15. perfect blue
Even though his first day of sixth grade hadn't been that bad, Touya Akira was still overjoyed when class ended. He couldn't run as fast as the others, but he did race out the doors of the school as soon as the bell rang. The subway station a block away got closer and closer with each hurried step Akira made towards it, his excitement and impatience growing with the target before him. He took the steps down two at a time, not quite athletic enough for three, but his eyes were fixed down toward the trains, huge and sleekly silver. The laminated white pass card in his hand slid through the slot easily, and the bars before him lifted, clearing his way to the path that would take him to a place he could play go.
School had always bored Shindou Hikaru, and from what he'd seen so far, sixth grade seemed to prove no exception. There were good parts, though, and those without exception came after class got out. Letting out a loud whoop, Hikaru raced down the one flight of stairs the school had and pushed open the red doors that led outside. Immediately he was part of the world that had been outside the window, and could feel every part of the hot sunshine and stirring breeze that he'd daydreamed about. Friends and classmates weren't too far ahead or behind, some heading to the athletic fields purposefully, others wandering there in groups, laughing brightly as they went. His red and black soccer ball, the one he'd gotten at camp, was waiting for him by the side of the far goal, just where he'd left it that morning. There weren't any hints yet of rain to come in the sky.
The familiar bell announced Akira's presence as he entered his father's salon. Ishikawa-san waved to him, and he shot her back his politest of smiles. There were a few of the normal regulars there, and Akira knew at least one would want a game from him. He went to his normal seat back in the corner to wait, and as he took a seat, dug his hand into a goban for the first time since that morning. An elderly man who knew Akira asked for a teaching game, and Akira felt contentment between his closed eyes, relishing the feeling of cool control the stones gave him. He agreed and invited his new student to sit down with his eyes, the dimness of the light around them masking the summer heat just outside the window and filling each room with its sterile comfort.
Hikaru insisted on playing offense, as he always did, which made Akari stick her tongue out at him. She was one of the other team's defenders, and Hikaru resolved to make a point to totally fake her out at least once. His friend Benjirou took the ball up to midfield and they waited a moment together while all the other players, outside the nexus, clomped through the grass to their respective positions. Then, with a familiar nudge of his head, Benjirou knocked the ball to Hikaru and sprinted forward into enemy territory, and the game started. Immediately the air filled with yells, and the other team was on him. He maybe should have passed back to his own middies... but he just wanted to sprint on forward, all the way right to the goal! Sweat already stinging his eyes, Hikaru took off.
"Thank you for the game," Akira said in the same tone of voice and intonation as he had used a hundred times before. He rubbed his small, long white fingers together, their tips brushing each other and spreading power between them.The man had technically been right to resign when he had, but Akira had felt like playing still. God, he was bored. His mind itched in its stillness. There weren't any clouds outside. If there had been, he could have likened their shapes to those on a board. Akira closed his eyes and wished for a change in the direction of the wind. Humming to himself, he looked up at the sky again. Its color was a...
"Hikaru, if you chug your water like that, you'll just throw it back up," one of his teammates called to him.
"Well," Hikaru said, "Maybe I just need to keep my strength up!"
"Shindou, we're up by one, you know."
"Not enough!" Hikaru declared, and looked up from his thermos. The sun fingerprinted his gaze with light. "There's no limit to the number of goals we can still score!"
17. kHz and 7. superstar
"Hey, Shindou, do you know what kilohertz are?"
"Waya, it's your stupid homework, not mine- Just like this is your stupid hat, not mine!"
"Shindou, you're wearing the hat."
"That's because Waya dared me to!"
"Come on, don't you do a mini-unit on physics in junior high? Help me out here!"
"Okay, okay! Geez! Um... let me think... it's a measure of period, right? So seconds per wave!"
Akira shook his head to himself and walked past the other pros without saying a word. If that was the intellectual level of the other teenagers in the go world, agreeing to this press event had been an even worse idea than he'd thought. "It's good publicity for go," Ashiwara had said. Akira, however, was coming to inwardly maintain that his love for go did not justify the torture of attending this human travesty charitably called a party at the ESPN zone. Really, there were few things in the world that made Akira feel more uncomfortable than air hockey or arcade racing games. At the moment, he couldn't really think of anything.
