Lacy's Place

2019 Fic Posting Goal 75000 words

lacygrey — Wed, 02 Jan 2019 20:00:51 GMT

2019 fic posting goal

lacygrey — Sat, 07 Jun 2014 12:57:02 GMT

A writing inspiration community

Something I'm aiming for

lacygrey — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 16:05:16 GMT

Rules and FAQ & Sign Ups

I've signed up to write a fic!

Where was I?

lacygrey — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 06:08:10 GMT

In a nutshell
I got a job while I was still running my own business and studying, hence the fandom hiatus

Blind Go

lacygrey — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 19:48:55 GMT

Its blind_go time again. Go check out the new batch of fics here

The title list alone is delicious!

lacygrey — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 19:54:11 GMT

Hmmm, most bits of LJ don't seem to be working tonight. I wonder if this does.

ETA: 'DDOS' attack apparently, even LJ isn't immune to computer woes.

Arrietty

lacygrey — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 17:34:17 GMT

♥ This film is beautiful

...then keep on dancing

lacygrey — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 17:22:07 GMT

So I finally found out that there are only three episodes so far.

In other words Ive already seen all the canon (me who was scrupulously avoiding the fandom for fear of spoliers ^^).

Where did I get the idea that the BBC made series of 13 episodes?

On the bright side, I can read fic* with a clear concience now and won't have to put up a fight for the TV on Saturday nights.

*ETA, (Feb 10): Blimey!

Writer's Block: The name game

lacygrey — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 22:24:01 GMT

lacygrey is one letter different from my favorite type of tea 'Lady Grey': tea with bergamot and orange.

Its also a wink at Macy Gray, lady of soul,

and a hint at my age and gender.

And, no, I wouldn't change it.

Joys and pitfalls of compiling a recs list

lacygrey — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 09:23:52 GMT

At the Dreamwidth hikarunogo community, troisroyaumes is collecting a list of everyone's favorite Hikago fics of 2010. Go contribute to it if you haven't already.

There are many Hikago fics from 2010 I haven’t read yet. (That’s not a bad thing, but it’s a bad thing for compiling a rec list when you stop to read them).
There’s also fics I’ve read and like but haven’t commented yet (belatedly commenting also slows up the reccing).
I ask myself whether authors mind me linking. It would be amiable to ask but it’s a lot to have to ask every single one.
I need to keep a better track of things if I ever want to try anything like this again. I really haven't been noting things I liked, apart from in my head, and thats not much use to anyone else on the interwebs (I went off and got a Delicious account, learnt how to use it, played with it, etc. thereby further delaying the reccing).
Manual coding for multiple links is a pain. There has got to be an easier way. MS Word should be able to do this without macros (I think I need a manual for Word 2010).
Mediaminer is starting to look like a mueseum piece, but is still alive. On A03, Fics archived in 2010 may in fact be older. FF.net has tons of fic, but would it please the Dreamwidth audience? LiveJournal remains a maze where not everybody promotes their fic on the comms, but then that makes it like a treasure hunt, which is kind of fun, if a bit slow.
Its difficult to organise recs. What do you choose as categories: character, genre, length, original challenge…? What is most helpful to readers?

And, also at Dreamwidth, I learnt of kaigou's panfandom fanfic survey,"Inspirations and Perceptions", which is already showing some interesting results and will only get better the more people take part.

Why fanfiction?

lacygrey — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 18:34:50 GMT

Some thoughts on reading, writing and what lies inbetween

As a reader I long for books that will sweep me away, writers than will impress me and make be aspire to be like them, stories that I adore so much I am in awe. For me its very rare, and rarer still are the books that speak to me about life such that I wish I could open the cover and step right in.

When I first discovered fanfiction I was astounded that writers would expend their energies (waste their time, it seemed) writing other author's characters rather than expressing themselves. But I think Ive understood now that fanfiction is more about being a fan of something than it is about creating fiction per se.

Fanfiction is about playing in another person's universe. It can also be a means of discussion criticism or character study - its getting intimate with the fabric of an original work in a way that is itself creative.

I think that's why I started writing fanfiction. Its fun and has become important to me because its unimportant in the general order of things: like many a good book, it reflects life while being totally outside it.

Bye bye 2010 - Hello 2011!

lacygrey — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 23:23:29 GMT

Happy New Year to all!

Though its only a date on the calendar, the New Year has that wondeful feel of potential to it. I'm hoping to be more productive in 2011, do more writng and have a healthier lifestyle (hope I can resolve that contradiction - writing being so sedentary).
I'm not up for fulfilling a meme on 2010. All told its been a very nondescript year - except that I got involved in fandom and started writing Hikago fanfic:

Mini Fic List 2010

Confluence Sai, Akitada; Heian AU ~6.5K (FF.net version with author notes)
Tea for three Hikaru/Nase, Akira PG-13 ~~WIP~~ (ETA: finished April 2011) ~3K
Soliloquy Sai PG-13, 410 words
Nigiri, she said Nase, Akari (Dreamwidth drabblefest)
Quintet for go boards and prodigy Internet go players, OC (Dreamwidth drabblefest short version)
Strangers Akari, Akira (Dreamwidth drabblefest)
The pros and cons of daydreaming AkiHika PG-13 ~3.5K
A piece of cake Shigeko 1K
A world without go Waya, Nase 1K (page down)

[Fic] Confluence

lacygrey — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 16:38:34 GMT

Title: Confluence
Fandom: Hikaru no go
Characters: Fujiwara no Sai, Sugawara no Akitada
Genre: Heian AU
Rating: G
Word Count: 6496
Warnings: Non-explicit violence; minor character death
Disclaimer: Hikaru no go is the property of Yumi Hotta and Takeshi Obata. This is a nonprofit-making fanfiction
Author Notes: Written for blind_go round 10. Many thanks to my beta sidevocalist for corrections and discussions.
Summary: In which Sai is saved from drowning by a passing peasant...

