The outfit Sai wore is called a konoshi. I had a link posted, but ffnet is stripping all URLs from text files at the moment.
Since Hikaru's image color is yellow, his konoshi is yellow too. I imagine he'd look very cute in that. I did a sketch I need to scan and link and stuff soon.
Edit on 3/24/05: Fixed a typo of doom in this chapter.
Disclaimer: None of them are mine, they belong to Hotta & Obata and Shounen Jump and lots of other people in Japan. Oh, and history too.
Fujiwara, part 4
Some time later, Akira paused outside of the boundaries of the Imperial Park, his hair ruffling softly in the breeze.
Like Hikaru, he felt some strange, distant connection to this place. It was in the court that igo had gained popularity, and allowed talented players to first make a living trying to discover the universe in a configuration of stones. Unlike Hikaru, Akira knew that the court hadn't been held on the actual Imperial grounds very often, due to the fires that constantly burned down structures in the city as recently as a hundred years ago.
People often joked about Tokyo constantly being rebuilt after monster attacks, but it was actually grounded in the historical reality that when you have an old wooden city, stuff will rarely survive for very long.
Peeved at Hikaru for not being within eyeshot as soon as he had arrived at the grounds, Akira turned around and went back another block towards the river, and spotted the rest of the pros standing in line at a ramen shop.
"Yo! Touya-san! Get over here, they have green onion ramen on the menu!" Waya called enthusiastically. Akira trotted over to them obediently, breathing slightly heavier than before with the effort. He reminded himself to not get used to the sendentary lifestyle of a pro TOO early.
"I think I'll take just ramen myself, but I'm happy to see you're so enthused over the prospect."
Waya grinned. "I haven't had a good bowl of green onion ramen in ages. Say, Touya, where's Shindou? We thought he was with you."
"I thought he was too. He disappeared about two hours ago." Akira sighed and shrugged, his light windbreaker crinkling with the motion. "If he was half as good at go as he is at getting lost . . ."
"Oh well. He'll turn up again when he's hungry. Man, and the ramen is only 400 yen a bowl!" Waya's eyes shone with joy. "Shindou will certainly regret missing out on THIS . . "
After a rather confused moment where Hikaru had quietly inquired about the "facilities" and Naritada directed him out to the outhouse in the garden, they were inside a dressing room of the mansion, where Naritada oversaw servants covering Hikaru in the clothing of a lower ranking courtier.
"What do you mean, they're not on the capital grounds?" Hikaru said, peering over his shoulder to stare at the enormous drooping sleeve that fell behind him. The court outfit was HEAVY. It's a good thing Sai was a ghost; it would have been hard for him to walk around like this all the time, Hikaru thought.
"The Palace burned down several years ago. Currently, the Emperor's court is being held in the Biwa mansion, two streets to the north of us." Naritada chuckled. "You don't hear much by way of news in Tokyo, do you?"
"Eheheh," Hikaru laughed nervously, and winced when Naritada stuck a tate-eboshi on his head. The large hat added to his already relatively tall height, but he just felt SILLY in the thing. The rest of the outfit was rather neat, however. Formal clothes had changes so much over the centuries; no one had worn an outfit like this in ages. Hikaru touched one of the sleeves, cautiously. It was genuine silk, carefully dyed and embroidered in a pale cream and yellow pattern. It was the everyday wear of the courtier; nothing terribly fancy by court standards, but Hikaru felt incredibly overdressed and not a little strange wearing the clothes he'd seen Sai in every day for three years.
"I've never worn a konoshi before," Hikaru said, lifting one leg of the heavy, strange sashinuki pants to stare at the unworn soles of the tabi that had replaced his reliable old gym socks.
"Most of the commoners outside of the court never have," Naritada replied, settling his own tate-eboshi in the hat-head grooves that permanently kinked his long hair. He tied strings underneath his chin to hold it in place, which also acted as a sign of his status. "Warrior generals prefer the soh, and garments such as these are not really meant to be worn outside civilization. One who is skilled at go such as you cannot be a commoner however, so the assumption of the seventh rank for you will be quite all right."
Hikaru nodded. "In my ti- er, town, Tokyo, only a very few people wear formal clothes anywhere. Western wear has sort of taken over."
"Western? You mean like Kyuushuu?"
Hikaru gave up. "Yeah, like Kyuushuu. The style of, uh, kosode garments they wear there. We adapted them." Something that had been bothering Hikaru finally caused him to speak his mind. "Is it really all right for me to meet the Emperor? I'm . . . a nobody. Just saying I'm seventh rank doesn't make me anything special."
"But I am a courtier of the second rank, and I will be escorting you," Naritada said, and that was that. "Just do not say anything. The Emperor will be behind a screen in the audience room; you can remain outside until I speak with His Excellency Michinaga."
