The suffering continues in chapter 12. Also a little bit of insight into how I title the chapters, which are all go-related terms:
- Kiri: Hikaru's soul is cut from his body
- Tsugi: Hikaru's soul is connected to Akira
- Fuseki: opening phase of go; opening phase of the story
- Yomi: Ogata reads the mystery of Sai, like a game
- Byo-Yomi: Time passes, Sai's time is running out
- Toru: Akira is captured
- Moyo: Framework marking potential territory; Ogata lays out most of what he knows, his territory on Sai's mystery.
On a side note, earlier this week I watched the movie Akira for the first time (and yes, my curiosity was piqued by the coincidental sharing of name), and it very quickly became one of my favorite things, so I wrote this chapter to the amazing soundtrack. Quite ominous to write this story with a chorus chanting 'Akira, Akira' in the background.
I wrote part of this while actually feeling quite hungry, and also while experiencing a migraine. That wasn't fun, but it at least influenced my description of Akira's experiences in this chapter.
Sorry for the delay in uploading to ffnet. I was very tired by the time I was done uploading to ao3. I always upload to ao3 first because it's easier.
Chapter 12: 後手 Gote
To the surprise of no one, the small bland rice cracker packet which Ogata gave him turned out to be entirely unfilling. Save for this packet, he'd hardly eaten since his one small lunch yesterday, and his stomach caved in with a dull, constant soreness that was impossible to ignore.
Shindou tried playing a little blind go with Akira to pass the time, but it failed to distract him from his predicament-the lack of food had left him faint-headed enough that he couldn't retain his memory of the board, and the developing headache helped no matters. Akira couldn't help feeling terrible about his losses so they decided to stop.
Instead, with nothing better to focus on, Akira tried to assess his situation. As Ogata had revealed earlier today, the man knew entirely too much about the connection between Shindou and Sai already, and even something of their connection to him, so there was no way he was going to be able to protect Shindou's secret simply by denying everything.
Appealing to Ogata's conscience hadn't worked. It was hard to accept, but the man who had been his father's student, a friend of the family his entire life, simply didn't care that he was holding prisoner, threatening and interrogating a teen, his sensei's son at that, and left him with no food. Akira still couldn't understand just what within him possessed him to do such a horrible thing.
All his life, Ogata had been there for as long as he could remember. He'd even taken care of him as a small child when his parents were busy, and for his whole childhood took interest in his development as a go player. Akira had lived his entire life under Ogata's watchful eye, a thought which now filled him with terror. This man who had held him, fed him and washed him as an infant was the very same one who could lock him in a closet and strangle him at a whim. Did he really not care for him as a person, as a living being? What was he, then, to him? Just an item to be used and discarded?
"Touya," said Shindou, distracting him from his dark train of thought. Akira looked up at his face, which, unknown to neither light nor shadow, seemed to shine in the darkness.
"Try not to think about him," said Shindou, as if reading his mind.
"I know, Shindou, but how do I get away from him?" Akira pressed his fingers against his aching temple. "Even in my mind, I can't escape him."
"We'll find a way out," Shindou reassured him with a gentle smile, "That asshole can't keep his guard up forever, right?"
Indeed, the only way out of this situation had to be escape, but how? Every time Ogata was done with him, he locked him in this little closet, which latched on the outside with no way to touch the latch from within. The spare room in which this closet was located was on the opposite side of the apartment from the exit. It had a window, but that was useless when the apartment itself was thirty or so storeys high.
When he was with Ogata, he stood no chance of outrunning him to the door, which still had the chain, deadbolt, and lock to deal with. He wondered how fast he could get out of here if Ogata was distracted, but didn't like the look of his chances.
Was there really nothing to do, then, but wait?
The clack of the locks, and the subsequent rattle of keys and stamping of dress shoes unceremoniously signaled Ogata's return later that evening.
With dread pounding through his body like a pulse, entangled with the pounding headache in his skull, Akira anticipated Ogata accosting him again, his sock-clad feet stomping down the hall to the room, throwing the door open, crossing the room, fumbling with the latch and shoving open the closet.
The incandescent light of the room beyond blinded him, stabbing him through the aching head, so that he saw Ogata as a towering sihouette through a bleary squint, carrying a bag in his fist.
"Konban wa," said Ogata tersely.
Akira shrank into the far corner of the closet, shielding himself from the unnatural brightness with his hands.
