Fic: (HnG) As the Grass Grows
Title: As the Grass Grows
Author: corbeaun
Fandom: Hikaru no Go
Disclaimer: Hikaru no Go belongs to Obata Takeshi and Hotta Yumi.
Pairing: pre- Ko Yeongha/Hon Suyeong
Summary: Three years is a long time when you're sixteen and thirteen. A slice of Ko Yeongha's life, and all the things he cannot let himself want. Post-Hokuto Cup.
A/N: So, uh, I didn't quite get to the Yeongha/Suyeong part of your prompt, Luce Red. But think of this as a prequel to the first-time fic I still owe you. ^^;
Written for issen4 in the fifthmus holiday fic exchange, here.
As the Grass Grows
At the sound of a key turning in the hotel room door, Yeongha looked up from the magazine article. Outside, muffled through the wall, he heard a familiar voice saying goodnight to their chaperon. When he glanced at the bedside clock, he saw that it was nearly eleven - almost Suyeong's curfew. Then Suyeong walked into the room, locking the door behind him.
"How was your game with Shindo?" Yeongha asked offhandedly, already turning his attention back to the penguin article.
"I lost. Again."
The grim tone gave Yeongha pause. He put aside the magazine and looked closely at the boy now kneeling beside the other bed, picking sullenly at his shoelaces.
"Next time then," he suggested awkwardly. He wasn't used to offering kindness in the face of failure, but he was fond of Suyeong. Ko Yeongha seldom liked anyone; he found most people insufferably inadequate. Hon Suyeong, however, was different.
Suyeong shot him a dark look and kicked his tennis shoes into the corner. "And next time, Ko Yeongha," he scowled, "you can just shut up."
At that, Yeongha leaned against the headboard of the hotel bed and laced his hands behind his head. "Still upset I teased your rival?" he smirked. He was relieved they'd moved so quickly past Suyeong's defeat; he knew how important that rematch had been for him. Yeongha wasn't sure he could handle a miserable Suyeong. Irritating him, however, was another matter.
Suyeong glared at him. "Are you five?" he demanded, and wrenched viciously at the knot of his necktie. Then he turned the death glare on the tie when it refused to budge.
Yeongha smiled, unaccountably amused. It was, he realized, strangely endearing how Suyeong forgot the right way of loosening a tie; somehow, he always ended up nearly strangling himself. Shaking his head, he got out of his bed and walked up behind the boy. "Here," he said, placing a hand over Suyeong's fingers, "you need to loosen this first." Patiently, with Suyeong's hand in his, he guided him through the process.
"Thanks," Suyeong muttered when the silk finally came apart in their hands.
Yeongha tugged the tie away from the boy's neck and tossed it onto the bedside table. "I'd like to say anytime, but you really do need to learn it." He paused, finally taking in the rest of Suyeong's considerably more casual clothes. "Why are you still wearing a tie anyway?"
The picture was exceedingly strange: Suyeong had changed into t-shirt and jeans to play against Shindo after the Hokuto Cup reward ceremony, but for some reason, the tie had remained around his neck.
The boy flushed. He mumbled something.
Yeongha frowned. "What?"
"I said," Suyeong ground out, face very red, "I tried to take it off but couldn't."
"And you couldn't have asked An Tenson or -" Yeongha stopped at the mortified look on Suyeong's face. "Right. None of their business." It was, in any case, a somewhat embarrassing inability to admit.
He supposed Suyeong's ensemble could have passed for what counted as fashion around here. Tokyo was notorious for it, after all. He patted him on the shoulder. "Don't worry - likely no one even noticed." But he couldn't stop the small smirk that escaped.
Suyeong batted his hand away. "Oh, shut up," he muttered.
Chuckling, he raised his hands and backed away, intending to dress for sleep.
"Hey." Suyeong's sudden voice made him turn around. He saw the boy studying him suspiciously. "How come you're back so early? Shouldn't you be in Roppongi or some place, trying out the Tokyo nightlife?"
"Why, Hon Suyeong," Yeongha raised an eyebrow. "Is this your way of suggesting I should find a woman?" He watched, amused, as the boy turned a fascinating shade of red. Really, Suyeong's skin seemed almost made for blushing. Yeongha wondered if that was partly why he so liked to tease the boy.
"Yeongha!" the boy spluttered.
He decided to take pity on him. "This is hardly my first visit to Tokyo," he answered. Walking over to his suitcase, he took out his pajamas. "Besides," he added, speaking over his shoulders, "been to one club, been to them all."
"What are they like?" Suyeong asked from behind him, sounding intensely curious.
He pulled his sweatshirt over his head, making sure to keep on his undershirt. "Nothing much. Loud, crowded. Horrific music choices. Oh, and the half-naked girls," he added, almost as an afterthought. Then he glanced slyly over at Suyeong. "I suppose you would be interested in that, pumped full of adolescent hormones as you are."
Suyeong blushed fiercely at that, but only retorted, "You're only three years older than me, Ko Yeongha."
"Well," Yeongha responded, buttoning his pajamas top, "it's clearly three very long years."
The boy scowled at him from his much shorter height and then walked into the bathroom, shutting the door pointedly behind him.
Yeongha laughed a little. Suyeong was decidedly touchy about his shortness, and Yeongha never tired of needling him about it. As he got into his bed, he wondered idly if it'd help to point out that Shindo Hikaru was the same height at two years older than Suyeong's age. But then he shook his head mentally - no, probably best to leave out all mention of Shindo with Suyeong; the boy was fixated enough on him as it was.
He waited until he heard the bathroom door open again and then the nearby mattress creak as Suyeong got into bed, before turning off the bedside lamp.
He pretended not to hear when Suyeong muttered a quiet, "Thanks."
* * *
Yeongha had heard of a boy named Hon Suyeong, who everyone said was going to be a pro one day. Some even went as far as to call him the next Ko Yeongha. Yeongha, upon hearing this, only smirked. He had been a pro for just a year, but during that time he'd already cowed the local opposition. He gave himself two more years, at the most, before taking down the Meijin. With that end in mind, he entered the international circuit. Meanwhile, let Hon Suyeong be tagged with Yeongha's name if he wanted, Yeongha had thought. It was clear, in any case, that there was only one Ko Yeongha.
