[Fic] My Blind Go fics (round 9)
Title: A Piece of Cake
Fandom: Hikaru no go
Characters: Shigeko, members of the Morishita study group
Genre: Gen
Rating: G
Word Count: 1000
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: Hikaru no go is the property of Yumi Hotta and Takeshi Obata. This is a nonprofit-making fanfiction
Author Notes: Written for blind_go round 9. A big thank you to my betas x_chocolatte and pyrrhic_victoly for their invaluble help. This ficlet was inspired by this manga mini chapter.
A Piece of Cake
Morishita-sensei loved his daughter Shigeko, although she was an enigma to him. From the very beginning, his efforts to nurture her love of Go, to guide her along the path he himself had followed, had borne no fruits. His children didn’t want to study Go, or even play it for that matter. What was more, they developed interests as disparate from his own as he could imagine.
*
"It looks too pretty to touch," said Saeki. An iced chocolate layer cake was the centre of everyone's attention. Shigeko held a shiny broad-bladed knife.
"I will have display cakes, of course, and cakes to serve, but it's always better to have a cake with a slice cut already. It's more inviting."
Tomorrow Shigeko would be opening her own café, and the study group was celebrating with the Morishitas, sitting in the cosy, coffee-scented environment she had created.
"Go ahead and cut it!" Waya begged.
"Waya!" said Morishita, firmly.
"Here, I'll do it," Shindou said, making a move for the knife.
Shigeko wagged her finger at him. "Saeki will cut the cake."
"Why?"
"Because he wants to really." She smiled.
*
Shigeko had always adored being taken out for treats to celebrate the victories large and small of the members of the study group. From an early age she would clamour for these outings and her boundless enthusiasm, though sometimes annoying, was undeniably infectious. As she grew into her teens, her mother sometimes feared she was playing one boy off against another, but it soon became clear, as it always had been to her 'dates', that romance was not what she was seeking.
She would ask to be invited to more luxurious and high class addresses whenever someone from the group moved up in Dan level or won a tournament; and always to enjoy some delectable cake or sundae. To Morishita, who had never liked sweet things, it seemed a frivolous waste of time. Some thought Shigeko had good taste, as she chose the most renowned establishments, while others simply thought it expensive. As she neared adulthood, she only became more discerning, recording her impressions in a blog she adopted for this purpose and conducting sweet and sticky culinary experiments.
*
The cake yielded under the knife, topping cracking slightly, letting fragments of chocolate fall to the plate. The blade came out red with dark crumbs stuck to it, a promise of something more dangerous under the icing; aromas of cocoa and strawberry escaped from the cut. Everyone watched as Saeki removed the first piece. The interior was dark, glistening with the sauce that covered the knife and was now running down the cake itself.
"Good work," Shigeko gestured as if to introduce the cake to them. "Now there's an invitation."
*
She had been warned that if she carried on like this, her figure would suffer. But Shigeko was undeterred. These were exceptional treats for exceptional moments - it was quality that counted, not quantity. And so she grew, from a small spark of optimistic energy to a lithe and vibrant young woman. Her interest in desserts from near and far grew also, and Morishita wondered if his students studied kifu as avidly as she studied recipes. When she was eighteen, she told her parents that she wanted to start her own business, a teahouse or café.
*
You didn't so much eat the cake but let it melt on your tongue, thought Saeki.
"Perfection," he said.
"And that is the perfect compliment," Shigeko replied. "Perfection is what I'll always be aiming for, though of course it means something different to everyone."
"You mean you can still find fault with this?" he asked, gesturing at the small chunk left on his plate.
"That way the cakes will keep on getting better!" She winked.
*
When she was twenty, she found the ideal premises - a small shop that had lain empty for several months. Morishita was not keen on the venture, but Shigeko was counting on his sponsorship. The previous business in this same shop, a tea salon, had been forced into liquidation. Faced with a barrage of cajoling and pleading, he repeated his gruffest "No". But finally, though hardened to Shigeko's persuasive nature, he was eventually swayed because the building was close to the Go institute. He could therefore watch over her and accompany her to work. Shigeko explained that the former tea salon had failed due to 'poor management decisions', notably the senseless barring of a whole sector of potential clientele, and since she would make no such blunders, the success of her business project was assured.
