[kudo norio]

[answer_key]

A SEASON OF BLACK CHRYSANTHEMUMS: WINTER
by corbeaun


* * *

Part 2

* * *

When Hikaru was fourteen years old, Touya Akira disappeared from the go world. He left no trace, disappeared so completely, that when a similar event happened later than same year to another seemingly eternal figure in Hikaru's life, Hikaru could only stare in stupefied grief at the demolished skyline of his personal landscape.

He was only a boy then, and before, he had never truly understood loss. But that year, everything fell apart. His life cracked straight down the center through two distinct fault lines. For untold weeks he walked through the incomprehensively empty world, alternately dazed and bewildered, then angry and resentful - promising and threatening all kinds of things to the gods, if only they would turn his world right side up again.

The fateful afternoon in which he found Isumi in his room - and the brutally short game that they played - finally forced him to a bitter realization.

Sai was never coming back.

And Touya Akira, the one who he had chased so desperately and who had in turn chased after the ghost in Hikaru's go, was gone.

These two relentless forces that had dragged Hikaru into the world of go had, against all reason, vanished. And now he floundered in the wake of their abandonment.

His game against Isumi was a slaughter.

When he bowed his resignation to Isumi at the very end, his bitter tears splattered on the dusty board of the goban. Because he could still see the flashes of brilliance that had so typified Sai's play within his own - it was the first time he'd seen Sai again - but there was something monstrously lacking in his own go, some absence so insurmountable that it had destroyed the glittering beauty of the hands he'd inherited from Sai. His go, Hikaru realized, felt dead.

That very next morning, he went to the Go Institute and tendered his resignation as a professional go player.

Despite the reservations of his homeroom teacher, Hikaru managed to score high enough on the high school entrance test that he was accepted at a place not too far from where he lived. He took up soccer again, but playing in high school was very different from his time during grade school, and eventually the coach's unrelenting and - according to Hikaru - utterly pointless goading to win, win, win! leached away Hikaru's desire to play, so that one day he simply quit the team. If nothing else, quitting improved his grades.

His school also had a rather respectably sized go club. He tried not to go too often, though, because dead as his go was at a professional level, he was still good enough that he sporadically scared beginners out of playing the game. Teaching others to play was a new skill that he had to learn to enjoy.

Occasionally, he still spoke to Akari, but since she had been accepted to a much more competitive high school, they did not see each other as often. Which was fine by Hikaru, because lately, Akari had taken to looking at him with a pitying look in her eyes. She tried too hard to pretend everything was the same. But the silence in between her words to him was awkward and weighted down with all the questions he would not answer.

And so the years passed in this way, quiet and undisturbed.

By the time it came to choose a university, Hikaru had made the difficult but honest choice of not applying. It broke his mother's heart, but Hikaru knew with certainty that university and then the life of a salaryman was not for him. It bothered him, though, that he didn't know what else to do - the one path he truly wanted, he could not walk.

He looked to graduation with some trepidation.

In the past three years on his way back from high school, Hikaru often bypassed a small ramen shop. Through many visits over time, Hikaru and the owner had gotten to know each other quite well. Jun, the owner of the shop, was an ethnic Korean, and though she had been born in Japan same as Hikaru's mother, her identity card still designated her as a residential alien. After years of work hard, her restaurant business was finally booming, but that brought problems of its own. She needed someone with a legitimate citizenship card to smooth things over with the local police and the occasional ultra-right 'protection' racket gangs. And Hikaru needed a job.

One day, not long before graduation, Hikaru sat down at the counter with her and discussed both their problems. They found a solution in each other. And so without much fanfare, Shindo Hikaru became the newest all-purpose worker and sometime representative of a Chinese ramen restaurant.

He learned to be content in this new life.

And if he sometimes stared overly long at the dusty, untouched goban stored next to his old magazines and thought of old games long into the night, well, there was no one to know but himself.

Until the night Hikaru went to a ryotei in Kagurazuka to deliver ramen, and saw Touya Akira.

* * *

"You found a new girlfriend, Shindo?"

Hikaru broke off his whistling in surprise. "W-what?" he stuttered.

The other dishwasher, Jun's son on break from university, raised a sly eyebrow and grinned. "I said, I hear you've been in an awfully good mood these past two months. Any reason?"

Hikaru looked blankly at the other man. Then he stared down at his soapy hands holding a dirty soup bowl. Slowly, he dunked the dirty bowl back into the dishwater. "There was a...co-worker from my last job that I didn't expect I'd see again. We've been catching up."

