[Eisenberg]
by ph_nx
Nine Simple Rules
“Congratulations, Shindou.”
Hikaru turned around in his brightly-coloured plastic seat to squint up at the figure behind him. It was Touya, of course-Hikaru would always, always recognize that voice-but in his current half-asleep state, he couldn’t determine either what might have brought Touya into the McDonalds, as Touya determinedly avoided Hikaru’s group lunches, or even what his rival might have been congratulating him for. He decided to bluff it and hope that further conversation would reveal what Touya was going on about.
“Thanks!” he said, grinning as he took an enthusiastic bite out of his Bic Mac-he then winced, because they’d forgotten to take out the pickles again.
“It’s a big achievement,” Touya continued solemnly.
Hikaru hurriedly cast his mind back over the past few days, but no-no, nothing big had really happened, nothing that could be called even a small achievement, unless you counted that he’d succeeded on opening his can of soup on the first try last night-it wasn’t his fault the can-opener was broken, okay?-but he suspected that Touya would be less than impressed with that particular brand of ‘achievement.’
So he nodded enthusiastically, using his full mouth as an excuse not to reply (as if he’d ever let something as petty as table manners stop him from getting his two cents in) and waiting for Touya to get to the point.
Fortunately, he was not the only person who in the dark.
“What’s this?” Waya interjected, frowning back and forth between Hikaru and Touya as though he suspected an international conspiracy to be in the air. Real life does not always follow along the same plots as your video games, Waya, Hikaru thought to himself, still a little grouchy that he’d lost five games in a row the last time he’d agreed to a marathon with the other boy. “What’d Shindou do?” Waya must have been curious, to speak directly to Touya in a normal--indoor--tone of voice.
“He’s crossed a whole new milestone in his go today,” replied Touya, and there was something distinctly not right in the way he was smiling so very sweetly. “But I’ll let Shindou explain that to you.”
Hikaru smiled back, baring as many teeth as possible at his rival. “But Touya, I’m sure it would sound so much better coming from you.”
Waya rolled his eyes. “Someone just say it already.”
“Very well. As Shindou so kindly pointed out, I suppose I am the more eloquent of the two of us. Everyone-”
--And didn’t that come as a surprise; Touya very rarely willingly addressed more than one person at once, and he felt especially uncomfortable around Hikaru’s friends, who tended to be loud and boisterous when gathered together in a group--
“-Today, Shindou Hikaru will finally be teaching his first private go-tutoring job. With a complete beginner, no less.”
Hikaru froze. So did everyone else, until Waya burst out laughing. “Seriously, Shindou? Everyone else has been dealing with students for months, most of us way longer! What’s taken you so long?”
Hikaru flushed and spluttered and goddammit, Touya. “I was busy?”
“So are we, moron. Where do you get all your cash, if you don’t have any tutoring gigs?”
“Tournaments… and stuff.”
Touya-that bastard-was sniggering at him. How did he even find out about this, anyway? Hikaru had been so sneaky about it!
His friends continued to tease him gently-and not so gently, as the case may be-until the day ended and Hikaru packed up and headed home.
Dammit. He’d had such a good reason to not take on any tutoring jobs, and Touya-bastard, bastard, bastard-knew exactly what that was, as he’d shown by his farewell of, “Don’t worry, Shindou. Given your highly conventional go upbringing, I’m sure that your lessons will go perfectly smoothly. After all”-and here the smile he had given was sharp and cutting and furious, because he was still waiting impatiently for a truth that Hikaru showed no signs of being ready to tell him-“all you need to do is think back to your own early lessons in go, and you should be fine.”
My own early lessons in go…
Which had been… what?
Grandpa had been crazy about go for forever, but Hikaru had never really picked much up from him other than a few go terms and the attitude that go was strictly for old people. Then had come Sai, and there had been Shirakawa’s lessons, and the go club… But he had already known a little something about go by the time he’d first gone to the go club, hadn’t he?
He could remember his lessons with Tsutsui vividly, as though he were standing in the science classroom of his old middle school at that very moment, the air still smelling faintly of chemicals and pencil shavings, someone’s class notebook lying forgotten on one of the desks in the back, and the sounds of soccer practise being carried in through the open window.