He found himself taking refuge in the boy's bathroom for about the eleventh time already that evening. He would have splashed water on his face if he'd been the kind of person who did that sort of thing. Instead, he just leaned against the sink and stared at his reflection ruefully. The j-pop that he could still faintly hear, filtered in from outside, was good enough incentive to spent the rest of the night hiding right there, if needed.
It took only a few minutes for Akira to become immune to the before considerable charms of the bathroom. Abandoning his promise to stay in the right area so the reporters could find him, he took the open spiral staircase in the center of the warehouse down a floor. Another wonderful aspect of this journey to note was that Akira was afraid of heights. There were a few chairs propped up next to a thankfully temporarily defunct drinks bar, so Akira took refuge there, the flickering pink and green neon letters of the bar's sign a welcome relief compared to the psychedelic disco ball they'd had over the main room.The cracked dark red plush of the stool under him supported his weight gracefully, and for a single, god-given moment, there was silence.
"Ay yi yi, ay yi yi..." Akira jerked in his chair. The faint sound of a young girl singing intruded upon the silence. He got to his feet and took a step towards the sound. It was coming from the machines in the far corner of the level.
"Ay yi yi..." Akira pushed his head past the edge of the black open doorway and saw someone on one of the dance machines. The first thing his eyes registered was a pair of bare feet on a colorful platform, bouncing on their balls already in anticipation of the beat.
"Where's my samurai?"
Arrows began flying up the screen, and Shindou started to move and stomp to the techno beat. Despite how quickly the different arrows reached the white ones at the top, Shindou's feet reached where they were supposed to be smoothly, his jumps automatic responses that stayed with the song perfectly. Akira vaguely remembered seeing a classmate play a dance game like this on a school trip a few years ago, but somehow it seemed very different to see Shindou, head bobbing with the music just like any teenager in the world, playing with a concentrated grin on his face.
Waya's hat turned out to be a horrible red knit cap with cat ears at the top. It covered most of Shindou's offensive multi-colored hair, the ears shaking as he moved. The stony-metallic black wall behind Shindou and the machine seemed to be jumping with the beat as well. Sweat showed through the back of Shindou's horrible orange shirt, orange sneakers and white socks discarded nearby. The screen flashed yellow perfect after perfect, and the number of pink combos being shown grew. Shindou stumbled and the screen flashed a blue boo. Cursing, he righted himself quickly and got back on beat again. Akira just watched. Shindou hadn't noticed him.
"Green, black, and blue making colors in the sky..."
Shindou laughed as he played, almost as if remembering something, not only his feet moving with the unpalatable techno but his shoulders wavingwith the exhilaration of fast, intense movement.Akira stood and watched, halted, as the pace of the song and the moves went by much too quickly for him to affect them. Shindou mouthed the last refrain and last words along with the girl who'd sung them, grinning in a way Akira could never remember having grinned.
"Damn, it's been a while," Shindou said to himself. The screen flashed "CLEARED" in yellow/blue letters. The noise of cheering faded quickly in and out as his results came up. He'd gotten an A. Akira cleared his throat, feeling hopelessly formal and distant.
"Shindou," he said.
Shindou jumped, a much less coordinated display than he'd given before, and nearly bashed his knee on the side of the machine. "T-Touya!" he shrieked, whirling around. "Touya, why can't you ever appear like a normal person! You're going to kill me like that!"
Akira didn't dignify that with a response. Shindou laughed nervously. "Er... well! Uh, sorry, did you want to play?" Akira blinked, unable to believe what he was hearing, and stared up at Shindou baffled. "I mean," Shindou said, "You can if you want. Go ahead. You've got more seniority anyway..." All of a sudden, the idea of Touya Akira playing this Dance Dance Revolution thing seemed to hit Shindou, and his eyes visibly widened. Akira watched him stick a hand over his mouth, obviously stifling a nice hearty laugh at the thought. Shindou's face was glistening with sweat and his cat ears were tilted jauntily askew.
"Maybe I do," Akira said stiffly. If Shindou could win at this game, he could. Shindou couldn't be better than him at something.
