Fujiwara, Part III
* * *
Author's notes: I don't know how long I can keep this chapter rate of one every other day going, so it will be interesting to see how far it gets before Muse-chan peters out ^_^;; Poor Muse! I either rant on her or abuse her.
Once again, review thanks go to Lauren-sama, Kaitou, TJ, Sakurayuki, and Jeano.
Disclaimer: They're not mine, except Naritada so far. Please don't sue, as I have no money.
* * *
"Hmmm."
Akira and the shopkeeper both studied the board intensely. They were only about a third of the way through the game, but it was already clear whose skill was superior. Rather than drag it out, it is considered honorable to resign when the outcome is obvious.
"I have lost," the shopekeeper said with a laugh, and bowed.
"Thank you for the game," Akira answered, and started pointing out some of the other man's mistakes. "Your play was solid until here -- had you defended this stone instead of attacking on the north side of the board, I would have been in a much more difficult position."
"Ahhh, I see now. I could have connected these in two turns." The man chuckled softly as he studied the board configuration. "Wait 'til I tell the boys in the salon tonight that I lost to Touya Akira!"
Akira smiled back, faintly embarassed. "It was an honor to play you, sir," he managed. "I've still got much to learn myself, and every game teaches me more."
"So modest, too." The shopkeeper began clearing away stones, and glanced toward the door. "Your friend has yet to return. I have to admit, I'm not sure why, but I somehow think that boy is almost as talented as you. The go world sure will be exciting in the next few years, let me tell you."
"Shindou is . . ." Akira searched for a suitable word, and finally found one, "surprising. In many, many ways."
* * *
Hikaru felt like he was having a heart attack. This must be what it feels like, he said to himself, gasping and clutching his chest as he panicked. His heart felt as though it had sunk down to his stomach, and was waging a war with the other organ for dominance of his abdomen.
"One thousand ten AD," he repeated, in a much quieter voice. "The Heian court. The reign of the . . . Fujiwara?"
Naritada shrugged and reached out a hand to help the hysterical boy. "I'm not sure what one thousand ten 'ei-di' means, but yes, this is the capital city of Heian-kyou, and we are indeed under the reign of the Fujiwara. My name is Fujiwarano Naritada." He studied Hikaru thoughtfully, and felt the young man's forehead, checking for a fever. "Are you sure you're alright? You seem to have forgotten a lot of things."
"I don't think I ever learned them, ojii-san," Hikaru, replied, rubbing his face anxiously. Suddenly, a thought occurred to him, and he had to ask, "Have you ever heard of Fujiwarano Sai?"
Naritada looked troubled at the mention of the name. "Of course. He was the nephew I mentioned."
Hikaru became terribly excited, his heart leaping back into its proper position and thumping like a puppy for all of five seconds, before he remembered what Naritada had said before. "Oh. Your late nephew."
"Unfortunately. He disappeared four years ago, soon after my son Kohaku disappeared. 'Twas a pity, too, since he'd only been sentenced to exile for six months."
Hikaru had never heard that part of the story. "That's all? For what he did?"
"You assume he did something." The old man bent down and picked up the tea tray with a groan of exertion.
"Well, yeah, to get exiled and all," Hikaru finished lamely.
Naritada began walking toward the curtain that formed the far wall, where he had first come in, and Hikaru followed automatically, having to mince his steps to avoid passing by the shorter man.
"He cheated in front of the Emperor, or so Tsuyujima, his rival, claims. The Sai I always knew would have been too honest to cheat."
"Same here," Hikaru muttered under his breath. Sai had hated cheating, and loved meting out divine justice.
"I believe he was set up by Tsuyujima and Michinaga. Sai would have had a tenuous claim to the throne, and Michinaga so hates competition for his grandchildren. They wanted to discredit him, not kill him."
Hikaru nodded. "They didn't understand that not being able to play go would kill someone like Sai."
"You sound as if you knew him yourself," Naritada commented, and set the tea tray down once they passed through the curtain. The room they were now in was much larger and had a taller ceiling than the other portion. There had been a step down, and looking back Hikaru realized that the room they had left was some sort of sleeping area with a raised floor.
