Chapter 6

You've always thought spring too cold a time for new beginnings.

Kaio is decked out in bright colors, at least for today. The students—the ones who care—are gamely calling out enticements to come join this club or that. It's busy and cheerful and completely at odds with the grey sky, which is pale and flat. The cherry blossoms are pale and flat too.

A winter-like wind howls, blowing through your heavy coat like it isn't there. You shiver. Students mill around you, chatting and snapping photos and doing all sorts of things you don't know how to do. You weave your way through them. You feel insubstantial, weightless. It's a familiar feeling. The memory of it makes you shiver more than the actual cold does.

"Come join the go club!"

A cheerful round face, framed by messy hair and spectacles, pops up in front of you as if from nowhere. "You're a first year, right?" says the boy. "We have the largest go club in our district, and the second largest in Tokyo! You look like a smart guy. Why don't you join?"

You give him one of your best smiles. "Sorry, I can't."

He smiles back, still hopeful. "If you change your mind, we're right here." He gestures at the go club's tidy white table, where the other members lounge around in elegant Kaio fashion. The table boasts a sign-up form, too many trophies to count, and no other decoration whatsoever. "It's a fun club, honest."

You don't answer him. You're not trying to be rude, but you've spotted someone else you need to talk to. There's a girl at the shougi table whose long hair blows wildly around her pale face—that's what caught your eye. You know you've seen her before. She wears a scarf and long heavy coat, like you. She's alone, also like you. The wind dies down and you see her face clearly.

One side is covered in burns.

You didn't pay much attention to her before, when you saw her at Haze. This girl was always at Shindou's side, footsteps slow and face drawn and unhappy. Or rather, Shindou was always at her side.

As you watch, she gives a wan smile to the shougi club member who is trying to woo her, then wanders over to the go table. She gives you a small, knowing glance.

"Interested in the go club?" the boy starts his spiel again with a completely genuine smile. "We're the second-largest go club the prefecture, and we win the district tournament pretty much every year!"

The girl's eyes are wistful. "No thank you," she says. "But I'm a bit interested in go boards. Can you tell me about them?" The girl is pretty, even with half her face reddened with burns, and her voice is high and sweet.

"Gobans?" The boy brightens. "What do you want to know?"

"How much are the most expensive ones worth?"

"Mm, I think the most expensive one the go club has is about twenty thousand yen."

"How about an antique goban? One with history?"

"Ah. To tell you the truth I don't know much about that." The boy's grin turns sheepish. "But if you join the club, I can ask one of the senpai…"

She shakes her head and gives the same answer you did. "Sorry, I can't." As if the words were some sort of signal, she turns to look at you. "Touya-kun, right? What a coincidence."

"Let's go talk somewhere else," you say.

"Maybe you can both join the go club!" the boy yells as the two of you walk away.

It's quieter by the baseball field. Away from the crowds and the forced cheer, you can breathe freely. You don't say anything as you walk, but once in a while you glance up at the girl, who is a little taller than you. You barely registered those burns the first time you met. Your mind was too consumed by Shindou to notice much else.

"You're probably wondering why I came to Kaio." She speaks without preamble, voice duller than the one she used earlier. "It's far from Haze after all."

You stay silent and let her speak.

"I couldn't stay there anymore," she says simply "Because of…" She gestures at the burns on her face. "Do you know what happened?"

"No, I don't."

"Oh." She bites her bottom lip. "I'm sorry if I'm being rude, but…um…you were so weird that day you came to Haze, Touya-kun. You were yelling as if Hikaru was there, but he was…already dead."

You nod. "How did he die?"

Her eyes fall to her feet. The two of you have wandered over to the outfield; you walk in no particular direction, refreshingly empty and aimless, and try not to look at each other.

"There was a fire at his grandparents' house," she finally says, voice shaking. "Their storehouse actually. It's separate from the main house. I was up there with Hikaru—we were looking around for something, but...something weird happened. Like a wind blew through, so strong it knocked us over. I got up. He didn't. Maybe he hit his head." Her voice cracks but she keeps going. "There was an old kerosene lamp we were using—it fell down too. And there was a fire. I tried, but I wasn't strong enough to drag him out in time." She stops to wipe at her eyes. "So when you came to my school, demanding to see Hikaru, acting like he was there, I didn't understand what you…"

"I don't really understand either," you say, "but Shindou Hikaru walked into my father's go salon a few days before I went to Haze. I played a game with him. I'm the only one who saw him. Do you think I'm crazy?"

