The Fire: The Conversation
He trembled, his fists clenched at his sides, one around Waya, who was peacefully snoring on his shoulder. No, he couldn't lose his temper here, not when Waya had finally been knocked out with a few anesthetics for a few hours. He couldn't worry, then, about Hikaru, about the condition that the youngest of them was in NOW, and he could just sleep and sleep and dream about Go. Even now, he watched as the younger's fingers moved, almost as if picking up stones, tapping sluggishly against his leg. He wondered if this was how Waya usually slept - or if it was the side effects of the anesthetics working on him.
Of course, Isumi could worry. He wasn't sound asleep, wasn't knocked completely senseless that he wouldnt' be worrying about his friend who had been in the room for three hours, THREE HOURS, and no one had come back out of it. It was all very well that the doctors were doing their best for him, but he highly questioned their ability if they were taking this long. It was restraining, the four white walls that gleamed at him like grinning white teeth, and the humorless windows that only showed rain and gray ash skies. No, he decided it wasn't fair that Waya was allowed to sleep while he was allowed to be awake. He couldn't exactly walk out of the hospital - for one, there was Hikaru, and his maddening parental instincts just wouldn't let "abandoning" Hikaru become a possible option, and for two there was Waya, still sound asleep like a child, ticking his fingers to the rhythm of an imaginary watchclock. Slowly, he calmed down, his nerves still red like the fire that continued to glow dimly in his mind, like a half-dream when he was almost asleep.
It wasn't that he was worried or anything - he WAS the oldest Insei student, so he knew how it was to be looked down upon as "just a child" - but even as one side of his brain told him that Hikaru could take care of himself, the other side urged him to do something. But what could HE do? He wasn't a surgeon, a doctor, and he didn't have anything over first-aid class, which he had taken almost three years ago. Still, still, his fingers itched to do something, anything - what ifs circled around his head like those little birds in the American cartoons when the characters got squashed. He knew that he shouldn't be just collectively worried about one person, not just worried about Hikaru - there were other members of the fire, ones that might have gotten hurt more than Hikaru, and he knew that he should get up and look for anyone that he could possibly know - but somehow, he couldn't tear himself from that seat. It occurred to him that he was waiting, waiting for someone to come and tell him because they would, they would know who he was and who he was waiting for because everyone had seen the boy who saved Touya Akira.
As if on cue, footsteps rounded the corner of the waiting room and a certain well-known son of the Meijin Touya came around. Isumi could blatantly see the hesitation on his face, ridiculously out of place with the regular cool demeanor that he perceived around the famous Touya's son. It wasn't that he felt any ill will towards Touya Akira (maybe a little, though, because Touya Akira had obviously passed the pro test without any difficulty at all), especially not in the way that Hikaru had gone out of his way to save this particular person. He could see the emotions that battled for control, especially the discomfiture when Touya asked, "May I sit here?", and Isumi made room. But especially, he noted something like a still-duped disbelief on his face.
There was silence, blessed silence. Then Touya blurted out uncharacteristically, "I don't know."
Isumi knew that this was finally the answer to the question that he, too, had been thinking about. Too bad Waya was asleep, though - he would have liked to hear the answer to that stinging question he posed before marching off to the front door of the building. But even as his rage began to build up in him - how could Touya Akira be so ungrateful to his personalize savior? - he forced the bitter medicine down. No, he wouldn't get angry now, not when there was still Hikaru in the ER. He didn't exactly want it to be known that while Hikaru was preoccupied, he had taken to beating the living daylights out of Hikaru's rival. It wouldn't be nice news, especially when Hikaru woke up. The kid would probably take Isumi and beat him up himself, if at all a shortie would be able to beat up an almost-six foot Isumi.
"You don't know what?", Isumi asked calmly, knowing the answer.
"The question. The question that Yoshitaka asked. About Hikaru thinking that I'd do the same for him. I don't know if I would have - I've never thought of it that way, I've never thought that maybe he saw me as something more than just a very big obstacle to overcome. Certainly, I didn't", he paused, and his shoulders shook. "I saw him as just a threat - never as a person, someone whohas a life, I just presumed that he lived for Go like me and nothing else, that he was untouchable like everyone just like me... I just didn't see him as a person who had other interests as well."
