[saidan]
AN EXTREMELY UNORGANIZED RECORD OF THE EVENTS LEADING TO THE CURSING AND SUBSEQUENT DE-CURSING OF ONE SHINDOU HIKARU
by takewing
Touya says I should write this down. He thinks that it's a story worthy of a best-selling novel or something but I just think it's a story that gave us a huge pain in the ass for a while and I don't want to write it down to share with the world or the publishing companies or whoever else. He said that it didn't need to be published, just written down, and I said, "Well isn't that the same thing?" and we argued for like an hour but then there was sex so whatever.
I'm writing it down.
(I don't see why Touya can't write it. He's probably better at this kind of thing than I am, anyway. I just came back from telling him I had a whole huge paragraph and why couldn't he write this out, and he said maybe he would later so there you go.)
Um. Where was I again? Oh yeah. The story.
Now, I've had lots of weird things happen to me in my life. Probably the first weird thing was discovering that bleached bangs were cool (that was an accident!). And probably the second was falling out of a tree from ten or fifteen feet up and not breaking any bones when I was nine. Akari was really worried but I was okay! The third weird thing was probably Sai, and let's not even go into how weird Touya is, haha! (If he reads that part he'll probably hit me.)
But however weird those things are (and Touya's pretty weird), none of that compares to the stuff I'm about to tell you in this story (except maybe the Sai thing).
I guess I'd better start it now, then. People who are squeamish or under five feet tall should not read this story. Those with heart problems and pregnant women, too.
…Heh. Just kidding.
*
It all started when Touya saw an ad in the paper.
"For sale: antique goban, kaya, very good condition. Set of stones in original goke also included. 150 thousand yen or best offer," Touya read. His eyebrows were so high they were above his bangs. He looked kind of like he did whenever he watched me play a really awesome hand, or whenever I groped him!
I was eating cereal. I think it was Cocoa Puffs! Those are really good. "Huh? I bet they're lying. People are always looking to scam, Touya," I said. I might have been chewing at the same time but who cares?
Touya shook his head and stared at the ad a little more before ripping it out of the paper. I got mad.
"Hey! What's on the other side? Are the comics on the other side? Don't just rip the paper like that, I haven't read it yet!" I said, Cocoa Puffs momentarily forgotten.
Touya gave me a Look. That Look deserves to be capitalized because every time he gives it, he makes me want to punch him in the face. Or maybe push him against a wall and bite him. Sometimes it's hard to tell, even for me. But it's a really sharp look that seems to say, "Shut the hell up, Hikaru!"
It annoys me.
But right. So then Touya said, "I'll check it out. It's true that the goban may not be in as good condition as they're claiming, or that it's not true kaya, but as a Go player my curiosity naturally wins out over my skepticism."
That annoyed me too. "Are you saying I'm not curious?"
He didn't answer, the bastard. He rolled his eyes and headed for the living room to get the phone.
My Cocoa Puffs had gotten soggy but I ate them anyway.
*
Later on when he got back he was grinning like an idiot and nearly fell through the front door because he was carrying a huge goban and grinning like an idiot.
"What the hell, Touya!" I was incredulous.
Touya just set the goban down and beamed at it like it was his long lost child and he'd been reunited with it after years and years of separation, and then the child had gone on to win a spelling bee or something and he was really proud. (Touya is weird.)
"I managed to haggle a bit and got this beautiful goban for only 120 thousand yen!" Touya said excitedly. He leaned down and caressed the stupid goban. I made a "yuck" face - he doesn't even caress me like that, and I got a little jealous of the goban right about then.
It wasn't that the goban wasn't nice. It was. It had beautifully carved legs with what looked like floral patterns carved into them. The surface was shiny and polished, and overall it was really well-kept for a goban so old.
"I have an inkling…" Touya said. He took a stone out of his jacket pocket (I'd be lying if I said that neither of us carried stones on our persons on a regular basis… don't call us dorks!) and placed it on the goban.
Now, I've heard a lot of clinks in my day. Probably not as many as Touya has, and probably not as many as most of the other pros out there, but the clink of a stone as it's placed on the board isn't a foreign sound to me at all.
But this stone, on this board…
Okay. I'm going to tell you a side-story. Here, have one of those star-section-separator-things:
*
Once upon a time, Shindou Hikaru was sixteen years old. He was hot and handsome and stylish and he had a gay crush on a boy who had girly hair and liked old man sweaters and liked to shout at him for making rash moves over the goban so that they were face to face, and nearly close enough to kiss.
So one day young Shindou Hikaru decides that he actually kind of likes it when the girly-haired boy shouts at him from two inches away because he likes to look at his eyes from that close. They look ocean blue-green. They're really pretty. So he screws up more than he normally would but the other boy (okay, so it's Touya) doesn't get in his face about it.
Touya just gives him the Look and says, "You're doing it on purpose, Shindou. You can't fool me. Why?"
And Hikaru denies it and denies it and then he smartens up and admits it and instead of shouting at him over the goban, Touya kisses him over it instead.
The stone that hit the goban that Touya had just brought home - the sound it made - kind of reminded me of that moment. My heart skipped a beat and I just stared - at the goban, at Touya, at everything and nothing.
Weird, huh?
*
Now that the mystical flashback scene is over, let's get back to what was happening in the present!
Touya placed his stone - lower right hoshi, and I stood there for a while all excited until I remembered myself. "Touya. This came with gokes, right?"
Touya looked up, surprised. "Hm? Well, yes… why?"
"We're playing now! Where are the stones? Go get them." I couldn't not play a game now that Touya had placed a stone on the goban. I wanted to hear that same thrilling click, over and over again. Any uncertainty I'd had over Touya buying the damn thing was gone.
So we played a game and it was one of the best games of my life. I'm not kidding, either. Or… at least it felt like it was one of the best games of my life. We know now that the goban wasn't exactly normal, that it might have affected our perceptions from the moment Touya played the first stone on it.
But that's not supposed to come until later in the story. Oops!
*
I dunno about Touya, but even a week after he bought that pretty antique goban, it was still… "calling to me". Like I'd be at the Institute playing a Dan match and I'd still want to play on that damn goban back at home. I'd be out eating fast food with Waya, and I'd still want to play on that goban. I'd be reading the newest chapter of Naruto and along with pulling weird faces (seriously, what the hell?), I would want to play on that goban.
I think Touya was getting tired of me asking if we could play every time I saw him so he maybe wanted to placate me with a blowjob but even then… even then!
I had more tact than to actually say it, but I'd have rather we'd been playing on the antique goban.
My postcoital thoughts were something along the lines of, "Oh shit. I'm a freak." I didn't say that though. I have lots more tact than Touya gives me credit for.
"That was… good…" I said.
Touya wiped his mouth with the pink handkerchief he usually keeps in his left pants pocket (specifically for that purpose, which is not only weird but also somehow really hot) before replying, "You seemed distracted. And tense."
I sighed. It was frustrating, how well he could read me. I sat back and practically sunk into the cushions of the living room couch. I couldn't relax. My sleep patterns had been suffering all week. Sex couldn't de-stress me. Not even Go!