Then, for the first time, Suyeong dropped a rank among the kenkyuusei.
Yeongha heard of this because, despite himself, he had been curious about the boy who everyone thought had such a bright future, and some of his games had caught Yeongha's eye. He wondered how this prodigy would handle this first taste of defeat. When he learned later that the boy had failed the pro exam, Yeongha had felt a brief pang of disappointment. But he quickly pushed that aside. After all, Hon Suyeong wouldn't be the first, or even the most promising, to break under the pressure. Yeongha gave no more thought to it. He didn't expect to hear of him again.
He was wrong.
It was only a week after Touya Meijin abruptly announced his retirement; Yeongha had felt out of sorts for just as long. So when he went to relax - intending to recreate some of his better games - but instead saw a boy sitting at his customary table in the playing hall of the Institute, he was even less inclined than normal to be civil. Not that Ko Yeongha felt all that polite anyway, but, normally, he was a very convincing actor.
"You," he snapped at the boy, slamming his palm on the board, "find another table."
The boy at first looked startled by the interruption, then annoyed. His face flushed angrily. "You find another table," he retorted. "This one's taken."
Yeongha frowned, unused to being opposed. "Look, boy -"
"My name is Hon Suyeong!"
He raised a derisive eyebrow. "Is that supposed to mean something to me?"
But in fact, it did. It surprised Yeongha suddenly coming face to face with the boy. He looked younger than Yeongha had thought he would be. And that he was here again, playing baduk in the institute...
The boy's face was red with indignation. "We will have one game." He glared at Yeongha. "The loser scrams."
"Done," Yeongha smirked. He felt some of his bad mood lifting. He pulled out the chair opposite Suyeong and sat down. "What handicap do you want?"
"I'm going to be a pro! So you can just take your stones and sh-"
The boy of course lost.
But for the first time in a long while Yeongha was not disappointed. He had known then that the next time Hon Suyeong took the exam he would pass it.
When Suyeong, scowling, pushed back his chair to leave the table as agreed, Yeongha stopped him.
"You can stay." When Suyeong stared, disbelieving, he shrugged. "I changed my mind," he said only. "And call me Yeongha."
And that was the beginning of their friendship.
* * *
"Nuna, I'm home."
His older sister looked up from the living-room table. Papers and draw plans spilled over the tabletop and onto the floor. "Welcome back," she smiled distractedly, already turning back to her work. "Was the taxi-ride back from the airport okay? Sorry I couldn't pick you up. Oh, food's in the fridge."
Yeongha carried his small suitcase into his bedroom, before going into the kitchen. "The taxi was alright. Shared the fare with Suyeong. Hmm, yeolmu cold noodles," he commented as he lifted the bowl from the refrigerator. His sister cleared a small space for him on the table, and he set the bowl down before sitting on the floor beside her.
"It thought it fitting, since it's almost summer," she replied absently, scribbling on a sheet and then flipping it aside.
He chewed thoughtfully on a slice of fermented baby-radish. "Take-out?" he asked.
His sister looked up briefly from her papers. "Oh, of course," she smirked.
Yeongha smirked back. His sister's abhorrence of cooking was legendary; sometimes, Yeongha wondered how she planned to marry. Wives were, after all, supposed to know how to cook. He didn't plan on saying any of this to his sister, though, as he had a healthy sense of self-preservation. She already made him launder his own clothes.
"So," he picked up a strand of buckwheat noodle with his chopsticks, "how's the husband-hunting going?"
She waved one hand loosely at him, her other hand continuing to make corrections on the document. "Just well enough to keep our mom off my back," she muttered. "I think I can put her off for another three months."
He raised an eyebrow, and murmured, "Amazing, another whole year of freedom."
His sister had been putting off their mother for quite a while now, ever since he'd come to live with her in Seoul in fact, by perfunctorily attending marriage meetings but never quite following through. She claimed the men were all too intimidated by her.
She laid down her pen, and looked at him. "Mock all you want, but you're going to know what I mean soon enough." She cocked an eyebrow at him. "You're already making good money, and in a few years you'll be over twenty; you'll be swimming in matchmakers then. I keep telling mom you're the one she should focus on, since you'll be carrying on the family name." She smirked. "I'm just the girl."
Yeongha drank down the cold broth in one gulp, and hurriedly stood up. This was not a conversation topic he wanted to encourage.
"Alright, alright," he apologized. "I'm sorry I made light of your situation. I'll see what I can do when mom comes here in a few weeks."
His sister smiled graciously at him. "Why thank you, little brother, that's very thoughtful of you. Now please, go away - I need to finish this contract before morning."
Since it was her apartment, he let her drive him from the living room, and went into the kitchen to wash his dirty bowl and utensils.
Afterwards, he slowly rinsed the suds off his hands, and sighed.
He hadn't said anything to his sister, but Yeongha didn't relish the idea of matrimony - for more than one reason.
* * *
He hadn't exactly been honest with Hon Suyeong when he'd implied he hadn't gone out at all into downtown Tokyo. He had - only it hadn't been to Roppongi Hills, crowded as it was with young, sleekly groomed Japanese women.
Instead, that last day in Japan, as soon as the rewards ceremony was over, he'd quietly gone back to the hotel room and changed out of his suit. In slacks and a red shirt with the top buttons artfully undone, he'd then slipped out of the hotel without passing either Suyeong or their supposed chaperones.
It did not take long to find his way to the heart of Tokyo's metropolitan gay life.
Taking the underground walkway from Shinjuku Station's East Exit as the sun set, he walked into a neon-lit backdrop of 24-hour love motels, fetish sex boxes, karaoke bars, and clubs whose signs shouted, in multicolored lights, words in English like G. Shower and, simply, Dick. It was the Ni-chōme as he remembered it.
Yeongha bypassed the small bars and the large clubs, and headed directly for a place where he knew fluency in the Japanese language was superfluous. His age wasn't an impediment: he hadn't had trouble passing for his twenties the last time he'd been here, and that had been nearly a year ago, and he'd grown at least four inches since then.
