8. our own world

Hikaru's father stared at him and scratched his head. Hikaru's mother stared at him and sniffled. Hikaru remembered bolting from Sai's match with Touya Meijin and really, really wanted to do the same.

Dinner, which regrettably enough seemed to have been ramen, smelled like it was burning on the stove where it had been left upon Hikaru's announcement. Hikaru wished for the nerve to point this out to his mother, clenching his right hand on his short leg. Dammit.

Hikaru was a pro now, and that meant he wouldn't be going back to school next year. He would never enter high school at all. This seemed to have upset his parents. Hikaru thought they were silly, frankly. He couldn't get why. He'd planning to go out with Waya to celebrate, but that was apparently out of the question now.

There were so many arguments he wanted to shout at them, but he couldn't. He hadn't thought of himself as a student for a year, after all. He'd defined himself and his life had revolved around being an insei. If his parents hadn't figured that out about him, it was their fault. And the ramen was burning.

Hikaru's mother groaned and hugged him to her chest, squeezing him painfully tight. The hard arm of her chair dug into his shoulder. He leaned in closer to her, and tried very hard to understand why they didn't.

"It's like we don't know you," Hikaru's father said.

All Hikaru's bewilderment went into his voice. "Mom, Dad, I'm good at this! And I love it! It's what I want to do with my life!"

"You're a child," his mother replied, equally bewildered. Hikaru, perched half on her lap, shifted to her other side. It was as if she wanted to propel him off her with her words.

"I can do this," Hikaru said, and looked over his shoulder at an anxious Sai, who at his request was remaining quiet. "I can succeed."

"Hikaru," his father said, "That's not the way the world works. You should live your life like we have."

"Can't you just leave me alone?" Hikaru asked, and his teeth clenched together. "I passed the pro exams, didn't I? I can take care of myself!"

"Don't take that tone with your parents."

"You don't get anything! If you keep being so stupid, I'll just leave!"

His mother and father stared at him from their comfortable chairs, the news still running on the TV. Hikaru looked the same as he had for years and years, the sports jerseys and the blonde streak they'd always disapproved of still determinedly staying put. His posture was no better, his manners hadn't improved, his grades were as abysmal as always, and he still hadn't learned to keep his room clean.

"Hikaru," his mother said, hands on the warm impression he'd left in the folds of her skirt.

Their faces looked dull to him. He was tired of seeing them everyday. Hikaru knew they loved him. It wasn't the kind of love he wanted. They didn't even know Sai. Touya, Hikaru thought, it's your fault. You're the reason I'm a stranger to my parents.

As Hikaru walked out, Sai let out a long sigh. "To get something, you lose something."

"What's wrong with wanting something?" Hikaru yelled once they were out of the house. It was still mid-afternoon and birds were still chirping as obliviously as ever. If he saw them, he would have thrown a rock at them.

"Is it bad to not want to do what everyone else does? Is it wrong to want this this much?"

"No," Sai said softly, and stopped behind Hikaru, who had apparently decided he needed to climb a tree.

Hikaru's bare knee scraped against a chip of bark, and a stringy layer of skin tore off. Hikaru inhaled the musky smell of wet oak, so thick, and it brought back memories of climbing this tree when he'd just been a kid, by himself, with other kids, with Mom, with Akari. He'd been able to get to the very top. Once, though, he'd fallen out. Mom had kissed his skinned knees and they had felt better.

"I want Touya," Hikaru said. "I want to see Touya."

"We could try to find him," Sai said.

"I'm glad you're here, Sai," Hikaru said. "I am glad I met you. I don't regret it."

"They'll come to understand. And there's nothing wrong with what you love."

The maple tree that folded around the oak was draped with leaves of bright burgundy. Their points and veins were just like a person's. "Why does the truth hurt?" Hikaru asked.

"So we'll have a reason to change it into something better."

"I want to see him, Sai, but I can't."

"It's okay, Hikaru. It's a beautiful day."

