Hikaru's Life Lessons Number Two: Being Clueless Is Less Of A Problem When Your Friends Are Kind Of Clueless Too
The username was "AwesomeComputer07," and just to remove any doubt, a message under the name read "This player is a computer program created by the Go Institute in China. Please help us improve our development of artificial intelligence by playing a game."
Some traditional Go players scorned the idea of playing a computer—or perhaps they were simply afraid of being beaten by a machine. Others had accepted the challenge, and so far two titleholders and a seven dan player had been defeated—crushed, even—by a computer program created by a group of Chinese students.
"It's SAI! He's accepted our request for a game! Fire up the engines, Bao." Yang Hai gave a smile worthy of an evil genius. "Initiate program Deep Orange!"
How had the famous chess champion Kasparov been defeated? By a computer. One win against the world-renowned Sai would be enough to propel the designers into the realm of legend.
Laughing manically, Yang Hai declared, "Today, we see the end of the reign of the undefeatable Saint of Net Go!"
"Or at least we could beat our record of lasting twenty minutes," Bao said hopefully.
Le Ping expressed the rational thought of, "You are all crazy. I go to study lounge now. Call me when the game is over and Yang Hai has stopped crying over his embarrassing fail."
From a net café in Tokyo, Japan, Sai Fujiwari was cheerfully crushing the hopes and dreams of yet another set of youths (time clocked: ten minutes). Hikaru idly clicked when told, while watching the latest episode of "One Piece" in another window.
Akari plopped an enormous bag down on Hikaru's bed. "This is heavy, it wouldn't hurt you to lend me a hand on the stairs." She reached into the back and pulled out a white dress with a short puffy skirt. "I can't deny I'm excited you changed your mind, but you kept saying that you'd never wear a dress with this many frills. Any special occasion?"
"Oh, I'm just doing this to make you happy," Hikaru lied. It sounded much better than saying that this was his way of passive-aggressively annoying Akira and taking revenge for their fight yesterday while simultaneously distracting him/not-apologizing for the fight yesterday. Plus, there was this movie theatre that gave half-off tickets to the female gender.
Hikaru disappeared into the bathroom, dress in hand, unaware that his words had plunged Akari into contemplative thought.
She knew that Hikaru's ruse with Akira was long since up, so why did he keep letting her come over about once a month? It wasn't because of her original threat of blackmail, was it? Akari was still having fun playing dress-up, but at a more mature age she'd developed moral scruples. Blackmailing people was wrong.
Hikaru emerged from the bathroom. "I got the back of the dress myself, but I'm going to need your help getting the wig to stay on." He sat down on his desk chair, impatiently waving towards the long black wig lying on the bed.
Akari picked up her tools and came over. As she began to put in hair pins, she asked, "Hikaru, it doesn't make you uncomfortable when we do this, right? I know that I was the one who started blackmailing you, but that was when we were just kids."
"Oh, it's horribly uncomfortable," Hikaru assured her.
"Oh. I'm really sorry."
"Don't be sorry, just hurry up and finish with the hairpins so I can stop craning my neck like this."
Akari had a brain-sputter: a word she'd coined solely to describe occasional experiences with Hikaru. "I'll take that as a no, then? You're okay with this?"
Hikaru said, "With the hairpins? I think they'll stay in."
As she finished up, Akari moved on to the make-up kit. Hikaru made a face. "Do we have to? I hate make-up."
"I keep telling you that it's not much of a disguise if you don't let me cover your face—I mean, I don't want to force you into anything. Only what you feel comfortable with."
"It's just, I always smear lipstick everywhere when I eat popcorn. Maybe a tiny bit of eye shadow, that's all. How about the blue?"
"You want the eye shadow with sparkles?"
"I like sparkles," Hikaru said, unabashedly.
As she put the last touches on, Akari complained, "But you still won't let me call you little sister."
"Hah! That will never happen! I'm a whole month and seven days older than you!"
"THAT was all you cared about?"