Isumi said nothing.
"I didn't think about the insane stuff, the things that only happen movies when enemies have to team up and fight a common enemy - I've just never seen myself in Shindou's eyes, never seen him as anything more than just...just..."
"An object", Isumi finished. "But now you know what these people are, everyone in this world, they're all human and they're all susceptible to Death at all times. Hikaru won't blame you if you tell him this when he wakes up. He will just say that he's glad you learned it. Would you do the same for him, now, if the chance arose?" Touya nodded. "Then there's no harm done."
"But what if I'm not there...what if he dies anyway from a falling building or a fire or an earthquake or something like that..."
"Then it's not your fault. You can't expect yourself to be Hikaru's personal savior now that he's saved you. He's not a person who's revolved around 'paying people back', you know. He's a person who believes in belief, the belief that people can learn. If you ask a favor of him, he won't expect a favor in return. He doesn't like to ask favors himself, even thought that's the way it usually goes. He expects nothing in return, Touya. Learn that rule of selflessness, and you will be like Hikaru. You've got to be willing to give something and not expect something back - to have someone get angry and punch you and not fight back, or have someone throw stuff at you - you have to learn to be peaceful, let it by." Isumi smiled wryly. "I don't know if Hikaru wouldn't react to someone throwing a Go board at him, though."
"I'm so unlike him."
"Learn to be like him. It might help in beating him. Mercy is his middle name." Touya looked at him quickly at that particular comment, but said nothing. The ni dan wasn't sure if that was a clue to how Shindo played or just a philosophy that he went by.
After a few moments, Touya spoke again. "Has anyone come out yet?"
"No", Isumi answered distractedly, thinking of the same question, "no one's come out." Touya bowed his head and began to fall into a quiet recession when Isumi suddenly asked, "Are you worried?"
Touya stiffened in response. Isumi immediately knew that he'd hit something important. He watched as various emotions battled on the pro's face as he struggled to answer.
"No", the ni dan finally managed to say. "I'm not worried. Shindou's luck has never failed him before. It will not start now."
Isumi snorted, but inside he was seething. Thinly he veiled his next angry words so that even Touya could hear the contempt. "Luck?", he questioned, "all we can depend on is fickle Luck?" A pause, then, "Are you saying that you believe that the reason Hikaru won you in two informal matches was because of just his LUCK?" When Touya didn't move, Isumi continued. "You truly see his progress as nothing more than just chance, rather than ability?"
In response, the pro's hands tightened on the fabric of his pants. "That. . .is what I thought, at first. But after playing and replaying the game in my mind and also on the board, I realized there was simply too much that could have been attributed to petty Luck. . .it was someone else, someone who's not Shindou. . .even if Shindou studied all the Go books in the entire world but never played a single game, he could not have played half as well as my opponent that day."
Isumi was clearly mystified. "Not Hikaru who played you/" He had heard of the incident in the Go parlor that Touya Akira had often visited - the manager lady there was a friend of his mother's - and he, too, had been amazed that someone of Touya's own age had actually matched the young Go prodigy's caliber in an informal match. Furthermore, he was surprised when that same exact person turned up at the Go Research Center, intent on becoming an Insei. Still, he did not understand. Not Hikaru? Though he knew sometimes he could catch the youngster half-talking to himself, he dismissed it as just imagination.
Akira continued to ramble on, oblivious to the fact that he still had an audience. "No, it wasn't Shindou that played me that day - Shindou hadn't ever played anyone before playing me, so he had no experience whatsoever beforehand." He looked beseechingly at the pristine, white ceiling as if asking a question. "It's almost as if he had a second persona, like. . ."