"Relax, I'm not taking you out again, I just came back from the search so I'm too tired for another round right now. God, you're so jumpy."
"Did you have any luck finding me?" muttered Akira, with biting sarcasm. He lowered his hands as his eyes adjusted to the brightness, but the faint ill feeling did not improve. It was almost as if seeing the light made him more sick.
Ogata smirked as he set the bag aside. "No, but something interesting did come up." Ogata leaned in and gave a little knowing smile. "Who is Akari?"
Akira's heart skipped a beat. He'd hoped he'd be able to keep Akari-san and any other bystanders out of this situation, but apparently that was too much to hope for. He glared, frowned and said nothing.
"She was Shindou Hikaru's friend, right? She goes to the same school. Akiko didn't remember her as a contact until I arrived, but she said Akari had been over your house once to give you a present—Shindou's goban if I am not mistaken. A very sentimental gift to give someone who supposedly wasn't emotionally close to Shindou."
"Don't use okaa-san's name like that," Akira said, trying to dodge the topic. The familiar way he dropped the honorific off his mother's name did bother him as much as Ogata's jab at the relationship between him and Shindou, but he couldn't under any circumstances let Ogata realize that the goban was a key to the mystery.
"Touya, this isn't good!" said Shindou, "Akari was there with me when I first touched Sai's goban! She knows that I saw stains that she couldn't see, and that I heard a voice she couldn't hear, before I fainted. She also knows how weird I acted when I'd just met Sai, and I got into go really suddenly too. If Ogata finds out about all that from Akari, we're finished."
Shindou was right! Akira hadn't considered that angle before. Under no circumstances should Ogata realize Akari had key information!
Ogata ignored Akira and continued. "Akiko contacted Akari, and the girl was nice enough to come over and meet us in person. It turns out she was the last person to have seen you, in Shindou's neighborhood yesterday morning. She said you two talked in her house, and before you left, she gave you another gift, the very same interesting book which you claimed you found in Shindou's room yourself and had in your bag. And fortunately for me, apparently you didn't tell her where you were going after that, so no one knows that you went to the kiin."
Akira's heart pounded in his chest. Sweat beaded on his face. He felt sick to his stomach.
"Now, if I recall correctly, you told me that you snuck into Shindou's room and took his book yourself, leaving out any mention of Akari. It seemed like a reasonable explanation to me at the time, if a little bit out of character, so I didn't press you on the matter. But now I realize I have been fooled. Why come up with such a clever lie just to cover up Akari? The two of you have talked only twice, why hide her from me? What is it about her that you don't want me to know?"
"Maybe I just wanted to protect a friend, because it's the right thing to do!" said Akira, tremoring pretty badly and gritting his teeth. "You've already done too much to me, who's to say you wouldn't do something to Akari-san too, just because she might have some connection? Not everything has a grandiose explanation, I told you!"
It was, after all, the truth. He really hadn't been thinking that far ahead when he covered up for Akari-san, and now he wished he hadn't. By covering up and being found out anyway, Ogata now knew there was more to Akari-san's involvement than met the eye.
"Sorry, Akira, but I don't believe you. All you've done so far is lie and lie, and stubbornly dodge questions. You've hardly said a single truthful thing to me this entire time. So why should I believe you?"
Akira didn't say anything. He cast his eyes downward to the floor. He couldn't stop shaking.
"I have something that may convince you to change your tune."
Akira looked up again when he heard the rustle of a plastic bag. Ogata opened the bag, releasing the powerful warm scent of fresh homemade curry. He became extremely, painfully hyperaware of his caved-in stomach, and the inside of his dry mouth watered. Before he realized it, he was already reaching out a hand for the curry when Ogata lifted the bag further out of reach and slapped his hand away.
"Who said it was for you? All that happened was that Ashiwara, Akari and I joined your parents for dinner, and they gave each of us extra curry to take home, as a small token of gratitude for helping them. At first, I was just going to have it by myself, but I see you're really hungry, right? And you must miss your mother's homemade curry. They said it's your favorite, too. They must have made it in the hopes that you would turn up soon. They're really worried about you, after all."
Akira clenched his shaking hands into fists and failed to fight back tears.
"Tell you what. Tomorrow, if you're more cooperative, you can have it. It's all yours. And if you keep fucking around, well, you're a smart kid, I'm sure you can imagine what will happen." Ogata exhaled and slammed the closet door shut.
"Good night, Touya Akira," Ogata called, "I hope I have given you something to think about." He shut off the spare room's light, and once again Akira's world was dark and quiet.