Confluence

They say that downriver, where the water spreads as far as the eye can see and beyond, lies another land. There are fish aplenty, but also monsters who upturn ships and drown unwary seafarers, tearing the surface with their great fins and men with their teeth. Kawa-jin was happy where he was - fishing on the river - with the hope of a fair catch and a good supper. Fishing was a welcome rest from the shôen. With water between himself and the farm lands he could forget the problems, the drudge of his days, the lack of labor on the farm, the demands of the palace...

He was looking at the point his line met the water and following its reflection in the pale dawn when he spied a form on the quiet water surface. Though the tales of great vengeful fish sprang to mind, this was something floating, not something swimming. He steered his boat closer. It was a tall black thing, not a fin, but a tall eboshi, a noble’s hat: something thrown away from the palace, no doubt. He recognized it because the shôensupplied food for the nobility that lived cloistered behind its walls and he had briefly seen those people, the men at least, as they entered or left the city in fine carriages.

A little vexed at himself for wasting his time on this useless object, he turned his attention back to his line. But at that moment he saw something else; something else recognizable and altogether more frightening. He forgot all about the hat, all about the fish. It looked like there had been a terrible accident. Pulling on the oars he neared himself to a person he saw floating in the water, kept up by air caught in his robes, face blue with cold surrounded by an undulating cloud of hair. Was this man dead or simply chilled to unconsciousness?

~~~

In his sorrow, it was a question Sai had never asked himself: Is there Go after death? He had given himself to the water, welcoming its cold until it felt like warmth, accepting the biting until it dulled and he was surrounded, clothed in darkness he became one with.

But now he was dry, aching all over and lying on something hard. There was rough fabric against his skin and a smoke smell coming from somewhere near. His head throbbed. He had no idea what being dead was supposed to feel like but doubted it felt like this. And the anguish was still very much alive when he thought of his Go, tainted by injustice and shame.

"I have nothing."

"You’re not only inept, you’re dishonest."

How could people believe that of him? Anyone who loved Go as he did would never do such a thing. Go is my life.

There was a noise of someone moving close to him and he opened his eyes to see the face of an unfamiliar woman; a smiling face. Who was she? And where was he? Around him were the walls of a strange room with an earth floor. The woman’s face was worn and looked older than those he had known in the city, but softer too. Sai tried to smile back, for her sake. She looked at a loss for words, relieved. Though his last days at the palace hovered in his mind, with alternate pangs of anger and despair, he realized, as he looked at this woman, that here was someone who was happy to see him alive.

The next time he awoke there were more women, talking together. Sitting up, he found his hair was all loose and spread about him and that he was wearing a shapeless grey tunic, the like of which he’d never seen. He must look terrible, but he felt better. They hadn’t noticed he was awake. Sai had grown up among the women of the palace and was used to their company. As Go tutor he’d had the privilege of meeting them directly. When they weren’t learning Go, the ladies at court often chatted with him. They would tease him about how they envied him his hair.

But these women here were different; they weren’t only talking, but also working. It looked like they were beating reeds on the floor. With difficultly, he moved closer to watch them and saw they were collecting the tiny grains from the dried plants. He must be among commoners and this was probably their food. Hunger!! Though his disgrace and exile he had been too morally sickened to eat at all, no wonder he felt so weak.

One of the women saw him standing watching. She made a sound and all of them looked up at once. In an instant he was surrounded by faces.

"Oh…the one from the city."

"You’re better, beautiful one."

"Oh, the eyes he has."

"Look at his hands."

"Get him some soup."

"It was my husband who saved you," one of them said, "You fell in the water. Do you remember? We’ll take care of you and take you back to the palace." Then she asked, hesitantly, "What should we call you?"

Her expression was kind, but the question stabbed him: his name, his family, his rank: all were meaningless. She only wanted to know how she should address him, but it brought his despair to the surface... "I can't go back there!" he replied. He hadn’t the strength to say the rest: I don’t belong there anymore. I have failed. I am nobody. His knees buckled and the floor came up to hit him as consciousness and the swarm of faces slipped away.

~~~

"Tendoumaru! Tendoumaru, will you come in now? Your teacher is here."

A boy sprang out from behind a clump of melia trees, hair ruffled and escaping from the looped tresses over his ears. He sped towards the veranda.

"Sai! Sai! you’re back. Sai, where have you been? Let’s play Go." His mother stood there and looked troubled.

"No darling, it’s not Sai. It’s your Chinese teacher. It’s time for your lesson now."
His most dreaded lesson and still no Sai: definitely not his night.