"Duh. So, do you think the cloth wings on the back of the dress are too much, or just standard for Harajuku?"
Akari wondered why she ever bothered to worry about what Hikaru thought. The obvious answer was, he didn't.
Akira said, "I'm not sure that adding fifteen minutes of travel time and switching train lines is really worth the effort just to go to a movie theatre where you get half-price tickets. I keep telling you, if money is that much of a problem then I'll pay for you."
Hikaru said, "Don't be ridiculous, since I can never afford to treat you we're at least going dutch. And you know I've got to give Akari an excuse to bring over clothes every so often, it's the highlight of her boring life."
Sai asked, "Should I feel guilty that I never pay for tickets?"
"You don't take up any space, Sai, so I don't think it's a problem," Akira said.
"Did you just say Sai?"
Akira twitched like a mental patient with a history of electric shock therapy. Why had he ever let his guard down in a public space?
The fact that the person who had spoken was Hikaru's friend Waya, walking together with Isumi and Ochi, did not comfort Akira. After all, all three had been working with Seiji Ogata on tracking down Sai's location.
Hikaru said easily, "We were talking about a movie character, not that Sai."
Waya's mouth gaped open. "What is with your clothes?"
Akira's second twitch registered a 7.5 on the Richter Scale. He had, for a brief unfortunate moment, forgotten what Hikaru was currently wearing a white frilly dress. With angel wings on the back.
Hikaru said, "I don't think we've ever met before. My name is Hikaru—absolutely no relation to the one you know."
Akira slapped his forehead. Despite repeated efforts, he had never been able to convince Hikaru that wearing a dress did not in fact make him unrecognizable to people who knew full well what is face looked like.
Waya, Isumi, and Ochi all gaped, different neutrons firing in their brains.
Waya thought, Clearly Hikaru must have lost some kind of bet.
Isumi thought, Hikaru and Akira are playing some kind of joke on us.
Ochi thought, Hikaru is playing some kind of joke on Akira.
Isumi asked, "What movie did you watch?"
"Just a chick flick. I only go because Akira wants to," Hikaru said in a deeply martyred voice.
Waya thought, Hikaru and Akira are dating. Who didn't see that coming?
Isumi thought, I hope Hikaru didn't dress up just because Akira wanted him to. That's not healthy. Wait, what am I thinking? That dress was definitely something Hikaru picked out on his own.
Ochi thought, If they're both the girl in the relationship, how does that even work?
Sai thought, I want to play Go.
Waya said, "Look, we were just about head over to my house for the next meeting of the Find Sai task force. Judging from the direction you're heading in, I'm pretty sure you're going to be late."
Hikaru said, "I forgot about that. Look, if you'll give me, oh, fifteen minutes or so, I'll go find the other Hikaru and bring him back here."
Waya said, "Stop messing around, we already know it's you. Look, your bleached bangs are peeking out from under your wig."
Hikaru hastily turned away and adjusted the wig. Then he turned back with a triumphant expression that said, "See? Clearly not Hikaru anymore! Take that!"
Akira said, "Look, I'll see to it that he makes it to the meeting." He began to drag Hikaru away.
Trailing along after, Sai said, "Hikaru, I think your friends might be on to you."
Hikaru said sotto voce, "Would you mind babysitting Sai a bit while I attend the meeting? He always starts talking in response to what they say when they talk about 'Sai' and one of these days I'm going to accidentally answer back."
Akira said, "Sure, no problem. We can play a few games online."
"Great!" They pulled to a halt in front of a public restroom. Hikaru added, "Would you mind carrying my spare clothes back too? I don't want them to see. I need my backpack, it has other stuff in it, but I have paper bag in here. Thanks!"
He disappeared into the restroom, ducking into the men's after confirming no one was around. Akira contemplated that he was stuck riding the train back home holding a shopping bag with a Gothic Lolita dress inside.
Sai said sympathetically, "Relationships were difficult in my day too. I was dumped twice because I skipped romantic activities on various occasions so I could play Go. By the way, happy anniversary of the day you started dating!"