"I think all go players know each other, on some level," Hikaru said carefully.
Now they were in a more central room, and as Hikaru watched with wide eyes two young servant girls came along and whisked the tea tray to another part of the mansion they were in.
"Shall we play a game?"
Hikaru looked to where Naritada was gesturing, and saw a beautiful, lovingly crafted goban settled against one wall. The light streamed in from the open sliding door that it was in front of, illuminating the water of a koi pond and the dance of the carp inside it.
"As I said, this belonged to my nephew Sai." Naritada kneeled in front of the goban, and touched it reverently. "I keep it here in the hopes that someday he may return, however small that hope may be. Go on, sit, Sai won't mind us playing, wherever he is."
For the first time, the impact of his situation sunk into Hikaru's beleaguered mind. He had, through the benevolence of some god, been tossed back nearly a thousand years, and was now being asked to play a game of go with Sai's uncle.
Sai was still gone. Disappeared, to them, as he was to Hikaru. Oh Sai, Hikaru wanted to cry out, why don't you ever let people know when you're planning to leave? You seem to have hurt as least one other person as much as you hurt me . . .
Feeling quite sorry for himself, Hikaru sat in front of the board, and touched the kaya wood delicately. Immediately, the lightning flashed up his arm, and he gasped in shock. Naritada appeared not to have noticed.
"This . . . this is the board that Sai played at, every day, for his whole life . . ." Hikaru stare at his hand, puzzled at the flash of magic. Had it come from him, or from the go board?
"Well, not his whole life. This was a gift from the Emperor Ichijo, for Sai's coming of age, two months before he disappeared." Naritada took a bowl of white stones, and handed the black stones to Hikaru. "Shall we play an even game?"
"Sure," Hikaru agreed, and hesitantly picked up a black stone. The lightning did not return, and he breathed a sigh of relief.
"No matter where you are, go will always be the same." Naritada smiled, the papery skin around his eyes crinkling with warmth.
"Oh, I think some things might change a little." Hikaru picked up a handful of black stones, and Naritada set out two white sones. They counted them out together -- two, four, six, eight. Hikaru was white.
And this is the Heian! Hikaru bit his lip. There was one change right there. No komi . . . no five and a half moku given to him . . . this was an advantage he'd gotten spoiled by when he played white. He'd just have to play like he was black, then, he decided. He closed his eyes, and the eyes that opened a moment later were completely different. Go WAS go, no matter where you were in the world, and apparently no matter when you were, either.
He took a deep breath, and cleared his mind. The solid ping of shale against the kayo wood forced him to focus on the game.
Unconsciously, he took out the fan he had purchased after the final time he had met Sai, in his dreams, and held onto like a lifeline. He kept it in his pocket, and always held it when he believed he neeeded Sai's strength. He'd need it here, to play on Sai's board. With Sai's stones. Against Sai's uncle . . . in Sai's world.
* * *
"Shindou," Akira muttered as he left the go shop to return to the streets of Kyoto. "I don't know the heck you think you're doing, disappearing like this, but I don't have to sit around and wait for you."
Akira took a deep breath to dispell his anger. Hikaru always made him unreasonably angry; he had since the very first time they'd met. Lion and Dragon, they'd been called once by an overzealous reporter in Go Weekly. Doomed to clash every time they tried to breath the same air.
He walked casually down the cobblestones towards the Imperial Park. Perhaps Hikaru had gone there without him.
He would not admit that he was starting to get worried.
* * *
Pa-chi. Hikaru's infamous concentration had taken hold, and the universe around him consisted of nothing more than black and white stones and a kaya wood grid. The endless possibilites of go configurations ran through his mind faster than he could consciously think, and each plunk of his stones against the board was a solid, impressive move.
But Naritada was strong, stronger than Hikaru would ever have guessed. He felt something oddly familiar about the gameplay, and then realized it felt a lot like he was playing against Sai again, albeit a much weaker Sai, one who had yet to master the modern strategies needed to capture larger territories against greater odds.
Pa-chi. Naritada's move sparkled brilliantly on the board. There was a danger, but Hikaru could cut it off *there* -- and gain three more moku at the same time.