As Sai’s youngest pupil, Tendoumaru hadn’t cared much for Go when Sai had introduced him to it. Much as he’d loved his tutor, he preferred ball games to board games. But now that Sai had gone away, Tendoumaru missed him. And he started to wonder what the big deal was with Go anyway. Why did Sai think it was so important? And where was Sai anyway? No one ever told kids anything. If ever Sai returned, he promised himself they’d play Go. In the meantime, Tendoumaru asked to play Go with her majesty, his aunt. She had no children of her own and indulged him, though she too placed her stones like a child.

When a palace guard found a hat in the river, it really should have been a trivial thing and quickly forgotten. But few had forgotten the scene between the two Go tutors, least of all his majesty. Rumors travel quickly in places where little happens from day to day; minor gossip becomes insatiably interesting and details inflated and embellished. News spread that Fujiwara no Sai had drowned himself in the river: a logical explanation. There was hushed dismay but feverous debate. The women heard about the hat. The higher courtiers heard about the hat. His majesty heard about it, or rather he heard how Fujiwara no Sai had desperately thrown himself in the waters of the Kamo for the love of Go…because someone had written a poem about it. Far from being disgraced; in the eyes of the women of the court, Sai was a tragic hero. Sai would have many a lavishly decorated story dedicated to him for his act was one of love.

Sai’s suicide was an outcome Sugawara no Akitada had not predicted; though Sai always had been such that a dramatic fool he should have known he would over-react. Now it seemed that everyone was more influenced by pathos than reason. Too many people were looking at him strangely and too few were asking for games.

His majesty retired for several days. He did not want to play Go.

~~~

Kawa-jin’s family were surprised that Sai did not want to wear his old clothes again, even though they’d carefully cleaned and dried them for him. For Sai, they went with a life that was gone, a life that truly had drowned in the river. Dressed like the men of the farm and with his hair in a simple ponytail, he felt he’d been though a metamorphosis.

He’d tried to die: sought that place none return from. It seemed impossible, like a terrifying dream. But the reality remained:

"I am banished. I can no longer serve the emperor. I can no longer play Go," he sobbed, burying his face in his hands. A arm came around his shoulders.

"What is Go?" someone asked.

"Tell us what happened." said another.

Sai couldn’t keep the tension out of his voice, when, having first described his life and his love of Go, he told them of his strong but selfish rival and their final competition.

"I would never have suggested such a thing to the emperor." Sai shook his head. "Though I did not care for that man, until the moment he cheated against me I would never have wished that he leave. What is Go without strong opponents?"

It was difficult to describe the world he had come from to people who lived so differently. But Sai made it clear that he couldn't go back and that they shouldn’t send word to the palace about him. It was silently understood that his bath in the river had been no accident.

Though he’d never thought about it, the cloth of his robes had a high value. Sai gave them away willingly to his hosts and they let him stay on at the shôen.

He drew a goban on the earth in front of the house and explained the rules of the game to anyone who would listen. But no one had enough time to play a proper game, and when Sai explained that Go could last several days, Kawa-jin shook his head and said it was truly a game of the nobles or the gods and he had the rice harvest to manage and would hear about such distractions later. Sai felt that he had fallen into darkness at the shôen but was sorrier still for these people who had never known the joy of Go.

~~~

The empress was excited. His majesty had introduced her to a new game someone had brought to him from the continent. She showed the pieces to Tendoumaru. They were flat, five sided and decorated with delicate calligraphies.

Tendoumaru only wanted Sai to come back. Though he was only a child he couldn’t help but find out that people now thought Sai was dead. But for him it couldn’t be true, it just couldn’t.

"And each player has one piece that for his highness and his servants, and pieces for horses and tigers! And you move the pieces around during the game…Isn’t it delightful?" said her majesty. It was beautiful, that was true, as the empress liked everything to be. It was even fun, like stepping into an imaginary world, but it wasn’t Go.

His majesty, far from being upset that a mere board game should represent him, ordered more Shougi boards and pieces to be made so that everyone could learn and play the new game. Go was no longer in favor at court.

