[Sawaguchi]
[GEN] THURSDAY'S CHILD
thephoenixboy
The first time that Ogata noticed Touya Akira was when the boy was five. Oh, he'd seen the kid before, certainly, perched on his mother's hip or peering down at his father's guests from between the banisters, but he'd never paid much attenation. What was one more brat? In his experience, his friends' younger siblings were more annoying than interesting at that age. They weren't capable of interesting discussion and he was yet to meet one who wasn’t more interested in chucking the go stones all over than in playing.
He was twenty then, comfortably distant from his days as an insei and spoken of among the other pros as a talent rising in Touya-sensei's wake, the first of a new wave of younger players. It was a compliment he appreciated. The implication that he could follow his teacher to the greatest heights of the game and claim a title, more than one even, seemed a distant goal (though he had considered it - who wouldn't?). Simply being in Touya-sensei's small study group was a mark of some honour, let alone being a former disciple.
With this in mind, it was with some surprise that he glanced up from his game with Ashiwara to see Touya-sensei sit Akira down next to the goban. The boy stayed where he was put, eyes fixed immediately and intently on the game. He was a strange-looking child, with his hair long and brushing his chin, dressed in his strange little suit. Touya-sensei's own customary dress was somewhat eccentric though, so perhaps it wasn't too surprising.
"Ogata-san?" Ashiwara said a full minute after he heard the ‘pacchi’ of a stone being placed. Ogata blinked and pushed his glasses up his nose, turning back to scrutinise the board. Ah yes, Ashiwara had connected. It was a conservative enough move, no loss but relatively little gain. A moment's consideration and he made his own move.
The game ended predictably enough. Ashiwara was still a relatively inexperienced player, though the insei-master - Shinoda-sensei - seemed to think he stood a chance of passing the pro exam in a couple of years time. It was Ogata's private opinion that Ashiwara lacked the killer edge that he would need to survive in the world of the pros, though Touya-sensei seemed happy enough to let him develop that at his own pace. Maybe he was just young, though Ogata didn't remember ever being that innocent himself.
"Shall we discuss the game?" Touya-sensei asked. Ashiwara smiled at him and started pointing at the board, making his own suggestions as to where he went wrong. Ogata followed the conversation absent-mindedly, his eyes straying to Akira again. The boy was still silent, still watching, though he fidgeted slightly as though his legs were going numb beneath him. It was a little unnerving, being watched like that. Touya-sensei seemed to be ignoring him - didn't involve the child in the discussion or suggest what he could be doing. Was Akira there simply because his mother wasn't in the house to watch him?
When Touya-sensei was satisfied that Ashiwara had learned from the game, he called Ashiwara over to the goban in the corner of the room. Akira slipped into the vacated seat opposite Ogata.
Ogata raised an eyebrow. The boy looked up at him, eyes wide.
"If you don't mind, Ogata-kun, I'd suggest that he places four stones," Touya-sensei said, glancing over. Somehow Ogata felt doubtful that he had ever stopped watching them. Touya-sensei was more than capable of following two games at once.
Ogata sat back, taking off his white jacket and folding it carefully, placing it on the floor beside him. It was one he intended to look after, a present from his mother for his birthday to mark the occasion of his step into adulthood and getting a flat of his own.
"You'd like to play a game?" Ogata asked. Akira beamed up at him. Ogata chuckled and passed him the black stones. They bowed and began.
It was fascinating to watch. Akira placed the stones with an ease that suggested he'd been playing for years, like a pro rather than an amateur. The moves themselves, though… No, they weren't the strongest - not even at the level of the amateurs who played at Touya-sensei's go salon. Well, they wouldn't be. The boy was neither an insei nor a pro and this was shidougo rather than a serious match.
Still, Ogata gave him the respect he'd give any player, matching serious moves with serious moves, giving the game sufficient attention to make it worthwhile. That was one lesson he'd learned early on, not to judge by appearances. When you faced someone across the goban, it was their hands, not the rest of them, that you had to judge by. The first time he sat the pro exam, it had been a girl two years younger than him who handed him the loss that edged him out of the top three. Age was certainly not a reason to let his guard down.
In the end, it was Ogata and Touya-sensei that discussed the game, Ashiwara listening carefully, pointing out the occasional possibility. Akira listened. Ogata couldn't help but wonder if he understood what was being said, though surely he had to have been taught to play somehow.
Towards the end of the evening, Touya-sensei replayed his game against Morishita in the Honinbou preliminaries. Ogata had come up against one or other of Morishita's disciples in the past, though he was yet to meet the man himself and found himself drawn in by the deceptive calm in the man's go.
Whatever else, it was certainly a match at the top levels of the game. Morishita was a strong opponent and somehow tended to be at his strongest against Touya-sensei. Ogata could follow the game, could just about follow the logic, though he wondered how many of the moves he'd have seen for himself in the pressure that was an official game.
"Couldn't you have played there?" came a high voice from Touya-sensei's shadow. Ogata looked over, eyes wide. "That would be difficult for white on the right side."
"So you can speak!" Ashiwara exclaimed, even as Ogata's mind was tracing out the new path in his mind. Akira laughed, a hand coming up immediately to cover his mouth. Touya-sensei's hand paused in it's path, shaking slightly, then continued with admirable control. "Why haven't you before now?"
Akira tilted his head. Ogata and Ashiwara watched him curiously.
"I didn't have anything useful to say," Akira said at last, as if that said everything. Maybe it did.
Ashiwara laughed and reached over to sling an arm around his shoulders and ruffle his hair. Ogata merely smiled and reached over to indicate a cluster of stones.
"Playing there would leave the area here open to attack if Morishita-sensei played like this," he said, rearranging the stones to show the new pattern. Akira slipped out from under Ashiwara's arm and leaned forwards to look, hand flicking his hair back out of his face. It was unfortunate that Akira at five seemed to have better focus than Ashiwara at eleven.
Perhaps they made a nice picture, dark hair and dark suit bent bent over the board next to his own light hair and white suit. Ogata dismissed the image: he tended only to think visually of black and white, but such simplistic combinations as two humans could create failed to hold his interest in comparison with the intricate dance that two masters played out on the goban.