"Sai?", Isumi finished. Touya jolted upright - he hadn't been aware that he had been speaking his thoughts out loud. Isumi regarded him levelly, and in response to his apparent knowing of the answer to Touya's riddle, asked, "Have you ever played an opponent called 'Zelda' on NetGo?" Touya shook his head, but it was uncertain; after all, he played many people on NetGo, and he might have played Zelda but didn't remember it. "I know him, and he has played Sai before. He's also played Hikaru before - I've heard him comment that Hikaru's plays almost imitate Sai's, in a funny way - the two people counter the similar circumstances almost identically, and sometimes he swears that Hikaru had been practicing against Sai by night and playing him by day, especially on how fast Hikaru's Go has developed in only a year or so." Isumi smiled wryly, trying NOT to look down at Waya's head and ruffle it. "I'm quite familiar with him - he thinks very highly of Sai, even though Sai has not returned to NetGo for some time now." Touya nodded assent to the fact, and the two lapsed back into silence.
Soon, the doctor came, and gave a lengthy, long-winded explanation of "Shindou will have breathing problems for the rest of his life" that took twenty minutes or so. By that time, Waya was snoring like ten pigs that had been lullabyed to sleep, and Touya was drooping his head. The only other piece of relevant information that was actually understood in all the medical garble was that Hikaru would be awake in a day or so, and that nothing else other than a small part of his lungs was permanently damaged. Isumi and Akira were both parting ways when Waya finally came around.
"Eh?", he asked drowsily, the anesthetics still having their affect on him, "what happened?"
Isumi knocked on his head lightly. "We've been talking about you." At this, Touya looked a little concerned - they had been talking about Waya? He certainly didn't remember THAT particular part of the conversation.
"Oh", was the still-dizzy reply before Waya plopped his head back on top of Isumi's shoulder and continued to snore.
Author's note:
Well well well, whaddaya know, I actually wrote the next part. * grins * There should be one more chapter in this trilogy, and then we'll be finished. Thanks to all my reviewers, especially XD - I don't know if I'll write another story about "Hikaru no Go" after this, but let me finish this one first, and then you can tell me if you want another one. I'm hoping that it won't be something too big. . .Lord knows that I take a project and I can't finish it. Well, ja for now, got an essay to write, ya know.
Andrie
He trembled, his fists clenched at his sides, one around Waya, who was peacefully snoring on his shoulder. No, he couldn't lose his temper here, not when Waya had finally been knocked out with a few anesthetics for a few hours. He couldn't worry, then, about Hikaru, about the condition that the youngest of them was in NOW, and he could just sleep and sleep and dream about Go. Even now, he watched as the younger's fingers moved, almost as if picking up stones, tapping sluggishly against his leg. He wondered if this was how Waya usually slept - or if it was the side effects of the anesthetics working on him.
Of course, Isumi could worry. He wasn't sound asleep, wasn't knocked completely senseless that he wouldnt' be worrying about his friend who had been in the room for three hours, THREE HOURS, and no one had come back out of it. It was all very well that the doctors were doing their best for him, but he highly questioned their ability if they were taking this long. It was restraining, the four white walls that gleamed at him like grinning white teeth, and the humorless windows that only showed rain and gray ash skies. No, he decided it wasn't fair that Waya was allowed to sleep while he was allowed to be awake. He couldn't exactly walk out of the hospital - for one, there was Hikaru, and his maddening parental instincts just wouldn't let "abandoning" Hikaru become a possible option, and for two there was Waya, still sound asleep like a child, ticking his fingers to the rhythm of an imaginary watchclock. Slowly, he calmed down, his nerves still red like the fire that continued to glow dimly in his mind, like a half-dream when he was almost asleep.
It wasn't that he was worried or anything - he WAS the oldest Insei student, so he knew how it was to be looked down upon as "just a child" - but even as one side of his brain told him that Hikaru could take care of himself, the other side urged him to do something. But what could HE do? He wasn't a surgeon, a doctor, and he didn't have anything over first-aid class, which he had taken almost three years ago. Still, still, his fingers itched to do something, anything - what ifs circled around his head like those little birds in the American cartoons when the characters got squashed. He knew that he shouldn't be just collectively worried about one person, not just worried about Hikaru - there were other members of the fire, ones that might have gotten hurt more than Hikaru, and he knew that he should get up and look for anyone that he could possibly know - but somehow, he couldn't tear himself from that seat. It occurred to him that he was waiting, waiting for someone to come and tell him because they would, they would know who he was and who he was waiting for because everyone had seen the boy who saved Touya Akira.
