[Glasser]
by onkoona
part three
Once Upon A Time, Part 4
One evening in February Hikaru got ready to call Kanzou-sensei with the news that there would be some money this month. He hadn't called right after he got the check from the studio because he was unsure how much would have to be taken off in taxes and also he had hoped that there might have been another shoot as well, generating more money. The shoot didn't come up and Hikaru had the tax thing worked out so there was nothing left in the way now of calling.
But when he dialed the sensei's cell phone, he got an unexpected 'disconnected' signal. And the same when he tried the lab's phone. What? Those were the only phone number he had. Maybe they had changed them? Hikaru sat forward on the couch, grabbed his laptop from the coffee table and put in on his knees. He opened it and called up the Time Team's ultra boring looking web page; maybe the new number would be on there. Hikaru frowned when he found that the page was down.
All these months being reporter - even for a neighborhood rag like the Shinbun - had taught him one thing; always follow a hunch. He opened a search engine page and started searching: "Time Team", "Kanzou-sensei" and the names of any of the other Time Team members that he could recall. He even street viewed the industrial park that the Time Team's lab was located on.
There was nothing there. No search yielded results, at the location of where the lab should have been there was as sign for a tofu packaging factory. Well, Hikaru's hunch had been right; it was all gone, like those people had never existed. Boy, Red and his guys are really really good, Hikaru thought. He closed his laptop, putting it back on the corner of the coffee table and sat back on the couch, resting his head against the firm back.
If Red had made Kanzou-sensei and the Time Team disappear, did that mean that Hikaru's debt to them had also disappeared? Now there was a selfish thought! What about the sensei and all his people? Hikaru sighed. Of course he didn't just dismiss their disappearance but it wasn't like there was anything at all he could do about it. As things stood, he was the only person that he knew that knew that the Time Team had ever existed, that Kanzou-sensei had ever existed. Even the only one who Sai the ghost had ever existed.
Now there was a sobering thought. He was the only one with these memories; basically he remembered things that had never actually happened in this world. It was a scary thought. One that he'd need to think out some more.
'Hikaru-sama?' Sai asked in his 'I'm about to ask you to play' voice. Hikaru smiled and slipped off the couch onto the floor in front of the Goban on the coffee table, that at that moment held a game Sai had been replaying while Hikaru had been working.
'Clear the board; first a round of speed Go,' he announced with relish.
OOOO
February turned into March and brought an abrupt end to winter. But no end came to their bed sharing, even though the official excuse had now become defunct, Hikaru was overjoyed to note.
Now that Kanzou-sensei and the Time Team and with them that huge debt were out of the picture, Hikaru's finances were less of a disaster. Hikaru did his best to try and not spend more per month than he earned, but with having to take Sai everyplace by taxi and playing fees for the Go club and the extra food and clothing, not to mention the large heating bill that was only partly due to Sai's staying indoors but also because of the unusually harsh winter. Well, with all these things and more besides, Hikaru had had to dip into the emergency fund just a little every month up to then except for the month that Sai had gotten the modeling job. That check had helped and was still helping, but as there weren't many modeling jobs for someone like Sai - exotic looks yes, but no modeling experience and unwilling (or Hikaru was, anyways) to go bare-chested - so Hikaru couldn't count on that for providing a steady income.
And then there was the Pro exam to consider. In Hikaru's original time line, his family had taken care of the fees and he had never know exactly how expensive taking the exam really was. And now Hikaru had to cough up the fees for two. No way was he making either of them wait; Sai was already 28 years old (give or take a millennium) and Go was the only thing he was any good at and Hikaru didn't want to wait one minute longer than necessary to start chasing Touya for real. The annoying brat had been needling Hikaru every week about becoming a Pro, over their Wednesday games at the club; Hikaru really couldn't take much more!
But the fee was considerable and Hikaru just couldn't generate that kind of money when he was paying for costs of living for two as it was. No, this problem was far from solved yet...
OOOO
With the spring taking a hold with a vengeance in March another problem arouse, well, reappeared really. Not that Sai ever complained, of course! But Hikaru wasn't a total dunce and he did see that his lover was suffering in his constant confinement to the apartment.
Sai's time on NetGo had helped him to gain a lot of ground in modern Go. Even Touya had commented on it when watching Sai play the last few weeks. And it had kept Sai happy to be stuck inside while it was freezing outside. But with spring's arrival that had now come to an end as Hikaru kept catching Sai staring out of the window whenever his attention was not on Hikaru or on Go.