Yes, that was what it had been like, and Tsutsui had been at turns encouraging and teasingly frustrated as he taught Hikaru how to hold the go stones properly, how to count points, how to solve higher and higher level go problems. He’d make a great teacher someday, if that was what he wanted. Hikaru could remember all of his lessons and most of the games they’d played together without stressing himself, but none of them were as basic as he wanted. He’d gone to Tsutsui-to the go club-already having some basic knowledge of go, and his student was a little seven-year old girl whose only knowledge of go was that it was a game that sounded cool. She had no goban-he’d be bringing a folding one with him when he paid his visit.
So no, he wouldn’t find his answer there. Sometime earlier, then…
Shirakawa’s lessons, back at the Community Go Centre? Maybe… Hikaru tried to remember what exactly he’d learned there, but the only things he could recall were boredom and wigs.
He’d definitely known nothing before those lessons, right? Just that there was some boring game named go that his grandpa played with other old men, and it was in some inconceivable way different from Five-in-a-Row.
And after… Sai hadn’t begun to teach Hikaru until he’d already joined the go club, had he?
So where had he learned the basics of go? Had he somehow just skipped that stage of his life, passing straight from non-player to weak player, without ever even dipping his toes into that oh-so-important level of beginning player?
As he left the train station and headed home, he noticed a tiny bookstore squeezed in between an udon stand and a convenience store.
…Maybe… a beginner’s-level go book? He had a few go books at home… and Tsutsui had practically learned everything he knew from his book. It couldn’t hurt to take a look, right?
After a snooping around under the suspicious eye of the bookstore’s cashier, he finally located the shelf with what seemed to be the only two books about go in the small store-both, conveniently, professing to teach the secrets of beginner-level go to their readers. Perfect.
He picked up the first one, flipped through it, and stared. What was this? It was straight kanji-practically Chinese! Maybe he should have continued in school… But who had the time to learn all of those stupid characters, anyway? Whatever…
He turned to the second book, which proudly proclaimed itself to be the number one easiest go book to understand; it was entitled My Go Classroom-for Kids! along with some amusing and brightly-coloured illustrations.
…Well, fine. His student was a kid, right? This should be perfect.
He flipped through the book. The amusing illustrations continued. Good. He liked pictures. And he could read this one, too, though he was less than impressed with what he read.
The book proclaimed to be able to teach students about go in nine simple rules, but the rules were so-so obvious. Did it really need a whole rule to state that stones were supposed to go on the intersecting lines, not inside the squares formed by the grid? Or a whole other rule to state that players took turns placing stones? Or that black plays first? Everyone knew that stuff-no one had had to teach him about that, he’d just known!
…Wait, had he been taught about that?
He cast his mind back, but he couldn’t come up with any clear memories.
Had he been taught about these things, or had he just… picked them up, watching Sai play?
He replaced the book and exited the store in a huff, heading for home. He still had to change before the tutoring session, which was only in an hour and a half.
Once he arrived home, he tossed around his room, searching for anything--anything--that would give him some idea as to how he was supposed to survive this lesson. From somewhere buried beneath a pile of kifu, he heard his cellphone ringing on his bed, where’d he’d left it before diving headfirst into everything even vaguely related to go that his room had to offer. He snapped up his phone, hoping beyond hope that it was his student’s parents, calling in a cancellation.
No such luck.
“Hello, Shindou,” said Touya amicably. “Getting ready for your first big lesson?”
“Screw you, Touya,” he snarled back, not in the mood to deal with his evil, evil rival on top of his upcoming travesty.
Touya sniggered at him. “Oh, come on, Shindou. Surely you can’t be having that hard a time planning your lesson. Just think back to how yours went; your teacher, whoever or whatever it was, couldn’t possibly have been as incompetent as you are, after all.”
Hikaru nearly snapped back at that last comment, but he was getting beyond desperate, now. “…I really can’t remember, Touya,” he whispered into the mouthpiece. “I’m been trying to think all day, but... I just can’t remember when the transition took place. Where I got my very first lessons of go from. I can’t remember.”
Touya was silent for a moment, thankfully taking the situation seriously instead of bursting out laughing as Hikaru had half expected. “It was the same for me,” he said.
“What? You’ve been teaching since before I learned to play. It’s no big deal for you.”
“Well, that’s true. But that was usually with people who came to my father’s go salon-people who already knew some go. The first time I had to teach a true beginner, I didn’t know where to start. Go has surrounded me my entire life; I sometimes wonder if I ever really had a starting point, or if the basics were displayed around me so constantly during my childhood that I simply… absorbed them.”
