Things got busy for a while, what with Easter and everything, but I'm back. Hope you enjoy this.

(WARNING: this chapter contains terrible poetry and back-stabbing (not literally) kitchen utensils.

Tsutsui had gladly agreed to Hikaru's helping hand, and told him the location of the festival before skittering away up his tree. Hikaru wandered a little ways away before coming to rest in a small clearing free from any monstrous pine trees. He decided it would be as good a place to spend the night as any, and curled up in a little ball on some reeds. Alarmingly, the reeds shrieked bloody murder and Hikaru hurriedly rolled away, stuttering hurried apologies.

The reeds only sighed and wilted back into their soft-looking pile. Hikaru huffed and sat back, crossing his legs, staring at the reeds.

Everything here is odd. Everything–even the grasses! Even a bush on that hill turned out to be a hag. Why am I here, sitting alongside screaming reeds and Go-playing squirrels?

He began to feel very lonely, sitting there all alone with his torn up jeans, with the trees looming imposingly over him. He looked up into the sky, but at the next second, wished he hadn't; the moon was startlingly big, as was the sky, even viewed from the sliver provided by the trees, which now looked more frightening than imposing.

He sniffed and looked down at the ground, poking the dirt with a finger.

Look at me...I'm afraid of the moon. How lonely would a person have to be to be terrified of the moon?

"You are not alone, Hikaru."

Hikaru glanced to his side, where his ghost was sitting seiza next to him. Sai was smiling gently, an image that was oddly comforting to the scared, lonely little boy.

"What do you mean?" Hikaru said quietly.

Sai placed a hand on Hikaru's shoulder. "After my death, I was alone, with absolutely nobody to turn too, nobody to speak to...You are not alone. You have friends and family. And of course, me."

Hikaru grinned briefly and looked away, staring into the forest. A thought struck him. "Sai...what did it feel like when you died?"

Sai visibly shivered, (How funny, I didn't know ghosts could shiver-) and gave Hikaru a tired, but cheerful smile. "That conversation will be had another day, Hikaru. Let us talk about other things."

Sai clapped his hands together. "Like Go!"

Hikaru groaned and tipped backwards, sprawling all over the grass. "No, thank you. I would rather speak of death than Go."

"But Hikaru!" Sai cried. "You are helping Tsutsui with the festival tomorrow! You should at least practice a little..."

"Why would I need to practice? I will only be your puppet."

Sai shook his head seriously. "There is a form of grace you acquire when you play the game, Hikaru. Moving like a stiff marionette, placing the stones like an automaton, is not truly playing the game. You volunteered to help Tsutsui, not I."

Hikaru sighed heavily. "I do not understand..."

"You will one day." Sai clapped his hands, suddenly turning stern. "Now, practice."

As daylight came, it found Hikaru Shindo to be sleep-deprived and irate. The infuriating ghost had made him practice almost all night.

"You said I needed to practice for Tsutsui's festival," Hikaru grumbled. "And now I might be too tired to go."

Sai raised his eyebrows. "Is it possible for one to be too tired for Go?"

Hikaru only sighed, rubbing his tired eyes. "In any case, I wonder what the festival will be like," He muttered. "Filled with forest animals...will I be eaten? Perhaps I should learn to fight, or run away, if they only go for my leg first...Sai, if you were an animal, which part of my body would you eat first?"

Sai wrinkled his nose. "Hikaru, the chances of being eaten by squirrels and birds are slim."

"Maybe." Hikaru shrugged. "You never know."

They walked on in silence for maybe a few miles, or maybe twenty feet. It was so hard to tell now after all, what with the shrinking problems. Hikaru was just about to ask if they were going in the right direction when they broke through the trees.

He was shocked at what he saw. It would have been a regular clearing, but somebody had draped colored lanterns around the trees at the border, and the clearing seemed to go on forever. Though it was morning, the sky was midnight black, and glittering with thousands of stars. There were stalls and stalls that were selling or showcases oddities, run by even odder people. Well, people is a relative term; squirrels hunched behind tables, bird fluttered around anxiously, even mini-hippopotamuses walked on their hind legs in sweatpants and T-shirts. It was the weirdest, most bizarre sight Hikaru had ever seen.

And I'm a part of it.

Looking around nervously, Hikaru made his way through the crowd, which was easier said than done, because it seemed like every single living thing in the festival was bumping into him. On purpose. To escape the chaos, he stumbled over to a stall where a turtle was selling stewed mushrooms. Hikaru had never really had a taste for mushrooms, but he was hungry enough to eat anything, and so asked,

"How much for the mushrooms?"

The turtle slowly raised its head to fix Hikaru with a beady eye. "Eh?"

"I said," Hikaru raised his voice. "How much for the mushrooms?!"

The turtle glared at him, which Hikaru thought wasn't fair, because he was trying to behave himself this time around. "How much? They're free, aren't they?"

Hikaru beamed and grabbed a bowl of stewed mushrooms. The bowl has a silver spoon in it, and Hikaru picked up the spoon and tried to scoop up a mushroom. That is, tried. The mushrooms swirled and wriggled out of the way of his spoon, going as far as to spill over the sides in their attempt to get away from it. Hikaru grunted angrily, and chased them around the bow some more before giving up.