"Touya," I said. It was hard to say it. Really hard. I didn't think that I would be that difficult to say the "L" word to Touya. This was a different way of saying the "L" word, though, so maybe that had something to do with it.
Touya sat down next to me and looked on expectantly. I think I probably cringed.
"Touya, I love your…"
"…my what, Shindou?"
I couldn't see his expression because my eyes were closed. Looking back, it was probably a really funny expression. But I never saw it! Not far.
"I love your…" I whispered the last word, "…goban."
The silence was deep. It was uncomfortable. My stomach rumbled (I always get hungry after sex!). I opened my eyes but Touya looked the same as he always looked with his narrowed eyebrows and sharp expression.
His voice was calm but I could tell he was getting fed up. Heh, oops? "So you're meaning to say… that…"
"Uh-huh," I figured I knew what he was going to say so I answered before he asked.
I was wrong.
"You mean to say that you're leaving me for my goban?"
…I don't know what is was about this question but I cracked up. And while I was laughing my ass off, Touya hit me with two pillows and told me to shut up already but it was really hard.
"No, idiot," I said, once I got my bearings. By this time Touya was pouting a little. He says he wasn't but I know he was.
...ouch. He hit me again. Bastard. See if I ever let you read over my shoulder again!
Where was I?
So after that Touya was all, "I was joking, I didn't think you'd actually leave me for a goban!"
But of course he really did because he's a huge dork and we argued about that for a while and eventually we ended up on the floor in front of the couch and I was sucking him off.
That was good. It was around the time when I was fishing around in Touya's pocket for his pink handkerchief when Touya asked, "What did you mean, Shindou?"
I shrugged. Suddenly it seemed a lot easier to tell Touya about my real problem after he had already assumed that I was leaving him for a goban.
"It's just…" My eyes wandered over to the goban in question - it sat to the side of the living room and the gokes sat on top of it where I had lovingly placed them just the day before and… "Touya, can we play?"
Touya punched my shoulder softly. I didn't retaliate. I didn't even budge. Something was seriously wrong with me! "You were going to tell me what's going on, don't change the subject."
"I'm not. It's the same subject…" My voice was getting softer by the minute, kind of like I was being hypnotized. Maybe I was being hypnotized. "I want to play Go."
"There's nothing new about that," Touya said, getting more frustrated by the second.
I stared at the goban for a while longer before making my way over to it, sitting down, and running my hand lovingly over its smooth, intriguing surface.
"No, I want to play Go on this board. Forever. It's just really undeniably awesome like that."
There was a long pause. I continued stroking the goban in a way that was probably really creepy. I wonder if I blinked at all during that time? I probably didn't.
Touya got up after a while, made his way over to me, and kicked me in the side.
"Get a grip, Shindou! What on earth is wrong with you?!"
That had really hurt! I lay wibbling on the floor, nursing what I was convinced at the time must have been at least three broken ribs and a burst kidney, but at least I wasn't about to stroke or hug or have sex with the goban. I actually had no desire to, which is ironic because even sex couldn't take my mind off the goban, but apparently pain could.
Just my luck, right?
"Oww," I whined, looking up at Touya like he'd just betrayed me (et tu, Brute?).
"Get a grip," Touya repeated. "What is wrong with you?"
His eyes looked angry, and I'm sure he was, but even so, the straight line of his mouth revealed something else - he was worried about me.
I was tempted to reply with something like, 'besides my burst kidney?' but the look on Touya's face stopped me. I shrugged.
It wasn't as if I hadn't encountered things like this before - Sai had spent hundreds of years as a spirit trapped in a goban. Was it too much of a stretch to think that something was possessing this one, as well? Or maybe that it was… cursed?
There was a problem with telling Touya, though - would he believe me? I was practically immune to weird things like this by now, but it would be new and strange to Touya. At that point, I hadn't even told him about Sai.
On the other hand, what could I do? If I didn't tell Touya, he might kick me again.
I sighed. "Sit down," I told him, nodding to my left.
He sat to my left and placed a comforting hand on my thigh. I smiled a little before the frown took over again.
"This is going to sound really weird, but… I think the goban you bought is cursed."
There was a pause. And then…
He took his hand from my thigh and elbowed me in the side instead. "You're not right in the head!"
I punched his shoulder back and said, "Touya - can you just listen to me for once?"
I think it might have been the look in my eyes rather than the weak-ass punch that got his attention and made him say, "Fine."
"Good," I sighed again.
I told him everything. How I'd been enchanted by the goban since Touya played the first stone on it, how every game we played on that board was a million times better than any game on any other board had ever been or ever would be, and how I thought about playing on it in my sleep, in the shower, and…
"During sex?!" Touya interrupted.
I winced. My gaze wandered off to look at the goban. It was completely subconscious and I didn't even realize I was doing it until Touya grabbed my chin and made me face him again.
"Yes…" I said somewhat guiltily.
Touya looked at me, his expression angry for a while before it gradually began to soften. He was still holding onto my chin. Finally, he replied, "You… you poor thing."
I was tempted to laugh, then, and I did - but only a little. Touya seemed mildly offended so I stopped. "Um… right."
I think he finally believed me after that.
"So um… that's what's up," I finished several minutes later.
Touya was touching me again, but by this time we were half-hugging, with his arm wrapped around my waist and my head resting on his shoulder. I could hear his heartbeat.
He was silent.
I looked up. He seemed to be thinking hard about something. "Touya?"
"Mm." Touya's arm around my waist tightened considerably. "We're going to have to find a way to fix this, Shindou."
I looked down again and grinned into Touya's sweater. "Well obviously, Touya - I can't keep getting distracted by this goban when we're having sex."
I felt and heard his curt laughter. "Obviously," he said. "Which is why there won't be any sex until this problem of yours is solved."
"EHHH?!"
*
I'm going to let Touya write from now on. Hopefully that won't confuse whoever's reading this!
*
Hello. Touya Akira here, pleased to make your acquaintance and here's to hoping that I will be able to explain the events that led up to the successful de-cursing of Shindou Hikaru.
Now, as you know very well by now, Shindou had a problem. He wanted to sleep with the new goban I had bought, and no amount of his arguing to the contrary was going to change that fact. I had seen him stroking it. I wasn't about to tell him at the time, but I had also heard him mumbling about it in his sleep.
I love Go as much as the next person, but was it normal to love the game that much…? Absolutely not.
(Shindou is reading over my shoulder and imploring me to tell you all that he's heard me mutter about playing Go with him in my sleep, but that simply isn't true. So I shouted at him.)
Anyway, unbeknownst to everyone but myself and my mother, when I was a child, there were two things I wanted to become when I grew up. These things were a.) to become a pro Go player like my father, and b.) to become Touya Akira, P.I., Private Investigator. My father would be proud, I would get to wear pinstriped suits for both jobs, and the latter job would allow me to protect sobbing young women in pretty hats who happened to be in dire situations.
It was win-win, or at least it was to me at age six.
Now, however, it's actually quite embarrassing. Shindou is snickering right now. I've shouted at him again.
But truly, Shindou wasn't a young woman in a pretty hat, but he was in a dire situation that required investigating. I was inclined to help him with this, and free of any charge as well.
