Author's Note: This plot bunny was too tempting not to write. I originally wrote it as a short one-shot for an UlquiHime daily prompt, but it was so much fun that I felt it was best to continue and expand on it a bit. I have no plans to make it anything big at the moment, so it will remain a short three-chapter story. There's not going to be a lot of Go "jargon" in this story, and my apologies in advance if I have left anything out without explanation.

Black Stones

Rocks and heels don't go well together. Just like marmite and cake or soggy broccoli and chocolate don't go together. So many things don't go together in this enormous, blue expanse we call earth. Sometimes, though, destiny (or is it fate?) finds a loophole. Things meant to be apart collided at a particular junction in time, just like a game of Go.

Black stones.

White stones.

All mixed on a lone 19x19 grid board.

Two opposing forces would clash, mixing amongst ranks if necessary. Orihime used to play with Sora as a child, loving how she could maneuver pieces across the grid. She played a bit for her middle school after her brother had passed away. But the magic slowly withered from within those small polished rocks.

She eventually stopped playing, her brother's game now buried in some long-forgotten box.

This brought her to why she was sitting alone by a river bank, watching fluffy clouds drift aimlessly in the sky. Orihime was listening to two old men bicker near a convenience store about an upcoming Go tournament in the next town. She wasn't sure if the summer heat or the mention of the game was what made her heart ache.

"He's a beast, I tell ya! That foreigner kid climbing up the ranks!" one of them shouted. Orihime turned her head slightly to watch the two of them. "The fourth youngest player to achieve shodan."

"Che, I bet it's all just hot air," said the second old man. "Watch, and see. He would crash and burn just like all those other prodigies that became pros at a young age. Young'ins just have it much easier these days. There's no proper way for them to build up the challenge."

Orihime frowned slightly at that statement, but she shrugged it off.

"Oh, but hear this," old man number one said. "My granddaughter became interested in Go after seeing what that kid looks like."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. No matter the decade, boys like that are just the type to make girls swoon."

Is the Go prodigy a womanizer, like Akira from year three, class five, who always combed his hair back when Orihime walked by?

"I'll be damned. Heard all the foreigners they got playing recently were like that." The two men exchanged a few more words before parting ways for the day.

Orihime brought her knees up and wrapped her arm around them. She yearned for the afternoons when she and Sora would play a game in their stuffy one-bedroom apartment with two windows. Her mind wandered until her stomach grumbled, and the sun had sunk lower on the horizon. Suddenly, the idea of heading home didn't sound so bad.

"Welcome!" Greeted the store clerk as Orihime walked past the glass door of the convenience store.

"Good evening!" She greeted back jovially before making her way to the prepared meals. The cold air felt refreshing against her skin during a humid summer night like today.

Orihime brought a finger to her full lips and tapped the bottom pout repeatedly as she glossed over the various options. Today was payday Friday, so she could splurge a bit on something nice. There were rice balls on one end with eel and shrimp. The other side held neatly packed meals in black plastic containers with fried pork over a bed of rice drizzled with curry. Another one had yakisoba noodles with a light peppering of chicken and onions.

Rice balls dipped in curry sound like a perfect dinner plan. So, she grabbed the katsu curry and then went for the rice balls. But someone else beats her to it.

Her eyes followed the pale arm retract to a slender body. She saw a firm shoulder, a thin neck followed by a pointed chin, and a delicate face framed by ebony hair. Orihime stared, momentarily stunned by a pair of bewitching emerald eyes that studied her intently.

"Excuse me," Orihime squeaked.

"Do people here like to stare rudely?" The boy asked with a slight accent of a non-native speaker. His voice was deep, despite his slim build. He wasn't that much taller than her, but the way he was glaring made Orihime feel small. She withdrew to herself, clutching her hand against her chest.

"Sorry?" Orihime asked, trying to be polite. "I didn't mean to stare. It was just that rice ball was my dinner, and I was going to… Wait. Hey!"

The boy spared Orihime three seconds before turning around to walk away with her food. She didn't care that the rice ball was gone, but the boy's flippant attitude irked her. Orihime let out a deep sigh and shuffled her feet together. It was just a rice ball; better to move on than overthink it.

After hearing the front doors chime, Orihime poked her head from behind a metal shelf with neatly piled instant noodles. She surveyed the room first before making her way to the register and taking out the food for the clerk to ring.

x x x

Summer nights are serene, with the soft buzzing of cicadas and gentle warm winds. Orihime swung the grocery bag leisurely on her walk home until she remembered the conversation from earlier with the two old men. Does the foreign Go player look like Ichigo? Maybe he's a gentle soul that would push his glasses up a delicate straight nose during a match.

Somehow the rude foreigner from the convenience store flashed briefly. Orihime shook her head to dispel the image.

Orihime pushed the bag handles up her forearm and pulled out her phone. Her fingers danced across the screen, briefly searching for recent news of young professional Go players. It didn't take her long to find a list of foreign players in Japan that are on the rise.

There was a boy with bright blue dyed hair, another with pink hair, a girl with a wild mane of dyed teal hair, and a boy with straight black hair and a creepy smile. Almost all of them were in their twenties. However, only the girl had reached the rank of shodan.

She took a sharp intake after scrolling over to the next page. Her eyes widened, bringing the screen closer to her face to study the picture. A pair of glowering green eyes stared back from within her screen. It was the same pair of eyes from Mr. I'll-take-your-rice-balls-because-I'm-a-prude from the convenience store.

The fourth youngest player to reach the pro ranks.

"Ulquiorra Cifer!" Orihime said out loud as she snapped from her daze. "That… that… meanie. He stole my rice ball!"

Maybe avoiding the world of Go was a good thing after all.