Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Hey, welcome back Touya! I’ll see you later tonight, okay?”

Almost as quickly as Shindou’s sweeping arm has pulled Akira in for a kiss, he is letting him go again, feet already searching for shoes and earphones swung round his neck. Akira has just come home from his Friday night lesson at the Institute, and his eyes have barely adjusted to the brightness of the apartment. He is used to Shindou leaving so soon in the evening, but he does not like it.

“Shindou, wait.”

He grabs his arm.

“What?”

When Shindou’s eyes dart up to meet his, Akira can’t determine if his lover seems skittish, or if he is only imagining it. 

“When will you be home?” he asks. 

“9 P.M. Like every week.”

“And our game?”

“What do you mean? We played this morning, remember?”

“Yes, but…”

Of course, Shindou is right. They played in the morning for an hour and a half. Akira had asked Shindou to wake up earlier than usual so that they could play a match together before work, and Shindou, as usual, had played brilliantly. Akira could find no fault with their game. Still, those light brown eyes had seemed distant, and Akira had felt somehow as though there had been an invisible wall set into the goban separating the two of them. Now, he cannot put this sense of frustration into words. There is nothing specific he can say to express what has been weighing on his mind.

“I’ll see you tonight,” he says, letting go of Shindou’s arm. 

Shindou laughs warmly. “Yeah! I’ll see you tonight.” 

Another kiss on the cheek. Akira wonders when it was that Shindou’s kisses began to feel like excuses.

. . .

It is not only in his head. Akira has told himself this many times. However, if there have been any changes in Shindou’s demeanor, they have been almost imperceptible. 

In the morning, Shindou is lying next to him, his eyes focused on a point on the ceiling. 

“Are you thinking about the Meijin title?”

After a moment’s pause, Shindou turns to face Akira. “Yeah.” He grins.

Akira doesn’t know why he asked the question, because he had already known that Shindou’s answer would be a lie. He knows what Shindou had been thinking about. Rather, he knows whom Shindou had been thinking about. 

Shindou moves himself closer and runs a hand through Akira’s hair. “It got away from me again this time, but next time for sure…”

Akira closes his eyes, focusing on the sensation of the fingers brushing lightly against his face. But soon the fingers are lifting away and Shindou has rolled over and out of the bed. He pulls his laptop out from its case and sits half-naked in his chair. Akira listens to the click of the mouse. 

“Do you have to do that now?”

“What?”

“Your programming practice.”

“Well, I don’t really have time except for on the weekends.”

“And our Go?”

Shindou looks up at him. 

“What are you talking about?”

“What about our Go?” Akira asks again.

“You’re still in bed. Are you saying you want to play Go in bed?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“How am I being ridiculous? I don’t know what you want.”

Shindou’s voice seems so genuinely confused that Akira gives up and pulls the covers aside.

“I suppose I should get up too. Do you want breakfast?”

Shindou’s eyes have returned to the screen. “Uh…. yeah.”

Akira walks to the kitchen and turns on the water full blast to fill up the kettle. 

sai. You were thinking about sai. 

He knows he is not wrong. But how can he ask about a person who was Shindou before but is not Shindou now? How can such a person have existed? He’s turned it over in his mind hundreds of times, and the mystery has become so old now that he has grown weary of it. But he still wants the answer badly. When Shindou’s eyes take on that far away look, it is as though there is something driven between him and Akira; an invisible barrier that Akira is not allowed to touch. 

. . . 

Shindou had signed up for programming lessons about three months ago. Initially, Akira had been intrigued. 

“I thought you wanted more time in your schedule. You’re always complaining about it. Why are you taking a completely unrelated class now?”

“I just keep thinking about that AI stuff,” Shindou had said. “The video game that Waya has.”

Akira had shaken his head decisively. “A computer will never be able to play Go as well as a human.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right. But it’s kind of fun, you know? Besides, I didn’t study a whole lot in middle school. I guess I wanted to make up for that.”

So Shindou’s lessons had begun — Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings. Sometimes if Akira came home late from a teaching engagement, he missed Shindou entirely, and was left to deal with the mess on the counters or the dishes in the sink. There had been more than one drawn-out argument between the two of them upon Shindou’s return. 

“Look, I’m trying my best! If I clean the kitchen, you tell me I should be studying Go. If I study Go, you tell me that I’m neglecting the chores. And if I take any time for myself—”

“You’re missing the point!” Akira had snapped. But he himself didn’t know what the point was. 

. . . 

One night, after a bad fight that had left Shindou sleeping on the couch — he had sold his own bed months ago — Akira woke in the darkness to a strange sense of panic. The edges of his dream were still sharp, and as he ran his hands over his brow, the words of dream-Shindou echoed in his mind. 

“You don’t really know me. You can never understand.”

In the dream, the two of them had been standing under a high concrete bridge at the outskirts of Tokyo. Shindou hadn’t been angry, but this had somehow made the atmosphere still more ominous. He had seemed steel-cold and distant, as though all the light and warmth had fled from him, and his words had fallen like pellets of ice at Akira’s feet.

“Why won’t you tell me?” Akira had demanded. But the Shindou in the dream had turned away and begun to walk towards a highway, and Akira could not follow him.

Even when the real Shindou had apologized in the morning and promised to do better in the future, Akira could not help feeling, irrationally, that he wanted an apology for the dream too. He did not say this out loud, of course.

“Hey Touya — do you wanna play a game tonight?”

“Yes, if you have time.” 

“Come on, I always have time for you!” 

“Good. I’ll have the board out when you come home.”

. . . 

As it nears the end of the month, Shindou is informed that he will go on a business trip in Taiwan. It will last two weeks. Akira helps him prepare by writing up notes for his lecture. 

“You should come with me,” Shindou says, casting a glance at him from the other side of the room.

“You know that I can’t,” Akira replies, not looking up from his book.

To tell the truth, a part of him is glad that Shindou is leaving for a while. The atmosphere in the apartment has become somewhat stifling, and Akira feels he would appreciate a couple of weeks alone. He helps Shindou pack, and teaches him a few words in Chinese. He also has a lecture of his own to prepare for, and he retires to their room to take notes while Shindou goes over his itinerary.

The day of Shindou’s flight, Akira has a match, so they do not say goodbye. When he comes home that evening, the apartment is dark and silent, and as he switches on the light he finds a pair of sunglasses that Shindou must have accidentally left on the counter, so he sets them on the bedside table. He then goes to the kitchen to prepare himself some dinner. It is wonderfully quiet. He listens to his favorite radio program — the one Shindou always complains is too boring — and cleans the kitchen thoroughly after dinner. It feels good to see the counters without any stains. He reads a book in bed before switching out the light and sleeping soundly. 

. . . 

When there is no word from Shindou for three days, Akira is a little annoyed. He finds himself checking his phone frequently in between matches and appointments, but under Shindou’s name it is still the same month-old message that greets him every time. It is irresponsible of him, Akira thinks, to be so negligent in his communication. It would be normal at the very least for Shindou to send a text when he arrived at the airport. He certainly would have expected something after the first full day in Taiwan. But if Akira were to send a text to reprimand him for his behavior, he can just imagine Shindou’s response:

Jeez, just relax, okay? It’s only been three days. Have you missed me that much??

Absorbed in his thoughts, Akira nearly runs into Ashiwara-san in a corridor of the Tokyo Go Institute. 

“Oh my, is something wrong?” 

“I’m sorry,” Akira says, “I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

Ashiwara-san looks concerned. “Your face was all wrinkled up just now! Is there something on your mind?”

Akira momentarily considers telling Ashiwara-san about the lack of communication from Shindou, then decides against it. 

“It’s nothing in particular,” he says, and changes the topic to Ashiwara-san’s most recent match in Sendai.

. . . 

Another day passes, then two more. The annoyance that Akira had initially felt has slowly and steadily been changing into a sense of anxiety, and now he is struggling to keep himself from imagining dreadful situations and gruesome scenes — Shindou in the hospital, Shindou kidnapped, Shindou dying on the side of some abandoned road. 

Sitting on the edge of the bed, Akira brings out his phone again. His thumb hovers over the green CALL icon, but he stops himself just before pressing it. He is being ridiculous. If Shindou wants to communicate, then he will. It’s extremely unlikely that anything serious has happened to him. Still, in order to calm his worries, Akira calls Shindou’s mother, who upon answering immediately tells him how delighted she is to hear from him. Akira assures her that he is doing fine and that his work is going well, and asks, in passing, if she has heard any news from her son. 

“Yes, he called me yesterday,” Shindou’s mother says. “He said that he has been eating noodles every day.”

“Ah, noodles. That sounds like him,” Akira says. He has to fight very hard to keep his voice calm as a flood anger overtakes him. “Did he say anything else?”

“No, only that he was having a nice time.”

So Shindou called his mother. Why his mother but not Akira? What could it mean?

Biting his lip to tamp down on his frustration, he thanks Shindou’s mother for the information and hangs up. He succeeds in not throwing the phone across the room.

. . . 

Akira’s mind the next day is so occupied with feelings of resentment that it is barely possible for him to concentrate on his work. When he returns home, however, it is an unexpected loneliness that sweeps over him as he switches on the light and illuminates nothing but emptiness and silent furniture. Shindou’s belongings are all neatly sitting in their proper places; nothing is out of order. There is no chaos in the apartment, and no life. There is no one to play Go with, and no one to argue with. 

Akira walks to the sofa and sits down slowly, bringing his hand to his lips as he attempts to consider the situation directly. He has now confirmed that Shindou’s lack of communication was intentional. He can only read it as a sign, and he does not like the implications. As much as he would like to blame everything on Shindou, perhaps he is the one at fault; he had seen the distance in Shindou’s eyes for months without having the courage to bring it up. He must prepare himself to face the direction their relationship is now heading. He has been avoiding it for far too long.

Shindou had said he would tell Akira about sai someday, and Akira had pretended to himself that he was being patient by waiting for Shindou to tell him. But this is not the whole truth. With every day they live together, he has been able to see more clearly the silhouette of an immense sorrow. For all of Shindou’s attempts to hide it, it sometimes hangs over their apartment like a deep shadow, and Akira knows the shadow’s name even if he does not known its form. One thing is clear: sai affects every part of Shindou’s Go and his life, and this terrifies Akira. He does not know if he is strong enough to share the pain of this secret when the pain of his own losses is difficult enough to bear alone.

If he loses Shindou, though, he does not know what he will do.

If he loses Shindou…

A faint buzzing sound brings Akira to his feet, and he realizes that his phone is ringing on silent. He rushes to find his jacket, a wordless hope budding in his chest. Even when his fingers have found the phone and he sees the name on the screen, he can hardly believe it. To his embarrassment, he realizes his heart is racing as he answers. 

“Shindou?”

The pause before the response nearly kills him.

“Hey….. Touya.”

The relief he feels at the sound of Shindou’s voice is two or three times more intense than he had expected. He finds himself gripping the windowsill and letting his breath out all at once, completely at a loss for words.

“I’m so… I’m so sorry,” Shindou says.

“It’s you,” Akira murmurs.

“Yeah, it’s me.”

Akira lowers himself into a chair and brings one hand to his temple. “You’re late,” he says. He has to disguise the wavering in his voice. But Shindou’s voice sounds somehow even more fragile.

“Touya, you didn’t call me…”

“YOU didn’t call!” Akira retorts.

“Yeah. I was worried.”

“Worried!? If anyone was worried, it was me!”

“Why?”

“Why? Are you an idiot? I didn’t know if you were all right! I didn’t know if you were safe!”

“I was fine. Nothing hap-”

“How could I have known that?”

Akira waits for Shindou to respond, but it seems as though he is struggling to say his next words. When he does answer, his voice is very quiet.

“I thought you were going to break up with me.”

“What!?”

Even as Akira is reeling from the absurdity of this suggestion, something clicks in his mind as he reconsiders his own behavior over the past month, and disparate scenes begin to fall into a recognizable pattern. From Shindou’s point of view… 

“You’ve been acting really annoyed with me for weeks!” Shindou accuses him. “Don’t deny it! You’ve been distant this whole time. I thought for sure that whenever you called me you were going to say it was all over between us!”

Now it is Akira who hesitates as he answers. “Why would I break up with you, Shindou?”

“Because you’re tired of me. Because I’m not good enough for you. There are plenty of reasons. Take your pick!”

“The only reason I would break up with you would be if you shut me out,” Akira says carefully. “If you stopped looking at me and decided to shoulder everything on your own without trusting me… then I might break up with you.”

“I don’t want to shut you out. I would never want to!”

“I’m talking about sai,” Akira says, and suddenly Shindou is silent again. Akira stands up, his legs feeling shaky from the weight of his words even as he is saying them. Still, he walks forward to the window. “Can I trust you to tell me about sai when the time is right?” he asks.

“Touya…”

“I won’t ask you to do anything you are unable to do.” Outside the window, the urban disorder of Tokyo sprawls out in every direction. The office buildings and apartments glint yellow and green, tan and red, and a haze of smog discolors the night sky. “But Shindou, you must tell me,” Akira says.

There is no answer for a moment, but when Shindou speaks again, his voice is firm. “I promise.” 

Akira knows that he can believe him. He closes his eyes. “Thank you,” he says. “Will you call me tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” Shindou says. 

“Will you call me the next day too?”

“Yeah, I will.”

This is Akira’s way of saying “I love you.” He knows that when Shindou returns home, they will make love and play Go and eat out together, and everything will fall back into the steady rhythm of the life that they share. But this moment of separation is fleeting and important, and he treasures the sound of Shindou’s voice on the other end of the line. 

“Come home soon,” Akira says. 

Chapter Text

Two things happen at about the same time. First, Hikaru finds himself on a brilliant winning streak that catches the attention of most of the Go world. Secondly, Touya begins meeting with his mother. 

The winning streak comes at a good time for Hikaru. He’s been frustrated by repeatedly watching the Meijin and Tengen titles slip away from him at the last moment. After a few consecutive years of coming within an inch of a title and then losing it, even a patient person would get a little frustrated, and Hikaru is not particularly patient. Touya on the other hand seems never to lose faith in Hikaru’s ability for an instant, for which Hikaru is immensely grateful. When he begins winning game after game, Touya only says that he’s hitting his stride, and warns him not to get too careless. Hikaru does not become careless. He continues on steadily, taking down players in the upper dans one after another.

Touya, of course, has not been faltering in his Go either, although he does lose some of his composure on the day that he suddenly receives a phone call from his mother. It’s the morning of an important match. She asks him to come back home for only a day, and when he does not agree to this, she begs him to meet with her somehow, anywhere — in a restaurant if they have to. Touya gives in on the condition that he doesn’t have to see his father.

He plays the match well that afternoon, although his hands shake from nerves. The meeting occurs without incident, and when Touya gets home he tells Hikaru of the new development. Soon it is arranged between Touya and his mother that they will meet monthly, always at a family restaurant. Although Touya reveals little of what happens in these meetings to Hikaru, it becomes clear to Hikaru that it is emotionally draining for Touya to see his mother. Hikaru decides to step around the subject, only speaking of it when Touya brings it up himself. This suits both of them, and it is not until the autumn a year and a half later that the situation changes.

One day in late September when Hikaru enters the apartment, he notices that Touya seems to be in one of his most pensive moods. He is staring resolutely in front of him, his body tense. He doesn’t hear Hikaru come in.

“Hey,” Hikaru calls out.

“…Ah. Welcome home.”

It takes Hikaru a moment to put his finger on the reason for Touya’s subdued appearance. 

“Oh, you just had lunch with your mom, right?”

Touya nods without changing the direction of his gaze. His fingers are clenched around the sleeves of his cardigan, as though trying to keep his hands still. 

“All right, seems like today was a doozy,” Hikaru says, dropping his bag on the floor and coming over to sit next to Touya on the couch. “So spill. What did your mom say?”

Touya takes a deep breath in, then exhales slowly. 

“My father wants to see us.”

“What!?”

Whatever Hikaru had thought he was going to hear, it wasn’t this. He feels his heart rate increase as worries he had been avoiding for years all begin to writhe to the surface of his mind. 

“Hold on, you mean ‘us’ like you and me? Together? He wants to see us!?”

“Yes, that is what my mother said.”

Touya’s voice is still muted, but Hikaru isn’t ready to be calm and collected about something like this just yet. 

“Where the hell did that come from? Where was he for the last five years? Why now?”

“It seems he was impressed with your televised game against Lu Li,” Touya says, the corner of his mouth curling into a wry smile. “That’s how my mother introduced the topic, in any case.” 

“My game…?” Hikaru can’t deny that he feels a flicker of pride. He knows he played an excellent game, tight and effective from start to finish, and it is satisfying to hear that the former Meijin thought so too. But this is no time to indulge in self-satisfaction.

“Okay but, that doesn’t make any sense!” Hikaru says. “You’ve played a ton of amazing games, and he’s never said anything!”

“You don’t need to tell me that,” Touya says quietly. 

Hikaru looks at Touya silently for a moment. Even though they barely ever talk about Touya’s dad, he knows how much the break in their relationship has been hurting him, even now. “So are we gonna go see him?” he asks. 

“I think so. I don’t know what he’s going to say, but I think it would be better for us to go.”

“Do you… do you think he changed his mind about us?” Hikaru asks, even though he knows he shouldn’t.


“I don’t know,” Touya says simply, getting up from the couch. “I’ll call my mother and tell her we’ll come over on Thursday afternoon.”

. . . 

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Hikaru looks through some of the Meijin’s old games from back when he was still the Meijin. He remembers the contents of some of them, because Sai had wanted to see them. Looking through them now, he feels a mixture of a nostalgia with a pang of remorse. He knows he should have shown Sai more games, and more than anything he wishes he could have let him play against the Meijin at least one more time. If there was one thing Sai had probably wanted with all his heart, it was to have Touya’s father as a rival, and play countless matches together, just like Hikaru and Touya are playing countless matches now. Hikaru smiles when he imagines a self-indulgent fantasy scene — Sai and the former Meijin playing Go in one room while their two favorite students play Go in another room. What a family reunion that would be! But Hikaru is getting ahead of himself. He’s still a long way from even being able to think of calling Touya’s dad “family.” He’s surprised to discover that a part of him wants to. 

As he puts away the kifu, he notices there is one on the bottom of the stack that is written in someone else’s handwriting — Touya’s, not his. And as he scans the game move by move, the memory comes back to him. They had been arguing that day, as usual; they must have been sixteen or seventeen. 

If you’re so sure that that was a bad move, why don’t you go ask your dad, huh?

Are you honestly suggesting that I ask my father’s opinion on your ridiculous move here?

Yeah, go ask him! He’s gonna say that I’m right. 

Where do you get that completely baseless self confidence?

Baseless? Who’s baseless!?

In the end, Hikaru wonders if Touya ever did show the kifu to his dad. Over the years they’ve been dating there have been countless times when it would have been nice to know what Touya’s dad thought about this move or that strategy. “If everything goes well…” Hikaru begins to think, but stops himself from completing that thought. 

It hurts to hope, just like it hurts to shut the hope away. 

. . . 

Thursday comes so fast that it feels unfair. Before they leave the apartment, Hikaru kisses Touya fervently on his forehead, his nose, and his cheeks. Surprisingly, Touya lets him do it.

“We’re gonna be fine,” Hikaru says. “It’s gonna be okay. No matter what, I’m gonna be there, okay?”

“I know,” Touya says, taking Hikaru’s hand and squeezing it lightly. “We should go now.”

They get into Touya’s car, and Hikaru is surprised to see that Touya needs to use the GPS system to get to his own house. But of course, he only learned to drive after he stopped visiting his family. Whenever he and Hikaru take the train, Touya insists on them standing an appropriate distance away from each other, so as not to attract any suspicion. Now Hikaru is glad that in the privacy of the car he can lay a gentle hand on Touya’s knee. They drive for several minutes.

“He might ask you to leave me,” Touya says suddenly. “You should be ready for that.”

“You haven’t seen him since he kicked you out?”

“Not once. You know that.”

Hikaru chuckles grimly, watching the scenery as it changes from office buildings to residential neighborhoods.

“You know… I was pretty shocked when you came home like that after your dad found out. But honestly, my dad would flip if he knew I was dating a guy.”

“Hasn’t your mother told him?” Touya asks.

“Nah. She knows how he is. We kind of agreed not to.”

Touya bites his lip, and slows the car. Looking out, Hikaru sees that they have already arrived in front of Touya’s parents’ house. His stomach twists.

“I want to play against my father again,” Touya says. It is the first time he has said it out loud in five years, though Hikaru knew it without having to ask.

“Yeah. Maybe you will.”

“Maybe.”

They lock the car doors, walk up the path to the entrance, and Touya rings the doorbell. Hikaru’s shoulders are so tense they’re practically up to his ears. Touya reaches out one hand to physically force Hikaru’s left shoulder down again, and draws away just in time as his mother answers the door.

“Akira-san! Hikaru-kun!”

It’s a friendliness that somehow Hikaru hadn’t been expecting, and he feels suddenly overly formal and stiff as he bows in his suit. 

“You’re a little bit early,” she is saying to Touya as they walk inside, and Hikaru is surprised by how small she looks next to her son. “Your father is still eating his lunch.” 

Touya’s house in the daylight brings back memories. The smell more than anything takes Hikaru immediately back to the Hokuto Cup: eating sushi with Yashiro and Kurata-san, arguing with Touya, playing Go all night. But the knowledge that Touya’s dad is in the next room takes away any kind of pleasantness from the sense of nostalgia. He feels almost woozy, and he doesn’t know where to put his hands. Touya isn’t looking any better. His face is pale. 

“Why don’t you sit down and have something to eat too? There’s still salad and soup and rice. I can heat up some gyoza.” 

“I don’t think we…” Touya is saying, but from the kitchen there is the sound of something clacking against the table, and then soft footsteps approaching them. 

Kouyou Touya stands in the doorway, his kimono grey, his hair startlingly white. 

“Come inside,” he says, and both Hikaru and Touya are too startled to say anything in opposition. 

They follow Touya’s father past the dining room, where Touya shoots a confused glance over his shoulder.