He raised the stone high, and deliberately placed it with more force than necessary. As he held the stone for few seconds, pressing it down as if to affix it to the board, a flash of light emanated from his fingers. Hikaru tried to hide his gasp of surprise. The magic WAS in the board. Had Naritada seen it? Hikaru looked up into the face of the old man, expecting to see indifference or concentration.
Not awe.
"The hand of god," Naritada said softly, looking straight into Hikaru's eyes. Hikaru blanched. Sai had never explained exactly what the kami no itte was, exactly, but surely it was more than just a few random bits of shine leaking out from a particularly good move.
"No," Hikaru said, surprised at the firmness in his voice.
"Of course, not yet," Naritada agreed, shaking his head to clear it. "But this play . . . this strong, solid play, so much like Sai's go . . . in it, I can see the hand of god. In there, somewhere. Waiting to come out. Someone such as I am unable to draw it out, but Sai . . . yes, I would have liked for Sai to play against you."
Hikaru had never regretted not finishing that final game with Sai more than at this point. He lowered his eyes to the board, unable to meet the old man gaze for gaze.
"Are all the puros from Tokyo this strong?"
"There are a lot who are stronger than I am," Hikaru said. "I'm still young. Touya Koyou says that I and the other new pros need to mature more as players before we can begin to really understand the nuances of true strength."
Naritada nodded in agreement. "Sai was young, too, which is why he never was able to attain the hand of god while I knew him. I taught him to play, you know. So much potential wasted . . . and for politics." Naritada looked old and bitter then, and Hikaru longed to tell him the whole story, at least the parts that he understood. But he knew, much as he knew that he could never share the secret of Sai with those in the future, that he could not explain Sai's journey in time to anyone here in the Heian. They'd never believe him, for starters.
The Sai that Hikaru had known had lived an entire extra life, and still been unable to reach the hand of god. If this go board had been a gift for his coming of age, that meant that Sai had been no more than twenty when he died, assuming that the coming of age ceremony had never really changed over the centuries. Hikaru was rather shaky on history as a whole, and unless Sai had lectured him, he rarely paid attention. Now that he was apparently stuck in the Heian, he hoped his ignorance of his own country wouldn't come back to bite him.
The Heian . . . why am I accepting this so easily? he asked himself, now that he was free to concentrate on something besides go. The comment I made in the street was a joke. Surely the kami-sama -- if they even exist -- would have realized that.
The part of him that acted smarter than the rest of him answered: The reason you're accepting it is because it's real, and if you don't accept it, you'll go nuts. And we don't want that now, do we? So let's NOT dwell on it.
The human mind has a remarkable ability to heal itself in these sort of situations.
"Since you are here to play go, you'll probably want to play against someone strong," Naritada was saying. "The Emperor normally takes a go lesson around midday. Would you like to play a game against him? I'm sure that he will appreciate your talents."
"Erk," Hikaru said, and flinched. "Would Michinaga-sama allow it? I mean, I'm a stranger, I'm no relation to anyone in the court, I'm weird looking . . ."
"If I request it, I'm certain. You are my guest here, after all, and Michinaga IS my cousin." Naritada patted Hikaru's hand reassuringly. "Although we will have to do something about your appearance. Does everyone dress in the manner as you are currently in Tokyo?"
Hikaru glanced down at his worn jeans, white t-shirt, blue overshirt with stenciled rabbits, and signature enormous sneakers.
"Most boys my age do," he said, mildly defensive.
"Well, fortunately, you are about Kohaku's height. There is at least one court outfit he never wore that should fit you well. It may be a bit behind current styles, but that is excuseable for one who hasn't been to court before." Naritada began clearing the stones, and Hikaru assisted him, until the board was once again in rights.
Hikaru sighed, and decided that all things considered, he could be in a lot worse shape than he was in now. If Naritada hadn't -- well, hadn't rescued an unconscious stranger, Hikaru might well be dead by now, trampled in the streets by a horse or crushed by a palanquin.
"Thank you, Naritada-san," Hikaru said, and followed the man to yet another part of the mansion. "Oh, and do I have to wear one of those funny looking tall hats? Please tell me I don't . . ."