Emperors do not make mistakes. There is only greatness and light in the capital. Though he would not believe that his Go tutors would cheat in front of him, he remembered it was Akitada who’d told him "You only need one Go tutor", and Akitada who had accused Sai first. His majesty questioned all of the men who had witnessed the game between Sai and Akitada but learned no more. The emperor was young but not stupid. He suspected something and that something tainted Go completely for him.

~~~

The farm supplied rice and fruit to the palace. Kawa-jin also kept pigs. The 'reeds’ that Sai had seen being beaten were rice, though he hadn’t recognized it as the dish he’d eaten in the city.

Sai had little more success persuading the women to play Go than he’d had with the men; they were busy with rice polishing or other chores. He tried the children too: they found him funny, but few of them would sit still for long. They reminded of Tendoumaru from the palace: vivacious, but easily distracted.

Finally, playing alone, he brought himself to lay out the fateful game he and Akitada had played before the emperor. He played out the moves he would have played if he’d hadn’t been so upset by the accusation and found, with bitterness, that he could have won. He cried long and hard over that but told himself that it meant that his Go was strong, despite what had happened. Then he started to wonder: Had Akitada put that white stone in his goke somehow? Surely not; Akitada would have had no way of knowing whether he would be playing black. So it must simply have been an accident, and his rival’s cheating an act of pure opportunism.

“We could use your help with something. I’m building a new wet field system; it’s better for the rice. We’ll flood the land with water from the river but the fields need to wall up the field boundaries to keep the water in. Can you handle a spade?”

Sai thought his limbs looked frighteningly slender and pale compared with those of the other men. Moving the earth he soon became filthy, exhausted and appalled at the crudeness of it all and the sheer slog of such work. His hair, plaited and tied on top of his head was a weighty burden. In half a day he was done in, mud splattered, and red from exertion and sun. "That’s enough for one day," Kawa-jin told him.

"Do you know how to do anything else besides Go?" they asked him. Sai knew his answer wasn’t what they wanted to hear:

"I play the biwa and the flute." Kawa-jin sighed.

"I have neither here, but you could perhaps make yourself a flute from the bamboo that grows by the forest. In the meantime, while you stay here, I have another job for you." Sai knew the shôen lacked workers and knew too that he could not live here as a guest once the cloth of his robes had been bartered away.

"It’s easier than digging." Kawa-jin reassured him. "What we need is someone to care for the swine."

~~~

An emperor who doesn’t make mistakes must make sure that there is no reminder of something that might be seen that way. Matters at the palace had been considerably worsened by the romanticized picture drawn of Sai’s demise, notably by court ladies who had little to do but write or paint. And now a new rumour had spread that if you took a walk near the river at twilight you sometimes heard the ghost of Fujiwara no Sai playing his flute.

The emperor called Akitada to him.

"Does his majesty desire a teaching game this evening?" his preceptor asked, eagerly. The emperor had been working on his Shougi and the court, in the name of fashion and good taste, followed suit. Akitada had hoped that this interview meant that the emperor had got over his Shougi infatuation and they would soon also talk of the privileges that went with his new position, after all, he was now Go tutor of both the left and the right palaces.

How badly he had read the emperor. While Akitada wasn’t exiled from the city, he found he no longer had the approval or sponsorship: he simply had no position at court anymore. There was no mention of Sai, simply that the emperor no longer cared to play Go. The disgrace was implicit. Akitada would have to leave Heian Kyo.

On the continent he knew that Go was popular as ever and with his experience he could work for an important family there without the stain of humiliation that now stalked him among the Japanese upper classes. Taking his most valuable possessions he left the capital and sought a passage to China.

~~~

Sai had taken to walking down to the river in the evening. His thoughts of self destruction had faded, to be replaced by longing. He tried to make himself a flute, remembering how the instruments in the city had felt under his fingers, the pattern of the holes. It took several attempts, but finally he fashioned something resembling a real instrument and took it out by the river and in the fields to play surrounded by the rusty plume grass and autumn birds. Soon it was time for the pigs to be brought in for the winter.

He spent winter playing his flute, dreaming of Go and mucking out. The pigs were a good audience and the people on the farm complimented him also, but the sweet sadness of his music was born out of his longing for Go and he knew that he couldn’t stay here much longer. He would find somewhere to play Go once more if he searched. But it was still winter. His bed in the loft above the pigs was warm and comfortable even though he sometimes felt like his whole existence had taken on their odor.

~~~

It was a bad time of year for Akitada to be traveling. Days were short and the roads often damaged from the rain – and that was without bargaining for highwaymen.

Sugawara no Akitada was a proud as well as an ambitious man. Despite the loss of his position he would never dream of traveling humbly. And thus, his ornate carriage attracted attention, but not the kind he wanted. It brought the kind of attention that lies in ambush and surges from the darkness to attack travelers and strip them of their possessions, to slit throats and send oxen running scared into the night when they’re not taken as part of the prize themselves.

Akitada was unused to a world were one negotiated not with the subtle influence of discourse or importance of rank but where that all that mattered was human strength and force in numbers. He was lucky to escape the carnage of his wreaked carriage with his life.

He was also unused to walking, but it was the only way forward. He cursed his bad luck as made his sodden way towards the coast, cursed Sai’s hat and Sai himself for not dying more discreetly, but stopped short of cursing Sai’s Go.

He couldn’t barter for a passage to China using Go lessons. When he reached the place where the land ended and the sea lay before him he could go no further, but he couldn’t turn back either. So he decided to find a ship to stow away on.

Akitada liked to think of himself as an educated man. But he was not well-traveled. His choice of vessel had been very sensible for not getting caught, but not for reaching China. The fishing boat he had hidden on returned to the harbor the very same day with a hold full of fish and one very bedraggled and disgruntled stowaway. No explanations he gave seemed to make sense to the men who found him, the truth about his identity was just too incredible for them to believe.

At first they decided he was crazy, which was infuriating: the more Akitada tried to assert his rank, the funnier they found it. But finally, his presumed insanity was useful as they took pity on him and gave him something to eat. They even offered him work - sorting fish. In half a year he figured he could earn an honest passage to China.