Hikaru hoped his parents wouldn't come out and find him. What a stupid thing to do, to hide from his parents in their own front yard. He imagined going off and playing Touya, as cool and geeky and stony as always, as serious and pretty. He imagined the descent of white and black stones, the red of the maple leaves conjuring the intricacies of a kifu, and was sure that if he played Touya he would forget all this, the two of them wrapped up in their own world. The sky behind the branches of the oak tree shone luminously white, his shorts shifting softly against his thighs, and he wondered how long it would take his skinned knees to heal.

9. dash

Hikaru watched his opponent carefully across the table. It was an honor to be recognized and challenged, especially in a ramen restaurant, of all places, but he was getting the feeling the old guy was trying to cheat. He looked kind of like a 70-year-old Mitani. The thought made Hikaru giggle.

"Hikaru!" Sai admonished him. "That's rude, Hikaru! Just because it was a horrible move doesn't give you the right to laugh at him!"

"I wasn't," Hikaru protested. "He just looks kind of like Mitani, doesn't he?"

"Maybe," Sai said, and stared at the man critically. Hikaru placed his stone.

"I resign," the man said, and left without a word. Hikaru stared after him.

"Huh," Hikaru said. "He actually didn't try to cheat."

"Hikaru, play me," Sai said. "Let's go home, and play!"

"Idiot," Hikaru grumbled. "I wanna finish my ramen first."

Hikaru pushed his face close to the bowl and began to shovel the noodles down his throat. He was in heaven, chicken-flavored heaven! It was even a great day outside. Nothing in the world like a good 10:00 ramen feast, Hikaru thought happily, ignoring Sai's forcible pouting. He may love go, but ramen was in a completely different league!

He heard pounding feet run past him. A bunch of kids were racing down the sidewalk. Looked like an endurance run, from their sweaty uniforms, the red-faced boys and girls thundering past as if stampeding. Hikaru grinned, glad he had school off, then caught sight of a familiar dark head at the end of the pack. He ran out of the restaurant.

"Hikaru?" Sai asked.

"Ssh," Hikaru hissed, forgetting he was the only one who could hear Sai. "Touya," he breathed.

"Ah," Sai nodded, understanding. "Touya."

"Touya," Hikaru whispered reverently, and he and Sai crept over behind a dumpster to watch the other boy. They peered out stealthily. Sure, this wasn't fittingfor a pro, but he hadn't played or even seen Touya in so long... his rival, his inspiration-

Who was currently having a lot of trouble breathing. Hikaru went "Hah?" as an exhausted-looking Touya slumped against the wall of the alley as if incapable of dragging himself another step forward. Sai half expected him to weakly appeal passerby for a pen and paper so he could compose his last poem.

"Wow," Hikaru blinked. "I guess he's really out of shape."

Touya was drenched with sweat, he noted, that strikingly pale skin soaking wet. Touya's usually perfect hair was even darker than usual with moisture, and he had to pull his shirt up to rub at the sweat on his stomach. "I hate endurance runs," Hikaru distinctly heard Touya mutter to himself. Hikaru stared, aghast. Touya wasn't perfect!

"Sai!" Hikaru whined, "It's Touya! I wanna play him!"

"Are you really ready?" Sai hissed back, and Hikaru groaned, eyes still fixed on his tired rival in fascination. "Besides, he's got to finish what he's doing."

"Come on, Akira," Touya whispered to himself. "Can't let Shindou catch up to me..." With that, he had staggered to his feet and, gasping and unsteady, was dashing off again.

Hikaru's mouth dropped wide open. He watched Touya go, then turned to look at Sai. Then, in unison, they started to giggle together.

11. gardenia

Hikaru would sooner die than even give a hint of this to any of his guy friends, but practically since forever, his mother had been cultivating in him a rich appreciation for flowers. Each year, every time the sakura came out, the first day the trees at school bloomed, Hikaru would pick the most beautiful blossom he could find, bring it home, and stealthily lay it on her pillow. He looked forward to spring so he could hear her delighted, almost girlish gasp each time she saw the delicate pink flower on her bed, and he, listening outside, could feign nonchalant ignorance and pretend to be absorbed in homework or soccer or something. Sometimes she made him help with planting, around that time of year, and he minded doing so a lot less than he pretended.