“’Absorbed’? You sound like a dry sponge, Touya.”
“…Shindou, you’re not making me want to help you.”
“Sorry.”
“Anyway, Shindou, I’m sure you’ll do fine. It’s not like you don’t know the basics, after all; you’ve simply forgotten what’s basic and what’s not. Just play close attention to your student-what she’s understanding, what’s she’s not-and there won’t be a problem. You’re lucky that she’s so much younger; you won’t need to earn her respect, she’ll give it automatically.”
“…I can easily imagine what kind of kid you were when you were seven, Touya, but don’t assume that’s true for the rest of the planet.”
“Whatever. I’ll leave you to it. You only have about half an hour until the meeting, anyway. How long does it take you to get there?”
“Around forty-five minutes, I think… Wait…” Half an hour? He hadn’t even changed yet! “Crapcrapcrapcrap-bye, Touya-crapcrapcrapcrap-”
As he ended the call, he could have sworn he heard that bastard Touya laughing.
--
He collapsed against the door, gasping, one hand clenching a google-map printout and the other slamming the doorbell open fisted. He managed to stand up in a semblance of professionalism when he heard footsteps approaching from within the building and desperately tried to gather himself.
The door opened, and before the figure standing on the other side could speak, Hikaru fell to the ground, prostrating himself and begging for forgiveness for his tardiness.
A young business man stared down at him, utterly flummoxed and more than a little frightened. “That-that’s fine. Shindou-…sensei, is it? You’re right on time.”
At that, Hikaru’s head popped up. “What, really?” He grabbed his phone, flipped it open, and stared at the numbers blinking up at him. He was on time-right to the minute. “Awesome!” He stood up and smiled brightly at his employer as though nothing had happened. “Yeah, I’m Shindou Hikaru! Nice to meet you!”
“…Takaguchi Hiroto. It’s nice to meet you, too.” As he stepped aside to allow Hikaru to pass inside, he asked uncertainly, “You are a go player, aren’t you?”
“Of course!”
“You’re just a little bit… younger than I was expecting.” His eyes lingered on Hikaru’s clothing, which he hadn’t had time to change.
Hikaru flushed, but carefully avoided the topic. “Oh, that. There are lots of young pros. Where’ll I be setting up?”
“Right over here, Shindou-…sensei.”
Hikaru had forgotten about his panic in his mad dash over, but now that he was faced with a small room and a tiny girl kneeling in front of the low table, peeking up at him over her dark bangs, it was starting to rise again.
Okay. Calm down-he could do this. Touya could do this, and so he could, too. He could do anything Touya could do.
He introduced himself and heard her soft-spoken response-Takaguchi Hitomi, age seven, grade two, favourite class was lunch (he didn’t have the heart to tell her that wasn’t a class; she’d find out soon enough, just as he had)-as he set up the folding goban he’d had stuffed into his backpack and brought out the stones. A silence fell, and his mind went blank when he searched for some way-any way!-to fill it.
Finally, he blurted out, “So, there are nine simple rules to go.”
What? No, don’t go quoting that stupid book!
But he couldn’t think of anything else to say, so he continued. “Do you know them, Hitomi-chan?”
The little girl shook her head, eyes wide.
“Well, first, you don’t place the stones-these white and black… thingies, they’re called stones-you don’t place them in the spaces like this, you put them on the lines like this. Do you get it?”
Hitomi nodded, awkwardly picked up a stone, clutching it between her index finger and her thumb-and wow, that brought up memories-and placed it shakily on an intersection between the lines to demonstrate her knowledge.
“Yeah, just like that,” said Hikaru cheerfully.
He showed her how to hold the stones properly, and got all the way up to Rule #5: Capturing a surrounded stone before the session ended. He hit inspiration with that one, as somewhere in the dregs of his subconscious he managed to pull up a vague memory of playing a capture game with Shirakawa on that first day in the Community Go Centre, and he improvised something that he hoped wasn’t too different.
Hitomi seemed to be having fun, at least, and also she appeared to be growing in enthusiasm for go, especially when she saw that he wasn’t bothering to kneel in seiza. At least that was one thing that he had over Touya-Hikaru had no problems whatsoever convincing people that you didn’t need to act like an old man to be a brilliant go player, and until Touya ditched those sweaters and that awful suit, no one would ever believe him if he made the same argument (not that he ever tried).