In that vein, the very next day, Shindou and I traveled to the home of the last owner of the cursed goban, to whom I had paid a ridiculously low amount for an antique of such high quality.
We were soon to figure out why the goban had been priced so low.
*
I remembered the place well then, and I remember it even better now. It was hardly the type of complex you might see as the setting of a horror film, but it wasn't quite as welcoming as the flat Shindou and I lived in, either.
The neighborhood was dark. Just dark in color, not necessarily in light. The buildings surrounding the complex were shades of grey and black and dark brick, for the most part.
"Why am I not surprised?" I heard Shindou mutter from beside me as I examined the map. We stood next to an alleyway filled with rusting dumpsters and I wrinkled my nose from the smell, as much as from Shindou's statement.
"It's not as if I said to myself when I came here to buy it, 'Oh, this place is a bit creepy, I bet the goban I'm about to buy will be cursed!'" I said to him, glaring slightly.
"No," Shindou smirked annoyingly. "I bet you just said, "Oh, this place is a bit creepy, better keep my man-purse close to me at all times!'"
I hit him. (It's not a man-purse, it is a messenger bag, and it is very handy, thank you very much!)
As we approached the apartment complex where the seller resided, a black cat passed by and walked under a ladder that someone was presumably using to complete a paint-job. The cat then leapt up and onto the stoop of the building we were about to enter and stared at us.
"Okay…" Shindou said, stopping. "That… is creepy."
I shrugged it off. He may have convinced me to believe in curses, but I refused to believe in bad omens. "Come on, Shindou," I said. I pressed the button that sent a call to apartment number 13 on the second floor and waited.
"Yes?" The voice was that of the old man from whom I had bought the cursed goban. I breathed a sigh of relief.
"Ah, sir…? This is Touya Akira. I bought that goban from you last week-"
"GO AWAY!" he shouted. There was a slight shuffling sound - presumably the old man trying to figure out which button turned off the intercom - and then the static background sound ceased.
I looked at Shindou. He looked at me. And then his eyes seemed to almost… glaze over.
"It's okay, Touya…" he said, his voice soft and almost… lilting. It was disturbing. "We can just go home and play on the goban…"
I bit my lip in frustration. "This hurts me more than it hurts you," I said.
And then I elbowed him hard in the ribs.
He doubled over and became himself again. While he cursed at me, I tried to get hold of the old man again, to no avail. He wasn't answering his speaker anymore.
Luckily, though, not even two minutes after I had elbowed Shindou ("I have bruises, Touya, you bastard!" I ignored him. He knew it was necessary.), a woman left the apartment complex and I caught the door as it was about to shut.
"Come on, Shindou," I said, offering my hand to him (he had fallen to the floor in agony after I'd hit him), "we're going to get to the bottom of this, mark my words."
Why Shindou wasn't more impressed by my token Private Investigator phrase, I still have no idea.
He did finally grab my hand after a bit of scowling, though.
The trip upstairs was tense. It was mid-day, and yet the stairwell was dark because there were no windows. The plaster of the walls was peeling and the rug on the carpet was threadbare - the old man I had bought the goban from didn't seem to be in a good place, financially, to be living in a complex like this, in this area of the city. I remember having felt bad for the man when I'd first met him, thinking that he was probably selling his prized antique as a means to get by, but this time around things were different - we needed answers.
We arrived in front of apartment 13 and Shindou gave me a pointed look before raising a hand to knock at the door. I decided to heed him for once and keep quiet - Shindou was admittedly better at "people things" than I was, and besides, the old man didn't know that Shindou was even with me.
"Hey old man!" Shindou yelled. He practically pounded on the door. I couldn't help wincing. "Come to the door! Come on, please?"
It took a minute or two, but eventually the old man called back, "What d'you want? If you're selling something, I ain't buying!"
"I just want to ask you some questions about the goban you sold my friend!" Shindou yelled through the door, having finally ceased his incessant door-pounding.
"You got that board for a damn good price, that should be that! There's nothing to talk about, no questions to answer 'cause there's no answers to give!"
Shindou rolled his eyes at me. I kept quiet - he was getting the old man to speak more than I had been able to do, just by being annoying. What a skill.
"Yeah, okay, but Touya here thinks I wanna have sex with the goban he bought and I don't but it's pretty close, you know?"
The old man was silent for a moment, but then we heard footsteps approaching and the door opened. The old man stood there, his face red with anger and embarrassment. He looked at us both but grabbed Shindou by the collar and pulled him inside the apartment. Shindou made an amusing sound.
"Get in, then, get in! The neighbors'll hear you, you idiot!" he said, mainly to Shindou. He did, however, leave the door open for me to pass through as well. I closed it gently and watched as Shindou got manhandled and lectured to.
Eventually, after Shindou was looking appropriately sheepish, the old man beckoned us to sit down.
"I've gotta say," he murmured, taking out a cigarette and lighting it, "I tried destroying that damn goban after it was all said and done - even took a saw to it - but that thing's damn near impossible to wreck, you know? Couldn't give it a single scratch, and you'd better believe it. Only sold it to you 'cause livin' the life I have these past twenty years hasn't been a picnic. Needed that money real bad, you know?"
"Oh, we do," I said sheepishly, stealing a glance at Shindou. He looked distracted - most likely by thoughts of the cursed goban - and I sighed before grabbing to pinch ruthlessly at his inner thigh (he squealed). I looked to the old man, "Pain seems to be the only way to keep thoughts of the goban away from him, unfortunately."
Shindou glared daggers at me.
The old man nodded. "Yeah, you better believe that too. Don't tell me this stuff as if I don't know it already, kid."
"Oh… I'm sorry. But…"
"I suppose you want me to tell you what it is you're dealing with, and how to get your friend back to normal, huh?" the old man asked. He took a long, slow drag off his cigarette and frowned before exhaling. I tried not to breathe through my nose, but it was beginning to get stuffy anyway.
"If you would, yes," I said.
"I'll tell you right now, though, I'm not buying that damned thing back - no returns!"
"Yeah, we got it, jeez. Just tell us the important crap!" Shindou interrupted. I would have elbowed him but I figured he was getting enough abuse from me as it was, lately.
"Keep your pants on…" the old man said. He extinguished his cigarette in an ash tray on the coffee table. "When I was about your age, I bought the goban off a vendor at a Go event here in the city. Amateur tournament in '56, I think it was. Something like that. Anyway, he was selling it for cheap and I had been planning to buy a nice goban while I was there, so I did, and when I got home and played my father on the damn thing, from the very first stone that was placed…"
I glanced toward Shindou, and his eyes were wide again, but this time it was with surprise and unexpected familiarity. Shindou knew what this man was talking about, and from what Shindou had told me, so did I.
"You were addicted," I finished for him.
He nodded solemnly, rubbing his neck and frowning. "I played on that board whenever I could, with whoever I could. It was all I could think of for at least twenty years."
"Twenty years?!" Shindou interjected. My own eyes widened in shock. Surely this wouldn't last twenty years for Shindou as well?
"Twenty years," the old man repeated. "But me, I didn't have a wise elder to show me any answers or anything, you see. Not like you two have got in me. You boys are lucky, is what you are."
