[kudo norio]
A SEASON OF BLACK CHRYSANTHEMUMS: WINTER
by corbeaun
Winter
Part 1
* * *
[six years before]
Akira learned his love for the game from his father, who had made a ritual of sitting in front of the goban every morning, a steaming teacup by his side and the view of the Tokyo skyline glittering before him. His underlings had long ago learned to not disturb Touya Kouyo during this time of silent contemplation, where only the soft pachi of stones upon kaya wood interrupted the morning stillness.
Now, in his father's absence, Akira sat in Touya Kouyo's place before the goban. The shoji paper door leading into the back garden had been pushed aside, flooding the study room with the bright, cold light of morning. All over the house, white drapery now covered the walls - only the study room was left undisturbed. Dressed in his new black kimono, the stiff cloth chaffed at Akira's still tender shoulder where the colors had been newly tattooed. He did not place any stones on the board, and only turned a smooth, crisp stone over and over in his fingers, lost in thought.
Somewhere in the distance, a brass bell sounded and the priest's chanting began.
When Akira was much younger, and a schoolmate had asked what his father did for a living, he had replied earnestly that his father played go. To him, that was the truth. His father's dedication for the game was obvious for anyone to see, and Akira emulated his father wherever he could. Though he knew his father did not play professionally, he had simply thought that there was another kind of job for go lovers separate from the jobs of the go pros who his father often called over for a game. The go pros were inevitably escorted into his father's study room by a man from the numerous 'guards' stationed at their house. As a boy, Akira never even thought unusual the group of dark-suited young men with the occasional pompadour who trailed his father like personal shadows and replied to every comment of his father's with a clear, punctuated, "Hai!" To Akira, the men were either roughly indulgent or indifferent. He assumed the presence of these 'bodyguards' were the normal state of affairs in a large household.
Go was the only task he ever saw his father occupied with at the sprawling mansion within the genteel Meijiro neighborhood that Touya Kouyo had shared with him and his mother. This was deliberate. Only later would a much older Akira realize to what lengths his father had gone to ensure his young son never saw him involved in any overtly questionable dealings. The occasional older men in custom-fitted Italian suits and heavy Rolexes who visited his father, and drank sake behind closed doors, brought with them their own flock of tense, suited young guards.
Akira knew neither his paternal or maternal grandparents - his paternal grandparents being long dead; his maternal grandparents long estranged. Touya Kouyo's wife and Akira's mother was an intelligent, sophisticated woman who was born to a social class that did not readily lend itself to intermarriage with the criminal outcasts of the country. She was the prized daughter of a doctor educated at Todai, the Japanese equivalent of Harvard. Her parents had been devastated when she dropped out of college and abruptly married a then middling-level Yakuza boss; to add insult to injury, she gave birth to Akira only six months after the wedding. Her parents never forgave her.
But growing up, Akira did not know his family's history; he was ensconced safely within the protection of Touya Kouyo, oyabun of a rapidly growing faction within the Sumiyoshi crime family in dazzling, metropolitan Tokyo.
And until the day that protection had been suddenly shattered, Touya Akira had fervently believed he would walk the path that would lead him to the hand of god, exactly like his respected father.
Now, in the broken aftermath of that old, happy life, Akira gently stowed the go stone in its wooden pot. The chanting of the priest was growing louder in the distance, and now it was responded to by the wailing monotone of the mourners. Slowly, Akira straightened from his kneeling position before the goban. Straightening the wide sleeves of his kimono, he slid open the shoji door and stepped out of his father's former study room.
The time for contemplation was over.
He was his father's only son, and - despite his tender years - he knew what he must do.
* * *
[the present]
Hikaru cycled away from the main road and onto one of the many winding side streets that twisted through the famous old geisha district of Kagurazuka. The streets become narrower and narrower the further he went away from the main road, the worn wooden walls of old houses crowding in on him. Rain-slick stones passed beneath the tires of his bicycle, and occasionally the raised root of a tree broke through the cobbled ground. These closely packed houses blocked out the moon and the bright over-wash of light from the more industrial part of Tokyo. Only the pale pink glow filtered through the square paper sides of the red lanterns that hung along the eaves of the houses illuminated his path.
