[Hino]
[GEN] THE DAY THE WORLD HELD ITS BREATH
cry_havoc
A soft, roaring sound grew in Touya Kouyou’s ears, then out of the noise arose a beat, getting louder and louder until it was the only thing he heard. Then, the awareness of his chest expanding and closing-up with every breath. He could feel the mask strapped to his head, the elastic pinning his ears against his hair, the plastic digging a circle around his mouth and nose. With every exhalation the air within the mask grew uncomfortably clammy.
Awareness flooded into him. He acutely felt every bump of the ambulance as it navigated the windring streets, the motion made all the more noticeable by the straps keeping him on the trolley. The ambulance skidded right. The paramedics were flung left, their vague silhouettes grabbing for handles. He was overwhelmed with the dizzying feeling of his body attempting to spin left, but joltingly hindered by the straps. He could faintly hear the din of the street beyond the screaming of the siren. Over the chaos, keeping a quick beat, he could hear his heart. Da-dum. Da-dum. Syncopated. Rushing. Racing.
Racing him to the end of his life.
The plastic mattress wasn’t a tatami mat; the faux wood tray wasn’t a goban. Akiko sat by his bedside, pouring a cup of tea. Akira, pacing in front of the television, looked as restless as Touya felt. In his hand, Akira held a remote, flicking between channels with his thumb. A news reporter came on, followed by a sports channel, then two more news channels. He clicked it off, on. A sentence of static-filled speech was broadcast across the room, a second of silence. The contrast was giving Touya a headache. Seeing his wrinkles deepen, Akiko stood, and together she and Akira went down to the cafeteria.
Touya Meijin stared down at his hands, knobbly and much more wrinkled then they had been a year ago. He inspected the wood pattern on the tray. The shaky lines representing the wood grain looked like the lines on a goban as drawn by a child, and he could almost pretend the dark knots were Go stones.
His mind remained in a fog during the first hours of his stay, living in memories, replaying the early games that had been the catalyst for growth. The arrival of Ichikawa, Hirose, and Ogata brought his focus back to the present, but his attention still wandered from their conversation. He thought of his missed game, of the upcoming game, and of the doctor’s comments that introduced the nagging doubt he might not be able to make the game.
Two soft knocks, on the door interrupted his thoughts. Touya wasn’t sure who he was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t Shindou. Confusion to why Shindou was here and the boy’s unrepressed exuberance brought Touya back to the present. He half expected the boy to ask after Akira, but instead the boy mentioned Sai. While he welcomed the idea of a game, he wasn’t interested in a game over the internet. He wanted a real game of Go, one that would serve as a distraction, not a reminder of the limitations of his current situation. However, the desperation present in Shindou’s plea, voicing a request that meant much more than just a game, made Touya pause, then accept.
Touya wasn’t sure what to make of Sai. He was sceptical of the merit of a player who confined himself to net-Go. Net-Go, Touya found, lacked the intensity of a physical game. When beating opponents on the internet, he found, they held no determination to win, no desperate strategies, just random clicking; hoping their luck would prove to be greater than his skill. The weight of stone placement was gone; net-go lacked the traditional, pensive feeling that Go achieved. But Sai proved himself different. Touya dragged his mouse slowly across the screen, his clicks made with a deliberate force. He marvelled at the vehemence of his opponent, known to him even without any physical presence.
The mystery of Sai confounded him. This was not a talented newcomer. Touya didn’t know his opponent’s true name or face, but through his Go, Touya learned about him. His playing style was curious. Every generation, every school of Go bred a unique batch of players. Akira and Ogata unconsciously preferred different moves, not because of their personalities, but as an unconscious reflection of their teachers. Sai’s Go was vastly different from anyone Touya had played. But, at the same time, the style was familiar. It was as if Sai had learned to play by studying older kifu, but Touya knew Sai couldn’t have just studied, he had also played many matches of this calibre, impossible given Sai’s anonymity.
The tension grew. He was no longer in the hospital room, a laptop on top of white sheets, but in the isolated state his mind always found its way into during a match. The stones were creating a pattern across the board, the sounds of their placement a rhythm. Something felt right about this game. His opponent was a learned player, who played with a passion Touya could match. The intensity-had he even felt this before? This wasn’t the challenge of facing a superior opponent or the pressure of defeating a lesser player who has managed to gain more territory than is comfortable; Sai’s intensity wasn’t the desire to beat Touya Meijin. The intensity was the intensity of Go: two players dancing slowly around the board, subtle shifts, never moving quickly for fear of losing their advantage.