“So, Hitomi-chan,” Hikaru asked as he was pulling on his shoes by the door, “how do you think you like go?” Hitomi’s parents were standing close by, watching as carefully as they had been the whole lesson, so he didn’t expect an entirely honest reply. Still, he was surprised by the exuberance she showed when she answered.
“It’s so much fun!” She was practically glowing. “And the shapes the stones make are so pretty! The sounds, too.”
He grinned at her. “Maybe next time I’ll take you around the Institute, so that you can see go played on one of those fancy boards. I think they even have a kaya board on display, with real jade go stones and everything.”
Her eyes went as wide as saucers, and she whirled around to stare at her parents pleadingly. While they glanced at one another uncertainly, Hikaru laughed. “It doesn’t have to be soon. Just think-when you get really good at go, maybe you’ll be able to work there like I do.”
Hitomi beamed at him, then paused, biting her lip and frowning. “Shindou-sensei…”-and he would definitely never get used to that honorific being added to his name-“are there lots of lady go players?”
He could see that the answer was dreadfully important to her, so he hesitated, uncertain as to how to tell her that he only personally knew three female pro go players, and was only aware of a handful more. Finally, he crouched down so that he was on eye level with her and said solemnly, “No, not many.” As her face fell, he added, “But that’ll never change if little girls like you decide not to go in just for that reason.”
She seemed to be thinking about this carefully, and behind her, her parents were giving him an unreadable look, so he figured it must be time to go.
As he stood up to leave, Hitomi’s mother stopped him to say, “I hope you’ll be able to come by again next week, Shindou-sensei.”
He blinked in surprise. He’d thought that his age combined with his less-than-professional mannerisms and appearance-and no matter what anyone said, he was never going to stop bleaching his bangs-had already lost him this job. Maybe not.
“Sure!” he replied, grinning. “Just give me a call if you decide how you feel about a fieldtrip to the Institute. I know it’s a bit out of the way, but…”
“We’ll call,” she promised, and then he was outside, strolling through the night air. He had just pulled out his phone to call Touya when it went off in his hand, and he grinned, answering it.
“How’d it go?” Touya demanded.
“Well, I got invited back, so it couldn’t have been too bad,” he laughed.
“Shindou.”
“I got there just in time, and I sort of blanked for a bit in the beginning, but it went okay after that. Once the lesson started getting into the swing of things, I started remembering a little. Sort of.”
“…A little? Sort of?”
“Anyway, she’s a good kid. It was pretty fun.”
Touya gave a sigh of relief.
“Aww… You weren’t worried about me, were you, Touya?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m just glad that you didn’t manage to terrify a prospective go player straight out of the field. We need all the go players we can get, remember.”
“Yeah, yeah. She seemed pretty into it, though. I don’t think you have to worry that I’ve scared her off.”
“We’ll just see how session number two goes, shall we? We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves, after all.”
“Ha ha, very funny.”
The two boys were quiet for a moment before Hikaru said softly, “Hey, Touya?”
“Hmm?”
“Thanks.”
He could hear Touya’s smile-this time, neither sickly sweet nor razor sharp, but simply, beautifully genuine-when the other boy replied, “No problem.”
He hung up on Touya as he entered the train home and leaned against the closed door, thinking about how he’d just shown up barely-on-time to his first-ever tutoring job in hysterics and wearing a t-shirt stamped with the letter 5, a pair of loose khaki shorts, and a thin camo jacket he’d borrowed from Waya and never returned. Even with his determination to never become one of those grumpy old men wearing identical starched suits and insisting that go was a serious game that wasn’t for a crazy young hooligan like him… even with that, maybe this had been going a little far.
…Whatever. Between his bleached bangs, his youth and his schoolboy demeanour, he never looked even vaguely professional no matter what he wore, so where was the difference?
Besides, just as the door had been closing behind him, hadn’t he heard Hitomi’s voice whisper to her parents, “I’m so glad he’s not all stiff and scary like the ones on TV!”
And that was a memory he would treasure forever.
But as he walked by the same tiny bookstore he’d visited earlier in the day and saw that it was still open, he made a quick stop there before continuing on his way home, My Go Classroom-For Kids! safely tucked in a plastic bag under his arm.
Because if he’d learned anything from this venture, it was that sometimes, memories need to cling to a bit of tangible evidence to keep from fading away with the passage of time.
