"Wait, I beat a professional player?" She asked after reading the article for the fifth time in disbelief. "Oh crap…"
Sai, who had come over to her after seeing her stare at the picture for a good few minutes, read along with her. It wasn't anything interesting, just about his latest victory in a game with some guy she didn't bother to think about.
'That boy was a strong player. Stronger than most. It makes sense that he chose it as his profession.' Sai said, then saw the expression her face. 'You don't seem too impressed by it.'
"I'm doomed…" She whimpered out, her face going pale as she started to shake dramatically.
Sai would swear to this day that he saw her soul fly out of her body.
'Hikaru! What's wrong? Are you hurt? Are you feeling ill? Did a papercut get infected with sepsis? Do we need to rush you to a hospital?!' Sai asked, worryingly floating around her to check for anything wrong.
"No…" She sniffed, her eyes never leaving the page in growing horror. "So much worse! No hospital can fix this! I'm going to die, Sai!"
'What? Of what?!' He cried in alarm, looking around for the nearest exit just in case.
"My social life is dead!" She cried (the poor man in the next ail over slowly shifted away from her). "If my friends fine out I play this old man's game and beat a professional at it, I'll be dead for sure. I'll be a laughingstock. The school nerd! I'll be worse than Tsubaki and her beetle collection!"
'Eh?' Sai facepalmed, all worry leaving in an instant. 'Hikaru, there is nothing shameful in playing go. Aren't you already the art nerd in your friend group?'
"That's different, Sai! Art is fun and people like watching me them draw stuff and the art club doesn't meet enough to really impact my life. If someone starts saying that I play go and play it well, you know those teachers or upperclassmen would try to get me to join that awful go club no one likes!"
'Isn't Akari's friend part of the go club at your school?'
"That's only because she couldn't say no to that damned Tsutsui-senpai's puppy eyes!" She said, more to herself than him. "I don't want to get put in a boy's uniform again or play in those tournaments against my will or- "
She stopped talking, feeling her face start to burn as she realized what she just said. She gulped and turned back to her manga collection. Sai sighed silently, now fully understanding what was going on.
Hikaru quickly grabbed a few magazines and a copy of Dr. Stone. She handed the bills over to the bored teenager behind the counter, telling him to just toss the rest of the change into the charity bucket. He decided to keep the fact that she took the magazine with the Touya boy home with the rest to himself.
Sai followed Hikaru onto the train station without another word and they didn't speak of it for the rest of the day.
The Tokyo Youth Art and Fashion Exhibit was a wonderful time of the year for spectators, but absolute hell for Hikaru. Especially this year.
Hikaru didn't really care too much for these events. She had gotten over the excitement of having her own stand years ago and it was rather boring just sitting there, waiting for someone to come up to her and ask her about the paintings of Sai. The exhibit didn't get much attention, so even that was far in between.
Not to mention the fact that she was still forced into the fancier clothes. At least she had managed to convince her mother and Akari to let her wear a nice floral blouse with a pain of non-ripped skinny jeans instead of another dress or skirt.
She had spent the last three hours reading the issue of Dr. Stone she bought and catching up with the anime she had missed while in school. It had been good until her phone started dying and she was forced to leave it to charge, leaving her to just doodle in her sketchbook. It was utterly boring indeed, especially when Sai had run off on her to look at the traditional Japanese Watercolor section, leaving her to stew in her own misery.
Therefore, she almost cried in happiness when someone came up to her stand. Almost, until she saw the person.
Her smile faded a bit when her eyes met the scary ones she had definitely not been staring at for the last few days, thank you very much Sai. He was in a rather dumb looking suit, standing in front of her stand and glaring at her with an intensity that she couldn't quite describe. It was as if he either wanted her to burn or cower before him. It was scary how much it was working.
She swallowed hard before quickly straightening up in her chair, setting her sketchbook down, and forcing a professional smile.
"Hello sir. How can I help you? Are you interested in learning about my Master Sai Collection? We have a few prints of them up for sale if you would like." She said in a fake, high voice.
He didn't even bother to look around at her work and kept staring.
"Shindo-san." He started, then paused as if he were trying to decide what to say. "Are you ever going to come back to the go salon? I can give you my game schedule if it'll be easier for you to find me there."
She felt her eye twitch and it took all her willpower not to drop the smile.
"I'm alright but thank you, Touya-san. I'm not really interested in another game with you." She said, gaining a little satisfaction from watching his shocked expression. "Can I interest you in one of my paintings or art books instead?"
He recoiled, not expecting her blatant refusal. She tapped her fingers on the counter, leaning on her hand while she waited for him to construct his answer.
"What do you mean?" He finally said. "You don't want to play again? I know I didn't take you as seriously as I should have during our last match, but this time- "
"No thank you." Hikaru said firmly, sitting up straight. "I really don't care that you went easy on me at first. I just didn't appreciate how you spoke to me, so I rather not play with you again. Now please buy something or leave."
Touya did not buy something nor leave. He seemed to just notice her stand and the drawing around it, taking in each one of them with an unreadable expression. He seemed to gaze at the ones where Sai was playing go the hardest.