I allowed myself to exhale. Shindou's body next to mine, which had tensed up after the old man had said the words "twenty years", began to unwind slightly. I reached for his wrist and stroked it with my thumb, not particularly caring about what the old man would think, or if he would think anything of it at all.
"So how did you break the curse…?" I asked, as the old man had failed to elaborate on that point.
"Mmm…" he muttered. He took out yet another cigarette and slipped between his lips but didn't light it. "It's simple. What the board seems to want is lotsa games played on it. No idea why - hell, it doesn't really make sense for the damn thing to be cursed to begin with, so why would it make sense that it would want lotsa games played on it? When I played on it, I only did so maybe once every week or two. Once ever week or two for twenty years is… is…"
"A damn lot," Shindou muttered dejectedly.
"Right, right, a damn lot! But still, say you play once a day, twice a day… three times a day…! Then you're splitting my twenty years into a period of maybe a couple months or something, got it?" He lit the cigarette. "I sure hope you two like Go. Haha!"
"So… is that it, then?" I asked.
"It's as much as I know."
"I see… You've no idea as to the origins of the curse, or how to rid the board of the curse?"
The old man gave me a strange look. "What do I look like to you, some kinda witch doctor?"
Shindou stood up abruptly and practically pulled me out of the old man's apartment. "Thanks for telling us about this, old man! I really appreciate it! It was scummy for you to sell the goban to Touya to begin with, but any chance to play Touya, I'll take it!"
I barely managed to say, "I'm sorry for the trouble" before Shindou closed the door behind me and we practically ran home to play Go.
It was going to be a long couple of months.
*
Touya is a better writer than me. I don't know why he didn't just write this entire thing himself.
Hikaru again, though!
Um, so basically we played a lot of Go on that goban. For me it was kind of like heaven, since I've already said that playing on the cursed goban was better than sex, and it lasted longer than sex (sorry Touya, it's true!), so what's better than sex besides heaven? I bet in heaven, it feels like an orgasm all the time. That would explain a lot, actually!
We averaged four games a day, partly because Touya and I are such great speed-Go players. And it's funny, because I think the board actually became… happy the more we played on it. Like after a particularly good game, it would have this happy sort of… glow, I guess. I think it must have enjoyed being played upon by two destined Go rivals, working toward the Hand of God!
Touya tried to keep it secret, but I think most of the time he was kind of pissed that we had to play so often. We both had to skip our study groups in favor of playing on the cursed goban, and I know Touya wasn't pleased about that. Normally he would've gone on and on about how much worse I was compared to his father, but I think he did a pretty good job in being nice to me for my own sake back then. It wasn't my fault, after all - if anything, it was his for buying the damn goban, and he knew it.
It was late on a Thursday night on the fourth week, the 124th game, when I told Touya about Sai.
I can't rationalize it. I've tried. Honestly, it was late, I was tired, we were playing kind of mechanically and though it was still good, it wasn't great, and neither was the conversation, which had died down something like two weeks before. It was getting kind of bad.
I wanted a change.
And yeah, I'd been planning to tell him someday. That "someday" seemed to need to come a little sooner than I'd originally planned once this whole cursed goban thing happened and he believed me and wanted to help, though.
Why not now? What've I got to lose? That's what I was thinking.
I was nervous though. And part of me wondered if maybe it was too far-fetched for Touya to believe; that he couldn't believe in two supernatural things. That's pretty stupid, but paranoia usually is, right?
"This kind of thing is always happening to me," I started out, smiling halfway, first at the board and then at Touya.
"Pardon?" He looked up, placed a stone.
"When I was eleven, I found a possessed goban in my grandfather's attic." I placed my stone without missing a beat, though my hand shook just the slightest bit. I looked straight into Touya's eyes as I spoke. "After that I had a ghost following me for years."
He dropped his stone.
I nodded, finally allowing myself to look away. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't tempted to break down and cry right then and there as I said, "His name… was Sai."
We didn't finish the game that night.
*
"Any other supernatural goings-on that you've experienced? Anything at all that you've neglected to tell me?"
I got that a lot after I told Touya.
And also:
"What kind of move was that?! Did Sai teach you that crappy move?"
I would wrestle him over that.
Sometimes I even got, "Why can't we find a ghost to haunt you that will do your laundry for you?"
Ha ha.
Telling Touya probably wasn't the best thing I could've done, looking back.
*
Weeks turned to months, and we were still playing. We talked more, though, and criticized each other more, which made the whole thing that much more bearable. I was beginning to feel like maybe there was something to the idea that too much of a good thing was ultimately bad. Playing so much awesome Go on a really sweet goban with my favorite opponent in the world was good, but I missed the days when it wasn't an obligation to play three to five times a day. I'd told Touya about this, and he obviously agreed. Like I said, it was affecting him a lot more because he didn't have the curse working on his mind directly.
"Hey Touya," I said one weekend afternoon. "What's that?"
I pointed to a dark stain or mark on the wood of the goban that hadn't been there yesterday.
"What's what?"
"That! Did you spill something on the goban?" I traced the pattern of it with my index finger, but even as I did that, Touya just looked more perplexed.
I froze. Not again. Not again.
The tsuke I placed before I lost consciousness decided the game.
*
When I came to, the first thing I saw was Touya's face, upside down and hovering over me. He was worried, and his hand was in my hair. I could feel his fingers on my scalp. It felt nice.
There was no ghost. I checked. Not that I thought there would be after what had happened in my… dream? Vision? Something like that.
"All the weird things happen to me," I muttered to Touya. I moved my arm so that it was wrapped around his waist and buried my head in his sweater.
"What happened?" he asked.
I shuddered. "Her name was Akiyama Shinobu. She looked on and recorded Go matches between her husband, who I guess was pretty good at the game, and whoever he played. She really enjoyed watching Go, but wasn't really a player herself. And then the Boshin War happened, and her husband was among the guys mobilized… except he was one of the few who didn't make it home."
Touya frowned. "And?"
I took a deep breath. "And… I guess… she was sort of like Sai. She couldn't see her life continuing after that, so she ended it… right over the goban he used to play on so often. The goban on which she had watched hundreds of his games unfold."
"…oh."
I smiled a smile that wasn't really a smile at all. "She resides in the goban and waits for two people to play, locks onto one of them, and sort of… entices them into playing for her. She missed the game."
"Missed? Is she gone now, then?" Touya asked.
I sat up all the way and looked at the goban for the first time since I'd woken up. There was no blood stain.
"I think so," I told him, smiling. "Our Go pleased her."
Touya remained quiet for a few minutes, just staring at me. Then he pulled me closer and our lips met in a short kiss and he said, "It pleases me too."
It took about a second for me to push Touya away. "Liar, you were so bored!"
"I was not! I'm never bored when I play you!"
"Could've fooled me, Mr. 'Shindou-Do-We-Really-Have-To-Play-Now'!"
"I only said that when it was extremely early in the morning! I need my coffee first, Shindou!"
"You said it at night too!"
"I was tired…."
That fight ended in sex.
Man, I'd missed sex! Go is cool and all, but sex is a totally different thing, and I can't wait to get to heaven!