The sauna had raised its admission fee since his last visit, but it was within a reasonable range. Yeongha paid the machine and then took the ticket with him to the counter, where he asked in halting English for the sauna's complimentary robes, towels and key to the clothes locker. The attendant handed them to him, fingers sliding along his as he did so.
Yeongha smiled at the man - politely, because it never paid to antagonize the man who held the key to your clothes, but without any interest because he wasn't what Yeongha was looking for - before going to the lockers to change.
Then he walked upstairs to the showers and steam rooms, the place that did hold what he was seeking.
It didn't take long before a likely looking man approached him. From his carefully calculated sprawl on the steam benches, Yeongha studied the stranger. He was just beneath Yeongha's height, medium for a Japanese, with nicely defined pectorals where the robe gaped open in front, and he smiled easily at Yeongha as he sat down on the bench beside him. He said something in Japanese.
Yeongha smiled slightly and shook his head. "Wakaranai," he said. "I don't understand." It was a useful phrase he'd learned from Suyeong.
"Ah, sou desu ka..." the man said wryly. He held out a hand inquiringly and, when Yeongha continued to look amendable, touched his temple where the hair strained against the unusual tension that Yeongha had put them in when he'd pulled them back in the ponytail. From experience, Yeongha knew that the humidity of the steam room had turned his usually russet-dyed hair a dark, unrecognizable brown.
The man's fingers were rough and calloused against his face - a workman probably. Not a baduk player, he had to remind himself, the lines between fantasy and reality blurring.
"O.K.?" the man asked breathlessly, with accented English, in his ear.
Closing his eyes, Yeongha thought of the lines outside carefully gridded boards; cold, brittle stones; and pretty Japanese boys who faced him with sure hands and dark, desperate eyes.
The man's hands had slid down Yeongha's side to rest warm and heavy against his waist. He pressed his hips inquiringly against Yeongha's - and Yeongha was suddenly, desperately hard.
Breath catching, Yeongha agreed. "Okay." He didn't have more time to cruise, anyway, before one of the chaperones from the Korean team started wondering where he was. "Okay," he repeated, and let the man pull him up from the bench and lead him upstairs to the beds.
When he left the sauna an hour later, trading in his robe, towels and clothes locker key, the attendant gave him a knowing wink.
Yeongha was back in his hotel room, already showered and changed, and reading a magazine he'd bought downstairs, by the time Hon Suyeong finally came back from his game with one Shindo Hikaru. Later, when Yeongha changed into his sleep clothes, he made sure that the pajamas covered anything too incriminating - so that Suyeong needn't ask any difficult questions, and he needn't lie.
* * *
The phone rang in the living room.
"Nuna!" he called out, not bothering to stop his perusal of Touya Kouyo's latest amateur game records.
No one answered and, meanwhile, the phone kept ringing incessantly. After giving it another full fifteen seconds, he sighed. Then he pushed back his chair and strode into the living room; he picked up the receiver. "Ko residence," he said perfunctorily. He glanced around the apartment but didn't see his sister anywhere - she must have gone out immediately after returning from work. Probably looking to relax after that taxing visit from their mother.
"Have you seen the Hokuto Cup article?"
It was Suyeong, his voice demanding and sounding more than a little stressed.
"Oh, hello Suyeong." He took the cordless with him as he walked back to his room. "Are you coming over today?" He sat back down at his desk and flipped distractedly through Touya Kouyo's game records; the former Meijin was playing erratically lately, almost as if he was changing game styles again. It was quite bothersome.
"Are you listening?" Suyeong voice demanded tinnily from the receiver. "Do you know what they're printing about you?"
At that, Yeongha paused and gave the telephone his full attention. It had been a full week since the team had arrived back at Seoul from the Hokuto Cup. They had gotten a complete hero's welcome, with photo opportunities and hoards of young, impressionable kenkyuusei clamoring for his autograph. Yeongha couldn't see how that could go wrong.
He grabbed the latest baduk newsletter from a nearby pile. "Why?" he said, "did the picture turn out badly?" With one hand, he flipped through the pages, looking for the photo the reporters had taken of him and the rest of Team Korea.
His hand stilled on the newsletter when Suyeong read him a passage from something. It was an article and it rang the gamut from accusing him of being a poster child for the Korea-Japan resentment to pompous, juvenile posturing. "It's the Japanese Weekly Go," the boy concluded tightly. "I translated."
Yeongha tapped the receiver thoughtfully. "Why are you even reading that?" he said finally.
"That's all you have to say?" the boy demanded.
Even knowing Suyeong couldn't see him, he raised an eyebrow at the receiver, amused. "Well, I did utter the words they quoted me on. What they make of it is their business." He pushed the baduk newsletter away from him. Absently, he wondered if that funny little man with the buckteeth had written the article. Probably. People were predictable that way.
"And you don't care? How you're seen by other people?"
"It's an opinion that is well within their right to make." Yeongha was getting bored with all this. Why was Suyeong being so adamant about his reputation anyway? He still remembered how, during the Hokuto Cup, the boy had smacked him with a pillow over the same issue. "And anyway," he drawled, leaning back in his chair, "I won. This article only makes the Japanese sound like sore losers." Which was too bad, since that was not the impression he got of the Japanese pros, especially one Shindo Hikaru.
There was a pause on the other side of the line. Then, "I...I guess," Suyeong agreed reluctantly.
Yeongha sighed, fond but exasperated. The boy really needed to learn not to let the press get to him. "Was that all?" he asked, flipped absently through the game records in front of him.
"...yeah."
"I'll see you tomorrow then."
And without saying goodbye, Yeongha hung up, as was his habit.
The next day, Suyeong called him to say he'd be late for their usual afternoon game - something about planning for a school festival. Yeongha, having been out of the compulsory education system and all the activities it entailed for two years by then, was amused to be reminded that Suyeong was still caught up in all that. Usually he remembered their age difference - Hon Suyeong looked every inch his thirteen years, after all - but occasionally Yeongha was reminded in other ways.
Over the phone, he only said the new time was fine, before hanging up.