"How do you eat these things?" He demanded of the turtle.

"With your mouth." The turtle said, and went back to gloomily gazing into the distance.

"But they keep running away."

"Because you're trying to scoop them up with a spoon, idiot!" The turtle snapped. "Just slurp off the side of the bowl."

Hikaru brought the bowl to his face and took a gulp, surprised to find that they didn't run away this time. The mushrooms didn't taste that bad, either.

"You can't eat mushrooms with silverware," The turtle was saying. "They don't want any of those dirty utensils in their faces."

Everything in this world is so opinionated! "Why not?" Hikaru asked between mouthfuls of stew.

"I'll tell you why," The turtle said in a dramatically more cheerful voice. "With a poem."

"Oh no," Hikaru said hastily, "That's fine-"

But the turtle had already started:

In a shadowy wood, where an old tree once stood,

Was a mushroom, a horse, and a spoon.

The mushroom said "Hail! For a penny and rail, I will get you a wild baboon!"

The horse tossed its head, all shiny and sleek, said "Now, why would I ever want that?"

"I have not a penny, I have not a rail, only this old leather hat."

The spoon gleamed and grinned, throwing fear to the wind, and said, "Well, I would buy your baboon! Only one question, one I must ask, can you get me a rubber balloon?"

"Yes, I will get it today," said the mushroom, an amiable, friendly, fellow.

And off he went, to recover his wares, his pace quite measured and mellow.

When he came back, weighed down from his sack, the spoon had the rail and the penny.

The spoon took the baboon, saying, "My! You are light, and the baboon is incredibly heavy!"

The mushroom was left holding the rubber balloon, and floated up, up, and away.

And the spoon, with his prize, the deed now done, went smugly on his way.

The turtle finished his tale and looked expectantly at Hikaru.

"Um...it was good." Hikaru said uncomfortably. "So, mushrooms hate spoons because a spoon tricked a mushroom into giving him his monkey without paying for it?"

"A baboon, my dear boy." The turtle reproved. "But yes. How you like it if you were forced to climb inside something that wronged you?"

Hikaru merely shrugged, finished his stew, and said goodbye to the old turtle. Wandering through the crowd, looking for Tsutsui, he scanned the various signs for anything that remotely resembled Go. Finally, he caught sight of Tsutsui sitting behind a table, gesturing to a small, velvety black square with stars on it. The square was hovering in the air at face height, and Sai squeaked in astonishment.

"They have harnessed the night sky? But how?"

"I don't know." Hikaru said and quick-walked over to Tsutsui.

Tsutsui glanced up and met Hikaru's gaze. He beamed, and rose from his seat. "Hikaru! So happy that you came, you can have the table next to mine."

Hikaru stood behind the table accompanying Tsutsui's, but realized he had no idea how to continue.

"Ah...Tsutsui, how do I…'harness the night sky'?"

"It's easy." Tsutsui reassured him. "Just reach your hand to the clouds and grab the sky instead of a star. Granted, you can't play very good games on harnessed boards; the stars sometime shatter on them ad you have to start all over, see. But for this, they're perfect."

Hikaru was hopeless. How am I supposed to drag down a piece of the sky if I can't even grab a star?

Sai, however, appeared intrigued and up for a challenge. "Relax, Hikaru. Let me take over."

Hikaru let his arms flop down, and his shoulders sag, and Sai slowly penetrated his skin, slipping his hands and arms into Hikaru's like he was putting on gloves. He reached into the sky, his hands held aloft, and Hikaru said nervously, "Sai, are you sure I'll be okay?"

"I have never tried this before," Sai murmured, concentrating. "But I can assure you, you will be safe."

Suddenly, Hikaru's hands clenched themselves into fists, and Hikaru drew a sharp breath at the feeling of his palm. He was gripping something cool and soft, like a blanket. He brought his hand down, and was mesmerized by the square of black he held in his hand. He let go, and the square rippled, sticking to what appeared to be air in front of him, a perfect canvass.

Hikaru soon discovered that like Tsutsui said, it was a weak substitute for the sky at best, the stars breaking and fading slowly if left to their own devices, but mostly he got along okay. All he had to do was lay out problems (with Sai's help, of course; Hikaru still couldn't hold a star) from a book, Life and Death Problems of Honninbo Shusaku. He was treated to a brief history lesson from Sai concerning Torajiro, all his quirks and habits. Hikaru could tell, just by the softness in his voice and the glimmer in his eyes that Sai had cared dearly about his former pupil.

I wonder if one day he will care about me like that.

Tsutsui glanced up from his own board to check on Hikaru. "How are you doing?"

"Fine," Hikaru said. "It's not that hard to do, you know."

"Not hard to do, huh?"

This voice was loud, brazen, with an underlying purr to it. Hikaru looked up to find the source of this voice. A wild cat, lean and walking on its hind legs, was approaching them, it's fanged mouth twisting into a sneer.

"Oh, no..." Tsutsui mumbled.

"What is it? Who is he?" Hikaru asked immediately as the cat came closer.

"It's Tetsuo Kaga." Tsutsui whispered miserably.

In Alice in Wonderland, Alice has this habit of talking to herself, which I tried to incorporate in Hikaru's personality in this story, but I realized he came off more like Izuku Midoriya than Alice. XD