Cycling through these streets that had survived the bonfires of Allied bombing, Hikaru felt an almost superstitious silence fall over him. He almost expected, as if at any moment, he would catch a glimpse of white robes and long familiar black hair. Only the ordinary aroma of ramen wafting from the boxes tied securely behind his seat kept him in the now and then. Still, Hikaru felt an irrational sense of anticipation, as if something was going to happen that evening. What, he had no idea, but he hoped it was something good.
His world, since the days of his boyhood, had grown increasingly small and narrow over the years.
Finally he saw approaching up ahead an old, traditional wooden building with windows shuttered in bamboo. A tiny, kimono-clad woman came out of the ryotei to greet him. She looked askance at Hikaru's shoddy work wear, but smiled politely and, after he had removed his shoes in the foyer, ushered him to the small, traditional kitchen in the back. He quickly unpacked the boxes of ramen. Due to two hard years of practice, not a drop of soup had been spilled on the long uneven path he'd biked and the bowls were still steaming hot. The cook of the establishment and his few assistants greedily grabbed the bowls from him and proceeded to slurp down the noodles with relish. Hikaru waited beside the kitchen door for the woman who had greeted him to finish tallying up the bill. Light laughter drifted down the corridor from the main part of the house where the guests were dining. Hikaru hoped they enjoyed their high-priced food just as much as the cook and his assistants had the much cheaper ramen.
When the woman finally handed him the money for the noodles, Hikaru bowed his thanks and quickly took his leave. Outside, he righted his bicycle, now much lighter without its culinary burden, and slung a leg over the seat, ready to take off, when suddenly the tilt of a familiar, long-unseen head down the street thumped his heart into his throat.
"Touya," he breathed.
The figure was rapidly walking away from him, accompanied by a throng of suited men. The light from the geisha teahouse they'd just exited from illuminated without a doubt the face of his one-time rival. He still sported that same, pageboy cut. "Touya!" Hikaru shouted, heedlessly abandoning his bicycle to the ground.
In the distance, the figure stopped. The men around him tensed, until he leaned over to the one beside him and said something. With what seemed like great reluctance, the suits around Touya bowed perfunctorily and continued down the street without him. The dark, winding nature of old-fashioned Kagurazuka soon hid the men from sight. Only then did Touya turn around to face him.
The light from the late autumn moon showed Hikaru a face he'd never thought he would again see.
Hikaru run up to him until he was standing only a few feet away. He felt his face split in a large, uncontrollable grin. "It really is you!" He grabbed him by the shoulder, unthinkingly, wanting to make sure the other man was real. His shoulder was warm and reassuringly solid. Until then, Hikaru had still been deathly afraid he was wrong.
When Touya didn't reply, his smile faltered. "Don't you - don't you know me?" he asked haltingly, feeling disappoint beginning to roil his stomach. His hand dropped from Touya's shoulder. Hikaru stopped himself in time from reaching self-consciously to his no longer bleached bangs. It was nervous gesture Hikaru had developed in the past two years. The upkeep of the bleached bangs had proven too expensive, both money and time-wise, when he'd moved out on his own. Sometimes, he barely recognized himself in the mirror. Now, Hikaru wished he'd found some way to keep it, just so Touya would have known him without a doubt.
But then Touya spoke:
"Shindo. Shindo Hikaru."
His voice, sure and steady, was an octave lower than Hikaru remembered it being. They had been boys the last time they met.
"Right." Hikaru stared at Touya, finally fully taking in his gray, tailored slacks and his elegant cashmere overcoat. The years had been generous to him in a way it had not been for Hikaru. "How've you been, Touya?"
"All right. And you -" The other man hesitated. "The Go Institute must be feeling expansive."
"What?" Hikaru couldn't follow the sudden topic shift. What did the Japanese Go Institute have anything, anymore, to do with him? He had retired from his position as a professional go player years ago. Hikaru shook his head mentally, dismissing it: It was unimportant. There was only one thing he desperately wanted to know, a question that had plagued him for the past six years.