“We’ve begun eating in the kitchen now that it’s just the two of us,” Touya’s mother explains. “It’s easier that way.”

They sit down at the table across from Touya’s father, and soon each of them has a steaming bowl of soup as well as some bean sprout salad and a heaping bowl of rice.

“Itadakimasu,” Touya says in a hesitant voice that sounds completely out of character. Hikaru wants to grab his hand and run out of the house, but he knows that he can’t do it; they have to see this through to the end.

“Hikaru Shindou,” Touya’s father says. His hands are folded on the table in front of him, and he’s staring at Hikaru with the piercing gaze his son inherited. “It has been a long time.”

“Yes.” Hikaru nods, swallowing.

“You and Akira have been together for five years.” 

“Yes, sir.”

“Hm.” Kouyou Touya nods and picks up his chopsticks. He takes a sip from his soup and says nothing.

Hikaru shoots a glance at Touya to his right, but realizes Touya is ignoring him deliberately. He seems to be holding his breath. 

Touya’s father puts down his bowl. “It is not my intention to intervene in the personal life of my child more than is proper to his well-being,” he says. “This being said, I do not encourage reckless behavior, and I cannot see an affair with a man as anything other than reckless for a young person who has his whole future ahead of him.”

Hikaru’s mind races for something to say. Why hadn’t he thought of what he was going to do in this situation? Why can’t he think of anything? His hands grip at the fabric of his suit pants. But Touya’s father has already begun to speak again. 

“That… is what I would have said five years ago.” He looks at his son, and then at Hikaru. “I do not feel the same way now.”

Beside him, Hikaru hears Touya let his breath out. 

“Sensei,” Hikaru begins, but Touya’s father cuts him off.

 “Shindou-kun, you have talent that sparked at a young age and led you to your current position, though I do not know the true means of your ascension.” His voice is quiet. “I suspect there is much that you have had to hide, perhaps out of necessity. You once deceived me in a formal match, and I do not appreciate a man who distorts his talent or tries to seem something that he is not. When I learned the truth about your relationship with my son, I thought that such a person, regardless of his sex, would not be suitable for Akira. I will not deny your strength in Go, because it is more than apparent. But I did not want to see him hurt. I would have liked a respectable future for my son.”

Kouyou Touya sighs heavily.

“If I continue as I have up until now, what am I other than an obstinate old man? I believed it was right to be firm with Akira, and that in doing so he would understand the repercussions of a foolish decision. But it seems that what I did in fact was rupture a relationship with my only son, and thus injure my family. Akira is like me; he does not back down when he has found something he believes in. I see now that he has decided to believe in you.” 

He looks first at Hikaru, and then into his son’s eyes. “I know that whatever I say will not change that. Akira, I would like you to join our family again.”

Hikaru looks to his right and sees that Touya’s eyes are filled with tears. When he closes them, the tears spill silently over the edges, falling into his lap. He does not say anything.

Hikaru can’t take it anymore. “Sensei, I can’t… I’m not going to leave Touya. I mean, Akira. He’s the most important person in my life.”

Touya’s father nods. There is a hint of a smile on his lips. “I understand that,” he says. 

“And I… I also know how important his family is to him. I want him to be happy.” Hikaru has no idea where he’s going with this, or where the words are coming from. His voice is shaking. “If he’s not happy, I can’t be happy. That’s why I…”

“Shindou-kun, you are welcome here,” Kouyou Touya says. “You are both welcome.”

Hikaru takes Touya’s hand and squeezes it as tightly as he can. Touya’s shoulders are shaking as he muffles the sound of his crying.

“I’m not going to give up on him. Ever,” Hikaru says.

“I will not ask you to give up on him.”

“Father.” Hikaru is startled by Touya’s voice, still murky with tears. “Thank you.”

Touya’s father nods slowly. “You will always be my son.”

. . . 

Touya walks ahead to the car, taking long strides so that Hikaru almost has to jog to keep up with him. 

“Hey,” Hikaru says.

Touya opens the car door roughly and gets into the driver’s seat. Resolutely staring straight ahead, he waits for Hikaru to put on his seatbelt before he starts the engine. There are new tears running down his cheeks. 

“Um,” Hikaru begins tentatively as Touya pulls out into the street. His fists are clenched tightly around the steering wheel. 

“Do you want me to drive?” Hikaru asks.

“No.”

Hikaru looks out the passenger seat window, watching the scenery blur. Before they left, Kouyou Touya had stopped them.

“There is one more thing I would like to say to you,” he had said. “Akira, I saw your match last week. You have done well.”

“Father?”

“Your Go. The Honinbo title. It is all exactly what I have hoped for you. You have done very well.”

Before Hikaru’s eyes, Touya had stiffened. “You were watching me?”

“Of course I have been watching,” Touya’s father had said. “How could I not be proud of everything you have done?”

…Out of the corner of his eye Hikaru sees Touya sniff and wipe his eyes with one hand. 

“Handkerchief?” Hikaru asks.

“No. Thank you.” His tone is a little more gentle. 

“I thought it went pretty well,” Hikaru says. “He didn’t apologize or anything, but it was still pretty much his blessing, right?”

Touya doesn’t reply. They get onto the highway, and soon enough Tokyo’s high-rises are flying past on either side. 

When Hikaru decides to risk another glance at Touya a few kilometers later, his eyes are on the road, but it seems as though his mind is far away. 

They do not speak until they get home, and are taking off their jackets. Touya looks as though he is going to walk away to his room, but Hikaru grabs his wrist.

“Hey. Let me hold you,” he says. Touya turns around slowly. Looking into Hikaru’s eyes, he steps into his open arms, then slowly softens into the embrace. They settle against each other, their breathing becoming easy. 

“I didn’t want to cry in front of him,” Touya says. “Or you.”

“Oh, geez! I don’t even care about that kind of stuff! What kind of jerk would I be if I judged you for something like that?”

Touya laughs into his shoulder. “I thought I was going to be strong in front of him this time.”

“You are strong. You’re always strong.” He brushes Touya’s hair back behind his ears tenderly. “Probably too strong.”

“Thank you for what you said.”

“What? Oh, earlier. Well, yeah. I meant it.”

“I know.”

Hikaru snakes his arms tighter around Touya, and together they rock back and forth, toes touching. 

“Oh. Didn’t you say you had to teach Atsushi tonight?”

“You’re right,” Touya says, letting go. “I should get ready.”

As Hikaru watches Touya organize his kifu and notes in a clear file, he thinks that Touya looks a lot like his dad when his gaze is turned down like that. It makes Hikaru grin.

“What are you smiling about?”

“Nothing. It’s a secret.”

“Tch,” Touya scoffs. He brushes his fingers along Hikaru's cheek as he leaves.

"See you tonight."

"See ya."

Chapter Text

“I can’t believe it.” 

It must be the fifth time he has said it in the forty minutes they’ve been discussing the game, but it’s all that Akira can think of.

“I just can’t believe—“

“Ok, but hold on,” Shindou says. “Going back to one of the earlier moves, the 2-space jump here. Just… the reading. Holy shit. So before it played that, I was thinking it would be more like here, right?”

“Yes, or below.”

“Yeah. But I think it was at that jump that I just lost it. I was like, this guy doesn’t stand a chance. He’s not going to win any of the games.”

They are at home discussing Lee Sedol’s third losing match against AlphaGo. Akira coughs into his elbow without taking his eyes off the board. 

“Dude, go get a drink of water. That sounds really bad.”

“I’m fine,” Akira says. “More importantly, about the rumor regarding ko… What do you think?”

“What, whether it’s avoiding ko? I don’t think so. Not judging by this game.” 

“Without understanding the algorithm, there’s no way to predict…” 

“Yeah, but it’s just going to get stronger, right? It’s AI, so it’s gonna keep learning. Like, all that stuff that’s holding us back? Tradition and stuff? It doesn’t care. It’s just going to keep doing whatever will help it win.”

Akira shakes his head, still rapt. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“I know. And on top of that, the thinking time…”

Shindou does not finish his sentence, because Akira has begun coughing again, and this time cannot seem to stop.

“Okay. I’m getting you a glass of water,” Shindou says, getting up. “Anyway, I have to go teach. Are you gonna teach Atsushi today?”

“…Y-yes,” Akira manages to say between coughs.

“Really? Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

Akira silently nods his head in affirmation, and takes a long drink from the glass that Shindou has set in front of him. 

“Atsushi is still struggling with nerves. He’s too apprehensive in his playing style. He just played his first Young Lions’ game against an insei, and lost the match.”

“I was talking about you,” Shindou says. “You’re coughing your lungs out. You could cancel on him, you know?”

“No. Not now. It’s a critical time for him.”

“Okay, whatever. It’s your body. I gotta go.” 

Shindou kisses him on the cheek, and grabs his briefcase.

“Shindou, your coat is inside out.”

“Agh!”

. . . 

After Lee’s final loss against AlphaGo several days later, Akira finds himself unable to fall asleep at night. Upon losing the Honinbo title to Kurata-san eight months ago, he had experienced a fairly bad patch of insomnia, but now it seems to be coming back with a vengeance, keeping him up sometimes four or five hours later than usual. In order to make productive use of the extra time when he is awake, Akira studies everything about AlphaGo that he can find. He replays matches until the early morning, trying to make sense of the machine’s playing style. Long after Shindou has fallen asleep, Akira stares at his computer, reading the professional commentary of the games. 

He is not so naive as to think that the AlphaGo wins were a fluke, as some of his older colleagues persist in claiming despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. He can understand why many professional Go players are in denial. Akira himself does not want to believe in the power of AI, but he must. He has no choice. He knows that AlphaGo’s wins against Lee Sedol mean an earth-shattering transformation of the field of Go. Clearly, the repercussions will extend far beyond what Akira had ever imagined. On a personal level, it is eerily similar to another pivotal encounter earlier in his life. It is the feeling of facing an immense and inscrutable power.

Yes, it is only natural that Akira thinks of sai when he studies AlphaGo, even though in many senses, the two forces are polar opposites. Akira is certain that sai was never in any sense a computer program or algorithm, because unlike the unpredictable moves that AlphaGo plays, sai’s playing style was firmly rooted in traditional theory and joseki. Still, this sense of thrill and mystery — and frustration — is the same. From the beginning, the antiquated shapes of sai’s stones had lent them an otherworldly feel. In a similar way, AlphaGo plays like no human opponent. Some of its moves are unthinkable… yet blisteringly effective. 

It is because AlphaGo’s moves are extremely effective that no professional Go player will be able to escape its influence. They must learn, or fall behind. Akira does not intend to fall behind. 

. . . 

“Sensei, you have dark circles under your eyes,” Atsushi observes one afternoon during their lesson.

Akira looks up in surprise.

His longest-standing and most promising student is typically respectful to a fault. Soft spoken and sensitive in character, it is unusual for him to make personal remarks. Wrinkling his brow in consternation, Akira suppresses a cough.

“Oh! And it sounds like you still haven’t recovered from your cough. Are you all right?” Atsushi’s round eyes look at him earnestly from behind the delicate frames of his glasses.

“Thank you for worrying about me, but I’m fine,” Akira says, readjusting his posture. “You didn’t answer my question. How were you hoping to develop this shape?” 

“Well… I thought it was too early to attack him on the left side of the board. My corner was still too weak.” Atsushi sounds as though he is trying to convince himself.

Akira points at the board. “But you see how this played out. You knew at the time you should have attacked, didn’t you?”

“I… don’t know.”

Akira sighs. “To be completely honest with you, this is unacceptable. I would expect this level of playing from an insei, but you are a professional now, Atsushi. You can’t continue to cower in front of your opponents like this. You know better.”

Atsushi says nothing, staring at the Go board. Even at sixteen, he is baby-faced. His fingers worry the edge of the tablecloth as he carefully avoids Akira’s gaze.

“I’ll start coming twice a week again,” Akira decides, closing his briefcase with a snap. “We’ll have biweekly lessons like we did before you became a pro.”

Atsushi raises his head suddenly, his face distressed. “But Sensei, I’m sure your schedule is already packed! You don’t have to go to so much trouble…”

“You are my best student, and my expectations for you are high,” Akira tells him firmly. “I don’t know what has happened to cause you to lose your nerves like this, but it’s extremely detrimental to your playing style. I’ll come the day after tomorrow.”

“Sensei, hadn’t you better rest yourself?”

Akira turns around to look at him sharply. “Don’t worry about me. Worry about yourself. I would like to see you improve, not stagnate.”

. . . 

The next day at their apartment, Isumi-san widens his eyes in disbelief. “You told him he was stagnating?” 

“It’s too much, right? That’s what I’ve been telling him,” Shindou says, laying down move 53 of Game 2 of AlphaGo vs. Lee Sedol on the board. “Touya’s been like this since the AlphaGo games. He keeps skipping lunch too.”

“I’m worried about Atsushi.” Akira says. “I’m concerned he’s going to fall behind, especially now with the influence of AI to contend with. And, Shindou, I don’t eat when I’m not hungry. I’ve already told you that.” 

Although Shindou continues to lay out stones on the board, none of them are paying full attention to the development of the game. For Akira, it is his fifth time studying the match. The late afternoon sunlight blindingly pours down over the three of them, making Akira sweat in his cashmere vest.

Isumi-san takes a sip of tea. “How long have you been teaching Atsushi?”

“Ten years. Two thirds of his life.”

“He’s almost like his son now,” Shindou says. “Touya used to come home gushing about how great he was.”

“I did not.”

Isumi-san laughs. “Well, it’s not like I don’t know what you mean about AI. I barely know what to say when my students ask me about it. If it’s beating 9-dan players now, I don’t know what that means for us.”

“It means we have to reconsider our strategies,” Akira says. “We can’t keep playing as we always have. The influence of AI won’t fade away or disappear, so we need to reassess everything we thought we knew about Go.”

“It sounds like we have a topic for another book,” Isumi-san says, smiling.

Akira looks down at the board solemnly. “No. I’m nowhere near understanding it. When I think of what I would have done if it had been me playing against AlphaGo…”

“Well even if somebody comes out and asks you to play against it, you won’t be able to do it if you keep staying up till three in the morning,” Shindou says, rolling his eyes. “But yeah, if they were choosing candidates based on enthusiasm, they’d 100% choose you, so I’ll give you that.”

“Better you than me,” Isumi-san says. “I don’t know if I could survive a thrashing from a computer.” He shakes his head. “Oh, but speaking of computers, I think I’d better go now. I have to help my mother buy a new monitor.”

“Hey, thanks for coming over,” Shindou says.

“Thank you for having me. Touya-san, I’ll see you on Wednesday,” Isumi-san says.

“On Wednesday?” Akira looks up, confused.

“For the live commentary. It’s you and Sakai-san presenting, right?”

Akira blinks several times and swallows.

“Wait, you forgot about it?” Shindou asks, incredulous. “You forgot about it and I didn’t? That’s got to be a first.”

I didn’t forget! Akira wants to retort, but this would be a lie.

“Touya-san…” Isumi-san’s expression is filled with something that looks like sympathy.

Feeling his face grow hot, Akira gets up from the floor. “I’ll see you on Wednesday,” he says. “Thank you for coming over.”

“See you later Isumi-san!” Shindou calls.

Before he steps out the door, Isumi-san pauses with his hand on the knob, and turns to Akira. “You should listen to Shindou. Take care of yourself,” he says gently. 

Akira gives a tight smile, and nods. “I’ll try.”

. . . 

AI is not constricted by tradition. An AI opponent will use whatever works, even if it seems illogical. 

When Akira first tries an AI-influenced move in an official game, he does feel as though he has gone slightly insane. His opponent seems to feel the same way. He suddenly cranes his head up to look at Akira, as though trying to judge from his facial expression whether or not Akira has placed the stone there by accident. In the heat of a developing battle, only a fool would ignore the attack and reach out to an unrelated part of the board. But Akira is attempting to learn how to be foolish. In spite of all common sense, the move is effective, and Akira wins the match. 

After the game, his opponent fixes him with a curious gaze. “What was that?” he asks. 

“Humans aren’t the only players now,” Akira replies soberly. He slips past to mark his win. 

He feels vindicated. Finally he knows that he has been right to work as hard as he has. Shindou had scoffed at Akira’s intense study, saying it was reckless, but now it is beginning to pay off.  Even if he doesn’t admit it to himself, Akira’s pride was badly hurt when he lost the Honinbo. Soon now, he hopes, he will once again become a title holder. 

He makes his way to his car, mentally readying himself to teach another lesson to Atsushi. His back aches from sitting in seiza — he never had this problem before — but he ignores the pain, and starts the engine. As the radio turns on automatically, he unexpectedly catches the ending snippet of an interview with Shindou Meijin. 

“— with support from my friends and family. I’m definitely looking forward to winning more titles in the future as well.”

“Shindou Meijin will be defending his title this coming August in the 41st Meijin race. He has successfully defended the title for the past four—”

Akira turns off the radio with a click. Although he is not jealous of Shindou’s success per se, he sometimes finds himself painfully aware of the disadvantages of cohabitating with one’s rival. Competing with a stranger means being able to cleanly separate the personal from the professional. Competing for titles with one’s partner, however, means that listening to radio interviews usually brings up a confusing mixture of second-hand pride with an edge of something less charitable. Although each of them is discreet and polite in official interviews, Akira does not always succeed in keeping his ego out of their private discussions, and Shindou, for his part, does not always succeed in stopping himself from gloating about his title. 

Perhaps it is the effect of hearing the interview, or perhaps it is the pain in his back, but Akira is beginning to feel slightly tense and irritable as he pulls out of the parking lot. When his cell phone begins to ring, he answers it immediately. 

“This is Touya.”

“Touya-sensei? This is Atsushi’s mother. Thank you so much for always teaching Atsushi. I’m very sorry to contact you at the last minute like this.”

“Not at all. Did something happen?” Akira asks. 

“Atsushi asked me to cancel his lesson today. I know you must already be on your way, and I’m very sorry…“

“Is he ill?” Akira asks.

“Well, no, he’s not ill. He just asked me to cancel the lesson…”

Akira sets his jaw. “May I speak to him?”

“Oh, uh, yes, if you want to,” Atsushi’s mother says, and after a moment, Akira hears the phone changing hands. 

“Sensei?” 

“What are you thinking?” Akira demands.

“What do you—“

“I told you that you can’t be retreating now. This is ridiculous.”

“I’m not retreating! I just...”

“What is it? Tell me. Your playing record isn’t so sound that you can afford to slack off. I thought you wanted to become a 2-dan within your first year. What happened to that ambition?”

Atsushi sounds panicked. “I just thought I should maybe take a little break from lessons so I could recover. I don’t mean to give up or anything like that.”

“Do you think that I got to 9-dan by taking breaks? Or that Kurata-sensei did? Or my father? What are you going to say when the other players overtake you?”

“I’m not—”

“Well?”

Akira waits to hear Atsushi’s answer, but instead of a response Akira hears silence. He feels his heart sink.  

“Never mind,” Akira mutters. “I don’t approve of this, but it sounds like I can’t change your mind. Call me when you want to have another lesson.”

He hangs up, and grits his teeth. His body hurts, and he is angry with himself for having lost his temper, but angrier still at the part of him that wants to go home immediately and sleep. If anything, he should get back to studying AlphaGo. His win today was one step in the right direction, but it only reinforces to him that he has simply scratched the surface of what he can learn from AI. He needs to learn more if he wants to survive in the world of Go — if he ever wants to achieve the hand of God. 

There is a buzzing sound in the seat next to him, where he has thrown his cell phone. Another call, this time from Shindou. 

“What is it?” he asks as he answers the call.

“Hey, I thought you were going to be in a lesson with Atsushi now. That’s what you told me before.”

“He canceled the lesson,” Akira says. “What do you need?”

“Wait, why did he cancel the lesson? Wasn’t he going to increase the number of lessons he had every week?”

“Apparently he decided differently. Which is too bad, because he’s losing confidence and letting his fears get the best of him on the board. Quitting lessons is the last thing that he should be doing.”

“Oh jeez. Don’t tell me you yelled at him again. You used to go on about how much you respected him!”

“This is because I respect him,” Akira snaps. “He can’t be playing like this. It’s self-sabotage.”

“Don’t you think that your attitude has something to do with it? He’s only, what, seventeen?”

“He’s sixteen,” Akira corrects. “But that doesn’t mean anything.”

“Yeah, it does! It means he’s a kid. So you don’t have to go so hard on him. He’s got time to learn.” 

Akira turns onto the highway, and turns on the speakers on his phone. “Shindou, I think you don’t understand that these are his formative years. Did anyone go easy on you when you were sixteen?”

Shindou groans. “Ugh, I get what you’re saying, but look, you’re putting a ton of pressure on him!”

“That’s what he needs.”

“No he doesn’t!”

“That is my judgement to make! He’s not your student!”

“Look,” Shindou says, “You’re being weird about this. You’re not like this with your other students; it’s only Atsushi. What is it? Is it because he reminds you of yourself or something? Is this because you lost the Honinbo?”

“That has nothing to do with it,” Akira says sharply. 

Shindou sighs. “Well, whatever. You’re right; he’s your student. I guess it’s none of my business. I was just calling you to see if you wanted to go out to dinner tonight.”

“Tonight? I don’t know. I don’t think I have the time.”

“What are you talking about? You have the night off, don’t you?”

“I have to study.”

“Again!? That’s all you do!” Shindou complains.

“We can talk when I get home,” Akira says.

. . . 

The drive home seems to take forever. It’s too early for rush hour, but the traffic is unbearable, and now in addition to his back pain, Akira feels a sharp pressure at the front of his head. He escapes one traffic jam only to find himself embroiled in another. The air in his car is suffocating, but the air condition outside is worse, so his windows remain closed.

AI is not constricted by tradition. We have to relearn all that that we know.

Akira’s mind keeps returning to the phantom of AI, feeling haunted by the inescapable feeling that everything is slipping outside of his control. With AI, long-established joseki will be discarded in favor of new moves. But which joseki will remain? What is the future of Go? There are too many questions, and he knows so little. How to fight against AI is something that no one can teach him — not his father nor Shindou nor anyone else. The path ahead of him seems never-ending, and in spite of everything he has learned, he feels powerless. He is tired. How can he—?

