Over coffee
A Hikaru no Go ficlet
During one of their rare talks over coffee, Shirakawa told Ogata about his experiences with go as a child. How he used to play in different go salons, how he joined his school's go club, how he'd lost chances to date because he forgot the time while playing and the girls wouldn't speak to him again. How the children and the old men would smile at him when he played, saying he showed great promise for a little child with big glasses. The fun times as an insei, the friendly rivalries that turn serious when the pro exams approached. And as he said it, Ogata would wear a half-smile, faintly mocking, as if those things were trivial, inconsequential to how he had developed as a go pro.
And what did you do, before you became pro? he'd asked, irritated at Ogata's claim of superiority. Didn't you play at salons, or have fun in your go club? What made you into a go pro?
And Ogata told him, tonelessly, of soba noodles left cold as he replayed game after game of the best players of that time, of staring at a goban for so long that the shape and pattern of the stones burned behind his closed eyelids when he shut them, of his grandfather's distaste when he finally won his first game with no handicap.
That is what made me a pro, Ogata finished, picking up his coffeecup. More coffee? he asked.
-end Over coffee-