When Hikaru couldn't take it anymore, he went talk to his boss. Over the months Hikaru had been working at the paper he had found Tanaka-san to be a surprisingly congenial boss. Except around 5 pm when the man had held his daily venting match / break down / voice exercises, or whatever that was. At other times Tanaka-san was a nice and patient man, to whom you could explain a problem and get a wise word back and, within his abilities, he'd help you out gladly.
A very long talk (at 2 pm) yielded some possibilities. Hikaru had already realized he couldn't afford to work fewer hours, so taking an extra afternoon off per week was out. Then Tanaka suggested that he'd trade afternoons for nights. The man was rather enthusiastic about the idea, because they hadn't been able get someone for week nights for years now and Tanaka knew that Big Boss so very much wanted to include more night life into the paper.
Hikaru had to seriously ponder this; so, he'd end up losing some of his evenings with Sai, but he'd get afternoons in the park with Sai in exchange and a small bonus for working the more 'inconvenient' hours. He decided it couldn't hurt to try in out for a month; just in case Hikaru found his body couldn't manage the odd hours he'd be keeping.
Sai was ecstatic. And after one week Hikaru really didn't care that his working hours were utterly screwed up; he'd not give up Sai's happy smile for anything.
OOOO
They quickly set a routine; Monday, Tuesday and Friday afternoons it was Go in the park, sitting on a blanket on the grass. Wednesday it was exploring the nicer bit of Tokyo - like other parks and temples, Hikaru had made the mistake of taking Sai to Shibuya only once. And they'd spend the afternoon and evening at the Touya Go club. Thursdays was still their private day, half of it spent on grooming and the rest on whatever their fancy took them.
Hikaru very carefully held on to his privacy of Thursday because - and Hikaru didn't mind this at all - Touya had muscled in on their Go-in-the-park afternoons, the moment the man had found out about them. So by the time it was April, Go-in-the-park had become almost a dependence of the Touya Go Club. People came with Gobans and blankets of their own. Then one chap had volunteered to bring 2 foldable and 8 foldable chairs and pretty soon, Go-in-the-park was an event that even ran when Hikaru and Sai were not there.
And, the most shocking of all to Hikaru, one fine Tuesday afternoon, he found himself not only there with Sai but also working in his capacity of Reporter for the Shinbun. Tanaka-boss had assigned Hikaru to report on this new phenomenon "Go-in-the-park". 'And bring plenty of pics!' the man had ordered and Hikaru was more than happy to obey.
OOOO
In June Hikaru found that his finances had decided for him in the matter of him taking the Go exam or not. At that moment he could either comfortably afford the Prelim fees for two people or he could afford the Prelim fee and a good chunk of the Exam fee for only one person. And added to that he had received the news from Tanaka-boss that his job at the paper could not be guaranteed if he took as many days off as would be necessary for sitting the Prelim and the Pro Exam. And if Hikaru lost his job, what was he and Sai going to be living on between September and the next April, when they'd officially be Pros and could charge for playing Go?
And so Hikaru had to make possibly the hardest decision of his life; he had to give up his dream of going Pro that year. But he knew it wouldn't be more than an extra year's wait; Sai would be a working Pro by next April and then Hikaru could afford to take the Exam himself the August after that.
Yes, the decision was hard, but if he had to do it all over again - taking the time trip to get Sai and losing him his high flying Go career and his rivalry with Touya in the process - he would do it all again, in a flash! Having a living, breathing, smiling Sai in his arms every night had filled the gaping wound in his heart for good and he hadn't had even an felt an inkling of a Black Day coming on ever since he'd brought Sai home.
OOOO
Epilogue
Of course a lot of things happened to Hikaru on his way to becoming a successful Pro again. There had been his letting go of his Sai-doesn't-go-anywhere-without-me policy, when it became clear that he wouldn't be able to take Sai to the exam days himself, never mind picking him up afterwards. Luckily Touya had stepped in and offered his services, saying that he's be around the Go institute at the time of the exams anyway as he had two young pupils of his taking part.
Hikaru had reluctantly agreed. Partly because he'd known Touya of the other time line to be a very responsible and capable person - and he appeared so here - but also because Sai seemed to feel comfortable with the Go Pro and that could not be said of everybody; the former Heian Noble was actually quite shy.
