well."
As he had expected, the counterpart of his rival did not reply. Most of the spectators looked concerned, while others were slightly stunned.
And Hikaru left the Go salon without another word. He didn't bid farewell, didn't even look back as he left the Go salon.
After all, he had a feeling he would be seeing Touya Akira again.
That was usually how kami works.
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"Daisuke!"
Without looking up from the food in front of him, Daisuke waved his left hand that was not currently occupied with eating. He was alone. Their mother, at the insistent of Daisuke and Hikaru that they needed 'fresh air', had allowed them out for that day despite the fact that Daisuke had just been discharged a few days ago.
Hikaru shrugged and sat on the bench beside Daisuke.
"Takoyaki?" He made a face. "Ramen's much better!"
"So this is takoyaki?" Sai looked on curiously.
Daisuke swallowed two takoyaki balls at once, and then looked at Sai and Hikaru in a slightly challenging manner.
"Takoyaki is the most delicious food in the world!"
Hikaru just shook his head while Sai continued to look mildly confused again.
The street was as busy as ever despite the growing darkness of the sky. Pale reddish glow from the sunset made everything seemed rather surreal, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy. The trio sat on the pavement. Occasionally, brief conversations from solemn adults and chattering from easily excitable teenagers would reach Hikaru's ears, before fading away to nothing, passing through his brains like mere meaningless jumbles of words.
"Nii-chan? That isn't the way home..."
A wide grin broke across Hikaru's face.
"Don't you remember, Sai?"
Looking more perplexed than before, Sai tilted his head to the right. A silent and unofficial 'huh?' hung in the air.
"Oh well... Since you don't remember, let's go home then. And here I was thinking you'd be excited to be shown a place where you can play as much go as possible." Hikaru said flippantly, before turning to walk to the train stations.
A look of dawning realization was quickly replaced by one of horror.
"Noooo! Hikaru! Take me there! I want to play Go!" Sai whined, forcefully shaking Hikaru to within an inch of his life and generally attracting curious onlookers seeing a boy shaking like a leaf.
"Fine! Hey, I said FINE! STOP SHAKING ME!"
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It didn't take them long to arrive at the Internet Cafe, and neither did it long for them to pay and got themselves a computer. Of course, there was some trouble at first as the cashier thought that they were trying to get away with paying one person's cost while hogging two computers. However, after some explanation, the irritable cashier merely waved them off and threatened half-heartedly that they had better not be lying.
"Ne, ne, Hikaru! Can we really play Go in this box? Are there really people inside? How are we going to play? Ne, Hikaru? Hikaru!"
Hikaru mostly ignored Sai's excited blabbering. He suspected that Sai wasn't exactly interested in knowing how a computer worked anyway.
"That's great, nii-chan! So now every day after school, we can come here and let Sai play people from all over the world!" Hikaru said enthusiastically.
"Yeah. If we save enough, we could even pay for two computers. One for each of us to use." Hikaru replied as he typed in the user-name for a Go account.
S-A-I
Grinning as the account was made, Hikaru asked.
"So... Who'd you like to play first, Sai?"
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After realizing with horror that it was past seven in the evening, Hikaru and Daisuke dashed home in record time, accidentally startling three cats and two dogs, and one turtle on their way.
Entirely worried out of her mind, their mother, astonishingly, did not scold them when they stepped into the house, looking guilty. Even Sai had his head bowed, apologising profusely to Daisuke and Hikaru's mother despite knowing that she couldn't hear him.
Their father however, was another matter.
They had to endure an hour of lecture on how irresponsible they had been and a stern warning never to stay out so late without alerting them again. Their allowances had been cut to half for the week and they were to come home immediately after school. No more getting 'fresh air' for the rest of the week.
Therefore, it was a subdued trio that entered the Shindou twins' bedroom.
With mumbled 'good night's, Hikaru and Daisuke drifted off the dreamlands.
And somehow, a routine emerged. The punishment fulfilled, on the days they didn't have to stay back late in school, they would go to the Internet Cafe and allow Sai to indulge playing his favourite pastime – which was playing Go, naturally. On days that they did have to stay back in school for one thing or another, Sai wasn't exactly bored either, since they would take turns with playing Go with Sai when they returned home. Their cut on allowance was finally lifted up when Hiakru proudly brought back a History and Mathematics test paper proclaiming a perfect sixty eight and sixty five percent respectively. Therefore, combined with a bit of careful planning, they sad saved up enough money to rent two computers.