*
"Why did the last café here close?" asked Saeki.
"They banned insei and lower Dans, lost money and went bankrupt."
"Oh? I didn't even know I'd been banned," said Waya. "Not that I ever tried to get in. Seemed a bit of a snobby place. I always preferred a NcDo." Shigeko was staring at Waya hard. "But, err…everything will be different now, of course," he finished.
"But why ban Go players?" asked Shirakawa.
"I heard there was a brawl," said Shigeko's brother.
"Go players don't brawl." Morishita said, indignant, as Waya seemed to take a sudden interest in a spot on the floor. "It can't have been more than a heated post-game discussion."
"Perhaps it perturbed the refined atmosphere they were trying to keep," Shirakawa suggested. But he was looking sidelong, with a hint of suspicion, at Shindou, who seemed to be examining the same detail of the floor as Waya.
"You know how to deal with this kind of problem," Morishita said, pointing at his daughter with his spoon. It wasn't a question. So Shigeko, with her hands on her hips, the knife tucked in one of them, gave a firm nod.
*
Later, standing outside the shop as they left, Saeki looked up at the newly painted gold-on-green sign hung above the door.
"Do you think the joke's on us?" he wondered aloud.
"My daughter isn't joking," Morishita replied.
The sign read: 'The Spoon of God.'
FIN
Title: A World Without Go
Fandom: Hikaru no go
Characters: Waya, Nase
Genre: Gen
Rating: G
Word Count: 994
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: Hikaru no go is the property of Yumi Hotta and Takeshi Obata. This is a nonprofit-making fanfiction
Author Notes: Written for blind_go round 9. Thanks to my betas sidevocalist and x_chocolatte for their input and soundboarding.
Summary: Several years post-canon, in a far away city…
A World Without Go
Cold water trickled around his bare toes making him shiver in the night air. With a shoe in each hand and his feet in the thin layer of water, Waya strode into the fountain. Here, in the middle of a city, among crowds and noise, there was a childish delight in finding such a place. The fountain formed an enticing spiral pathway sunken into quay, with a rounded rock at the centre. Putting his shoes down there, he turned to look back up at Nase, who was standing laughing at the edge of the fountain. "Well what are you waiting for?" he called.
She stayed on the brink, her snug pink top bright under the harbour lights. Nase still looked as though she was seventeen he thought, as though she was still the insei she had been before she had left it all behind. Why she was hesitating? Did this seem silly to her? She took a step forward, but without removing her shoes, treading carefully so as not to let the water over the tops.
"There, where's the harm in that?" he said "What happened to your spontaneity? Don't you take chances anymore, do things to surprise people? It's like with-"
"Like with my Go?" she finished for him as she arrived at the bottom, and they both smiled because it had to be the tenth time today he'd likened something to Go. Then her expression changed; the smile turned mischievous. "Sometimes," she replied and, quicker than Waya could react, she'd snatched his shoes and was running back up out of the fountain and into the night.
"Wait! Nase! Wait for me! I don't know this city! Come back! I can't speak English!" Waya gave chase but, with her sneakers still on, Nase was faster. The hardness of the paving stones struck the soles of his feet as he ran after her, away from the streetlights and into the gloom of a park. He could see her pink top bobbing ahead and picked up speed as he felt soft earth beneath his feet. He could catch her, he was fitter than most Go pros, or so he often told himself; not that that was saying much. "Nase!" Then on an impulse he called her NetGo name: "Pachie!" Ahead of him he saw something strange. Her pink-clad form was moving upwards in the air. He approached. Shapes in the darkness took form as he recognized the outlines of swings and slides, they were in a playground, and Nase was climbing a rope net.
He started climbing toward the giggling, then realized she was on the other side of the net: hanging on with one hand and waving his shoes with the other. "Come back," he repeated, and, as he got within reach, he put a hand through the net and grabbed her ankle. The surprise almost made her lose her balance and she let go of the shoes as she clung on. They made a dull thud in the sand below and she gave another laugh, but just a tiny one.
Letting go, he climbed up level with her.
"Come back really, I mean." He forced himself to go on. "Why don't you come back to Japan?" He heard her catch her breath, but the darkness hid her expression.