So he had let Sai go, after extracting promises from both - without each other knowing - that they wouldn't play each other. And they both kept their word, Hikaru was sure of this, because Sai couldn't lie convincingly even if his life depended on it. Every game day, Touya would pick Sai up from the apartment - Hikaru having gone to work hours earlier - and take him to the Go Institute. And after the official game there would be games in the open game room downstairs in the building or Touya would take Sai to his parents' house where Sai would play Touya Kouyo, who was seriously thinking of retiring for real, so he'd have more time for the more private kind of games, like these with Sai.
Hikaru, in the mean time, had started to feel he had gotten the knack of taking usable pictures at any and all occasions and was really starting to enjoy his job. He especially enjoyed doing an assignment he himself had proposed to his boss; a background piece on local Go Pros, to run as a human interest story behind the event of the current Pro Go Exam.
Once he got the go-ahead, the first person he called was Waya, asking him for a interview combined with a game of Go. Waya - who never turned down a game of Go, especially a friendly one with real coffee on the side - readily said 'yes' and so Hikaru got a great interview, a good game and the beginnings of a friendship.
Hikaru, rather slyly, consulted Waya on who he should ask for an interview next and Waya - quite predictably - recommended Isumi. Hikaru was grinning all the way back to the boss's office to get clearance for the second interview.
In the end he also interviewed - and played - Ochi, Shinoda-sensei and Kuwabara-sensei - who just happened to be there the one day Hikaru actually had time to pick up Sai after his game. So he did that interview without clearance, but the boss didn't mind that very much; Hikaru had handed in an in depth interview with the current Honinbou, what could be better?
All in all that summer was pretty marvelous, even if Hikaru did have to miss the Exam.
OOOO
That winter, when not working of 'playing' with Sai, Hikaru decided to write down again all the games he could recall of his time with the other Sai.
It was funny how 'this Sai' had become just 'Sai' over the year they'd spent together and how 'his Sai', the first Sai, Sai the ghost, had become 'the other Sai'. The differences between the two were not so great; there was the difference in Go levels, but Sai, this Sai, was catching up to modern levels at a staggering pace. He wasn't quite playing Touya Kouyo to a draw yet, but he would very soon!
The two Sai's looked differently, but that was largely due to the fact that this Sai either wore modern clothing when going out, or a Yukata when staying in. And he never wore a hat.
The two Sai's talked differently, that was true. Even after spending over a year in the modern world, Sai hadn't lost his usage of 'thee' and 'thou'. But then the other Sai's speech had not been very modern either. It had been very formal at the best of times; Hikaru guessed he'd had modified his speech when he had spend that 30 years with Torajiro. It was also there that the other Sai had gained the levels of Go that this Sai had not had, when Hikaru had taken him out of his own time.
As for behavior; Sai the ghost had been a ghost and couldn't interact with anybody but Hikaru. And therefore he had not ever learned to interact with the modern world. This Sai was forced to interact with the modern world. From flushing a toilet, to turning on the lights at night, to making tea, learning to read and using the micro wave; Sai could do it all. Well, now anyway.
There were still things in the modern world Sai just could not handle. Like using public transport, even with Hikaru's help. The one time Hikaru had taken Sai on the Metro had been an utter disaster, when they had gotten separated and Sai had gotten lost. It resulted in a loss of confidence so badly, that Sai wouldn't leave the apartment for two whole sunny days.
No, the two Sai's were not the same; they couldn't be because their lives had taken different paths and a person is molded by his experiences. On the one hand Hikaru was head over heels in love with Sai, but on the other hand the loss of his first Sai was still there, even if it didn't hurt quite so much anymore. It had helped that Hikaru felt he had done something for the other Sai by rescuing him just before his suicide. It also helped that he had accepted there had been nothing more in this time line - or in any other - that he could have done for the other Sai. And the fact that he held Sai in his arms each night, well, that was just unbelievable.
To honor the other Sai, he wrote out all the Kifu he could remember and showed them to Sai, who was in total awe of them; he declared the games against the stronger opponents 'sublime'.
It was after he finished recreating the Kifu collection he had had in the other time line that Hikaru decided to write down the other Sai's story. Because, really, Hikaru was the only person to remember what a remarkable thing had happened between a boy and a ghost some 12 years ago.
And so the first line he wrote was:
"Once upon a time, not so long ago at all, a foolish boy met a magnificent ghost."