When the study session ended, Ashiwara made his farewells and vanished hastily, flashing a smile at Akira as he grabbed his bag from the hallway. He had school the next morning and had homework to do before then. Ogata didn't envy him. He himself had never struggled in school as such but many subjects had tumbled down his list of priorities as he made the decision to pursue go seriously.
It was more comfortable without Ashiwara there, even Akira's quiet presence milling around them didn't hold back the comfortable familiarity between them. It had taken Ogata a few years to adjust to no longer being a student as such - to be able to talk to Touya-sensei as an adult - and he valued the privacy to do so.
"Will you join us for supper?" Touya-sensei asked as they finished packing up.
"If you'll have me," Ogata said. He'd been hoping for the invitation, anticipating it even, as it had been a few weeks since he'd last stayed to eat. After all, if it came down to weighing Akiko-san's cooking and the intellectual conversation here against whatever paltry fare he could manage and the meagre company that the television could provide, there was no contest.
He and Touya-sensei were going over the kifu from the latest round of the Meijin tournament when Akiko swept Akira off to bed. Akira smiled at his father, bowing slightly to Ogata before vanishing through the door.
Thank you for the game, perhaps? Thank you for coming, thank you for not treating him like a child? It was hard to say.
"He plays well," Ogata said, when it was just the two of them in the kitchen. Touya-sensei's voice might have fooled a casual listener into thinking he was indifferent but Ogata saw the edges of his mouth curving up in an involuntary smile.
"Akira does well enough," he said conservatively. "It's early to say how his go will develop. It may be premature, but I think he has talent."
Ogata hid a smile. There were times when it was hard to forget that Touya-sensei was more than just the stern teacher who had driven him through his time as an insei and then through the lower dans. This was not one of them.
"Has he been playing long?"
"We play every morning. It must have been a year or so now, I believe. Since he could hold the stones properly."
That level in a year - though Ogata wondered if he'd been clutching the stones when he was still a mere baby - it was no wonder that Touya-sensei could see talent. He was right though, it remained to be seen what Akira did with it. More players faltered than navigated the delicate path through to the pros.
* * * * * *
"Ogata-san! Did you hear?"
Ogata stifled a smile as he paused in the doorway to collapse his umbrella and turned to look. Ashiwara's head was poking around the doorway to the study, an ear-to-ear grin plastered across it. Akiko-san concealed a smile behind her hand, her eyes indulgent. Ogata passed her the umbrella and stepped into the hallway. "
"Hear what?" Ogata asked Ashiwara, removing his glasses and wiping them on the cloth he kept in his suit pocket. "About the pro exam exam? Yes, Amano-san was kind enough to let me know as I was leaving the Institute."
"I passed!"
Touya-sensei emerged behind Ashiwara, most likely disturbed by the noise. Their eyes met over Ashiwara's head for a moment, then Ogata smiled and looked down again.
"Yes and with the highest score, as well. Congratulations, Ashiwara-kun. Now that you mention it, do you suppose you could spare him this evening, Touya-sensei?"
Touya-sensei paused a moment, looking back into the room and then down at the flushed face of his student. Former student, now. Ogata could hear voices from further within. It sounded like it was a busy night for the study group - Sasaki holding forth on the Kuwabara-Zama game. No matter, he could always drop by another time to hear the results of the discussion.
"Did you need him for something?"
"After a win like that? I thought I'd treat him to dinner." Ogata said, though he had a feeling the words were unnecessary. On the evening of his own success, the two of them had gone out for ramen. That had been almost ten years ago and Touya-sensei now had heavier responsibilities and students that he shouldn't leave. Ogata’s eyes noticed the slight movement as Akira's peered around his father's legs. A moment's contemplation of a few hours alone with a hyped-up Ashiwara and a sudden thought struck him. "I'll take that one too, if it's no trouble, and have them both back at a sensible time."
Ashiwara's mouth was open, lips forming an 'o'. Akira didn't seem to have realised that they were talking about him, his attention still half on whatever was happening inside the room.
Touya-sensei smiled, a hand on Ashiwara's back propelling him out of the doorway and towards his jacket.
"Akira, too?" he asked, sounding mildly surprised. Ogata's smile was wry.
"It can't be much fun for Ashiwara-kun with only an old man like me for company," he said, reclaiming his umbrella from the stand by the door. "So, Ashiwara-kun - sushi or ramen?"
Minutes later, they stepped outside, Akira bundled up in a coat and holding Ashiwara's hand obediently as the two of them shared a single umbrella. Ashiwara was short for twelve, so they should both stay relatively dry. It was hard to believe that he was a pro already, this child who had spilt orange juice down Ogata’s favourite jacket only a month ago.
They walked in silence to the sushi place Ashiwara had chosen. Well, Ogata and Akira walked in silence; Ashiwara kept up a never-faltering spiel of chatter that Ogata let drift in one ear and out the other.
"So Akira, how long before you start working towards the pro exam?" Ogata asked as they sat down, Ashiwara's attention safely diverted by the food. Akira was young certainly, currently the only one in the study group younger than Ashiwara, but he'd been playing since he could walk and his talent was undoubted now. It was no longer a hypothetical question, as it had been when he first joined the sessions.
Akira looked up, startled.
"I'm not ready yet - Ashiwara-san beats me all the time. Maybe in a few years I’ll be good enough. I'm playing at Father's go salon now and learning a lot there too."
"All the time?" Ashiwara said, laughing. "Maybe I win a bit more than half the time but you're as strong as most of the insei now. You have to come after me soon, so I'm not the only one going up against guys like Ogata 5-dan."
Ogata smiled obligingly, though his thoughts turned to Kuwabara Honinbou and the other top pros. Compared to them, he was a small fish in a big pond. Now that he was playing the later rounds of the tournaments, he was starting to discover the great depths of skill and focus that the best players brought to bear. The further he walked along the road of the pros, the further he discovered that he had to go.
