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?
Disclaimer: Hikaru no Go belongs to Obata-sensei and Hotta-sensei.
chiisana yasashisa wo kure
By Miyamoto Yui
Chapter 5 – Integrity of skill.
When I was about to let go, he holds onto me and we walk a bit further, watching the changing skies together. Akira looks up to my profile, but as always, I pretend I don't see it.
He walks farther into the water. Taking off one tabi at a time, he bends his head, eyes half-closed. He holds onto his tabi but the water is already knee deep, the kimono floating from its lightness.
"You know what?" Akira questions with a stern, thoughful look. Usually, when he asks me things, he blurts out what's on his mind, but recently, he hesitates.
Now, the same mannerism of his calm, collected father emerges through: The pensive look that charms his opponents before slaughtering them. The exact one he wore when he decisively tapped the Go Board on national television with live coverage when he became Meijin.
As we're staring into the blinding light, waves picturesque in their contained chaos, the cruel summer converges both of their images.
"Yes?" I walk slowly with him, the sky a shining guillotine of vermillion and sapphire blue behind him.
How fate reversed and overlapped but here I am still stuck in between.
Now the water is halfway up his thighs, unashamed but determined. He's too mesmerized by the horizon's beckoning.
"This reminds me of the time when you brought me to the Enoshima Aquarium."
"You still remember that?"
"Of course I do. It was the first time you brought me somewhere." He continues to regard the sunset. This time, it is me who stares at his profile…
/I sat on the bench facing the square glass display window, reaching from floor to ceiling. Akira stood in the middle as people's silhouettes passed back and forth through the intense blue or stood in amazement of it. He pressed his hands further into the transparent surface while watching a stingray glide along with an expression of glee that rivaled the first time he tumbled by himself and giggled ecstatically on his baby blanket in the middle of their living room floor.
My first impulse was to walk over and touch the top of his head, but then I thought of how strange it all seemed. I who had been dubbed "Stone King" was the most unlikely to be someone's playmate, let alone a child's. What an anomalous predicament: A young man spending time with their teacher's son. We had yet to become student and pupil, we were not exactly siblings and this was a request (after much cute childish cajoling) from Akira himself. It did not feel like babysitting either because Akira acted like a mini adult.
I had thought that until we went out that day.
At that moment, while lost in thought, Akira came back to me and wrapped his arms around my neck. The rims of my glasses pushed against my skin, a little askew. He held me so close, just as I had years ago with my precious cup, as if he couldn't get closer enough.
"What happened?"
He held on tighter, his hands crunching my starched shirt between the crevices.
Had I missed something when he was right in front of me?
"You look so sad." His voice then became a whisper, "Maybe you didn't want to come after all."
Before I knew it, I held the back of his head, soft hair slipping through my fingers. "I could never be unhappy with you around."
He stepped back, but he held my face in between his hands with smiling eyes. "Really?"
I nodded my head.
This much was true./
When I let go of his hand, I cup my hand on his cheek and really look at him.
"Ogata…sensei?"
Surely, this much is true.
Finally, I let him go and turn around to walk back towards the shore.
+/+/+/+/+/
In front of a take-out takoyaki stand connected to a seafood restaurant, I call the taxi driver.
We are standing in the middle of the pandemonium of visitors now heading to dinner or their lodgings. Again, we're each having a soundless conversation without moving our lips. Only this time, I avert my eyes while he persistently peers over at me. Nervously, he pushes his hair behind his ear.
Taking out another cigarette, he pushes the box back into my pocket and shakes his head. But I shrug him off and give him a cold look.
How the hell do you expect me to deal with this?
But imperfect as it is, if we could prolong this…
I'll still accept this vexing happiness.
"You only answer questions that have nothing to do with you, don't you?" he asks with a prideful tone. "I won't be quiet forever."
All these years, we've been going back and forth. You push me for responses to your quandaries and I try my best to tell you without betraying pieces of myself. But this…this tone with his decisiveness is the first time I feel slightly scared, yet excited. The same feeling of exhilaration while playing a match.
The needles in my soul are slowly being pulled and I can feel true pain again, the holes fully visible.
I smirk while taking a drag of my cigarette.
But like our first official match together, I still hadn't decided if it was too late or too early. The only true answer was that it was coming.
His phone begins to ring. The mental anesthesia creeps into my brain while that certain pop song plays.
"Hikaru."
Akira's demeanor completely changes before me as he paces back and forth with half-closed eyes, a small smile on his lips.
That wonder kid never fails to astonish me.
"No, I'll be back in a few days…what do you mean you're bored? I left you group patterns to study in your notebook." He sighs. "Yes, you have to study it while I'm gone~."
Shaking his head on the phone, an eyebrow twitches. "I will test you when we get back…Mmm…Mmm-hmm…No, you have to study other kifu besides mine…What do you mean by that?"