And so, it was organised that Hikaru would use one of the computer for an hour, and then switch with Daisuke, who would be playing Internet Go for Sai at that time.
Being overly excited as usual, Sai began directing Daisuke where to place the stones as soon as the game screen showing the goban was shown. Hikaru sat down on the rolling chair and faced the computer with a determined look on his face.
To tell the truth, Hikaru had an ulterior motive for going to the Internet cafe other than letting Sai play Go. He wanted to find out if it was possible to return to his own world.
Of course, that was easier said than done. He once thought of going back to Shuusaku's grave and somehow... replicate the conditions that got him into this strange situation. However, the ground wouldn't move on demand, and rain didn't just come because he wanted it to.
Hikaru also didn't care to repeat having his head nearly being cracked opened by the stone grave. Once was enough. Thus, it was set that he needed to find out more information...
And if one wanted to do research, where else could one find the information one needed but the great World Wide Web?
Currently, he was staring uncertainly at the screen showing a website in front of him. Hikaru frowned slightly in concentration. For the past one minute, that was all that he had been doing – staring, that is. He kept feeling a tingling sensation in his right hand to just clench his fist and smash it onto the computer in front of him.
Why was everything in English?!
And what the hell was 'the decay or rapid vanishing of the off-diagonal elements of the partial trace of the joint system's density matrix'?!
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"Oh, Hikaru and Daisuke! You're early!"
Waving excitedly, Hikaru and Daisuke both bore the same Cheshire cat grin on their faces upon seeing Akari. Although the meeting was planned at two o'clock, Sai had wanted to play Go, and so they left their houses in the morning for the Internet Cafe. By now, the Cafe cashier was quite familiar with the twins. On some days when the Internet Cafe owner wasn't in, she would even let the use the computer for free.
Today was one such occasion. An opponent (with a user name which somehow had nagged at the corner of Hikaru's mind) had challenged Sai the moment he had logged on and Sai had happily accepted. Approximately an hour later, the opponent admitted defeat. Just as they were about to leave however, a message that set off alarm bells ringing in Hikaru's head appeared on the screen.
Who are you? I'm an Insei!
Although Hikaru wasn't as fluent in English as he would have liked to be, he at least, could recognise and read the simpler terms.
'Uh... That was Waya...?'
Staring at the message, Hikaru stood rooted to the ground for a moment, before snapping out of it.
"So Sai, what do you want to say to him?" Hikaru turned around.
Sai looked startled for a moment (they have never replied to anyone's message before), before smiling and saying, "Ano... Please tell him that he is indeed strong and I enjoyed playing with him very much. However, the defence of black could be better. For example 12-5..."
Unknown to the group, with that one message, they had left Waya stunned, baffled and even more eager to know who Sai was. The three, without anything else to do, proceeded to the meeting place to meet up with their friends.
"Only the three of us here?" Hikaru made a noise of disappointment.
"Well... We're nearly half an hour early you know," Akari pointed out wisely.
And so for the next thirty minutes, Akari bombarded the twins with inane questions on Daisuke's health, their whereabouts for most of the time, and even more inane conversation topics such as the upcoming exams.
Lastly, she exclaimed.
"You two are being weird these days!"
"Yo, people!" A voice called off from a distance.
Finally, the rest of the group had arrived, and any reply which the twins would have made to that statement was lost in fantasy world create by arcades.
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She didn't know how... or why... or when it happened...
But Hikaru had changed.
He acted the same as before. In fact, he was still Hikaru, the boy who would joke at everything, be abysmal in most of his studies (although that was certainly changing lately) and both annoyed and worried her, sometimes even at the same time. However, there was just something different about him. The airs around him, maybe? Either way, it something she couldn't quite put her finger on.
That revelation, somehow, made her a little sad... why hadn't she noticed...?
On the other hand... Daisuke seemed... happier. Less lonely somehow. And that chased away any sadness she had.
People changed, didn't they?
Rather than walk in the middle of them, like she usually did, this time she slowed her pace so that they were slightly in front of her. They didn't notice much about that, so lost in their playful banters.
'Hikaru... you've changed, haven't you? You're not really the Hikaru I knew any more...' Her thoughts trailed off.
And somehow, Akari felt a pang at the spot where her heart was. Just a little.
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A/N: Judging by 's new feature 'reader's traffic', I have readers from all over the world! (52 different countries last counted. Some of them I had to look up some of them on the map.) Awesome! Though I kind of feel intimidated and pressurised now... Hope I don't disappoint anyone...
And as a last note... Review~
