Heat 2: Black - submitted by seven
Prompt: high fidelity
When the doorbell rings at ten in the morning and Tsutsui sees who is standing outside, he runs through the list of possible reasons Touya Akira might be on his doorstep and comes up with nothing.
"Can I help you?" he asks, blinking owlishly behind his glasses. Touya the younger hasn't changed much since the last time he'd seen the other man, but then he's seen photographs too, working for the small igo section of a local newspaper. Touya carries with him a goban but no stones as if he's come half-ready to play, but the idea that Touya would go to him for a game in the first place is laughable.
Touya's fingers brush over the board, almost absentmindedly. "Shindou-kun told me once he'd left a letter with you to give to me if he'd... passed away and I asked. I was to tell you that it was 'written after a promise he made me'. If you'd please retrieve it, I'd be grateful."
Oh, I guess he is dead then, is Tsutsui's first thought. If Hikaru is indeed dead and not just missing, Touya has a very, very good reason to be on his doorstep after all, and said reason sits like an elephant in his (very, very small) apartment. "Come in," he blusters. "Can I get you something to drink while you wait? Water? Tea?" He has never been so thankful as now that he habitually makes a pot so it's ready to pour at Touya's nod to the last. Funny how he's forgotten the letter was meant for Touya, because he's stared at its manila envelope too many times to count recently. He wonders what could be in there that is so important, that Hikaru has left it to be said only when he's gone.
It would make the rumours that Touya had killed first Hikaru and then Ogata very interesting, if he didn't know Touya so well. So far, it's still impossible to create the Hand of God alone.
But it's an ordinary envelope that he hands to Touya, with - when Touya unseals it - an ordinary bundle of parchment within. Touya's expression gentles as he begins to read, interspersed occasionally with soft chuckles that only further prick Tsutsui's curiosity. Why leave the envelope with him, he thinks, and not ensure it through legal means? Why the letter at all? He can't really believe Hikaru is dead.
(Except he handed the letter over anyway, so perhaps, somewhere inside him, he does.)
Then, "Thank you, this explains a lot," and Touya leaves his apartment with more questions and no new answers.
------
"You could have just told me the whole thing," Akira chides, back in the familiarity of his apartment. Shindou's familiar laugh echoes from the go board, and Touya can almost see the mental shrug the spirit must be giving him. He wonders not for the first time whether he's going crazy, but Shindou's letter helps ground things to reality a little. He's pretty sure Shindou wasn't crazy-- well, he's pretty sure Shindou wasn't delusional during all the time they'd known each other.
Sai was a ghost who'd haunted Shindou's old goban. Shindou now is stuck in a goban. He's still trying to wrap his mind around the whole thing. "So you have an... affinity for the supernatural," and if that wasn't the greatest understatment Akira has ever made, given Shindou's current situation, he doesn't know what is. But perhaps Shindou's previous experiences are why he can communicate through the board when no one else can, and maybe it means they're all in there and maybe they can all come back. "And you're real."
"Yeah," Shindou replies. If Akira closes his eyes, it's almost as if the other man were actually there with him. God, besides Shindou, how many people had been taken in before? "Hey, Akira, can you do me a favour?" He nods, and then remembers Shindou can't see it and repeats it verbally. "Great! Play a game with me, it'll be just like blind go."
It's no hardship playing with go with Shindou, at least. As they play, they talk; he thanks Shindou for trusting him with Sai's story, and Shindou jokes back that he 'better be thankful! You're the only person alive who knows.'
"You're alive," he insists at that, and before Shindou can protest, he adds, "You can still play go." Shindou laughs again, a warm sound. They play well into the night, and before Akira falls asleep, Shindou assures him that Tsutsui Kimihiro is a trustworthy person and to go ahead with his plans.
------
Tsutsui's pretty sure the world is spinning slightly off-kilter when he finds Touya on his doorstep again. "Er, hello?"
"You can't pass on to anyone what I'm about to tell you," Touya is saying, without so much as a greeting in return. He almost misses Touya's words at the fact that the other man is just. Inviting himself in! Of all the nerve! Touya is carrying that goban again, with no stones again, he notices distractedly amidst his indignation. But his mind is quickly dragged back. "So when Shindou-kun lost to Ogata, whatever spirit or curse residing within this board activated and swallowed his body into it," is pretty attention-catching after all.
Hikaru what!? Strange events have always surrounded Hikaru, but that's a little hard to, ah, swallow. "S-sorry, can you repeat that?"
Laid out and complete, the entire story is still hard to wrap his mind around. Touya had been doing research on the goban's path even before he came to him, following it from China to Korea to China again before hitting Japan. One of the opponents Ogata had been playing is now considered missing; Touya believes that that man was the previous owner, before the man lost to Ogata. (The kifu itself is an interesting read - the game dragging on far past where it should have ended.) Ogata became the owner of the board then, and when Hikaru lost to him as well Hikaru too was eaten. And then Ogata lost to Touya.
Touya hasn't been playing, obviously, but the other man mentions to him that he's been playing against Shindou.
"You can talk with the people in the board?" he asks. It'd make things so much easier.
"No," Touya replies. "Just Shindou-kun. You can't hear him?"
Maybe it's because Touya is the current owner of the board. More importantly, Hikaru might still be alive. "So... what do we have to do?"
Akira smiles then, a small smile but a smile nonetheless. "Shindou-kun was right about you. Would you happen to know a reliable exorcist?"
An exorcist. Tsutsui thinks, he might know someone who might know someone, before grimacing. He never likes going to Kaga.