"I don't understand. Why are you even in a place like this when you should be out studying for the pro exams or even the insei? If you need a sponsor, I can find you one with ease."
Hikaru frowned, now fully annoyed. She stood up to face him, gripping her sketchbook to hold back her anger.
"And if I don't want that?" She snapped. "I'm not interested in becoming a professional or playing with you, as I have already said. Now please leave since you clearly don't appreciate my work enough. How did you even find me here?"
Touya pulled out a card from his pocket that had the art exhibit's logo on it. They were the same cards that somehow had gone missing from her purse. She must have dropped them in his store when she faceplanted at the exit.
"Oh. Well regardless, I said no so please just respect that." She said.
"But why? Why would someone of your skill level be wasting their time in an art exhibit?" He ignored her pissed off glare. "You could do so much more than just a few drawings. You could become one of the greatest go players of our time. You could pass the pro exams easily if you would just let me help- "
She slammed her book down on the table, effectively shutting him up and gaining attention from the other stands. She felt her face burn with rage and had to grit her teeth to keep herself mostly restrained.
She tried to ignore how much that comment hurt.
"What part of 'no' do you not understand?" She almost cried. "I will not play a game with you, I will not become a professional, and I certainly will not let you berate or degrade my work! I told you to leave, so leave! You can go find someone else to play with you!"
Hikaru huffed, pointing at the door, and ignoring how much her eyes were starting to sting.
Touya seemed taken aback by her outburst, taking an involuntary step back. The message finally drilled into his thick head and he turned around to leave, but not before pulling out a few cards from his pocket and setting them down.
"This is my number and the number of the Institute in case you change your mind. We'll talk later, Shindo-san."
Hikaru sighed in relief as he walked out the door. She sat back down after a few moments of making sure he wasn't coming back, angrily wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
Why she kept the cards instead of ripping them like she wanted to, she'd never know.
"My mother said Professional titles don't mean much. It just means that someone is making something into their job." Hikaru said the next morning while she was cleaning her brushes. "There are plenty of professional artists that can be out-drawn or sculpted by amateurs or hobbyist. You don't need a fancy certificate and a payroll to be good at something."
Sai looked up from his video of a man playing the Kagura-bue on her tablet. Hikaru dried off her hands and sat down next to him to watch along. Over the years, she had gotten used to the older music that Sai still clung to.
"And just because you're good at something doesn't mean that it has to be your profession. There's no such thing as wasting your talent away just because you're not doing it full time." She laughed, though it sounded hollow even to him. "I'm not a bad person for not wanting to play go all the time…"
Sai gave her a small pat on the shoulder, which she leaned into despite only being able to feel part of it.
'This is about that tournament two years ago.' He stated, though gently. 'When that rude boy threatened to throw you in a frozen pool if you didn't join that event.'
Hikaru grimaced, remembering how he threw a Haze uniform jacket he had ripped off from Tsutsui-senpai and ordered her to put it on or he would throw her into a freezing pool after destroying the book that she wanted. She of course tried to say no, but what was an 11-year-old girl going to do against a delinquent boy 3 years older than her?
Not to mention how that bastard of a "First board" had lied to her, berated her for playing too slow despite knowing that she had never used a clock, and blame her for their disqualification when her cap had fallen off. She really disliked Kaga-senpai.
The Second board wasn't any better. Tsutsui-senpai went along with the whole thing, even though he protested at first, which made him just as guilty in her eyes as Kaga-senpai. To think he had the audacity to ask her to join his club once she entered Haze and they could "play for real this time".
She had avoided him ever since.
"Not just that." She sighed, pushing away those memories. "I hated the Go classes Grandpa always took me to. They were annoying and everyone was so condescending. The instructor even refused to teach me the rules at first because he didn't think that I would get it or that I'd 'make pretty patterns rather than learn a decent strategy*'. Yet they were more than happy to teach Shouji-kun even though he was younger than me because 'a boy his age needs something to keep his mind strong and healthy'."
Sai looked positively offended and enraged on her behalf, but she kept taking before he could go on a rant about her skill.
"It wasn't until I started beating them that they started to really get annoying though. One man got into a fight with grandpa for not training me to be a professional as I had obvious talent for it. Can you believe that? I was barely nine and they already tried to map out my future for me." She huffed. "When I quit that go class, Gramps kept getting yelled at because he had let his little prodigy waste away with a hobby that's not worth her time."
Sai nodded, remembering overhearing that conversation. He had only been with Hikaru for about a year at that point and had watched her improve tremendously during the time he had been teaching her. He also remembered not really liking the atmosphere of the place but blocking it out in his excitement for go.
"You would think that would turn me off from playing the game. My mother thought it would when she found out. Yet I kept playing." She shrugged.
'Go is a game for two people, Hikaru. The greatest games that we play are the ones where we play those we enjoy and respect. They didn't respect you as a player, so you didn't like their games.'
She took a few moments to think about that and smiled.
"You're right, Sai. Maybe I just need to play better people." She stood up. "Want to go see if Akari is available?"