Shortfic: Round w3 - Prompt: Leisure
Title: The break up
Rating: G
Genre: Gen
Characters: Iijima Ryo
Summary: “The ticking of the clock reminds you of the familiar pachi, and you wonder how are Nase and the others doing.”
Word Count: 656
The first Sunday you are caught by surprise. You didn’t expect to; last night you went to sleep to the thought of ‘this it, this is the first Sunday in all these years that I’m not going.’ Of course, that isn’t entirely true: during all your years as an insei, you did have summer vacations. But now it’s truly over. You didn’t set your alarm clock, because it was alright to wake up a little late if you didn’t have anything to do.
Even without the alarm, you wake up almost as early as if you had to go to the Institute. Still submerged in your drowsiness, you panic when you see the clock, because you overslept and you’re going to be late for your first game. And here is where it hits you. There is not going to be a first game of the day for you anymore. You are not going to be late for anything. In fact, you can just go back to sleep if you want to.
And you try to do so, but after one hour of struggling, you give up. You seem to be doing that a lot, lately. Even though you are not hungry, you go to the kitchen to have breakfast. Dad is still asleep, mom must be out shopping, and you’re thankful there’s no one else home to ask you again and again how are you doing. The refrigerator light on your face is something dull and sad, and all those boxes and packages with food seem too colorful compared to the stones you should be laying on the goban. After grabbing a slice of bread, you turn on the TV.
Silly cartoons and strange morning shows-all gaudy colors and laughs-fill up your brain like a kid inflating a balloon. Half an hour later you turn off the TV, bored. You just stay there with your head resting against the couch, staring at the ceiling. The ticking of the clock reminds you of the familiar pachi, and you wonder how are Nase and the others doing. Are they winning or losing? Is the game a good game or a crappy one? Are their opponents tough or mediocre? Unable to stand the silence anymore, you stand up and go back to your room, with its unmade bed and its old goban, next to the desk.
You watch it from the doorway. Your hands begin to itch, as if telling you how badly they want to play. Maybe you should go out. But where do kids your age go to on Sundays? What do they do? What kind of things do they like? You’ve never bothered with things other kids your age do. It’s always been all about go for you, and you thought it was always going to be that way. What you thought, however, is meaningless. You always thought working hard was more important than having talent, and turns out it isn’t. Turns out all efforts are worthless when you lack that little bit of a spark that propels other people so far. And you stay where you are, in the doorway, struggling and struggling, but unable to get inside.
Your goban is still there, like your love for go. You need to find something else to pour all this passion on, because it’s burning, and it can burn you down. You need to fall in love with something else, you need to find something else to devote your life to, because the university entrance exams are getting closer and closer and you can’t just blow this chance of being somebody, you can’t just throw your life away.
You’re good at math. Maybe engineering? The idea of spending the rest of your life in front of whatever it is an engineer works with, instead of the goban, makes your guts twist. You close the door-careful not to wake dad, still snoring in the next room-and rush to the bathroom, sickened.
Rating: G
Genre: Gen
Characters: Iijima Ryo
Summary: “The ticking of the clock reminds you of the familiar pachi, and you wonder how are Nase and the others doing.”
Word Count: 656
The first Sunday you are caught by surprise. You didn’t expect to; last night you went to sleep to the thought of ‘this it, this is the first Sunday in all these years that I’m not going.’ Of course, that isn’t entirely true: during all your years as an insei, you did have summer vacations. But now it’s truly over. You didn’t set your alarm clock, because it was alright to wake up a little late if you didn’t have anything to do.
Even without the alarm, you wake up almost as early as if you had to go to the Institute. Still submerged in your drowsiness, you panic when you see the clock, because you overslept and you’re going to be late for your first game. And here is where it hits you. There is not going to be a first game of the day for you anymore. You are not going to be late for anything. In fact, you can just go back to sleep if you want to.
And you try to do so, but after one hour of struggling, you give up. You seem to be doing that a lot, lately. Even though you are not hungry, you go to the kitchen to have breakfast. Dad is still asleep, mom must be out shopping, and you’re thankful there’s no one else home to ask you again and again how are you doing. The refrigerator light on your face is something dull and sad, and all those boxes and packages with food seem too colorful compared to the stones you should be laying on the goban. After grabbing a slice of bread, you turn on the TV.
Silly cartoons and strange morning shows-all gaudy colors and laughs-fill up your brain like a kid inflating a balloon. Half an hour later you turn off the TV, bored. You just stay there with your head resting against the couch, staring at the ceiling. The ticking of the clock reminds you of the familiar pachi, and you wonder how are Nase and the others doing. Are they winning or losing? Is the game a good game or a crappy one? Are their opponents tough or mediocre? Unable to stand the silence anymore, you stand up and go back to your room, with its unmade bed and its old goban, next to the desk.
You watch it from the doorway. Your hands begin to itch, as if telling you how badly they want to play. Maybe you should go out. But where do kids your age go to on Sundays? What do they do? What kind of things do they like? You’ve never bothered with things other kids your age do. It’s always been all about go for you, and you thought it was always going to be that way. What you thought, however, is meaningless. You always thought working hard was more important than having talent, and turns out it isn’t. Turns out all efforts are worthless when you lack that little bit of a spark that propels other people so far. And you stay where you are, in the doorway, struggling and struggling, but unable to get inside.
Your goban is still there, like your love for go. You need to find something else to pour all this passion on, because it’s burning, and it can burn you down. You need to fall in love with something else, you need to find something else to devote your life to, because the university entrance exams are getting closer and closer and you can’t just blow this chance of being somebody, you can’t just throw your life away.
You’re good at math. Maybe engineering? The idea of spending the rest of your life in front of whatever it is an engineer works with, instead of the goban, makes your guts twist. You close the door-careful not to wake dad, still snoring in the next room-and rush to the bathroom, sickened.