It all happens in a second. First he notices that the light is red, and then that he is already far into the intersection. Before he has time to curse his stupidity he sees the car speeding in from the right, and slams his foot down on the accelerator to get ahead of it. He can see the car, but can’t stop it and can’t make his car go any faster. With ice-cold horror, he wonders if he is going to die. He feels the impact into the rear end of his car jolt him forward, almost sending him spinning, but he quickly regains control of the wheel. His heart is hammering in his chest. The other car has already sped away — was no one hurt? He is gasping for breath, somehow still driving forward, and his mind races to comprehend what had happened. He had been distracted — more than distracted, he hadn’t been looking. It was as though he hadn’t even seen the light. 

He looks for a place to pull over, and by pure good luck finds a small park with an open space on a side street. There are several trees and a sandpit for children. Once he is parked, Akira gets out of the car and shakily walks around it to perform an inspection. The tail end of the car is damaged, but far less than he had anticipated. His body feels suddenly weak. His head feels light as he gets out his phone to call the mechanic. After this call is completed, he calls Shindou, who answers upon the first ring. Slowly and evenly, he explains the situation.

“Holy shit.” Shindou says, after having listened to the story. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Akira says. It’s an automatic response. He backtracks. “I’m… I’m all right. I’m not hurt. The car is damaged. I’ve already called someone to come look at it; they say they’ll be there in half an hour.”

“Do you want me to come get you?”

“No, I’ll take the train,” Akira says. His legs are still shaking. Seeing no bench anywhere near him, he sits down in the grass and immediately feels the pull of gravity on every inch of his body, as though the ground were magnetized.

“Just wait for me, okay?” Shindou says. “I’ll borrow a neighbor’s car.”

“It’s still a long drive”

“I don’t care. I’ll come get you.”

Usually this is when Akira would reject Shindou’s offer more forcefully and insist on going home alone. But his head aches badly, and now that he is sitting, he does not feel at all like getting up. 

“Okay,” he says, succumbing to the urge to lay his head down in the grass. “I’ll wait for you.” 

He hangs up, and lets the ambient sounds of the city fill his ears. The ground feels good against his back. It is a clear spring day, and the clouds that drift across the sky are majestic. In their shapes, Akira can see first dragons, then lions, then horses, then swans. It is like a fairy tale. Half in a dream, Akira begins to feel as though he too is drifting across the ground. As the shapes above him merge and shift and transform, Akira feels his eyelids grow heavy.

He imagines that he is on a boat, drifting far out to sea with the wind at his back and the horizon spreading out before him. His hands feel warm. He is making onigiri with his mother, who is also on the boat, smiling next to him. Then Shindou comes beside him and presses more warm rice into his hands. From deep within, Akira hears a message: 

Everything will be all right.

. . . 

He only intends to close his eyes for an instant, but when he feels a hand on his shoulder he jerks awake suddenly, his body feeling heavy and his senses muddled. The dream he had been having flies away to the edges of his consciousness, and disappears.

“Hey! Take it easy. It’s just me,” says the voice above him.

“Shindou.”

“Yeah.”

Akira pushes himself up on one arm, and shakes his head disconcertedly, trying to regain his bearings. “I must have fallen asleep.”

“Yeah, you did! You were out cold. You didn’t hear me when I called your name.”

“I’m sorry.”

Shindou grins. His hair has been tousled by the wind, and his face looks boyish and rosy in the spring sunlight. “You needed it, huh?”

“I guess I did.”

A sparrow sings in a tree above them, and Shindou pulls Akira up with both arms, pausing to brush some grass out of his hair. 

“Let’s get you home.”

. . . 

Akira offers to drive the neighbor’s car, but Shindou insists, so Akira ends up in the passenger seat, watching the scenery go by.

After a few minutes, he turns to Shindou. “When you think about AI, it doesn’t frighten you?”

Shindou glances over at him, and smiles. “Not really.”

“You don’t think about what it means for us and for our profession?”

“Well, it’s like you said, right? AI isn’t going to disappear any time soon. So there’s no rush. You don’t have to learn everything in a month.”

Akira rubs his forehead, and sighs. “I should apologize to Atsushi.”

“I think you’re okay,” Shindou says. “He’ll forgive you. He adores you, you know.”

“I was too hard on him. Maybe I should be gentler with him.”

“Yeah, maybe. But he’s tougher than he acts. And he is crazy about Go. At least as crazy as you and me.”

The clouds overhead are still making magnificent shapes above them. Akira allows himself to watch them drift past, and feels his mind grow pleasantly hazy again. 

“I’m taking you out for yakiniku, by the way,” Shindou says out of the corner of his mouth.

Akira looks over at him, and raises an eyebrow. “…How extravagant.”

“Hey! I still have all that money from the Meijin title!”

“You keep saying that, and you keep spending it.”

“A little yakiniku every once in a while can’t hurt!”

“You’re going to get fat.”

Shindou laughs. “Hey, come on, I thought you were gonna stop giving people a hard time!”

“I said I was going to be gentler with Atsushi; I said nothing about you.”

“You really never let up, do you? Maybe you need to eat more fat. Maybe that’ll soften you up.”

Shindou reaches over and pinches Akira’s cheek playfully.

“Shindou!” Akira swats Shindou’s hand away, then laughs. “I suppose I should be grateful that you’re paying.”

“Damn right! You better let me spoil you lots while I’m the only one with a title.”

“That won’t be true for much longer, I think.”

“Yeah, I know! So you better order lots of meat tonight!”

“I’ll take you up on that.” Akira smiles. 

Five minutes away from their home, light raindrops begin to tap against the windshield. Akira closes his eyes.

Chapter Text

The winter light makes its way palely through the window of their new apartment. Hikaru has still not adjusted to the amount of light they receive in their bedroom now, and finds himself unfortunately awake even though it is a Saturday morning at 7:15am. He shifts his arms around Touya, who stirs against him.

“Could you turn on the heater?” Touya asks in a groggy voice.

“Yeah.”

As Hikaru climbs out of the warmth of their bed to press the button on the kerosene heater, he sees a notification light up Touya’s phone on the nightstand. It’s from Hikaru’s mother. Sliding back into bed, he glides his fingers down the length of Touya’s arm and whispers into his ear.

“You went to visit my mom?”

“…Mm? Yes.”

“You didn’t say anything to me about it.”

“No, it wasn’t important.” Touya yawns. “I was only returning the glass containers from the leftovers.”

“So not a secret visit or anything.”

“No secrets,” Touya murmurs, and pulls the covers more firmly around his body, settling back into sleep. Hikaru rolls over onto his back and looks at the ceiling. No secrets.

They had made the decision a long time ago not to go to Touya’s father’s Go salon anymore. Hiding their relationship from all of the customers there had become too much of a burden, and they hadn’t wanted any gossip to get out to the rest of the Go world. Still, despite their precautions, it is sometimes difficult to deflect questions concerning romance, especially now that both Touya and Hikaru’s bachelor statuses have become infamous among friends and colleagues. Hikaru remembers a recent conversation with Waya that occurred in a newly-opened chain restaurant.

“It’s not that things are going badly, it’s just that she nags,” Waya had complained. “It’s always something that I did wrong or something that I forgot to do. Back when we were dating, it wasn’t like this. I really don’t get why it’s like suddenly a 180.”

Waya’s life as a newlywed had become the usual topic of conversation when they weren’t discussing Go. Hikaru had smiled, and tried to sound convincing. “Women are like that.”

Waya shook his head, rolling his eyes. “You wouldn’t know. You don’t date at all! I’ve had five girlfriends before Haruka, and you’ve had… zero, right? Unless you’re hiding someone.”

“No.” Hikaru had laughed. “It just doesn’t seem right for me I guess.”

“You’re wasting your youth! I mean, we’re not exactly young anymore. You should at least give dating a try!”

“And put up with all the stuff you’re going through? Thanks, but I’m good.”

Hikaru had shoved some rice into his mouth and thought of some way to change the subject. He hated lying to one of his best friends. Every time the two of them met up, Hikaru felt like he had slipped back in time, back to the Hikaru who wasn’t dating anyone and didn’t care about anything but Go — which was fine, except he wasn’t that person anymore. It was getting harder to maintain the charade, and Hikaru was always worried that one of these days he was going to let something slip and ruin their friendship. Waya had never exactly hidden how he felt about Touya — or about homosexuality for that matter. 

Looking at the line of Touya’s sleeping form, Hikaru wonders when it will be time to divulge his other secret, the one that he has promised for years without delivering. It’s not that there’s a particular reason why he doesn’t want to tell Touya about Sai. It’s more like he can’t find a good reason to bring it up. Sai was everything for Hikaru for so many years, whether or not Hikaru realized it at the time. But now when he thinks about those days, it’s like he’s looking back on them from an incredibly far distance. It feels weird to bring all of those memories back into the present. But if he were to put his finger on the one reason why he hasn’t said anything yet, it would probably be that things have been going really well with Touya lately. They’ve been playing tons of Go, and going on dates. They haven’t been fighting. It feels stupid to put everything at risk.

“Oh, my father wants to see you for another game,” Touya says, rolling over. “If you have time today, you should visit him.”

Hikaru sits up. “What about you? You’re not coming with?”

“I signed up to speak at a children’s competition.”

“A children’s… I thought you didn’t like that kind of thing?”

“I don’t have any problem with children.”

Hikaru frowns. By now the light reflecting off the white walls of their bedroom is almost painfully bright. “Well,” he says, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “Okay. I guess I’ll go see your dad then, if you’re busy.”

“Thank you,” Touya says, and Hikaru ruffles his hair.

. . . 

The train runs late and Hikaru arrives far past the time he had intended to, but at 1pm he is at the Touyas’ door and ringing the doorbell. The space beside him feels empty; it’s very rare for him to come to the Touya residence without Touya there too, and if he stays in Touya’s parents’ house alone, it’s never more than fifteen minutes. In recent years, the house has grown dustier around the edges. Neither of Touya’s parents is yet very old, but Hikaru has wondered if Touya’s mother’s eyes are failing. Maybe it is simply that she does not want to clean as she used to. In any case, there is an unshakable sense of things being different from before that troubles Hikaru whenever he is at Touya’s parents’ house. Touya’s father’s gait has changed too. He no longer quite has the graceful poise that he used to; Hikaru can sometimes see the pain in his movements. Hikaru is past the point of being frightened of Kouyou Touya, but this too frightens him in its own way.

He can hear the rustle of Touya’s father’s kimono as he approaches the door. 

“Shindou-kun. I’m glad you’re here.”

“Sensei, how have you been doing?”

“Well enough.”

Green-tinted light shines through the curtains of the living room. As Kouyou Touya turns around and begins to walk to the room where he plays Go, Hikaru glances towards the kitchen.

“Is Akiko-san…?”

“Out shopping. She won’t be back until the evening. In any case, I had something I wanted to speak to you about.”

Hikaru nods. “Yes, sir.”

Kouyou Touya pauses at the doorway. “Perhaps we can play a game after our talk. It has been a while.”

“Yes, sir.”

They sit down together on either side of the goban, and Hikaru notices a framed picture on the table. It is an image of Mount Fuji on a clear, cloudless day. His eyes linger on the photograph, which looks out of place in the otherwise sparse room.

“That was given to me by Serizawa-sensei, who has just retired because of health issues,” Touya-sensei says. 

“Yeah, I heard about that. Akira and I used to attend his study group.”

“He came to see me here a couple of weeks ago and asked to consult with me, given the fact that I have already been retired for many years.”

“I heard a rumor that he has cancer,” Hikaru says tentatively. “Is it true?”

“Yes.” Kouyou Touya replies. “Yes. And he is much younger than I am. It is a shame. He asked me something interesting. He wanted to know if I had any regrets when I left the Go world.”

The muscles in Hikaru’s shoulders tense. He had wondered if there was a reason why Touya’s father had singled him out for a game like this. Now his suspicions are growing stronger; this was something that they could not speak of with Akira around. 

“What did you reply, Sensei?” he asks.

“I think you may know my answer,” Kouyou Touya replies. “I have one regret. There is one I have always wanted to meet again.”

Yes, Hikaru knows exactly whom he means. But he hesitates as he responds, unsure of how to word his answer.

“Sensei, I can’t… that person is gone.”

Kouyou Touya fixes him with his intense gaze, and Hikaru unexpectedly falters, looking down. His heart is beating quickly. Why? He doesn’t know. It’s been years since he has even alluded to Sai’s existence to anyone. Somehow saying the word aloud — “gone” — Hikaru feels a pain in his chest. 

“I know that he is gone,” Kouyou Touya says softly. “I had guessed that fact long ago. What I mean to ask you today is why you have not spoken to Akira about him.”

“What?” Hikaru blinks. “How—“

Kouyou Touya clears his throat. “Akira does not speak to me of personal matters unless they weigh on him heavily. When we spoke recently, he said that he is still waiting for you to tell him a secret that you promised. I wondered if that secret might be the player known as sai.”

Hikaru rubs his forehead. He is sweating. 

“That’s, um…. I…”

“I know that you care for him,” Kouyou Touya says. 

For a moment, Hikaru is shocked. How could Touya-sensei know what Sai meant to him? But then he realizes that he is referring to Akira.

“Akira trusts you. I do not expect you to reveal to me the true identity of sai. But I do expect you to keep your word if you have made a promise.”

“I’ll keep my promise,” Hikaru says. “I just… I just need some time.” 

Kouyou Touya does not respond for a moment, and Hikaru forces himself to look up. Kouyou Touya’s eyes hold no mercy. Grey and unyielding, they fix him to the spot with a pure intensity. It was this power that Sai could see just by looking at him, this penetrating and unforgiving drive. 

Like father, like son. 

“Very well,” Touya-sensei says, and Hikaru can’t stop himself from letting out his breath too quickly in a sigh of relief.

“I think Serizawa-san has many regrets regarding his retirement,” Touya-sensei continues. “I am very fortunate that I have been able to continue this far into my old age.”

“Sensei, you aren’t so old!” Hikaru protests. 

“I am even more fortunate in that I have so many opportunities to play Go against a title-holder such as yourself.”

“Please, Sensei, I still only have one title. Compared to you…”

“There is time,” Kouyou Touya says, and Hikaru laughs, but his heart is still beating too quickly.

Sai. 

Everything is rushing up inside him as though Sai had disappeared yesterday. His eyes flit around the room, stopping at the framed photograph of Mount Fuji against the clear blue sky. The landscape is beautiful, but he isn’t seeing it. He is panicking, he realizes. Even though he had thought that all of these feelings had drifted far away from him over the years, why does he still feel this pain in his heart? Why does it seem as though he is about to cry? 

. . . 

Hikaru loses his game against the former Meijin, naturally. 

When he checks his phone on the train an hour and a half later, there is a missed call from Touya with no message. Hikaru hesitates. He doesn’t want to call Touya if he’s still in the middle of the competition, but he also knows that Touya usually doesn’t call unless it’s something important. Touya had not explicitly mentioned the location of the children’s competition, but Hikaru is fairly sure that it’s at the Go Institute. 

Probably it’s nothing. But he isn’t sure. He gets off at the next major station and heads back in the direction of the Institute. 

Once Hikaru is inside the Go Institute, the coordinator stationed at the door leading to the children’s competition tries to deny him entry; he isn’t registered for the event. After a bit of wheedling, however, she eases her stance and lets Hikaru slip inside. 

The noise coming from the dozens of children in the room is overwhelming. Many of them are moving about energetically and talking in loud voices to each other. In all the confusion, Hikaru isn’t able to locate Touya in the crowded room. One of the children is crying. Another one yells “I LOST!” at the top of his lungs. 

Hikaru shakes his head in disbelief. Had children always been this noisy? He can hardly imagine Touya having signed up for something like this. 

As he watches the muddle of little round faces shift like a kaleidoscope in front of him, he begins to lose himself. Years ago, Hikaru would have been just like one of these kids. He wonders — if he had met Sai earlier, what would his life have been like? When would he have met Touya? Would he have become an insei much earlier? He’s asking himself questions that he rarely thinks about, but the meeting with Touya’s father has thrown him off balance. He feels out of place, and searches for Touya’s face in the throng. 

Surprisingly, he hears the voice before he sees him. His head turns round instinctively, but he stops as he notices something disconcerting. The voice is soft. It’s gentle. It’s definitely Touya’s voice, but Hikaru has the strange impression that he has never heard it before, not like this.

Touya’s back is turned to Hikaru. He’s leaning over a match between a girl and a boy who are looking up at him attentively. 

“And what do you think about playing here?” Touya is asking. “If I place a stone right here, then…”

“Oh!” exclaims the girl. 

“That changes things, doesn’t it?” Touya says. He is smiling. Hikaru can hear the smile in his voice, can see it as Touya turns his head slightly. 

Without thinking, Hikaru moves himself back behind him, where Touya can’t see him. Although it’s ridiculous, he doesn’t want to be seen yet. There’s something strange about all of this. Why does Hikaru feel guilty, like he’s seeing something secret?

“Sensei, should I have parried here?” the boy asks. It’s an easy question. From a quick glance at their board, Hikaru can see that the answer is “yes.”

But Touya pauses. “What do you think?”

“Well,” says the boy, “I think if I parry here, then I can defend against both attacks at the same time.” 

“Yes,” Touya says. He is smiling again, with that same gentleness that he never shows to anyone. “I think so too.”

You want kids, Hikaru thinks. He can’t explain it to himself, but he knows it now without a doubt, as clearly as he knows his own name. 

Touya wants kids. Touya has always wanted kids. And he has never breathed a word of it to Hikaru. 

It feels like a punch to the stomach. Is that jealousy? Well, maybe a little. After all, Touya never smiles at Hikaru the way he’s now smiling at this child. A part of it’s also anger. The fact that Touya never once mentioned this — something that clearly means so much to him. But maybe Hikaru is mostly angry with himself, for not noticing, for not asking. The way they talk about their future has always included being together for the rest of their lives, and that’s enough for Hikaru. Being with Touya is enough. 

But he had never considered the things that Touya might be giving up in order to stay with him. Things like having a family. 

As Hikaru watches the back of Touya’s head leaned over the goban, the anger slowly fades, and a sadness takes its place. 

Why did you never tell me?

Of course, he can think up a dozen reasons on the spot. It’s not like it’s an easy thing to talk about. And talking about something this close to your heart can hurt. Hikaru knows that. God, does he know that. 

It takes him a minute to gather himself before he can walk up to the table. 

“Touya.”

When Touya looks up at him, it’s as though he’s coming out of a dream. 

“Shindou— you—“

“You called me,” Hikaru says, pointing at his phone. “Butt dial?”

“Oh, I… I don’t know.” Touya blinks. “You, um… we should…”

“Yeah, I know,” Hikaru says. “I won’t bother you here. I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t anything important.”

Touya still looks confused, but Hikaru holds up his hand in a casual goodbye, and makes his way to the back of the room, where he entered. 

No secrets, huh? Seems like we both have our secrets, don’t we? You and me.

As he opens the door, Hikaru turns over his shoulder to look back at Touya, who meets his eyes with a questioning look. 

Maybe that’s okay for now.

Chapter Text

“Ah.” Akira puts down his coffee mug on the kitchen table and stares intently at his phone.

“Ah what?” Shindou asks.

“He passed away.”

“Who passed away?”

“Kuwabara-sensei.”

“Kuwabara-sensei passed away!?”

The two of them are sitting at breakfast together. Shindou is hunched over his own coffee and toast. He leans in closer as Akira explains. 

“I just received an email from the Go Institute. You should have received one too.” Akira takes his eyes off his phone to look at Shindou. “It’s surprising. He must have been incredibly old.”

“Yeah, no kidding! He was already ancient before I went pro.”

Akira counts on his fingers “Eighty… ninety… no. That can’t be possible.”

“Over a hundred?” Shindou asks, his mouth full of toast.

Akira shakes his head. “I’ve been so caught up keeping tabs on the young players, I haven’t been paying any attention to the senior professionals.”

“Well yeah. If they’re not playing anymore, then…”

“I suppose that’s true.”

Akira looks back down at his phone. “There’s a funeral on Friday. We’re invited to attend.”

“Friday? Yeah, I could make that.”

“So could I.”

“Do you wanna go?”

“Yes, I think so.”

. . .

The reception hall turns out to be a walkable distance from their apartment. Even though it is much too hot, they walk side by side in their black suits. 

“Oh,” Akira remarks about a block away from the building. “This might have been foolish.”

Large white clouds float overhead. Hikaru wipes some sweat from his brow. “What was foolish? Walking?”

“Walking together. They’ll see us enter the building together.”

“Oh crap. I didn’t think of that. Do you wanna go ahead?”

But before Akira can respond, someone has already recognized them. He hears the sound of high heels clicking against the pavement.

“Oh my! It’s Shindou-san and Touya-san!” 

The speaker is a tall middle-aged woman with long hair. She quickens her pace, dipping her head in a bow as she approaches them.  

“I’m Sakurano. Maybe you remember me? We played a match last summer,” she says, addressing Shindou. 

“Oh yeah, that’s right,” Shindou says.

Akira smiles warmly at her. “I recall the match.”

“Really! Even though you weren’t the one playing!”

“Well,” Akira explains, “I look at his kifu sometimes.”

Sakurano-san laughs.  “I guess the rumors are right about the two of you,” she says. “You’re so close to each other.”

“He’s a good guy,” Shindou says. He grins widely and slaps Akira on the shoulder. “A good rival.”

The three of them fall into step, heading towards the funeral hall, and the talk turns to Kuwabara-sensei’s death. 

“I suppose it was a very Kuwabara-sensei kind of way to pass away,” Sakurano-san muses. “Of course he couldn’t have just died in bed like a normal person.”

“Do you mean he wasn’t ill when he passed away?” Akira asks.

“No! Apparently — and I heard this from another Go player so I don’t know if it’s true — but apparently he slipped while getting out of a pool.”

