-------(10)---------
In the days to come, Touya would find his mind casting back to that triple ko game, wondering what, if any, cosmic ripples it had produced. Waya and the other spectators had been alarmed, true, but Touya himself had never believed in Go superstitions. Shindou, he could tell, was even more skeptical. But Waya, angry and ignorant, seemed like a large-sized figment of reality, intense and trivial, as he stumbled through the crowd of worried faces and out of the salon.
It seemed incredible that a mere coincidence on the Go board could cause such uneasiness. Touya dealt in abstractions and strategy, not omens and signs. It did not compute. As a result, the significance of the triple ko game sank into the back of his mind, to be replaced by the disaster in his professional life.
He lost his Meijin title.
In the past, he had wondered when this would happen. The focus that had always come easily to him now felt thin and overstretched, and even with Shindou to spur him on, Touya felt as though the Hand of God was sliding ever further out of his grasp. At the age of thirty-seven, he was long past the days when he was a prodigy. He was no longer the intrepid challenger to the established players. Instead, he was the giant that the young pros wanted to bring down. And even the best had to fall sometimes.
Seeing Akashi in the tatami room of the hotel in Hiroshima had been a chastening experience. The flare of challenge in Akashi's eyes saying, I want your title, was sharp and familiar, and at that moment the impact of numerous similar looks over the years hit him at once with immeasurable weight. The little group of younger players sitting to one side of the audience's space--Akashi's supporters--looked quaint and threatening at the same time.
Perhaps it was because no one had come so close to the title in years. He had sat down before the Go board on weakened knees.
"Please give me your guidance," Akashi said, his voice cool, at odds with the burning look in his eyes. I'm going to win, his eyes seemed to say.
Touya let his head fall as he bowed. "Please give me your guidance," he said in return.
That was all they exchanged, until Touya gathered the words that had been stuck in his throat for the last three hands, and resigned. The murmur of surprise among the audience that followed, the congratulations to Akashi, and the commentary on the game: all these seemed far away as Touya sat there, thinking about the loss of a title that had been his for so long that he had forgotten what it was like to be without it. But even with the heaviness in his belly, Touya remained hyper-aware of the one member of the audience who had been silent throughout the game.
Even worse than losing to Akashi, part of him thought, was losing in front of Shindou.
Shindou, who had taken the opportunity to go to Innoshima in the morning, who had made it for the game five minutes before it was due to start, and who had managed to disguise the tight, haunted look around his eyes with a harum-scarum entrance that had caused several annoyed mutters and stares. Throughout the game, Touya was conscious of Shindou's attention on the game, his silent will in the corner, as though he could play the game for him, but when he looked up again from the surrendered Go board, Shindou was nowhere to be seen.
The bottom dropped out of his stomach. He stumbled to his feet; the expression on his face deterring the reporters, avoiding the gazes of the spectators.
Outside the game room, he stopped dead when he came across the last person he expected to see.
"Takeshi-san," he said.
Takeshi had disliked the way Touya put an honorific to his name when they were together, and he now saw his ex-boyfriend's eyes narrowed for a split second at the 'san.' "Akira," Takeshi said. "I'm sorry about your loss."
Touya was aware of shaking his head, dazed. "Why are..." he stopped, and thought. Takeshi knew a large number of young pros and insei; it made him one of the more popular reporters for Go Weekly. "You're here to write about Akashi-san," he said. Stories about young, successful Go pros were always popular, unlike boring stories about middle-age pros.
"I'm also here to support you," Takeshi said, his eyes earnest.
Touya could feel his polite smile crack. Of all the people in the Go world, Takeshi was the one person Touya felt he could not show his weakness. Perhaps it was because they had a relationship together before, but Touya had always considered their break-up an amicable one, and he was unwilling to reveal any lack of his composure now. He stood frozen, willing himself not to break.
"Touya."
And there was Shindou, his casual clothes rumpled and his face tired, reaching for him with an outstretched hand.
Takeshi frowned, looking between him and Shindou.
Shindou's hand was still outstretched, and helplessly, Touya saw himself putting his own hand in Shindou's, feeling the calluses in his rival's hand, both their grips tightening at the same time.
"What…" Takeshi began.
"Excuse us, Ueyama-san," he heard Shindou say, before his rival pulled him away from Takeshi.
The rest of evening passed in a blur as Shindou led him down the hallway, and bore him away to the hotel bar where they ate in total silence, gazed into separate spaces, thought about Go games, and finally, got drunk together.
It was a long night despite that, and Touya found himself waking in the middle of the night, thinking about the missed opportunities in his game, haunted by the possibility that he could have won, somehow. He thought about Shindou sleeping away in his room, wondering if Shindou tortured himself with such thoughts whenever he lost a game as well. Somehow, the idea of Shindou obsessing over a single game seemed ludicrous. Touya knew this was his own stubbornness; hadn't one game with Sai held his attention for years? Shindou was more likely to set his jaw and fight harder. That was the Shindou he knew.
The last game he saw Shindou play was with Waya, and Touya frowned a little as he remembered the results of that unusual game. He sat back in bed, letting his mind drift to other matters. If the triple ko's bad luck was supposed to refer to his lost title, Touya reflected with black humour, it had done its job.
But he was wrong; it was not over.
A triple ko game was supposed to forewarn of disaster, and while it made for perfect numerical correlation, Touya could not have expected three bouts of misfortune.
-------to be continued---------