Author's Note: This was, again, written for 55themes. It's supposed to be a speculation as to how Isumi and Waya met.
It sounded more plausible to tell people that they had met at the Go Institute, which was sort of true. They'd met there, but that wasn't where they started to know each other. Everything was put in motion on a drizzly afternoon in the subway, by a stolen wallet and a rail card.
Isumi left the Go Institute at a quarter past six, in time for the six thirty subway at the nearest terminal. At the ticket station, he realized that his wallet was gone. Nowhere to be found. He had just begun to panic, quickly patting down his jeans and jacket for any pocket it might have been put into and forgotten about, but there was nothing.
Aboveground, it had been clouding over, fat droplets beginning to plop down and darken the sidewalks. He didn't like the walk home from here on the nicest of days; forget pouring rain! But he couldn't purchase a ticket without any money, and he had been holding up the line. A very polite, very firmly insisting security guard led him out of the line and asked him what the problem was.
"I can't find my wallet" sounded stupid, because how could you lose a wallet? But Isumi explained anyway, knowing it was useless. The man was fairly unsympathetic. He said that he would keep an eye out for the wallet in the lost-and-found, but there wasn't anything he could do about a ticket. Isumi nodded and thanked him, not feeling very grateful, but when he trudged back out into the sea of churning subway-goers, someone grabbed his arm.
A little brunette boy with a wide grin and large hazel eyes pulled him over to the wall.
"You don't have a ticket, huh?"
"Yes..." Isumi wasn't sure what the kid's point was.
"I could loan you mine. You're Isumi-san, right?"
It was too good to be true. Trying to place where he might know the boy from turned up no results, so Isumi simply asked him: "How do you know me?"
"Oh! I guess you wouldn't remember me, would you? I'm Waya Yoshitaka, from the Go Institute! We've played a couple of games. You're really good, and I wanted to ask you to play a teaching game with me, but...I dunno. You just looked so serious!" Waya made a frowning face and narrowed his eyes; Isumi had to stifle a laugh. "Anyway, do you wanna ride with me?"
"Ah...yes, thank you very much. I really appreciate it. And I'm sure I'm not too busy to play a few games, though I'm not nearly skilled enough for a teaching game." Isumi half-bowed – the crowd made it hard to move much – and Waya giggled.
"You're kind of funny! How old are you? You act like a grown-up!"
"I'm only fifteen," replied Isumi, a little taken aback.
"Well, I'm only twelve, so that's really old to me! But I'm gonna be thirteen in two months, so don't treat me like a kid, okay?"
"Of course." The way Waya spoke so familiarly, so easily, to someone he hardly knew was endearing, and Isumi found himself replying less and less curtly as they boarded the shuttle, running Waya's rail card through the machine twice. It was nice to just talk like this, and Isumi wished he'd made more friends instead of focusing single-mindedly on Go. He wasn't really sure if it would be a distraction or a blessing when the pocket that had been empty of his wallet suddenly found a slip of paper folded up and pushed into it. With a grin, Waya hopped off at his stop, waving back at Isumi.
"Bye, Isumi-san! Don't forget, you owe me a game!"
Reaching down, Isumi took out the little white and blue-lined note, unfolding it. A phone number was scrawled in large, messy pencil, punctured in places where the uneven surface it had been written on dipped or had a bump. That was a little surprising; when had Waya written it? Not while they had been on the bus.
All was revealed the next day when his missing wallet appeared in his cubby, inside one of his shoes. Tucked in next to it, in scribbly handwriting (the same that had penned the phone number), was a note declaring, "You still owe me a game!"
He supposed it had been a bad idea to leave his wallet in the unlocked cubby, but out of all the prospective thieves, he'd been fairly lucky to be robbed by this one.