Disclaimer: I don't own it

A/N: Thank you all for your very nice reviews: dragon shadows, rainqin, star, Ametris and xiar! I appreciated them very much!

Part 2/2

"Sai?" Akira echoed quietly. He was confused.

He heard the cold howling of the snowstorm outside and the warm rustling of Hikaru's mother in the kitchen downstairs.

"Talk", he said in a low, but determined voice.

"First, Hikaru began timidly, "do you believe in ghosts?".

"No." Akira negated.

"So you don't think that Ogata-sensei could become a spirit if he still had some unfinished business left in this world?"

"If Ogata-san had some unfinished business left he wouldn't have committed suicide."

"Ha-ha…" Hikaru chuckled lowly at Akira's completely serious comment. "Well … about Sai…" Hikaru launched into his story.

Soon Akira found himself carried away on his friend's deep and melodious voice, telling him Sai's story in an almost trancelike chant. Akira heard the storm outside calming down, the bed under him creaking softly whenever there was a movement, the sounds of Hikaru's parents going to bed. All the while he stared at the ceiling, and, slowly, as Hikaru talked on, he found his mind building up images of what Sai could have looked like, with his long, black hair, his tall hat, his daunting play-face that Hikaru described and even the childish side he couldn't believe a thousand year old being possessed and in which he was so alike Hikaru.

As Hikaru's voice became increasingly melancholic with the ongoing story, Akira was continuously drawn deeper into the tragic happenings that followed after Hikaru's pro exam. Fascinated and engrossed in the story he felt with Hikaru when his best friend and mentor suddenly disappeared, his strenuous but futile search of him and the painful experience of hoping he would come back if he only stopped playing. And finally the relief when he had been 'allowed' to play again.

Despite his doubts at Hikaru's fantastic story, he couldn't help being fascinated by it. Either Hikaru was a formidable storyteller, what Akira disbelieved, or the story was really true. His rational mind opted for the invented story, but his heart was almost convinced of the second. A sadness like Hikaru's when he talked about Sai could barely be only the product of genial storytelling. A pain like this… a pain so much like his… had to be for real.

If Akira had thought that listening to Hikaru could make him forget his grief, he had been proven untrue. Hikaru's voice and words alone had made him suffer. But it was especially through the similarities between Sai's and Ogata's positions in their respective lives, and through their both untimely, unexpected disappearances, he felt himself being buried under an avalanche of feelings twice as big as if he had only had his own.

In the end he found himself weeping with Hikaru at Sai's disappearance as well as for himself at the renewed anguish of Ogata's loss.

"Let's play a game…" Hikaru had said, after all talk had become inane. He stood up and placed his gob an in the middle of the room, where there was still enough light to discern black and white stones.

Akira, divining what his friend had been aiming at, had answered: "I'm tired and I feel bad… I don't think I can play a game worthy of neither Ogata-san nor Sai-sama."

"Don't worry. Of course you will. They'll guide us."

Akira had looked up for some time at his friend, as he had waited for him, standing in the middle of his room like a solid shadow. Finally, he had relented.

Akira had gotten up from the bed and taken his place in front of the wooden board. Hikaru sat down in the same instant as him.

Both had taken a goke, the colour of the stones didn't matter in this game, their eyes locked with each other's, like blinking deeps in shadowy faces. In a simultaneous movement they had opened their bowls, laying the caps beside them on the floor with silently resounding thumps.

Akira had bowed in the ancient ritual, but his voice had uttered different words.

"For Seiji and Sai," he had said.

Hikaru had taken a deep breath before answering like a prayer.

"For Seiji and Sai."

Both smiled gently as they placed the first stones, as the played their game… in memoriam.

Akira didn't respond to Sai's story. Even though he sensed he sensed in Hikaru's silence the expectation of an answer, a comment, anything, he kept quiet for he wasn't sure at all what he was thinking.

He felt Hikaru starting to twitch uncertainly beside him. Doubtlessly he wondered if Akira believed him. Akira felt every movement of Hikaru through the easing of the bed and because they lay so close to each other on the bed that with every movement their arms touched fleetingly.

The silence was uncomfortable.

"Why did Ogata die?" Hikaru finally asked quietly, almost as if commenting on the weather.

Akira told him, his voice as faraway as his friend's.

Suddenly, after a moment of stunned silence, Hikaru started to cackle helplessly. The noise resounded from the walls, chasing itself like an echo back and forth.

"O-Ogata…Ogata-sensei killed himself," Hikaru pressed out the words between fits of laughter, "because of…of Kuwabara-sensei?"

"Why are you laughing?" Akira demanded, to a certain degree, shocked.

"Because…" Hikaru could barely breathe, only that Akira couldn't help noticing the desperate tinge to his laughter. "Because… because it's just so genially absurd! Hahaha."

Leaning the back of his hand against his brow, Akira closed his eyes and shook his head in disbelieve, He wondered if Hikaru had ultimately gone insane. But, after a while of holding his stomach and seesawing back and forth on the mattress, Hikaru calmed down and Akira opened his eyes again to grant him a look.

"That was not a joke?"