“A pool!?”

“In leopard print swimming trunks. It sounds like a far-fetched rumor doesn’t it? But she swore up and down that it was absolutely true. I guess we’ll see.”

Shindou laughs. “That’s how I want to go! I can totally imagine him though — ugh, actually, no, I don’t want to imagine Kuwabara-sensei in trunks.”

While the other two continue talking, Akira walks silently, lost in his thoughts. His own father was hospitalized again nine days ago. The updates he receives from his mother seem optimistic enough, and Akira supposes that both his parents will be back to their normal way of life within the next few days. Still, he doesn’t like watching the signs of his father’s aging. It seems that every time he visits their house, there’s something else that’s changed. His father is still in his seventies — with today’s technology, that’s practically young. But Akira doesn’t want to hope for too much. When he thinks about it, his shoulders tighten. 

Soon they are inside the reception hall, immediately enveloped into a thrumming swarm of prominent Go players. Kurata-san is there, giving an autograph to a younger fan, and Ashiwara-san, who smiles at Akira from across the room, and Ogata-san and his wife, and Maeda 9-dan, from whom Akira won back his Honinbo title last year, and Nase 7-dan, who is one of Shindou’s friends, and even the child prodigy Yonemura 4-dan, flanked on either side by her parents. 

Before Akira has acclimated to the crowd, he sees Atsushi approaching him from the other side of the room. 

“Sensei!”

Atsushi’s curly black hair has grown longer, nearly to his shoulders, and he looks very much like one of the fashionable young men who hang around in Shibuya, in spite of the fact that he is wearing a suit. His face shines with boyish innocence as he beams at Akira and Shindou. 

“I didn’t know you would be coming here,” he says, squeezing between two women to get closer to Akira. “And this is…”

“Ah,” Akira says, a little flustered. “This is my…. Shindou.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Shindou says without missing a beat, and bows. “You’re Touya’s student, right?”

“Yes, he’s been my teacher for a long time!” Atsushi replies, his eyes twinkling as he looks from Shindou to Akira and then back again. “I’m very lucky to have been able to rely on Touya-sensei since I was little. He really is a mentor to me.”

“Congratulations, by the way,” Akira says.

Atsushi’s face flushes, and he seems to hesitate as he speaks. “Sensei, you… you knew?”

“About your 4-dan? Of course I know. I’ve been following your games.”

“Oh, um… right!” Bowing his head, Atsushi laughs nervously. “Yes, thank you. I’ll keep working hard in the future. Also, congratulations to you too, Sensei! I saw that you won the Agon Kiriyama Cup! I thought it was a wonderful game.” 

Akira laughs. “Thank you. I’m looking forward to defending the title next year.” 

From the back of the room, one of the funeral workers steps in and announces the commencement of the service.

“Oh, I think we should go in,” Atsushi says. “I’ll see you afterwards, Sensei!” And he disappears into the crowd.

“What’s his hurry?” Shindou asks.

“I don’t know.” 

Akira and Shindou follow the rest into the main room and find their seats. The room smells like incense, and it is hot and stuffy. After a few preliminary remarks, an elderly woman wearing a black kimono steps up to the platform. She fumbles with the microphone for a moment, but once she has it firmly in her grip, her face grows serious, and a profound hush falls over the room. 

“I am very grateful that so many friends and family and professional Go players were able to attend this service today,” she begins. “My name is Etsuko Kuwabara. I’m a daughter of the deceased.” She pauses, and looks slowly at the faces in the audience in front of her. “It is an honor for me to pay tribute to the man who raised me and my four brothers and sisters. Not every child has the opportunity to speak with gratitude about those who raised them, but today I speak with sincere gratitude. My father was not only a clever man, but also an honorable man. He taught all of us to live honestly, and without bowing to the will of others. Some might say that he raised a gaggle of headstrong children. He himself was notoriously stubborn and prankish — yes, even ill-tempered. But I believe that he was above all a man who saw to the heart of things. He saw things as they truly were.”

Akira thinks of his own father. Long mornings playing Go, walks in the park, expensive sushi dinners, the laughter of many adults around a small child with fire in his eyes. How can you put all of that into a speech? How can you justice to all of it? Death comes to take away the one man who made you who you are before you even knew the making was happening, and then you are alone in the world in a way that you were not alone before. Akira’s eyes flit to Shindou, who seems deeply engaged in the speech. Shindou is taking in the words and making meaning out of them. But Akira is at another funeral; one that hasn’t happened yet. 

“Many of you may think this strange,” Etsuko Kuwabara is saying, “But I do believe that there is more to the world than the naked eye can see. My father knew that, and he taught us to be respectful of our ancestors and of the spirits that live in this world. Although my father is no longer among us as a living person, his spirit is with us even now. Thank you for coming to this ceremony. I am sure that Father is pleased to see all of you here.”

Having finished her speech, Etsuko Kuwabara bows deeply. The crowd applauds. 

Unnerved by the supernatural tone of these last remarks, Akira claps softly, wondering how it is possible for a woman of such an advanced age to believe in things like spirits. He glances at Shindou, and is startled to see that his eyes are moist. Catching his eye, Shindou smiles weakly and wipes his eyes. 

“Sorry,” he whispers.

“No,” Akira replies, disconcerted. 

As the applause begins to fade, a baby begins to cry. The sound is very close to Akira’s ear, and he automatically turns his head around to see a mother and child sitting in the row behind him. Hurriedly, the mother gets up, bobbing her head in apology as she leaves the room with the screaming child.

“And so the circle of life continues,” says the man who is now at the microphone, and the audience laughs. Akira swallows and feels his chest tighten. Again, he looks at Shindou, who is smiling in that way he sometimes does — more melancholy than mirth. But the ceremony continues on, and neither of them speaks to the other for the next hour and a half. 

. . . 

As the caterers are beginning to pack up the dregs of the refreshments, and Shindou is beginning to make noises about wanting to go home, Akira hears the sound of a familiar voice calling him. 

“Sensei! Sensei!”

Atsushi is standing near the entrance, waving Akira over. 

“Atsushi…”

“Bring Shindou-sensei too,” Atsushi says, and so Akira does, feeling perplexed.

“Do you have a moment now?” Atsushi asks. “I’d like you to meet someone.”

“Of course,” Akira says, and they follow Atsushi outside the building where a young woman, who looks to be about twenty, is standing, wearing a light pink tulle skirt and cardigan. Her face is round, like Atsushi’s. She is visibly pregnant. 

“This is Natsumi,” Atsushi says nervously. “We’re going to get married next month.”

“Oh,” Akira says. 

“Oh,” Shindou says. 

Natsumi smiles at them, blushing, and dips her head forward. “I’m sorry to bring you out of the reception.”

“Not at all,” Akira says quickly. “I’m very glad to meet you. Congratulations on your engagement.”

“Congratulations,” Shindou echoes, sounding nevertheless more natural than Akira. “I’m glad I got to meet both of you today. I’ll be wishing you both happiness.”

“Thank you!” Atsushi takes his fiancée’s hand and squeezes it tightly. “Touya-sensei, Shindou-sensei, I owe you so much! It means a lot!”

“No, please, it’s nothing,” Akira stammers, but both Atsushi and Natsumi repeat their thanks and bow many times before they disappear into Atsushi’s light blue Prius, and drive away.

Shindou and Akira watch it drive off in silence. 

“Did you know about that?” Shindou asks finally. 

“No.” 

“Kind of surprising, coming from—“

“It’s very unexpected,” Akira says. “Completely unexpected.” 

“Well, it’s not like he’s a kid anymore. We were about that age when we got together.”

“We weren’t getting married.” 

Shindou shoots Akira a sidewards glance that seems to say something, but he doesn’t say anything. They have started the walk home.

“I don’t know why he asked for you to come meet his fiancée too,” Akira says.

“Why? Well I think he figured us out, right?”

“Figured us out?”

“Well you introduced me as ‘my Shindou,’ so I think he got the idea then. You weren’t exactly subtle.”

“That was by accident.”

“Yeah, I know that! But you did it with Sakurano-san too. ‘I often read his kifu.’ I mean when you say stuff like that, people are gonna figure things out! You were kind of off today, honestly.”

Akira sighs. 

“You worried about your dad?”

“Well…”

“He’s doing fine, right? That’s what your mom said. He’ll probably outlive Kuwabara-sensei.”

“I don’t know about that.” 

“He’ll be back home soon, and then you’ll feel better. You always get worried like this when he’s in the hospital, but it never turns out to be serious.”

“Not so far,” Akira says, and they walk in silence the rest of the way home. 

. . .

Akira’s suit jacket is slung over the chair and Shindou’s comes off on top of it. Neither of them wants to cook, so it’s ochazuke for dinner with a side of potato chips for Shindou. A LINE message from his mother pops up on Akira’s smartphone. 

Akira-san, good evening! Did you eat dinner? Your father is doing well! Ogata-san visited him in the hospital today. He’ll be out the day after tomorrow, the doctors say! 

Akira sends a thumbs up stamp and is about to close the app when a video appears in the chat. Without thinking, he clicks on it, and the sound of many babies crying assaults his ears at full volume. Angrily, and with something like a sharp pain in his chest, Akira closes the video and throws his phone onto the table. His heart is racing. 

“What was that?” Shindou asks.

“My mother…” Akira says, but is too upset to finish his sentence. 

“What? Did she send you a video? Let me see.”

Shindou picks up the discarded phone, taps in Akira’s passcode, and opens the video again. He turns the volume down to a more appropriate level, and smiles.

“This is cute,” he says. 

Akira exhales shortly.

“You don’t think it’s cute? It’s a baby crawling race. Looks like they held it at that shopping mall nearby. That’s probably why your mom sent it.”

“Can you turn that off?” Akira asks. He holds out his hand for his phone. 

Shindou closes the video and hands the phone back, watching Akira’s face. “Can we talk?” he asks.

“What about?” Akira says, not looking at him.

“You looked really upset today when that baby was crying.”

“It was directly behind my ear.”

“And then with Atsushi and Natsumi…”

“They’re too young.”

“Is that all?”

“That’s all. What are you trying to say?”

Shindou sighs and leans back on his hands.

“You don’t hate kids, right?” 

“No, of course not.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Shindou looks at Akira from the corner of his eye. “It’s kind of weird right? Atsushi is gonna be a dad. He’s gonna get married before us, even though we’ve been together—“

“It’s natural for them to get married. They’re a man and a woman,” Akira says.

“If we could get married—“

“We can’t.”

“Look, Touya,” Shindou says. “I know you want kids.”

Akira breathes in slowly, feeling the tightness in his chest. “It doesn’t matter what I want,” he says.

“Bullshit!” Shindou says, pushing himself up and leaning in towards Akira. “I’m telling you it matters! It matters to me!”

“It may matter to you, but it doesn’t matter to our government. It’s impossible, so whether or not I want children has absolutely no meaning.”

“How can you say that?”

“What is the point of wanting something that’s impossible?” Akira shoots back. 

Shindou looks at him with a slow tenderness, like something is breaking inside of him. Which is ridiculous, because Shindou has no reason to be upset. Akira wishes the subject had never been brought up in the first place. But he reaches out to touch Shindou’s hand anyway.

“It’s better if we don’t worry about it,” he says. “I’d rather continue our life as we have.”

“You don’t have to pretend it doesn’t exist. I want to talk about it.”

“What is there to talk about?” 

“If you really want kids, I think we should have one,” Shindou says. “I mean, if we ever can. If it ever becomes possible.” 

“We’ll be sixty before Japan decides to do something about it.”

“You don’t know that!”

Akira shakes his head.

“I’m saying ‘if’, okay? If it becomes possible, we’ll do it, right?”

“Sure,” Akira says, giving up.

“Touya!”

Shindou’s voice is both angry and pleading.

“Okay,” Akira says. “I just don’t think it will happen. But if it does, we’ll get married and try to have a child. I would like to have a child with you.”

The words feel like a joke on his tongue, even though these are the things that he has been thinking in his heart for years and years. Stuck there so long, never spoken aloud, they feel awkward and unwieldy now that they have been released into the air. He has never before alluded to this constant, painfully empty space in his life. It is strange how telling the truth sometimes feels so much like lying. 

Shindou’s fingers reach out to brush Akira’s cheek, like he’s touching something delicate. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah.” 

And neither of them has the words to continue the conversation.

Chapter Text

As Touya passes by him in the hall of the Go Institute, Hikaru grabs him by the wrist and pulls him over. “Did you see it?” he asks. The others are milling around them, and some are staring, but Hikaru doesn’t care. “Did you see the ruling?”

“I haven’t looked at my phone,” Touya says, calmly, as though he were speaking to a reporter. “Did they win?”

“Yeah,” Hikaru says. “They won.” 

Touya nods. He doesn’t need to say anything more. The action plan has been laid out, or the important parts have anyway. What had started as a hope had slowly crystalized into a plan over the past few years, taking on a more solid shape as it began to seem more and more possible, and less and less like a dream. And now it has fallen into their hands, and at last they can carry it out as they had envisioned. That’s probably what Touya’s thinking behind those calm eyes, and why he can look like that even when Hikaru’s heart is dancing with anxious excitement. Or maybe Touya’s heart is also dancing in his chest, and he just doesn’t want to show it in front of the other professionals in the hallway. Because there is nothing else to say, Hikaru lets go of his wrist and lets Touya walk away to his study group. Touya has always been skilled at hiding what is in his heart, but Hikaru isn’t like that. He’s so full of nervous energy that he feels he might start running through the halls or laughing out loud. He doesn’t know if he will be able to contain himself until the evening. 

. . . 

At 5:45pm, the last of Hikaru’s students are leaving the building, and everything is packed up in the classroom. The excited thumping is back in his chest, right on time, like a dog that knows it’s time for supper. 

Almost home! Almost home! Almost home!

He presses the light switch, and the room falls into dark grey. Then, as he’s zipping up his backpack, a shadow appears in the doorway. It’s Waya, who has been teaching in the next door classroom. 

“Hey Shindou.”

“Oh. Hey Waya.” 

Hikaru swings his backpack over his shoulders and begins toward the stairs, hoping that Waya will fall into pace. But:

“Where are you going all of a sudden?” Waya asks incredulously. “I was gonna ask you to have dinner with me. It’s been a long time!”

He and Waya both teach classes on Tuesday evenings, and typically chat for a few minutes in the corridor after their classes get out. But today, as much as he would enjoy having dinner with Waya, Hikaru doesn’t want to waste another minute before he can go home and see Touya. 

“Uh, yeah, I don’t know about tonight,” Hikaru says, conscientiously trying to keep himself from inching towards the stairs. “What about Haruka? Won’t she be waiting for you?” 

“Nah.” Waya grins. “She’s on a business trip in Gifu. If I went home I’d just be having dinner alone anyway. So let’s hang out. You wanna get ramen? I’ll treat.”

Hikaru shakes his head. “Um, no, I can’t.”

“What? Who’s waiting for you at home? Your porno magazines?”

Normally Hikaru would be able to laugh at Waya’s off-color jokes, but on a day like today, on a day when Hikaru’s entire world has just changed, he takes it personally. 

“What would you know about who’s waiting for me?” he asks. He has said the words before fully processing what he’s saying. 

“Ok, but if I don’t know anything about your home, that’s your fault, right?” Waya retorts. “You never invite me over. Actually, you never tell me anything about your private life. Which is why I thought it would be nice to have dinner together.” He raises his eyebrows. “But I guess you have someone waiting for you, huh? So you do have a girlfriend.”

“No,” Hikaru says, realizing he has backed himself into a corner. “No, I don’t. I don’t have a girlfriend. I’m living with Touya.”

He can see it hit Waya like a baseball bat.

“What?”

“I’m living with Touya,” he says again. “I promised to have dinner with him tonight. We were gonna—“

“How long?” Waya demands. 

“Since… since we were eighteen,” Hikaru admits. 

“Since you were eighteen. Eighteen?” Waya repeats, turning Hikaru’s words around at him like a jab to the stomach. “Oh. Nice. Thanks for telling me. You know what? Fuck you. Forget dinner. Go home to Touya.” He shakes his head. “I can’t believe you.” 

“Hey!” Hikaru says, but Waya turns his back on him and struts away.

Standing there in the hallway, Hikaru’s suddenly like a little boy again. Waya has always been like an older brother to him: kind of cool, kind of mischievous. He’s been the one Hikaru would talk to about the stuff that was too silly or stupid for Touya, too embarrassing for Isumi-san. When Hikaru talks to Waya, he knows what he can expect: teasing and complaining, video games, jokes, ramen, and laughter. 

“C’mon!” he says to the empty hallway, but it sounds more pleading than angry. He wanted Waya to be happy for him. Hikaru was there to congratulate Waya when he got engaged. Is it too much to ask that Waya do the same for him? Except Hikaru knows that he’s not being fair. He was the one who kept this from Waya. He kept it from Waya because he was afraid of what Waya would say. He was too worried about the truth to worry about the lying, or vice versa. 

And Hikaru thinks about the wedding plans and the list of names shoved into a drawer in the kitchen, and the place that says Best man: Waya? 

And he wonders if he is going to have to cross that name out and write in a new one. 

. . . 

When Hikaru opens the door to their apartment, he can see Touya standing in the kitchen leaning over the rice cooker, bathed in sweet orange light like some kind of paragon of domesticity. And Touya smiles at Hikaru just as the rice timer chimes its melody, and holds out two welcoming arms that Hikaru rushes into like water into a vacuum. They hold each other, just like it’s the two of them in the world, with no Waya, no reporters, no paperwork, none of that yet: just them.  

“Congratulations,” Touya says, and Hikaru laughs. 

“Is that what we say in this situation? Congratulations to you too then.” 

“Yeah.”

“You made red bean rice.”

“I thought this qualified as enough of a celebratory occasion.”

“Yeah, I’d say it does.” 

Hikaru looks at Touya, whose face is glowing in the warmth of the kitchen, looking more beautiful than he ever has before.

“Oh man,” he says, pressing a kiss to his cheek. “I love you so much.” 

“I love you too,” Touya says, and seems to notice the shadow in Hikaru’s eyes because he asks “Is everything all right?”

“Yeah. It’s fine. It’s been a long day. Did anyone say anything to you about the ruling?”

“No.”

“Me neither.”

“But Shindou, I wanted to talk to you about that,” Touya says, releasing Hikaru from the hug and beginning to serve the red bean rice and the pork soup. “We should think about when we’ll start to come out to everyone. We haven’t really discussed that yet.” 

Hikaru gets out the chopsticks. The TV is on in the living room, muted, and Hikaru can see a jubilant crowd marching through the streets of Tokyo, waving rainbow flags and smiling and singing. The camera switches back to the NHK reporter.  

”I’d like to send a formal statement to the Go Institute,” Touya says. “We can write it together if you’d like, and send it by email. Or I can write it myself.” 

“Do we have to do that?” Hikaru asks.

“Do you really want the Go Institute to draw its own conclusions from hearsay?”

“I mean, I just don’t see why we have to notify them officially. We just say we’re getting married.”

Touya sets the bowls on the table. “You and I are the most searched-for Go players on the internet, behind Yonemura-san,” he says. 

“And she’s fourteen.”

“Right. You should know what kind of weight our names carry, not only for our own careers, but also how our private lives reflect on the profession of Go itself. This will be explosive news. We need to be extremely intentional with how we present ourselves.” 

Hikaru sighs and turns the TV off. 

“I guess I don’t care if you write it. I don’t really know what I would say. I wish we didn’t have to make a big deal out of it though.”

Touya has sat down at the table, and is waiting for Hikaru to join him. “I’ll let you tell your friends,” he says. “We can go my father’s Go salon together and let them know. Ashiwara-san already knows about us, and Isumi-san of course. I’ll send cards to my father’s other friends.”

“Sounds good,” Hikaru says. “Itadakimasu.”

“Itadakimasu.”

They both begin eating. Touya’s hair, which has been getting longer again, is pulled back in a loose ponytail. In this lighting, he looks like he could still be in his twenties. His face has become a little thinner with age, but even this makes him look sharper — perfected, like a stone whose roughness has been worn away. All the excess gone, only what is necessary. 

I’m getting married to this guy, Hikaru thinks, and his heart gives a little jump, the way it used to jump when they were seventeen and Hikaru spent his nights fantasizing about that spark in his rival’s eyes. All those years they spent over the goban have somehow brought them to this moment, in what must have been a one in ten million chance.

“You’re gonna be a dad,” Hikaru says suddenly. 

Touya lifts his face, and there is light dancing in his eyes. It’s different from the spark that comes with the stones on the board. It’s the smile of a child who has just received a birthday present, or who has spotted a hot air balloon in the sky, or has a flower cupped in his hands to show his mother. Even this face, which is the face of an adult and has been smoothed down to perfection, can still make that kind of expression. Hikaru feels almost embarrassed to see it, but only because Touya almost never makes that face, and Hikaru doesn’t know what kind of face he should make in return. 

“We’ll be fathers,” Touya says, affirming it as though to make it more real. “We’re going to be fathers starting today.”

. . . 

Hikaru doesn’t know exactly what Touya means when he says “starting today.” He doesn’t know it until he sees it little by little, in the way that Touya is facing the world now. It isn’t so different from the way he usually faces the world, only there is a warmth beneath it, a steady glow behind the usual inscrutable exterior. Hikaru isn’t sure if the other people around them can see it. Touya’s personality is strong enough that most people tend to miss the subtleties; they simply try not to cower when the full-strength intensity of that gaze is turned on them. But Hikaru has been subject to the intensity long enough to know the difference in it when he sees it. Touya is no longer a lone wolf aiming for the top. All of his actions are now motivated by something else; they are for someone else. They are for someone coming, but not yet present, who has a face they haven’t seen yet and a name they don’t yet know. He thinks Touya might be able to see the child’s face in his mind’s eye, though Hikaru can’t. There are some things it’s better to leave to Touya, and this is one of them. 