"Touya," he said, "what happened to you? That day, in the dan matches, you were finally supposed to play me -"
The sudden grip on his arm stopped him mid-word. "Not here." Though the streets were clearly empty, Touya glanced around tightly, and pulled Hikaru with him to the lit entrance of an old, teak and bamboo house further down the street. An old woman in a gray kimono came out and bowed to them.
Touya dropped Hikaru's arm and turned to him. "Are you here with anyone?" he asked quietly.
His question was unbelievably strange. Hikaru had to bike back to the ramen shop soon. Did Hikaru look like he could afford to visit Kagurazuka as a revered customer? "What? No -"
Touya's short nod cut off the sarcastic comment Hikaru had been about to voice.
"Good," Touya said curtly. "We can talk here." And walked into the house behind the old woman before Hikaru could even blink.
For a moment Hikaru hesitated. He knew he was already late and needed to hurry back to the shop. But he was afraid he'd never see Touya again if he left now. And that, he could not accept. This is important, Hikaru told himself firmly, he'll take the docked pay if he had to. Thus decided, Hikaru slipped off his shoes and followed.
The old woman ushered them into a small, private tatami-matted room with a view of an indoor rock garden. The room was otherwise empty. At a word from Touya, she bowed and left them, quietly sliding the shoji door shut behind her. Touya sat down on the floor. He waited until her shadow had retreated from the paper wall.
"We're ensured of privacy here," he told Hikaru.
"What is with all the cloak-and-dagger stuff? Touya," Hikaru looked at him warily from his seat across the tatami, "what did you get mixed up in? Does this -" He paused, then continued, "Does this have anything to do with why you disappeared that April?"
Touya laughed abruptly at that, a low, bitter sound that startled Hikaru. Hikura reached out across the mat, but then thought better of it. The aborted gesture was not lost on Touya. He cut off his laughter.
The sudden silence unnerved Hikaru just as much.
"My father is dead, Shindo." His voice was hoarse with unspoken emotion. "He died and I inherited the family business."
And saying that, he put a hand to his shoulder - the same one Hikaru had grabbed - and pulled down coat and shirt to expose his bare skin. Incised across his left bicep was the elaborate tattoo of burnt orange chrysanthemums - chrysanthemums for mourning and vengeance. Their entwined stems trailed along his upper arms and the feathered crest of a dragon there, before disappearing below his collarbone. Below the flowers and the winding, serpentine body, with a quarter of his torso laid bare, one could see easily the outlines of what was a spectacular full-body tattoo.
It was the ubiquitous emblem of the yakuza.
Hikaru felt his eyes widen in disbelief. When he looked back at Touya's face, Touya had drawn his lips back from his teeth in a cold, brittle smile. His voice, when he spoke, was just as cold:
"My father and mother were gunned down in a go parlor by a punk from a renegade faction. Six years ago, in April."
The news shocked Hikaru to stillness.
His memories recalled a large, stern rock of a man. He had bumped into him the day Hikaru took Sai to that first go tournament. Hikaru remembered how the suited men around the large, stern man had snarled at him to watch where he was going. The man himself had barely acknowledged him. At the time, Sai had blinked and stared strangely after the man as he and his bodyguards disappeared down the corridor. But when Hikaru had asked, the ghost had only shivered and said he felt like someone had walked over his grave.
Later, Hikaru had learned from news gleaned in less reputable go parlors that the man was Touya Kouyo, oyabun of one of the most rapidly rising factions within the Sumiyoshi of the Tokyo yakuza, and a dedicated go aficionado. Back then, Hikaru hadn't made the connection from him to Touya Akira, a rapidly rising star within the go world and rival after whom Hikaru so single-mindedly chased. The name Touya, after all, while not as common as Tanaka, was certainly not unique.
Now, the son was still speaking.
"The squabbling began over who would get what. The oyabuns of the other factions in the organization - they were like dogs, fighting each other for scraps from my parents' corpses. The police," and a disgusted look crossed Touya's face, "refused to get involved - they feared a disruption in the status quo.