“Perhaps it is early,” he conceded. Maybe it was a little greedy to hope for someone with Akira’s potential to come and chase him through the ranks. It was a big leap, up to the very top level, and the idea that he could be overtaken by this child might give him the drive to throw himself at it.
* * * * * *
It was another couple of years after that that Akira came to a study session and said not a word throughout. Ogata watched as he stared at his hands rather than the goban, scarcely looking up to consider the proposed moves. It was strange - he was normally an active member of the group despite his age. Stranger still was that Touya-sensei allowed him to drift, never calling him to order.
When things drew to a close, Akira excused himself hurriedly, brushing past Ogata without even a smile of acknowledgement. He turned to watch the boy go. Akira was normally infallibly polite, it was unheard of for him to be so brisk.
“Is he ill?” Ogata asked as they reconvened in the sitting room. His attention was caught by a book on the coffee table; he paused to pick it up. “Or worse, is he hitting adolescence early? It’s unusual for him to avoid our company.”
Touya-sensei frowned.
“As far as I can tell, he has been studying Shuusaku’s kifu every hour that he has free,” he said. He hesitated and then continued, eyes fixed at a point on the far side of the room. “Ishikawa-san spoke to me yesterday to let me know that he played a boy at the salon that afternoon. He hasn’t mentioned it but I believe he’s been hoping for opponents his age since I had to withdraw him from the children’s classes at the Institute and this child was apparently equally keen, though he seemed unfamiliar with the game.”
Akira had certainly grown into an odd position - too young to fit in with the insei classes, too strong to play with the other children and not yet willing - or perhaps ready - to step into the adult world. No wonder he’d been looking for others in his situation.
“So Akira’s made a friend,” Ogata said, taking a seat next to him on the sofa and letting Murakami, Touya-sensei’s most recent success, find a place on the floor by Ashiwara. The privilege of age. “Even if the kid isn’t up to his level, it will probably be good for him.”
“That’s not it,” Touya-sensei said. “They played an even game. An even game that Akira lost, though this child couldn’t even hold the stones correctly.”
“Oh, now that is different.” Ogata flicked through the book of problems that Touya-sensei had been working on. Trivial, most of them, but they’d be good for beginners. “Do we know who this young prodigy is?” It was all very well to talk about ‘the young wave’ but when he was at the forefront and only Kurata - and someday Akira - chasing him, it was more like raising a ripple in an ocean.
“Shindou Hikaru, according to Ishikawa’s records, about Akira’s age. It’s not a name that I’m familiar with and inquiries at the Institute about recent children’s tournaments didn’t raise any matches. It’s... something of a mystery. Akira seems to be handling it as well as can be expected, though he hasn’t offered to show me the game.”
“As well as can be expected?” Ogata asked, book slipping out of his fingers in surprise. “He didn’t say a word tonight.”
There was a gleam in Touya-sensei's eyes.
“But he’s studying to win in the next game they play,” he said, almost smiling. It was the look he got after a close game. “He hasn’t given in. His intensity has only increased. I had wondered if I’d restricted his growth, limiting the opponents that he could play but it seems that he does have the drive. I’ll be interested to see how this develops, until then I will be here when he needs me.”
“You aren’t going to talk things through with him?” Ogata asked. If he’d dared act like that when he was that age, his parents would have sat him down for a Talk. Touya-sensei had always been a little different, though, and Akira was hardly a normal child.
“This is his hurdle to overcome. Unless he asks it of me, I shan’t interfere.”
That evening, Ogata went home and logged onto NetGo. There’d been a lull in his game schedule lately and while discussing games at the study group was education, it lacked the same thrill.
He scrolled down the list of online players, his mouse hesitating over Ichiryuu. Maybe it wasn’t fair to challenge him when Ogata was the only one going in forewarned as to his opponent’s abilities. It was well known that ‘Ichiryuu’ was Ichiryuu-sensei...
No, Ogata was yet to reach any of the title leagues but his record on NetGo was strong and any go player who underestimated his opponent, particularly in an anonymous forum, deserved what he got.
He invited Ichiryuu to a game.
If Touya-sensei was right about Akira’s new-found drive, then Akira might be coming after him sooner and faster than he’d anticipated.
* * * * * *
“Akira-san!” Akiko-san exclaimed. Ogata heard a quiet greeting outside, the click of the door closing. Conversation within the study group ceased - they had all been wondering where Akira was. He’d missed a couple of the most recent gatherings for tutoring sessions and as a group they’d missed his insights, the deep, aggressive game that he favoured. There had seemingly been no reason for him to be absent tonight though.
Ogata lifted his bag away from the goban to open up a space for him. He looked up as Akira appeared in the doorway. Hair bedraggled, the shoulders of his suit splattered with rain, Akira paused in the doorway, eyes scanning the room, his half-collapsed umbrella dripping water on the carpet. A moment, then he took his seat next to Ogata. He placed the umbrella absent-mindedly on the carpet between them.
Ogata eyed it and picked it up carefully by the handle, rising from his seat to place it in the umbrella stand by the front door.
“So where have you been?” Ogata murmured when he returned, shifting sideways to avoid being dripped on. “It’s not like you to have got lost trying to find us.”
Akira didn’t answer. He shivered slightly, turning to smile as someone handed him a dry jacket to slip on in place of his own. He appeared fixed on his father’s analysis and slowly attention shifted away from him and back to Touya-sensei.
Ogata followed suit, though his mind only absently noted the points made. What on earth could have sent Akira out into the rain? Ogata knew for a fact that his previous job, tutoring some kid for the pro exam, must have finished since the last of the games had been that afternoon.
That was a thought, the pro exam...
Ogata looked at Akira out of the corner of his eye. Maybe he should have checked the results - based on what he’d seen, Shindou Hikaru would be one of the stronger insei candidates: could Akira have vanished to talk to him?
No, Shindou had the ability to shake Akira up like no one else Ogata had seen but Akira wouldn’t have come back looking confused if he had. Not these days, anyway. Hadn’t Amano-san mentioned something about the boy Akira was tutoring - Ochi - being the first passer? If he had spoken to that kid but Ochi hadn’t told him anything about Shindou...