So Touya writes the statement and sends it to the Go Institute, and asks them to keep quiet about it for another month or so while he and Hikaru come out to their other friends. Hikaru tells Nase and Akari first, and gives the okay to his mom to tell the rest of their relatives. He and Touya had decided to handle the Go salon crowd together, but Touya has to cover for another Go instructor at the last minute, so Hikaru ends up going alone.

It’s late Wednesday afternoon — dark grey clouds are tented over the sky. In the stuffy elevator leading to the Go salon and in between the stained beige walls of the hallway, Hikaru is looking at the peeling posters, wondering how nobody has torn the place down yet. The fluorescent lighting is the same uncanny glare it’s always been; the kind that makes a person think of ghosts and childhood, if a person is inclined to think that way. 

Ichikawa-san is still at the front desk, and as Hikaru walks up to her, he feels a little bit like a guilty child approaching his mother. It doesn’t make things better that her whole face lights up when she sees him. 

“Shindou-sensei! It’s been such a long time! How are you?”

The crinkles at the corners of her eyes give Hikaru a kind of melancholy feeling, and he looks down at the counter as he answers. 

“Yeah! Things have been good. Um, just been busy with tutoring and study groups. Usual stuff. And how about your children, Ichikawa-san?”

She whips out her phone and quickly pulls up a picture. 

“Look! Nana got herself a puppy! It’s an Akita Inu. Isn’t he adorable? She named him Rosso.”

“Is Nana-chan still in college?” Hikaru asks, glancing at the thin girl in the picture whose arms are wrapped around the dog.  

“It’s her last year,” Ichikawa-san says. “She’s getting ready for the job-hunting season. But…” She looks at Hikaru quizzically, suddenly seeming to realize something. “Where is Touya-sensei? The two of you always come here together.”

“Yeah, um, he had to cover for another teacher.”

“Then why…? Are you here to meet with one of the customers?”

“No, not really. I…” Hikaru can feel that many of the patrons of the Go salon are looking at him from across the room, and their collective gaze itches like prickles at the back of his neck. Even though Hikaru should be an adult by now, and he should be able to handle this on his own, he wishes that Touya were next to him right now. He wishes he weren’t such a coward. 

“We had some news to tell you,” he says, and bites his lip. Ichikawa-san’s face is innocently curious. 

"We're going... we're going to get married."

From across the room, one of the patron begins clapping, and several others join. Hikaru smiles nervously, and raises his hand to them in acknowledgement. But Ichikawa-san is still smiling in a way that tells Hikaru she hasn’t understood at all. 

“Congratulations!” she says earnestly, her eyes wide. “Who are you marrying?”

“Um,” Hikaru mumbles, “T-, T…Touya.”

Ichikawa-san’s brows furrow. “What?”

“Touya and I are going to get married,” he says again, quietly, as though the volume might make it easier for her to hear. He doesn’t know why he’s trying to break it to her gently — somehow he feels responsible for how she takes the news. If Touya were here, he would know how to tell her, but Hikaru’s the wrong person for the job — he only ever used to cause trouble for Ichikawa-san when he came to the salon regularly. Ichikawa-san had been patient every time their bickering had blustered into a full-blown argument, and every time Hikaru had walked out in a huff. But now she only looks bewildered. 

“You and Touya-sensei are going to…?”

“We’re going to get married. We’ve been together for a while, and now that we can, we…” Hikaru trails off as he notices that Ichikawa-san’s eyes are slowly filling with tears. “We thought we should…”

“Oh…” Ichikawa-san covers her face, trying uselessly to hide the tears. “Oh, that’s so… that’s so wonderful…” 

The look on her face doesn’t seem to say it’s wonderful, but Hikaru bites his tongue. He knows that she’s known Touya since he was practically a baby, and he can’t really guess what kind of complicated emotions she might be going through right now. One of the patrons, a woman in her forties, comes up to the counter and pats Ichikawa-san’s hand. 

“It’s wonderful news, isn’t it?” she says, turning to Hikaru. “The two of you must have been waiting so long.”

“Yeah, I mean… yeah.”

“And the ceremony?” 

“We were thinking June or July.”

Behind him, Hikaru hears a whisper. “Marriage? Touya-sensei and…?”

Ichikawa-san is still overcome with emotion, unable to stop the tears. “I’m sorry… I’m just so…”

“It’s okay,” the female patron says, patting her hand again reassuringly. “It’s a bit of a surprise, isn’t it?”

“Yes...”

Feeling very much out of place, Hikaru continues to stand at the counter, hoping that the crying will stop soon. For a moment his eyes linger on the back corner of the room where he first played against Touya. He imagines the faint shape of an adult man wearing white robes and an eboshi; he can almost see the silhouette standing there while the patrons continue playing around the figure, completely unaware.

“It will be a Go household, won’t it?” one of the old-timers says to Hikaru, coming up to the counter.

“It always has been,” Hikaru replies, pulling himself away from the reverie, and the old-timer laughs. Ichikawa-san suppresses a sob.

“I, uh… I should probably go now,” Hikaru says. There’s no silhouette in the back of the room waiting for him, only middle-aged Go students and their games. “I just came here to tell everyone. After all, without this place, Touya and I would never have met.” 

“Really? I don’t know this story,” says one of the newer regulars, and Hikaru shakes his head.

“It’s a long story,” he says. “You’d better ask one of the others.”

. . . 

After finishing up some business at the Go Institute, Hikaru takes the train to his parents’ home and arrives just in time for dinner. Touya shows up a couple minutes later, looking thoroughly worn out and carrying a gift from a student — an expensive-looking package of French macarons. 

“Are you really sure you want to share them with us?” Hikaru’s mother asks as she cautiously turns the svelte green box over in her hands.

“I’d rather they get eaten by more than one person,” Touya says, coming up from behind Hikaru and pulling the coat off his shoulders. “Hikaru eats too many sweets as it is.”

“I eat them for you because you keep getting things from your students and letting them sit in the pantry for months!” Hikaru protests. “I’m reducing food waste.”

“Hmm,” Touya says.

Hikaru sits down at the table, then Touya next to him, then Hikaru’s mother across from them. They wait for a moment.

“Dear!” Hikaru’s mother calls from the dining room. “It’s dinner time!”

They wait again, listening, but there is no sound of movement.

“I’ll get him,” Hikaru says, and walks to the living room. His father is sitting in his armchair with his eyes closed, listening to music through a pair of wireless earbuds. With his legs crossed at the ankles and his hands clasped behind his head, he’s got the attitude of a retired rockstar, except he’s much too fat from all those nights spent out drinking with colleagues, and the chartreuse polo shirt he’s wearing is definitely not a rockstar look.

“Dad,” Hikaru says loudly.

The old man lifts his head and squints at his son. 

“Dinner,” Hikaru says.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. And Touya’s here.”

“Oh.”

Hikaru walks back to the dining room without checking to see if his father is following him, but hears the huffing sound as the old man heaves himself from the chair. His mother has served Touya his spaghetti and some avocado salad. 

“So the Imperial Hotel said they had an opening in June but not July?” she asks.

“I’m not impressed with their level of service,” Touya says, unfolding his napkin. “It’s a very stately venue, but I’m not sure if it would be worth the price. I also found the Grand Briller in Ginza, which has good lighting. I thought the pricing was reasonable.”

“And did you check to see the catering options? Oh, and if they had dressing rooms?”

Hikaru sits down next to Touya and serves himself some spaghetti. His father sits down across from him, and their eyes meet briefly as the wedding talk continues on the other half of the table. 

“…We decided on steak for the main course,” Touya is saying. “I was thinking of sorbet for the dessert, with some cut fruits. We still haven’t decided on the hors d’oeuvres.”  

Touya is using “we” as though Hikaru were at all involved in the process, which Hikaru supposes is a charitable thing to do. He lets his mind wander as Touya and his mother talk their way through a seemingly inexhaustible list of ceremony details. Hikaru’s mother, in exaggerated deference to Touya’s family, continuously asks about whether Touya’s parents have agreed to each of the arrangements.

“I spoke with Akiko-san on the phone the other day,” she says anxiously. “She told me that every wedding in the Touya family has been held at a Buddhist temple for at least the past five generations! Are you really sure that it will be fine to go ahead with a Christian-style ceremony?”

“I think it might be a more comfortable atmosphere for the guests if it’s Western style,” Touya replies.

“But your family seems awfully traditional to me, Akira. I really wouldn’t want to do anything to upset them. After all—“

“Oh for Pete’s sake!” Hikaru’s father interrupts. “Nobody’s going to give a damn about what clothes they’re wearing or what kind of ceremony it is!” He slaps his napkin down on the table. “They’re going to be husband and wife anyway. I don’t see why we have to fuss about every little tiny thing.”

Hikaru looks up quickly at Touya, whose mouth is a tight line. 

“Look, Dad, you don’t--” Hikaru begins to say, but this time it is Touya who interrupts him. 

“Husband and wife, is it?” he asks icily. “I wonder which one of us will be the wife.” 

Hikaru’s father does not respond, turning his nose towards the two remaining strands of spaghetti on his plate. 

“I’ll clear the table,” Touya says, standing up. 

Hikaru stands up as well. “Let me help.”

“You should sit with your parents,” Touya replies, his voice still cold. 

“No, I actually have to go pick up Isumi-san from the airport.”

“Oh, was that tonight?”

“Yeah.”

Hikaru carefully stacks the plates and carries them to the kitchen. Touya has begun washing a saucepan, and Hikaru leans over to whisper in his ear.

“Go easy on the old guy, okay? He’s still not used to it.”



Touya raises his eyebrows. “To the fact that you and I are together? Even though we told him seven years ago?

“It’s not like he’s opposing it or anything.”

“He certainly hasn’t done much to show his support.”

Hikaru sighs. “Can you just be nice to them while I’m gone? I probably won’t be home until late.”

“Fine,” Touya says. “Put some gas in the car on your way back.”

. . . 

In the arrival lobby of the airport, Hikaru’s eyes scan over the crowd, trying to find Isumi-san. After the long drive, exhaustion has settled into every nook and cranny of his body, and he has to rally his strength to keep his eyes from closing. The headlights and taillights of taxis proceed in front of him in an endless march, the red and white trails superimposed against the black sky when he looks away. Finally, his smartphone buzzes with a message. 

I can see you. I’m at number 16. 

Hikaru readies himself to greet Isumi-san, who has been living in China for the past eight months. At first he hardly recognizes him — he has grown a beard.

“Welcome back to Japan.”

“Thanks.”

They take the pedestrian overpass to the parking structure and locate Hikaru’s vehicle. Isumi-san heaves two bulging suitcases into the trunk, and eases himself into the passenger’s seat with what must be the same weariness that Hikaru feels. Starting the engine, Hikaru glances over at Isumi-san’s profile. There are grey hairs in his beard, but it is well-trimmed. His hands rest in his lap, and he is silent. 

“How was China? Did you play against any old friends? Oh, is Yang-Hai doing okay?”

“Yang-Hai is winning international competitions; he’s doing fine.”

They get onto the highway and cross the bridge, but Isumi-san doesn’t say anything more for several minutes. 

“How about you? How have you been doing?” Hikaru asks. 

“I saw the news about the ruling,” Isumi-san says. “Are you and Touya-san going to get married?”

“Yeah.” Hikaru nods. “Hard to believe, right? I really never thought it was going to happen. It still doesn’t feel real. We keep going around, and people congratulate us, but it’s like a dream. It’s just me and Touya, the same as it’s always been. I guess it’s not like I expected a lot to change, but…”

“Congratulations,” Isumi-san says, and Hikaru notices for the first time that he hasn’t smiled once since he sat down in the car. No, not even when they greeted each other. 

“Did you meet anyone in Beijing?” he asks.

Isumi-san chuckles darkly. “Romantically? No. No, I just played Go. It’s strange to think that I could get married now, if I wanted to. Maybe I should call up Satoru again.”

“Satoru? Are you kidding me?” Hikaru cringes. “He cheated on you! There’s no way I’m letting you get back together with him.”



“I was only kidding. Well, it’s not like he would take me back anyway.”

“Listen, you’re the one who’s not taking him back, okay? Not even if he comes crawling back on his hands and knees.”

They drive over Rainbow Bridge, which tonight is actually lit up in rainbow colors. On the other side of the water, Tokyo Tower glitters orange and yellow against the dark slate of the sky. Hikaru can feel the heaviness of Isumi-san’s mood like a weight on his own heart, and searches for something he could possibly say to ease the gloom. After a series of terrible boyfriends, there’s only so much you can say before it all begins to sound the same. 

I’m sure the next one will be a good one. Plenty of fish in the sea. Eighth time’s a charm.

But Isumi-san speaks first.

“Have you told Waya?”

The question catches Hikaru off-guard. “Um, no. Well, yes and no.”

“I told him about Satoru,” Isumi-san says, helping himself to a mint from the box Touya keeps in the front seat. “He found a picture of us together on my Instagram, and I told him I wouldn’t lie to him about it.”

Hikaru tries in vain to imagine Waya’s reaction. “He was okay with it?”

“Okay with it… well, he didn’t say much about it. I texted him, and I think he said something like ‘Oh really’ and that was about the end of it. But if you’re going to come out to him, he’ll want to hear it from you in person.”

“Yeah,” Hikaru says, gripping the steering wheel tightly. “Yeah, I don’t know if he still considers me much of a friend. He found out that I was living with Touya.”

Isumi-san looks at Hikaru seriously, and nods. “I’ll talk to him,” he says. 

“No… no, you’re busy. You just got back to Japan. Besides, it’s my problem. I’ll talk to him.”

“Okay.” Isumi-san nods again. They cross over onto the land again, and Tokyo spreads out around them on all sides.  

. . . 

At 11:35pm, Hikaru is finally home, finally undressed, finally in bed next to Touya, who is reading a book on his tablet. Rolling himself over, he throws an arm over Touya’s lap. Touya adjusts his posture and strokes Hikaru’s hair absentmindedly. 

"I'm beat. All this marriage stuff."

"You're not the one who's making most of the arrangements."

"Yeah, and I'm still tired."

"Your mother asked me if there was a reason why you weren't involved with the planning."

"I don't know, I just..." Hikaru looks up into Touya's eyes. "It's not like we're the typical age to get married. And I'm fine with whatever you pick. I don't care if we have ham or shrimp or oshiruko or whatever for hors d'oeuvres."

"Well, we're definitely not going to have oshiruko for hors d'oeuvres since the wedding will be in the summer."

"You know what I mean," Hikaru says. "You can do whatever you want. And I'll help if you want me to."

Touya strokes his hair and lets his fingers glide down to caress his cheek.

"I guess I kind of wanted to show our wedding ceremony to him," Hikaru murmurs. "To Sai."

Touya brushes his bangs out of his eyes. "You say that a lot."

"Yeah, I guess I do." He smiles. "He'd definitely want to play against you now, at your current skill level."

"Tell him I'm waiting."

Hikaru's smile falls. "Yeah. I wish I could tell him." He pulls himself closer to Touya and breathes in the scent of his bedclothes. "He'd love you so much."

Chapter Text

“Dieses Mohnbrötchen, bitte.”

“Bitte sehr!”

“Ich hätte auch gerne dieses Gebäck und zwei Kaffees.”

“14,75 Euro.”

Akira pulls out his wallet and pays the clerk while Shindou widens his eyes. 

“Touya, that was amazing!”

“I only used very simple expressions. You would be able to do the same if you had studied.”

Shindou shakes his head decisively. “I tried! It’s impossible for me. I can barely remember ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’” 

Akira laughs, and hands Shindou his coffee and pastry. “Why don’t you try ordering next time?”

“Are you kidding me? I’m telling you, it’s impossible.”

The sunlight is shining in from the large storefront window of the bakery, and as Akira sits down at a table for two, he is aware that he is smiling like a fool. It is their third day in Germany and their eighth day in Europe. After the enormous stress of the wedding preparations, their honeymoon came somehow unexpectedly, seeming to whisk them away. Akira’s body and mind feel to be brimming with a lightness that makes him giddy at times. 

He hands Shindou a butter knife and stares at his husband’s hands as he cuts the pastry in two. 

“Do you still miss Japanese food?” Akira asks. 

“Yeah! Don’t you?”

“Not very much…”

“I’m pretty sick of spaghetti by this point.”

They had eaten pasta at least once a day while in Italy. Shindou had enjoyed the seafood, but had unexpectedly complained that the rest of the food was too rich. After years of relying on Akira’s cooking five days a week (they had long ago decided that Shindou would make the meals on Fridays and Saturdays), it appears that Shindou has gotten used to the healthier meals that Akira favors. As Akira continues to stare absentmindedly in front of him, Hikaru grins, and grabs his hand. 

“What?”

“Did you want to hold hands with me? Is that why you were staring at my hands?”

Akira, embarrassed at having been discovered in a moment of inattention, stammers. “Ah, no, I wasn’t—“

“Well I want to hold hands with you,” Hikaru says, and brings Akira’s fingers to his lips, smiling coyly. 

“What’s gotten into you?”

Shindou raises his eyebrows. “Did you see those guys at the beach yesterday?” he asks.

“You mean at the lakefront?”

“Yeah, whatever. They were holding hands and kissing and stuff in public, right there on the beach! Pretty bold!”

Akira chuckles, and studies Shindou’s playfully challenging expression. “We don’t have to put our love on display,” he says. 

“Yeah, I guess I got plenty of that already, honestly,” Shindou replies, apparently recalling their wedding.

“Having you by my side is enough for me,” Akira continues. “You, and our child…”

“Yeah.” Shindou squeezes his hand. 

They submitted the initial adoption forms the day after they obtained their official marriage license, even before the wedding ceremony. Soon after, they began going back and forth to and from the child consultation center at a dizzying frequency, and filling out a seemingly endless amount of paperwork. So far, Akira has found it exhilarating; every step brings them closer to fulfilling his long-awaited dream. Shindou has put up with the formalities with good humor, and without complaint. 

“I like to see you happy like this,” he has said whenever asked. 

And Akira can’t deny his happiness. For the first time in a long while, he feels as though he has something to live for beyond Go. He thinks about the child twelve times a day; feels his heart race when he imagines holding the small, warm body in his arms.

“Hey,” Shindou says suddenly, pushing their plates aside. “I have something I want to tell you.” 

Akira blinks. “Yes?”

“I wanna tell you about Sai while we’re here.” 

“Oh.” Akira struggles to tear his mind away from his thoughts and comprehend the meaning of what Shindou is saying. “Okay. Yes, whenever you want.” 

Shindou smiles, looking relieved. “Thanks, Touya.”

“Yes, of course.”

But Akira isn’t sure of what he’s saying or how exactly he feels. He senses that he ought to be excited, but somehow the part of him that had wanted this so fiercely feels very far away from him now. It is as though he’s been numbed by the sunlight, by too much contentedness. He can only sip his coffee with a warm feeling in his chest, holding Shindou’s hand while his mind wanders lazily in no direction at all. 

. . . 

“This bed is too big,” Shindou complains that night as they turn out the lights in their hotel room.

“Too big?” 

“Yeah, it takes up like half the room.”

As the lamplight fades down, Akira watches Shindou’s face, which seems to be genuinely discontent. But soon the light is gone, and Shindou has climbed into bed. 

“Get in here.”

“Wait a minute, I forgot to get a glass of water.”

Akira turns on the light in the bathroom. He sees himself in the mirror, lightly sunburnt and fatigued from too much walking. He still has a stamp on his hand from the museum that they visited in the afternoon; he is unmistakably a foreign tourist. 

As he looks at himself, he is struck by a fact — that this might be his last vacation with Shindou together as a couple. That is, their last vacation as a couple and not a family. His heart rate quickens with excitement, seeing in his mind’s eye their daughter or son holding his hand and Shindou’s, skipping along in a T-shirt and sunhat. 

“Touya, are you coming?” Shindou calls, and Akira tries to pull himself away from the imaginary scene; he has to go to bed. He runs warm water from the tap and splashes it on his face in an attempt to calm down. 

“Touya!” 

“I’m coming!”

He turns off the bathroom light and changes into his nightclothes. When he slips into the bed, Shindou doesn’t move — his back remains turned to him. Given Shindou’s earlier impatience, Akira had expected his husband to be in an amorous mood, but he is fine with the prospect of being able to go to sleep immediately. His exhaustion and the sensation of cool sheets on his body quickly pull him down into a deep sleep. 

. . . 

When Akira awakes, it is still dark. For a moment he is unsure of what woke him, and he hovers on the boundary between reality and dream in the dark blue tones of the hotel room. But then Shindou cries out, and Akira sits up in bed, listening.

“I didn’t…”

His voice is muffled, but Akira is able to make out some of the words.

“I didn’t! I didn’t want to, I…”

For a moment Shindou is quiet, and Akira waits. Then Shindou’s breath comes out in a sob, and his body shakes with an unknown grief. Akira leans over and takes his shoulder firmly.

“Shindou.” 

His eyes, even after they open, seem to still be seeing the nightmare. 

“Touya…” he says slowly. There are tears on his cheeks. 

“You were dreaming.”

Pulling away from him, Shindou sits with his knees drawn close to his chest. It is an uncharacteristically vulnerable posture, and Akira is not sure how to respond. This is the first time he has seen Shindou react like this to a nightmare. 

“What did you see?” he asks gently. 

Shindou doesn’t respond for a few seconds. He hides his face. 

“… A ghost,” he says at last.

Akira takes Shindou’s hand, and holds it. 

“Shindou,” he says. “I know it was frightening. But ghosts don’t exist. You’re safe here.”

Shindou lets out his breath suddenly. Akira can’t tell if the sound is a sob, or laughter. Then he leans into Akira and weeps for several minutes. Sometimes his breath comes out in a quick huff, as though he were angry. Then, his emotion heightening like a wave, his breathing grows faster and faster, panicked, until his voice collapses in a drawn-out whimper of pain. When this pattern repeats several times, Akira becomes concerned. 

“Shindou. Listen to me. There are no ghosts. I’m here. I won’t let anything hurt you.”

“No, that’s not it. It’s me,” Shindou sobs, but Akira can’t understand what he means. 

“You don’t have to worry about anything. You’re safe,” he says, and Shindou nods. 

