[Hikaru no Go] Fic: The Games of Spring
Title: The Games of Spring
Fandom: Hikaru no Go
Genre: Drama, Romance
Characters: Waya, Isumi
Wordcount: 1845Summary: Waya and Isumi spend May 5 like old farts: drinking beer (even though Waya is technically underage), playing the slowest game of go in the world, and not paying any attention to the Hokuto Cup that Waya failed to qualify for, no sirree. Submitted to Blind Go Round 18. Comes after "The Games of Summer" and "The Games of Winter."
Waya's neighbourhood featured exactly zero koi flags this year, and that was the way he liked it. He liked his skyline grey and bleak--no happy flappy fish to spoil his mood, no sirree.
"If Shindou were here," Isumi-san said, staring out the window, "I think he would be a little sad at how sad your neighbourhood is."
Waya made a face.
"He seems to have a thing for keeping up traditions," Isumi went on.
"But he's not here," Waya tried to keep the sourness out of his voice, "because he's in Korea, so he's hardly someone who treats golden week like a sacred family holiday either."
Isumi stepped away from the windowsill; he had to know Waya was stewing. "Personally, I'm glad we're not working during the holidays for once."
If that was Isumi's way of consoling Waya for not making it into the Hokuto Cup again, it wasn't working.
"Well," Isumi said, after an awkward moment, "if we're going to be bitter old men, let's do this properly."
Waya had two kinds of beer in his fridge--cheap and cheaper--but he'd started chilling the cans hours ago, and now they were crisply cold, dripping with condensation.
Isuni carried their beers to the kotatsu/dinner table/coffee table, while Waya set his goban on the floor next to it, not doling out the stones yet. The two of them sat down, not speaking, and opened their cans.
"I kind of hate spring," Waya said suddenly, after a moment of just drinking and thinking.
Isumi gave him a purposely bland look. "Why is that? Allergies?"
"No. I just hate...how emotional people get."
"Hate is an emotion too."
Waya ignored the baiting. He also tried to ignore what--or rather who--was actually bothering him. "You know, if I'd gone to high school," he said randomly, "maybe spring would mean something more to me. I'd remember graduation and I'd get all nostalgic about saying goodbye to my school friends…and stuff." Waya chugged down some beer; if he was going to outgrow the Hokuto Cup soon, he might as well enjoy being an old fart. "But I never had any hard goodbyes. Middle school was whatever. All my best friends are still with me."
"Yeah, I guess we are."
"Come to think of it," Waya said, trying not to think of a certain friend who wasn't here, "on grad day in middle school, there was this girl who confessed to me, like in all the dramas, and I just said, 'Huh, me? Are you sure?' I think she was expecting me to give her a button from my uniform or something."
"You are pretty clueless when it comes to those things, Waya."
Isumi sounded a bit regretful, even though it wasn't his middle school tragedy they were talking about here, and Waya wondered if this was going to turn into one of those oblique conversations about Morishita Shigeko that people always threw at him nowadays. "She wasn't my type anyway," he said, remembering that girl in middle school all too clearly. "Cute, but too short."
"Hm. Is this turning into an oblique conversation about Morishita-sensei's daughter?"
"Argh. She's not my type either."
"What is your type then?"
"Someone who isn't the daughter of my scary sensei."
"Besides that."
Isumi-san was being oddly insistent all of a sudden--must be the beer. "The classic tall-pale-slender-beauty type, I guess. Kind of like if you were a girl." Waya gave a rueful laugh into his can of alcohol. "Those types usually don't go for me though."
"Are you sure?"
"Sure I'm sure. The cute ones like me. Birds of a feather I guess."
"Are you saying you're cute?"
"And not particularly tall."
"That's actually my type."
"Yeah?" Waya sat up a little. "Can you go out with Shigeko then? So my mom will stop bugging me. Although I guess she's kind of super young for you."
Isumi didn't answer; he was taking an awfully long pull from his can. When he did speak, his voice was a bit lower than usual. "You're on your own with that one, Waya."
"Look, we'll make it an even trade. You go out with Shigeko, and I'll pretend to go out with Sakurai-sensei and get everyone off your back about her 'Shin-chan'ing you all the time. Although I guess I'm kind of super young for her..."
Isumi put down his can. "Waya, to be honest..."
"Sorry, sorry, I'll stop bugging you about that." Waya put his can down too; he had really hit a nerve there, hadn't he? "Anyway, since we're alone, there's something I've been meaning to ask you."
Isumi went still. "Yes?"
"Um, it's not like I've been thinking about this all the time or anything like that..." Waya hedged. "It's just that at this time of year, you know, with people being too emotional, every single year, I start wondering..."