Ogata knew the feeling of being chased. He’d watched Akira’s inexorable march through the ranks of the pros. He’d anticipated it, waited for it: he’d known what was coming. Shindou, though. No one knew quite who he was, just that he had significant talent and that Akira was his main target.
If Shindou had passed and Akira was reading himself for the onslaught, that could well account for this current mood. Seeing at him now, damp and pathetic-looking, made Ogata wonder if Akira was no longer striding towards him but had turned and was continuing in his path with his back to the top, his eyes fixed firmly on one Shindou Hikaru.
“Have you thought about the beginner-dan series?” Ashiwara asked as they were getting their coats. “It sounds like they have a strong set of players coming through this year - Ochi-kun, who Akira-kun’s been coaching, and Waya-kun and Shindou-kun from Morishita-sensei’s group.”
“It will be much as the series ever is, I suspect,” Ogata said, nodding politely to Akiko-san as they passed. “Apart from the poor brat who gets Kuwabara-sensei, of course.”
“But will you ask to play in it?” Ashiwara pressed, turning awkwardly to talk to him as they went one-by-one down the path. “Against Shindou-kun, maybe? Akira-kun’s been watching him for a while.”
Ogata paused on the pavement, tucked his umbrella into the crook of his arm and lit a cigarette.
“I’ll do it if they ask, I suppose,” he said. “I might look into it if Kuwabara-sensei signs up and make sure that I outperform him. Shindou-kun has a long way to go before he’s an interesting challenge. If he makes it throw the lower ranks, I’ll face him in an official match, an even match, and measure his progress then.”
Ashiwara winced and laughed nervously. “You’re too hard on them, Ogata-san. Before long they’ll have caught up to you, if you’re not careful.”
Ogata looked at him flatly.
“Do you think so? I don’t see you in the leagues yet, Ashiwara-kun, and I expect to see you keeping ahead of the beginners. Edging ahead of Saeki-san in every tournament isn’t going to keep you ahead in the long run and you’re strong enough to go further if you tried.”
Ashiwara looked away, eyes fixed on some point far up the road.
“There’s my target for the year then - I’ll stay ahead of Shindou-kun. As for you... you should try to take a title. By the beginner-dan series next year, I want to be calling you Ogata Honinbou!”
Ogata stifled a sigh; another one looking back at Shindou. Was he so unusual in looking forward for his targets? He wanted to beat Touya-sensei, to beat Kuwabara Honinbou in a critical match, even to take a title. Merely staying ahead simply didn’t hold his attention.
* * * * * * *
A light breath and Ogata leaned back against the wall, head back as he watched the wisps of smoke spiralling upwards in the still air until they vanished altogether. He was no longer considered the disciple of Touya Kouya, with his own study group now and his own titles to his name. They no longer even called him the forefront of the young wave, not with boys like Akira and Shindou, Isumi and Yashiro coming up behind him, coming ever closer to his perch at the top of the tree. That was the problem with sitting at the top - it was a lot harder to move forwards when you were the one setting the pace.
He wondered sometimes how Touya-sensei had done it, had sustained his position at the top of the game, retired and somehow improved in a new spurt of inspiration. Ogata somehow doubted that retiring alone would give him the answers he was looking for.
Ogata felt old sometimes, watching them, though in the go world forty hardly counted as advanced years. He had emerged somehow in a dry spell between waves of talent - after Touya Kouyou, Ichiryuu, Morishita and such like and a good fifteen years before Touya Akira led in the new generation. It wasn’t such a bad place to be. Sometimes though, just sometimes, he wondered what it would be like to have grown into his go with a rival at his side.
Sometimes he wondered how old Sai had been and whether they would have driven each other on had Sai pursued the path of the pros. Normally, though, it felt like Sai had been Touya Kouyou’s rival, not his, never his.
“Ogata-sensei?” came a quiet voice from the doorway. He turned. Some new pro was standing there, some child who seemed to be quaking in their boots. When had he turned into Kuwabara-sensei, to be provoking that kind of reaction? “It’s time to begin.”
Ogata paused, stubbing out his cigarette and taking a final moment of fresh air. There was no hurry; they’d wait for him. It would be hard to play a title match without one of the players. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the messenger jiggling from foot to foot, tugging awkwardly at a tie. He couldn’t help but smile at such fidgeting - whether it was nerves or discomfort, both or either would vanish in another few years.
In the end, he himself had stuck to the white suits. They were more natural for him than the traditional dress that Touya-sensei had favoured, with their billowing sleeves; more imposing than Kuwabara-sensei’s quirky suits, which would undoubtedly clash terribly with his car. Maybe Shindou was setting a new trend of more casual wear these days but he was more than happy to play the old eccentric. A black suit would have been acceptable, perhaps, but he had never been all that keen on blending in with the masses.
Ogata ambled slowly down the familiar halls of the Institute, pausing outside the Room of Profound Darkness. He closed his eyes for a moment, composing himself, then drew open the sliding doors and stepped through.
Akira was already there, kneeling on the far side of the goban, back straight and eyes fixed on the bare goban in front of him. Ogata slid into the seat opposite him, sitting back with the ease of someone who has been there so often that they no longer even register their surroundings.
It had been a long time in the coming, this match. Akira had been pressing at his heels for a few years, playing in the leagues, challenging him for titles. This was the closest he had ever come, though, taking Ogata’s defence of the title into the final game.
Ogata smiled: he had long since accepted that Akira was Shindou’s rival and that the rivalry was mutual. That didn’t mean that he didn’t enjoy borrowing him on occasion. Playing someone that familiar, where you knew their moves even as they did, was special in a different way from the normal intensity of a title match.
“So Akira-kun,” he began, “You took your time getting here.”
Akira’s head came up. His face, which had been carefully blank, relaxed, his lips quirking upwards with amusement. He’d come a long way from the quiet child that they had teased back in Touya Kouyou’s study group back before it was truly more than a teacher and a couple of disciples.