Touya found he desired to win and learn Sai’s identity not because he disapproved of Sai’s concealment, but because he wanted to know who he was so he could play him again.
Touya Kouyou lay on the starched hospital sheets, a different man. He was old, tired. Physically he had long been feeling the effects of age, but now he experienced it mentally. He became increasingly aware of the hospital, the call of ‘Code Blue’ over the speaker-system, the running footsteps of doctors and nurses, then an ominous silence. Ogata and the others came frequently, but he found his attention was focused elsewhere. The games of the tournament seemed pedestrian in comparison to the game with Sai.
He wasn’t entirely sure what he was trying to prove in his match against Ogata. It was not his Go, that was for sure. It was youthful, risky; perhaps the game of an old man in denial. It wasn’t his Go. It wasn’t the Go that had shown itself in his game against Sai, because Ogata wasn’t Sai. He didn’t want to play again, not until he had faced Sai, played another game. It was a selfish desire, probably one of the first of his career, so almost as an apology, he showed Ogata something else, the Go he might be playing were he thirty years younger. A Go filled with the passion he had felt in his match against Sai, but a Go lacking in the maturity that had perfected that match.
He announced his retirement after the match, wondering if he should have done it before, lest it be interpreted that his loss to Ogata was the cause. It was an amusing thought that one would stop playing after a loss; it seemed to Touya that one would want to keep playing after a loss, to keep playing because of that loss.
Like he does.
Though, he mused, had he announced it before the game, rumours would have spread about his deteriorating health, rumours he didn’t want to be forced to acknowledge.
Go is a game of giving and taking. Sacrifice some stones to win a larger territory.
Touya Kouyou understood this intimately. Now, the game was not Go, rather his life, but he could see it unfolding before him just as easily.
Every day his condition deteriorated slightly. He didn’t catch more than a few brief snatches of conversation between the doctors and nurses, but it was enough to understand his situation. Every day, a new imbalance occurred. He would be low on this, have too much of that. A nurse would come in, adjust something on one of the numerous pieces of equipment around him, change his IV drip, give him a new pill, then scribble something down on his chart; all until he achieved equilibrium once again. Or almost equilibrium. They’d gained ground back, but it wasn’t as much as they had lost. Every day a little bit of territory slipped away.
He could feel himself nearing the end. The playing field was becoming smaller: less room to manoeuvre, less room for error. Laying in his bed, Kouyou is aware of every heartbeat, every laboured breath. His eyes flutter open, but his lids are heavy and he closes them. Still, that brief glance tells him everything he needs to know.
Akiko is sitting on a stool next to him and he dimly registers her hand around his. Akira is sitting behind her. Kouyou can’t make out the expression on his face, but he can see Akira’s hands clasped in his lap and Kouyou imagines they’re white-knuckled. He tries to open his eyes again or to squeeze Akiko’s hand, but he finds he lacks the strength. He breathes again; a deep, wheezing breath that hurts his throat. He exhales and finds he only barely notices the dampness as his oxygen mask clouds over from his warm breath, something that had immensely bothered him before.
In his mind’s eye (though his brain no longer makes the distinction; it’s the only sight he has now) he picked up a stone, setting it down with a resounding clack. The noise is sharp, at odds with the blurriness of the dream world. The other player played his stone, and played it well, maintaining his slight advantage. Kouyou fumbles as he picks up the next stone, suddenly, unexplainably nervous. The game would be decided in the next two moves. If he misstepped, it would cost him the game. If his opponent misstepped…well, the game would go on a bit longer.
The world slowed. Akira watched as the spikes representing his father’s heart fell with each beat, rapidly disappearing. A distant voice echoed in his head ‘Code Blue room 401…’
A nurse shook his arm, pulling him out of his trance.
‘Touya-kun, please, we need you to leave the room.’ Stumbling over his feet, he let the nurse lead him out into the hall. He had a brief glance of his father lying on the bed before the team of doctors and nurses obscured his vision.
Kouyou surveyed the board, though he already knew what he would find. His opponent’s stones had been well placed. Each one pressured him and Kouyou had been hard pressed not to slip behind. Strangely, he had a nagging feeling his opponent was playing shidou-go.
And Kouyou had learned.
He rested his hands on his knees, leaning back from the game. As he removed his focus from the board, he became aware of the soft clack of games continuing around him. He inclined his head slightly.