* * *
End part III
* * *
Author's notes: I don't know how long I can keep this chapter rate of one every other day going, so it will be interesting to see how far it gets before Muse-chan peters out ^_^;; Poor Muse! I either rant on her or abuse her.
Once again, review thanks go to Lauren-sama, Kaitou, TJ, Sakurayuki, and Jeano.
Disclaimer: They're not mine, except Naritada so far. Please don't sue, as I have no money.
* * *
"Hmmm."
Akira and the shopkeeper both studied the board intensely. They were only about a third of the way through the game, but it was already clear whose skill was superior. Rather than drag it out, it is considered honorable to resign when the outcome is obvious.
"I have lost," the shopekeeper said with a laugh, and bowed.
"Thank you for the game," Akira answered, and started pointing out some of the other man's mistakes. "Your play was solid until here -- had you defended this stone instead of attacking on the north side of the board, I would have been in a much more difficult position."
"Ahhh, I see now. I could have connected these in two turns." The man chuckled softly as he studied the board configuration. "Wait 'til I tell the boys in the salon tonight that I lost to Touya Akira!"
Akira smiled back, faintly embarassed. "It was an honor to play you, sir," he managed. "I've still got much to learn myself, and every game teaches me more."
"So modest, too." The shopkeeper began clearing away stones, and glanced toward the door. "Your friend has yet to return. I have to admit, I'm not sure why, but I somehow think that boy is almost as talented as you. The go world sure will be exciting in the next few years, let me tell you."
"Shindou is . . ." Akira searched for a suitable word, and finally found one, "surprising. In many, many ways."
* * *
Hikaru felt like he was having a heart attack. This must be what it feels like, he said to himself, gasping and clutching his chest as he panicked. His heart felt as though it had sunk down to his stomach, and was waging a war with the other organ for dominance of his abdomen.
"One thousand ten AD," he repeated, in a much quieter voice. "The Heian court. The reign of the . . . Fujiwara?"
Naritada shrugged and reached out a hand to help the hysterical boy. "I'm not sure what one thousand ten 'ei-di' means, but yes, this is the capital city of Heian-kyou, and we are indeed under the reign of the Fujiwara. My name is Fujiwarano Naritada." He studied Hikaru thoughtfully, and felt the young man's forehead, checking for a fever. "Are you sure you're alright? You seem to have forgotten a lot of things."
"I don't think I ever learned them, ojii-san," Hikaru, replied, rubbing his face anxiously. Suddenly, a thought occurred to him, and he had to ask, "Have you ever heard of Fujiwarano Sai?"
Naritada looked troubled at the mention of the name. "Of course. He was the nephew I mentioned."
Hikaru became terribly excited, his heart leaping back into its proper position and thumping like a puppy for all of five seconds, before he remembered what Naritada had said before. "Oh. Your late nephew."
"Unfortunately. He disappeared four years ago, soon after my son Kohaku disappeared. 'Twas a pity, too, since he'd only been sentenced to exile for six months."
Hikaru had never heard that part of the story. "That's all? For what he did?"
"You assume he did something." The old man bent down and picked up the tea tray with a groan of exertion.
"Well, yeah, to get exiled and all," Hikaru finished lamely.
Naritada began walking toward the curtain that formed the far wall, where he had first come in, and Hikaru followed automatically, having to mince his steps to avoid passing by the shorter man.
"He cheated in front of the Emperor, or so Tsuyujima, his rival, claims. The Sai I always knew would have been too honest to cheat."
"Same here," Hikaru muttered under his breath. Sai had hated cheating, and loved meting out divine justice.
"I believe he was set up by Tsuyujima and Michinaga. Sai would have had a tenuous claim to the throne, and Michinaga so hates competition for his grandchildren. They wanted to discredit him, not kill him."
Hikaru nodded. "They didn't understand that not being able to play go would kill someone like Sai."
"You sound as if you knew him yourself," Naritada commented, and set the tea tray down once they passed through the curtain. The room they were now in was much larger and had a taller ceiling than the other portion. There had been a step down, and looking back Hikaru realized that the room they had left was some sort of sleeping area with a raised floor.