“Ogata Honinbou,” Akira murmured.
thephoenixboy
The first time that Ogata noticed Touya Akira was when the boy was five. Oh, he'd seen the kid before, certainly, perched on his mother's hip or peering down at his father's guests from between the banisters, but he'd never paid much attenation. What was one more brat? In his experience, his friends' younger siblings were more annoying than interesting at that age. They weren't capable of interesting discussion and he was yet to meet one who wasn’t more interested in chucking the go stones all over than in playing.
He was twenty then, comfortably distant from his days as an insei and spoken of among the other pros as a talent rising in Touya-sensei's wake, the first of a new wave of younger players. It was a compliment he appreciated. The implication that he could follow his teacher to the greatest heights of the game and claim a title, more than one even, seemed a distant goal (though he had considered it - who wouldn't?). Simply being in Touya-sensei's small study group was a mark of some honour, let alone being a former disciple.
With this in mind, it was with some surprise that he glanced up from his game with Ashiwara to see Touya-sensei sit Akira down next to the goban. The boy stayed where he was put, eyes fixed immediately and intently on the game. He was a strange-looking child, with his hair long and brushing his chin, dressed in his strange little suit. Touya-sensei's own customary dress was somewhat eccentric though, so perhaps it wasn't too surprising.
"Ogata-san?" Ashiwara said a full minute after he heard the ‘pacchi’ of a stone being placed. Ogata blinked and pushed his glasses up his nose, turning back to scrutinise the board. Ah yes, Ashiwara had connected. It was a conservative enough move, no loss but relatively little gain. A moment's consideration and he made his own move.
The game ended predictably enough. Ashiwara was still a relatively inexperienced player, though the insei-master - Shinoda-sensei - seemed to think he stood a chance of passing the pro exam in a couple of years time. It was Ogata's private opinion that Ashiwara lacked the killer edge that he would need to survive in the world of the pros, though Touya-sensei seemed happy enough to let him develop that at his own pace. Maybe he was just young, though Ogata didn't remember ever being that innocent himself.
"Shall we discuss the game?" Touya-sensei asked. Ashiwara smiled at him and started pointing at the board, making his own suggestions as to where he went wrong. Ogata followed the conversation absent-mindedly, his eyes straying to Akira again. The boy was still silent, still watching, though he fidgeted slightly as though his legs were going numb beneath him. It was a little unnerving, being watched like that. Touya-sensei seemed to be ignoring him - didn't involve the child in the discussion or suggest what he could be doing. Was Akira there simply because his mother wasn't in the house to watch him?
When Touya-sensei was satisfied that Ashiwara had learned from the game, he called Ashiwara over to the goban in the corner of the room. Akira slipped into the vacated seat opposite Ogata.
Ogata raised an eyebrow. The boy looked up at him, eyes wide.
"If you don't mind, Ogata-kun, I'd suggest that he places four stones," Touya-sensei said, glancing over. Somehow Ogata felt doubtful that he had ever stopped watching them. Touya-sensei was more than capable of following two games at once.
Ogata sat back, taking off his white jacket and folding it carefully, placing it on the floor beside him. It was one he intended to look after, a present from his mother for his birthday to mark the occasion of his step into adulthood and getting a flat of his own.
"You'd like to play a game?" Ogata asked. Akira beamed up at him. Ogata chuckled and passed him the black stones. They bowed and began.
It was fascinating to watch. Akira placed the stones with an ease that suggested he'd been playing for years, like a pro rather than an amateur. The moves themselves, though… No, they weren't the strongest - not even at the level of the amateurs who played at Touya-sensei's go salon. Well, they wouldn't be. The boy was neither an insei nor a pro and this was shidougo rather than a serious match.
Still, Ogata gave him the respect he'd give any player, matching serious moves with serious moves, giving the game sufficient attention to make it worthwhile. That was one lesson he'd learned early on, not to judge by appearances. When you faced someone across the goban, it was their hands, not the rest of them, that you had to judge by. The first time he sat the pro exam, it had been a girl two years younger than him who handed him the loss that edged him out of the top three. Age was certainly not a reason to let his guard down.
In the end, it was Ogata and Touya-sensei that discussed the game, Ashiwara listening carefully, pointing out the occasional possibility. Akira listened. Ogata couldn't help but wonder if he understood what was being said, though surely he had to have been taught to play somehow.
Towards the end of the evening, Touya-sensei replayed his game against Morishita in the Honinbou preliminaries. Ogata had come up against one or other of Morishita's disciples in the past, though he was yet to meet the man himself and found himself drawn in by the deceptive calm in the man's go.
Whatever else, it was certainly a match at the top levels of the game. Morishita was a strong opponent and somehow tended to be at his strongest against Touya-sensei. Ogata could follow the game, could just about follow the logic, though he wondered how many of the moves he'd have seen for himself in the pressure that was an official game.
"Couldn't you have played there?" came a high voice from Touya-sensei's shadow. Ogata looked over, eyes wide. "That would be difficult for white on the right side."
"So you can speak!" Ashiwara exclaimed, even as Ogata's mind was tracing out the new path in his mind. Akira laughed, a hand coming up immediately to cover his mouth. Touya-sensei's hand paused in it's path, shaking slightly, then continued with admirable control. "Why haven't you before now?"
Akira tilted his head. Ogata and Ashiwara watched him curiously.
"I didn't have anything useful to say," Akira said at last, as if that said everything. Maybe it did.
Ashiwara laughed and reached over to sling an arm around his shoulders and ruffle his hair. Ogata merely smiled and reached over to indicate a cluster of stones.
"Playing there would leave the area here open to attack if Morishita-sensei played like this," he said, rearranging the stones to show the new pattern. Akira slipped out from under Ashiwara's arm and leaned forwards to look, hand flicking his hair back out of his face. It was unfortunate that Akira at five seemed to have better focus than Ashiwara at eleven.
Perhaps they made a nice picture, dark hair and dark suit bent bent over the board next to his own light hair and white suit. Ogata dismissed the image: he tended only to think visually of black and white, but such simplistic combinations as two humans could create failed to hold his interest in comparison with the intricate dance that two masters played out on the goban.