He and Touya had been meeting once a week at that old house in Kagurazuka to play go in the evenings. The aged proprietor of that modest ryotei kept a goban ready for them whenever they appeared. Hikaru had also been eating better than he had in years.

"Is she pretty?"

Broken out of his musings, Hikaru only rolled his eyes. Jun's son was a notorious womanizer. "Yeah, he's as pretty as a girl. That hasn't changed."

"Oh." The other man looked disproportionately disappointed.

Hikaru had to laugh at that, and slapped the other man on the back, leaving a soapy imprint on his shirt. "Jeez, don't worry. You'll find a girlfriend, eventually, without having to bother me for an introduction."

Akari always visited Hikaru's ramen workplace whenever she came visiting home from university. On one of those visits, she had had the misfortune of bumping into Jun's son, who had immediately fallen head-over-heels in infatuation with her. The feeling was not mutual. It had gotten to the point where Akari had started to call Hikaru ahead of her visits, just to make sure the other man wouldn't be there when she was.

"I wouldn't have to find a new girlfriend," Jun's son needled, "if you would just help me convince Fujisaki-san..."

"Nope," Hikaru replied firmly. He stacked a wet dish on the side counter. "Friends don't pimp friends."

The young man would have turned to needle him some more, when Jun's voice boomed from the front of the shop. "Shindo! I need more help up front!"

Hikaru hurriedly wiped his hands on his apron. "Coming!" he shouted back, and dumped the rest of the dishes into the other man's sink. He whipped off the dirty apron and quickly tied a server's clean one around his waist, as he rushed out of the kitchen and into the dining room. He skidded to a stop at the sight of Touya Akira in an elegant three-piece suit sitting calmly at the counter.

"T-Touya," he stammered in astonishment. "What are you doing here?" He hadn't told Touya where he worked.

A cuff on the back of the head made him wince. He looked up to see Jun glaring at him. "Is that the way to greet customers?" she said, before marching into the kitchen to grab some bowls of ramen.

Hikaru rubbed his head sheepishly. "Heh," he grimaced. Then seeing the frown Touya was giving the doorway through which Jun had disappeared, he grinned. "Oh, don't mind her. Jun's loud but has a soft touch. So." Hikura posed expectantly with his server's pad and pencil. "What can I get ya?"

He flinched at the dark-eyed look Touya gave him.

"What I want," Touya said in a low voice, "is to know why you're working in a ramen shop."

Hikaru gaped at him. Finally he said faintly, "It... It's my job."

Touya's face turned even darker. "And why, exactly, are you not playing go professionally?"

Hikaru could only stare in slowly growing comprehension.

For Hikaru, the news that he had quit professional go was long old and buried beneath the years. He had assumed it was so as well for Touya. They never spoke to each other about their personal lives, or - after that first outburst from Touya - about the past. Occasionally he had wondered why Touya did not ask about his sudden retirement from the professional go world during the weeks they had met to play their games. It was strange, yes. But for the most part, Hikaru had put it out of his mind. The most important thing was the revived life in his go, and Touya had given that back to him. Facing Touya across the goban like that... For the first time in years, Hikaru was truly, utterly happy. He had not given a thought to his past, or what it might mean for his future.

Now, Hikaru swallowed uneasily. "Look," he said slowly, "let's talk later. I'm off work in an hour."

The next half hour was torture. Jun noticed his distraction, and after the fourth order he'd messed up that day, she finally threw up her hands in disgust and shooed him out of the restaurant thirty minutes early. "And I expect you to come in tomorrow with your brain with you," she'd said, before slamming the kitchen backdoor shut behind him.

Standing outside in the narrow alley behind the kitchen, Hikaru sighed, knowing he'd have to apologize to her and make up the time tomorrow. He stuck his hands in his pockets and walked glumly around to the front of the store, where Touya was waiting. That same old gas-guzzling monstrosity of a Mercedes was parked illegally beside the curb, but no policemen had come to bother it. Looking at it, Hikaru could only shake his head. Touya Akira the yakuza, he muttered to himself. Who woulda thought?

The door to the passenger side opened and Akira looked at him pointedly from the driver's seat. "Get in."

"Man, you just get off of bossing me around, dontcha," Hikaru grumbled, but obediently got into the car anyway. When he looked up from buckling his seat belt, he found Touya looking slightly flushed. "What?" he demanded.

But Touya only tightened his lips in a prim line. He kept his eyes on the road.

Seeing the roads flash by on the familiar way to that old ryotei in Kagurazuka in which they'd played their go games the past few weeks, Hikaru impulsively spoke up, "Touya, let's go to my place today."