It was raining hard when Suyeong finally called him on the building intercom. Yeongha buzzed him up and when he opened the apartment door, he found a dripping-wet Suyeong standing out in the hall. At the sight, a burst of laughter escaped Yeongha. Suyeong looked like a wet kitten.
"I'm surprised the doorman let you in," he grinned, as the boy stalked past him into the apartment.
"I got off on the wrong bus stop, and then it started pouring," Suyeong muttered, dropping his wet backpack on the kitchen tiles. Then he pulled wretchedly at his drenched sweater.
Yeongha shook his head, laughing, at the boy's woebegone expression. "Here." He tugged Suyeong's hands away from the ruined wool, and gently pushed him in the direction of the bath. "Leave your wet things in the sink, and try to get warm. I'll lend you some of my stuff."
Suyeong looked at him gratefully and quickly disappeared into the bathroom to follow his directions.
The water was already running by the time Yeongha finally found some loose draw-pants and an old shirt that had shrunk in the wash. Briefly, he pondered on lending the boy underwear as well, but decided against it; it would be too awkward. Suyeong would just have to make do with what he had.
He knocked on the bathroom door to notify the boy he was coming in, before stepping into the steam-filled room.
Suyeong stuck his head out of the shower curtain. "Thanks," he said gratefully upon seeing the clothes Yeongha was laying on the counter.
"Try not to take too long," Yeongha replied, hiding an amused smile at the way the boy's hair stuck up around his head; it looked like Suyeong had found his sister's shampoo. But at least he no longer looked like a drowned kitten. "We have a few games to go over." He closed the bathroom door behind him.
As he waited for Suyeong to finish, he went back to the kitchen to grab some leftovers and the boy's backpack. The backpack was surprisingly heavy, and Yeongha weighed it curiously in his hand before bringing it into his room along with a plate of French pastries.
The sound of the shower had stopped. Yeongha found Suyeong waiting for him at the desk, already peering at Touya Kouyo's game records. The boy had rolled up the legs of the sweats and wrapped the drawstring securely around his waist; the shrunken shirt fit perfectly. His hair was still damp, however, and lay plastered against his head.
"Wow." Suyeong nodded toward the game records. Just like Yeongha, he had seen the anomaly at a glance. "What's going on with him?"
Yeongha raised a wry eyebrow. "That's what I would like to know as well," he said, putting the plate down on the desk next to Suyeong. The boy would be hungry soon. "He's going through more changes these two years than a beginning pro. Here." Yeongha dropped a towel on Suyeong's head. "Dry yourself."
Suyeong made face as the towel fell over his eyes and grabbed at it. Then he noticed the backpack Yeongha had brought with him. "Oh, let me get that. I have something to give you." Yeongha surrendered the bag into the boy's grasp, and watched curiously as Suyeong withdrew a thick brown package from it. "Here," he pushed the package at Yeongha, "this is for you."
"Why, Hon Suyeong," Yeongha grinned, catching the package in one hand, "I didn't know you cared."
"Hey!" Suyeong protested, his brows drawing sharply together, "It's what you asked me about - you know, the course books."
Yeongha, already unwrapping the package, paused at the sight of the revealed cover of Basic Japanese, Level I.
On the flight back from Tokyo nearly a month ago, he had made a mention of wanting to look at Yeongha's Japanese language books. He hadn't expected Suyeong to remember it though - after all, the boy had been half-asleep against his shoulder at the time.
"...Thanks," he murmured, randomly opening the book to the middle. The pages still had notes penciled in on the margins in Suyeong's neat handwriting.
When he got to the back flap, glossy prints spilled into his hand.
It was photos from the Hokuto Cup.
Yeongha remembered the tiny, disposable camera Suyeong had carried throughout the trip and how readily he'd used it. He looked back up, searchingly, at Suyeong.
Suyeong shrugged, looking a bit embarrassed, as Yeongha flipped through them. There were quite a few of the photos. "I picked out the ones you were in. Thought you'd like to have them," he said, in answer to the unspoken question.
Yeongha stopped abruptly. He stared at the man in the photo.
"Oh, sorry. That one got there by mistake."
"Where did you take that?" he said carefully.
"This? After the rewards ceremony, when Shindo and I were playing. Some of Touya Kouyo's old students dropped by." Suyeong pointed to a group of men at the edge of the picture. "Oh, that's the new Meijin."
God.
Yeongha felt the inside of his stomach turn. He'd known the name but not the face.
"The man who's smiling?" he asked with admirable calm.
"No, the one with the glasses. Um, the one you're talking about -" Suyeong seemed to think hard for a moment. "That's Ashiwara-pro, fifth rank."
Well. Good to know, at least, he hadn't fucked the newest Meijin on the fourth floor of the Ni-Yon Kaikan.
If he ever went to Tokyo again, he'll just have to avoid the man. Yeongha didn't think the fifth rank was the type for international tournaments; he'd have recognized the name if he did. He certainly didn't plan on repeating the encounter.
Yeongha had never intended to mix baduk with this side of his personal life.
"Hey. Yeongha."
He looked up to see Suyeong studying him. "Yes?" he said cautiously. Lately, ever since the Hokuto Cup in fact, he kept catching the boy looking at him - almost as if he expected Yeongha to pull another stunt like the one he'd goaded Shindo Hikaru with.
"Do you actually plan to learn Japanese?" Suyeong asked, his eyes intent on him.
Yeongha very carefully affected nonchalance. Sometimes the boy saw more than Yeongha was comfortable with. "Maybe." Let Suyeong think it a whim.
Suyeong's voice was decidedly suspicious. "You said I was wasting my time."
Yeongha shrugged, and tossed book and pictures onto the bed. "I changed my mind."
Suyeong frowned when he didn't elucidate further, but didn't ask any more questions - possibly knowing that the questions wouldn't get anywhere. And that made Yeongha uncomfortable as well.
"So," Yeongha said, covering up his discomfort with a smirk, "Ready for a quick game before we look at Kouyo's game records?"
And though Suyeong pressed him hard, Yeongha won that game. As he always did.
In the back of his mind, Yeongha wondered when Suyeong would finally catch up to him. When things would finally change.
But he didn't let himself think on it for long.