"I think all go players know each other, on some level," Hikaru said carefully.
Now they were in a more central room, and as Hikaru watched with wide eyes two young servant girls came along and whisked the tea tray to another part of the mansion they were in.
"Shall we play a game?"
Hikaru looked to where Naritada was gesturing, and saw a beautiful, lovingly crafted goban settled against one wall. The light streamed in from the open sliding door that it was in front of, illuminating the water of a koi pond and the dance of the carp inside it.
"As I said, this belonged to my nephew Sai." Naritada kneeled in front of the goban, and touched it reverently. "I keep it here in the hopes that someday he may return, however small that hope may be. Go on, sit, Sai won't mind us playing, wherever he is."
For the first time, the impact of his situation sunk into Hikaru's beleaguered mind. He had, through the benevolence of some god, been tossed back nearly a thousand years, and was now being asked to play a game of go with Sai's uncle.
Sai was still gone. Disappeared, to them, as he was to Hikaru. Oh Sai, Hikaru wanted to cry out, why don't you ever let people know when you're planning to leave? You seem to have hurt as least one other person as much as you hurt me . . .
Feeling quite sorry for himself, Hikaru sat in front of the board, and touched the kaya wood delicately. Immediately, the lightning flashed up his arm, and he gasped in shock. Naritada appeared not to have noticed.
"This . . . this is the board that Sai played at, every day, for his whole life . . ." Hikaru stare at his hand, puzzled at the flash of magic. Had it come from him, or from the go board?
"Well, not his whole life. This was a gift from the Emperor Ichijo, for Sai's coming of age, two months before he disappeared." Naritada took a bowl of white stones, and handed the black stones to Hikaru. "Shall we play an even game?"
"Sure," Hikaru agreed, and hesitantly picked up a black stone. The lightning did not return, and he breathed a sigh of relief.
"No matter where you are, go will always be the same." Naritada smiled, the papery skin around his eyes crinkling with warmth.
"Oh, I think some things might change a little." Hikaru picked up a handful of black stones, and Naritada set out two white sones. They counted them out together -- two, four, six, eight. Hikaru was white.
And this is the Heian! Hikaru bit his lip. There was one change right there. No komi . . . no five and a half moku given to him . . . this was an advantage he'd gotten spoiled by when he played white. He'd just have to play like he was black, then, he decided. He closed his eyes, and the eyes that opened a moment later were completely different. Go WAS go, no matter where you were in the world, and apparently no matter when you were, either.
He took a deep breath, and cleared his mind. The solid ping of shale against the kayo wood forced him to focus on the game.
Unconsciously, he took out the fan he had purchased after the final time he had met Sai, in his dreams, and held onto like a lifeline. He kept it in his pocket, and always held it when he believed he neeeded Sai's strength. He'd need it here, to play on Sai's board. With Sai's stones. Against Sai's uncle . . . in Sai's world.
* * *
"Shindou," Akira muttered as he left the go shop to return to the streets of Kyoto. "I don't know the heck you think you're doing, disappearing like this, but I don't have to sit around and wait for you."
Akira took a deep breath to dispell his anger. Hikaru always made him unreasonably angry; he had since the very first time they'd met. Lion and Dragon, they'd been called once by an overzealous reporter in Go Weekly. Doomed to clash every time they tried to breath the same air.
He walked casually down the cobblestones towards the Imperial Park. Perhaps Hikaru had gone there without him.
He would not admit that he was starting to get worried.
* * *
Pa-chi. Hikaru's infamous concentration had taken hold, and the universe around him consisted of nothing more than black and white stones and a kaya wood grid. The endless possibilites of go configurations ran through his mind faster than he could consciously think, and each plunk of his stones against the board was a solid, impressive move.
But Naritada was strong, stronger than Hikaru would ever have guessed. He felt something oddly familiar about the gameplay, and then realized it felt a lot like he was playing against Sai again, albeit a much weaker Sai, one who had yet to master the modern strategies needed to capture larger territories against greater odds.
Pa-chi. Naritada's move sparkled brilliantly on the board. There was a danger, but Hikaru could cut it off *there* -- and gain three more moku at the same time.