Nine Simple Rules
“Congratulations, Shindou.”
Hikaru turned around in his brightly-coloured plastic seat to squint up at the figure behind him. It was Touya, of course-Hikaru would always, always recognize that voice-but in his current half-asleep state, he couldn’t determine either what might have brought Touya into the McDonalds, as Touya determinedly avoided Hikaru’s group lunches, or even what his rival might have been congratulating him for. He decided to bluff it and hope that further conversation would reveal what Touya was going on about.
“Thanks!” he said, grinning as he took an enthusiastic bite out of his Bic Mac-he then winced, because they’d forgotten to take out the pickles again.
“It’s a big achievement,” Touya continued solemnly.
Hikaru hurriedly cast his mind back over the past few days, but no-no, nothing big had really happened, nothing that could be called even a small achievement, unless you counted that he’d succeeded on opening his can of soup on the first try last night-it wasn’t his fault the can-opener was broken, okay?-but he suspected that Touya would be less than impressed with that particular brand of ‘achievement.’
So he nodded enthusiastically, using his full mouth as an excuse not to reply (as if he’d ever let something as petty as table manners stop him from getting his two cents in) and waiting for Touya to get to the point.
Fortunately, he was not the only person who in the dark.
“What’s this?” Waya interjected, frowning back and forth between Hikaru and Touya as though he suspected an international conspiracy to be in the air. Real life does not always follow along the same plots as your video games, Waya, Hikaru thought to himself, still a little grouchy that he’d lost five games in a row the last time he’d agreed to a marathon with the other boy. “What’d Shindou do?” Waya must have been curious, to speak directly to Touya in a normal--indoor--tone of voice.
“He’s crossed a whole new milestone in his go today,” replied Touya, and there was something distinctly not right in the way he was smiling so very sweetly. “But I’ll let Shindou explain that to you.”
Hikaru smiled back, baring as many teeth as possible at his rival. “But Touya, I’m sure it would sound so much better coming from you.”
Waya rolled his eyes. “Someone just say it already.”
“Very well. As Shindou so kindly pointed out, I suppose I am the more eloquent of the two of us. Everyone-”
--And didn’t that come as a surprise; Touya very rarely willingly addressed more than one person at once, and he felt especially uncomfortable around Hikaru’s friends, who tended to be loud and boisterous when gathered together in a group--
“-Today, Shindou Hikaru will finally be teaching his first private go-tutoring job. With a complete beginner, no less.”
Hikaru froze. So did everyone else, until Waya burst out laughing. “Seriously, Shindou? Everyone else has been dealing with students for months, most of us way longer! What’s taken you so long?”
Hikaru flushed and spluttered and goddammit, Touya. “I was busy?”
“So are we, moron. Where do you get all your cash, if you don’t have any tutoring gigs?”
“Tournaments… and stuff.”
Touya-that bastard-was sniggering at him. How did he even find out about this, anyway? Hikaru had been so sneaky about it!
His friends continued to tease him gently-and not so gently, as the case may be-until the day ended and Hikaru packed up and headed home.
Dammit. He’d had such a good reason to not take on any tutoring jobs, and Touya-bastard, bastard, bastard-knew exactly what that was, as he’d shown by his farewell of, “Don’t worry, Shindou. Given your highly conventional go upbringing, I’m sure that your lessons will go perfectly smoothly. After all”-and here the smile he had given was sharp and cutting and furious, because he was still waiting impatiently for a truth that Hikaru showed no signs of being ready to tell him-“all you need to do is think back to your own early lessons in go, and you should be fine.”
My own early lessons in go…
Which had been… what?
Grandpa had been crazy about go for forever, but Hikaru had never really picked much up from him other than a few go terms and the attitude that go was strictly for old people. Then had come Sai, and there had been Shirakawa’s lessons, and the go club… But he had already known a little something about go by the time he’d first gone to the go club, hadn’t he?
He could remember his lessons with Tsutsui vividly, as though he were standing in the science classroom of his old middle school at that very moment, the air still smelling faintly of chemicals and pencil shavings, someone’s class notebook lying forgotten on one of the desks in the back, and the sounds of soccer practise being carried in through the open window.