"So you see, Shindo, why I had to give up being a go pro." Touya looked down and spread out his hands on the tatami mat before him. "I had no other choice."
Hikaru's reply was obviously unexpected.
"Bullshit!"
Akira blinked and looked up.
Hikaru knew his face was still pale at the revelation, but he felt a familiar fire burning in him. All those years of wondering, all those years of bitter resignation at never finding an answer... Touya had loved go - even more than him, and he had just thrown it away for something that, apparently, he did not even want and only felt obligated for.
It made him careless and unafraid to say what he thought. "Bullshit," he said again, emphasizing his conviction. "What is this, the freaking Tokugawa era?" He jabbed an angry finger at the other man. "You are not living during feudalism, Touya! If this were a go game, Touya Akira, you would have resigned six hands ago. Admit it! You had a choice, and you chose - stupidly."
Touya glared, his spine tensing in response. "My father and mother -"
"Yeah, they were murdered. So now you're throwing your life away in order to - what? Find out the name of the punk that killed them. And then what, kill him? Gun him down. Make him hurt the way you hurt -"
"Zakennayo!" Touya growled, his hand slamming down on the mat. "You don't know -"
Hikaru ignored him, and snorted in disgust. "Oh, and afterwards, you're gonna commit seppuku, right? Just stick a sword in your belly, join them in an honorable afterlife -"
He heard himself let loose a surprised grunt as he was slammed back onto the tatami mat. Touya glared down murderously at him. For a moment Hikaru was visibly stunned, so much so that it almost seemed to shake the other man out of his anger. But then he growled, a low vicious sound, and lunged at Touya. His strong left hook caught the other man on the jaw. A shuffle of limbs on the floor, explosions of pain, and he ducked and grabbed Touya by the arm just as he swung, momentum helping him throw Touya over his shoulder and onto the tatami mat. But Touya kicked viciously at his shins as he landed, bringing Hikaru down with him. The impact knocked the breath out of him.
When the sparks finally faded from his sight, he found himself immobile on the floor with Touya's arm braced against his neck. In the sudden silence, he could hear his own heavy breathing as he labored for air. His jaw ached, the skin of his knuckles stung. Touya was also breathing heavily, his chest rising and falling, warm and solid against him. Not admitting defeat, Hikaru stared up defiantly into the other man's eyes.
"It won't be so easy to give up your life. To give up go."
At his words, Touya's hold on him had loosened in surprise. But he didn't let Hikaru up from the floor. Hands braced at both sides of him, Touya stared down at Hikaru, an unreadable intensity in his eyes. His face looked drawn and taut against some unnamed pressure. For the first time, Hikaru noticed how different Touya looked. Neither of them were round-cheeked boys anymore, but the sheared planes of Touya's face now had a lean, hungry look that had not previously existed.
Carefully, Hikaru's hands rose and closed firmly around Touya's shoulders. In his hold, the other man was warm but unyielding. But Hikaru felt the strength of his own conviction, heady and undeniable. "I won't let you give it up." The shadows of the last few years slinked away in the brilliance of that surety. He blinked, feeling light and breathless. "I won't," he repeated, steadier than he'd been in years.
"It's been a long time, Shindo," Touya objected in a low voice. "As you said, I made my choice. Priorities change. People change."
"No, not you. I know you. Go is your life."
Touya only stared down at him, his eyes agonizingly dark. "It's not that simple," he whispered.
Hikaru felt himself burn. He yanked the other man's head down to his, pressed his forehead tight against Touya's. "Shut up," he whispered fiercely. His hands cupped the back of Touya's head, not letting him escape. "Play that game against me," he demanded feverishly. "That game we never got to play. I'll show you."
This close, Hikaru couldn't see Touya's expression, but he felt the tension - the preparation of a violent refusal - gathering in the body against him. He lowered his hands from the back of Touya's head, and let Touya see his face.