The End (I think)
*
There's no way we're going to be able to publish this, is there?
by takewing
Touya says I should write this down. He thinks that it's a story worthy of a best-selling novel or something but I just think it's a story that gave us a huge pain in the ass for a while and I don't want to write it down to share with the world or the publishing companies or whoever else. He said that it didn't need to be published, just written down, and I said, "Well isn't that the same thing?" and we argued for like an hour but then there was sex so whatever.
I'm writing it down.
(I don't see why Touya can't write it. He's probably better at this kind of thing than I am, anyway. I just came back from telling him I had a whole huge paragraph and why couldn't he write this out, and he said maybe he would later so there you go.)
Um. Where was I again? Oh yeah. The story.
Now, I've had lots of weird things happen to me in my life. Probably the first weird thing was discovering that bleached bangs were cool (that was an accident!). And probably the second was falling out of a tree from ten or fifteen feet up and not breaking any bones when I was nine. Akari was really worried but I was okay! The third weird thing was probably Sai, and let's not even go into how weird Touya is, haha! (If he reads that part he'll probably hit me.)
But however weird those things are (and Touya's pretty weird), none of that compares to the stuff I'm about to tell you in this story (except maybe the Sai thing).
I guess I'd better start it now, then. People who are squeamish or under five feet tall should not read this story. Those with heart problems and pregnant women, too.
…Heh. Just kidding.
*
It all started when Touya saw an ad in the paper.
"For sale: antique goban, kaya, very good condition. Set of stones in original goke also included. 150 thousand yen or best offer," Touya read. His eyebrows were so high they were above his bangs. He looked kind of like he did whenever he watched me play a really awesome hand, or whenever I groped him!
I was eating cereal. I think it was Cocoa Puffs! Those are really good. "Huh? I bet they're lying. People are always looking to scam, Touya," I said. I might have been chewing at the same time but who cares?
Touya shook his head and stared at the ad a little more before ripping it out of the paper. I got mad.
"Hey! What's on the other side? Are the comics on the other side? Don't just rip the paper like that, I haven't read it yet!" I said, Cocoa Puffs momentarily forgotten.
Touya gave me a Look. That Look deserves to be capitalized because every time he gives it, he makes me want to punch him in the face. Or maybe push him against a wall and bite him. Sometimes it's hard to tell, even for me. But it's a really sharp look that seems to say, "Shut the hell up, Hikaru!"
It annoys me.
But right. So then Touya said, "I'll check it out. It's true that the goban may not be in as good condition as they're claiming, or that it's not true kaya, but as a Go player my curiosity naturally wins out over my skepticism."
That annoyed me too. "Are you saying I'm not curious?"
He didn't answer, the bastard. He rolled his eyes and headed for the living room to get the phone.
My Cocoa Puffs had gotten soggy but I ate them anyway.
*
Later on when he got back he was grinning like an idiot and nearly fell through the front door because he was carrying a huge goban and grinning like an idiot.
"What the hell, Touya!" I was incredulous.
Touya just set the goban down and beamed at it like it was his long lost child and he'd been reunited with it after years and years of separation, and then the child had gone on to win a spelling bee or something and he was really proud. (Touya is weird.)
"I managed to haggle a bit and got this beautiful goban for only 120 thousand yen!" Touya said excitedly. He leaned down and caressed the stupid goban. I made a "yuck" face - he doesn't even caress me like that, and I got a little jealous of the goban right about then.
It wasn't that the goban wasn't nice. It was. It had beautifully carved legs with what looked like floral patterns carved into them. The surface was shiny and polished, and overall it was really well-kept for a goban so old.
"I have an inkling…" Touya said. He took a stone out of his jacket pocket (I'd be lying if I said that neither of us carried stones on our persons on a regular basis… don't call us dorks!) and placed it on the goban.
Now, I've heard a lot of clinks in my day. Probably not as many as Touya has, and probably not as many as most of the other pros out there, but the clink of a stone as it's placed on the board isn't a foreign sound to me at all.
But this stone, on this board…
Okay. I'm going to tell you a side-story. Here, have one of those star-section-separator-things:
*
Once upon a time, Shindou Hikaru was sixteen years old. He was hot and handsome and stylish and he had a gay crush on a boy who had girly hair and liked old man sweaters and liked to shout at him for making rash moves over the goban so that they were face to face, and nearly close enough to kiss.
So one day young Shindou Hikaru decides that he actually kind of likes it when the girly-haired boy shouts at him from two inches away because he likes to look at his eyes from that close. They look ocean blue-green. They're really pretty. So he screws up more than he normally would but the other boy (okay, so it's Touya) doesn't get in his face about it.
Touya just gives him the Look and says, "You're doing it on purpose, Shindou. You can't fool me. Why?"
And Hikaru denies it and denies it and then he smartens up and admits it and instead of shouting at him over the goban, Touya kisses him over it instead.
The stone that hit the goban that Touya had just brought home - the sound it made - kind of reminded me of that moment. My heart skipped a beat and I just stared - at the goban, at Touya, at everything and nothing.
Weird, huh?
*
Now that the mystical flashback scene is over, let's get back to what was happening in the present!
Touya placed his stone - lower right hoshi, and I stood there for a while all excited until I remembered myself. "Touya. This came with gokes, right?"
Touya looked up, surprised. "Hm? Well, yes… why?"
"We're playing now! Where are the stones? Go get them." I couldn't not play a game now that Touya had placed a stone on the goban. I wanted to hear that same thrilling click, over and over again. Any uncertainty I'd had over Touya buying the damn thing was gone.
So we played a game and it was one of the best games of my life. I'm not kidding, either. Or… at least it felt like it was one of the best games of my life. We know now that the goban wasn't exactly normal, that it might have affected our perceptions from the moment Touya played the first stone on it.
But that's not supposed to come until later in the story. Oops!
*
I dunno about Touya, but even a week after he bought that pretty antique goban, it was still… "calling to me". Like I'd be at the Institute playing a Dan match and I'd still want to play on that damn goban back at home. I'd be out eating fast food with Waya, and I'd still want to play on that goban. I'd be reading the newest chapter of Naruto and along with pulling weird faces (seriously, what the hell?), I would want to play on that goban.
I think Touya was getting tired of me asking if we could play every time I saw him so he maybe wanted to placate me with a blowjob but even then… even then!
I had more tact than to actually say it, but I'd have rather we'd been playing on the antique goban.
My postcoital thoughts were something along the lines of, "Oh shit. I'm a freak." I didn't say that though. I have lots more tact than Touya gives me credit for.
"That was… good…" I said.
Touya wiped his mouth with the pink handkerchief he usually keeps in his left pants pocket (specifically for that purpose, which is not only weird but also somehow really hot) before replying, "You seemed distracted. And tense."
I sighed. It was frustrating, how well he could read me. I sat back and practically sunk into the cushions of the living room couch. I couldn't relax. My sleep patterns had been suffering all week. Sex couldn't de-stress me. Not even Go!
"Touya," I said. It was hard to say it. Really hard. I didn't think that I would be that difficult to say the "L" word to Touya. This was a different way of saying the "L" word, though, so maybe that had something to do with it.