Yes, that was what it had been like, and Tsutsui had been at turns encouraging and teasingly frustrated as he taught Hikaru how to hold the go stones properly, how to count points, how to solve higher and higher level go problems. He’d make a great teacher someday, if that was what he wanted. Hikaru could remember all of his lessons and most of the games they’d played together without stressing himself, but none of them were as basic as he wanted. He’d gone to Tsutsui-to the go club-already having some basic knowledge of go, and his student was a little seven-year old girl whose only knowledge of go was that it was a game that sounded cool. She had no goban-he’d be bringing a folding one with him when he paid his visit.
So no, he wouldn’t find his answer there. Sometime earlier, then…
Shirakawa’s lessons, back at the Community Go Centre? Maybe… Hikaru tried to remember what exactly he’d learned there, but the only things he could recall were boredom and wigs.
He’d definitely known nothing before those lessons, right? Just that there was some boring game named go that his grandpa played with other old men, and it was in some inconceivable way different from Five-in-a-Row.
And after… Sai hadn’t begun to teach Hikaru until he’d already joined the go club, had he?
So where had he learned the basics of go? Had he somehow just skipped that stage of his life, passing straight from non-player to weak player, without ever even dipping his toes into that oh-so-important level of beginning player?
As he left the train station and headed home, he noticed a tiny bookstore squeezed in between an udon stand and a convenience store.
…Maybe… a beginner’s-level go book? He had a few go books at home… and Tsutsui had practically learned everything he knew from his book. It couldn’t hurt to take a look, right?
After a snooping around under the suspicious eye of the bookstore’s cashier, he finally located the shelf with what seemed to be the only two books about go in the small store-both, conveniently, professing to teach the secrets of beginner-level go to their readers. Perfect.
He picked up the first one, flipped through it, and stared. What was this? It was straight kanji-practically Chinese! Maybe he should have continued in school… But who had the time to learn all of those stupid characters, anyway? Whatever…
He turned to the second book, which proudly proclaimed itself to be the number one easiest go book to understand; it was entitled My Go Classroom-for Kids! along with some amusing and brightly-coloured illustrations.
…Well, fine. His student was a kid, right? This should be perfect.
He flipped through the book. The amusing illustrations continued. Good. He liked pictures. And he could read this one, too, though he was less than impressed with what he read.
The book proclaimed to be able to teach students about go in nine simple rules, but the rules were so-so obvious. Did it really need a whole rule to state that stones were supposed to go on the intersecting lines, not inside the squares formed by the grid? Or a whole other rule to state that players took turns placing stones? Or that black plays first? Everyone knew that stuff-no one had had to teach him about that, he’d just known!
…Wait, had he been taught about that?
He cast his mind back, but he couldn’t come up with any clear memories.
Had he been taught about these things, or had he just… picked them up, watching Sai play?
He replaced the book and exited the store in a huff, heading for home. He still had to change before the tutoring session, which was only in an hour and a half.
Once he arrived home, he tossed around his room, searching for anything--anything--that would give him some idea as to how he was supposed to survive this lesson. From somewhere buried beneath a pile of kifu, he heard his cellphone ringing on his bed, where’d he’d left it before diving headfirst into everything even vaguely related to go that his room had to offer. He snapped up his phone, hoping beyond hope that it was his student’s parents, calling in a cancellation.
No such luck.
“Hello, Shindou,” said Touya amicably. “Getting ready for your first big lesson?”
“Screw you, Touya,” he snarled back, not in the mood to deal with his evil, evil rival on top of his upcoming travesty.
Touya sniggered at him. “Oh, come on, Shindou. Surely you can’t be having that hard a time planning your lesson. Just think back to how yours went; your teacher, whoever or whatever it was, couldn’t possibly have been as incompetent as you are, after all.”
Hikaru nearly snapped back at that last comment, but he was getting beyond desperate, now. “…I really can’t remember, Touya,” he whispered into the mouthpiece. “I’m been trying to think all day, but... I just can’t remember when the transition took place. Where I got my very first lessons of go from. I can’t remember.”
Touya was silent for a moment, thankfully taking the situation seriously instead of bursting out laughing as Hikaru had half expected. “It was the same for me,” he said.
“What? You’ve been teaching since before I learned to play. It’s no big deal for you.”
“Well, that’s true. But that was usually with people who came to my father’s go salon-people who already knew some go. The first time I had to teach a true beginner, I didn’t know where to start. Go has surrounded me my entire life; I sometimes wonder if I ever really had a starting point, or if the basics were displayed around me so constantly during my childhood that I simply… absorbed them.”