This time Shindou had to stifle an incredulous gasp. "You're kidding, right?"
"Shindou," Akira said, tilting his chin up and making his voice haughty and cool, "There's nothing you can beat me at."
Dark eyebrows shooting way up, Shindou regarded him skeptically, as if unable to believe he and his now-official rival were actually having this conversation, but then the prospect of competing with Touya got the better of his reserve. "Okay," Shindou said, leaning back against the wall with the more graceful, adult confidence that seemed to have sprung to life in him recently. He reached into one of the big pockets of his denim shorts and pulled out a bedragged piece of candy. "Show me your moves!" he challenged, unwrapping the big red lollipop and shoving it into his mouth. The sharp cherry flavor was a sudden, burning sweetness on his tongue.
Akira took a step onto the platform and its garish blue and pink arrows before realizing what he'd actually said he'd do. His blue suit bunched around him as he nervously pushed his feet together. Would Shindou be able to tell he'd never done this before? He felt like he'd just put himself in the electric chair, told the priest he didn't want last rites, and challenged the executioner to pull the switch.
There was a list of songs and their artists on the right side of the screen, tabs lain out like a wheel. Akira could see Shindou out of the corner of his right eye, sucking at his candy nonchalantly. "Well," Akira said, voice miraculously not cracking on him, "Is there a song you'd have me do?"
"Do Random Roulette," Shindou said. "That's what I did."
Akira didn't know how to work the controllers. He stepped on the x in the right corner, and that seemed to work as a selector. The game had started as a default on Roulette, so the wheel began to spin, changing to a blur of color. Akira tried very hard to conceal his surprise.His right foot in its tight black shoe tapped anxiously as the tabs spun and kept spinning. Finally, the wheel settled, the green selector locking on a single song- The Whistle Song.
"Select that," Shindou said. Akira had no choice but to do as he said. Normally he never followed orders, but a challenge was a challenge. He gingerly touched the x with his left foot, and the screen changed immediately with a whoosh to a screen with arrows like Akira had seen Shindou dancing to. There was a second of silence in which the game told him to get ready. He put his feet together in the center like the character on the screen had them and took a deep breath in. Shindou was licking the side of his lollipop absently, watching with improbable interest.
"Blow my whistle, baby!"
Whis-tle whistle whis-tle whis-tle whistle whis-tle. The yellow arrows flew out from the bottom as a hard synthetic beat started. Akira was supposed to step when the arrows hit the ones at the top, right? Caught off guard, though, he stumbled from side to side. There were so many coming without a rest between them in seconds- BOO! The screen went.
"Blow my whistle, baby!" Whis-tle whistle whis-tle whis-tle whistle whis-tle! ALMOST! The screen shouted at him. ALMOST! BOO! The sound of catcalls came from the game. Akira almost tripped.
"Open up, put it in!" What? Akira froze and tripped and fell into the screen, banging his head. He felt his entire face fill up with heat. The song was about- There was a brief stop like a boom in the drumbeat, then- Shindou chomped down on hislollipop, tilting his head at Akira as his teeth sunk into the hard candy.
"Let's begin!" A harried synthetic melody began behind the whistling, too, as the arrows started again, seeming to advance up even faster. Akira fell back onto the arrows, off-balance, and the bar at the top started to flash red. BOO! BOO! Shindou was licking the sweet red residue off the sides of his mouth. Whis-tle whis-tle. "Blow it like you mean it, blow!"
Akira felt the rest of his body, from his neck to his arms to his stomach, fill with hot, embarrassed goosebumps. He was panting already, and breathed out hard, the red at the top flashing more intently. Shindou jumped up onto the platform. The synthesized melody took over completely. "Hey!" Shindou said. "You're gonna fail in a second!"
"What?" Akira yelled back.
Shindou pushed Akira out off the way, onto the left dance-pad, the empty, unused one, and took over. It took him a second to start bouncing with the beat, caught in the middle of the song, but with the coordination Akira lacked, started to make the screen flash positive comments again, and the bar turn a bright, slithery green again. Akira stared, watching as Shindou, inches away from him, took over the dirty song.