The End
part three
Once Upon A Time, Part 4
One evening in February Hikaru got ready to call Kanzou-sensei with the news that there would be some money this month. He hadn't called right after he got the check from the studio because he was unsure how much would have to be taken off in taxes and also he had hoped that there might have been another shoot as well, generating more money. The shoot didn't come up and Hikaru had the tax thing worked out so there was nothing left in the way now of calling.
But when he dialed the sensei's cell phone, he got an unexpected 'disconnected' signal. And the same when he tried the lab's phone. What? Those were the only phone number he had. Maybe they had changed them? Hikaru sat forward on the couch, grabbed his laptop from the coffee table and put in on his knees. He opened it and called up the Time Team's ultra boring looking web page; maybe the new number would be on there. Hikaru frowned when he found that the page was down.
All these months being reporter - even for a neighborhood rag like the Shinbun - had taught him one thing; always follow a hunch. He opened a search engine page and started searching: "Time Team", "Kanzou-sensei" and the names of any of the other Time Team members that he could recall. He even street viewed the industrial park that the Time Team's lab was located on.
There was nothing there. No search yielded results, at the location of where the lab should have been there was as sign for a tofu packaging factory. Well, Hikaru's hunch had been right; it was all gone, like those people had never existed. Boy, Red and his guys are really really good, Hikaru thought. He closed his laptop, putting it back on the corner of the coffee table and sat back on the couch, resting his head against the firm back.
If Red had made Kanzou-sensei and the Time Team disappear, did that mean that Hikaru's debt to them had also disappeared? Now there was a selfish thought! What about the sensei and all his people? Hikaru sighed. Of course he didn't just dismiss their disappearance but it wasn't like there was anything at all he could do about it. As things stood, he was the only person that he knew that knew that the Time Team had ever existed, that Kanzou-sensei had ever existed. Even the only one who Sai the ghost had ever existed.
Now there was a sobering thought. He was the only one with these memories; basically he remembered things that had never actually happened in this world. It was a scary thought. One that he'd need to think out some more.
'Hikaru-sama?' Sai asked in his 'I'm about to ask you to play' voice. Hikaru smiled and slipped off the couch onto the floor in front of the Goban on the coffee table, that at that moment held a game Sai had been replaying while Hikaru had been working.
'Clear the board; first a round of speed Go,' he announced with relish.
OOOO
February turned into March and brought an abrupt end to winter. But no end came to their bed sharing, even though the official excuse had now become defunct, Hikaru was overjoyed to note.
Now that Kanzou-sensei and the Time Team and with them that huge debt were out of the picture, Hikaru's finances were less of a disaster. Hikaru did his best to try and not spend more per month than he earned, but with having to take Sai everyplace by taxi and playing fees for the Go club and the extra food and clothing, not to mention the large heating bill that was only partly due to Sai's staying indoors but also because of the unusually harsh winter. Well, with all these things and more besides, Hikaru had had to dip into the emergency fund just a little every month up to then except for the month that Sai had gotten the modeling job. That check had helped and was still helping, but as there weren't many modeling jobs for someone like Sai - exotic looks yes, but no modeling experience and unwilling (or Hikaru was, anyways) to go bare-chested - so Hikaru couldn't count on that for providing a steady income.
And then there was the Pro exam to consider. In Hikaru's original time line, his family had taken care of the fees and he had never know exactly how expensive taking the exam really was. And now Hikaru had to cough up the fees for two. No way was he making either of them wait; Sai was already 28 years old (give or take a millennium) and Go was the only thing he was any good at and Hikaru didn't want to wait one minute longer than necessary to start chasing Touya for real. The annoying brat had been needling Hikaru every week about becoming a Pro, over their Wednesday games at the club; Hikaru really couldn't take much more!
But the fee was considerable and Hikaru just couldn't generate that kind of money when he was paying for costs of living for two as it was. No, this problem was far from solved yet...
OOOO
With the spring taking a hold with a vengeance in March another problem arouse, well, reappeared really. Not that Sai ever complained, of course! But Hikaru wasn't a total dunce and he did see that his lover was suffering in his constant confinement to the apartment.
Sai's time on NetGo had helped him to gain a lot of ground in modern Go. Even Touya had commented on it when watching Sai play the last few weeks. And it had kept Sai happy to be stuck inside while it was freezing outside. But with spring's arrival that had now come to an end as Hikaru kept catching Sai staring out of the window whenever his attention was not on Hikaru or on Go.