She shakes her head, no trace of disbelief in her teary eyes. So she felt a little of what you felt, even if she didn't see it. It's probably for the best she was spared that pain. Yet something in you is a little angry that she didn't have to go through what you did. You nearly died. But then, you suppose, so did she.

"It doesn't make any sense," she says, touching the burns on her face in an unconscious gesture. "But it also explains everything. That wind in the storehouse, that wasn't natural."

"What was in there?" you ask. "What were you looking for?"

She looks away, shame-faced, pretending to stare at some birds flocking above the field. "He was looking for things to sell off. There were a lot of old antiques in the storehouse. I told him it was a bad idea but I still let him…" She wipes at her eyes again. "We weren't careful."

"It wasn't your fault."

Startled, she looks up at you, and you see how light her eyes are, a shade of brown closer to amber. The tears are flowing freely now. "Maybe," she croaks, lovely voice gone unlovely. "Hikaru was looking at an old goban…going on and on about bloodstains for some reason, but there weren't any, I couldn't see any anyway. There was so much old dry wood and paper up there… I couldn't get him down the ladder."

She's rambling. You give her some time to collect herself. But she cries and cries, and doesn't stop. A passing member of the baseball team gives you a disapproving look. It's almost comical.

You take her gloved hand in yours. She stares down at your linked hands as if they're diseased, but eventually her great heaving sobs die down to hiccoughs.

There's nothing beautiful about it. Nothing beautiful about the deep lines of grief on Akari's face. Nothing beautiful about this frigid spring day, cherry blossoms promising a new beginning under the clouded grey sky. Nothing beautiful about your father sitting in the tatami room, playing out the game you showed him over and over and muttering about ghosts. Nothing beautiful about your mother's worried smile, the way Ogata looks at you as if you might break. Nothing new for you to move on to when the old fears still hang, ghostlike, over you and your family and this poor girl, more haunted than you ever were.

"For the longest time I felt like he was right beside me," Akari says when she can finally speak again. She lets go of your hand. "You know how some people are when they lose a limb, they can still feel it? That was me. But now I don't feel him anymore."

"I'm sorry," you say, because it's what you said to Shindou too. "I…I'm sorry I couldn't get him back to you. I was there when he finally…left."

"Really? What happened?"

"It's hard to say." You don't want to say is more like it. "All I know is, something bad would have happened if he stayed."

Akari buries her face in her hands. She can't seem to look at you. "Couldn't you have tried? It wouldn't've been fair maybe, but you could have tried, right?"

"I …" you try to speak, but it's as if Shindou has stolen has your voice all over again. "I'm sorry," you say again uselessly.

You leave her alone, in that gray empty field, and wonder if it was the right choice, letting Shindou go.

You didn't know what it was you were missing. There was no gaping emptiness in you, nothing obviously wrong with your life. You were happy. Your parents were and still are loving and attentive. Your mother is still beautiful. Your father is still Meijin. He still teaches you go. Everyone is nicer to use than ever, even if most of them don't understand why.

You don't want to scream exactly. You don't know what it is you want. But you do know that you want.

You never knew this before.

(Except maybe you did, somewhere inside you. Even before Shindou Hikaru walked through the door of your father's go salon, deep down you knew. The person they thought you were, who everyone thought you were—that was never you. Shindou knew who you were. He knew how to make you fear defeat. He knew how to make you angry. He knew how to steal your breath away. And now that boy is no longer here. Maybe he never was.)

You look up at the April sky and shiver. New beginnings indeed. You preferred the black and white of the go board. Now all you can see is grey. It makes you think of the grey light shining through Shindou's ghost; the grey of Shindou's eyes; the empty space behind him where something else floated, real and unreal all at once.

(Maybe you never were either.)

"Time to go home," you say to the air, as though a ghost is watching over your shoulder. "Goodbye," you say softly. But who you're saying goodbye to, you still don't know.

End

Author's Notes:

This fic was written for tuulentupa's second unofficial blind_go fic challenge.