"Don't tell me you haven't thought about it. You never really gave up, did you? you still play NetGo…Don't you Pachie?" With a single movement she released her hold on the net and pushed off into nothing, landing softly somewhere in the dark. He descended slowly; she was waiting.
"How did you find me on NetGo?" she asked. "You challenged 'Pachie' again and again…Why?"
He rounded the net, searching for his shoes. "There's a kind of play I always watch for on NetGo."
"You took me for Sai? You can't have! I lose so often." She sounded incredulous.
"But your style has a certain something that's like-"
"Oh, any player who's studied Shusaku would…" She trailed off. "Are you still hoping Sai'll come back?"
"I want to play him and I'd like to thank him too." Waya tied his shoes. "No one has done more for internet Go: great players flocking to the web, more people learning and more people on my website, downloading my Go problems, then my videos, and then I get a call from a TV company and…I'm better known in Japan than Shindou is, even though I'm nowhere near his level."
She said nothing and he wished it wasn't so damn dark, so he would have been able to see her face.
"People ask about you," he continued. "The girls who want lessons, so many saw you on the Ki-in poster. They all ask me what happened to you."
"Aren't those girls more interested in you?" she teased.
"They're interested in Go or they don't last five minutes in my study group!"
They started to walk back toward the lights. "It's hard to fail," she said, "At the pro exam, at the university entrance exam, at making a good marriage…And all because of Go. I want to do something well. I teach Japanese well." They made their way past sweet-smelling food courts, cafés and gaily-lit restaurant boats along the waterfront. The place bathed in a backdrop of pop music, giving the sensation of an eternal Friday night. Finally, beneath the rising whine of a monorail train, they made for the ferry port. "But I still dream of being a pro," she said. "And every year I find I'm counting the chances I have left. I guess then once I'm thirty those dreams will finally die away."
"But you've lost already if you never try," he said. "Come home Nase."
***
Standing together on the rear deck of a ferry, they watched the harbour lights grow smaller. "Maybe," she finally replied. It wasn't so much an answer as a promise that this was a game they would continue.
FIN
Fandom: Hikaru no go
Characters: Shigeko, members of the Morishita study group
Genre: Gen
Rating: G
Word Count: 1000
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: Hikaru no go is the property of Yumi Hotta and Takeshi Obata. This is a nonprofit-making fanfiction
Author Notes: Written for blind_go round 9. A big thank you to my betas x_chocolatte and pyrrhic_victoly for their invaluble help. This ficlet was inspired by this manga mini chapter.
A Piece of Cake
Morishita-sensei loved his daughter Shigeko, although she was an enigma to him. From the very beginning, his efforts to nurture her love of Go, to guide her along the path he himself had followed, had borne no fruits. His children didn’t want to study Go, or even play it for that matter. What was more, they developed interests as disparate from his own as he could imagine.
*
"It looks too pretty to touch," said Saeki. An iced chocolate layer cake was the centre of everyone's attention. Shigeko held a shiny broad-bladed knife.
"I will have display cakes, of course, and cakes to serve, but it's always better to have a cake with a slice cut already. It's more inviting."
Tomorrow Shigeko would be opening her own café, and the study group was celebrating with the Morishitas, sitting in the cosy, coffee-scented environment she had created.
"Go ahead and cut it!" Waya begged.
"Waya!" said Morishita, firmly.
"Here, I'll do it," Shindou said, making a move for the knife.
Shigeko wagged her finger at him. "Saeki will cut the cake."
"Why?"
"Because he wants to really." She smiled.
*
Shigeko had always adored being taken out for treats to celebrate the victories large and small of the members of the study group. From an early age she would clamour for these outings and her boundless enthusiasm, though sometimes annoying, was undeniably infectious. As she grew into her teens, her mother sometimes feared she was playing one boy off against another, but it soon became clear, as it always had been to her 'dates', that romance was not what she was seeking.
She would ask to be invited to more luxurious and high class addresses whenever someone from the group moved up in Dan level or won a tournament; and always to enjoy some delectable cake or sundae. To Morishita, who had never liked sweet things, it seemed a frivolous waste of time. Some thought Shigeko had good taste, as she chose the most renowned establishments, while others simply thought it expensive. As she neared adulthood, she only became more discerning, recording her impressions in a blog she adopted for this purpose and conducting sweet and sticky culinary experiments.