When Hikaru couldn't take it anymore, he went talk to his boss. Over the months Hikaru had been working at the paper he had found Tanaka-san to be a surprisingly congenial boss. Except around 5 pm when the man had held his daily venting match / break down / voice exercises, or whatever that was. At other times Tanaka-san was a nice and patient man, to whom you could explain a problem and get a wise word back and, within his abilities, he'd help you out gladly.
A very long talk (at 2 pm) yielded some possibilities. Hikaru had already realized he couldn't afford to work fewer hours, so taking an extra afternoon off per week was out. Then Tanaka suggested that he'd trade afternoons for nights. The man was rather enthusiastic about the idea, because they hadn't been able get someone for week nights for years now and Tanaka knew that Big Boss so very much wanted to include more night life into the paper.
Hikaru had to seriously ponder this; so, he'd end up losing some of his evenings with Sai, but he'd get afternoons in the park with Sai in exchange and a small bonus for working the more 'inconvenient' hours. He decided it couldn't hurt to try in out for a month; just in case Hikaru found his body couldn't manage the odd hours he'd be keeping.
Sai was ecstatic. And after one week Hikaru really didn't care that his working hours were utterly screwed up; he'd not give up Sai's happy smile for anything.
OOOO
They quickly set a routine; Monday, Tuesday and Friday afternoons it was Go in the park, sitting on a blanket on the grass. Wednesday it was exploring the nicer bit of Tokyo - like other parks and temples, Hikaru had made the mistake of taking Sai to Shibuya only once. And they'd spend the afternoon and evening at the Touya Go club. Thursdays was still their private day, half of it spent on grooming and the rest on whatever their fancy took them.
Hikaru very carefully held on to his privacy of Thursday because - and Hikaru didn't mind this at all - Touya had muscled in on their Go-in-the-park afternoons, the moment the man had found out about them. So by the time it was April, Go-in-the-park had become almost a dependence of the Touya Go Club. People came with Gobans and blankets of their own. Then one chap had volunteered to bring 2 foldable and 8 foldable chairs and pretty soon, Go-in-the-park was an event that even ran when Hikaru and Sai were not there.
And, the most shocking of all to Hikaru, one fine Tuesday afternoon, he found himself not only there with Sai but also working in his capacity of Reporter for the Shinbun. Tanaka-boss had assigned Hikaru to report on this new phenomenon "Go-in-the-park". 'And bring plenty of pics!' the man had ordered and Hikaru was more than happy to obey.
OOOO
In June Hikaru found that his finances had decided for him in the matter of him taking the Go exam or not. At that moment he could either comfortably afford the Prelim fees for two people or he could afford the Prelim fee and a good chunk of the Exam fee for only one person. And added to that he had received the news from Tanaka-boss that his job at the paper could not be guaranteed if he took as many days off as would be necessary for sitting the Prelim and the Pro Exam. And if Hikaru lost his job, what was he and Sai going to be living on between September and the next April, when they'd officially be Pros and could charge for playing Go?
And so Hikaru had to make possibly the hardest decision of his life; he had to give up his dream of going Pro that year. But he knew it wouldn't be more than an extra year's wait; Sai would be a working Pro by next April and then Hikaru could afford to take the Exam himself the August after that.
Yes, the decision was hard, but if he had to do it all over again - taking the time trip to get Sai and losing him his high flying Go career and his rivalry with Touya in the process - he would do it all again, in a flash! Having a living, breathing, smiling Sai in his arms every night had filled the gaping wound in his heart for good and he hadn't had even an felt an inkling of a Black Day coming on ever since he'd brought Sai home.
OOOO
Epilogue
Of course a lot of things happened to Hikaru on his way to becoming a successful Pro again. There had been his letting go of his Sai-doesn't-go-anywhere-without-me policy, when it became clear that he wouldn't be able to take Sai to the exam days himself, never mind picking him up afterwards. Luckily Touya had stepped in and offered his services, saying that he's be around the Go institute at the time of the exams anyway as he had two young pupils of his taking part.
Hikaru had reluctantly agreed. Partly because he'd known Touya of the other time line to be a very responsible and capable person - and he appeared so here - but also because Sai seemed to feel comfortable with the Go Pro and that could not be said of everybody; the former Heian Noble was actually quite shy.