‘I have nothing.’
cry_havoc
A soft, roaring sound grew in Touya Kouyou’s ears, then out of the noise arose a beat, getting louder and louder until it was the only thing he heard. Then, the awareness of his chest expanding and closing-up with every breath. He could feel the mask strapped to his head, the elastic pinning his ears against his hair, the plastic digging a circle around his mouth and nose. With every exhalation the air within the mask grew uncomfortably clammy.
Awareness flooded into him. He acutely felt every bump of the ambulance as it navigated the windring streets, the motion made all the more noticeable by the straps keeping him on the trolley. The ambulance skidded right. The paramedics were flung left, their vague silhouettes grabbing for handles. He was overwhelmed with the dizzying feeling of his body attempting to spin left, but joltingly hindered by the straps. He could faintly hear the din of the street beyond the screaming of the siren. Over the chaos, keeping a quick beat, he could hear his heart. Da-dum. Da-dum. Syncopated. Rushing. Racing.
Racing him to the end of his life.
The plastic mattress wasn’t a tatami mat; the faux wood tray wasn’t a goban. Akiko sat by his bedside, pouring a cup of tea. Akira, pacing in front of the television, looked as restless as Touya felt. In his hand, Akira held a remote, flicking between channels with his thumb. A news reporter came on, followed by a sports channel, then two more news channels. He clicked it off, on. A sentence of static-filled speech was broadcast across the room, a second of silence. The contrast was giving Touya a headache. Seeing his wrinkles deepen, Akiko stood, and together she and Akira went down to the cafeteria.
Touya Meijin stared down at his hands, knobbly and much more wrinkled then they had been a year ago. He inspected the wood pattern on the tray. The shaky lines representing the wood grain looked like the lines on a goban as drawn by a child, and he could almost pretend the dark knots were Go stones.
His mind remained in a fog during the first hours of his stay, living in memories, replaying the early games that had been the catalyst for growth. The arrival of Ichikawa, Hirose, and Ogata brought his focus back to the present, but his attention still wandered from their conversation. He thought of his missed game, of the upcoming game, and of the doctor’s comments that introduced the nagging doubt he might not be able to make the game.
Two soft knocks, on the door interrupted his thoughts. Touya wasn’t sure who he was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t Shindou. Confusion to why Shindou was here and the boy’s unrepressed exuberance brought Touya back to the present. He half expected the boy to ask after Akira, but instead the boy mentioned Sai. While he welcomed the idea of a game, he wasn’t interested in a game over the internet. He wanted a real game of Go, one that would serve as a distraction, not a reminder of the limitations of his current situation. However, the desperation present in Shindou’s plea, voicing a request that meant much more than just a game, made Touya pause, then accept.
Touya wasn’t sure what to make of Sai. He was sceptical of the merit of a player who confined himself to net-Go. Net-Go, Touya found, lacked the intensity of a physical game. When beating opponents on the internet, he found, they held no determination to win, no desperate strategies, just random clicking; hoping their luck would prove to be greater than his skill. The weight of stone placement was gone; net-go lacked the traditional, pensive feeling that Go achieved. But Sai proved himself different. Touya dragged his mouse slowly across the screen, his clicks made with a deliberate force. He marvelled at the vehemence of his opponent, known to him even without any physical presence.
The mystery of Sai confounded him. This was not a talented newcomer. Touya didn’t know his opponent’s true name or face, but through his Go, Touya learned about him. His playing style was curious. Every generation, every school of Go bred a unique batch of players. Akira and Ogata unconsciously preferred different moves, not because of their personalities, but as an unconscious reflection of their teachers. Sai’s Go was vastly different from anyone Touya had played. But, at the same time, the style was familiar. It was as if Sai had learned to play by studying older kifu, but Touya knew Sai couldn’t have just studied, he had also played many matches of this calibre, impossible given Sai’s anonymity.
The tension grew. He was no longer in the hospital room, a laptop on top of white sheets, but in the isolated state his mind always found its way into during a match. The stones were creating a pattern across the board, the sounds of their placement a rhythm. Something felt right about this game. His opponent was a learned player, who played with a passion Touya could match. The intensity-had he even felt this before? This wasn’t the challenge of facing a superior opponent or the pressure of defeating a lesser player who has managed to gain more territory than is comfortable; Sai’s intensity wasn’t the desire to beat Touya Meijin. The intensity was the intensity of Go: two players dancing slowly around the board, subtle shifts, never moving quickly for fear of losing their advantage.