"At least some one noticed," Akira said. Another passerby who walked too close shied away from him. "And when we get home, please try not to talk to me while we're outside of my room. I think my mom is this close to making an appointment with a specialist in schizophrenia. How does Hikaru do it?"
Sai said, "I am reasonably certain that Hikaru's parents have already diagnosed their son with mental problems and do not worry about it anymore."
At least part of the reason why Hikaru hated Ogata's Find Sai task force was because he hadn't thought of a Make Touya Meijin Play Net Go task force.
Waya said, "The only personal evidence we have is the chat message that Sai sent me after I played a game with him about three years ago. Judging from the content of the message, I have concluded that Sai is rude, immature, and probably stupid in every area except for Go. There's no way an elementary-schooler could possibly be such a strong player, but I haven't completely ruled out a middle-schooler or a very immature high-schooler."
Hikaru muttered, "You're just bitter about being mistaken for a girl. I told you, with a screen name like that anyone could have made that mistake."
The blackboard contained the one online message that Sai had sent in all the games he'd played with famous Go figures from around the world. It said, "Zelda, I'm pretty strong, aren't I? It's cool to meet another girl who plays Go. We should get our nails done together or do other girly stuff."
Hikaru said, "Your screen name is the name of the magical princess from Legend of Zelda. You really should have expected people to think you were a girl. Sai probably just wanted to be friends."
Waya said, "Despite the insulting message, I'm not convinced Sai is a girl. That sounds like the sort of stupid thing that a boy would say while pretending to be a girl, assuming he wasn't too bright."
Hikaru said, "What do you mean wasn't too bright? That sounds exactly like something a girl would say!"
Isumi said, "I think we should also consider that this might have been a fake message. That time was when the rumor first started spreading that Sai was a young girl. What if our mystery player deliberately made such a clumsy message in order to encourage the rumor, as a cover for his real identity?"
Hikaru nodded. "Yes, it was exactly what Isumi said. Except it wasn't a clumsy message."
Ochi demanded, "How would you know, Hikaru? And didn't you just contradict yourself? First you say Sai sounded like a girl to you, now you say that you think it was a trick."
Hikaru said, "It was a trick, but a very clever and not at all stupid one." He paused. "Oops. Ignore everything I just said."
"We always do," Ochi reassured him.
Waya said, "I considered a possible deception, but further evidence shows that Sai never plays during regular school hours, and frequently focuses on weekends, leading me to suspect he or she is a student. Speaking of which, Hikaru, you never show up during Sai's regular Go-playing hour on Saturday at 2:00."
Hikaru said, "I always spend Saturday at 2:00 at Akira's house."
"You could reschedule. You're not showing much commitment to this team."
"You tricked me into being on the team with a box of pocky. And now I've eaten all the pocky, so I'm not sure why I'm still here."
Isumi offered him a bag. "Doritos?"
Author's Note: Yang Hai is the guy who Isumi rooms with in China. There is one page where he talks about how computers are the future of Go, so in my fic I dragged him in to be the computer person. Since Sai pretty much beat every Go player in part 1, I need to keep coming up with new ways to challenge him.
By the way, Yang Hai's program as described here would actually be better than any that exists in the real world, as the best computer programs are actually only at amateur dan level.
A bit of background about Go and computers is necessary here. Go is a much more challenging game for computers than chess because there are many more moves possible in Go than in chess and strategy is more qualitative. In chess, even the best professional players can be beaten by a computer. However, currently the very best Go program in the world is ranked 6 dan, while the top ranking for players is 9 dan (10 dan is a special title). Thus, a computer is far below the rank Sai would presumably be at. Even so, computers have been improving over the last ten years, and artificial intelligence experts believe they will one day create a program which is better at Go than humans. So some day we may have a famous showdown between Go players and computers akin to the Kasperov-Deep Blue showdown in chess.
It's kind of cool that computers can beat humans at chess but not at Go, isn't it?
Remember this, it will actually be plot-important later.
To be continued.