Touya sat down next to me and looked on expectantly. I think I probably cringed.
"Touya, I love your…"
"…my what, Shindou?"
I couldn't see his expression because my eyes were closed. Looking back, it was probably a really funny expression. But I never saw it! Not far.
"I love your…" I whispered the last word, "…goban."
The silence was deep. It was uncomfortable. My stomach rumbled (I always get hungry after sex!). I opened my eyes but Touya looked the same as he always looked with his narrowed eyebrows and sharp expression.
His voice was calm but I could tell he was getting fed up. Heh, oops? "So you're meaning to say… that…"
"Uh-huh," I figured I knew what he was going to say so I answered before he asked.
I was wrong.
"You mean to say that you're leaving me for my goban?"
…I don't know what is was about this question but I cracked up. And while I was laughing my ass off, Touya hit me with two pillows and told me to shut up already but it was really hard.
"No, idiot," I said, once I got my bearings. By this time Touya was pouting a little. He says he wasn't but I know he was.
...ouch. He hit me again. Bastard. See if I ever let you read over my shoulder again!
Where was I?
So after that Touya was all, "I was joking, I didn't think you'd actually leave me for a goban!"
But of course he really did because he's a huge dork and we argued about that for a while and eventually we ended up on the floor in front of the couch and I was sucking him off.
That was good. It was around the time when I was fishing around in Touya's pocket for his pink handkerchief when Touya asked, "What did you mean, Shindou?"
I shrugged. Suddenly it seemed a lot easier to tell Touya about my real problem after he had already assumed that I was leaving him for a goban.
"It's just…" My eyes wandered over to the goban in question - it sat to the side of the living room and the gokes sat on top of it where I had lovingly placed them just the day before and… "Touya, can we play?"
Touya punched my shoulder softly. I didn't retaliate. I didn't even budge. Something was seriously wrong with me! "You were going to tell me what's going on, don't change the subject."
"I'm not. It's the same subject…" My voice was getting softer by the minute, kind of like I was being hypnotized. Maybe I was being hypnotized. "I want to play Go."
"There's nothing new about that," Touya said, getting more frustrated by the second.
I stared at the goban for a while longer before making my way over to it, sitting down, and running my hand lovingly over its smooth, intriguing surface.
"No, I want to play Go on this board. Forever. It's just really undeniably awesome like that."
There was a long pause. I continued stroking the goban in a way that was probably really creepy. I wonder if I blinked at all during that time? I probably didn't.
Touya got up after a while, made his way over to me, and kicked me in the side.
"Get a grip, Shindou! What on earth is wrong with you?!"
That had really hurt! I lay wibbling on the floor, nursing what I was convinced at the time must have been at least three broken ribs and a burst kidney, but at least I wasn't about to stroke or hug or have sex with the goban. I actually had no desire to, which is ironic because even sex couldn't take my mind off the goban, but apparently pain could.
Just my luck, right?
"Oww," I whined, looking up at Touya like he'd just betrayed me (et tu, Brute?).
"Get a grip," Touya repeated. "What is wrong with you?"
His eyes looked angry, and I'm sure he was, but even so, the straight line of his mouth revealed something else - he was worried about me.
I was tempted to reply with something like, 'besides my burst kidney?' but the look on Touya's face stopped me. I shrugged.
It wasn't as if I hadn't encountered things like this before - Sai had spent hundreds of years as a spirit trapped in a goban. Was it too much of a stretch to think that something was possessing this one, as well? Or maybe that it was… cursed?
There was a problem with telling Touya, though - would he believe me? I was practically immune to weird things like this by now, but it would be new and strange to Touya. At that point, I hadn't even told him about Sai.
On the other hand, what could I do? If I didn't tell Touya, he might kick me again.
I sighed. "Sit down," I told him, nodding to my left.
He sat to my left and placed a comforting hand on my thigh. I smiled a little before the frown took over again.
"This is going to sound really weird, but… I think the goban you bought is cursed."
There was a pause. And then…
He took his hand from my thigh and elbowed me in the side instead. "You're not right in the head!"
I punched his shoulder back and said, "Touya - can you just listen to me for once?"
I think it might have been the look in my eyes rather than the weak-ass punch that got his attention and made him say, "Fine."
"Good," I sighed again.
I told him everything. How I'd been enchanted by the goban since Touya played the first stone on it, how every game we played on that board was a million times better than any game on any other board had ever been or ever would be, and how I thought about playing on it in my sleep, in the shower, and…
"During sex?!" Touya interrupted.
I winced. My gaze wandered off to look at the goban. It was completely subconscious and I didn't even realize I was doing it until Touya grabbed my chin and made me face him again.
"Yes…" I said somewhat guiltily.
Touya looked at me, his expression angry for a while before it gradually began to soften. He was still holding onto my chin. Finally, he replied, "You… you poor thing."
I was tempted to laugh, then, and I did - but only a little. Touya seemed mildly offended so I stopped. "Um… right."
I think he finally believed me after that.
"So um… that's what's up," I finished several minutes later.
Touya was touching me again, but by this time we were half-hugging, with his arm wrapped around my waist and my head resting on his shoulder. I could hear his heartbeat.
He was silent.
I looked up. He seemed to be thinking hard about something. "Touya?"
"Mm." Touya's arm around my waist tightened considerably. "We're going to have to find a way to fix this, Shindou."
I looked down again and grinned into Touya's sweater. "Well obviously, Touya - I can't keep getting distracted by this goban when we're having sex."
I felt and heard his curt laughter. "Obviously," he said. "Which is why there won't be any sex until this problem of yours is solved."
"EHHH?!"
*
I'm going to let Touya write from now on. Hopefully that won't confuse whoever's reading this!
*
Hello. Touya Akira here, pleased to make your acquaintance and here's to hoping that I will be able to explain the events that led up to the successful de-cursing of Shindou Hikaru.
Now, as you know very well by now, Shindou had a problem. He wanted to sleep with the new goban I had bought, and no amount of his arguing to the contrary was going to change that fact. I had seen him stroking it. I wasn't about to tell him at the time, but I had also heard him mumbling about it in his sleep.
I love Go as much as the next person, but was it normal to love the game that much…? Absolutely not.
(Shindou is reading over my shoulder and imploring me to tell you all that he's heard me mutter about playing Go with him in my sleep, but that simply isn't true. So I shouted at him.)
Anyway, unbeknownst to everyone but myself and my mother, when I was a child, there were two things I wanted to become when I grew up. These things were a.) to become a pro Go player like my father, and b.) to become Touya Akira, P.I., Private Investigator. My father would be proud, I would get to wear pinstriped suits for both jobs, and the latter job would allow me to protect sobbing young women in pretty hats who happened to be in dire situations.
It was win-win, or at least it was to me at age six.
Now, however, it's actually quite embarrassing. Shindou is snickering right now. I've shouted at him again.
But truly, Shindou wasn't a young woman in a pretty hat, but he was in a dire situation that required investigating. I was inclined to help him with this, and free of any charge as well.
In that vein, the very next day, Shindou and I traveled to the home of the last owner of the cursed goban, to whom I had paid a ridiculously low amount for an antique of such high quality.