And though Hikaru hadn't touched a go stone in years, when Touya closed his eyes and relaxed against him in assent, Hikaru knew he had already won.
next part
by corbeaun
Winter
Part 1
* * *
[six years before]
Akira learned his love for the game from his father, who had made a ritual of sitting in front of the goban every morning, a steaming teacup by his side and the view of the Tokyo skyline glittering before him. His underlings had long ago learned to not disturb Touya Kouyo during this time of silent contemplation, where only the soft pachi of stones upon kaya wood interrupted the morning stillness.
Now, in his father's absence, Akira sat in Touya Kouyo's place before the goban. The shoji paper door leading into the back garden had been pushed aside, flooding the study room with the bright, cold light of morning. All over the house, white drapery now covered the walls - only the study room was left undisturbed. Dressed in his new black kimono, the stiff cloth chaffed at Akira's still tender shoulder where the colors had been newly tattooed. He did not place any stones on the board, and only turned a smooth, crisp stone over and over in his fingers, lost in thought.
Somewhere in the distance, a brass bell sounded and the priest's chanting began.
When Akira was much younger, and a schoolmate had asked what his father did for a living, he had replied earnestly that his father played go. To him, that was the truth. His father's dedication for the game was obvious for anyone to see, and Akira emulated his father wherever he could. Though he knew his father did not play professionally, he had simply thought that there was another kind of job for go lovers separate from the jobs of the go pros who his father often called over for a game. The go pros were inevitably escorted into his father's study room by a man from the numerous 'guards' stationed at their house. As a boy, Akira never even thought unusual the group of dark-suited young men with the occasional pompadour who trailed his father like personal shadows and replied to every comment of his father's with a clear, punctuated, "Hai!" To Akira, the men were either roughly indulgent or indifferent. He assumed the presence of these 'bodyguards' were the normal state of affairs in a large household.
Go was the only task he ever saw his father occupied with at the sprawling mansion within the genteel Meijiro neighborhood that Touya Kouyo had shared with him and his mother. This was deliberate. Only later would a much older Akira realize to what lengths his father had gone to ensure his young son never saw him involved in any overtly questionable dealings. The occasional older men in custom-fitted Italian suits and heavy Rolexes who visited his father, and drank sake behind closed doors, brought with them their own flock of tense, suited young guards.
Akira knew neither his paternal or maternal grandparents - his paternal grandparents being long dead; his maternal grandparents long estranged. Touya Kouyo's wife and Akira's mother was an intelligent, sophisticated woman who was born to a social class that did not readily lend itself to intermarriage with the criminal outcasts of the country. She was the prized daughter of a doctor educated at Todai, the Japanese equivalent of Harvard. Her parents had been devastated when she dropped out of college and abruptly married a then middling-level Yakuza boss; to add insult to injury, she gave birth to Akira only six months after the wedding. Her parents never forgave her.
But growing up, Akira did not know his family's history; he was ensconced safely within the protection of Touya Kouyo, oyabun of a rapidly growing faction within the Sumiyoshi crime family in dazzling, metropolitan Tokyo.
And until the day that protection had been suddenly shattered, Touya Akira had fervently believed he would walk the path that would lead him to the hand of god, exactly like his respected father.
Now, in the broken aftermath of that old, happy life, Akira gently stowed the go stone in its wooden pot. The chanting of the priest was growing louder in the distance, and now it was responded to by the wailing monotone of the mourners. Slowly, Akira straightened from his kneeling position before the goban. Straightening the wide sleeves of his kimono, he slid open the shoji door and stepped out of his father's former study room.
The time for contemplation was over.
He was his father's only son, and - despite his tender years - he knew what he must do.
* * *
[the present]
Hikaru cycled away from the main road and onto one of the many winding side streets that twisted through the famous old geisha district of Kagurazuka. The streets become narrower and narrower the further he went away from the main road, the worn wooden walls of old houses crowding in on him. Rain-slick stones passed beneath the tires of his bicycle, and occasionally the raised root of a tree broke through the cobbled ground. These closely packed houses blocked out the moon and the bright over-wash of light from the more industrial part of Tokyo. Only the pale pink glow filtered through the square paper sides of the red lanterns that hung along the eaves of the houses illuminated his path.