"L-l-let me hear you say-" Whoo whoo! Shindou took the jumps with a grin, lips and pink tongue flicking around the candy clenched between his front teeth with the sound of the whistle. "Louder!" And again, and- "Is that what you call loud!" Whoo whoo!
The demands of the singer kept on, Akira panting from his exertion and embarrassment, eyes fixed on Shindou with a look quite different than that of go. The beat rose in intensity, then- "You need to bring the beat- back!"
The whistling and synthesizer showed up again, and Shindou's head bobbed up and down again. They sped up and Shindou's shoulder and hips, which had already started to move with the music, started to toss and roll, keeping time and slashing across with complete, shameless surety. A final jump-
"Blow my whistle, baby!"
Shindou fell to a stop as the screen congratulated him. He turned away from the front to look at Akira at his side. He took the remnants of the lollipop out of his mouth and tossed it into a nearby trash can. "So!" Shindou said, face red, too, but from exertion and truly obscene satisfaction. "You can do anything better than me, huh?"
Akira's tongue flew across his suddenly dry lips, face to face with Shindou. "Y-your hat is stupid," Akira finally blurted, legs suddenly not quite strong enough to support him. "A-and you-you have no taste in clothes. And-and!" He realized, suddenly. "Kilohertz are a measure of frequency! They're waves per second! Like- for additive color in light. Or the pitch of music."
"Hah?" went Shindou, and Akira took that opportunity to make a quick if somewhat unsteady exit.
29. the sound of waves
When Akira looked behind, there was the far-off glow of the lights distantly lining the beach, shadowing the masses of ant-like people moving slowly along their ways, but from where he stood, he was completely alone. The sky was a dimmed blue above him, the color of the waves vividly before him, and a few lone gulls still let out their strikingly wailing cries.
The slight breeze stayed with him, enfolding itself around him, but the waves swayed in and out across his feet, walls of water that stretched like armies across hills showing white as they crashed and sprayed around him before retreating to begin again the same war dance. The remaining sheets of water sloshed in from both sides to reach him mercifully where he stood, nowhere near their far-away zenith. The traces of white spray that stroked his bare legs wrenched at him like homesickness.Dark blue ripples faded into the horizon, blocking from eyes whatever was beyond them. What am I, to this ocean, Akira thought? What am I compared to its inevitability and unchangingness? Where did I come from, and where am I going? The rows of light faded into the distance as well.
He wasn't cold, but he wrapped the trailing sleeves of his sweater around himself. What a tragic figure I must make, he said to himself. He looked behind at the ants and bright colors. Blowing his hair out of his face, he smiled to himself and kicked the heavy depths. Droplets jumped into the air next to him and shimmering, suspended for a second, shining, before they fell back into the unceasing flow of the tide.
Akira climbed back up the beach to where he'd left his sandals and bent down to pick them up. The sand was soft against his feet as he climbed the rest of the way to the boardwalk. He rubbed his feet against his legs to dry them, leaving grains of sand caught in the hairs on his shins as he stepped back into his shoes and walked back across the planks he'd come to this part of the beach on. He was close to the top part of the boardwalk, with the amusement parks and arcades vying with the five and ten stores for the rush of countless ants that awaited them. He pushed his head inside one of the arcades, saw two-tone hair, and walked in.
Shindou was playing DDR, like he always did at the beach arcades whenever there was a tournament at the water. Some other teenagers had gathered to watch him or wait for their turns. Akira joined them and tried to catch a glimpse of Shindou's eyes. Shindou claimed he did DDR to expel stress, but something about the techno song he'd ended up doing seemed to be vexing him. His back was set straight and hard, head slightly bent and not shaking to the music at all. He stomped on the arrows like they were his enemies.And you coming back to me is against the odds, and that's what I've got to face..."
"There's so much I need to say to say to you."
"You're the only one who really knew me at all... So take a look at me now, cause there's just an empty space, and there's nothing left here to remind me, just the memory of your face. Take a good look at me now, cause I'll still be standing here..."
Shindou jumped off the pad as soon as the song finished, not bothering to look at his score. Someone immediately took his place. "God, I hate that song," Akira heard Shindou say to himself.
Shindou!" Akira called.
