.

Stepping Stones

~37~ In which Touya Meijin steps in

Akira started to smile when he looked up and saw Hikaru entering the salon a second day in a row, then forgot the smile as he saw Hikaru's face. He'd never seen his friend look quite that… upset before.

"Hikaru?" he asked tentatively as the blond-banged boy thumped down hard into the chair across from him.

"I can't take the pro exam," Hikaru growled.

"What?" Akira's brain seemed to have stopped processing properly. "But…"

"I'm not allowed," Hikaru fumed. "I told my parents I was thinking about skipping high school since I wasn't going to need it, and now they say I can't even take the stupid exam! They won't even let me prove I can do it!"

"But…" But Hikaru was going to take the next exam with him, and they were going to pass, and they were going to spend the rest of their lives playing better and better Go with each other, Akira and the only rival he'd ever found... that had to happen. This had to be fixed. But how?

"My life sucks," Hikaru sulked, arms crossed and shoulders hunched as he slouched in the chair. "I should just run away. Go back to America and turn professional there and come back with one of those stupid titles that'd show I was one of the best players in the whole stupid country—"

Akira blinked and leaned back discreetly from the other boy's wrath. "Ah, is that really good idea?"

Hikaru's face screwed up further, and then he slumped and sighed. "I hate the world. You wanna play?"

They tried playing. Hikaru kept bursting into more outrage and Akira could barely keep a five-move plan in his head in company with the thought that Hikaru wouldn't go pro. It would be such a horrible waste for Hikaru to do anything but Go… there had to be a way to fix this…

Finally at some point in midgame they both looked down at the board, registered their terrible playing, and looked up with mutual resignation.

"I will help," Akira said, helplessly.

"I can move in with you?" Hikaru grumbled, probably joking. "I should go. Tell everybody else who'll need a chance to vent."

"Your… teacher?" Akira asked, careful not to say grandfather.

Hikaru, strangely, shuddered. "You kidding, he's gonna take weeks to calm down. Or years. As long as until I hit legal adult and can go pro anyway, probably." He sighed. "See you later."

Hikaru left. Akira slowly cleared away their unfinished game, once again wrapped up in the problem of how to let Hikaru turn pro after all. He still hadn't solved it by dinner, where his parents noticed his preoccupation and inquired what was wrong.

Akira told them, glad to get other perspectives since he'd made no progress himself.

His mother made a thoughtful sound when he finished, and asked, 'Your friend's parents don't know much of Go?'

'I suppose not?' Akira guessed. He could ask Hikaru next time he saw him.

'And he's not an insei? Perhaps that could be an intermediary step, to show his parents he could succeed,' his mother suggested.

'He doesn't need to be, though,' Akira confessed. 'I suppose it might help him improve some...'

'Well, it couldn't hurt to suggest.'

That seemed reasonable, although Akira was hesitant to suggest anything that only might work when Hikaru seemed so volatile.

'Your friend is, truly, very good?' his father spoke up.

'He beat me once,' Akira said, truthfully, even if the circumstances had been a little… but Hikaru had beaten him, and it was Akira's own fault for not noticing it happen. 'And we always play even.'

'He must have a teacher, surely?' his father asked. 'Why does his teacher not present his case for him?'

For a moment the words weighed on Akira's tongue, that Hikaru's teacher might be his grandfather… but Hikaru had asked him not to tell. And he had no idea why, if that was true, Hikaru's grandfather wouldn't have already helped persuade his parents.

He thought about what he did know—or, rather, what he remembered Hikaru actually telling him—and came up with, 'He said once he learned to play online...'

'Hmm,' his father said. 'Ask him to play a game with me. I will make time when he can.'

.

"What?"

"My father wants to play you," Akira repeated.

Hikaru tried to hide the faint terror induced by that sentence. "Uh… on NetGo?"

Akira looked dubious. "Father never played online…"

Dang, there went Sai's chance at a game.

"Um… uh, why? I mean… your dad's really, really good, right? What with having that title and all. Why'd he want to play me?"

"Yes, Father is good," Akira agreed. "You can play… put down two stones, to start, like I do to play him."

"Wait, put down two stones? What does—like a teaching game? Shidougo?" That made Hikaru feel a lot better about the idea, although he still wasn't sure why Akira's dad would suddenly want to play him.

"Well…" Akira hesitated, but Hikaru wasn't paying attention anymore.

"Okay, I guess. I can be online at—oh, wait, you said no, then… here, I guess?" There was no reason to be nervous about the idea of facing down Touya Meijin across a goban, he did it all the time with the person—ghost—who'd really been Honinbo Shusaku and Touya Meijin would probably faint or something if he ever actually got to meet Honinbo Shusaku so Hikaru was going to be fine. And playing Akira's dad. He'd be fine.

"Okay," Akira agreed. "I will tell him."

Hikaru swallowed. "Great."

.

Hikaru regretted telling Sai about Hikaru's upcoming match with Akira's dad almost as soon as he said it, because for just a moment Sai's face and Sai's fan went perfectly still. And then he replied enthusiastically and threw himself into preparing Hikaru to face such an esteemed opponent.