* * *
end "As the Grass Grows"
Author: corbeaun
Fandom: Hikaru no Go
Disclaimer: Hikaru no Go belongs to Obata Takeshi and Hotta Yumi.
Pairing: pre- Ko Yeongha/Hon Suyeong
Summary: Three years is a long time when you're sixteen and thirteen. A slice of Ko Yeongha's life, and all the things he cannot let himself want. Post-Hokuto Cup.
A/N: So, uh, I didn't quite get to the Yeongha/Suyeong part of your prompt, Luce Red. But think of this as a prequel to the first-time fic I still owe you. ^^;
Written for issen4 in the fifthmus holiday fic exchange, here.
As the Grass Grows
At the sound of a key turning in the hotel room door, Yeongha looked up from the magazine article. Outside, muffled through the wall, he heard a familiar voice saying goodnight to their chaperon. When he glanced at the bedside clock, he saw that it was nearly eleven - almost Suyeong's curfew. Then Suyeong walked into the room, locking the door behind him.
"How was your game with Shindo?" Yeongha asked offhandedly, already turning his attention back to the penguin article.
"I lost. Again."
The grim tone gave Yeongha pause. He put aside the magazine and looked closely at the boy now kneeling beside the other bed, picking sullenly at his shoelaces.
"Next time then," he suggested awkwardly. He wasn't used to offering kindness in the face of failure, but he was fond of Suyeong. Ko Yeongha seldom liked anyone; he found most people insufferably inadequate. Hon Suyeong, however, was different.
Suyeong shot him a dark look and kicked his tennis shoes into the corner. "And next time, Ko Yeongha," he scowled, "you can just shut up."
At that, Yeongha leaned against the headboard of the hotel bed and laced his hands behind his head. "Still upset I teased your rival?" he smirked. He was relieved they'd moved so quickly past Suyeong's defeat; he knew how important that rematch had been for him. Yeongha wasn't sure he could handle a miserable Suyeong. Irritating him, however, was another matter.
Suyeong glared at him. "Are you five?" he demanded, and wrenched viciously at the knot of his necktie. Then he turned the death glare on the tie when it refused to budge.
Yeongha smiled, unaccountably amused. It was, he realized, strangely endearing how Suyeong forgot the right way of loosening a tie; somehow, he always ended up nearly strangling himself. Shaking his head, he got out of his bed and walked up behind the boy. "Here," he said, placing a hand over Suyeong's fingers, "you need to loosen this first." Patiently, with Suyeong's hand in his, he guided him through the process.
"Thanks," Suyeong muttered when the silk finally came apart in their hands.
Yeongha tugged the tie away from the boy's neck and tossed it onto the bedside table. "I'd like to say anytime, but you really do need to learn it." He paused, finally taking in the rest of Suyeong's considerably more casual clothes. "Why are you still wearing a tie anyway?"
The picture was exceedingly strange: Suyeong had changed into t-shirt and jeans to play against Shindo after the Hokuto Cup reward ceremony, but for some reason, the tie had remained around his neck.
The boy flushed. He mumbled something.
Yeongha frowned. "What?"
"I said," Suyeong ground out, face very red, "I tried to take it off but couldn't."
"And you couldn't have asked An Tenson or -" Yeongha stopped at the mortified look on Suyeong's face. "Right. None of their business." It was, in any case, a somewhat embarrassing inability to admit.
He supposed Suyeong's ensemble could have passed for what counted as fashion around here. Tokyo was notorious for it, after all. He patted him on the shoulder. "Don't worry - likely no one even noticed." But he couldn't stop the small smirk that escaped.
Suyeong batted his hand away. "Oh, shut up," he muttered.
Chuckling, he raised his hands and backed away, intending to dress for sleep.
"Hey." Suyeong's sudden voice made him turn around. He saw the boy studying him suspiciously. "How come you're back so early? Shouldn't you be in Roppongi or some place, trying out the Tokyo nightlife?"
"Why, Hon Suyeong," Yeongha raised an eyebrow. "Is this your way of suggesting I should find a woman?" He watched, amused, as the boy turned a fascinating shade of red. Really, Suyeong's skin seemed almost made for blushing. Yeongha wondered if that was partly why he so liked to tease the boy.
"Yeongha!" the boy spluttered.
He decided to take pity on him. "This is hardly my first visit to Tokyo," he answered. Walking over to his suitcase, he took out his pajamas. "Besides," he added, speaking over his shoulders, "been to one club, been to them all."
"What are they like?" Suyeong asked from behind him, sounding intensely curious.
He pulled his sweatshirt over his head, making sure to keep on his undershirt. "Nothing much. Loud, crowded. Horrific music choices. Oh, and the half-naked girls," he added, almost as an afterthought. Then he glanced slyly over at Suyeong. "I suppose you would be interested in that, pumped full of adolescent hormones as you are."
Suyeong blushed fiercely at that, but only retorted, "You're only three years older than me, Ko Yeongha."
"Well," Yeongha responded, buttoning his pajamas top, "it's clearly three very long years."
The boy scowled at him from his much shorter height and then walked into the bathroom, shutting the door pointedly behind him.
Yeongha laughed a little. Suyeong was decidedly touchy about his shortness, and Yeongha never tired of needling him about it. As he got into his bed, he wondered idly if it'd help to point out that Shindo Hikaru was the same height at two years older than Suyeong's age. But then he shook his head mentally - no, probably best to leave out all mention of Shindo with Suyeong; the boy was fixated enough on him as it was.
He waited until he heard the bathroom door open again and then the nearby mattress creak as Suyeong got into bed, before turning off the bedside lamp.
He pretended not to hear when Suyeong muttered a quiet, "Thanks."
* * *
Yeongha had heard of a boy named Hon Suyeong, who everyone said was going to be a pro one day. Some even went as far as to call him the next Ko Yeongha. Yeongha, upon hearing this, only smirked. He had been a pro for just a year, but during that time he'd already cowed the local opposition. He gave himself two more years, at the most, before taking down the Meijin. With that end in mind, he entered the international circuit. Meanwhile, let Hon Suyeong be tagged with Yeongha's name if he wanted, Yeongha had thought. It was clear, in any case, that there was only one Ko Yeongha.