This year, she had entrusted to him something she'd never been busy enough to risk before: the first flower of the spring, the gardenias. They were special to her in a way Hikaru found hard to understand in his old, distant mother, and he had no idea why they reminded her of her and Hikaru's father. When he'd been little, he'd ascribed a mythic significance to these white mysteries, as if because of their name, nothing else in the garden could flourish without their presence. He knew better now, and at 14, what he loved most about the task was how dirty he could get.

He remembered planting seeds last year with Akari, and remembered how inwardly, he'd seen her in the lightest of the Korean lilacs. He and Akari weren't likely ever to plant together again, he realized, and they would never stare in awe at the golden azaleas again. He looked instead at Sai, who sat there watching him with a quiet, beatific smile,like a rain-spattered, smooth blue hyacinth.

Touya walked up to Hikaru's house, as formally clad as ever, and let out a rather comic noise of surprise. Hikaru, crouched in the dirt with his hands full of seeds, turned and saw Touya, the sight of which pleased him immensely. "Hey, Touya!" Hikaru yelled. "Wanna play a game?"

The astonishment Touya bore at the state of Hikaru's appearance let Hikaru address him much more informally than usual. The proud boy barely noticed. Touya's cheeks were flushed from the heat and burgeoning humidity. Offering a game to Touya was only right, after all, since he was sure it was the reason the other boy had taken the trouble of coming here.

"What are you doing?" Touya finally asked, adorably stupefied. Hikaru, just to shock his rival even more, grabbed a handful of healthy, white-dotted dirt and smeared it across his shirt.

"Chores," Hikaru said. "Gardening."

"Oh," Touya replied faintly. Hikaru bet Touya hadn't even ever seen his own mother do it. The Touya family probably had servants for things like that.

"We can still play, though?" Hikaru said hopefully.

Touya looked down at him, eyes sweeping over Hikaru's muddy form in a way that said, why do I even acknowledge your existence?

"What are you, chicken?" Hikaru baited him.

Touya sat down so quickly he made a slight thud sound. "I'm in," Touya said. "Where's a board?"

Hikaru thought for a second, then realized he couldn't really afford to have his mother see him goofing off. There would go his ramen money! "Hey, Touya, let's play with seeds! I'll be these black ones." He cleared the ground and started drawing a grid with his bare fingers. "Star," he said, and placed one.

"It's not like you to start there," Touya said, staring at the soil with helpless interest.

"No," Hikaru said. "It's like you. Here are some white seeds."

"We're going to plant a kifu?" Touya asked softly.

"Hey," Hikaru said, "Gardenias are perennials. I think that means they'll last a long time. Besides, it'll drive my mom insane."

It was worth it later to be dazzled tenfold, by the dazzling sun drenching the sidewalks, the tent of green-yellow enfolding them, and by Touya's disheveledstate, face and hair clumped with sweat, hands up to his elbows stained in goopy mud, swears across his face sticky with chapstick and lemonade mix he'd joined Hikaru in licking out of the box. Hikaru stared and him and picked a seed off his face.

Touya stared down at himself, finally, with a combination of horror and helpless amusement. "I've never been this dirty in my entire life."

Of course. Touya would have spent his childhood indoors, by himself. Hikaru grinned. "Well, in that case, you'd better start making up for lost time!"

18. "say ah..."

Hikaru sighed, stretched out on his side, and yawned with all his might. Touya looked very impatient. Hikaru grinned. It was a good look on him.

"Will you play already?" Touya finally snapped, causing the people around them to turn and stare in amazement. Hikaru grinned.

"Touya," Hikaru sighed again, deliberately, "I told you, I'm tired." He deliberately yawned right in Touya's face. "It's real great you wanna play me, Touya, but you haven't just played a tournament."