Noticeably startled, the other man glanced over at him. "Why?"

"You don't have to feed me all the time, you know." Touya just shot him a narrow-eyed glance, not believing him. Hikaru sighed, and looked down at his lap reluctantly. "I'd feel better telling you what happened in my place," he admitted grudgingly.

At that, Touya blinked, then nodded. "Alright. Tell me the address."

It took a little longer than expected to direct Touya to his cramped old neighborhood in Okobu, since ordinarily Hikaru walked a back alley route - he and Touya began to snipe at each other in the car, over the map - but they managed to pull up in front of his place before sundown. Looking at it from a stranger's view, Hikaru felt slightly ashamed of the squat run-down buildings sitting in the shadows of Tokyo's tallest skyscrapers. Usually, he just had Touya drop him off at the local train station. The heavy rumbling as a train passed through the nearby Shin-Okobu Station set the flimsy neighborhood buildings quaking. Signs outside a few of the buildings advertised 'resting' rates of five thousand yen for a two-hour stay or twelve thousand for a full night.

"Will your car be okay here?" he asked anxiously. Touya had parked it close to the curb and the gleaming black Mercedes stood out glaringly from the small, battered Hondas dotting the rest of the street. Some of the local prostitutes were eyeing the car and its owner avariciously.

Touya looked thoughtful, then slid his business card onto the dashboard. Touya Akira's name was written in clean, concise strokes beside the title: PRESIDENT OF TOUYA-GUMI OF THE SUMIYOSHI ASSOCIATION. Incised across the top left corner was a stylized sunburst with the character for sumi inside.

"There," he said. "That'll take care of it."

Hikaru looked at him uncomfortably. "Um," he cleared his throat noisily. "Isn't that a bit...uh, blatant?"

"Don't worry. I know who handles this part of the neighborhood."

Hikaru could only nod dumbly, and quickly got out of the car. Touya Akira the yakuza, he reminded himself, mentally shaking his head. He led the way up to the front of his ground-floor apartment. Unlocking the door, he kept one hand on the worn handle, saying as he opened it, "It's a bit messy. I haven't had the chance to do laundry these few weeks."

The hardwood floor was piled with old jeans and dirty socks. Hikaru kicked some out of the entrance way and ushered Touya into the one all-purpose room with the tatami mat. He ducked his head sheepishly as the other man looked around his tiny apartment. "Yeah, it's not much," he admitted, "but it's mine."

"You're not...living with your parents?"

Hikaru busied himself with gathering up the dirty clothes before the television. "Nah, my dad threw me out. And my mom moved back to her parents in Nagasaki."

"I'm...sorry."

He shrugged. "Don't be. Actually, the reason I'm living on my own is because they couldn't accept my life choices. Quitting my job as a go pro and all, and then not going on to university...Well." He dumped the clothes bundle into the laundry basket with perhaps more force than was needed. "But it was for the best." He leaned down to grab more socks off the floor. "There was just no way I could play go like that or waste my life preparing to be a salaryman."

"Why?"

"What?" He shook his head warily and turned to look at Touya. "What do you mean why?"

Somehow, Touya had found the only empty spot in the room and was now sitting cross-legged on the tatami, not caring about wrinkling his expensive suit. His eyes held the same dark burning look that had arrested Hikaru in the restaurant. "You promised you would tell me why you quit go."

"Look!" Hikaru exploded, throwing down the clothes he'd been gathering. "I didn't quit go!

"Go left me!"

Touya stared at him. Hikaru knew he looked crazy, god, he felt crazy. He panted, feeling the steamroller of emotion crushing him at the thought of that one disastrous year. Touya had, with his usual ease at pricking Hikaru's composure, found his trigger words. Hikaru squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep calming breath.

"Look," he finally said, quieter, after a short moment. "You don't know what happened." Slowly, he walked over to where Touya was sitting and folded his legs wearily beneath him. He looked at a spot a foot above and to the right of the other man's head.

"It - it drove me nuts, you know, when you disappeared. The day you were supposed to play me, and you didn't come... I didn't know why. No one did. You were just. Gone.

"And then other things happened."

Sai, he thought wretchedly, and looked down at his clenched fists in his lap. He didn't say anything for a while, and Touya didn't interrupt.

"Anyway," he finally continued, voice rough, "I didn't know why I was playing anymore, and apparently it showed in my go. I tried, but." He paused. "When Isumi - another former insei - came and challenged me to a game, I finally realized how useless it was. Even though I wanted to play, it wasn't the same."

Touya's quiet voice startled him.

"Then why me?"

He looked up to see Touya staring intently at him.