Then, for the first time, Suyeong dropped a rank among the kenkyuusei.
Yeongha heard of this because, despite himself, he had been curious about the boy who everyone thought had such a bright future, and some of his games had caught Yeongha's eye. He wondered how this prodigy would handle this first taste of defeat. When he learned later that the boy had failed the pro exam, Yeongha had felt a brief pang of disappointment. But he quickly pushed that aside. After all, Hon Suyeong wouldn't be the first, or even the most promising, to break under the pressure. Yeongha gave no more thought to it. He didn't expect to hear of him again.
He was wrong.
It was only a week after Touya Meijin abruptly announced his retirement; Yeongha had felt out of sorts for just as long. So when he went to relax - intending to recreate some of his better games - but instead saw a boy sitting at his customary table in the playing hall of the Institute, he was even less inclined than normal to be civil. Not that Ko Yeongha felt all that polite anyway, but, normally, he was a very convincing actor.
"You," he snapped at the boy, slamming his palm on the board, "find another table."
The boy at first looked startled by the interruption, then annoyed. His face flushed angrily. "You find another table," he retorted. "This one's taken."
Yeongha frowned, unused to being opposed. "Look, boy -"
"My name is Hon Suyeong!"
He raised a derisive eyebrow. "Is that supposed to mean something to me?"
But in fact, it did. It surprised Yeongha suddenly coming face to face with the boy. He looked younger than Yeongha had thought he would be. And that he was here again, playing baduk in the institute...
The boy's face was red with indignation. "We will have one game." He glared at Yeongha. "The loser scrams."
"Done," Yeongha smirked. He felt some of his bad mood lifting. He pulled out the chair opposite Suyeong and sat down. "What handicap do you want?"
"I'm going to be a pro! So you can just take your stones and sh-"
The boy of course lost.
But for the first time in a long while Yeongha was not disappointed. He had known then that the next time Hon Suyeong took the exam he would pass it.
When Suyeong, scowling, pushed back his chair to leave the table as agreed, Yeongha stopped him.
"You can stay." When Suyeong stared, disbelieving, he shrugged. "I changed my mind," he said only. "And call me Yeongha."
And that was the beginning of their friendship.
* * *
"Nuna, I'm home."
His older sister looked up from the living-room table. Papers and draw plans spilled over the tabletop and onto the floor. "Welcome back," she smiled distractedly, already turning back to her work. "Was the taxi-ride back from the airport okay? Sorry I couldn't pick you up. Oh, food's in the fridge."
Yeongha carried his small suitcase into his bedroom, before going into the kitchen. "The taxi was alright. Shared the fare with Suyeong. Hmm, yeolmu cold noodles," he commented as he lifted the bowl from the refrigerator. His sister cleared a small space for him on the table, and he set the bowl down before sitting on the floor beside her.
"It thought it fitting, since it's almost summer," she replied absently, scribbling on a sheet and then flipping it aside.
He chewed thoughtfully on a slice of fermented baby-radish. "Take-out?" he asked.
His sister looked up briefly from her papers. "Oh, of course," she smirked.
Yeongha smirked back. His sister's abhorrence of cooking was legendary; sometimes, Yeongha wondered how she planned to marry. Wives were, after all, supposed to know how to cook. He didn't plan on saying any of this to his sister, though, as he had a healthy sense of self-preservation. She already made him launder his own clothes.
"So," he picked up a strand of buckwheat noodle with his chopsticks, "how's the husband-hunting going?"
She waved one hand loosely at him, her other hand continuing to make corrections on the document. "Just well enough to keep our mom off my back," she muttered. "I think I can put her off for another three months."
He raised an eyebrow, and murmured, "Amazing, another whole year of freedom."
His sister had been putting off their mother for quite a while now, ever since he'd come to live with her in Seoul in fact, by perfunctorily attending marriage meetings but never quite following through. She claimed the men were all too intimidated by her.
She laid down her pen, and looked at him. "Mock all you want, but you're going to know what I mean soon enough." She cocked an eyebrow at him. "You're already making good money, and in a few years you'll be over twenty; you'll be swimming in matchmakers then. I keep telling mom you're the one she should focus on, since you'll be carrying on the family name." She smirked. "I'm just the girl."
Yeongha drank down the cold broth in one gulp, and hurriedly stood up. This was not a conversation topic he wanted to encourage.
"Alright, alright," he apologized. "I'm sorry I made light of your situation. I'll see what I can do when mom comes here in a few weeks."
His sister smiled graciously at him. "Why thank you, little brother, that's very thoughtful of you. Now please, go away - I need to finish this contract before morning."
Since it was her apartment, he let her drive him from the living room, and went into the kitchen to wash his dirty bowl and utensils.
Afterwards, he slowly rinsed the suds off his hands, and sighed.
He hadn't said anything to his sister, but Yeongha didn't relish the idea of matrimony - for more than one reason.
* * *
He hadn't exactly been honest with Hon Suyeong when he'd implied he hadn't gone out at all into downtown Tokyo. He had - only it hadn't been to Roppongi Hills, crowded as it was with young, sleekly groomed Japanese women.
Instead, that last day in Japan, as soon as the rewards ceremony was over, he'd quietly gone back to the hotel room and changed out of his suit. In slacks and a red shirt with the top buttons artfully undone, he'd then slipped out of the hotel without passing either Suyeong or their supposed chaperones.
It did not take long to find his way to the heart of Tokyo's metropolitan gay life.
Taking the underground walkway from Shinjuku Station's East Exit as the sun set, he walked into a neon-lit backdrop of 24-hour love motels, fetish sex boxes, karaoke bars, and clubs whose signs shouted, in multicolored lights, words in English like G. Shower and, simply, Dick. It was the Ni-chōme as he remembered it.
Yeongha bypassed the small bars and the large clubs, and headed directly for a place where he knew fluency in the Japanese language was superfluous. His age wasn't an impediment: he hadn't had trouble passing for his twenties the last time he'd been here, and that had been nearly a year ago, and he'd grown at least four inches since then.