Hikaru really was glad. He was happy. Touya's eyes were on him, making happy an understatement, insufficient. He'd won this year's Wakarajisen, but the thing that was more important was that Touya had come to watch him play.But Hikaru wouldn't be able to play that well at the moment- He'd won the Wakarajisen this year, just like Touya had won the last one, and Touya cared. But- he was tired. And not everything was about the stones on the board. Touya. Touya. Touya. A whole year, dammit. A whole year thinking of him. But... if Touya wanted to be his rival, he'd better get used to Hikaru!

He slammed his first stone down. Touya looked surprised, then responded. Someone shouted that Shindou and Touya were having a match. Touya looked excited in a way he hadn't looked on TV playing 5-dans. He responded with force.

Hikaru played a conservative diagonal on the first stone. Touya blinked, eyes narrowing, and took the adjacent corner. He had no idea what Shindou was doing.

Hikaru pretended to contemplate his next move very seriously, then slammed his third stone down diagonal to his second. "Alright! Three in a row! I win!"

Touya stared down at the board. Hikaru shrugged and grinned. "Shindou," Touya shrieked, "We're not playing tic-tac-toe!"

"Hmm... okay," Hikaru said, and looked at the board with mock absorption. He rearranged his stones into a smiley face, taking out a few extra black ones to complete his great work of postmodern art.

"Look, Touya, I'm happy to see you!"

Touya seemed clueless how to deal with this.Hikaru stuck his tongue out at him and reached for the board again. With the black stones, he spelled out, Touya iz kewl. Touya's perfectly manicured fingers flew to his mouth. Isumi looked scandalized, and was averting his eyes. Waya was laughing hysterically. No wonder. Waya must love seeing Touya Akira flustered.

Shindou pushed the letters together and surveyed the stones critically, then began to try, quite futilely to pile them into solid rows and columns. "I'mmmmmm... building a house," he began to sing. Waya choked.

"Shindou," Touya finally managed.

"Eh?" Hikaru said innocently, stopping in the process of marrying a white and black stone together to live in their new home.

Touya's face unexpectedly softened, taking on a different look. The corner of his mouth almost tilted. Hikaru stared.

Touya picked up one white stone and leaned towards a frozen Hikaru. He tilted his head and his hair swished over his shoulders. "Say ah," he said, and pushed his fingers past Hikaru's slightly parted lips. His hand shifted softly, and the white stone slipped off. Touya pulled his now-moistened hand out easily and wiped it on his own mouth, looking astonished at his own audacity for a second, then almost smirking. Hikaru gaped at him, gulped- and choked.

Waya and Isumi jumped to Hikaru's side and began to pound him on the back. Hikaru gasped and spit the stone out of his mouth, panting. Touya raised a perfect eyebrow at the other boy, whose mouth was still agape. "You-"

Don't be mad, Shindou," Touya said, voice perfectly polite.

"You-"Hikaru panted again.

"Don't give it if you can't take it, Shindou," Touya said, and breathed, "Idiot." Shindou stared up at the other boy, who rose to his feet.

Touya pressed down two white stones next to his first one. "Just make sure you don't like it too much."

16. invincible; unrivaled

Touya was in physics class, not paying attention. "He's playing go with himself," The boy who sat behind him whispered to another boy. None of the boys in his class liked him. They had used to, but they didn't anymore.

"Touya-kun, would you define frequency in terms of visible light for us?"

"Additive color."

When the bell rang, the girls left, as did the teacher, and the boys began to rummage under the desks for their gym uniforms. Akira reached behind himself and removed his blue suit from its neat bag, pushing off the off-white film aroundit. He stared down at his paper and realized he'd recreated an old game between him and his father, with a few crucial changes. Hair falling in his face, he leaned forward and carefully wrote in red and black on either side, Akira and Meijin. Noting comments to himself with his right hand, he tried to wriggle out of his uniform sleeve with his left. Biting his lip, he thought hard, and the clatter, classroom, and faces around him all faded into the background.

He shrugged on his suit jacket and fastened the top button carefully. His gold tie went on the ease of long practice. The color made him think of Shindou, and he realized with a start that it felt like he hadn't played Shindou in years. If according to Shindou, they were rivals, they shouldn't barely ever see each other. The blue-gray of the Kaiou gym uniforms filled his eyes as he looked around him, breathing in and out. It took him way too long to realize someone was talking to him.