As if on cue, footsteps rounded the corner of the waiting room and a certain well-known son of the Meijin Touya came around. Isumi could blatantly see the hesitation on his face, ridiculously out of place with the regular cool demeanor that he perceived around the famous Touya's son. It wasn't that he felt any ill will towards Touya Akira (maybe a little, though, because Touya Akira had obviously passed the pro test without any difficulty at all), especially not in the way that Hikaru had gone out of his way to save this particular person. He could see the emotions that battled for control, especially the discomfiture when Touya asked, "May I sit here?", and Isumi made room. But especially, he noted something like a still-duped disbelief on his face.
There was silence, blessed silence. Then Touya blurted out uncharacteristically, "I don't know."
Isumi knew that this was finally the answer to the question that he, too, had been thinking about. Too bad Waya was asleep, though - he would have liked to hear the answer to that stinging question he posed before marching off to the front door of the building. But even as his rage began to build up in him - how could Touya Akira be so ungrateful to his personalize savior? - he forced the bitter medicine down. No, he wouldn't get angry now, not when there was still Hikaru in the ER. He didn't exactly want it to be known that while Hikaru was preoccupied, he had taken to beating the living daylights out of Hikaru's rival. It wouldn't be nice news, especially when Hikaru woke up. The kid would probably take Isumi and beat him up himself, if at all a shortie would be able to beat up an almost-six foot Isumi.
"You don't know what?", Isumi asked calmly, knowing the answer.
"The question. The question that Yoshitaka asked. About Hikaru thinking that I'd do the same for him. I don't know if I would have - I've never thought of it that way, I've never thought that maybe he saw me as something more than just a very big obstacle to overcome. Certainly, I didn't", he paused, and his shoulders shook. "I saw him as just a threat - never as a person, someone whohas a life, I just presumed that he lived for Go like me and nothing else, that he was untouchable like everyone just like me... I just didn't see him as a person who had other interests as well."
Isumi said nothing.
"I didn't think about the insane stuff, the things that only happen movies when enemies have to team up and fight a common enemy - I've just never seen myself in Shindou's eyes, never seen him as anything more than just...just..."
"An object", Isumi finished. "But now you know what these people are, everyone in this world, they're all human and they're all susceptible to Death at all times. Hikaru won't blame you if you tell him this when he wakes up. He will just say that he's glad you learned it. Would you do the same for him, now, if the chance arose?" Touya nodded. "Then there's no harm done."
"But what if I'm not there...what if he dies anyway from a falling building or a fire or an earthquake or something like that..."
"Then it's not your fault. You can't expect yourself to be Hikaru's personal savior now that he's saved you. He's not a person who's revolved around 'paying people back', you know. He's a person who believes in belief, the belief that people can learn. If you ask a favor of him, he won't expect a favor in return. He doesn't like to ask favors himself, even thought that's the way it usually goes. He expects nothing in return, Touya. Learn that rule of selflessness, and you will be like Hikaru. You've got to be willing to give something and not expect something back - to have someone get angry and punch you and not fight back, or have someone throw stuff at you - you have to learn to be peaceful, let it by." Isumi smiled wryly. "I don't know if Hikaru wouldn't react to someone throwing a Go board at him, though."
"I'm so unlike him."
"Learn to be like him. It might help in beating him. Mercy is his middle name." Touya looked at him quickly at that particular comment, but said nothing. The ni dan wasn't sure if that was a clue to how Shindo played or just a philosophy that he went by.
After a few moments, Touya spoke again. "Has anyone come out yet?"
"No", Isumi answered distractedly, thinking of the same question, "no one's come out." Touya bowed his head and began to fall into a quiet recession when Isumi suddenly asked, "Are you worried?"