The sauna had raised its admission fee since his last visit, but it was within a reasonable range. Yeongha paid the machine and then took the ticket with him to the counter, where he asked in halting English for the sauna's complimentary robes, towels and key to the clothes locker. The attendant handed them to him, fingers sliding along his as he did so.
Yeongha smiled at the man - politely, because it never paid to antagonize the man who held the key to your clothes, but without any interest because he wasn't what Yeongha was looking for - before going to the lockers to change.
Then he walked upstairs to the showers and steam rooms, the place that did hold what he was seeking.
It didn't take long before a likely looking man approached him. From his carefully calculated sprawl on the steam benches, Yeongha studied the stranger. He was just beneath Yeongha's height, medium for a Japanese, with nicely defined pectorals where the robe gaped open in front, and he smiled easily at Yeongha as he sat down on the bench beside him. He said something in Japanese.
Yeongha smiled slightly and shook his head. "Wakaranai," he said. "I don't understand." It was a useful phrase he'd learned from Suyeong.
"Ah, sou desu ka..." the man said wryly. He held out a hand inquiringly and, when Yeongha continued to look amendable, touched his temple where the hair strained against the unusual tension that Yeongha had put them in when he'd pulled them back in the ponytail. From experience, Yeongha knew that the humidity of the steam room had turned his usually russet-dyed hair a dark, unrecognizable brown.
The man's fingers were rough and calloused against his face - a workman probably. Not a baduk player, he had to remind himself, the lines between fantasy and reality blurring.
"O.K.?" the man asked breathlessly, with accented English, in his ear.
Closing his eyes, Yeongha thought of the lines outside carefully gridded boards; cold, brittle stones; and pretty Japanese boys who faced him with sure hands and dark, desperate eyes.
The man's hands had slid down Yeongha's side to rest warm and heavy against his waist. He pressed his hips inquiringly against Yeongha's - and Yeongha was suddenly, desperately hard.
Breath catching, Yeongha agreed. "Okay." He didn't have more time to cruise, anyway, before one of the chaperones from the Korean team started wondering where he was. "Okay," he repeated, and let the man pull him up from the bench and lead him upstairs to the beds.
When he left the sauna an hour later, trading in his robe, towels and clothes locker key, the attendant gave him a knowing wink.
Yeongha was back in his hotel room, already showered and changed, and reading a magazine he'd bought downstairs, by the time Hon Suyeong finally came back from his game with one Shindo Hikaru. Later, when Yeongha changed into his sleep clothes, he made sure that the pajamas covered anything too incriminating - so that Suyeong needn't ask any difficult questions, and he needn't lie.
* * *
The phone rang in the living room.
"Nuna!" he called out, not bothering to stop his perusal of Touya Kouyo's latest amateur game records.
No one answered and, meanwhile, the phone kept ringing incessantly. After giving it another full fifteen seconds, he sighed. Then he pushed back his chair and strode into the living room; he picked up the receiver. "Ko residence," he said perfunctorily. He glanced around the apartment but didn't see his sister anywhere - she must have gone out immediately after returning from work. Probably looking to relax after that taxing visit from their mother.
"Have you seen the Hokuto Cup article?"
It was Suyeong, his voice demanding and sounding more than a little stressed.
"Oh, hello Suyeong." He took the cordless with him as he walked back to his room. "Are you coming over today?" He sat back down at his desk and flipped distractedly through Touya Kouyo's game records; the former Meijin was playing erratically lately, almost as if he was changing game styles again. It was quite bothersome.
"Are you listening?" Suyeong voice demanded tinnily from the receiver. "Do you know what they're printing about you?"
At that, Yeongha paused and gave the telephone his full attention. It had been a full week since the team had arrived back at Seoul from the Hokuto Cup. They had gotten a complete hero's welcome, with photo opportunities and hoards of young, impressionable kenkyuusei clamoring for his autograph. Yeongha couldn't see how that could go wrong.
He grabbed the latest baduk newsletter from a nearby pile. "Why?" he said, "did the picture turn out badly?" With one hand, he flipped through the pages, looking for the photo the reporters had taken of him and the rest of Team Korea.
His hand stilled on the newsletter when Suyeong read him a passage from something. It was an article and it rang the gamut from accusing him of being a poster child for the Korea-Japan resentment to pompous, juvenile posturing. "It's the Japanese Weekly Go," the boy concluded tightly. "I translated."
Yeongha tapped the receiver thoughtfully. "Why are you even reading that?" he said finally.
"That's all you have to say?" the boy demanded.
Even knowing Suyeong couldn't see him, he raised an eyebrow at the receiver, amused. "Well, I did utter the words they quoted me on. What they make of it is their business." He pushed the baduk newsletter away from him. Absently, he wondered if that funny little man with the buckteeth had written the article. Probably. People were predictable that way.
"And you don't care? How you're seen by other people?"
"It's an opinion that is well within their right to make." Yeongha was getting bored with all this. Why was Suyeong being so adamant about his reputation anyway? He still remembered how, during the Hokuto Cup, the boy had smacked him with a pillow over the same issue. "And anyway," he drawled, leaning back in his chair, "I won. This article only makes the Japanese sound like sore losers." Which was too bad, since that was not the impression he got of the Japanese pros, especially one Shindo Hikaru.
There was a pause on the other side of the line. Then, "I...I guess," Suyeong agreed reluctantly.
Yeongha sighed, fond but exasperated. The boy really needed to learn not to let the press get to him. "Was that all?" he asked, flipped absently through the game records in front of him.
"...yeah."
"I'll see you tomorrow then."
And without saying goodbye, Yeongha hung up, as was his habit.
The next day, Suyeong called him to say he'd be late for their usual afternoon game - something about planning for a school festival. Yeongha, having been out of the compulsory education system and all the activities it entailed for two years by then, was amused to be reminded that Suyeong was still caught up in all that. Usually he remembered their age difference - Hon Suyeong looked every inch his thirteen years, after all - but occasionally Yeongha was reminded in other ways.
Over the phone, he only said the new time was fine, before hanging up.