"Hey, Touya," Shindou said. His face looked strange, like he was in a different place altogether, somewhere Akira couldn't see into.
Akira fell into step next to him. Shindou was in one of his funks again, it seemed. Akira wished to be the kind of person who would put his hand on Shindou's shoulder, but he wasn't. "D-don't worry," he finally managed, trying to catch Shindou's eyes.
Shindou looked up at him. "Huh? What?" he said, not having been listening. He smiled slightly. "Where were you all that time, Touya?"
"At the ocean," Akira said. "Shindou, don't worry."
"Touya-"Shindou began. Akira's eyes set. He pulled Shindou behind the arcade and kissed him. Shindou was still and quiet against him, eyes open and lips gentle under his.
"I'm here," Akira said. "And so are you. Neither of us are going to disappear."
Behind them, the sound of waves continued, crashing and sliding, crashing and sliding, and returning to crash and slide again.
21. violence
Somehow Akira had come to have Shindou Hikaru pinned to the wall of the room, had come to have his fingers dragging down Shindou's wrist to keep Shindou from hitting him, and he wasn't entirely sure how. Words and events were blurring before him, and everything was simply reduced to the anger on Shindou's face and the anger and fear he felt rushing and pounding through his veins. Shindou was shouting at him, and he could barely understand the words, but then Shindou kicked him square in the shin, pushing him away, and that Akira understood.
Shindou tried to hit him in the face, but only managed to land his fist into Akira's neck. Akira cried out, hissing, and fell back, scrambling away. Shindou's go board made a sickening cracking sound beneath his shoe, and the stones on it flew off, thumping against the carpet as they frantically scattered. Shindou tripped on the side of the bed as he lunged for Akira, and Akira, seeing weakness, took the chance to drive his foot into Shindou's back. Shindou cried out. Akira felt like there was a cloud of fire around his head, scrambling all his reason, and he slammed his foot there twice again.
Shindou screamed, and as his head arched back in pain, his light eyes cut into Akira's like his short nails were into his clenched fists. Why did his life have to be like this? Shindou made everything so complicated and it was Shindou's fault! Everything was Shindou's fault!
Akira was gasping as his foot fell back. Shindou collapsed face first onto the bed, moaning from pain. Akira froze, something catching him in place- guilt? Fear again? Adrenaline and the strain in his body were making him dizzy. Akira leaned over Shindou. Shindou got his fist into Akira's face this time.
The window outside, full of the flashing stars of the night, sailed past Akira's vision as he tripped. He looked up to see Shindou doing the same. They stared at each other, Akira's body crying out in protest at the pain going through his ankle. Shindou was breathing hard now, clutching his shoulder, his handsome face so flushed it was like it was overflowing with hostility and hate. Beneath his green T-shirt, sweaty and slightly askew, the bones of his collarbone, drenched with heat, looked startlingly delicate and fragile.
"I hate you," Akira said back to the accusing fury in Shindou's eyes, suddenly defensive and wary. He didn't feel like himself at all. His legs felt weak, making him feel unsteady.
Shindou didn't say anything to respond. He hadn't noticed that his go board was broken. His eyes kept on Akira's. Absurdly enough, the thought that came to Akira was that, unlike usual, Shindou didn't look completely untouchable. His hand shot out and closed around Shindou's wrist. Their faces were closer.
"Touya," Shindou said, and Akira felt a surge of something race up his spine at the sound, the sight of Shindou saying his name like that. His pulse was hurtling beneath his skin, almost making him shake. He could feel Shindou's was thundering right along with his. They were almost touching. Akira's body was tense with its lack of surety. He was afraid Shindou was going to hurt him.
Akira slowly bent his head down, eyes dropping from Shindou's. He felt strands of dark hair fall around his face. They brushed against the skin of Shindou's wrist. Akira's head fell onto the back of Shindou's hand. His lips opened and pressed a kiss to Shindou's skin, falling just beneath the roughness of Shindou's bruised knuckles. Shindou let out a slow breath, the coolness escaping out, feeling the trace of Akira's teeth just behind his lips. Akira felt like he could have just melded his head to Shindou's body, and with the force of the impact, could have stayed there, listening to the unsteady rhythm Shindou's breathing had.