When the study session ended, Ashiwara made his farewells and vanished hastily, flashing a smile at Akira as he grabbed his bag from the hallway. He had school the next morning and had homework to do before then. Ogata didn't envy him. He himself had never struggled in school as such but many subjects had tumbled down his list of priorities as he made the decision to pursue go seriously.
It was more comfortable without Ashiwara there, even Akira's quiet presence milling around them didn't hold back the comfortable familiarity between them. It had taken Ogata a few years to adjust to no longer being a student as such - to be able to talk to Touya-sensei as an adult - and he valued the privacy to do so.
"Will you join us for supper?" Touya-sensei asked as they finished packing up.
"If you'll have me," Ogata said. He'd been hoping for the invitation, anticipating it even, as it had been a few weeks since he'd last stayed to eat. After all, if it came down to weighing Akiko-san's cooking and the intellectual conversation here against whatever paltry fare he could manage and the meagre company that the television could provide, there was no contest.
He and Touya-sensei were going over the kifu from the latest round of the Meijin tournament when Akiko swept Akira off to bed. Akira smiled at his father, bowing slightly to Ogata before vanishing through the door.
Thank you for the game, perhaps? Thank you for coming, thank you for not treating him like a child? It was hard to say.
"He plays well," Ogata said, when it was just the two of them in the kitchen. Touya-sensei's voice might have fooled a casual listener into thinking he was indifferent but Ogata saw the edges of his mouth curving up in an involuntary smile.
"Akira does well enough," he said conservatively. "It's early to say how his go will develop. It may be premature, but I think he has talent."
Ogata hid a smile. There were times when it was hard to forget that Touya-sensei was more than just the stern teacher who had driven him through his time as an insei and then through the lower dans. This was not one of them.
"Has he been playing long?"
"We play every morning. It must have been a year or so now, I believe. Since he could hold the stones properly."
That level in a year - though Ogata wondered if he'd been clutching the stones when he was still a mere baby - it was no wonder that Touya-sensei could see talent. He was right though, it remained to be seen what Akira did with it. More players faltered than navigated the delicate path through to the pros.
* * * * * *
"Ogata-san! Did you hear?"
Ogata stifled a smile as he paused in the doorway to collapse his umbrella and turned to look. Ashiwara's head was poking around the doorway to the study, an ear-to-ear grin plastered across it. Akiko-san concealed a smile behind her hand, her eyes indulgent. Ogata passed her the umbrella and stepped into the hallway. "
"Hear what?" Ogata asked Ashiwara, removing his glasses and wiping them on the cloth he kept in his suit pocket. "About the pro exam exam? Yes, Amano-san was kind enough to let me know as I was leaving the Institute."
"I passed!"
Touya-sensei emerged behind Ashiwara, most likely disturbed by the noise. Their eyes met over Ashiwara's head for a moment, then Ogata smiled and looked down again.
"Yes and with the highest score, as well. Congratulations, Ashiwara-kun. Now that you mention it, do you suppose you could spare him this evening, Touya-sensei?"
Touya-sensei paused a moment, looking back into the room and then down at the flushed face of his student. Former student, now. Ogata could hear voices from further within. It sounded like it was a busy night for the study group - Sasaki holding forth on the Kuwabara-Zama game. No matter, he could always drop by another time to hear the results of the discussion.
"Did you need him for something?"
"After a win like that? I thought I'd treat him to dinner." Ogata said, though he had a feeling the words were unnecessary. On the evening of his own success, the two of them had gone out for ramen. That had been almost ten years ago and Touya-sensei now had heavier responsibilities and students that he shouldn't leave. Ogata’s eyes noticed the slight movement as Akira's peered around his father's legs. A moment's contemplation of a few hours alone with a hyped-up Ashiwara and a sudden thought struck him. "I'll take that one too, if it's no trouble, and have them both back at a sensible time."
Ashiwara's mouth was open, lips forming an 'o'. Akira didn't seem to have realised that they were talking about him, his attention still half on whatever was happening inside the room.
Touya-sensei smiled, a hand on Ashiwara's back propelling him out of the doorway and towards his jacket.
"Akira, too?" he asked, sounding mildly surprised. Ogata's smile was wry.
"It can't be much fun for Ashiwara-kun with only an old man like me for company," he said, reclaiming his umbrella from the stand by the door. "So, Ashiwara-kun - sushi or ramen?"
Minutes later, they stepped outside, Akira bundled up in a coat and holding Ashiwara's hand obediently as the two of them shared a single umbrella. Ashiwara was short for twelve, so they should both stay relatively dry. It was hard to believe that he was a pro already, this child who had spilt orange juice down Ogata’s favourite jacket only a month ago.
They walked in silence to the sushi place Ashiwara had chosen. Well, Ogata and Akira walked in silence; Ashiwara kept up a never-faltering spiel of chatter that Ogata let drift in one ear and out the other.
"So Akira, how long before you start working towards the pro exam?" Ogata asked as they sat down, Ashiwara's attention safely diverted by the food. Akira was young certainly, currently the only one in the study group younger than Ashiwara, but he'd been playing since he could walk and his talent was undoubted now. It was no longer a hypothetical question, as it had been when he first joined the sessions.
Akira looked up, startled.
"I'm not ready yet - Ashiwara-san beats me all the time. Maybe in a few years I’ll be good enough. I'm playing at Father's go salon now and learning a lot there too."
"All the time?" Ashiwara said, laughing. "Maybe I win a bit more than half the time but you're as strong as most of the insei now. You have to come after me soon, so I'm not the only one going up against guys like Ogata 5-dan."
Ogata smiled obligingly, though his thoughts turned to Kuwabara Honinbou and the other top pros. Compared to them, he was a small fish in a big pond. Now that he was playing the later rounds of the tournaments, he was starting to discover the great depths of skill and focus that the best players brought to bear. The further he walked along the road of the pros, the further he discovered that he had to go.