"Why me, Shindo? You fought so hard to play that game with me when I met you again. Why, if go is no longer what you're after in your life?"

Hikaru could only stare helplessly back at him. "I just wanted to play you."

He could see a scowl now darkening Touya's face. There was a flurry of movement as Touya scrambled upright and stalked to the front door.

Hikaru scrambled up after him. "Touya! Wait!" He grabbed for his arm, but Touya threw him off. Hikaru thumped back against the foyer wall, painfully. "What the hell's wrong with you?" he shouted, raising his arms defensively.

The other man's eyes were wild with some emotion Hikaru couldn't understand. "You nearly broke both our lives," he snarled, "for a...a whim!"

"What?"

"It hurt, you fucking bastard!"

Hikaru gaped.

"It might be a game to you, Shindo, something to pass the time, amusing yourself with me -" Hikaru began to shake his head frantically, but Touya ignored him. "But I'd almost put my old life entirely behind me. Then you came along. And you showed me how badly I've let my go fall. That first game-"

The look Touya speared Hikaru with made him recoil against the wall.

"That first game. It was like you were reaching into my belly and ripping out my insides for me to see. It hurt. I would have rather been shot in the gut!"

Hikaru cringed. "Touya..." he mumbled. "I-"

Touya cut him off sharply. "But it made me feel alive. Alive for the first time in years.

"Now what I have is not enough. And that's showing itself in what I do now, for a living. I've been lucky so far that my lieutenants have cleaned up my mistakes. But each time was telling the other factions in the association that I'm weakening, that I'm a fool. And that I might not have the stomach anymore for what I do.

"So if you'd given up...If you had no intention of playing seriously, then we would have been both better off if you'd looked for those old insei friends of yours - and left me alone!" He finished, panting angrily.

Hikaru looked at him. "But Touya," he said helplessly, "you're the one I want."

The other man's eyes widened.

Hikaru realized suddenly what he'd said and blushed bright red. "Th-that's not what I meant," he stammered, flapping a hand at Touya. "I meant..." He drew in a deep breath, stopping himself from hyperventilating. He exhaled. "I mean," he continued steadier, "I've been chasing you for so long, Touya. Sheesh!" he exhaled, running a hand through his bangs, "During puberty, other boys were chasing girls but all I could think of was how close my go could get to yours. Um." He winced as Touya's eyes grew even wider. "Ah, uh, I'm making this worse. But it's just...well," he sighed, gave up, "go was important, you know." Then he smiled crookedly, and shrugged, "Akari was always telling me how weird that was. But I didn't mind. When you left -" Hikaru felt his voice break slightly, and he looked down at his feet and swallowed. "You," and Sai, he thought to himself - "were the one who convinced me to be serious about go. Without you," either of you, "it felt...dead."

There was a strained silence above him. Then he heard Touya say in a strange, tight voice, "Well, your go is fine now. But you've never said anything about returning to the pros - which you would, if this was not just a game to you."

Hikaru looked up. "I honestly didn't think about it, Touya," he told him quietly. "I was just happy to play you."

That dark, intense look was back in the other man's eyes. "Then think about it," Touya insisted vehemently. Hikaru flashed back to a rainy day in the past, when a much younger Touya had stared at him just like that and asked him about his future.

"What about you?" Hikaru asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

"What about me?" A small, bitter smile turned Touya's mouth. "I have other obligations now. The schedule of a go pro would never work." There was a pained look on his face. "But I'll be content if you would come around to give me the occasional game."

Hikaru began to shake his head fervently, feeling the wrongness of that suggestion reverberate to the very marrow of his bones. "No, no, no." He shuddered, thinking of how futilely he'd chased after...something, those few weeks after Touya had disappeared from the go world. "I can't - not without you!"

Touya looked impatient at his refusal. "Your go is brilliant, Shindo," he snapped. "I don't understand what you meant by it being dead all those years, but I do know that you deserve more than the casual game against me." His mouth twisted. "...Sometimes I feel as if I barely remember how to hold the stones."

"That's a lie," Hikaru almost shouted. "So what if you feel out of practice? So am I! If you think I can do it -"

Touya face had gone very cold and still. "Maybe you haven't been paying attention, Shindo," he said very slowly and quietly, "but there are slightly more strings tying me down than you do. Dangerous ones, which if I let go, could discharge a few bullets into my back and anyone I care for." He stopped, then added softer, "You're the only one who can go back."

Desperate, Hikaru tried one last appeal. "Touya, I'd quit. They're not going to let me in that easily. It won't work."