We were soon to figure out why the goban had been priced so low.
*
I remembered the place well then, and I remember it even better now. It was hardly the type of complex you might see as the setting of a horror film, but it wasn't quite as welcoming as the flat Shindou and I lived in, either.
The neighborhood was dark. Just dark in color, not necessarily in light. The buildings surrounding the complex were shades of grey and black and dark brick, for the most part.
"Why am I not surprised?" I heard Shindou mutter from beside me as I examined the map. We stood next to an alleyway filled with rusting dumpsters and I wrinkled my nose from the smell, as much as from Shindou's statement.
"It's not as if I said to myself when I came here to buy it, 'Oh, this place is a bit creepy, I bet the goban I'm about to buy will be cursed!'" I said to him, glaring slightly.
"No," Shindou smirked annoyingly. "I bet you just said, "Oh, this place is a bit creepy, better keep my man-purse close to me at all times!'"
I hit him. (It's not a man-purse, it is a messenger bag, and it is very handy, thank you very much!)
As we approached the apartment complex where the seller resided, a black cat passed by and walked under a ladder that someone was presumably using to complete a paint-job. The cat then leapt up and onto the stoop of the building we were about to enter and stared at us.
"Okay…" Shindou said, stopping. "That… is creepy."
I shrugged it off. He may have convinced me to believe in curses, but I refused to believe in bad omens. "Come on, Shindou," I said. I pressed the button that sent a call to apartment number 13 on the second floor and waited.
"Yes?" The voice was that of the old man from whom I had bought the cursed goban. I breathed a sigh of relief.
"Ah, sir…? This is Touya Akira. I bought that goban from you last week-"
"GO AWAY!" he shouted. There was a slight shuffling sound - presumably the old man trying to figure out which button turned off the intercom - and then the static background sound ceased.
I looked at Shindou. He looked at me. And then his eyes seemed to almost… glaze over.
"It's okay, Touya…" he said, his voice soft and almost… lilting. It was disturbing. "We can just go home and play on the goban…"
I bit my lip in frustration. "This hurts me more than it hurts you," I said.
And then I elbowed him hard in the ribs.
He doubled over and became himself again. While he cursed at me, I tried to get hold of the old man again, to no avail. He wasn't answering his speaker anymore.
Luckily, though, not even two minutes after I had elbowed Shindou ("I have bruises, Touya, you bastard!" I ignored him. He knew it was necessary.), a woman left the apartment complex and I caught the door as it was about to shut.
"Come on, Shindou," I said, offering my hand to him (he had fallen to the floor in agony after I'd hit him), "we're going to get to the bottom of this, mark my words."
Why Shindou wasn't more impressed by my token Private Investigator phrase, I still have no idea.
He did finally grab my hand after a bit of scowling, though.
The trip upstairs was tense. It was mid-day, and yet the stairwell was dark because there were no windows. The plaster of the walls was peeling and the rug on the carpet was threadbare - the old man I had bought the goban from didn't seem to be in a good place, financially, to be living in a complex like this, in this area of the city. I remember having felt bad for the man when I'd first met him, thinking that he was probably selling his prized antique as a means to get by, but this time around things were different - we needed answers.
We arrived in front of apartment 13 and Shindou gave me a pointed look before raising a hand to knock at the door. I decided to heed him for once and keep quiet - Shindou was admittedly better at "people things" than I was, and besides, the old man didn't know that Shindou was even with me.
"Hey old man!" Shindou yelled. He practically pounded on the door. I couldn't help wincing. "Come to the door! Come on, please?"
It took a minute or two, but eventually the old man called back, "What d'you want? If you're selling something, I ain't buying!"
"I just want to ask you some questions about the goban you sold my friend!" Shindou yelled through the door, having finally ceased his incessant door-pounding.
"You got that board for a damn good price, that should be that! There's nothing to talk about, no questions to answer 'cause there's no answers to give!"
Shindou rolled his eyes at me. I kept quiet - he was getting the old man to speak more than I had been able to do, just by being annoying. What a skill.
"Yeah, okay, but Touya here thinks I wanna have sex with the goban he bought and I don't but it's pretty close, you know?"
The old man was silent for a moment, but then we heard footsteps approaching and the door opened. The old man stood there, his face red with anger and embarrassment. He looked at us both but grabbed Shindou by the collar and pulled him inside the apartment. Shindou made an amusing sound.
"Get in, then, get in! The neighbors'll hear you, you idiot!" he said, mainly to Shindou. He did, however, leave the door open for me to pass through as well. I closed it gently and watched as Shindou got manhandled and lectured to.
Eventually, after Shindou was looking appropriately sheepish, the old man beckoned us to sit down.
"I've gotta say," he murmured, taking out a cigarette and lighting it, "I tried destroying that damn goban after it was all said and done - even took a saw to it - but that thing's damn near impossible to wreck, you know? Couldn't give it a single scratch, and you'd better believe it. Only sold it to you 'cause livin' the life I have these past twenty years hasn't been a picnic. Needed that money real bad, you know?"
"Oh, we do," I said sheepishly, stealing a glance at Shindou. He looked distracted - most likely by thoughts of the cursed goban - and I sighed before grabbing to pinch ruthlessly at his inner thigh (he squealed). I looked to the old man, "Pain seems to be the only way to keep thoughts of the goban away from him, unfortunately."
Shindou glared daggers at me.
The old man nodded. "Yeah, you better believe that too. Don't tell me this stuff as if I don't know it already, kid."
"Oh… I'm sorry. But…"
"I suppose you want me to tell you what it is you're dealing with, and how to get your friend back to normal, huh?" the old man asked. He took a long, slow drag off his cigarette and frowned before exhaling. I tried not to breathe through my nose, but it was beginning to get stuffy anyway.
"If you would, yes," I said.
"I'll tell you right now, though, I'm not buying that damned thing back - no returns!"
"Yeah, we got it, jeez. Just tell us the important crap!" Shindou interrupted. I would have elbowed him but I figured he was getting enough abuse from me as it was, lately.
"Keep your pants on…" the old man said. He extinguished his cigarette in an ash tray on the coffee table. "When I was about your age, I bought the goban off a vendor at a Go event here in the city. Amateur tournament in '56, I think it was. Something like that. Anyway, he was selling it for cheap and I had been planning to buy a nice goban while I was there, so I did, and when I got home and played my father on the damn thing, from the very first stone that was placed…"
I glanced toward Shindou, and his eyes were wide again, but this time it was with surprise and unexpected familiarity. Shindou knew what this man was talking about, and from what Shindou had told me, so did I.
"You were addicted," I finished for him.
He nodded solemnly, rubbing his neck and frowning. "I played on that board whenever I could, with whoever I could. It was all I could think of for at least twenty years."
"Twenty years?!" Shindou interjected. My own eyes widened in shock. Surely this wouldn't last twenty years for Shindou as well?
"Twenty years," the old man repeated. "But me, I didn't have a wise elder to show me any answers or anything, you see. Not like you two have got in me. You boys are lucky, is what you are."