He collected small shells from the seaweed the boat brought in, and from the shore itself, scratched a board into a piece of wood from the shipyard. Not may were interested in his "crazy game". Then he found something to make it more attractive, something people did at the palace too but as little more than an idle distraction. Go was something you could gamble on.

~~~

It was in the spring that Sai bid his farewell to Kawa-jin and the people of the shôen. It was a sad parting but one they all understood.
"My time with you has taught me much and I thank you," Sai told them. He was capable of doing many other things than playing Go, he knew now. But Go was still the best.

Sai’s skill on the flute earned him food and lodging as he wandered the country. Everywhere he asked whether people knew Go. He found a few other good players, but continued to search for someone as strong as himself. He could finally release his hair, tied up for practicality during so many months. With his flute, his long hair and his wanderlust he fitted the part of an itinerant musician. He traveled on foot. The sun tanned his skin and bleached auburn lights into his hair. It made no difference to him now that his Go was not for the emperor, it was his. As was his goal. People asked him why he lived this way. He would always give the same answer. Because I’m looking for , Kame no itte, the perfect move in a perfect game of Go.

It was when he reached the sea that he heard rumors of a tavern where they played the game of black and white that people wagered on. A traveler showed Sai a salted cod he’d won betting on one of the players there. There is a master sensei there, you should go and play him.

~~~

Akitada had never liked fish, and most of the time when he’d seen them before they’d been dried. But now he had to deal with hundreds of dead fresh fish, all gaping at him with dead glazed expressions, as though still gasping their last. It made him think of what had happened to that fool Sai...

In truth he’d begun to wonder who the fool really was. For Sai had had his revenge, as clearly as if he had struck Akitada down directly. But what good was it if he was dead? Foolish, idealistic Fujiwara no Sai. Sai was dead, he reassured himself, while he was alive. Didn’t that mean he’d won in the end?

He didn’t sleep easy these days. He dreamt of Sai’s Go, both beautiful and fearsome. The presence of Sai at the palace had seemed an injustice to him. Even if it had only been for his family’s importance, Sai would have had a higher rank than Akitada. But Sai’s Go made him a like a shooting star that had risked to eclipse Akitada’s steady ascent of the social hierarchy. And worse still Sai seemed unaware of such things, driven only by his desire for the game, his pursuit of Kami no Itte. Akitada had done one little thing to assure his own future. One tiny thing…that had changed everything.

In the port of Gyoko, Akitada taught many people to play Go and it became an entertainment watching them play one another rather than playing them himself. There was also a flow of travelers some of whom played, but none of them had a level that rivaled his own.

~~~

Strangers were not uncommon in Gyoko. It was one of the place’s virtues, as those passing through sometimes played Go. But one day a young man appeared who could have been Sai’s double. Akitada’s heart stopped in shock when he saw him in the street, and his first reflex was to hide. He repeated to himself that this was impossible as he looked again and saw with relief that it had just been the effect of the man’s long hair. This stranger was simply the same height as Sai and wore his hair long. It wasn’t the Sai he had known, whose fair skin and ebony hair would have him mistaken for one of the ladies. This man was older, his skin weather-tanned skin and, as he walked past, Akitada noticed how his hair was tinged with auburn. This couldn’t be Sai. After all Sai was dead, along with his Go.

The man appeared again that evening at the tavern. Akitada had time to observe him as he entered. He must be a Go player come to find Akitada. His resemblance to Sai was uncanny - it would be very strange playing him. Now the visitor was talking with the landlord, any moment now he’d come over. But no, he reached into his bag and brought something out: a pipe or flute of some sort. Almost before the man started to play Akitada had started to panic. When the music came he was left in no doubt. Fujiwara no Sai was very much alive.

So the rumors were untrue, the nightmares unjustified: Fujiwara no Sai hadn’t died in the river. The ghost that had haunted his thoughts was none other than his own conscience.

Judging by his dress it seemed that Sai had done little better for himself than Akitada. These were a journeyman’s clothes. But Sai was alive. So, therefore, was his Go. Akitada’s pulse quickened. The first high quality player he’d laid eyes on since leaving Heian-Kyo: and it was someone who must hate him worse than any other in the world.

Sai was talking to the tavern owner again. He must be looking for ‘the Go player’, as people referred to Akitada, without knowing who he was about to meet. There was nowhere for Akitada to run. He was about to face the man he had betrayed. He tried to think quickly of a way out.

~~~

He’s a bit strange sometimes the owner warned Sai. "Touched in the head", he said tapping the side of his forehead –“Delusions of grandeur and all…But he’s a real master of his game – an idiot savant.”

They took Sai to a corner of the room where a bent hooded man was mumbling over a go board.

"Looks like one of his bad days," murmured the publican.

"Sensei, would you permit me a game?" Sai tried to discern the man’s features.

The dinginess of the tavern and the man’s hood meant that only the very outlines of face were visible. It seemed impolite and cowardly to Sai but he remembered what he’d been told about ‘sensei’ and if the game to be had was worth it then he would play with a man who hid his face.

"Hmm," said the man and pushed a pot of clam shells towards him. This was no normal player. Sai could concentrate under virtually any circumstances, but there was something disturbing here. The man was very nervous of him, not what one would expect of a ‘master sensei’, and Sai felt uneasy.

But when the man reached into his own pot to nigiri, Sai watched him, mesmerized, as he saw the same hand enter a goke in the palace and those fingers withdrew a single white cheating stone, as it had in his mind a thousand times. He recognized that hand.