It was raining hard when Suyeong finally called him on the building intercom. Yeongha buzzed him up and when he opened the apartment door, he found a dripping-wet Suyeong standing out in the hall. At the sight, a burst of laughter escaped Yeongha. Suyeong looked like a wet kitten.
"I'm surprised the doorman let you in," he grinned, as the boy stalked past him into the apartment.
"I got off on the wrong bus stop, and then it started pouring," Suyeong muttered, dropping his wet backpack on the kitchen tiles. Then he pulled wretchedly at his drenched sweater.
Yeongha shook his head, laughing, at the boy's woebegone expression. "Here." He tugged Suyeong's hands away from the ruined wool, and gently pushed him in the direction of the bath. "Leave your wet things in the sink, and try to get warm. I'll lend you some of my stuff."
Suyeong looked at him gratefully and quickly disappeared into the bathroom to follow his directions.
The water was already running by the time Yeongha finally found some loose draw-pants and an old shirt that had shrunk in the wash. Briefly, he pondered on lending the boy underwear as well, but decided against it; it would be too awkward. Suyeong would just have to make do with what he had.
He knocked on the bathroom door to notify the boy he was coming in, before stepping into the steam-filled room.
Suyeong stuck his head out of the shower curtain. "Thanks," he said gratefully upon seeing the clothes Yeongha was laying on the counter.
"Try not to take too long," Yeongha replied, hiding an amused smile at the way the boy's hair stuck up around his head; it looked like Suyeong had found his sister's shampoo. But at least he no longer looked like a drowned kitten. "We have a few games to go over." He closed the bathroom door behind him.
As he waited for Suyeong to finish, he went back to the kitchen to grab some leftovers and the boy's backpack. The backpack was surprisingly heavy, and Yeongha weighed it curiously in his hand before bringing it into his room along with a plate of French pastries.
The sound of the shower had stopped. Yeongha found Suyeong waiting for him at the desk, already peering at Touya Kouyo's game records. The boy had rolled up the legs of the sweats and wrapped the drawstring securely around his waist; the shrunken shirt fit perfectly. His hair was still damp, however, and lay plastered against his head.
"Wow." Suyeong nodded toward the game records. Just like Yeongha, he had seen the anomaly at a glance. "What's going on with him?"
Yeongha raised a wry eyebrow. "That's what I would like to know as well," he said, putting the plate down on the desk next to Suyeong. The boy would be hungry soon. "He's going through more changes these two years than a beginning pro. Here." Yeongha dropped a towel on Suyeong's head. "Dry yourself."
Suyeong made face as the towel fell over his eyes and grabbed at it. Then he noticed the backpack Yeongha had brought with him. "Oh, let me get that. I have something to give you." Yeongha surrendered the bag into the boy's grasp, and watched curiously as Suyeong withdrew a thick brown package from it. "Here," he pushed the package at Yeongha, "this is for you."
"Why, Hon Suyeong," Yeongha grinned, catching the package in one hand, "I didn't know you cared."
"Hey!" Suyeong protested, his brows drawing sharply together, "It's what you asked me about - you know, the course books."
Yeongha, already unwrapping the package, paused at the sight of the revealed cover of Basic Japanese, Level I.
On the flight back from Tokyo nearly a month ago, he had made a mention of wanting to look at Yeongha's Japanese language books. He hadn't expected Suyeong to remember it though - after all, the boy had been half-asleep against his shoulder at the time.
"...Thanks," he murmured, randomly opening the book to the middle. The pages still had notes penciled in on the margins in Suyeong's neat handwriting.
When he got to the back flap, glossy prints spilled into his hand.
It was photos from the Hokuto Cup.
Yeongha remembered the tiny, disposable camera Suyeong had carried throughout the trip and how readily he'd used it. He looked back up, searchingly, at Suyeong.
Suyeong shrugged, looking a bit embarrassed, as Yeongha flipped through them. There were quite a few of the photos. "I picked out the ones you were in. Thought you'd like to have them," he said, in answer to the unspoken question.
Yeongha stopped abruptly. He stared at the man in the photo.
"Oh, sorry. That one got there by mistake."
"Where did you take that?" he said carefully.
"This? After the rewards ceremony, when Shindo and I were playing. Some of Touya Kouyo's old students dropped by." Suyeong pointed to a group of men at the edge of the picture. "Oh, that's the new Meijin."
God.
Yeongha felt the inside of his stomach turn. He'd known the name but not the face.
"The man who's smiling?" he asked with admirable calm.
"No, the one with the glasses. Um, the one you're talking about -" Suyeong seemed to think hard for a moment. "That's Ashiwara-pro, fifth rank."
Well. Good to know, at least, he hadn't fucked the newest Meijin on the fourth floor of the Ni-Yon Kaikan.
If he ever went to Tokyo again, he'll just have to avoid the man. Yeongha didn't think the fifth rank was the type for international tournaments; he'd have recognized the name if he did. He certainly didn't plan on repeating the encounter.
Yeongha had never intended to mix baduk with this side of his personal life.
"Hey. Yeongha."
He looked up to see Suyeong studying him. "Yes?" he said cautiously. Lately, ever since the Hokuto Cup in fact, he kept catching the boy looking at him - almost as if he expected Yeongha to pull another stunt like the one he'd goaded Shindo Hikaru with.
"Do you actually plan to learn Japanese?" Suyeong asked, his eyes intent on him.
Yeongha very carefully affected nonchalance. Sometimes the boy saw more than Yeongha was comfortable with. "Maybe." Let Suyeong think it a whim.
Suyeong's voice was decidedly suspicious. "You said I was wasting my time."
Yeongha shrugged, and tossed book and pictures onto the bed. "I changed my mind."
Suyeong frowned when he didn't elucidate further, but didn't ask any more questions - possibly knowing that the questions wouldn't get anywhere. And that made Yeongha uncomfortable as well.
"So," Yeongha said, covering up his discomfort with a smirk, "Ready for a quick game before we look at Kouyo's game records?"
And though Suyeong pressed him hard, Yeongha won that game. As he always did.
In the back of his mind, Yeongha wondered when Suyeong would finally catch up to him. When things would finally change.
But he didn't let himself think on it for long.
* * *
end "As the Grass Grows"