Cycling through these streets that had survived the bonfires of Allied bombing, Hikaru felt an almost superstitious silence fall over him. He almost expected, as if at any moment, he would catch a glimpse of white robes and long familiar black hair. Only the ordinary aroma of ramen wafting from the boxes tied securely behind his seat kept him in the now and then. Still, Hikaru felt an irrational sense of anticipation, as if something was going to happen that evening. What, he had no idea, but he hoped it was something good.
His world, since the days of his boyhood, had grown increasingly small and narrow over the years.
Finally he saw approaching up ahead an old, traditional wooden building with windows shuttered in bamboo. A tiny, kimono-clad woman came out of the ryotei to greet him. She looked askance at Hikaru's shoddy work wear, but smiled politely and, after he had removed his shoes in the foyer, ushered him to the small, traditional kitchen in the back. He quickly unpacked the boxes of ramen. Due to two hard years of practice, not a drop of soup had been spilled on the long uneven path he'd biked and the bowls were still steaming hot. The cook of the establishment and his few assistants greedily grabbed the bowls from him and proceeded to slurp down the noodles with relish. Hikaru waited beside the kitchen door for the woman who had greeted him to finish tallying up the bill. Light laughter drifted down the corridor from the main part of the house where the guests were dining. Hikaru hoped they enjoyed their high-priced food just as much as the cook and his assistants had the much cheaper ramen.
When the woman finally handed him the money for the noodles, Hikaru bowed his thanks and quickly took his leave. Outside, he righted his bicycle, now much lighter without its culinary burden, and slung a leg over the seat, ready to take off, when suddenly the tilt of a familiar, long-unseen head down the street thumped his heart into his throat.
"Touya," he breathed.
The figure was rapidly walking away from him, accompanied by a throng of suited men. The light from the geisha teahouse they'd just exited from illuminated without a doubt the face of his one-time rival. He still sported that same, pageboy cut. "Touya!" Hikaru shouted, heedlessly abandoning his bicycle to the ground.
In the distance, the figure stopped. The men around him tensed, until he leaned over to the one beside him and said something. With what seemed like great reluctance, the suits around Touya bowed perfunctorily and continued down the street without him. The dark, winding nature of old-fashioned Kagurazuka soon hid the men from sight. Only then did Touya turn around to face him.
The light from the late autumn moon showed Hikaru a face he'd never thought he would again see.
Hikaru run up to him until he was standing only a few feet away. He felt his face split in a large, uncontrollable grin. "It really is you!" He grabbed him by the shoulder, unthinkingly, wanting to make sure the other man was real. His shoulder was warm and reassuringly solid. Until then, Hikaru had still been deathly afraid he was wrong.
When Touya didn't reply, his smile faltered. "Don't you - don't you know me?" he asked haltingly, feeling disappoint beginning to roil his stomach. His hand dropped from Touya's shoulder. Hikaru stopped himself in time from reaching self-consciously to his no longer bleached bangs. It was nervous gesture Hikaru had developed in the past two years. The upkeep of the bleached bangs had proven too expensive, both money and time-wise, when he'd moved out on his own. Sometimes, he barely recognized himself in the mirror. Now, Hikaru wished he'd found some way to keep it, just so Touya would have known him without a doubt.
But then Touya spoke:
"Shindo. Shindo Hikaru."
His voice, sure and steady, was an octave lower than Hikaru remembered it being. They had been boys the last time they met.
"Right." Hikaru stared at Touya, finally fully taking in his gray, tailored slacks and his elegant cashmere overcoat. The years had been generous to him in a way it had not been for Hikaru. "How've you been, Touya?"
"All right. And you -" The other man hesitated. "The Go Institute must be feeling expansive."
"What?" Hikaru couldn't follow the sudden topic shift. What did the Japanese Go Institute have anything, anymore, to do with him? He had retired from his position as a professional go player years ago. Hikaru shook his head mentally, dismissing it: It was unimportant. There was only one thing he desperately wanted to know, a question that had plagued him for the past six years.