He raised the stone high, and deliberately placed it with more force than necessary. As he held the stone for few seconds, pressing it down as if to affix it to the board, a flash of light emanated from his fingers. Hikaru tried to hide his gasp of surprise. The magic WAS in the board. Had Naritada seen it? Hikaru looked up into the face of the old man, expecting to see indifference or concentration.
Not awe.
"The hand of god," Naritada said softly, looking straight into Hikaru's eyes. Hikaru blanched. Sai had never explained exactly what the kami no itte was, exactly, but surely it was more than just a few random bits of shine leaking out from a particularly good move.
"No," Hikaru said, surprised at the firmness in his voice.
"Of course, not yet," Naritada agreed, shaking his head to clear it. "But this play . . . this strong, solid play, so much like Sai's go . . . in it, I can see the hand of god. In there, somewhere. Waiting to come out. Someone such as I am unable to draw it out, but Sai . . . yes, I would have liked for Sai to play against you."
Hikaru had never regretted not finishing that final game with Sai more than at this point. He lowered his eyes to the board, unable to meet the old man gaze for gaze.
"Are all the puros from Tokyo this strong?"
"There are a lot who are stronger than I am," Hikaru said. "I'm still young. Touya Koyou says that I and the other new pros need to mature more as players before we can begin to really understand the nuances of true strength."
Naritada nodded in agreement. "Sai was young, too, which is why he never was able to attain the hand of god while I knew him. I taught him to play, you know. So much potential wasted . . . and for politics." Naritada looked old and bitter then, and Hikaru longed to tell him the whole story, at least the parts that he understood. But he knew, much as he knew that he could never share the secret of Sai with those in the future, that he could not explain Sai's journey in time to anyone here in the Heian. They'd never believe him, for starters.
The Sai that Hikaru had known had lived an entire extra life, and still been unable to reach the hand of god. If this go board had been a gift for his coming of age, that meant that Sai had been no more than twenty when he died, assuming that the coming of age ceremony had never really changed over the centuries. Hikaru was rather shaky on history as a whole, and unless Sai had lectured him, he rarely paid attention. Now that he was apparently stuck in the Heian, he hoped his ignorance of his own country wouldn't come back to bite him.
The Heian . . . why am I accepting this so easily? he asked himself, now that he was free to concentrate on something besides go. The comment I made in the street was a joke. Surely the kami-sama -- if they even exist -- would have realized that.
The part of him that acted smarter than the rest of him answered: The reason you're accepting it is because it's real, and if you don't accept it, you'll go nuts. And we don't want that now, do we? So let's NOT dwell on it.
The human mind has a remarkable ability to heal itself in these sort of situations.
"Since you are here to play go, you'll probably want to play against someone strong," Naritada was saying. "The Emperor normally takes a go lesson around midday. Would you like to play a game against him? I'm sure that he will appreciate your talents."
"Erk," Hikaru said, and flinched. "Would Michinaga-sama allow it? I mean, I'm a stranger, I'm no relation to anyone in the court, I'm weird looking . . ."
"If I request it, I'm certain. You are my guest here, after all, and Michinaga IS my cousin." Naritada patted Hikaru's hand reassuringly. "Although we will have to do something about your appearance. Does everyone dress in the manner as you are currently in Tokyo?"
Hikaru glanced down at his worn jeans, white t-shirt, blue overshirt with stenciled rabbits, and signature enormous sneakers.
"Most boys my age do," he said, mildly defensive.
"Well, fortunately, you are about Kohaku's height. There is at least one court outfit he never wore that should fit you well. It may be a bit behind current styles, but that is excuseable for one who hasn't been to court before." Naritada began clearing the stones, and Hikaru assisted him, until the board was once again in rights.
Hikaru sighed, and decided that all things considered, he could be in a lot worse shape than he was in now. If Naritada hadn't -- well, hadn't rescued an unconscious stranger, Hikaru might well be dead by now, trampled in the streets by a horse or crushed by a palanquin.
"Thank you, Naritada-san," Hikaru said, and followed the man to yet another part of the mansion. "Oh, and do I have to wear one of those funny looking tall hats? Please tell me I don't . . ."
* * *
End part III