"Why the hell are you wearing that?" Someone was prodding him, and the other boys in the class were staring. "Are you skipping gym? You're really bad at sports already."

Akira picked up his kifu and pushed it to his nose. Someone snatched it from him. Resignedly, he turned to the dark-haired boy who'd taken it. Everyone was done changing, and although there was less talking going on around him, some of the guys were laughing, looking straight at him.

"I need that," Akira said quietly. "I have a match, and I need to study it."

"No," the boy said. "You can't have it."

"Alright," Akira said after a second. "I remember what was on the paper anyway."

"Fag," the boy said, and Akira sighed, leaned down, and began to redo the kifu. He got out his kifu paper for that, which was in his go supplies, and couple guys walked up and began to rifle through them.

"Stop that," Akira snapped. He didn't want their greasy, dirty fingers touching his go things.

They ignored him. "You know, I really can't stand him," one of the boys said to another, obviously talking about Akira, and several of the other boys nodded in agreement. Some of the quieter boys started looking nervous.

"Yeah, he's so arrogant," a boy in the Kaiou go club said. "I really hate him."

Akira slung his school bag over his shoulder and walked to where his go bag was. A boy named Watanabe was looking through his schedule. "He's got a Meijin-something match today."

Akira walked over and wrenched his bag out of the boy's hands. He needed some time to think before him match.

"I hate you," a popular boy said.

"I hate you," another boy said.

"I hate you," another boy echoed with full feeling, and the other boys started stepping forward and voicing their grudges.

"You're an eyesore."

"I can't stand you."

"You should just leave."

"Why don't you just go and die?"

"Looking at you makes me sick."

"Bitch."

"I hate you."

"Slut."

"Dirty cocksucker."

"Why are you even going to high school if you're so fucking good at go?"

"I hate you."

Akira stood silently. The girls were already out, and were walking past their classroom, giggling. The radiation spectrum was still pulled over the board, and infrared was peeling off. He imagined himself fading into translucence and then transparence.

I guess they're right, he thought, and walked towards the door, hands full of go stones. He wished his entire world was just those. No, he'd miss Father and Mother, and watching Shindou play.

His breath scraped out his lungs as his head was wrenched back by more than one hand. It wasn't a completely unfamiliar feeling. He thought, "What's that? I don't want to be late." Then he heard a click, like someone chomping their gum, or popping a bubble of it, or someone making a mistake during seiichi. Snip.

A pair of scissors tore into Akira's scalp, and a sickly mass of silk jet hair crashed to the dirty linoleum. Akira was perfectly still, then his body jerked. Sweaty hands pushed his arms. He stepped on someone's foot.

He remembered his mother taking him home one day after a haircut and saying, "Oh, dear, doesn't Akira just look wonderful this way?"

The boys let him go. He say a ragged halo of torn black hair around his face reflected on the desk. "Now you look like a boy, at least," the boy with the scissors spat.

Akira stared at them, hand on his head disbelieving, then pushed his head high and spat in the boy's face. He walked out, catching himself in the window of the classroom. His eyes burned in their sockets with impotent rage and shame. He quickened his pace and concentrated on his hollow footsteps.

Akira stared at his opponent across the go board. His father was in China at the moment, but Shindou was watching. He was staring at Akira's hair, everyone was. Akira played his first move. He was going to rip Hiro 4-dan apart and make him cry right there. In Akira's place.

I hate you.

Well, of course.

Akira felt Shindou staring. Shindou looked like he thought everything was wrong. Star position. Nothing was wrong.

I'll play the perfect game. Akira reached up, touched his hair, and bit his tongue viciously to keep his stinging eyes from overflowing. I'm so glad Shindou's here. Because he's watching, I know I have to keep it together. So think whatever you want, it won't change a thing. I'm... invincible.

Hino's eyes widened in fright. Akira didn't touch his hair, just turned and looked at Shindou.

"Touya," Shindou said, "Don't be cruel."