Jumping to his feet he flung back the man’s hood.

"You!" The bar went quiet in the bar around them. "You! Here?" He put a hand to his mouth and took a step backwards.

Sai stared at Akitada, shocked. Shocked to see him again, here, looking as much like a commoner as himself. Sai wanted to strike him, he knew he could. He felt injustice, anger, disgust…But what was worst in all he felt was that he still wanted to play Go, yes, play some good Go with someone who knew the game as well as he did, the game he had come for. He felt the bile rise in his throat and hated himself. Sai turned on his heel and swinging his mass of hair behind him he stamped out of the tavern.

~~~

Akitada was surprised but not unhappy when he learned that Sai was still in the town some days later. He found him playing his flute in the market. Catching the eye of each passer-by, as though playing to each of them. When he saw Akitada he stopped.

"The game you asked me for..." Akitada started.

"I asked a stranger. I wouldn’t ask for a game from you. You cheat!" Sai took up his flute as though to continue and ignore Akitada altogether.

"I cheated. Yes. Once." Sai stopped, flute poised, wide-eyed.

"Nothing is at stake, Sai. Why don’t you play me?"

"Because I hate you," Sai yelled.

"But you are still looking for your Kami no itte."

"My? What do you mean my Kami no itte? It’s not something you own." A small crowd had gathered, as though this might be part of the show.

"But it’s something you want, isn’t it Sai, and I can help you find it." Sai’s face was red and he opened and closed his mouth without answering. Then he raised his arms and Akitada feared that he might use the flute as a weapon.

Akitada backed off and almost ran out of the market. He didn’t hear Sai start playing again until he was almost out of earshot.

~~~

What was Akitada doing outside the city? What had happened to him? Had he been disgraced like Sai? Had someone found out what he’d done? Or had he done it again? No, he said he only cheated once. But should Sai believe him? All the thoughts chased each other around Sai’s head and wouldn’t leave him in peace. He resolved to get the truth from Akitada.

The man was waiting for him in the tavern. As if he knew Sai would come. But Sai did had not come unprepared, or alone.

"We will play Go, honest Go," Sai told him as icily as he could, "Every one of our actions will be scrutinized so that no one can cheat." He gestured with his arm to introduce three people he’d brought with him: a merchant, a scribe and another musician, all of whom he’d had the pleasure of playing Go with. "My Go is not unknown. These people wager that I would be the victor in a game between us. I believe there are also people ready to wager that you would win. I think that everyone here wants to see a fair game," he concluded. Akitada nodded silently.

"But first, you will tell me how you come to be here, what happened at the palace and exactly how you cheated against me."

Akitada didn’t look as sure of himself as he had the day in the market. He nervously stroked a finger down the line of his moustache and started to explain the goings on in the court following Sai’s ‘death’.

"Am I pardoned then?" Sai thought aloud. "Can I go back?"

"You may not be dead Sai, but imperial Go is. The emperor has turned away from the game altogether. There is nothing to go back to." Akitada would have expected a suitable display of tears from the Sai he used to know, but instead Sai said to no one in particular:

"It is a terrible loss for the emperor." Then to Akitada: "This is your doing."

Akitada bowed his head, breaking eye contact.

"Was it only once?"

"Just once...One white stone in the black goke, one black stone in the white."

"Black stone in the white," repeated Sai in surprise. "I had an enemy stone in my goke too."

"That way luck would be on my side whatever color I played." Akitada replied with a bitter self-derisory smile.

"And if I’d found that stone?" Sai pursued.

"You would have declared it Sai. I know you."

"You knew me and I assure you that I am still as honest. Tell me, are you still as dishonest?" This time Sai fixed his eyes on Akitada and tried desperately to read him. Akitada didn’t turn away.

"I simply want to play Go." He replied. "I will give you an honest game."

~~~

The atmosphere of the game could hardly have been more different from the lat one they had played. Instead of the reverent silence there’d been in the presence of the emperor, there was rowdy encouragement from all the people watching in the tavern. Sai got black and accepted the pot of mussel shells. They felt strangely fragile between his fingers and looked irregular on the board as he laid the basic foundations of his territory. Akitada obviously incredibly tense, sweat forming on his brow and his expression intense. The noisy crowd, egging them on, did nothing for concentration.

Sai felt his fingers buzzing with excitement. He forgot the circumstances and even who he was playing for the fascination of every path, of every possibility laid open by each move. He felt alive.

Akitada’s ability, stripped of their bitter conflict and the environment it was born in, shone and Sai’s Go shone in its reflection. Akitada dared to provoke him by placing shells deep in Sai’s territory, risking to be reckless to incite a response. The board became a complicated maze of battles. Sai was content. Here was where their differences would be resolved.This was Go.

Sai carried off a two moku victory and there was celebration among his supporters the insistence for a rematch from the others.

Akitada finally slept untroubled.

~~~

The games Sai and Akitada played in Gyoto were honest, balanced and viciously beautiful, though witnessed by few who could appreciate that beauty.

There were few Go players in this world they found themselves in, even fewer were good and none matched the level of the two ex-court teachers. They turned to one another, Sai resolving that his love of Go was stronger than his hatred of Akitada.