I allowed myself to exhale. Shindou's body next to mine, which had tensed up after the old man had said the words "twenty years", began to unwind slightly. I reached for his wrist and stroked it with my thumb, not particularly caring about what the old man would think, or if he would think anything of it at all.
"So how did you break the curse…?" I asked, as the old man had failed to elaborate on that point.
"Mmm…" he muttered. He took out yet another cigarette and slipped between his lips but didn't light it. "It's simple. What the board seems to want is lotsa games played on it. No idea why - hell, it doesn't really make sense for the damn thing to be cursed to begin with, so why would it make sense that it would want lotsa games played on it? When I played on it, I only did so maybe once every week or two. Once ever week or two for twenty years is… is…"
"A damn lot," Shindou muttered dejectedly.
"Right, right, a damn lot! But still, say you play once a day, twice a day… three times a day…! Then you're splitting my twenty years into a period of maybe a couple months or something, got it?" He lit the cigarette. "I sure hope you two like Go. Haha!"
"So… is that it, then?" I asked.
"It's as much as I know."
"I see… You've no idea as to the origins of the curse, or how to rid the board of the curse?"
The old man gave me a strange look. "What do I look like to you, some kinda witch doctor?"
Shindou stood up abruptly and practically pulled me out of the old man's apartment. "Thanks for telling us about this, old man! I really appreciate it! It was scummy for you to sell the goban to Touya to begin with, but any chance to play Touya, I'll take it!"
I barely managed to say, "I'm sorry for the trouble" before Shindou closed the door behind me and we practically ran home to play Go.
It was going to be a long couple of months.
*
Touya is a better writer than me. I don't know why he didn't just write this entire thing himself.
Hikaru again, though!
Um, so basically we played a lot of Go on that goban. For me it was kind of like heaven, since I've already said that playing on the cursed goban was better than sex, and it lasted longer than sex (sorry Touya, it's true!), so what's better than sex besides heaven? I bet in heaven, it feels like an orgasm all the time. That would explain a lot, actually!
We averaged four games a day, partly because Touya and I are such great speed-Go players. And it's funny, because I think the board actually became… happy the more we played on it. Like after a particularly good game, it would have this happy sort of… glow, I guess. I think it must have enjoyed being played upon by two destined Go rivals, working toward the Hand of God!
Touya tried to keep it secret, but I think most of the time he was kind of pissed that we had to play so often. We both had to skip our study groups in favor of playing on the cursed goban, and I know Touya wasn't pleased about that. Normally he would've gone on and on about how much worse I was compared to his father, but I think he did a pretty good job in being nice to me for my own sake back then. It wasn't my fault, after all - if anything, it was his for buying the damn goban, and he knew it.
It was late on a Thursday night on the fourth week, the 124th game, when I told Touya about Sai.
I can't rationalize it. I've tried. Honestly, it was late, I was tired, we were playing kind of mechanically and though it was still good, it wasn't great, and neither was the conversation, which had died down something like two weeks before. It was getting kind of bad.
I wanted a change.
And yeah, I'd been planning to tell him someday. That "someday" seemed to need to come a little sooner than I'd originally planned once this whole cursed goban thing happened and he believed me and wanted to help, though.
Why not now? What've I got to lose? That's what I was thinking.
I was nervous though. And part of me wondered if maybe it was too far-fetched for Touya to believe; that he couldn't believe in two supernatural things. That's pretty stupid, but paranoia usually is, right?
"This kind of thing is always happening to me," I started out, smiling halfway, first at the board and then at Touya.
"Pardon?" He looked up, placed a stone.
"When I was eleven, I found a possessed goban in my grandfather's attic." I placed my stone without missing a beat, though my hand shook just the slightest bit. I looked straight into Touya's eyes as I spoke. "After that I had a ghost following me for years."
He dropped his stone.
I nodded, finally allowing myself to look away. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't tempted to break down and cry right then and there as I said, "His name… was Sai."
We didn't finish the game that night.
*
"Any other supernatural goings-on that you've experienced? Anything at all that you've neglected to tell me?"
I got that a lot after I told Touya.
And also:
"What kind of move was that?! Did Sai teach you that crappy move?"
I would wrestle him over that.
Sometimes I even got, "Why can't we find a ghost to haunt you that will do your laundry for you?"
Ha ha.
Telling Touya probably wasn't the best thing I could've done, looking back.
*
Weeks turned to months, and we were still playing. We talked more, though, and criticized each other more, which made the whole thing that much more bearable. I was beginning to feel like maybe there was something to the idea that too much of a good thing was ultimately bad. Playing so much awesome Go on a really sweet goban with my favorite opponent in the world was good, but I missed the days when it wasn't an obligation to play three to five times a day. I'd told Touya about this, and he obviously agreed. Like I said, it was affecting him a lot more because he didn't have the curse working on his mind directly.
"Hey Touya," I said one weekend afternoon. "What's that?"
I pointed to a dark stain or mark on the wood of the goban that hadn't been there yesterday.
"What's what?"
"That! Did you spill something on the goban?" I traced the pattern of it with my index finger, but even as I did that, Touya just looked more perplexed.
I froze. Not again. Not again.
The tsuke I placed before I lost consciousness decided the game.
*
When I came to, the first thing I saw was Touya's face, upside down and hovering over me. He was worried, and his hand was in my hair. I could feel his fingers on my scalp. It felt nice.
There was no ghost. I checked. Not that I thought there would be after what had happened in my… dream? Vision? Something like that.
"All the weird things happen to me," I muttered to Touya. I moved my arm so that it was wrapped around his waist and buried my head in his sweater.
"What happened?" he asked.
I shuddered. "Her name was Akiyama Shinobu. She looked on and recorded Go matches between her husband, who I guess was pretty good at the game, and whoever he played. She really enjoyed watching Go, but wasn't really a player herself. And then the Boshin War happened, and her husband was among the guys mobilized… except he was one of the few who didn't make it home."
Touya frowned. "And?"
I took a deep breath. "And… I guess… she was sort of like Sai. She couldn't see her life continuing after that, so she ended it… right over the goban he used to play on so often. The goban on which she had watched hundreds of his games unfold."
"…oh."
I smiled a smile that wasn't really a smile at all. "She resides in the goban and waits for two people to play, locks onto one of them, and sort of… entices them into playing for her. She missed the game."
"Missed? Is she gone now, then?" Touya asked.
I sat up all the way and looked at the goban for the first time since I'd woken up. There was no blood stain.
"I think so," I told him, smiling. "Our Go pleased her."
Touya remained quiet for a few minutes, just staring at me. Then he pulled me closer and our lips met in a short kiss and he said, "It pleases me too."
It took about a second for me to push Touya away. "Liar, you were so bored!"
"I was not! I'm never bored when I play you!"
"Could've fooled me, Mr. 'Shindou-Do-We-Really-Have-To-Play-Now'!"
"I only said that when it was extremely early in the morning! I need my coffee first, Shindou!"
"You said it at night too!"
"I was tired…."
That fight ended in sex.
Man, I'd missed sex! Go is cool and all, but sex is a totally different thing, and I can't wait to get to heaven!
The End (I think)
*
There's no way we're going to be able to publish this, is there?