(A/N:
This is an AU where Hikaru and Sai wind up playing Kuwabara Honinbo - not for the title, but in some kind of serious match.
When a song is brought up below, it's uh, culturally localized for an English-speaking audience, and was of course originally a similar Japanese song. Like, um… Goat's letter! Ha! Yes. I knew that existed when writing this. Of course.)
Hikaru was ready for this game.
It had taken weeks of wheedling, begging, and honest-to-God nausea like Hikaru hadn't experienced in years, but as much as he wanted to play his own go, the Honinbo was something special. This was impossible to forget, since Sai reminded him about it constantly.
"It was our title once," Sai reminded, referring not to himself and Hikaru but to himself and Kuwabara Torajiro. "Look at their names, Hikaru! Surely kami-sama has placed me here for exactly such a monumental-" and on, and on, and on.
Even though Hikaru finally relented and agreed not to play the game that might be the biggest of his life - with the alternative being to risk throwing up on the goban itself - he had done his best to prepare against Kuwabara Honinbo's mind games. He'd witnessed them before. Fortunately, he had a hidden superpower: a millennium-old ghost that was the strongest player on the planet, alive or dead, who was totally impervious to petty manipulation.
"The fuseki," Sai said again, flipping his fan open and shut with a nervousness Hikaru had never seen before. Sai never spoke during games. Never. "Hikaru, remember what he said about our fuseki?"
Hikaru remembered. Sai had been repeating it for the last twenty minutes as Kuwabara eyed them with detached, dismissive boredom. Right before the match, Kuwabara had nudged Hikaru in the side a little too sharply to be friendly. "I've seen some of your kifu," he had murmured with a grin. "Impressive. Very impressive, considering that you're clearly so unfamiliar with modern fuseki. But the classics were a classic for a reason." He had chuckled and shuffled away from Hikaru before he could get a word in edgewise.
To Hikaru, it was a pointless side comment. He didn't understand the significance of the compliment-that-might-have-been-an-insult-if-he-squinted until the game started and Sai didn't play.
"What do you think he meant?" Sai said nervously. Hikaru wondered if Sai would have at least shut up if he were the one in seiza in front of the goban. But Hikaru was there and Sai was pacing. "That my traditional playing style might give me an advantage? But he said we were unfamiliar with modern play. That's not true!" He again opened and shut his fan a few times as Hikaru winced and stared at the board. "But he is right," Sai continued. "I have only had a few years of practice with modern methods, and this is a master of the game - he must know something I'm missing. He is going to win, Hikaru!" Sai said, shocked at his own words.
"He's not going to win," Hikaru mentally grit out, barely resisting the urge to pull out his hair or at least bury his face in his hands. "You haven't played the first move yet. Seriously, Sai, when was the last time you lost a serious game, even to a professional?"
Sai was silent for long enough that Hikaru risked a glance up at the ghost. Sai's fan covered his face as he refused to make eye contact.
"…Oh." Hikaru reviewed his own words. "Right. That."
Across the goban, the Honinbo cleared his throat, shifting his weight. He looked well and truly bored.
"Sai, he's just trying to psych you out." At the lack of response, Hikaru added, "You know. Mind games!"
"Mind… games?" Sai said with no hint of recognition.
"I'm not great at history, but c'mon, they had psychological warfare or whatever in the past. We didn't invent it." Hikaru risked another glance, getting only a confused and worried frown in return. "This guy's old as dirt. You think a geezer like him kept the Honinbo title for a jillion years by playing fair?" In contrast, Sai looked oddly young. Hikaru didn't associate Sai with youth, but his appearance was a man in his mid-twenties - a nobleman focused on intellectual pursuits in a palace, to whom propriety and respect for the game were worth dying for. For the first time, Hikaru wondered if Sai's colleagues thought him naive, sheltered. They may have been right.
Sai's pale face scarleted. "He cheats?"
"Not like Mitani. Or like a thousand years ago," Hikaru added. He was beginning to feel the timer ticking down like a bomb beside him. Sai needed to play and soon or they would be laughed out of the go community, Hikaru's life falling in shambles around him. "He gets in your head until you think you can't play. "
Sai peered down at the board, biting his lip. "Ah… It seems to be working." Even with the admission, Sai made no move to point for Hikaru to place his first stone.
Hikaru frowned, inadvertently letting out a "hmmm," that meant nothing to the Honinbo. Only one person watching the match knew what that face meant. She'd seen it immediately before the most childish, baffling, and Hikaru-ish plans - plans of a "let's sell grandpa's antique goban for spending money" variety.
"This is pointless, Hikaru." Sai heaved a sigh.
"Trust me," Hikaru thought with a beaming smile that received a quirked eyebrow from the Honinbo. "Just do like I said and you'll be fine. Pretend it's any other opponent and look nowhere but the board."
It was impossible for Sai to do much else. He was seated on the right of the goban, his black eboshi at a bizarre angle that made Hikaru mentally laugh. But it did its job - as if he wore horse blinders, Sai wouldn't be able to see the Honinbo at all.
Kuwabara cleared his throat again, making Sai startle.
They were running out of time to actually play before the Honinbo won by default. They had to implement phase two.
"First stone, Sai," Hikaru mentally reminded. He kept his lips pressed together tightly as he watched Kuwabara's expression, trying not to laugh. Sai had plenty of experience ignoring noise when playing go. Anything but the Honinbo's noise was acceptable, right? To that end, he readied himself, then mentally burst out in the intentional off-key singing of a well-practiced annoyance:
"This is the song that never ends!
It just goes on and on, my friends -
Hikaru started singing it, not knowing what it was,
And he'll be singing it forever, just because
It is the song that never ends!
It just- "
Even if the Honinbo stood up at the goban and gave an impromptu yodel, Sai wouldn't be able to hear over Hikaru's racket. Sai had no defense against the go strategy that Hikaru called "mind games," but after years, he was a seasoned pro at ignoring Hikaru's many attempted distractions from the game. Hikaru could practically feel the clouds in Sai's mind dissipate.
The Honinbo's eyebrows shot up when finally, finally, Hikaru confidently slammed a stone on the goban.
Hikaru stuck out his tongue. Sai may be a master at go (and a dabbler in annoyance), but if Kuwabara wanted to play like a bratty kid… he had no idea the power he had just unleashed.
("The match is over, Hikaru. Your assistance was invaluable, but if you please, we need to discuss-"
Not now. Hikaru was going for a personal record. Last one was a three-hour road trip that had finally convinced his parents that driving out to the sticks to look at flowers every year was a waste of time.
"It just goes on and on - c'mon, Sai! - Hikaru started singing it, not knowing what it was-" )