Fifthmus Fic: The Good Friend (for flonnebonne, from corbeaun)

[mmmdraco]

Title: The Good Friend
Author: corbeaun
Recipient: flonnebonne, requests
Characters/Pairing: Waya, Isumi/Le Ping
Summary: Not everything can be fixed, but this time Waya Yoshitaka tries to be the good friend.
A/N: Waya Yoshitaka is 22, Isumi is 25 and Le Ping just turned 18.
Word count: 6,200

Comments

[nighteevee]

You know, the very thing that makes me love Waya is his imperfection and the way that he comes to acknowledge it (at least in part) and work to move beyond it. The fandom usually gets hung up on his dislike of the Touya, so it tickles me pink to see that somebody actually wrote about the other parts of him - and wrote it so well, too ♥

[corbeaun]

I admit I had a hard time moving past Waya's imperfection -- and until now I wasn't really willing to like him. He did acknowledge his failure after he made that opportunistic remark during the Hokuto Cup prelims about the Shindo-Yashiro game taking the stronger opponent out and letting either him or Ochi qualify. But he never addressed his treatment of Isumi after the pro exams. To me, those two things, rather than anything about his dislike of the Touya, defined his character for me. And I really didn't like the definition.

But I understand Waya a lot better now, having written this, and I am so happy you think I wrote him well. *hugs*

[nighteevee]

Weeeell, I never found Waya's avoidance-of-sorts of Isumi after the pro test to be particularly bad; part because there were two parts involved in losing touch, part because he did go to see him but was pretty much told to let him have some space, and part, I suspect, because I'd probably do the same thing myself (I can very, very well sympathize with inabilities to having awkward conversations). And the Hokuto preliminaries, while disappointing at first, become so glorious when we later get to see HOW Waya acknowledges his shortcomings and turns to face his fears.

Not that I'm at all biased or anything *g*

[qem_chibati]

LOL.

Definitely an excellent friend to have indeed.

[corbeaun]

Thanks! I had some doubts there, but in the end Waya did come through. *g*

[aithine]

Oh, that was excellent. I like that it took a while for Waya to figure out what he'd done wrong way back when, and that he had the courage to finally fix it by being the good friend he can be for Isumi, no matter how hard that was to do.

[corbeaun]

About half-a-decade passed before he fixed it: Waya's a little slow. ^^;

Thank you for reading and liking it enough to tell me. *g*

[aithine]

Heee. Yeah, but he fixed it--that's the important part. *vbg*

I was a bit annoyed that we never got much in the manga on how Waya making pro and Isumi not making it affected Waya and their friendship--we got how the game with Shindou and the fallout did to Isumi, but you'd think more than just the lost games would have caused fallout in their lives. So it was really lovely to see that addressed. :)

[aiwritingfic]

*burbles wordlessly* ♥

[corbeaun]

That's good right? Burbling is a good sign, right? ;)

<333

[aiwritingfic]

*laughs* Yes, it is. ^_^

[stillskies]

This is absolutely fantastic. ♥ I loved how you touched on the Isumi/Waya without making it an actual pairing, and I like that Shigeko actually has a personality.

And Le Ping. I just want to give him cuddles and cookies.

Great job, seriously. The characterizations are spot on. ♥