*
The cake yielded under the knife, topping cracking slightly, letting fragments of chocolate fall to the plate. The blade came out red with dark crumbs stuck to it, a promise of something more dangerous under the icing; aromas of cocoa and strawberry escaped from the cut. Everyone watched as Saeki removed the first piece. The interior was dark, glistening with the sauce that covered the knife and was now running down the cake itself.
"Good work," Shigeko gestured as if to introduce the cake to them. "Now there's an invitation."
*
She had been warned that if she carried on like this, her figure would suffer. But Shigeko was undeterred. These were exceptional treats for exceptional moments - it was quality that counted, not quantity. And so she grew, from a small spark of optimistic energy to a lithe and vibrant young woman. Her interest in desserts from near and far grew also, and Morishita wondered if his students studied kifu as avidly as she studied recipes. When she was eighteen, she told her parents that she wanted to start her own business, a teahouse or café.
*
You didn't so much eat the cake but let it melt on your tongue, thought Saeki.
"Perfection," he said.
"And that is the perfect compliment," Shigeko replied. "Perfection is what I'll always be aiming for, though of course it means something different to everyone."
"You mean you can still find fault with this?" he asked, gesturing at the small chunk left on his plate.
"That way the cakes will keep on getting better!" She winked.
*
When she was twenty, she found the ideal premises - a small shop that had lain empty for several months. Morishita was not keen on the venture, but Shigeko was counting on his sponsorship. The previous business in this same shop, a tea salon, had been forced into liquidation. Faced with a barrage of cajoling and pleading, he repeated his gruffest "No". But finally, though hardened to Shigeko's persuasive nature, he was eventually swayed because the building was close to the Go institute. He could therefore watch over her and accompany her to work. Shigeko explained that the former tea salon had failed due to 'poor management decisions', notably the senseless barring of a whole sector of potential clientele, and since she would make no such blunders, the success of her business project was assured.
*
"Why did the last café here close?" asked Saeki.
"They banned insei and lower Dans, lost money and went bankrupt."
"Oh? I didn't even know I'd been banned," said Waya. "Not that I ever tried to get in. Seemed a bit of a snobby place. I always preferred a NcDo." Shigeko was staring at Waya hard. "But, err…everything will be different now, of course," he finished.
"But why ban Go players?" asked Shirakawa.
"I heard there was a brawl," said Shigeko's brother.
"Go players don't brawl." Morishita said, indignant, as Waya seemed to take a sudden interest in a spot on the floor. "It can't have been more than a heated post-game discussion."
"Perhaps it perturbed the refined atmosphere they were trying to keep," Shirakawa suggested. But he was looking sidelong, with a hint of suspicion, at Shindou, who seemed to be examining the same detail of the floor as Waya.
"You know how to deal with this kind of problem," Morishita said, pointing at his daughter with his spoon. It wasn't a question. So Shigeko, with her hands on her hips, the knife tucked in one of them, gave a firm nod.
*
Later, standing outside the shop as they left, Saeki looked up at the newly painted gold-on-green sign hung above the door.
"Do you think the joke's on us?" he wondered aloud.
"My daughter isn't joking," Morishita replied.
The sign read: 'The Spoon of God.'
FIN
Title: A World Without Go
Fandom: Hikaru no go
Characters: Waya, Nase
Genre: Gen
Rating: G
Word Count: 994
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: Hikaru no go is the property of Yumi Hotta and Takeshi Obata. This is a nonprofit-making fanfiction
Author Notes: Written for blind_go round 9. Thanks to my betas sidevocalist and x_chocolatte for their input and soundboarding.
Summary: Several years post-canon, in a far away city…
A World Without Go
Cold water trickled around his bare toes making him shiver in the night air. With a shoe in each hand and his feet in the thin layer of water, Waya strode into the fountain. Here, in the middle of a city, among crowds and noise, there was a childish delight in finding such a place. The fountain formed an enticing spiral pathway sunken into quay, with a rounded rock at the centre. Putting his shoes down there, he turned to look back up at Nase, who was standing laughing at the edge of the fountain. "Well what are you waiting for?" he called.
