Fandom: Hikaru no Go
Title: chiisana yasashisa wo kure
Pairing: Ogata + Akira
Rating: pg-13
Description – So, why did Ogata stay with Touya-sensei for such a long time?
chiisana yasashisa wo kure
By Miyamoto Yui
Chapter 1 – Staring through the window
This stunning memory boils alongside the muggy humidity within the air.
Always simmering at the surface of my thoughts, it's as if I'm constantly anticipating for it to come. And then when it does, it scalds me unexpectedly. This year I find myself in Tokyo Station meshed in between people's crosshatched paths leading to their respective trains.
Standing behind the yellow lines, I wait for the Shinkansen doors to open for me to board. For a few seconds, motionless in the chaos, a gentle breeze flows through the station. A moment of tranquility passes through me, watching life go by as a bystander but still absorbed within it.
The center of this peace mixes the sweltering heat, the delight within Akira's tickled smile, and the anxiety of his father's subtle teasing.
It doesn't matter where I am or whatever point I am in life because every single damn time the weather is like this, I am instantly back in that corridor once more. Its bittersweetness so thick, I could taste it in the air. With it, all those tiny festering wounds reopen from every corner of my mind the longer I dwell there.
/Sensei's looking at me as I lower myself so that Akira and I are at eye-level. Knowing full well that I'm blushing, I reply as Akira and I watch one another, "I guess I can't help it."
A little part of me strangles itself, then fades away.
I stop my index finger from caressing his baby cheeks softly even though he is still reaching out to touch my face with all his might that even his toes curl. His father continues to observe us, but I'm too disconcerted to meet his gaze again./
The jolt of the doors opening makes me flinch back into the present. I've missed the train announcement altogether.
I step into the train, but my mind tries to push those remnants away so that my eyes can focus on searching for my seat by the window. It is the same as always: Car 12, Seat 14A. Stopping at my row, I put my rollaway into the overhead compartment, but as I do so, the train moves before I'm ready for this trip.
Settling into my seat, I take out my light green tickets as one of the staff comes around to stamp it. Before putting it back into my jacket pocket, I glance at the arrival time: 13:07. It will take six hours and thirty-seven minutes to reach my destination.
Approximately twenty-seven hours and twenty-three minutes before our match.
I put them back into my pocket and stare out as stations pass in linear blurs, outlines leaving imprints before my eyes can capture them. Crowds of excited children in school uniforms and exhausted adults in business attire stand on elevated platforms. Hundreds of signs of businesses, each on a different floor in a single building, welcome the new day in singular tones. But the whirr of cement and commotion within Tokyo's embrace soon opens into Kanagawa like a breath of fresh air. Trees, hills, and wide driving roads run along my window and I begin to relax just a little.
/"Play with me one last time."
"Aren't you feeling a little fatalistic lately, Sensei?" I jest while placing his marks into my mental kifu, ready to write them later on as I always did.
But where is this coming from? I shouldn't be surprised though. For the past few years since that internet battle with Sai, he'd become more and more impulsive.
"Did you think I'd live forever, Ogata-kun?" He questioned back while sealing the lid of the white go stone container.
Again, I found him watching me attentively.
Dismissing the remark, I nodded, "Of course. You're you."
"Saying that with a straight face? Naru hodo..." I could hear the hint of a smirk in his voice though.
I didn't think he'd react so I handed the black container back slightly pouting in an almost disgustingly childish way. He'd caught me again.
How translucent do I really appear to this man?/
Comfortably leaning to my left, the window brims with the heat of the morning sun despite the rapid velocity. The outline of houses soon gives way to a seemingly endless expanse of glittering blue waving back at me. It didn't matter how many times I'd passed through, this would ultimately be my favorite part of any domestic trip…
…way before airplanes and exhibition trips abroad,
before the bubble period changed the sky and ocean lines with all its "modern constructions",
before the times when I would accompany him as a student,
before when I'd chase him all over the nation as a spectator,
before I was within his periscope of opponents,
before I existed within his eyes.
Even now, deep inside, I am still the teenager staring through the window at you.
+/+/+/+/+/
/On the way to my house, while passing over a stone bridge and walking down a busy street, I'd stopped at a traffic light. Across the street, I blinked as a young man was walking through the crowd with a book in his hands.
I only noticed him because he was wearing a navy-colored kimono with vertical lines running through it but randomly, as if the fabric caught slivers of white rain streaming onto a dark blue glass pane. He glided through the crowd of people, never breaking his stride in his geta.
When the light changed, I found myself standing there, caught out of my trance when someone shoved me trying to get to the subway. Quickly, I ran across the street before the light changed to red, and turned in the complete opposite of where I should have gone.
Walking parallel with his steps (and it was easy since he was tall), he went into a café, but sat outside of it. I quickly looked at where I was standing and was lucky it was a fast food burger shop so I sat right at the window.
By the time I'd caught up to him, he'd probably ordered as well. Sitting so rigidly straight up, I found myself chuckling in amusement until he put the book down and sat on the other side of the table, scribbling something into a notebook.
What the hell was he doing? Why didn't he care that people were giving him strange or admiring glances? Why was he doing this in public?
Back and forth, he wrote away and I soon forgot about eating, totally absorbed by his presence. I got up and threw all of it away.
I had to get closer…
Trying to make it look natural, I "casually passed by" to catch a small glimpse of his chiseled profile. Ignoring the world around him, he was enwrapped within his own universe. Smiling so contentedly, he was happy all by himself.
Holding my right hand over my left one tightly, I gulped and ran away as fast as I could. I kept on holding my hands in closed fists, fingernails pushing through my palms while thinking,
"I want to touch him."/
Tsuzuku…/To be continued…
Author's note: This fic came up as a little idea for something entirely different last year. Then, in April of this year, it kept on tugging at me. I wrote and wrote pages already in my notebook but have yet to convert all my notes into any comprehensible format.
But still, even with a very busy schedule, it persisted to pull at my heart. I'd been editing like crazy to get the tone right, something I never do. There is a special feeling inside of me but I have yet to discover why it wants to be written, pushing other ones I'd written already (and need to be edited) to the wayside.
I hope you'll enjoy this with me though I think it is unwrapping in a way I hadn't planned on and it's only the second chapter…
Love,
Yui
6/29/2019 12:10 AM – Los Angeles
6/29/2019 4:10 PM – Tokyo