Akira wraps his arms around him, and guides him back under the covers. He holds Shindou until he falls asleep again.

. . . 

“Are you fine?” Akira asks the next morning over breakfast in their hotel.

“I’m fine,” Shindou says. He stabs a sausage with his fork and cuts off a piece, giving it to Akira. “Here.”

“Oh, um, no thank you,” Akira says. He gives the piece of the sausage back to Shindou. “I’m not very hungry.”

Shindou shrugs. "Suit yourself. Is today the castle?”

“Yes. It will be a lot of walking again.”

“That’s okay with me.”

Shindou’s eyes look tired. He is not meeting Akira’s gaze as he shovels his breakfast into his mouth. His appetite, in any case, appears to be healthy. 

“We can cancel the tour and do something in town if you’d like,” Akira suggests. 

“You already reserved tickets though,” Shindou says. “Are you worried about me? Don’t worry. I’m fine. What was the name of the castle again? Noisy Van something or other?”

“The Neuschwanstein Castle,” Akira corrects. “The bus ride is two hours each way.”

“Yeah. That’ll be fine.”

“You can sleep on the bus if you get tired.”

“Nah.” 

. . . 

The blue sky shimmers brilliantly over a view of rolling green hills and distant, shady mountains. Akira has his guidebook in one hand and a water bottle in the other. Shindou is holding the straps of his backpack and walking silently, a baseball cap shading his eyes. Along with the other tourists, they walk the ten minutes to the castle, pausing sometimes to comment on the scenery. 

“Jeez, that’s huge,” Shindou says when they finally arrive in front of the castle, its white walls looming in front of them. 

“You can’t really get a good sense of the shape of it from up close,” Akira observes. 

“How long until the tour?”

“About thirty-five minutes.”

“That long?”

The two of them look around for a place to sit for a while. 

With one finger, Akira taps his smartphone in his pocket. Since getting on the bus in the morning, he has been trying with difficulty to keep himself from checking it incessantly. He is waiting for an email from the child consultation center regarding his request for an exception to the age restriction for adoptive parents.

“The government regulations are still being finalized,” one of the staff members had told them about a month ago. “According to the previous guidelines, you would be too old for a plenary adoption. However — and we don’t want to get your hopes up — but there is a possibility that the new revisions would extend the age limit to 40.”  

Of course, Akira has gotten his hopes up; it would be impossible for him not to. According to the information that he has been able to find, the new government guidelines should be released sometime before the end of this week, and it is already Thursday. However, there is no use in perseverating on this and stirring up his already tense mental condition.  

He turns to Shindou, who is staring absentmindedly at the spiraling cobblestones around his feet. 

“Let’s play a game.”

“Huh?” Shindou looks up from the ground. “On the app?”

“Yes; I don’t have my travel board with me.”

“Okay.” 

Akira opens the app and sets up a two-player game on a nineteen by nineteen board. When they are only a few moves in, however, he looks up, seized by a strange feeling. 

“What?” Shindou asks. 

Akira scans the tourists scattered in pairs and clumps in front of them. 

“I thought I heard someone call my name.”

“Out here? No way.” 

But this time, both of them hear the name again clearly: “Akira Touya.” The speaker is a tan-faced man with bristly grey hair and square shoulders. He is gesticulating excitedly while a younger woman listens and nods. Akira can tell that they are speaking German, but can’t make out what they are saying. As Akira continues to stare at the couple, the man takes notice of him, and his face flushes.

“I’m so sorry,” he says in English, approaching Akira and Shindou. “I didn’t mean to bother you. I just thought I recognized you. You don’t happen to play Go, do you?”

“As a matter of fact, we do,” Akira answers. “Are you also a Go player yourself?”

“Yes,” the man says, still flustered. “I mean, not at the professional level!” He reaches out his hand to shake Akira’s. “Oh my god, it really is you, Akira Touya! My name is Detlev. What an incredible coincidence. I’m an enormous fan!” 

He reaches his hand out to Shindou, who also shakes it. “And you’re Hikaru Shindou 9-dan, aren’t you?” 

“Yes,” Shindou replies, clearly struggling to keep up with the English, but nevertheless able to recognize as much as his own name.

“I’m really quite surprised,” Detlev says. “I never would have expected to see you here. What brings you to Germany?”

“We’re here on our honeymoon,” Akira explains. 

Detlev blinks.

“We just got married,” Akira adds. 

“Oh… that is…” Detlev looks incredulously from Shindou to Akira before exploding into joyous laughter. “I can’t believe it! Congratulations! That’s enormous news!”

“Thank you,” Akira says. Though it is not unusual for fans to recognize him, he is amused by the unlikely coincidence just as much as he is amused by Detlev’s infectious enthusiasm. 

“And how long have you been together, if you don’t mind my asking?” Detlev says, directing his question at Shindou.

“I can’t…” Shindou begins in English before giving up and turning to Akira. “Touya, can you tell him I don’t speak English?”

“We’ve been together since we were eighteen,” Akira tells Detlev. “I’m sorry, my husband is still working on his English.” 

“Oh, is that so?” Detlev says. “Well, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t keep you from your honeymoon. But,” he adds, as though unable to stop himself, “If you would like to come to our modest Go club, we would all love to see you; we would throw you a party. And if you would like a personal guide in Munich, well, I know my way around very well; I would be delighted.” He quickly scribbles down his full name and telephone number. “There. If you need it.” 

Akira thanks Detlev warmly and says goodbye before handing the note to Shindou. “He says he’ll be our personal guide in Munich if we want.”

Shindou wrinkles his nose. “In English?”

“Ah, that’s right. I suppose that wouldn’t work.” 

“Yeah,” Shindou says. “Do you wanna finish our game?”

“Yes,” Akira says, and they sit back down on the bench and play speed Go in the shade until the start of the tour. 

. . . 

The tour lasts for over an hour. After walking through room after dazzling room filled with majestic murals, gilded chandeliers, ornate archways, and opulent furnishings, Akira feels at the end as though he is coming out of a dream. It is relieving to be outside again in the plain simplicity of nature. “Let’s sit down,” he says, and they order cheese rolls and a currywurst mit pommes at one of the nearby street food vendors. Shindou picks at the currywurst slowly, and Akira ignores the food completely. It is well past their usual lunchtime, but he is not hungry. 

There is something about the tour guide’s explanations that continues to ring in his ears. He can see the king’s portrait in his mind’s eye; the stoic face and the broad shoulders bedecked with epaulettes and a golden livery collar. Called the “Fairy Tale King,” King Ludwig II of Bavaria apparently had been fascinated with his own image since he was a young child. It was said that he enjoyed making gifts of his possessions to others and that he had a pronounced sense of sovereignty. And perhaps it was this self-importance and these romantic leanings that pushed the king to erect the fanciful Schloss Neuschwanstein. Akira cannot help but feel an affinity to the man in the portrait who had so taken to heart the duty imposed upon him by his family and his rank. 

Akira himself had been the same as a child, hadn’t he? Always separated from the other children somehow, through no conscious choice of his own. The loneliness of his childhood had been only bearable through his devotion to Go, and his decision to help others along the same path. Go had been his castle, his way of making sense of the life that had been given to him.

Our child, Akira thinks as he stares out at the white pillars of the building beside them, will never have to choose between his passions and his friends. We will give him everything he needs. We’ll let him grow up surrounded by love.

Love — will Akira be able to make the child know that he is loved? Almost surprised by his own question, Akira looks over at Shindou, who is also sitting silently, apparently lost in thought. Akira wants to express to him, somehow, these hopes for their child. But before he can put into words what is going through his mind, Akira’s smartphone buzzes with a notification, and he pulls it out of his pocket to check. 

Re: Re: Re: Age Restriction Exception. 

Status: Approved

Touya-sama, Shindou-sama, it is with great pleasure that we inform you that your request regarding the age restriction exception for adoptive parents has been approved as of…

Akira does not bother to read the rest of the email before crying out.

“Shindou!”

“What?” Shindou looks up, disconcerted.

“They approved the age restriction exception! The plenary adoption!”

“What?”

Akira laughs, and picks up a cheese roll before immediately putting it down again; he is so excited that he doesn't know what to do with his hands. “I just got an email from the child consultation center. They say that…” He looks through the email, summarizing as he reads. “… Approved until the age of forty… So we’ll have to complete the process soon. But that we ought to have enough time to go through the necessary home visits and the rest of the approval process. They offer their most sincere congratulations…” 

Laughing again, feeling close to crying, Akira reaches out to hold Shindou’s hand. 

“Oh, wow…” Shindou says, rubbing Akira’s fingers. “That’s… that’s great.” He smiles, and Akira realizes that his hands, as they grasp Shindou’s, are shaking. His whole body is shivering from the flood of excitement. 

“I’m so relieved,” he says, unable to think of anything else. “I didn’t want to hope too much, but now it’s all right. It’s all going to be fine now that…”

Akira stops mid-sentence as he realizes that Shindou’s eyes are turned away. He is looking out over the lush green scenery on the other side of the courtyard, and even though Akira is here, overwhelmed with joy and relief, Shindou is somewhere else, far away. 

Why now, of all times, must Shindou look like this?

Akira's heart falls painfully, and when he speaks, it is in a quiet voice. “Shindou, what is it?”

“Oh, um… no, never mind,” Shindou says, trying to smile.

“Tell me.” 

“I just…. sorry. I just was thinking of telling you about Sai today. But it can wait till later. Since we just got the news, and it’s exciting, and…”

“Tell me,” Akira says again, before he can think better of it. His mind has never been further away from sai than in this moment, but the pain of seeing Shindou look so distant has trumped his desire for caution. “Tell me about sai.”

Shindou meets his eyes briefly before looking away. “Yeah. So, he… he was a ghost. And I know you said that ghosts don’t exist, but Sai did. And he was with me for about two and a half years. When you met me and you played against him…. yeah. So I just wanted to tell you that. I know I should have told you sooner, but I…” Shindou laughs. “Yup. There you go.”

Akira stares at him. “Are you joking?” he asks. 

“Nope!” Shindou laughs again. “Um, we don’t have to talk about it that much. I mainly just wanted you to know because uh… I said I would tell you, right? So now you know.” He squeezes Akira’s hand. “And we got approved, so things are good, right?”

Akira looks seriously at Shindou. He doesn’t know how to respond; doesn’t know what to make of the lie that Shindou has just told him. It has to be a lie — either that, or a delusion. But he does not want to believe that Shindou is delusional. 

“Are you done with the food?” Shindou asks, beginning to clear up the paper plates. “I can throw these away.”

Are you not going to tell me the truth? Akira thinks. Do I not deserve the truth? His mind is going over everything he can remember: their first meeting in the Go salon, the rise of mysteriously powerful player on the internet, his first game against sai, his father’s game against sai, Shindou’s unusual rise to prominence among the insei. 

But a ghost? No. He can’t accept such an explanation. It doesn’t make any sense. 

“Shindou, I can’t —“

“Hey, can we actually talk about it later? I’m kind of tired.” Shindou’s voice is brittle and unexpectedly sharp. “We don’t have to like… work this out right now.”

“Okay,” Akira says, getting up briskly. He breathes deeply, trying to calm the anger that has rushed in to replace his joy. “I’ll see about finding the shuttle back.” 

“Thanks.”

“Of course.” 

Akira walks ahead, the sounds of birdsong ringing in his ears, the white fairytale castle towering over them solemnly in its royal grandeur. 

Chapter Text

“Kiho-san! Kiho-san! Kiho-san!”

The sing-song voice coming from the next room is Touya’s, though anyone who knows anything about Akira Touya would be hard pressed to guess it.

Hikaru walks into the living room to observe his husband, who is wearing a suit and tie, bounce their 9-month-old daughter on his knee and watch her giggle with each bounce.

“Kiho-san! Kiho-san! Who is it? You? Are you Kiho-san?”

“I put the rest of the rice in the freezer,” Hikaru informs him. “Why are you wearing a suit?”

“Ah, I have a Zoom call with a fairly important client in a half an hour or so. I thought I’d better change to something more formal just in case.” When their daughter looks expectantly up at Touya, awaiting the next part of the song, he turns his head back towards her and gives her another bounce. “Kiho-san!” The plump baby, delighted, bursts into giggles once again.

“I’ve gotta go to my class,” Hikaru says. While Touya has switched nearly all his teaching activities to virtual lessons, Hikaru’s schedule remains mostly in person. “I’ll be back this afternoon, okay?” He walks over to kiss Touya on the cheek, and Kiho on the top of her head. “You two be good.”

"Kiho, say bye-bye!" Touya waves her hand for her, and Hikaru grins, waving back at them.

"Bye-bye!"

. . .

”What do you think, sensei?” Hamakura-san asks.

Hikaru, who has been staring blankly at the wall of the Go classroom, wrenches himself from his nebulous daydream and tries to recall what they had been talking about. Maybe it’s because Kiho has started waking up in the middle of the night again recently — Touya thinks it’s constipation — but Hikaru has been feeling constantly sleepy throughout the day, every day, for the past week. He shakes himself and tries to switch back into teacher-mode.

“You want to interview me for your blog?”

“Yeah, just a short one if you have time for it,” Hamakura-san says, brushing her hair back with an air of self-confidence. “I know you’re very busy, but if I could just ask you a few questions about playing against AI…” She hands Hikaru a business card with a stylish blog name written out in romaji block letters.

Hikaru has no particular reason to dislike Hamakura-san, who is an attentive student and a fast learner. But if he were to be honest, he really doesn’t have the time to do another interview. In between teaching, managing social media, attending events, doing formal interviews, and taking care of everything at home, Hikaru barely has a moment to himself. Nevertheless, he nods, and gets out his phone.

“What day were you thinking?” he asks.

“How about the 19th?”

“Friday? Oh, actually, I have a photo shoot then.”

“A photo shoot?”



“Yeah, with Touya and our kid.”

“Wow! For the Go Weekly?”

“It’s actually for AERA magazine.”

“AERA!?” Hamakura-san widens her eyes in excitement. “Well, I guess you and Touya-sensei are both top-level players so I shouldn’t be surprised, but still…”

Hikaru scratches his head. “It’s really not such a big deal.” He’s pretty sure that he and Touya wouldn’t have been featured if they had been a straight couple. He’s not exactly sure what the purpose or the angle of the article is going to be, but Touya seemed excited about it. He had strutted around the kitchen in that way he does when he’s feeling particularly passionate about something, and had given Hikaru some (unnecessary) pointers on how to respond during the interview. 

“Can you do Monday the 22nd?” Hamakura-san asks. “Maybe around noon?”

“Sure,” Hikaru says, and adds an event in his calendar where his lunch break would have been.

“I’ll be looking forward to the article,” Hamakura-san adds. “I’ll definitely buy that issue of the magazine!”

“Right. Thanks,” Hikaru says. 

. . .

At a quarter to one o’clock, Hikaru slings his backpack over his shoulders, leaves the Go Institute, and heads north.

About four months ago, Waya had reached out to Hikaru and asked him to play a casual game. They had met in Waya’s apartment, and Hikaru, whose Go had by no means been stagnating, gave him a good thrashing. In the silence that followed their discussion of the game, Waya had looked up sheepishly, and apologized for not coming to Hikaru’s wedding. Hikaru, in turn, had apologized for keeping quiet about his relationship with Touya for so long, and their friendship had thus been satisfactorily repaired. 

Since that day, to make up for the several years they hadn’t spoken, the two of them have been going out for lunch about once or twice a month. Today, Waya has invited Hikaru to a narrow gyudon shop near the Kanda river.

Hikaru seats himself at the counter under the orange dim lights, and for the first few minutes they talk about celebrity news, Go news, and food.

“It’s good, right?” Waya asks, pointing at the beef stacked up plentifully in Hikaru’s rice bowl.

“It’s good,” Hikaru agrees.

“When I eat good food like this, I can just forget about everything. Don’t have to think about teaching Go, or money, or anything,” Waya says. He sighs, and stares at his rice bowl forlornly. “Natsuki better find another job soon. I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”

Hikaru nods. Waya and Haruka had gotten a divorce last year, which Hikaru only learned recently. Now Waya is living with (and apparently financially supporting) his girlfriend Natsuki, who is unemployed. Waya hasn’t said anything directly, but Hikaru’s gotten the impression that money’s been tight.

“You know, when I was an insei , I never thought I’d be doing this much teaching,” Waya says. “If I had a title, things might be a little easier, but man…” 

Hikaru nods. “Yeah.” 

“By the way, why did you take on another teaching job? You don’t have to, right?”

Technically, Waya’s right. Hikaru and Touya have nothing to complain about financially. Even taking into account all the upcoming costs of Kiho’s schooling, they have saved up much more than enough to survive on their base salaries. Still, there’s a sense of uncertainty that’s been gnawing at Hikaru for the past few months, and he can't easily put it into words.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I guess I just felt like I should be doing something more.”



“Why? You were just saying you were way too busy.”

“Yeah, I mean, I am busy, but…” Hikaru recalls the expression of joy on Touya’s face as he had bounced Kiho on his knee that morning. “We have a kid now. It’s not like I can just sit around all day, right? Touya’s staying home to take care of Kiho almost every day. I’d better be doing something, or I’m gonna look like a deadbeat dad.”

Waya raises his eyebrows. “You? A deadbeat dad?”

Hikaru smiles awkwardly. “Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe not a deadbeat dad. It’s more like… in comparison to Touya…” 

Touya’s transformation once they had officially adopted Kiho had been remarkable, almost shocking. No matter how often she cried at night, Touya had been on the spot every time, always ready to soothe and comfort her. And while Hikaru had thought he might go crazy from sleep deprivation in the first few months, Touya had seemed, if anything, more energetic and cheerful than usual. Now that Kiho’s grown a bit older, Touya has started taking on more work again, but his devotion to Kiho remains apparent. He glows with pride when he takes her in his arms, and somehow, he’s even been more affectionate toward Hikaru. He speaks more gently and warmly in a way that Hikaru finds, in spite of himself, slightly unnerving. Although Touya used to appear constantly on edge, he now seems less stressed about his work than ever, and seems to perfectly balance the childcare, the household chores, and his professional duties. 

“He’s been so happy and like… nice to me,” Hikaru confesses. “He actually looks so happy that it’s kind of scary. Y’know, it makes me wonder just how much he was holding in all these years. Or was like, silently enduring.” 

Waya gives Hikaru a side glance. “So you mean that whole intense attitude of his was just because he secretly wanted kids?”

“No, I don’t know,” Hikaru says. “He’s just been different since Kiho came along. He’s really good with her. It’s obvious that she’s his number one priority. And I mean, for me too. Definitely. But…”

Hikaru wonders if other fathers – normal fathers – also feel like they’re doing everything wrong. He isn’t sure how a father is supposed to feel about his daughter, but he’s pretty sure that whatever he feels isn’t it. For a long time, he waited to start experiencing the natural tenderness that Touya clearly feels, but even now, nine months after Kiho’s birth, nothing about the situation seems natural to him. While he does feel that he loves his daughter, he’s also completely bewildered. Sometimes when he looks at that baby, that little stranger, he can’t believe that she’s part of his family. He should be proud and excited to be a father now, but in reality, he’s never felt more confused by anything in his life. 

“You’re gonna be fine,” Waya says, elbowing Hikaru in the side. “Nobody manages kids and a career perfectly. You’re probably getting too worked up over nothing.”

“Yeah, maybe so,” Hikaru says, and smiles. “Maybe I should lighten up.” 

He tosses back a gulp of oolong tea as though it were alcohol and grins at Waya, who gives him another hearty slap on the back. 

. . . 

Because the weather is actually nice, Hikaru decides to walk home rather than take a crowded train. The plum blossoms are in bloom, prematurely, and Hikaru stops to run his fingers over the smooth petals of a flower on a low branch. Almost spring. The blue-grey bark looks chalky against the deep pink of the blossoms. 

Springtime: the start of a new year, elementary schoolers heading off to school, hyacinths, crocuses, and cherry blossoms. Hinamatsuri – their first Girl’s Day with a daughter. For a moment, there’s a choking sensation in Hikaru’s throat, and it takes him a moment before he realizes that his mind has turned to Sai without him noticing it. 

Okay… okay. Calm down.

This has been happening to him more often these days.

Like Pandora's box, everything that he had thought he had come to terms with about Sai had come spilling out into his heart again the exact moment when he had told Touya the truth. “He was a ghost,” he had said, and as soon as the words were out of his mouth, he knew that he sounded stupid, that it sounded like a lie.

Sai, I married Touya. Can you believe it? We have a daughter. It's crazy, right? You wouldn't have guessed it in a hundred years, in a thousand years…

At first, Touya had seemed angry. But after they had arrived back in Japan and settled into their newlywed apartment, he had taken Hikaru by the shoulder one evening and spoken in a gentle, careful voice. 

“Shindou, I want you to know… that I do believe you. I do believe that Sai was a ghost.” 

Hikaru would have been happy if it hadn't sounded forced, and if Touya hadn't seemed like he was talking to a child or somebody who was slightly mentally deranged.

“Thanks,” he had said. “Thanks, Touya.”

What do you say to someone who’s looking at you like that, like they’re ready to forgive you for whatever kind of nonsense is about to come out of your mouth? No matter what Hikaru did, he knew he would look like a jerk.

“You can tell me whatever you want me to know,” Touya had said.

What is there to say? I had the world’s greatest Go player of all time right there in front of me, and I wouldn't even fucking let him play the game that he came back on Earth in order to play. Touching story, right? I lied to you. I lied to everyone. Is that the kind of story you want to hear? 

“Well, you know, like I said. He was Shuusaku too. Or I mean, Shuusaku’s Go was Sai,” Hikaru had said, and Touya had just stared at him.

If you aren't actually going to believe me, then don't ask! 

In that moment, Hikaru had felt so angry that he had needed to physically remove himself from the room in order to keep himself from saying anything stupid. They had made up, somehow or other. But these days, no matter what Hikaru wants to be focusing on, he still ends up thinking about Sai. When he sees plum blossoms. When he looks at a Go board. When he looks at his daughter.