Heading for China remained Akitada’s objective. Sai thought that their own emperor could be won over, though he couldn’t imagine how as his majesty’s decisions were above everyone.

Sai’s goal was to reach Kami no itte . Akitada didn’t believe in it.

"Of course you do," said Sai. "That’s why you play me."

"Sai, you are trying to teach me to reach for something that I cannot see and worse that you don’t know what it looks like. You are chasing a Chimera. Why should I listen to you and why would the emperor listen to either of us?"

"Because I believe that in his heart the emperor loved Go and that what happened broke his heart."

"You’re such an idealist. You’d do better to come to China."
And so they argued, but did not go in separate directions. Not when the most important thing was the Go they were playing then and there.

~~~

Tendoumaru never forgot the departure of his teacher Sai. The ladies told him Sai had gone forever, his soul wandered tortured and on some nights you could hear the sound of his ghostly flute coming up from the river. Tendoumaru heard the music too but he didn't think it sounded tortured, only sad. But then the music too became a thing of the past.

Death was a not a thing that was hidden from children. He knew that people died; he had lost members of his family before. Sometimes an evil spirit would possess someone and despite the priest praying for the spirit to leave, they still died. And that was how it was for the emperor one night of the following spring after the rains had swelled the river and the weather was warming once more.

The emperor had no children, and the importance of this had been pressed on Tendoumaru. So, it was at the age of twelve that the time for being a carefree child had come to an end. Tendoumaru, as son of the late emperor’s sister, ascended to the throne, and with this change came the understanding that he now had the power to do as he wished in the city. And what he wished, when he wasn’t engaged in state affairs, was to play Go.

Go boards were brought out again and he encouraged his couriers to play. He played with eminent visitors, but only the elders knew how and they were very much better than him. He had stopped his tuition much too early. He had to admit it and stop allowing elder courtiers to let him win through diplomacy. Emperor Tendoumaru needed Go lessons. He would search the land for a talented tutor.

~~~

The locals were pleased with the coming of Sai though he was as strange as Akitada in his own way. So were the discussions that led from the games. It was beyond the ken of most people, but the two senseis would try to explain. The tavern was starting to become like an informal Go school.

Akitada and Sai were discovered by the emperor’s emissaries playing go with shells of cockles and mussels outside a tavern. Among the most talented of their generation they were summoned to the palace.

Though he’d rejected the rumors of his drowning Tendoumaru had with time given up hope of ever seeing Sai again. When it happened, he flung himself into Sai’s arms in excitement as he had when he was small, though he stopped short of begging for a game straight away. After all he was a sovereign.

There was a great show of emotion among the courtiers and the ladies were genuinely overjoyed to see him.