The servants (who had all been wearing plain kosode themselves, Hikaru had noted) trickled away quickly like mice to their holes. Considering the richness of the house that he was in and the fact that Naritada had just proclaimed himself to be the second rank (and now had on the lavender court robes on to prove it), Hikaru surmised that Naritada was far more important than he'd originally guessed.
Let's see, he desperately told himself as they left the mansion and bundled into the palanquin which would take them to the Biwa estate. Court ranks in the Heian determined position and status. As a newly proclaimed seventh rank, I should technically not be allowed in to see the Emperor . . . but Naritada can bypass that, I guess.
The second-ranked Naritada, a count by the Heian rankings, pointed out various mansions as they passed through the crowded streets of the Fujiwara section of Heian-kyou. Hikaru nodded in interest, trying to calm his fluttering nerves. His stomach growled, and he had a sudden craving for green onion ramen.
"When was the last time you ate?" Naritada yelled over the noise of daytime Heian-kyo's crowded streets. Dozens of palanquins, carried by hundreds of servants, carted nobles to and fro. More than one palanquin had a drooping sleeve suddenly hang out of the door, as a noble lady spied a courtier she favored.
"Uh, on the train this morning," Hikaru replied before thinking.
"What's a tu-rain?"
"A method of travel," Hikaru answered.
"I'll ask you about it later," Naritada said, as they approached the Biwa mansion where court was currently held.
The group of young pros sat at a large table in the ramen shop, Waya happily slurping the green onion special he'd ordered. Akira picked at the slices of pork in his ramen, but he felt a little guilty enjoying one of Shindou's favorite dishes without his rival.
"Touya-san, stop worrying about Shindou! He's probably laughing at us, wherever he is," Ochi declared, and pushes his glasses up authoratatively. "So irresponsible. He's a shame to all pros."
"Ochi, please shut up," Waya grumbled, and slurped up another chopstick-full of noodles. "Akira can worry about Shindou if he wants to. Just how and where did he disappear, anyway?"
Akira set his chopsticks down. "We were in a go shop. I was speaking with the owner, and Shindou was poking around in another aisle. We heard a crash, and looked, and he was just gone."
"D'you think he was kidnapped?" Waya said with a grin.
"Don't be silly," Ochi snapped. "Why would anyone kidnap Shindou? If they'd want to kidnap anyone, it'd he Touya, since at least they could hold him for ransom then."
"Maybe they thought Shindou was Touya?"
"I doubt it," Akira said, shaking his head. "There was no noise of footsteps running away, no sound of a struggle . . . and the bell didn't ring to let the shopkeeper know someone had left."
That last statement silenced everyone for a moment.
Isumi spoke up first, joining in the conversation finally. "Hey, Touya-san," he said slowly. "This is old Kyoto . . . you don't think something . . . supernatural could have happened to him, do you?"
"You mean like a ghost ate him or something?" Waya said, eyes wide.
"I don't believe in superstitions," Akira said, rubbing his chin. "Although Shindou DID do something really stupid early this morning . . . he mocked a Shinto prayer right in the middle of the street and asked to meet a Heian court go player." He shook his head in denial. "No, that's just silly. He probably broke one of the antique go stones he was messing with and ran to hide."
"Antique go stones?" Waya said, interested. "Just how antique?"
"It's hard to date them precisely, since the older ones are worn just as smooth as the modern ones with time. The shopkeeper said he wouldn't have been surprised if some of those weren't a thousand . . . years old." The Heian.
Everyone was silent again.
"I have heard," Isumi said carefully, "that sometimes objects can act as a conduit through time."
"You think he ended up back in the Heian era?"
"The kami-sama might have heard his wish," Waya said with a nod, and reattacked his ramen. "Then again, it's more likely that the kami-sama would just bring a ghost around to meet him. Heh, that would explain a few things about Shindou, wouldn't it?"
Akira picked up his chopsticks and picked at his own ramen again, unable to put his thoughts into words.
"He'd get eaten alive in the Heian," Ochi said knowledgeably. "Even if he does manage to avoid being mistaken for a peasant, he'd have NO idea how to act."
"I certainly wouldn't want to have lived in the Heian, either," Waya agreed. "You were either a bored noble, or more likely, a starving serf. I'm more than happy to be a child of the twenty first century." He slurped his ramen juice from the bowl to prove his point.
"I just don't believe in that sort of magic," Akira said weakly, but somehow knew without a doubt that Shindou's disappearance was more than just the other boy playing a strange game of hide and seek. Hikaru didn't have the attention span for anything besides go to play at a game for more than a few hours.
End part four