Sai, I don't know if I’m any closer to finding the hand of God. Are you watching me? Can you tell me if I’m a total screw-up? Or is this all in my head?

. . . 

When Hikaru opens the door to their apartment, Touya gets up from the couch and approaches him with a strange look in his eyes.

“What?” Hikaru barely has time to ask before Touya begins kissing him on the mouth.

“Touya– what are – mmm – what are you…?”

Hikaru swallows as Touya trails two fingers down the line of his neck and begins undoing the buttons of his shirt.

“Welcome home.”

“I’m home – why are you–?”

“Is something wrong?” Touya asks, turning his attention to Hikaru's belt, skillfully undoing the buckle while his lips breathe hot air along Hikaru’s neck. 

“No, I mean… Kiho…”

“Kiho is asleep.”

“We probably shouldn't…”

“Why not?”

Hikaru is not able to come up with a suitable answer to this question on the spot, so he allows Touya to finish undressing him, and watches in bewilderment as his husband removes his own shirt and steps neatly out of his trousers.

The ends of Touya’s straight black hair brush his bare collarbones as he straightens and faces Hikaru, his gaze unwavering and seductive. The afternoon light is streaming into their apartment and bouncing off its crisp white walls dazzlingly, augmenting Hikaru’s sense of unreality.

“What would you like me to do?”

Hikaru stares at him for a moment, transfixed. Then he rouses himself. 

“Shit, Touya, I don’t know. I just got home!”

Gently smiling, Touya takes Hikaru by the hips and pulls him close. “Then why don’t we play it by ear?” he whispers.

This is what I’m talking about, Waya, Hikaru thinks. What am I supposed to do with this?

When he looks into them, Touya’s dark eyes are the same as they have always been. Honest, relentless, and penetrating. Hikaru wonders what his own eyes must look like right now – probably drained, avoidant, confused. But if Touya looks too hard, he’s going to see past the tiredness and the confusion, and see something scared and vulnerable. So Hikaru doesn’t give him the chance. Grabbing him by the face, he kisses him back forcefully. 

Screw it. I don’t get any of this. I don’t even know!

. . . 

On Friday the 19th, Hikaru and Touya are waiting for a buzz on the intercom to signal that Ashiwara-san has arrived. Touya, worried about the timing, is changing Kiho’s diaper with short, brisk movements. Hikaru, in the kitchen, is tasting the ginger sauce while the chicken breast cooks in the microwave. While neither of them would have chosen this particular day for Ashiwara-san to visit, the fact remains that if Ashiwara-san announces that he is going to visit them for lunch, there is no denying him, even if the day that he chooses happens to be the day of the photo shoot for the AERA magazine interview. 

“Did he say how late he’d be?” Touya asks. 

“No.” 

“Shindou, have you seen Kiho’s pink shirt?”

“Um, wasn’t it in the closet?”

“It wasn’t in the dresser?”

“I think it was in the closet.”

Ashiwara-san’s visits have seemed to increase at an exponential rate since Kiho’s birth. Each time he arrives, he makes the same remark with the same delighted expression: “She’s gotten so big!” Perhaps this is why Touya has not had the heart to reject his incessant lunch proposals. Although all of their friends and acquaintances politely agree that Kiho is the cutest baby they have ever seen, no one is quite as obviously enamored of her as Ashiwara-san is. 

The intercom buzzes just as Hikaru is taking the chicken out of the microwave. 

“I’ll get it!” he calls to Touya.

A few moments later, Ashiwara-san is stepping into their apartment, wearing an outfit that concerningly consists of a brown t-shirt with a teddy-bear on it, blue jeans, a hoodie, and fluorescent sneakers.

“Hello!” Ashiwara-san says cheerfully. “Thank you for having me!”

“Oh… yeah,” Hikaru replies, and stands dazedly in the doorway, still taking in Ashiwara-san’s shining face, his receding hairline, and the alarming outfit. He wonders if he and Touya are also going to start to lose their sense of fashion as they get older.

“That smells delicious!” Ashiwara-san is already moving towards the kitchen. “Akira-kun, what are you making?”

“Shindou’s making ginger chicken,” Touya calls back from their bedroom. “Give me a minute; I’m getting Kiho dressed.” 

Out of their mutual acquaintances, Ashiwara-san is the one that Hikaru knows the least. As Ashiwara-san is already the father of a fourteen-year-old and a nine-year-old, he usually misses no opportunity to give the new parents his baby-related advice. 

“Let me see her,” Ashiwara-san says. “Has she gotten bigger again?” 

Touya emerges from the bedroom holding the prize bundle, who is squirming in his arms. 

“Oh my goodness! Oh the little dear!” Ashiwara-san holds out his hands, and Touya relinquishes Kiho to him. 

“Did you miss your uncle?” he asks Kiho, who is craning her head around to look at Touya. 

Touya reaches out and smooths her hair several times, his hand moving unthinkingly. 

“She’s been fussy,” he says. “I’m worried about whether she’ll sit still for the photographer.” 

“She’ll be fine!” Ashiwara-san replies, bouncing her gently in his arms. “She’s got two papas to take care of her… don’t you?” 

But Kiho, ignoring the question, continues to focus her attention unilaterally on Touya. 

“I’ll go finish the chicken,” Hikaru announces, and retreats to the kitchen, where the chicken and the sauce are waiting to be assembled. 

“What are you pouting for?” he mumbles to himself as he pours the sauce over the chicken and wraps the bowl with plastic. From the kitchen he can hear Ashiwara-san’s and Touya’s voices, muffled. There is an ease in the way that Touya talks to Ashiwara-san; an effortlessness that Hikaru can’t help feeling jealous of, no matter how hard he tries to be reasonable. 

Back into the microwave goes the chicken. Had Hikaru always wanted so badly to possess Touya? He won’t lie to himself – he knows that what he’s experiencing is a kind of childish possessiveness. He can remember feeling that way back when they first got together. Back then, the only people who had known about their relationship had been Touya’s parents and Hikaru’s mom. The secrecy had made Hikaru feel special, although he’s only realized it now, in retrospect. Now that they’ve gone public with their relationship, now that they’re married and have a child, Touya seems more distant than ever. How could that be? But even Touya’s sudden renewed interest in sex feels incongruous to Hikaru. 

Like he was naked with a spotlight shining on him, Hikaru feels exposed and ashamed. Everyone can see what he is; there’s no place to hide. Meanwhile, he thinks that maybe it’s not that Touya is far away from him, but rather far above him, living on some cloud of blissful perfect fatherhood that Hikaru can’t touch. And once again Hikaru’s mind turns to Sai.

If you saw me now, would you tell me if I was doing a good job? 

It doesn’t matter how many times he asks, because he’s not getting any answer. But under his breath he whispers “I’m sorry.” The words might never reach Sai, and maybe they have no meaning. But sometimes they seem to make him feel better. 

“Shindou, I think we should start eating soon,” Touya says, walking into the kitchen. “Is the chicken done?”

“Yeah.” Hikaru points to the timer on the microwave, which is counting down from 20 seconds. 

“Thank you.” Touya kisses him on the cheek, then returns to the dining room. 

When Hikaru has arranged the dish and brought it out to the table, he finds Touya and Ashiwara-san engaged in a discussion about parenting. 

“Well, it’s different now,” Ashiwara-san is saying. He’s crouching down next to Kiho, who is amusing herself by scraping a plastic cup along the floor. “My father was never home. Never. Now with women in the workforce of course it’s different; the expectations change.” 

“I think I must have had an unusual upbringing in that regard, with my father so often home,” Touya replies, and smiles at Hikaru. “You can put it on that trivet.” 

“But you two will be the first generation leading the way for gender-equal parenting in Japan – I mean really gender-equal!” 

“I suppose. I hadn’t thought of it that way.” 

The three of them gather round the table. Kiho is placed in her high chair. 

As they begin to eat, Ashiwara-san leans forward conspiratorially. “Have you thought about how you’ll deal with what people will say to her at school?” 

Touya looks at Hikaru, who is cutting his chicken. 

“We’ve talked about it,” he says. “We don’t want her to have to hide anything. We don’t feel there’s any reason for her to hide who her parents are. We’re going to teach her that it’s normal.” 

“Ihara-san from the first floor called out to me the other day,” Hikaru says. “Just when I was about to head out on a walk with Kiho. She was like ‘It’s so nice to see a father with his daughter.’ And then she goes ‘But I’ve never seen your wife!’”

“What did you say?” asks Ashiwara-san.

“I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s true.’ I mean, I wasn't going to suddenly come out to her right then and there.”

Touya looks pensive. “Maybe I’ll go down and introduce myself properly.”

Hikaru laughs. “Yeah, she’ll probably be more impressed with you than she was with me.”

“You could come with me.”

“Nah, you’re better at that stuff.”

He sees Touya’s eyes flit to the clock on the wall. An hour and a half till the photo shoot. Kiho is trying to get out of her high chair, wriggling and making impatient sounds of protest. 

“Kiho? You aren’t gonna finish your pasta?” Hikaru asks. 

“Nnnngh!” she replies, pushing hard against the tray. 

“Okay,” Hikaru says. Touya is trying to get up from his chair, but Hikaru stops him. “It’s okay. I got her.” 

Taking her in his arms, he begins to walk her around the room, stopping by the potted fern in the windowsill so that she can touch the fronds. 

“She likes that fern,” Ashiwara-san remarks.

“This is what Touya always does with her when she’s upset,” Hikaru explains. 

Kiho grabs the fronds and lets go, then grabs again. 

“I’m surprised she’s letting you hold her this long,” Touya says. He does not need to add that Kiho usually prefers his arms to Hikaru’s.

Hikaru watches the tiny pink fingers take hold of the plant and release. “Kiho-san,” he whispers in her ear. “Kiho-san…”

For a moment, the four of them are silent as the baby continues to play with the plant. Then Ashiwara-san gets up.

“Shall we do a practice photo shoot?”

“What? Now?”

“Why not?” Ashiwara-san asks. “You can practice before the real thing.”

“Ashiwara-san, you just want a picture to keep for yourself, don’t you?” Touya teases. 

“Is there anything wrong with that?”

“I’m fine with it,” Touya concedes. “Where should we stand? Against the wall?”

He and Hikaru align themselves against the wall opposite the window. When Kiho makes it clear that she would prefer to be with the fern, they put it on a stool in between the two of them. 

“It can be part of the ‘set,’” Ashiwara-san says.

Hikaru holds Kiho in his arms as Ashiwara-san gets out his film camera. He watches her wide eyes stare intently at the fern. Then she swivels her head to look up at Hikaru.

“Hi Kiho,” he whispers. “Hi sweetie.” 

The black eyes continue staring up at him even as Touya takes his arm. 

“Kiho, look at the camera!”

“Yoo-hoo!” Ashiwara-san cries. But Kiho is undeterred.

“She’s looking at you like she’s never seen you before,” Touya says. 

Hikaru watches her, and a painful feeling stings his chest.

Hi Kiho, Hikaru thinks in his heart. I’m gonna do my best, okay? I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m gonna be the best dad I can be.

“Kiho, look over there!” Hikaru points at the camera, and Kiho finally looks away from her father’s face.

Ashiwara-san’s camera flashes. 

Chapter Text

A gentle rain turns the streets dark grey and cools the air. Akira is careful to tie his hair back before opening his umbrella and walking out of the Go Institute. 

Thanks to his father’s connections, they found a good preschool for Kiho only twelve minutes away from their apartment and twenty minutes away from the Go Institute on foot. Akira increases his walking pace. He has no reason to hurry, but it is always like this when he leaves work to pick up Kiho. His mind flutters to and fro — to his day, and how Kiho’s day might have been, and how glad he will be to see her face. 

Now that she is three, Akira and Shindou have begun to see more of her personality day by day as she unfolds herself, discovers the world; discovers herself. She is a picky eater, shy around strangers and other children, fascinated by the natural world, and stubborn when absorbed in her play. Akira has now read dozens of books on parenting, and even took a parenting class with Shindou about a year ago, but none of this has lessened the amount that he worries about Kiho while she is at preschool. 

Shindou often shakes his head when Akira voices these concerns. “You literally ask her how preschool was every day, and she says ‘fun’ every time. Nothing bad is happening to her there. I promise!”

Still, Akira can’t help but feel impatient as he waits for each traffic signal to change on his way to the preschool. The sky thunders, and he wonders if Kiho is afraid of thunder. Every day, there are still so many firsts: her first snow, her first trip to the zoo, her first time seeing a caterpillar. It’s a world filled with magic, and Akira experiences an almost physical pain when he thinks that he can’t be present with his daughter to share with her each new event. 

The gates of the school are adorned with decorative metal placards in the shape of pink rabbits wearing hats and blue dogs holding balloons. Akira joins the other parents who, like himself, have arrived early and are waiting outside at the gates in the damp weather. Though he has greeted each of the parents on previous occasions, he remembers none of their names, and remarks today that the few who have gathered are all looking at their smartphones. He adjusts his umbrella and turns his attention back to the entrance of the school. Soon a preschool teacher — Takeno-sensei  — is rushing out to open the gate for the parents, calling out apologies as she hurries over. 

“So sorry for having made you wait! Please come in! I’m very sorry!”

Akira follows the other parents inside to the school grounds, and catches Takeno-sensei’s eye. 

“Kiho played with many of the other children today!” Takeno-sensei says to him brightly. She is familiar with the questions that Akira tends to ask. “They made paper sailboats. She’ll be excited to show you hers!”

When they enter the classroom, Akira spots Kiho immediately. She is sitting in the corner of the room next to the window, holding a green crayon in her fist and clumsily pushing it across a sheet of notebook paper. While the other children play in twos and threes, Kiho is one of the only ones sitting alone. Is it really true that she played with the other children? Akira wonders if Takeno-sensei might have been exaggerating for his benefit. He wants to believe her, but on the days he comes to pick his daughter up, he often finds Kiho alone.

"Kiho-chan, Tou-chan is here!”

At the sound of her teacher's voice, Kiho’s round face looks up and she throws her crayon to the ground.

"Tou-chan!" she cries, running forward.

Akira kneels down to catch his daughter in his arms. Though he wants nothing more than to squeeze her tightly, he gently turns her around to face the classroom and speaks softly in her ear. 

“Kiho, we don’t throw our things on the floor. Can you go pick them up?”

“Yeah.” She nods, and dashes off to the corner to pick up the paper and crayon. 

“Thank you for taking care of her again today,” Akira says, standing up again and addressing Takeno-sensei. 

“Of course! We’re very glad to have her! Have you and Shindou-sensei been busy?” 

“My book was just published, so I’ve had a bit more free time. Shindou is as busy as ever.” Akira smiles. 

“My goodness, congratulations on your publication! That’s wonderful. Oh! And here’s a handout for our Halloween event. We’re asking the children to come in costume,” Takeno-sensei says, handing Akira a bright green and orange flyer. 

“Thank you. We’ll have to think of a costume. Maybe a flower… what do you think, Kiho?”

Kiho, eyes shining, turns her face up towards her teacher. 

“Do you know… Do you know I went to Grandfather’s house and they had a big big big big… big lily?”

“No, I didn’t know that!” Takeno-sensei exclaims. “What color was the lily?”

“Pink…” Kiho replies. She hides her face behind Akira’s pant leg, suddenly shy. 

Akira laughs and takes her hand. “Maybe we can take a picture to show your teachers next time. Let’s say goodbye to Takeno-sensei now. Kiho, can you say goodbye?”

“Goodbye!” Kiho waves with her other hand while tightly gripping Akira’s fingers.

“Goodbye!” Takeno-sensei waves back. 

. . . 

When they arrive back home, Shindou greets them at the door. 

“Can you say hello to your papa?” Akira asks. 

Kiho, who had been in the middle of describing her paper sailboat to Akira, pauses mid-sentence and looks confused. She warily eyes the vacuum cleaner that Shindou is holding, and frowns at the noise. 

“Off!”

“‘Please turn off the vacuum, Papa?’” Akira prompts her.

“Please off, Papa!”

When Shindou complies and turns the vacuum off, Kiho squirms in Akira’s arms until he sets her down on the floor, and then dashes off to her room without a word. 

Shindou smiles at Akira apologetically, and picks up some mail from the table. “There’s a letter for you from the Go Institute,” he informs him. “And the gas company is going paperless. Do you have the log-in? I don’t.”

Akira glances at the postcard that Shindou is holding. 

“I have it written down somewhere. And how did your lecture go today?”

“Fine.”

“Did they have any trouble with the video participants this time?”

“No, they figured it out.”

Akira can see fatigue in Shindou’s eyes, and wonders if he should say something. When Kiho was younger, Shindou had struggled to balance his work duties with childcare, and Akira had picked up most of the slack. Now, they seem to have found a working system. The dishes get washed, the house gets cleaned, they teach, they go to their matches. They pick up Kiho from preschool on alternating days. Akira cannot understand why Shindou so often looks defeated. It seems to be more than the stress of work. Yet even though Akira knows that something is wrong, he has a hard time bringing up these subjects with Shindou. How long has it been like this? Over a year surely… He can remember the sense of things being different between them all the way back when Kiho was a newborn. And although Akira hates to admit it, he knows that things changed when he first learned the truth about Sai.  

Even though he has turned it over many times in his head, sometimes “truth” feels like the wrong word to describe the story that Shindou told him. It isn’t that Akira disbelieves Shindou. He can see that Shindou believes that Sai was a ghost, and that Shindou believes this absolutely. If Shindou believes this story, then Akira must believe Shindou. It is just that Akira can’t make sense of it. The idea is so outlandish, and seems so far removed from their daily life. If Sai was a ghost, then wouldn’t there be other ghosts that exist in this world? Why has Akira never seen one? The idea does not conform to anything that Akira holds to be true about the world. After begging Shindou to tell him about Sai for years, Akira himself recognizes the irony in the fact that he can’t fully accept the explanation that he was given. He feels guilty about the way he has handled the situation. 

Even putting the veracity of Shindou’s story aside, there is something that weighs more heavily on Akira. The issue is that Shindou clearly no longer trusts him the way that he used to, and Akira does not know what to do about it. 

Akira sets the mail that Shindou had handed him back down on the table. He gathers his words, looking at his husband’s weary face. He tries to pose the idea lightly. 

“Shindou, both of us have been working hard. I was thinking that I’d like to make some time to spend alone with you in the next week or two.”

“Oh, you mean without Kiho?”

“Yes, that’s what I meant.” 

“I mean, sure. That’s kind of rare, coming from you.” 

Akira has previously expressed hesitancy around entrusting Kiho’s care to others. Still, he feels that the current situation merits extra measures. He has allowed himself to live with the status quo in their relationship for far too long. 

“Was there something you wanted to do?” Shindou asks. 

“I’ve been thinking about our junior high school days…” Akira begins. 

“Junior high?

You used to be different, Akira wants to say, but doesn’t, because that much is obvious. Of course a person changes over the decades. Still, the mischievous grin that Shindou wore so often when he was a child is a far cry from the subdued expressions he usually wears now. Akira tries to picture Shindou as a junior high schooler, followed by a mysterious and invisible ghost, but he can’t. What he wants is to see the old Shindou come back. He doesn’t know how to express this. 

Before Akira is able to put any of his thoughts into words, Kiho struts back into the room where they are standing, opens her backpack, and pulls out the paper sailboat. 

“Okay,” she begins to explain without any preamble, “This is the sailboat, okay? This is the sail, and this is the ocean. And this is the boat.” The gentleness and seriousness with which she is speaking contrast comically with her high-pitched voice. Akira nearly laughs as he realizes that her intonation is practically identical to his own when he is explaining something. 

“Papa, look!” she says insistently, pulling on Shindou’s pant leg. “Please look!”

“I see! That’s really cool!” Shindou says. 

“The water is dark blue, not light blue,” she emphasizes.

“Did you choose that?”

“Uh-huh. But Yua-chan chose ter… tur…”

“Turquoise?”

“Uh-huh. Papa, do we have a sailboat?”

“Um… no, I don’t think so,” Shindou answers. 


“Okay. Maybe we can get one next time,” Kiho says wisely.


“Maybe so,” Shindou agrees. “Kiho, why don’t you play with your coloring book? Tou-chan and I are gonna have a talk for a little bit.” 

“Okay!” 

As Kiho runs off again, Shindou turns towards Akira. “What were we talking about...? Oh yeah. You wanted to do something like we did when we were in junior high, right? Yeah, so I had this idea... maybe we could go to a study group together again."

Akira blinks.

"It’s been a while since we went to one together, but we used to go to Serizawa-sensei’s group way back in the day, remember?" Shindou continues. "I actually got a message from Isumi-san the other day…” 

Shindou pulls out his smart phone, and shows Akira a text message. 

“I think he meant to send it to both of us, but he sent it to your old number,” he explains. 

The text message says:



Hi guys! If you want, I'd like to invite you to a study group on Wednesday. It might be at an inconvenient time for you, but I thought you would want to come because Yonemura-san will be there, and I know you two are big fans. It was actually organized by Kondou-san, Touya-san’s student. I asked him, and he said he would love it if you attended. So feel free to let him know or me if you can make it.

Akira looks up, surprised. “Kondou-san? He means Atsushi Kondou?”

“Yeah. Apparently Atsushi got to be friends with Yonemura-san since they’ve been to a few events together. What do you think? Do you want to go?”

Yonemura-san, in addition to being the most famous Go professional in Japan currently, is also the closest thing to a celebrity crush that Akira has ever had. Shindou knows very well that Akira has been wanting to speak with her for years. 

“I would hate to ask your mother to babysit…” Akira says. 

“What about your mom and dad? Didn’t your mom say she was willing to watch Kiho whenever?”

“That is what she said, but…” 

“Hey Kiho!” Shindou calls to their daughter, who is now putting her dolls in a row on the living room floor. “Do you wanna go visit Grandfather and Grandmother on Wednesday?”

“Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!” Kiho replies, jumping up and down. 

“There you go,” Shindou says. 

. . . 

They decide drop Kiho off at Akira’s parents house on Wednesday afternoon, immediately after picking her up from her preschool. Kiho sits in the backseat of the car, singing a song. 