"Touya," he said, "what happened to you? That day, in the dan matches, you were finally supposed to play me -"
The sudden grip on his arm stopped him mid-word. "Not here." Though the streets were clearly empty, Touya glanced around tightly, and pulled Hikaru with him to the lit entrance of an old, teak and bamboo house further down the street. An old woman in a gray kimono came out and bowed to them.
Touya dropped Hikaru's arm and turned to him. "Are you here with anyone?" he asked quietly.
His question was unbelievably strange. Hikaru had to bike back to the ramen shop soon. Did Hikaru look like he could afford to visit Kagurazuka as a revered customer? "What? No -"
Touya's short nod cut off the sarcastic comment Hikaru had been about to voice.
"Good," Touya said curtly. "We can talk here." And walked into the house behind the old woman before Hikaru could even blink.
For a moment Hikaru hesitated. He knew he was already late and needed to hurry back to the shop. But he was afraid he'd never see Touya again if he left now. And that, he could not accept. This is important, Hikaru told himself firmly, he'll take the docked pay if he had to. Thus decided, Hikaru slipped off his shoes and followed.
The old woman ushered them into a small, private tatami-matted room with a view of an indoor rock garden. The room was otherwise empty. At a word from Touya, she bowed and left them, quietly sliding the shoji door shut behind her. Touya sat down on the floor. He waited until her shadow had retreated from the paper wall.
"We're ensured of privacy here," he told Hikaru.
"What is with all the cloak-and-dagger stuff? Touya," Hikaru looked at him warily from his seat across the tatami, "what did you get mixed up in? Does this -" He paused, then continued, "Does this have anything to do with why you disappeared that April?"
Touya laughed abruptly at that, a low, bitter sound that startled Hikaru. Hikura reached out across the mat, but then thought better of it. The aborted gesture was not lost on Touya. He cut off his laughter.
The sudden silence unnerved Hikaru just as much.
"My father is dead, Shindo." His voice was hoarse with unspoken emotion. "He died and I inherited the family business."
And saying that, he put a hand to his shoulder - the same one Hikaru had grabbed - and pulled down coat and shirt to expose his bare skin. Incised across his left bicep was the elaborate tattoo of burnt orange chrysanthemums - chrysanthemums for mourning and vengeance. Their entwined stems trailed along his upper arms and the feathered crest of a dragon there, before disappearing below his collarbone. Below the flowers and the winding, serpentine body, with a quarter of his torso laid bare, one could see easily the outlines of what was a spectacular full-body tattoo.
It was the ubiquitous emblem of the yakuza.
Hikaru felt his eyes widen in disbelief. When he looked back at Touya's face, Touya had drawn his lips back from his teeth in a cold, brittle smile. His voice, when he spoke, was just as cold:
"My father and mother were gunned down in a go parlor by a punk from a renegade faction. Six years ago, in April."
The news shocked Hikaru to stillness.
His memories recalled a large, stern rock of a man. He had bumped into him the day Hikaru took Sai to that first go tournament. Hikaru remembered how the suited men around the large, stern man had snarled at him to watch where he was going. The man himself had barely acknowledged him. At the time, Sai had blinked and stared strangely after the man as he and his bodyguards disappeared down the corridor. But when Hikaru had asked, the ghost had only shivered and said he felt like someone had walked over his grave.
Later, Hikaru had learned from news gleaned in less reputable go parlors that the man was Touya Kouyo, oyabun of one of the most rapidly rising factions within the Sumiyoshi of the Tokyo yakuza, and a dedicated go aficionado. Back then, Hikaru hadn't made the connection from him to Touya Akira, a rapidly rising star within the go world and rival after whom Hikaru so single-mindedly chased. The name Touya, after all, while not as common as Tanaka, was certainly not unique.
Now, the son was still speaking.
"The squabbling began over who would get what. The oyabuns of the other factions in the organization - they were like dogs, fighting each other for scraps from my parents' corpses. The police," and a disgusted look crossed Touya's face, "refused to get involved - they feared a disruption in the status quo.