Isumi looked way too serious, so Waya picked up his beer again and kept his voice light. "You don't have to answer if you don't want to. It's just, I've always wondered...how did you get Shindou to come back, when he quit go?"
Isumi blinked, and let out the breath he seemed to be holding. "Ah. That?"
"At the time I tried talking to him too, even went to visit him at home once, but it never took." Waya wiped some condensation off his beer can so he wouldn't have to look up. "How did you get him to listen to you?"
Isumi did not answer immediately. Instead he gazed down at the empty board and said, "Would you ask me if he were here?"
"No."
Isumi opened his mouth, didn't say a word, then opened both go-ke, took black for himself, and played a stone at 6-5. But Waya didn't move.
Finally, Isumi said, "I'm not sure it's my story to tell, Waya."
"Last summer we were here in this very spot when Shindou dropped that bombshell about what happened during the pro exam. Was that his story to tell?"
Isumi's eyes snapped up, flickering with emotion, and Waya immediately regretted his hasty words. But at the same time he felt a little angry at both of his friends--unfairly so, and it surprised him.
He took his own go-ke and played a white stone, because it was better than letting more stupid words come out of his mouth.
"Do you remember what Shindou said at the first Hokuto Cup, after he lost to Ko Yeongha?"
Waya looked up guiltily at Isumi--who was turned away, staring out the window at the grey spring sky.
"'To connect the far past and the distant future.' That's the reason he gave for why he plays go."
"I remember. What about it?"
Isumi still had that faraway look in his eyes, and Waya didn't like it, didn't like knowing his friends had this weird history between them that he wasn't a part of.
"That spring when he stopped playing...when I got back from China, it was right before the pro exam. To help me prepare, I asked him to finish the game we'd started during the exam."
"The one where..."
"Yes. He was reluctant to play, but I could also see that...he wanted to."
"That makes no sense."
"He looked like he was really hurting, Waya."
Hundreds of miles away, Shindou was probably playing a game right now. Waya could see it: eyes hard and bright with concentration, he would tap the side of goban with that resounding click of his fan, utterly inscrutable; but even as he destroyed you on the goban you could see there was something painful about the way he played.
"I still don't know what happened to him. And I don't know if he'll ever tell us. He has his share of secrets--we all do, him more than most." Isumi smiled, a little sadly, the corners of his mouth twisting upward gently. "Especially this time of year."
Waya sighed. "And that's it? That's the whole story of how you made him come back?"
"Yes. I'm sorry I never told you until now. I'm sorry if I made you feel left out." Isumi finally turned away from the window, and said, in his quiet Isumi-san way, "I try not to hide things from you, Waya."
"I know you don't."
Isumi-san was right. All these bits and pieces of Shindou they had, they were all part of the same puzzle, somehow. To connect the far past and the distant future. But Waya was beginning to think that even if he did get all the pieces together, if he went around talking to all the people who'd been subjected to Shindou's weirdness, Ochi and Kadowaki-san and Touya Akira--even then, he still wouldn't have the complete picture. Not unless...
"I think he'll tell us someday."
Isumi was watching him, as he always did, with those dark, serious eyes of his--almost as intense as Shindou's sometimes, but never in that annoying, mysterious way. Isumi wasn't a chronic secret-keeper.
"He'll tell you," Isumi said, "once he works up the courage."
And when will that be? Waya thought in the meaner side of his brain. But if Isumi said to wait, he would wait--no one knew more about patience, and finding courage, than Isumi.
"All right," said Waya. "But one of these days, if he doesn't tell, I might just ask him directly."
Isumi leaned his head on one hand. "Give him another year to figure himself out. That's about how long it took me."
"Next May, then, I'll make him 'fess up. Spring is the time for confessions after all, right?"
Isumi opened his mouth, then laughed way too hard for such a lame joke. "I suppose so. Come on, Waya. Enough maudlin' around." He tapped the goban. "In a real match, you'd have lost fifteen minutes of your time already."
"Oh, is that how it's going to be?"
"Come to think of it, that's what made me accidentally cheat during the pro exam...I was rushed because I was out of time."
"Yeah? I'll make sure to use that against you the next time we have an official match."
"Waya!" Isumi sounded more offended than he looked. "So that's what I get for pouring my heart out."
"Thanks for that!" Waya grinned. Then, in a slightly more serious voice: "I mean it. Thank you for telling me."
In response, Isumi slid a black stone onto the board--right beside Waya's one white stone. "That's what friends are for," he said, gesturing at the board.
"Already attacking? You big jerk. I take everything back."
"There are no take-backs once your hand leaves the stone. Go is a cruel game."
"Oh, now you're just fishing for sympathy. No mercy!"
"I wouldn't have it any other way."
And that was how a vicious killing game between friends began. It was, Waya thought, the perfect way to spend May 5th.
End.
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