“Perhaps it is early,” he conceded. Maybe it was a little greedy to hope for someone with Akira’s potential to come and chase him through the ranks. It was a big leap, up to the very top level, and the idea that he could be overtaken by this child might give him the drive to throw himself at it.
* * * * * *
It was another couple of years after that that Akira came to a study session and said not a word throughout. Ogata watched as he stared at his hands rather than the goban, scarcely looking up to consider the proposed moves. It was strange - he was normally an active member of the group despite his age. Stranger still was that Touya-sensei allowed him to drift, never calling him to order.
When things drew to a close, Akira excused himself hurriedly, brushing past Ogata without even a smile of acknowledgement. He turned to watch the boy go. Akira was normally infallibly polite, it was unheard of for him to be so brisk.
“Is he ill?” Ogata asked as they reconvened in the sitting room. His attention was caught by a book on the coffee table; he paused to pick it up. “Or worse, is he hitting adolescence early? It’s unusual for him to avoid our company.”
Touya-sensei frowned.
“As far as I can tell, he has been studying Shuusaku’s kifu every hour that he has free,” he said. He hesitated and then continued, eyes fixed at a point on the far side of the room. “Ishikawa-san spoke to me yesterday to let me know that he played a boy at the salon that afternoon. He hasn’t mentioned it but I believe he’s been hoping for opponents his age since I had to withdraw him from the children’s classes at the Institute and this child was apparently equally keen, though he seemed unfamiliar with the game.”
Akira had certainly grown into an odd position - too young to fit in with the insei classes, too strong to play with the other children and not yet willing - or perhaps ready - to step into the adult world. No wonder he’d been looking for others in his situation.
“So Akira’s made a friend,” Ogata said, taking a seat next to him on the sofa and letting Murakami, Touya-sensei’s most recent success, find a place on the floor by Ashiwara. The privilege of age. “Even if the kid isn’t up to his level, it will probably be good for him.”
“That’s not it,” Touya-sensei said. “They played an even game. An even game that Akira lost, though this child couldn’t even hold the stones correctly.”
“Oh, now that is different.” Ogata flicked through the book of problems that Touya-sensei had been working on. Trivial, most of them, but they’d be good for beginners. “Do we know who this young prodigy is?” It was all very well to talk about ‘the young wave’ but when he was at the forefront and only Kurata - and someday Akira - chasing him, it was more like raising a ripple in an ocean.
“Shindou Hikaru, according to Ishikawa’s records, about Akira’s age. It’s not a name that I’m familiar with and inquiries at the Institute about recent children’s tournaments didn’t raise any matches. It’s... something of a mystery. Akira seems to be handling it as well as can be expected, though he hasn’t offered to show me the game.”
“As well as can be expected?” Ogata asked, book slipping out of his fingers in surprise. “He didn’t say a word tonight.”
There was a gleam in Touya-sensei's eyes.
“But he’s studying to win in the next game they play,” he said, almost smiling. It was the look he got after a close game. “He hasn’t given in. His intensity has only increased. I had wondered if I’d restricted his growth, limiting the opponents that he could play but it seems that he does have the drive. I’ll be interested to see how this develops, until then I will be here when he needs me.”
“You aren’t going to talk things through with him?” Ogata asked. If he’d dared act like that when he was that age, his parents would have sat him down for a Talk. Touya-sensei had always been a little different, though, and Akira was hardly a normal child.
“This is his hurdle to overcome. Unless he asks it of me, I shan’t interfere.”
That evening, Ogata went home and logged onto NetGo. There’d been a lull in his game schedule lately and while discussing games at the study group was education, it lacked the same thrill.
He scrolled down the list of online players, his mouse hesitating over Ichiryuu. Maybe it wasn’t fair to challenge him when Ogata was the only one going in forewarned as to his opponent’s abilities. It was well known that ‘Ichiryuu’ was Ichiryuu-sensei...
No, Ogata was yet to reach any of the title leagues but his record on NetGo was strong and any go player who underestimated his opponent, particularly in an anonymous forum, deserved what he got.
He invited Ichiryuu to a game.
If Touya-sensei was right about Akira’s new-found drive, then Akira might be coming after him sooner and faster than he’d anticipated.
* * * * * *
“Akira-san!” Akiko-san exclaimed. Ogata heard a quiet greeting outside, the click of the door closing. Conversation within the study group ceased - they had all been wondering where Akira was. He’d missed a couple of the most recent gatherings for tutoring sessions and as a group they’d missed his insights, the deep, aggressive game that he favoured. There had seemingly been no reason for him to be absent tonight though.
Ogata lifted his bag away from the goban to open up a space for him. He looked up as Akira appeared in the doorway. Hair bedraggled, the shoulders of his suit splattered with rain, Akira paused in the doorway, eyes scanning the room, his half-collapsed umbrella dripping water on the carpet. A moment, then he took his seat next to Ogata. He placed the umbrella absent-mindedly on the carpet between them.
Ogata eyed it and picked it up carefully by the handle, rising from his seat to place it in the umbrella stand by the front door.
“So where have you been?” Ogata murmured when he returned, shifting sideways to avoid being dripped on. “It’s not like you to have got lost trying to find us.”
Akira didn’t answer. He shivered slightly, turning to smile as someone handed him a dry jacket to slip on in place of his own. He appeared fixed on his father’s analysis and slowly attention shifted away from him and back to Touya-sensei.
Ogata followed suit, though his mind only absently noted the points made. What on earth could have sent Akira out into the rain? Ogata knew for a fact that his previous job, tutoring some kid for the pro exam, must have finished since the last of the games had been that afternoon.
That was a thought, the pro exam...
Ogata looked at Akira out of the corner of his eye. Maybe he should have checked the results - based on what he’d seen, Shindou Hikaru would be one of the stronger insei candidates: could Akira have vanished to talk to him?
No, Shindou had the ability to shake Akira up like no one else Ogata had seen but Akira wouldn’t have come back looking confused if he had. Not these days, anyway. Hadn’t Amano-san mentioned something about the boy Akira was tutoring - Ochi - being the first passer? If he had spoken to that kid but Ochi hadn’t told him anything about Shindou...