But Touya wouldn't hear of it. "I'll make it work," he said. Then with a wave, he opened the door. "You have my personal number. Call me when you've decided." He paused, gave Hikaru a cool look. "Don't bother before then."

The door clicked shut behind him.

Hikaru slid down along the wall until his forehead touched his knees. He felt utterly and inexplicably drained.

"Sheesh," he muttered into his knees, "He's still the same." Facing down Touya was like beating his head against a rock - it hurt the head, and only made the rock seem harder. Hikaru had almost forgotten. "Stupid, pigheaded..."

A few tentative knocks sounded against the door. Hikaru scrambled to his feet and threw open the door. But the face that greeted him was not the one he wanted to see.

"Oh," he muttered, deflated. "It's you."

The scantily clad 'woman' narrowed 'her' eyes. "What do you mean, 'it's you'? Think you're all high and mighty now, just because you had some big honcho over?"

Hikaru rubbed a hand over his eyes tiredly. "Yuki, what are you going on about now?"

Yuki was waiting for the money to get the operation that would give 'her' the gender she should have been born with. Since he'd known, Hikaru had made an effort to think of her by the right feminine pronoun. Even when she deliberately provoked him.

She leaned against the doorjamb, flashing her white thigh. "Aren't you gonna let me in?"

Hikaru rolled his eyes at the familiar attempt and resolutely blocked the doorway. "No. I've had a long day, so if you'd just tell me what you want."

Her eyes shifted from his. Then she looked coyly up at him from her lashes. "Look, Shindo," she smiled coaxingly, stroking her faux-schoolgirl pigtails. "I need some money."

"NO." He moved to shut the door.

She quickly stuck her foot in the doorway. "Come on. I just need a few thousand - for the rent."

Hikaru glanced at her short sailor-uniform. The tracks were painfully visible on her arms. "Yuki, it's always the rent."

He'd given some money to her the first few times she'd asked - the very first time being the day he'd moved into the building - but he'd quickly learned not to. These days, he tried to 'lend' whatever extra money he had to her roommate, who actually took care of the rent and was working hard to get Yuki off the streets.

Yuki looked at him accusingly. "Well, this time it's true. Come on, Shindo, have a heart. My roommate's sick, so he can't work. What's a girl to do? Look - " She put her hands on her hips, "I'll do you. The whole night even. Just give me six thousand yen, cash."

"I told you, Yuki: No means no. Also," Hikaru sighed, "I don't get my paycheck until another few weeks. So sorry, but no money." He moved to close the door again, trying to nudge her foot from the doorway.

She refused to budge. "What about the money he gave you?"

"Who?"

"That boss from the Sumiyoshi. Lean, page-boy cut, dressed like a big spender." She glowered at him. "I saw him leave just now."

Hikaru was honestly bewildered. "Why would he give me money?" he demanded of her.

"Why would he be visiting you," she shot back.

He closed his eyes against the raging headache he could feel coming. "Yuki," he said with great patience, "I don't know what you think he was doing here -" He quickly held up a hand. "- and I don't want to know. But he did not leave any money. At all. So you can just look for some other sucker to scam." He pushed her foot forcefully out of the doorway. "Good night!" The door slammed shut with a gratifying bang.

The pounding continued for a couple minutes afterwards as Hikaru got ready for sleep. Muffled through the thick wood of the door, he could hear her swearing - something about him not being man enough, and a few creative suggestions for what he could do with himself (Hikaru was impressed, and promptly stored some of those for future use) - but eventually the racket stopped.

Hikaru breathed a sigh of relief from beneath his pillow. Then he moved the pillow from his face and stared at the cracked ceiling above him. Lying there, flat on his back, on the tatami of his one-room apartment, he tried to think back to the days when he'd been a go pro. He'd felt like another person. That boy who had just passed the pro exams...He had never had to wash his own socks, never cooked, never had to worry about the water cutting off if he couldn't pay. Did he ever imagine he would be here in six years, living next door to a crack addict, where just across the street there was a 'love' motel charging by the hour? Hikaru sighed.

Sai, he knew, would have been appalled.

...Sai.

After all this time, he still couldn't understand. Sai was supposed to have been with him for years. But instead, he was barely with him for two.

Touya would have liked to play Sai again. Hikaru knew Sai was in his go, but he wasn't sure if that was enough. Maybe, if it had been Sai playing...

If it had been Sai playing, maybe Touya would have tried harder to go back with him to the Go Institute and be a professional go player again.

Hikaru clutched the pillow to his chest. Sai, he asked silently, why did you have to leave?

But the cracked ceiling held no answers.

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