Touya found he desired to win and learn Sai’s identity not because he disapproved of Sai’s concealment, but because he wanted to know who he was so he could play him again.
Touya Kouyou lay on the starched hospital sheets, a different man. He was old, tired. Physically he had long been feeling the effects of age, but now he experienced it mentally. He became increasingly aware of the hospital, the call of ‘Code Blue’ over the speaker-system, the running footsteps of doctors and nurses, then an ominous silence. Ogata and the others came frequently, but he found his attention was focused elsewhere. The games of the tournament seemed pedestrian in comparison to the game with Sai.
He wasn’t entirely sure what he was trying to prove in his match against Ogata. It was not his Go, that was for sure. It was youthful, risky; perhaps the game of an old man in denial. It wasn’t his Go. It wasn’t the Go that had shown itself in his game against Sai, because Ogata wasn’t Sai. He didn’t want to play again, not until he had faced Sai, played another game. It was a selfish desire, probably one of the first of his career, so almost as an apology, he showed Ogata something else, the Go he might be playing were he thirty years younger. A Go filled with the passion he had felt in his match against Sai, but a Go lacking in the maturity that had perfected that match.
He announced his retirement after the match, wondering if he should have done it before, lest it be interpreted that his loss to Ogata was the cause. It was an amusing thought that one would stop playing after a loss; it seemed to Touya that one would want to keep playing after a loss, to keep playing because of that loss.
Like he does.
Though, he mused, had he announced it before the game, rumours would have spread about his deteriorating health, rumours he didn’t want to be forced to acknowledge.
Go is a game of giving and taking. Sacrifice some stones to win a larger territory.
Touya Kouyou understood this intimately. Now, the game was not Go, rather his life, but he could see it unfolding before him just as easily.
Every day his condition deteriorated slightly. He didn’t catch more than a few brief snatches of conversation between the doctors and nurses, but it was enough to understand his situation. Every day, a new imbalance occurred. He would be low on this, have too much of that. A nurse would come in, adjust something on one of the numerous pieces of equipment around him, change his IV drip, give him a new pill, then scribble something down on his chart; all until he achieved equilibrium once again. Or almost equilibrium. They’d gained ground back, but it wasn’t as much as they had lost. Every day a little bit of territory slipped away.
He could feel himself nearing the end. The playing field was becoming smaller: less room to manoeuvre, less room for error. Laying in his bed, Kouyou is aware of every heartbeat, every laboured breath. His eyes flutter open, but his lids are heavy and he closes them. Still, that brief glance tells him everything he needs to know.
Akiko is sitting on a stool next to him and he dimly registers her hand around his. Akira is sitting behind her. Kouyou can’t make out the expression on his face, but he can see Akira’s hands clasped in his lap and Kouyou imagines they’re white-knuckled. He tries to open his eyes again or to squeeze Akiko’s hand, but he finds he lacks the strength. He breathes again; a deep, wheezing breath that hurts his throat. He exhales and finds he only barely notices the dampness as his oxygen mask clouds over from his warm breath, something that had immensely bothered him before.
In his mind’s eye (though his brain no longer makes the distinction; it’s the only sight he has now) he picked up a stone, setting it down with a resounding clack. The noise is sharp, at odds with the blurriness of the dream world. The other player played his stone, and played it well, maintaining his slight advantage. Kouyou fumbles as he picks up the next stone, suddenly, unexplainably nervous. The game would be decided in the next two moves. If he misstepped, it would cost him the game. If his opponent misstepped…well, the game would go on a bit longer.
The world slowed. Akira watched as the spikes representing his father’s heart fell with each beat, rapidly disappearing. A distant voice echoed in his head ‘Code Blue room 401…’
A nurse shook his arm, pulling him out of his trance.
‘Touya-kun, please, we need you to leave the room.’ Stumbling over his feet, he let the nurse lead him out into the hall. He had a brief glance of his father lying on the bed before the team of doctors and nurses obscured his vision.
Kouyou surveyed the board, though he already knew what he would find. His opponent’s stones had been well placed. Each one pressured him and Kouyou had been hard pressed not to slip behind. Strangely, he had a nagging feeling his opponent was playing shidou-go.
And Kouyou had learned.
He rested his hands on his knees, leaning back from the game. As he removed his focus from the board, he became aware of the soft clack of games continuing around him. He inclined his head slightly.
‘I have nothing.’