So he had let Sai go, after extracting promises from both - without each other knowing - that they wouldn't play each other. And they both kept their word, Hikaru was sure of this, because Sai couldn't lie convincingly even if his life depended on it. Every game day, Touya would pick Sai up from the apartment - Hikaru having gone to work hours earlier - and take him to the Go Institute. And after the official game there would be games in the open game room downstairs in the building or Touya would take Sai to his parents' house where Sai would play Touya Kouyo, who was seriously thinking of retiring for real, so he'd have more time for the more private kind of games, like these with Sai.
Hikaru, in the mean time, had started to feel he had gotten the knack of taking usable pictures at any and all occasions and was really starting to enjoy his job. He especially enjoyed doing an assignment he himself had proposed to his boss; a background piece on local Go Pros, to run as a human interest story behind the event of the current Pro Go Exam.
Once he got the go-ahead, the first person he called was Waya, asking him for a interview combined with a game of Go. Waya - who never turned down a game of Go, especially a friendly one with real coffee on the side - readily said 'yes' and so Hikaru got a great interview, a good game and the beginnings of a friendship.
Hikaru, rather slyly, consulted Waya on who he should ask for an interview next and Waya - quite predictably - recommended Isumi. Hikaru was grinning all the way back to the boss's office to get clearance for the second interview.
In the end he also interviewed - and played - Ochi, Shinoda-sensei and Kuwabara-sensei - who just happened to be there the one day Hikaru actually had time to pick up Sai after his game. So he did that interview without clearance, but the boss didn't mind that very much; Hikaru had handed in an in depth interview with the current Honinbou, what could be better?
All in all that summer was pretty marvelous, even if Hikaru did have to miss the Exam.
OOOO
That winter, when not working of 'playing' with Sai, Hikaru decided to write down again all the games he could recall of his time with the other Sai.
It was funny how 'this Sai' had become just 'Sai' over the year they'd spent together and how 'his Sai', the first Sai, Sai the ghost, had become 'the other Sai'. The differences between the two were not so great; there was the difference in Go levels, but Sai, this Sai, was catching up to modern levels at a staggering pace. He wasn't quite playing Touya Kouyo to a draw yet, but he would very soon!
The two Sai's looked differently, but that was largely due to the fact that this Sai either wore modern clothing when going out, or a Yukata when staying in. And he never wore a hat.
The two Sai's talked differently, that was true. Even after spending over a year in the modern world, Sai hadn't lost his usage of 'thee' and 'thou'. But then the other Sai's speech had not been very modern either. It had been very formal at the best of times; Hikaru guessed he'd had modified his speech when he had spend that 30 years with Torajiro. It was also there that the other Sai had gained the levels of Go that this Sai had not had, when Hikaru had taken him out of his own time.
As for behavior; Sai the ghost had been a ghost and couldn't interact with anybody but Hikaru. And therefore he had not ever learned to interact with the modern world. This Sai was forced to interact with the modern world. From flushing a toilet, to turning on the lights at night, to making tea, learning to read and using the micro wave; Sai could do it all. Well, now anyway.
There were still things in the modern world Sai just could not handle. Like using public transport, even with Hikaru's help. The one time Hikaru had taken Sai on the Metro had been an utter disaster, when they had gotten separated and Sai had gotten lost. It resulted in a loss of confidence so badly, that Sai wouldn't leave the apartment for two whole sunny days.
No, the two Sai's were not the same; they couldn't be because their lives had taken different paths and a person is molded by his experiences. On the one hand Hikaru was head over heels in love with Sai, but on the other hand the loss of his first Sai was still there, even if it didn't hurt quite so much anymore. It had helped that Hikaru felt he had done something for the other Sai by rescuing him just before his suicide. It also helped that he had accepted there had been nothing more in this time line - or in any other - that he could have done for the other Sai. And the fact that he held Sai in his arms each night, well, that was just unbelievable.
To honor the other Sai, he wrote out all the Kifu he could remember and showed them to Sai, who was in total awe of them; he declared the games against the stronger opponents 'sublime'.
It was after he finished recreating the Kifu collection he had had in the other time line that Hikaru decided to write down the other Sai's story. Because, really, Hikaru was the only person to remember what a remarkable thing had happened between a boy and a ghost some 12 years ago.
And so the first line he wrote was:
"Once upon a time, not so long ago at all, a foolish boy met a magnificent ghost."
The End