"So you see, Shindo, why I had to give up being a go pro." Touya looked down and spread out his hands on the tatami mat before him. "I had no other choice."
Hikaru's reply was obviously unexpected.
"Bullshit!"
Akira blinked and looked up.
Hikaru knew his face was still pale at the revelation, but he felt a familiar fire burning in him. All those years of wondering, all those years of bitter resignation at never finding an answer... Touya had loved go - even more than him, and he had just thrown it away for something that, apparently, he did not even want and only felt obligated for.
It made him careless and unafraid to say what he thought. "Bullshit," he said again, emphasizing his conviction. "What is this, the freaking Tokugawa era?" He jabbed an angry finger at the other man. "You are not living during feudalism, Touya! If this were a go game, Touya Akira, you would have resigned six hands ago. Admit it! You had a choice, and you chose - stupidly."
Touya glared, his spine tensing in response. "My father and mother -"
"Yeah, they were murdered. So now you're throwing your life away in order to - what? Find out the name of the punk that killed them. And then what, kill him? Gun him down. Make him hurt the way you hurt -"
"Zakennayo!" Touya growled, his hand slamming down on the mat. "You don't know -"
Hikaru ignored him, and snorted in disgust. "Oh, and afterwards, you're gonna commit seppuku, right? Just stick a sword in your belly, join them in an honorable afterlife -"
He heard himself let loose a surprised grunt as he was slammed back onto the tatami mat. Touya glared down murderously at him. For a moment Hikaru was visibly stunned, so much so that it almost seemed to shake the other man out of his anger. But then he growled, a low vicious sound, and lunged at Touya. His strong left hook caught the other man on the jaw. A shuffle of limbs on the floor, explosions of pain, and he ducked and grabbed Touya by the arm just as he swung, momentum helping him throw Touya over his shoulder and onto the tatami mat. But Touya kicked viciously at his shins as he landed, bringing Hikaru down with him. The impact knocked the breath out of him.
When the sparks finally faded from his sight, he found himself immobile on the floor with Touya's arm braced against his neck. In the sudden silence, he could hear his own heavy breathing as he labored for air. His jaw ached, the skin of his knuckles stung. Touya was also breathing heavily, his chest rising and falling, warm and solid against him. Not admitting defeat, Hikaru stared up defiantly into the other man's eyes.
"It won't be so easy to give up your life. To give up go."
At his words, Touya's hold on him had loosened in surprise. But he didn't let Hikaru up from the floor. Hands braced at both sides of him, Touya stared down at Hikaru, an unreadable intensity in his eyes. His face looked drawn and taut against some unnamed pressure. For the first time, Hikaru noticed how different Touya looked. Neither of them were round-cheeked boys anymore, but the sheared planes of Touya's face now had a lean, hungry look that had not previously existed.
Carefully, Hikaru's hands rose and closed firmly around Touya's shoulders. In his hold, the other man was warm but unyielding. But Hikaru felt the strength of his own conviction, heady and undeniable. "I won't let you give it up." The shadows of the last few years slinked away in the brilliance of that surety. He blinked, feeling light and breathless. "I won't," he repeated, steadier than he'd been in years.
"It's been a long time, Shindo," Touya objected in a low voice. "As you said, I made my choice. Priorities change. People change."
"No, not you. I know you. Go is your life."
Touya only stared down at him, his eyes agonizingly dark. "It's not that simple," he whispered.
Hikaru felt himself burn. He yanked the other man's head down to his, pressed his forehead tight against Touya's. "Shut up," he whispered fiercely. His hands cupped the back of Touya's head, not letting him escape. "Play that game against me," he demanded feverishly. "That game we never got to play. I'll show you."
This close, Hikaru couldn't see Touya's expression, but he felt the tension - the preparation of a violent refusal - gathering in the body against him. He lowered his hands from the back of Touya's head, and let Touya see his face.
And though Hikaru hadn't touched a go stone in years, when Touya closed his eyes and relaxed against him in assent, Hikaru knew he had already won.
next part