“Ru ru ru ru ru ru ru…”

“Kiho, are you excited to see Grandmother and Grandfather?” Shindou asks from the passenger seat.

“Uh-huh!” 

“What kind of snacks do you think you’ll have?”

“Apples!” Kiho exclaims. 

“Apples?”

“I believe they had received some apples from our relatives in Aomori the last time we visited,” Akira says. 

“Oh! Do you like apples, Kiho?”

“Yeah! Ru ru ru ru ru…”

As they pull up to the garden, Akira can see his father sitting outside in an old outdoor chair. The boniness of his knees shows through his kimono, and his hands look almost like a skeleton’s. Since he stopped attending international Go-related events, he seems to have settled into an increasingly sedentary lifestyle. Akira wonders if it is really all right to leave their daughter with someone so frail. 

He parks the car and reaches around to unbuckle his daughter’s car seat. 

“Kiho, don’t run around too much near Grandfather, all right?” he says quietly. “He’s elderly, so he can get hurt if you run too fast.”

“What’s elderly?” 


“It means that he’s been alive for many years.” 

“Many many many years?”

“Yes.” 

“Kiho, let’s go?” Shindou has come round to take her hand, and the two of them, each holding one of Kiho’s hands, walk to meet Akira’s father, who is waiting at the gate. 

“Welcome back, Kiho-chan,” Akira’s father says, leaning on his cane and looking down at the child. 

“Sensei, thank you for watching her for us,” Shindou says. 

“Yonemura mania, is it?” Akira’s father chuckles. “I’m not surprised that you two would jump at the chance. That child is certainly something.”

“Father, Yonemura-san is already twenty years old,” Akira corrects him. 

“Is that so?”

“Where’s the lily?” Kiho demands, suddenly distressed. She is craning her neck around to look at the garden. 

The former Meijin looks confused. “Lily?” he asks. 

“She wants to see the lilies in your garden,” Akira explains. 

“Oh. Your mother cut them to use in a flower arrangement.”

“Cut!?” 

Kiho’s face contorts as large tears well in her eyes. Her round cheeks, which up until a moment ago had been pink with carefree joy, are now hot and red with sadness. Akira feels a stab of pain in his heart. 

“Don’t cry… don’t cry, Kiho. It’s okay… There are other flowers,” he says, taking her in his arms. 

“I wanna go home!” Kiho sobs, and Akira strokes her back. 

“Kiho…. Kiho… you’re going to have a nice time with Grandfather and Grandmother. You’ll have lots of fun with them. Papa and I will come to pick you up before bedtime.”

“No!”

“Touya, we should get going,” Shindou says softly, and taking Kiho from his arms, sets her on the ground. Their daughter begins sobbing even harder. 

“She’s had too much excitement today…”

“No!”

“I’m sorry, Father, but could you…?”

“Come, Kiho,” Akira’s father says, taking her hand.

“No! No! No! No!!!”

Akira and Shindou get back into the car, while their daughter, behind them, lies on the ground with her eyes squinted shut, crying as though her heart would break.

. . . 

“Touya-sensei!” Atsushi exclaims when they enter the room. “Long time no see! Are the two of you all right? You look a bit worn out.”

I see that Atsushi is as perceptive as ever, Akira thinks wryly. He takes off his coat and hangs it on the hanger that Isumi-san has proffered. The small room contains six Go players in addition to himself and Shindou. Atsushi and Isumi-san have stood up to greet them, while Yonemura-san and three other high-ranking players in their twenties sit huddled over a Go board in the center of the room. 

“We had a bit of trouble saying goodbye to our daughter today,” Akira says to Atsushi, who nods understandingly. 

“Yeah, goodbyes are difficult with toddlers.”

Yonemura-san, seeming to notice the entrance of two new players, looks up for the first time and meets Akira’s eyes. 

“Touya Kisei,” she says simply. Then turning her head, “And Shindou Meijin.” 

“It’s an honor,” Akira says, bowing to the young woman. She has a round, dark face with eyes that appear unfocused. She is dressed casually in a T-shirt and jeans, and shows no sign whatsoever of discomposure. 

“Won’t you play a game?” she asks, her gaze already turned back to the board. 

“I would love to. We won’t be interrupting?”

“We just finished.” 

Akira sits down across from Yonemura-san, and catches a glimpse of the game on the board before she begins clearing the stones. While he is thrilled to be able to play a casual game against someone so talented, he notes regretfully that this study group does not in any way lend itself to the kind of intimate discussion he had hoped to have with Shindou. 

“Is it all right if I calculate the AI percentages while you play?” asks a young man seated next to them. 

“Of course.” 

And so Akira’s long-awaited first game against Yonemura-san begins. They play without handicap, and nigiri for color. The playing style — which Akira has already become familiar with through his study of her games — is just as invigorating as he had hoped for. This is a Go player who practically grew up with AI, and he can feel it in the way she chooses her moves. For the first half of the game, they play at a brisk pace. About one hundred and fifty moves into the game, however, Akira sees the board clearly shift in his favor, and the game slows down, each of them taking their time to consider each move carefully. 

Shindou, who has finished his match against another of the younger players, sits down at Akira’s side to watch the endgame. Akira can see from the corner of his eye that Shindou is distracted. Why would he have suggested a study group in lieu of a more relaxed date between the two of them? Was it simply that he wanted to give Akira this chance to play against Yonemura-san? Or perhaps he did not want the two of them to be alone together?

“I’ve lost,” Yonemura-san says, bowing. To Akira’s surprise, she is smiling. “You gave me hell over here!” She indicates the leftmost area of the board, and grins widely. 

“Thank you for the game,” Akira says. 

Soon everyone in the room has crowded around the board to discuss the match. 

“Yonemura-san’s tsukenobi wasn’t as effective as I thought it would be here,” Isumi-san says, pointing to the middle of the board. 

“Yeah, I didn’t expect that development either,” says Yonemura-san. “I had to work really hard. That part of the game was especially intense.”

“AI said the win probability for Touya-san reached 60% on move 156,” the young man beside them says. “That was a decisive point. But at move 183, Yonemura-san’s win probability shoots up momentarily to 48%. Touya-san effectively counters it though.” 

“What did the AI say about this move?” Isumi-san asks, pointing to one of Akira’s black stones in the center of the board. “I was curious about alternatives there.”

“Let me see… It wanted him to do a clamp there.”

“A clamp!? Oh… no… I could see that.”

“It marked the clamp as its favorite option for that move, and the move that Touya-san actually played was marked as its third favorite.”

“It still feels kind of funny to me sometimes that we’re always asking the computer what it thinks,” Atsushi says, laughing. “I mean, it’s normal now, but it sometimes still strikes me as strange, you know?”

“It’s lonely,” Shindou says suddenly, and Akira turns his head to observe his husband’s face. Shindou is looking down, his mouth a hard line. 

“I think I know what you mean, Shindou,” Isumi-san says. “It takes away something of the mystery of the game, I guess. I sometimes wonder what Inoue Dousetsu Inseki or Honinbo Shuusaku would have said if they could have seen AI.”

“I wonder that too. A lot,” Shindou says, and when he turns his eyes up to meet Akira’s gaze, Akira sees a profound loneliness. The depth of the sadness there surprises him, and he instinctively reaches out to touch Shindou’s hand, almost embarrassed to have Shindou make such an unguarded face around fellow professionals. 

“I suppose we’ll never know what they might have said,” Akira says softly. Even without looking at him, he knows what Shindou must be thinking about. 

Shindou’s ghost. Shindou’s Sai. Of course Sai would never have known anything about AI if he had disappeared in 2001, as Shindou says he did. 

I know what Shuusaku means to Shindou,  Akira thinks. I’m the only one who does. He won’t tell even me most of the story, but what I know is more than the people in this room will ever know. 

And Akira feels a lonely kind of pride in the thought that Shindou needs him to hold that knowledge silently, without sharing it, without even understanding it himself… 

. . . 

The study group lasts four hours. When they finally arrive at Akira’s parents’ house, Kiho has already fallen asleep. She is still wearing her day clothes, and is clutching in her hands a bruised lily flower. Her hair is mussed against the pillow. Akira brushes his hand tenderly across one chubby cheek. 

“C’mon, kid,” Shindou whispers, picking up their fast-asleep daughter. “Let’s go home.” 

Akira earnestly thanks his parents, who protest that it was nothing, and watches his husband walk to their car with the child in his arms. The sky has turned a deep, dark blue, and is sprinkled with faint and distant stars. 

Chapter Text

“2000 yen,” Hikaru proposes.

“3000 yen,” Kiho counters.

“3000? Are you kidding? No way!”

“But Papa, you can’t buy anything with 2000 yen. You can get like one volume.”

“You’re thinking of a regular bookstore. This is BOOKOFF. You can get a lot with—”

“2500,” Kiho says, her face dead-pan.

“You are such a little…!”

As they pull up to the neighborhood BOOKOFF, Kiho drums the back of the driver’s seat with two mechanical pencils.

“You better actually keep that grade up, though, or Tou-chan is gonna be pissed,” Hikaru warns his daughter, turning around in his seat to stare her down.

“I will! I studied my butt off to get that 5, so it would be a waste if it went back down to a 2 again. Can we go in?”

They get out of the car, and Kiho rushes to the store before Hikaru, her hot pink sneakers flashing in the muggy air as she jogs inside.

Hikaru slowly follows his daughter to the shounen manga section, where she has already located her favorite series.

“They don’t have any of the special volumes?” he asks her.

“Nah. They always get bought right away.”

Hikaru’s eyes scan the white, pink, and yellow spines of the books on the shelves, reading dozens of titles there that he has only vaguely heard of: “Undead Unluck,” “Ginka & Glüna,” “Chainsaw Man,” “Akane-banashi.” There was a time when he read Shounen Jump religiously, but now he can’t even tell which titles are famous and which ones aren’t. His daughter, on the other hand…

“I’m gonna go check if they have the “Cooking Papa” reboot!” Kiho informs him, and dashes off to another section.

Compared with the stifling heat outside, the air conditioning running inside the store is so strong that Hikaru is tempted to put on a jacket. His phone buzzes with a notification, and he pulls it up to check.

You have 6 new followers.

That’s funny. He thought he had turned those notifications off. He doesn’t particularly get much joy from the knowledge that he has more followers on his YouTube channel, since the novelty of being a YouTuber has now almost completely worn off. Kiho seems to like the fact that her father is popular on the same platform that she and her friends use for entertainment on a daily basis. Touya, for his part, tolerates Hikaru’s new venture with little to no comment.

“Papa, come look,” Kiho says, grabbing Hikaru’s hand and dragging him to another section. “They have the entire series of the original Cooking Papa! Just look at that! That’s fricking crazy!”

Hikaru looks where his daughter is pointing: multiple massive packs of red-spined manga volumes take up an entire bookshelf on their own. He picks up one of the loose volumes, a repeat number, and studies the cheerful face of the apron-clad father on the front cover.

“Why do you like this series? You don’t like cooking.”

“I like the family, and it’s funny, and relaxing to read.” Kiho shrugs. “I like the mom. She’s always peppy and cheerful and stuff.”

“Huh,” Hikaru says. He looks down at his daughter, who is hopping from one foot to the other while flipping through a volume. “Kiho... do you ever wish you had a mom?”

Kiho turns a page and bites her lip. “Hmmm… I guess… not? I mean maybe sometimes, but not really, cuz like… I have Tou-chan, and I have you, and I don’t really know… I guess I just don’t think about it that much.”

Hikaru thinks back to when, several years ago, Kiho had come home with a Mother’s Day card addressed to Touya. She had drawn a picture of a daisy where the portrait of the mother was supposed to be.

“Besides, it’s not like I’m the only one in the world with two dads,” Kiho says with an air of indifference. “There just isn’t anyone else in my class.” She shoves the manga back into place on the shelf. “Anyway, I’m gonna go look at Demon Slayer.”

Hikaru shakes his head. There’s a lot he doesn’t understand about Kiho, and her casual nonchalance to most serious subjects is one of them. He supposes he had also been a pretty happy-go-lucky kid when he was her age. Now, especially when she gets onto one of her favorite subjects and starts rattling off facts at a galloping pace, he can barely keep up with her. Maybe it’s just that he’s getting old.

Their daughter, who shows absolutely no interest in Go, who has taken to decorating their apartment and re-decorating it on a bi-weekly basis, and whose brilliant enthusiasm for all subjects non-academic has brought her grades to the brink of disaster many a time, is a handful. Both Hikaru and Touya can agree on this point. What they cannot agree on is almost everything else: how to harness her energy, what she should be doing with her after-school time, whether she should be going to cram school, how often she should visit her grandparents and which grandparents to visit, how much allowance she should get, whether they should buy her the latest technological gadget…

It was Hikaru’s idea that they give her rewards for good grades — or passing grades in any case. Because they had let Kiho choose the kind of prize she would receive, they had ended up shopping for manga, of course. Hikaru can’t help seeing a reflection of his childhood self in his daughter’s passion for shounen manga; can’t help feeling that he’s watching a version of himself dance around the bookshelves in glee. It gives him a knotted feeling in the stomach — something like yearning, nostalgia, guilt, joy, embarrassment, and fear all tangled around each other. If she played Go, all of this would be worse, he knows. Is it weird that he’s relieved that she doesn’t play the game? Yeah, probably. A part of him wants her to stay this age forever, always the unmanageable ball of energy that she is. Part of him wants her to grow up as quickly as possible so that he doesn’t have to see her like this — see the parts of her that remind him of himself.

. . .

When they arrive home, Kiho triumphantly carrying volumes 12-16 of her second-favorite shounen manga series, they find Touya crouching down in the hall and squinting through his glasses into a cabinet.

“Whatcha doing, Tou-chan?” Kiho asks.

“Welcome home,” Touya says, looking up at them. “Kiho, what did you do with all of the folders that were in this cabinet?”

Kiho assumes a look of innocence. “Oh, I… were there folders in there?”

“You moved the cabinet last week, didn’t you? I need one of the folders for my students.”

“Um... I don’t remember where I put them.”

Touya takes off his glasses, and folds them with a click. “I don’t mind if you redecorate, but you shouldn’t move things that don’t belong to you, Kiho, especially documents.”

“I didn’t think they looked important…?”

Getting up, Touya sighs and looks at the manga in his daughter’s arms. “Five volumes? That’s quite the reward.” He raises his eyebrows at Hikaru, then turns back to Kiho. “Are you happy?” he asks.

“Yeah! Look, this one still has the bonus art card in it,” Kiho says, showing him a glossy piece of paper.

“You got lucky.” Touya smiles at her.

Hikaru hangs his backpack up on the hook in the hallway, and steps past them towards his office. “I’m gonna go record my next video,” he says.

Touya looks over his shoulder at him. “I thought you had already finished your video for the week.”

“This isn’t one of the weekly ones; I’m responding to questions I got in the inbox.”

“Oh.”

Hikaru trudges into his office, turns on the overhead light, and goes through the necessary set-up automatically. He starts his computer, adjusts the lighting, positions his camera over the Go board, checks the audio input from the microphone, and reviews the questions from his inbox.

These days, (although it was the same when he was a kid), there aren’t very many young people interested in Go. In spite of the Go Institute’s best efforts and the book series that Touya and Isumi-san co-wrote in an attempt to appeal to a younger audience, the game remains firmly an “ojisan” hobby. From the data that Hikaru can get from YouTube, most of the subscribers to his channel are also in their late forties and fifties, with a scattering of viewers much older or much younger than him.

When he first started his channel, it was out of a feeling of necessity, a creeping sense of irrelevance. Why should young people learn Go when they have countless streaming services, when the economy is in the dumps, and the national focus is on globalization and modernization — not ancient traditions? Why should they learn Go when AI will win against humans every time? Though he often dreads having to make the videos and expose himself to the unforgiving citizens of the internet, he feels bound to the weekly streams — less out of duty to the Go Institute than out of duty to the game of Go itself. He’s worried about where the game as a whole is going, and what its future will be. It’s something he could bring up with Touya, but so far Hikaru has kept his fears to himself. He doesn’t want to hear a smooth, self-possessed answer to his worries coming from Touya’s mouth. Better to deal with things on his own.

Hikaru finishes setting up the board, and hits the record button. “Hi everyone,” he says into the microphone. “How’re you all doing? In today’s special-edition video I’m gonna be responding to some of the questions I’ve gotten over the past month or two. I wanna say that I’m very grateful to have so many fans who have stuck with me this far, and I wanna say thank you to everyone who has encouraged me in starting this YouTube channel. I’m really amazed by how many people have subscribed already; thank you to all of you who have. If you haven’t subscribed yet, just go ahead and click that button. I update with new videos weekly, covering—“

“Shindou,” Touya says, bursting into the office. “I need you to watch Kiho.”

Hikaru looks up and hits the pause button. “Shit, Touya, what is it? I’m in the middle of recording, and—“

“My father’s had a TIA,” Touya says. His hands are shaking, his eyes darting around the office.

“What?”

“A transient ischemic attack; it’s a minor stroke.”

“Oh Touya, I—“

“It’s all right. I’m going to the hospital. I need you to watch Kiho. Make sure she does her homework, and all of it. I’ll also need you to make dinner.” Touya, seemingly unconsciously, straightens a pile of books on Hikaru’s side table, and then pulls out his wallet to check his keys and cards. “I may be home late. My mother’s with him now.”

“Do you want us to come too? We could all—“

“No, Kiho needs to do her homework. I’ll text you.”

Hikaru gets up and steps out of the office to watch Touya hastily grab his satchel and step into his shoes. Touya turns and sweeps his gaze one last time over the apartment. Then the door clacks and he is gone. The apartment is suddenly very quiet. Hikaru’s eyes are drawn to the sunlight that has streamed in from their balcony window and is dancing on the opposite wall.

After a moment, there’s a sound from Kiho’s room, and she walks out into the hallway.

“What happened to Tou-chan?” She’s still holding one of the manga volumes from the bookstore, and looks slightly dazed.

“Tou-chan… had to go to the hospital,” Hikaru says slowly. “Your grandfather had a minor stroke.”

“Oh. Is that bad?”

“Well, it’s, uh… it’s not good.”

Kiho seems to process this information. “Can I sit in your office while you make the video?”

Hikaru hesitates a moment, but shakes his head. “You’re supposed to be doing your homework, remember? If you’re in the room while I’m making the video, you won’t be able to concentrate, and I won’t be able to concentrate either. You’ve just been reading manga right? You can do that after you finish your homework.”

“Yeah… Okay.” Kiho hides the manga behind her back guiltily, and takes a step backwards.

“And make sure you do all of it, okay?” Hikaru says, remembering Touya’s words. “I’ll come over and check after I’m done with the video.”

He hates having to reprimand Kiho for not doing her schoolwork when he himself barely did his homework in elementary or middle school. But Kiho nods obediently, and retreats to her room.

Feeling slightly lost, Hikaru steps back into his office and over to his desk. On the left computer monitor, he has a list of questions he received in his inbox.

How do you prepare for a big match? How do you keep from getting nervous?

I want to teach my children how to play Go, but I don’t know how to introduce the game to them.

Should I still be learning jouseki in this day and age, or is there a faster way to improve?

Dear Shindou-sensei, what is it like being married to your rival?

Hikaru chuckles and rubs his temples, staring at the screen. How had he been planning to answer these questions? He can't even remember.

Let me tell you what it’s like being married to your rival, he thinks. You play hundreds of games together but you never get sick of it. When he wins a title, you’re happy for him and frustrated at the same time. You know the same people and you go to the same places as each other. When you’re doing good in your official games, you know that he’s going to try and overtake you. And when you’re doing bad, you can feel the pressure to do better like a physical force in the apartment. You fight a lot. You talk a lot about the game. And sometimes you look at him and wonder how on earth you ended up married to this guy.

Hikaru spends another five minutes staring blankly at his computer before he is hit with a realization: He doesn’t want to finish the video. No matter how many times he scrolls up and down through his list of questions, there’s not a single one that he wants to answer. He tries to force himself to click the record button again, but his finger won’t move. He’s going to make himself do it, in 5, 4, 3…

“Papa?”

Kiho is standing in the door to his office.

Hikaru swivels around to look at his daughter, who is rocking on her feet and biting her nails. “What’s wrong? Weren’t you doing your homework?”

Silently, Kiho shakes her head.

“What about your grades? I thought you said you wanted to keep your Japanese grade at a 5.”

Kiho nods guiltily. “I don’t know. I tried, but I just…” She stares at the floor.

Hikaru looks at his computer, then looks at his daughter again. Standing up suddenly, he presses the power switch, and the screen goes black.

“Okay, that’s it,” he says.

“Are you going to tell Tou-chan?” Kiho asks, her eyes wide.

“No,” Hikaru says. “We’re gonna read manga together. I don’t want to make this video, and you don’t want to do your homework, right? Let’s read manga.”

“Wait, really?”

“Yeah, really. Just today. It’ll be a secret from Tou-chan, all right? Don’t tell him I’m slacking on my videos.”

“Okay, but you won’t tell him about me not doing my homework either, right?” Kiho says, already running excitedly into the hallway.

“Yeah, just make sure it gets done before the due date, okay?”



“I will! I’ll get up really early tomorrow and I’ll finish it all then! I promise! Can we eat kaki no tane too?”

Hikaru laughs. “Yeah, what the heck, why not.”



“And Calpis?”

He can already imagine what Touya will say when he finds out that Hikaru let their daughter have two of her favorite forbidden snacks right before dinner. Oh well.

“Yeah, we can have Calpis too.”

“YES!!”

While Kiho is dashing into the kitchen, Hikaru smiles. How long has it been since he actually sat down and read shounen manga? Twenty years? Thirty? Kiho is humming the opening melody to Jujutsu Kaisen, pushing a stool to the cabinet so that she can reach the secret snacks. Her fast recovery is not surprising, Hikaru thinks. Kids are like that. One minute their troubles seem to overshadow everything, and the next minute they’re completely forgotten.

Today, Hikaru decides, he’ll be a kid too. Just today…