“’Absorbed’? You sound like a dry sponge, Touya.”
“…Shindou, you’re not making me want to help you.”
“Sorry.”
“Anyway, Shindou, I’m sure you’ll do fine. It’s not like you don’t know the basics, after all; you’ve simply forgotten what’s basic and what’s not. Just play close attention to your student-what she’s understanding, what’s she’s not-and there won’t be a problem. You’re lucky that she’s so much younger; you won’t need to earn her respect, she’ll give it automatically.”
“…I can easily imagine what kind of kid you were when you were seven, Touya, but don’t assume that’s true for the rest of the planet.”
“Whatever. I’ll leave you to it. You only have about half an hour until the meeting, anyway. How long does it take you to get there?”
“Around forty-five minutes, I think… Wait…” Half an hour? He hadn’t even changed yet! “Crapcrapcrapcrap-bye, Touya-crapcrapcrapcrap-”
As he ended the call, he could have sworn he heard that bastard Touya laughing.
--
He collapsed against the door, gasping, one hand clenching a google-map printout and the other slamming the doorbell open fisted. He managed to stand up in a semblance of professionalism when he heard footsteps approaching from within the building and desperately tried to gather himself.
The door opened, and before the figure standing on the other side could speak, Hikaru fell to the ground, prostrating himself and begging for forgiveness for his tardiness.
A young business man stared down at him, utterly flummoxed and more than a little frightened. “That-that’s fine. Shindou-…sensei, is it? You’re right on time.”
At that, Hikaru’s head popped up. “What, really?” He grabbed his phone, flipped it open, and stared at the numbers blinking up at him. He was on time-right to the minute. “Awesome!” He stood up and smiled brightly at his employer as though nothing had happened. “Yeah, I’m Shindou Hikaru! Nice to meet you!”
“…Takaguchi Hiroto. It’s nice to meet you, too.” As he stepped aside to allow Hikaru to pass inside, he asked uncertainly, “You are a go player, aren’t you?”
“Of course!”
“You’re just a little bit… younger than I was expecting.” His eyes lingered on Hikaru’s clothing, which he hadn’t had time to change.
Hikaru flushed, but carefully avoided the topic. “Oh, that. There are lots of young pros. Where’ll I be setting up?”
“Right over here, Shindou-…sensei.”
Hikaru had forgotten about his panic in his mad dash over, but now that he was faced with a small room and a tiny girl kneeling in front of the low table, peeking up at him over her dark bangs, it was starting to rise again.
Okay. Calm down-he could do this. Touya could do this, and so he could, too. He could do anything Touya could do.
He introduced himself and heard her soft-spoken response-Takaguchi Hitomi, age seven, grade two, favourite class was lunch (he didn’t have the heart to tell her that wasn’t a class; she’d find out soon enough, just as he had)-as he set up the folding goban he’d had stuffed into his backpack and brought out the stones. A silence fell, and his mind went blank when he searched for some way-any way!-to fill it.
Finally, he blurted out, “So, there are nine simple rules to go.”
What? No, don’t go quoting that stupid book!
But he couldn’t think of anything else to say, so he continued. “Do you know them, Hitomi-chan?”
The little girl shook her head, eyes wide.
“Well, first, you don’t place the stones-these white and black… thingies, they’re called stones-you don’t place them in the spaces like this, you put them on the lines like this. Do you get it?”
Hitomi nodded, awkwardly picked up a stone, clutching it between her index finger and her thumb-and wow, that brought up memories-and placed it shakily on an intersection between the lines to demonstrate her knowledge.
“Yeah, just like that,” said Hikaru cheerfully.
He showed her how to hold the stones properly, and got all the way up to Rule #5: Capturing a surrounded stone before the session ended. He hit inspiration with that one, as somewhere in the dregs of his subconscious he managed to pull up a vague memory of playing a capture game with Shirakawa on that first day in the Community Go Centre, and he improvised something that he hoped wasn’t too different.
Hitomi seemed to be having fun, at least, and also she appeared to be growing in enthusiasm for go, especially when she saw that he wasn’t bothering to kneel in seiza. At least that was one thing that he had over Touya-Hikaru had no problems whatsoever convincing people that you didn’t need to act like an old man to be a brilliant go player, and until Touya ditched those sweaters and that awful suit, no one would ever believe him if he made the same argument (not that he ever tried).