Raising his voice a little, he scolds, "Now go march to the Institute and look at the title matches for Kisei between Father and Fujiwata-sensei in 1983 as well as the Honinbou League for 1994 between Kuwabara-sensei and Ishii-sensei…"
Little by little, I'd been watching him and Shindou-kun and the possessive jealousy I held, gripped onto me even more, but being partly masochistic, I knew I'd thrown him against Shindou's fieriness knowing full well I was the one who would be scorned.
Yet I couldn't help myself.
"And look up Ogata-sensei's match in the 1999 for 7-dan. Moves 61 through 75 are the key points."
You didn't attend that match. Why would you study that?
I rose an eyebrow and pushed my cigarette into an ashtray nearby.
"Yes..." He started to smile softly again. "Okay, see you l-Baka."
He paused and looked around in a mini panic, turning bright red. "Bye."
The cab driver picks us up and we each sit by the windows. And with latent pettiness, I refuse to face his direction on our way back.
Yet again, he's been captured by Shindou. It was not the first time he'd steer his direction away from mine…
+/+/+/+/+/
After washing off, Akira was setting up in the middle of the living room with a file of neatly piled papers. Apparently, there'd been more text than clothing or other personal belongings in his bag.
I take a quick shower and come out to find he's spread 5 pages of kifu out on the table. Aligned next to one another, he sits in front of each of them, marking his moves carefully. While wiping my hair with a towel, I come closer towards to him, but do not invade his space.
He's playing all of them at the same time within turning points of each match. I know because I witnessed each as a spectator. There are title holders: His father, Zama-sensei, and Kuwabara-sensei. The fourth paper is Hikaru's, evidently a recent mock bout they'd played together.
The last one…is me?
He rotates among the papers, but I inwardly gasp as I realize he's not pretending to play against them but is them.
I am watching my past self contend against my current one. It is unbelievable…
Was this truly the difference between us? He was absorbing experience exponentially while I felt through mine meticulously and circumspect.
"You only look at me straight when I'm playing," he says once out of his trance.
Leaving his stack behind, I bring him over to the Go board that's been placed by the window while we were gone. The mountains and its forest are serene, and I take a deep breath, gesturing for him to sit directly across me. I bow and open the container of black stones.
Playing a combination of one-color and Speed Go, I start to replicate a game I enjoyed playing, his eyes widen as he recognizes who I am against.
"Ichiryu-sensei."
I stop at my favorite part and try another one. He squints his eyes and then replies after a few minutes. "Shirakawa-sensei."
Again, I clean the board and run through it even faster, not even trying to hide the snowstorm that consumed me in its wake.
"Father."
He has his hands in fists now, his knuckles turning white.
I glance into his eyes enigmatically before starting the new one. It is slow-paced. Again, I stop at the most delicious spot and clear the board.
"Why is this play so strange?"
I do not respond and begin another round. And then another one, the pace becoming faster with each new game.
"This is so erratic, but you look like you're having so much fun."
And another, and another…
…until his face is hovering over the board with the tips of his hair brushing against it. I take a deep breath and stop instantly the moment I see two tears drop onto the circular black slates.
"This is me." He pauses and wipes his face with his palm. "These last five plays have been with me."
I place my hands onto my knees and look him straight in the eye. "Akira, I'm not very verbose, but this is the only way I can respond.
"I love Go because it's the only place where you and I can meet with no restrictions except rank. Age, not even talent can overcome effort and hard work. There is no true status, nor pretenses, just the integrity of skill."
My eyes wander over to the stars shimmering outside. "On this 19 x 19 square, we are equals. So of all the people in this world, you probably know me the best."
He is speechless for a minute, looking at me intensely. A bit taken aback from my honesty, he says, "Besides Father, I've played you the most."
"1,092 times."
"Excuse me?"
"We've played 1,092 times and I counted the ones since you were three. Your father wouldn't let me play with you until then."
"Why?"
"Who knows."
"You really counted?"
I nodded slowly.
There's no way I'm going to admit I wrote them all down.
"Why?" He gives me a bemused face and then laughs aloud, embarrassed and touched at the same time.
"Because you're Akira."
And I'm not ready to give you up to the world, especially to Shindou Hikaru.
Tsuzuku… / To be continued…
Author's note: I wanted to get this in before Akira's birthday on the 14th!
Writing this chapter was intense. I wanted to put more, but then it would have been too much since I like what happened here. It warmed my heart and I needed something fluffy. I found myself smiling instead of crying while typing this time.
But the more I type, the deeper I get into Ogata and Akira (also I've been obsessing over this fic even more than before), and I realize what a unique relationship they have as opposed to other pairings I've written for in all the fandoms I've written for.
This is going much longer than I'd anticipated to write, but I'm enjoying the ideas that keep coming to my head as well as exploring the Hikaru no Go characters.
Love, Yui
12/8/2019 8:32 PM – Los Angeles
12/9/2019 1:32PM – Tokyo