Akira collapsed onto the half-folded futon in an exhausted sob. "What did I do to deserve this, Shindou!?" he cried, bunching up the blanket in his fists.
Shindou lay down beside him and put his arm around him. "Don't worry, Touya, we'll find a way out of this soon."
Akira wished he could be sure of that.
The bright light blazed onto his face when Ogata threw open the closet again, wrenching an exhausted Akira from his sleep.
"Rise and shine, Akira," Ogata proclaimed.
Akira groaned and rubbed his temple. He was still faint from lack of food, and couldn't think straight. Something was important, but he couldn't quite remember what.
"What day is it…?" Akira asked idly, not expecting an answer.
"It's the seventh."
The seventh… Something was important about today, but through the dizziness he couldn't remember.
"Touya, you had a game today, right?" Shindou reminded gently.
Of course! The game! How could he have forgotten?
"Juding from the look on your face, you seem to have remembered. You have a game today, right, Akira?"
"You're not going to let me go to it, are you?"
Ogata simply laughed.
Akira summoned all his courage and narrowed his eyes into a glare. "You do realize that now is your last chance to let me go before this becomes a problem for you, right? If I don't go to my game, they will understand for a fact that something is wrong. That I may have been kidnapped."
"No, Akira, this is your last chance. If you tell me the truth about Sai now, I will let you leave and go to your game, and we can both pretend this never happened."
Akira frowned and exhaled, not breaking his glare.
"You wouldn't want to worry your poor old parents, would you? They've already decided to wait until your game today, and if you don't show up, they will take the search to the police. I will then have no choice but to never let you see your parents again. They will think you died. The pain of losing their son will be too much for them. Is that really what you want?"
Akira swallowed and maintained his steel glare. "Why do you want to know about Sai so badly?"
Ogata pondered this question for a moment, rubbing a finger against his chin. "I've never been able to resist a challenge, I guess you could say. Anyway we're wasting time here." He seized Akira by the upper arm, which was starting to feel sore and bruised from being roughly grabbed so many times, and yanked him up to his feet and out of the closet.
This time, Ogata had set up his goban on the floor in the middle of the lounge, with a match clock set at one side, and a tray carrying a glass of water at the other. "Sit," he said, motioning to one side of the goban.
Akira immediately seized the glass and chugged the water as fast as he could swallow. God, on top of the hunger and everything else he had no idea he was this thirsty! The water could not make up for food, but it at least made him feel a little better.
"Sit, you savage," Ogata snarled.
Wiping his face with his sleeve, Akira regained his composure and cautiously entered seiza. Was Ogata actually going to make him play a game? He almost rathered that he'd simply interrogated him some more.
Then he saw two covered bowls on the coffee table at the side, with a pair of disposable chopsticks neatly laid at the side. The curry! His gnarled stomach twisted and he licked his lips. He could smell it. God, he was so hungry…
"That's yours if you cooperate with me today, remember? Now eyes over here."
Akira forced his gaze to the goban. The water was helping his headache a little bit, but his vision was still disoriented and a little out of focus from feeling so faint.
"Now here are the rules. We each receive ten minutes, and six 6-second byo-yomi periods. That leaves about 6 seconds per move."
"Speed go? Why?"
"Do you want to eat, or not?"
Akira swallowed. The smell of warm curry taunted him.
Ogata continued. "Now, this won't be like in the study group, I won't be taking it easy on you. I will treat this game as seriously as I would a title match, and I expect the same from you. If you play a respectable game against me, you get to have the curry. But if you fuck around with me, I'll leave it to you to imagine what will happen."
"That's ridiculous!" said Shindou, "Does he honestly expect you to win under these conditions?"
Akira stared sorely down at the goban through disoriented vision, and tried to formulate a plan. Maybe if he didn't worry about territory and went all the way for influence… but no. Ogata was a cold and brutal fighter, and he never made a mistake. Even if Akira went at him with the best of his ability, there were tricks Ogata knew that he didn't. He could barely string a thought together… he was seriously in no condition to play a game.
"I can take over, Touya," Shindou offered.
"No! He'll recognize your style of play!" said Akira, clenching his fists.
"If you understand, let's nigiri," said Ogata. They did nigiri, and Akira had white.
"Onegaishimasu," said Ogata tersely.
Akira glared and said nothing.