She stayed on the brink, her snug pink top bright under the harbour lights. Nase still looked as though she was seventeen he thought, as though she was still the insei she had been before she had left it all behind. Why she was hesitating? Did this seem silly to her? She took a step forward, but without removing her shoes, treading carefully so as not to let the water over the tops.
"There, where's the harm in that?" he said "What happened to your spontaneity? Don't you take chances anymore, do things to surprise people? It's like with-"
"Like with my Go?" she finished for him as she arrived at the bottom, and they both smiled because it had to be the tenth time today he'd likened something to Go. Then her expression changed; the smile turned mischievous. "Sometimes," she replied and, quicker than Waya could react, she'd snatched his shoes and was running back up out of the fountain and into the night.
"Wait! Nase! Wait for me! I don't know this city! Come back! I can't speak English!" Waya gave chase but, with her sneakers still on, Nase was faster. The hardness of the paving stones struck the soles of his feet as he ran after her, away from the streetlights and into the gloom of a park. He could see her pink top bobbing ahead and picked up speed as he felt soft earth beneath his feet. He could catch her, he was fitter than most Go pros, or so he often told himself; not that that was saying much. "Nase!" Then on an impulse he called her NetGo name: "Pachie!" Ahead of him he saw something strange. Her pink-clad form was moving upwards in the air. He approached. Shapes in the darkness took form as he recognized the outlines of swings and slides, they were in a playground, and Nase was climbing a rope net.
He started climbing toward the giggling, then realized she was on the other side of the net: hanging on with one hand and waving his shoes with the other. "Come back," he repeated, and, as he got within reach, he put a hand through the net and grabbed her ankle. The surprise almost made her lose her balance and she let go of the shoes as she clung on. They made a dull thud in the sand below and she gave another laugh, but just a tiny one.
Letting go, he climbed up level with her.
"Come back really, I mean." He forced himself to go on. "Why don't you come back to Japan?" He heard her catch her breath, but the darkness hid her expression.
"Don't tell me you haven't thought about it. You never really gave up, did you? you still play NetGo…Don't you Pachie?" With a single movement she released her hold on the net and pushed off into nothing, landing softly somewhere in the dark. He descended slowly; she was waiting.
"How did you find me on NetGo?" she asked. "You challenged 'Pachie' again and again…Why?"
He rounded the net, searching for his shoes. "There's a kind of play I always watch for on NetGo."
"You took me for Sai? You can't have! I lose so often." She sounded incredulous.
"But your style has a certain something that's like-"
"Oh, any player who's studied Shusaku would…" She trailed off. "Are you still hoping Sai'll come back?"
"I want to play him and I'd like to thank him too." Waya tied his shoes. "No one has done more for internet Go: great players flocking to the web, more people learning and more people on my website, downloading my Go problems, then my videos, and then I get a call from a TV company and…I'm better known in Japan than Shindou is, even though I'm nowhere near his level."
She said nothing and he wished it wasn't so damn dark, so he would have been able to see her face.
"People ask about you," he continued. "The girls who want lessons, so many saw you on the Ki-in poster. They all ask me what happened to you."
"Aren't those girls more interested in you?" she teased.
"They're interested in Go or they don't last five minutes in my study group!"
They started to walk back toward the lights. "It's hard to fail," she said, "At the pro exam, at the university entrance exam, at making a good marriage…And all because of Go. I want to do something well. I teach Japanese well." They made their way past sweet-smelling food courts, cafés and gaily-lit restaurant boats along the waterfront. The place bathed in a backdrop of pop music, giving the sensation of an eternal Friday night. Finally, beneath the rising whine of a monorail train, they made for the ferry port. "But I still dream of being a pro," she said. "And every year I find I'm counting the chances I have left. I guess then once I'm thirty those dreams will finally die away."
"But you've lost already if you never try," he said. "Come home Nase."
***
Standing together on the rear deck of a ferry, they watched the harbour lights grow smaller. "Maybe," she finally replied. It wasn't so much an answer as a promise that this was a game they would continue.
FIN