Ogata knew the feeling of being chased. He’d watched Akira’s inexorable march through the ranks of the pros. He’d anticipated it, waited for it: he’d known what was coming. Shindou, though. No one knew quite who he was, just that he had significant talent and that Akira was his main target.
If Shindou had passed and Akira was reading himself for the onslaught, that could well account for this current mood. Seeing at him now, damp and pathetic-looking, made Ogata wonder if Akira was no longer striding towards him but had turned and was continuing in his path with his back to the top, his eyes fixed firmly on one Shindou Hikaru.
“Have you thought about the beginner-dan series?” Ashiwara asked as they were getting their coats. “It sounds like they have a strong set of players coming through this year - Ochi-kun, who Akira-kun’s been coaching, and Waya-kun and Shindou-kun from Morishita-sensei’s group.”
“It will be much as the series ever is, I suspect,” Ogata said, nodding politely to Akiko-san as they passed. “Apart from the poor brat who gets Kuwabara-sensei, of course.”
“But will you ask to play in it?” Ashiwara pressed, turning awkwardly to talk to him as they went one-by-one down the path. “Against Shindou-kun, maybe? Akira-kun’s been watching him for a while.”
Ogata paused on the pavement, tucked his umbrella into the crook of his arm and lit a cigarette.
“I’ll do it if they ask, I suppose,” he said. “I might look into it if Kuwabara-sensei signs up and make sure that I outperform him. Shindou-kun has a long way to go before he’s an interesting challenge. If he makes it throw the lower ranks, I’ll face him in an official match, an even match, and measure his progress then.”
Ashiwara winced and laughed nervously. “You’re too hard on them, Ogata-san. Before long they’ll have caught up to you, if you’re not careful.”
Ogata looked at him flatly.
“Do you think so? I don’t see you in the leagues yet, Ashiwara-kun, and I expect to see you keeping ahead of the beginners. Edging ahead of Saeki-san in every tournament isn’t going to keep you ahead in the long run and you’re strong enough to go further if you tried.”
Ashiwara looked away, eyes fixed on some point far up the road.
“There’s my target for the year then - I’ll stay ahead of Shindou-kun. As for you... you should try to take a title. By the beginner-dan series next year, I want to be calling you Ogata Honinbou!”
Ogata stifled a sigh; another one looking back at Shindou. Was he so unusual in looking forward for his targets? He wanted to beat Touya-sensei, to beat Kuwabara Honinbou in a critical match, even to take a title. Merely staying ahead simply didn’t hold his attention.
* * * * * * *
A light breath and Ogata leaned back against the wall, head back as he watched the wisps of smoke spiralling upwards in the still air until they vanished altogether. He was no longer considered the disciple of Touya Kouya, with his own study group now and his own titles to his name. They no longer even called him the forefront of the young wave, not with boys like Akira and Shindou, Isumi and Yashiro coming up behind him, coming ever closer to his perch at the top of the tree. That was the problem with sitting at the top - it was a lot harder to move forwards when you were the one setting the pace.
He wondered sometimes how Touya-sensei had done it, had sustained his position at the top of the game, retired and somehow improved in a new spurt of inspiration. Ogata somehow doubted that retiring alone would give him the answers he was looking for.
Ogata felt old sometimes, watching them, though in the go world forty hardly counted as advanced years. He had emerged somehow in a dry spell between waves of talent - after Touya Kouyou, Ichiryuu, Morishita and such like and a good fifteen years before Touya Akira led in the new generation. It wasn’t such a bad place to be. Sometimes though, just sometimes, he wondered what it would be like to have grown into his go with a rival at his side.
Sometimes he wondered how old Sai had been and whether they would have driven each other on had Sai pursued the path of the pros. Normally, though, it felt like Sai had been Touya Kouyou’s rival, not his, never his.
“Ogata-sensei?” came a quiet voice from the doorway. He turned. Some new pro was standing there, some child who seemed to be quaking in their boots. When had he turned into Kuwabara-sensei, to be provoking that kind of reaction? “It’s time to begin.”
Ogata paused, stubbing out his cigarette and taking a final moment of fresh air. There was no hurry; they’d wait for him. It would be hard to play a title match without one of the players. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the messenger jiggling from foot to foot, tugging awkwardly at a tie. He couldn’t help but smile at such fidgeting - whether it was nerves or discomfort, both or either would vanish in another few years.
In the end, he himself had stuck to the white suits. They were more natural for him than the traditional dress that Touya-sensei had favoured, with their billowing sleeves; more imposing than Kuwabara-sensei’s quirky suits, which would undoubtedly clash terribly with his car. Maybe Shindou was setting a new trend of more casual wear these days but he was more than happy to play the old eccentric. A black suit would have been acceptable, perhaps, but he had never been all that keen on blending in with the masses.
Ogata ambled slowly down the familiar halls of the Institute, pausing outside the Room of Profound Darkness. He closed his eyes for a moment, composing himself, then drew open the sliding doors and stepped through.
Akira was already there, kneeling on the far side of the goban, back straight and eyes fixed on the bare goban in front of him. Ogata slid into the seat opposite him, sitting back with the ease of someone who has been there so often that they no longer even register their surroundings.
It had been a long time in the coming, this match. Akira had been pressing at his heels for a few years, playing in the leagues, challenging him for titles. This was the closest he had ever come, though, taking Ogata’s defence of the title into the final game.
Ogata smiled: he had long since accepted that Akira was Shindou’s rival and that the rivalry was mutual. That didn’t mean that he didn’t enjoy borrowing him on occasion. Playing someone that familiar, where you knew their moves even as they did, was special in a different way from the normal intensity of a title match.
“So Akira-kun,” he began, “You took your time getting here.”
Akira’s head came up. His face, which had been carefully blank, relaxed, his lips quirking upwards with amusement. He’d come a long way from the quiet child that they had teased back in Touya Kouyou’s study group back before it was truly more than a teacher and a couple of disciples.
“Ogata Honinbou,” Akira murmured.