And he never, not once, said anything about playing Touya Meijin himself, which just made Hikaru feel worse about getting to do it. Hikaru almost told him Akira said his dad never played online, then decided that was too cruel, then almost told him again just to explain that he had thought of Sai when this came up, then bit it back again because maybe someday Touya Meijin would change his mind...

The thought inevitably intruded that Hikaru could ask Akira's dad to play Jaro, but he squirmed away from it every time it came up. Maybe if Touya Meijin brought up Hikaru's teacher first, but otherwise… talking to Akira's dad at all was already intimidating enough. Sai helped drill him on formal speech too, though, and Hikaru practiced diligently instead of complaining. He would have concentrated more on speech practice than Go, but Sai insisted he present his best on both fronts even though it was just a teaching game. Hikaru was too guilty and grateful for Sai's help to argue.

He gave serious consideration—without mentioning it—to bringing Sai with him to the game, just for emergency vocabulary assistance, but finally decided against it. It would probably be worse for Sai to watch a game against the person he wanted to play most rather than just to go over it afterward.

So, when the next weekend came, Hikaru told Sai he'd be back after, took a deep breath as he boarded the bus, and practiced impromptu deep breathing exercises all the way to Akira's salon.

Touya Meijin was already there, in the back room where Hikaru and his friends had gotten the neighborhood gang and insei to play together. Hikaru resolutely shoved aside the memory of the gang badgering him to set up another game, and bit his tongue against begging Akira to sit in with them in case Hikaru mangled language.

Akira went in with him anyway. Hikaru resolved that Akira was now his best friend for eternity, bowed to and greeted Touya Meijin like Sai had taught him, and sat down across the board from him. And breathed.

"Put down two stones," Akira prompted him in an undertone.

Hikaru quickly moved to do so, then hesitated. Sai didn't give head starts for teaching games, but he shouldn't waste the opportunity by hurrying.

He took a deep breath, told himself Sai was the one he was playing as long as he looked at the board instead of his opponent, and placed his first stones.

Touya Meijin didn't say anything during teaching games, also unlike Sai, but the quiet helped Hikaru stay focused on playing the best game he could. Touya Meijin didn't show any more mercy than Sai did, but he also didn't squash Hikaru like a bug right from the start like Hikaru suspected he could. The extra two stones gave him a fighting chance to start on, even though his opponent immediately and steadily ate that advantage away.

When the game ended, rather than immediately begin going over weak moves like Sai did, Touya Meijin said, 'What would you now do differently?'

Hikaru blinked. 'Well...' He started to point, then moved to an earlier hand. 'Here, I should have moved it one space up...'

'Why?' Touya Meijin asked.

Hikaru explained, still breathing, figuring out what he wanted to say and then the words to say it, Akira seated nearby available to help but not volunteering.

Touya Meijin nodded when Hikaru finished. Then he indicated a different grouping and said, 'Would you play differently here?'

Hikaru looked, considered, and ran mental translations before he answered, head full of Sai's vocabulary and instructions on phrasing. Getting it right was more important than getting it out fast, in the face of such an imposing ghostly-except-still-alive figure as Touya Meijin.

'You play very well,' Touya Meijin said at the end of the postgame discussion. 'You wish to play Go professionally?'

It was either abandon everything now or stick to it come hell or high water. Hikaru nodded.

'Akira says your parents do not approve?'

Hikaru scowled, stifled it, and muttered, 'Yes sir.'

'Are you forbidden to attend professional games?'

Hikaru blinked. 'Uh… no?'

'If you have time next weekend, then, there is one scheduled you might find instructive. I can escort you to it.'

'Um… sure?'

'Where do you live.'

Hikaru looked at Akira, but Akira hadn't turned blue or spiky or anything, so maybe this hadn't turned into a dream. So Hikaru recited his address, vaguely waiting for an anvil to fall or his clothes to turn into pajamas.

'Then I will meet you there Saturday morning at ten. If that is acceptable?'

'Sure?' Hikaru repeated.

.

Hikaru spent the ride home debating whether or not to tell Sai that there was, possibly, unless Hikaru was hallucinating, a chance that Touya Meijin was going to show up at their house next weekend. He wasn't sure whether the ghost was more likely to faint, go hysterical, or camp out at the front door every single day until Touya Meijin appeared. Or maybe he'd be reasonable. There was a chance he'd be reasonable, right?

What Sai did was go very, very still, while Hikaru braced himself for whatever came next. But Sai only asked, 'Why?'

"Um…" Because he liked to indulge in lunacy? But Hikaru just related the strange conversation as accurately as he could manage.

Sai listened with rapt attention, though he didn't offer any insights either. Hikaru was surprised to notice, when he finished, that the ghost didn't immediately start begging to come along.

Well, why shouldn't he? It shouldn't involve Hikaru playing while Sai didn't get to, and there might be more talking, so having Sai along would be handy. Hikaru could just keep his mouth shut most of the time unless he was sure of what kind of vocabulary he was using.

'Want to come?' he asked, and finally the dam burst.

'YES!' Sai squealed, clouding Hikaru's vision with an intangible hug, then whirling around in a crazy fan dance. 'To see professionals today play, to watch a great game...'