"No, of course it wasn't," Akira frowned in frustration at his friend, who couldn't see the gesture because of the darkness, yet the glint in Akira's eyes wasn't lost to him.

"It sounds like one," Hikaru insisted, "Maybe someone told you the wrong thing?"

"Only I know the real reason… Ogata-san… he left a letter to me… explaining…" Akira ran a hand through his hair, "It was for Kuwabara's fault. For some reason Ogata-san was a lot more susceptible to the old man's speeches than anyone else. I can't explain it otherwise. When I read his letter, his logic seems flawless… but when I think about it… I can't see any reason. But for him… there seemed to be…" Akira baled his fists and continued squeezed his words out through his closed teeth, "I feel as if I had to respect his decision, but I can't help but thinking that what he did was… simply stupid!"

Angry helplessness carried through Akira's voice and every time he thought again about Ogata's letter he found himself more at a loss. He couldn't comprehend Ogata's treachery in leaving him alone because of his selfish reasons. He couldn't comprehend how such an old man had been enough to devastate his proud and conceited friend. He didn't understand anything anymore.

His train of thoughts was interrupted as Hikaru warily asked. "Do you think… it could be… because he felt cheated? Do you think he thought that Kuwabara cheated on him? Only that he found it too embarrassing to admit that he was bothered by his mean words? Did he find his helplessness too shameful, because no one else noticed?"

"Cheated? Kuwabara-sensei would never cheat." If there was something Akira was convinced of, it was the honour of a Go pro.

"Influencing his opponent's state of mind so he loses is not cheating?" Hikaru countered his thoughts.

"…"

"Akira…" Hikaru whispered. "It's not that unheard of… that a great go player killed himself because of a lost game."

"What?"

"Sai… too…" Hikaru hesitated for a breath's time, "Sai too was cheated in a very important game. It was just one piece, a black stone of his accidentally under the white stones of the opponent's. But instead of giving it to Sai, the opponent secretly transferred it into his agehama (captive stones)…"

"What?" Akira propped himself up on an elbow, rightfully shocked at this crime.

"Sai was so disturbed by this cheating…" Hikaru continued in a sad voice, still lying on his back, "He lost. He was chased away and saw no other resort than to drown himself."

Akira couldn't help the sadness mounting in him due to Sai's tragic story. As if it wasn't enough that he had simply vanished, leaving Hikaru all alone…

"So you really believe that Sai has existed?" he asked Hikaru.

"I do", the blond and black haired boy confirmed earnestly in a low voice, "I knew him. I told you."

"It could have been just a story", Akira explained matter-of-factly.

"It isn't."

Hikaru hesitated. "You can believe me… or maybe you don't. I guess it doesn't matter to me anymore. I would understand if you didn't. But still… if you believe me or not… Sai's story is true."

What did he believe?

Akira didn't know any more. If anyone had ever told him that Ogata-san would commit suicide, he wouldn't have believed it. If anyone had told him that the Hikaru that lost so disappointingly to him in the school tournament would catch up to him in merely two years, he wouldn't have believed it. If anyone had told him that Ogata, who additionally to his Judan and Gosei had gained the Kisei and Meijin as well and held for the last years would be beaten by the old Kuwabara-sensei out of the Honinbo due to the sheer meanness of the old man, he wouldn't have believed it. So, now, when Hikaru told him that he had been possessed by the spirit of an ancient Go – player, why actually shouldn't he believe him?

It was as if the storm outside had extended a gentle finger of ice cold air inside. Like a breeze it caressed the two boys facing each other over Hikaru's goban. It swirled around them in a playful dance, causing the small hairs all over their bodies to prickle.

Hikaru and Akira probably didn't know that Go, the ancient game of Go, had been invented by monks for oracle purposes and, before it had become a game of strategy, it had been a means of conjuring up spirits...

So it was nothing more than a hopeful illusion of two sleep-deprived seventeen year old boys, who believed in the breath of icy air to feel the presence of their late teachers. And it was only their desperate imagination that gave them the impression that two translucent ghost forms in the form of their friends were hovering over their heads bent over the goban, gently smiling down on them.

The quietness drifted around them like a waft, accumulated in the dark corners of the room, but was lightened where they lay only by their breathing.

Suddenly, destroying the silence, Akira asked. "You said that Sai drowned himself?" Seeking confirmation for what he had heard before.

"Yes…" Hikaru said in a pained voice.

Akira was silent again, lost in his thoughts.

"You know what it interesting…?" he asked.

"No…" Hikaru answered.

"Ogata-san did drown himself, too."

"What!"

Even the snowstorm seemed to have calmed down as if it were making sure that everyone heard the shocked silence in the room.

"Yes," Akira confirmed in a calm voice, "The policeman told me he bound a goban to his feet and jumped into the river."

"Did you ever hear the saying that shared pain is half pain?"

Both laughed bitterly.

"In reality it's the double of it. Having to bear you own and the other's."

It was maybe four o'clock in the morning. "Still… I'm glad…" Hikaru murmured, "I'm glad I finally could share my pain…" he closed his eyes and intertwined his fingers with Akira's in a gentle touch. "I'd rather have the double of it than having to bear it all alone…"