"I said Onegaishimasu, you ungrateful little shit. If you keep trying to rebel every step of the way we'll never get anything done."
"O-Onegaishimasu," said Akira with hesitation. Ogata was too vile to deserve such a small courtesy, but what was he going to do?
And then Ogata played his first move, a 4-4 point. He was going to go straight for fighting, probably.
Akira took up a white stone, but it slipped out of his tremoring fingers. He tried again, and again it slipped.
With a firm resolve, he picked the stone up with his thumb and forefinger, and took a 4-4 point. He'd already wasted about 10 seconds of precious time fumbling with that stone.
"What are you, a monkey? You should know how to hold the stones properly."
There was no time to think. Before he knew it, the game went straight to fighting, and Ogata was as cold and merciless as he expected. The man never did know how to take it easy on him back in the study group, and so he was a good opponent for Akira to learn against, but now he was just brutalizing him. Akira did the best he could, but Ogata was always a step ahead, slashing his stones apart.
Maybe if he made an exploitable move here to throw him off, and—
"WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING!?" Ogata had seized Akira's wrist and slammed his hand down on the floor just before he could hit the match clock, twisting it at a painful angle. "What kind of an idiotic move was that? Are you fucking around with me, Akira?"
"I'm not… honest…" Akira gasped, "Stop, it hurts…"
Ogata put more pressure on the wrist, so hard that it felt as if it were going to break. Then he looked at the board again, raised his eyebrows at the move, and smiled as if he'd realized something. "Alright, but you better be taking this seriously." He released Akira's wrist.
Akira hit the clock and nursed his aching wrist. He'd lost maybe 30 seconds of time thanks to Ogata's lashing out.
"Touya!" said Shindou, "That move was something I would do!"
Akira panicked as he realized he was right. Playing a deceptively weak move that would be more meaningful later on… that was Shindou's style! And it was too late to take it back. No wonder Ogata let him get away with it!
Akira tried now to avoid playing Shindou style moves, but the game was moving too fast to allow him to rethink his strategy, and he needed so badly to eat.
There! If he invaded there and forced life, he might be able to at least gain back a bit of the komi advantage. He played the move, and Ogata's eyes widened in surprise, as if it was something he had not foreseen. Wait, what did he do?
"Touya," said Shindou, "That was the kind of insight Sai would have had."
Damn! He'd done it again! And now it was too late to take it back.
In the end, he couldn't follow up on Sai's move, and that last opening was lost to him. It was hopeless now. There was no way he could win. Akira let the stone fall from his grasp into the goke and fought back tears.
"Well, Akira?" said Ogata, "Don't you have something to say?"
"I resign," Akira muttered under his breath, hanging his head.
"Speak up."
"I resign!" Akira cried, twisting the fabric of his trousers in his fists.
Ogata motioned to the bowls on the coffee table. "It's yours."
Akira hesitated before nudging his way over to the coffee table. He uncovered the bowls to reveal the soft white rice, and the shrimp, carrots and onions in thick curry broth-just the way his mother made it for him. Akira rubbed at his eyes with the end of his sleeve. God, he missed home so much. Had it really only been two days? It felt so much longer than that.
Akira broke apart the wooden chopsticks and began to mix the rice and curry, and was just about to start eating when he hesitated and looked up at Ogata again, who was scribbling in a book of blank kifu. Was this somehow another trick?
"Hurry up and eat," Ogata said, "I've got a meeting to go to in an hour, and commuting without a car is hell."
"But I resigned...?"
"The point wasn't to win, but to play an honest game. You may be a stubborn liar, but the game you played was honest. That's why you get to eat."
Akira started eating, and savored every bite, still warm from being reheated only a moment ago. It tasted so much like home, and already he was beginning to feel a little better.
"Your game clearly showed influence from Shindou, and even a little bit from Sai. In time, you will reveal to me exactly why that is."
"Was the point of making me play speed go to force me to show it?"
"That is exactly correct. Every day, you show a little bit more of the picture, no matter how hard you try to hide it. Now finish that curry."
As Akira ate, he couldn't shake the feeling that Ogata, gradually, was winning. As soon as he was finished, Ogata seized him by the arm, once again, and dragged him back to the familar closet once again, and Akira felt as if this was going to continue to happen for a very long time.
As Ogata slammed the closet door and shut the latch, he felt truly like the weaker player in this game of wits, always rushing to fix his mistakes before they are punished, always lagging behind in gote, with Ogata always one step ahead.