He kept going, at length, though he rapidly went incomprehensible due partly to formality and mostly to rate of speech.

"You lost me," Hikaru said mildly, with a grin. Sai didn't even notice. Hikaru eventually calmed him down only by dragging out the goban and setting up to recreate his game with Touya Meijin.

.

Akira's dad did, indeed, appear on Hikaru's doorstep the following Saturday at ten in the morning. Hikaru rushed to let him in, stumbling over an appropriate greeting with Sai invisibly hissing the words in his ear through a fan and trying to explain to his parents why they had a visitor.

'Nice to meet you,' Hikaru's mother said, still in smoother Japanese than he was managing at the moment, then demanded in an undertone while Hikaru's father came forward, "Ru, why didn't you say you were expecting someone—"

Because telling them and then having Touya Meijin not show up would have been much, much worse than a little confusion now. "He's my friend Akira's dad—" Hikaru said brightly, while Hikaru's father finished introducing himself and Touya Meijin finished bowing politely and explained, in his unhurried, formal Japanese, that he was here to take Hikaru to watch a Go game. Hikaru was sure his father could understand it, though he didn't know about his mother.

'It is good experience, for the young to watch their elders play,' Touya Meijin said. Sai nodded like a bobblehead at Hikaru's shoulder.

'I… see,' Hikaru's father hesitated. 'But...' He turned to Hikaru. 'You wish to do this? Spend your weekend this way?'

"Duh." Hikaru couldn't help himself, despite the distracting weirdness of hearing Japanese at home. 'I mean, yes. Sounds fun.'

'Hikaru is very promising player,' Touya Meijin remarked. 'Understands skill is more dedication than talent.'

Sai glowed with approval. Hikaru's parents looked a little lost. Hikaru told them goodbye, pulled on his jacket over jeans pockets already filled with Sai's stones, and got out the door with ghost and pro in relatively short order.

Fortunately, Touya Meijin didn't show much interest in small talk as they headed to their destination, which let Hikaru relax enough to eventually let go of the dread he'd built for it.

The setup for the game appeared to be the same as for Isumi's first game as a pro, except without Isumi playing or Waya to talk to while watching. Instead there were just some adults who all seemed familiar with each other (and surprised to see Touya Meijin) and curious about Hikaru, and two strangers—pros, hadn't Touya Meijin said?—starting a game. Hikaru nodded, smiled, and kept his mouth shut unless Touya Meijin said something to him directly. Hikaru and Sai both paid close attention to everything they could understand in the Japanese-conducted discussion.

It was a good game, although Hikaru found it hard to keep his attention on following it constantly when there was so much vocabulary to distract him in the pauses between moves. And it was good Japanese practice to listen to several people talk about one right-there-to-reference Go game without Hikaru having to talk much. It wasn't boring, or unpleasant, or even uninteresting.

But it seemed… unnecessary. He'd get the same benefit studying a game with Gramps, or practicing his Japanese with Waya or Akira.

Then Sai wriggled in Hikaru's peripheral vision and praised whatever move had just been made, and Hikaru refocused his attention to figure out what was special about it, and grinned in satisfaction when he got it just as one of the other people pointed out that hand's effect too.

Sai made several good points during the discussion over the game, points that nobody else made, but each time Hikaru bit his lip and said nothing. Speaking for Sai in front of his friends had been bad enough; he'd rather play mute than do it in front of Touya Meijin. Especially since Sai generally had better insights to the game than Hikaru did. He didn't want Akira's dad to think Hikaru was as good as Sai.

Sai chattered and sighed with pleasure all the way home after the outing ended, even though he hadn't really been able to contribute to the conversation, and Hikaru agreed when Touya Meijin suggested doing it again. He didn't want to say no to the old man, and it had hardly been a bad experience.

A couple weeks later, as promised, (though Hikaru still hadn't quite believed it would happen) Touya Meijin showed up at his door again. Again he chatted mildly with Hikaru's parents about Go while Hikaru stuffed his shoes on.

Except not about Go—about Hikaru playing Go. Hikaru realized when he heard the comment, 'If he continues to play, he may someday earn a title.'

'Of course!' Sai agreed, but Hikaru swung to look at his parents, who still mostly looked polite and uncomprehending.

They were missing an important fact, Hikaru realized, even though Akira's dad had introduced himself with his title last time. So, while Hikaru's father made vague positive noises, he pulled his mother back a step and demanded in an undertone, "Mom, look him up after we go, okay? T-o-u-y-a M-e-i-j-i-n. See who he is!"

Then he was out the door again, trying hard not to hope but doing it anyway. Surely, surely that kind of praise from a pro like the Meijin would get through to them. Once they realized how impressive Akira's dad was, and how good that must mean Hikaru was, they'd have to change their minds.

And he'd keep going out with Touya Meijin until they did. He'd bring Akira and his dad to dinner every day if it made a difference!

.

Much, much later, in the middle of the night, it belatedly occurred to him that holy cow, one of the titleholders of Japan said I could equal him someday!

He went back to sleep after that with deep satisfaction.