Touya stiffened in response. Isumi immediately knew that he'd hit something important. He watched as various emotions battled on the pro's face as he struggled to answer.
"No", the ni dan finally managed to say. "I'm not worried. Shindou's luck has never failed him before. It will not start now."
Isumi snorted, but inside he was seething. Thinly he veiled his next angry words so that even Touya could hear the contempt. "Luck?", he questioned, "all we can depend on is fickle Luck?" A pause, then, "Are you saying that you believe that the reason Hikaru won you in two informal matches was because of just his LUCK?" When Touya didn't move, Isumi continued. "You truly see his progress as nothing more than just chance, rather than ability?"
In response, the pro's hands tightened on the fabric of his pants. "That. . .is what I thought, at first. But after playing and replaying the game in my mind and also on the board, I realized there was simply too much that could have been attributed to petty Luck. . .it was someone else, someone who's not Shindou. . .even if Shindou studied all the Go books in the entire world but never played a single game, he could not have played half as well as my opponent that day."
Isumi was clearly mystified. "Not Hikaru who played you/" He had heard of the incident in the Go parlor that Touya Akira had often visited - the manager lady there was a friend of his mother's - and he, too, had been amazed that someone of Touya's own age had actually matched the young Go prodigy's caliber in an informal match. Furthermore, he was surprised when that same exact person turned up at the Go Research Center, intent on becoming an Insei. Still, he did not understand. Not Hikaru? Though he knew sometimes he could catch the youngster half-talking to himself, he dismissed it as just imagination.
Akira continued to ramble on, oblivious to the fact that he still had an audience. "No, it wasn't Shindou that played me that day - Shindou hadn't ever played anyone before playing me, so he had no experience whatsoever beforehand." He looked beseechingly at the pristine, white ceiling as if asking a question. "It's almost as if he had a second persona, like. . ."
"Sai?", Isumi finished. Touya jolted upright - he hadn't been aware that he had been speaking his thoughts out loud. Isumi regarded him levelly, and in response to his apparent knowing of the answer to Touya's riddle, asked, "Have you ever played an opponent called 'Zelda' on NetGo?" Touya shook his head, but it was uncertain; after all, he played many people on NetGo, and he might have played Zelda but didn't remember it. "I know him, and he has played Sai before. He's also played Hikaru before - I've heard him comment that Hikaru's plays almost imitate Sai's, in a funny way - the two people counter the similar circumstances almost identically, and sometimes he swears that Hikaru had been practicing against Sai by night and playing him by day, especially on how fast Hikaru's Go has developed in only a year or so." Isumi smiled wryly, trying NOT to look down at Waya's head and ruffle it. "I'm quite familiar with him - he thinks very highly of Sai, even though Sai has not returned to NetGo for some time now." Touya nodded assent to the fact, and the two lapsed back into silence.
Soon, the doctor came, and gave a lengthy, long-winded explanation of "Shindou will have breathing problems for the rest of his life" that took twenty minutes or so. By that time, Waya was snoring like ten pigs that had been lullabyed to sleep, and Touya was drooping his head. The only other piece of relevant information that was actually understood in all the medical garble was that Hikaru would be awake in a day or so, and that nothing else other than a small part of his lungs was permanently damaged. Isumi and Akira were both parting ways when Waya finally came around.
"Eh?", he asked drowsily, the anesthetics still having their affect on him, "what happened?"
Isumi knocked on his head lightly. "We've been talking about you." At this, Touya looked a little concerned - they had been talking about Waya? He certainly didn't remember THAT particular part of the conversation.
"Oh", was the still-dizzy reply before Waya plopped his head back on top of Isumi's shoulder and continued to snore.
Author's note:
Well well well, whaddaya know, I actually wrote the next part. * grins * There should be one more chapter in this trilogy, and then we'll be finished. Thanks to all my reviewers, especially XD - I don't know if I'll write another story about "Hikaru no Go" after this, but let me finish this one first, and then you can tell me if you want another one. I'm hoping that it won't be something too big. . .Lord knows that I take a project and I can't finish it. Well, ja for now, got an essay to write, ya know.
Andrie