“So, Hitomi-chan,” Hikaru asked as he was pulling on his shoes by the door, “how do you think you like go?” Hitomi’s parents were standing close by, watching as carefully as they had been the whole lesson, so he didn’t expect an entirely honest reply. Still, he was surprised by the exuberance she showed when she answered.
“It’s so much fun!” She was practically glowing. “And the shapes the stones make are so pretty! The sounds, too.”
He grinned at her. “Maybe next time I’ll take you around the Institute, so that you can see go played on one of those fancy boards. I think they even have a kaya board on display, with real jade go stones and everything.”
Her eyes went as wide as saucers, and she whirled around to stare at her parents pleadingly. While they glanced at one another uncertainly, Hikaru laughed. “It doesn’t have to be soon. Just think-when you get really good at go, maybe you’ll be able to work there like I do.”
Hitomi beamed at him, then paused, biting her lip and frowning. “Shindou-sensei…”-and he would definitely never get used to that honorific being added to his name-“are there lots of lady go players?”
He could see that the answer was dreadfully important to her, so he hesitated, uncertain as to how to tell her that he only personally knew three female pro go players, and was only aware of a handful more. Finally, he crouched down so that he was on eye level with her and said solemnly, “No, not many.” As her face fell, he added, “But that’ll never change if little girls like you decide not to go in just for that reason.”
She seemed to be thinking about this carefully, and behind her, her parents were giving him an unreadable look, so he figured it must be time to go.
As he stood up to leave, Hitomi’s mother stopped him to say, “I hope you’ll be able to come by again next week, Shindou-sensei.”
He blinked in surprise. He’d thought that his age combined with his less-than-professional mannerisms and appearance-and no matter what anyone said, he was never going to stop bleaching his bangs-had already lost him this job. Maybe not.
“Sure!” he replied, grinning. “Just give me a call if you decide how you feel about a fieldtrip to the Institute. I know it’s a bit out of the way, but…”
“We’ll call,” she promised, and then he was outside, strolling through the night air. He had just pulled out his phone to call Touya when it went off in his hand, and he grinned, answering it.
“How’d it go?” Touya demanded.
“Well, I got invited back, so it couldn’t have been too bad,” he laughed.
“Shindou.”
“I got there just in time, and I sort of blanked for a bit in the beginning, but it went okay after that. Once the lesson started getting into the swing of things, I started remembering a little. Sort of.”
“…A little? Sort of?”
“Anyway, she’s a good kid. It was pretty fun.”
Touya gave a sigh of relief.
“Aww… You weren’t worried about me, were you, Touya?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m just glad that you didn’t manage to terrify a prospective go player straight out of the field. We need all the go players we can get, remember.”
“Yeah, yeah. She seemed pretty into it, though. I don’t think you have to worry that I’ve scared her off.”
“We’ll just see how session number two goes, shall we? We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves, after all.”
“Ha ha, very funny.”
The two boys were quiet for a moment before Hikaru said softly, “Hey, Touya?”
“Hmm?”
“Thanks.”
He could hear Touya’s smile-this time, neither sickly sweet nor razor sharp, but simply, beautifully genuine-when the other boy replied, “No problem.”
He hung up on Touya as he entered the train home and leaned against the closed door, thinking about how he’d just shown up barely-on-time to his first-ever tutoring job in hysterics and wearing a t-shirt stamped with the letter 5, a pair of loose khaki shorts, and a thin camo jacket he’d borrowed from Waya and never returned. Even with his determination to never become one of those grumpy old men wearing identical starched suits and insisting that go was a serious game that wasn’t for a crazy young hooligan like him… even with that, maybe this had been going a little far.
…Whatever. Between his bleached bangs, his youth and his schoolboy demeanour, he never looked even vaguely professional no matter what he wore, so where was the difference?
Besides, just as the door had been closing behind him, hadn’t he heard Hitomi’s voice whisper to her parents, “I’m so glad he’s not all stiff and scary like the ones on TV!”
And that was a memory he would treasure forever.
But as he walked by the same tiny bookstore he’d visited earlier in the day and saw that it was still open, he made a quick stop there before continuing on his way home, My Go Classroom-For Kids! safely tucked in a plastic bag under his arm.
Because if he’d learned anything from this venture, it was that sometimes, memories need to cling to a bit of tangible evidence to keep from fading away with the passage of time.