Toya Akira loved the family Go salon. It was hard not to, as he had spent at least as much time there as at home while growing up, hiding both from other children taunting him about 'playing the old men's game' and the world of professional Go harassing him about joining their ranks. The customers of the salon shared his pure unconditional love for the game and called him 'sensei' since he was eight, acknowledging his skill, not some stupid piece of paper. Of course it also meant they had long since stopped offering him any true challenge, but with the Meijin as his father and the Juudan as his as-good-as-older-brother, Akira wasn't one to complain. In his rare rebellious moments he sometimes thought he would rather have the salon than overtake his father's lonely throne on the top of the Go world.

Yet on days like this Toya wished he had taken that pro exam when he had been first declared good enough for it at the tender age of eleven. Perhaps then he wouldn't be automatically considered the least busy member of the family expected to volunteer to watch over the salon whenever the need arose.

It's not that he was unable to run the salon. He was almost eighteen, he was in fact better at dealing with paperwork then Father was; and, unlike some of father's students, he had no reservations about serving an occasional cup of tea.

It is surprises that he hated, even more so right after his last midterm exam.

So he was completely unprepared to deal with the emergency involving their archive of best games, a can of cherry 'Ponta' and an 'urgent' phone call from their latest temporary desk-girl's boyfriend. And he had absolutely no idea where to get clean kifu-paper at 20:30 on Friday evening. But both father and Ogata-san were absorbed in preparing for their upcoming match, and Ichikawa-san, who had only just brought home not one, but two new-born daughters, was unlikely to appreciate the distraction either. So Akira gritted his teeth, locked the door and dragged himself outside, praying that the big bookstore two blocks away was still open and that they had some Go-related staff there.


Thankfully, the shop had a huge section for all kinds of table games, from shogi to Monopoly, which was currently empty, except for a rather silly-looking teenager around Akira's own age looming near one of the shelves, wincing at a price of a vaguely familiar book.

Akira spotted a tired shop-assistant, who was taking advantage of a quiet moment by playing a game of Go on her mobile phone, and stopped in front of her, absurdly reluctant to interrupt. The young woman was good, probably good enough to be an insei, but her opponent's latest move had left her in quite a precarious situation. There was, of course, quite an obvious opening at one-three, that would only profit the white in the long run, and after careful consideration Akira had to admit the best solution would be to abandon the cluster all together, except, maybe…

A monstrous oversized blue-and-orange flannel shirt suddenly filled his peripheral vision and a too loud voice barked:

"Just go to one-two and maybe give us a few minutes of your attention?"

The shop-assistant blushed, but quickly put the stone on the grid, hid the phone and turned to the absurdly-dressed teenager expectantly.

"I don't suppose I can only buy one of those," he said sweetly, waving two volumes of what turned out to be '100 Greatest Games'. The first one only has Shuusaku in it."

"That's why they are the greatest," the shop-assistant answered with a fake professional smile, throwing no-so-subtly disapproving glances at the boy's torn jeans, bleached bangs and flashy sneakers.

"That's why I already have them," he hissed, and started to rummage through his acid-yellow backpack with a fluorescent '5' on the front pocket, probably looking for a wallet.

The shop assistant dismissed him with a silent huff and turned to Akira. He used the chance to politely inquire about kifu paper.

"Kifu paper?" the other teenager suddenly screamed, and dived past Akira to where the girl was pointing to, promptly snatching all three kifu pads remaining on the shelf. "Holy shit, do you mean all this time I didn't in fact have to draw the stupid grid myself? Eh, I guess you want one of those?" And, showing one pad into dumbfolded Go prodigy's hands, he collected the other two, along with the '100 Greatest Games', and happily trotted towards the cash desk.

"Stop!" Akira choked out once he got his breathing under control: the time it had taken him to come to his senses and to pay for the remaining kifu-pad had given the guy quite a headstart, and running had never been Akira's strong point. "Wait! I needed those!"

"So do I!" the other teenager grinned. "Tough luck, man!"

"Why would you need kifu paper? Ten minutes ago you didn't even know what it was for!"

"I do know what it is for, I just didn't know it existed!"

"That doesn't even make sense! Anyone who has any idea about Go would have heard – And you did tell her to go to one-two."

"What of it? It was a good move!"

"It was, but how did you figure it out so fast? Even I had to – "

"Well, maybe that's because you are so slow?" the yellow-happy teenager replied cheekily.

"I am not – It is not – wait, did you just guess it?"

"What if I did?"

"What if you did? Go is not your silly joke! It takes years to master! It is complex, and profound, and beautiful! It's not some freaking guessing game!"

"OK, chill. I didn't guess, and you are not slow. A friend just showed me something similar some time ago, and I wasn't good enough to get it then, but now it is much clearer."

"Aha, so you do play GO!"

"What if I do? Wanna play me?"

"Think you are good enough?"


"Ok, I admit, you're good. Happy now?"

"How long have you been studying Go?"

"Studying? Man, whatever you say, Go is a game. Isn't it supposed to be fun? See you!"

Forest-green eye winked mischievously from under messy yellow bangs, the glass door swished noiselessly and the monstrous blue-and orange shirt vanished into cool autumn night.


Two moku. Toya Akira eyes a crumpled sheet of kifu paper, filled with messy black and precise red circles with trepidation. Two moku. He technically won, thanks to the unspecified komi, which was probably 5.5, as the guy had demanded an even game. But since when has Toya Akira allowed some punck, who didn't even know what kifu paper was, to gain two moku over him? Is he getting sloppy? Or is he simply not as strong as he has always thought? Perhaps, he should have become a pro long ago. Perhaps, he isn't good enough anymore…

But no. The guy might have been strong, remarkably so, but Akira still won. He was good. And he could always improve, he had the best teachers. He would beat the guy again, properly this time, and would beat him again and again and again, no matter how much harder the guy tried himself. He is Toya Akira, the hope of the Japanese Go World. One day no one would be able to beat him. With a determined smile he tucks the offensive sheet into his one kifu-pad and goes to buy himself a disgusting greasy sandwich as a pretext to ask for the exact address of the tiny café where they ended up playing.

Only after Ogata-san escorts him sourly to the car, demanding to know how exactly he ended up in this particular neighborhood at this time of the night, does Akira realise that he never learned the other boy's name.