Sai told Tendoumaru, in whom he still saw his disobedient pupil, that to maintain the balance of the palace he should take two Go tutors instead of one. Then he told him quietly, he had someone in mind.

~~~

When Fujiwara no Sai was a very old man in the court of emperor Tendoumaru, he had long flowing hair like the ideal woman, except that his was snow white. People considered him a very wise man. His Go was legendary but his life's goal was unattained.

The strength that pushed him forward, which was also rumored to be the secret of his longevity, was his search for Kami no itte - the hand of God.

"Go goes on forever and will keep getting better...forever." Akitada would tell him. “You will never find it.”

"I will find Kami no itte," promised Sai.

"And what if you die first?"

"If that happens then I will continue to search in whatever lies beyond."

THE END

Blind Go round 10 Guessing Post

lacygrey — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 17:07:43 GMT

Well here goes: Guess my author ID in this round of blind_go and I'll write you a drabble or ficlet.

Fics are here

Leave me your guess on this screened mail, together with a prompt of your choice.

Good Luck.

P.S. I didn't dare do this last time as I'd never written a drabble before ¨~¨

[Fic] My Blind Go fics (round 9)

lacygrey — Fri, 28 May 2010 07:38:00 GMT

Title: A Piece of Cake
Fandom: Hikaru no go
Characters: Shigeko, members of the Morishita study group
Genre: Gen
Rating: G
Word Count: 1000
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: Hikaru no go is the property of Yumi Hotta and Takeshi Obata. This is a nonprofit-making fanfiction
Author Notes: Written for blind_go round 9. A big thank you to my betas x_chocolatte and pyrrhic_victoly for their invaluble help. This ficlet was inspired by this manga mini chapter.

A Piece of Cake

Morishita-sensei loved his daughter Shigeko, although she was an enigma to him. From the very beginning, his efforts to nurture her love of Go, to guide her along the path he himself had followed, had borne no fruits. His children didn’t want to study Go, or even play it for that matter. What was more, they developed interests as disparate from his own as he could imagine.

*

"It looks too pretty to touch," said Saeki. An iced chocolate layer cake was the centre of everyone's attention. Shigeko held a shiny broad-bladed knife.

"I will have display cakes, of course, and cakes to serve, but it's always better to have a cake with a slice cut already. It's more inviting."

Tomorrow Shigeko would be opening her own café, and the study group was celebrating with the Morishitas, sitting in the cosy, coffee-scented environment she had created.

"Go ahead and cut it!" Waya begged.

"Waya!" said Morishita, firmly.

"Here, I'll do it," Shindou said, making a move for the knife.

Shigeko wagged her finger at him. "Saeki will cut the cake."

"Why?"

"Because he wants to really." She smiled.

*

Shigeko had always adored being taken out for treats to celebrate the victories large and small of the members of the study group. From an early age she would clamour for these outings and her boundless enthusiasm, though sometimes annoying, was undeniably infectious. As she grew into her teens, her mother sometimes feared she was playing one boy off against another, but it soon became clear, as it always had been to her 'dates', that romance was not what she was seeking.

She would ask to be invited to more luxurious and high class addresses whenever someone from the group moved up in Dan level or won a tournament; and always to enjoy some delectable cake or sundae. To Morishita, who had never liked sweet things, it seemed a frivolous waste of time. Some thought Shigeko had good taste, as she chose the most renowned establishments, while others simply thought it expensive. As she neared adulthood, she only became more discerning, recording her impressions in a blog she adopted for this purpose and conducting sweet and sticky culinary experiments.

*

The cake yielded under the knife, topping cracking slightly, letting fragments of chocolate fall to the plate. The blade came out red with dark crumbs stuck to it, a promise of something more dangerous under the icing; aromas of cocoa and strawberry escaped from the cut. Everyone watched as Saeki removed the first piece. The interior was dark, glistening with the sauce that covered the knife and was now running down the cake itself.

"Good work," Shigeko gestured as if to introduce the cake to them. "Now there's an invitation."

*

She had been warned that if she carried on like this, her figure would suffer. But Shigeko was undeterred. These were exceptional treats for exceptional moments – it was quality that counted, not quantity. And so she grew, from a small spark of optimistic energy to a lithe and vibrant young woman. Her interest in desserts from near and far grew also, and Morishita wondered if his students studied kifu as avidly as she studied recipes. When she was eighteen, she told her parents that she wanted to start her own business, a teahouse or café.

*

You didn't so much eat the cake but let it melt on your tongue, thought Saeki.

"Perfection," he said.

"And that is the perfect compliment," Shigeko replied. "Perfection is what I'll always be aiming for, though of course it means something different to everyone."

"You mean you can still find fault with this?" he asked, gesturing at the small chunk left on his plate.

"That way the cakes will keep on getting better!" She winked.

*

When she was twenty, she found the ideal premises – a small shop that had lain empty for several months. Morishita was not keen on the venture, but Shigeko was counting on his sponsorship. The previous business in this same shop, a tea salon, had been forced into liquidation. Faced with a barrage of cajoling and pleading, he repeated his gruffest "No". But finally, though hardened to Shigeko's persuasive nature, he was eventually swayed because the building was close to the Go institute. He could therefore watch over her and accompany her to work. Shigeko explained that the former tea salon had failed due to 'poor management decisions', notably the senseless barring of a whole sector of potential clientele, and since she would make no such blunders, the success of her business project was assured.

*

"Why did the last café here close?" asked Saeki.

"They banned insei and lower Dans, lost money and went bankrupt."

"Oh? I didn't even know I'd been banned," said Waya. "Not that I ever tried to get in. Seemed a bit of a snobby place. I always preferred a NcDo." Shigeko was staring at Waya hard. "But, err…everything will be different now, of course," he finished.

"But why ban Go players?" asked Shirakawa.

"I heard there was a brawl," said Shigeko's brother.

"Go players don't brawl." Morishita said, indignant, as Waya seemed to take a sudden interest in a spot on the floor. "It can't have been more than a heated post-game discussion."

"Perhaps it perturbed the refined atmosphere they were trying to keep," Shirakawa suggested. But he was looking sidelong, with a hint of suspicion, at Shindou, who seemed to be examining the same detail of the floor as Waya.

"You know how to deal with this kind of problem," Morishita said, pointing at his daughter with his spoon. It wasn't a question. So Shigeko, with her hands on her hips, the knife tucked in one of them, gave a firm nod.

*

Later, standing outside the shop as they left, Saeki looked up at the newly painted gold-on-green sign hung above the door.

"Do you think the joke's on us?" he wondered aloud.

"My daughter isn't joking," Morishita replied.

The sign read: 'The Spoon of God.'

FIN

Title: A World Without Go
Fandom: Hikaru no go
Characters: Waya, Nase
Genre: Gen
Rating: G
Word Count: 994
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: Hikaru no go is the property of Yumi Hotta and Takeshi Obata. This is a nonprofit-making fanfiction
Author Notes: Written for blind_go round 9. Thanks to my betas sidevocalist and x_chocolatte for their input and soundboarding.
Summary: Several years post-canon, in a far away city…

A World Without Go

Cold water trickled around his bare toes making him shiver in the night air. With a shoe in each hand and his feet in the thin layer of water, Waya strode into the fountain. Here, in the middle of a city, among crowds and noise, there was a childish delight in finding such a place. The fountain formed an enticing spiral pathway sunken into quay, with a rounded rock at the centre. Putting his shoes down there, he turned to look back up at Nase, who was standing laughing at the edge of the fountain. "Well what are you waiting for?" he called.

She stayed on the brink, her snug pink top bright under the harbour lights. Nase still looked as though she was seventeen he thought, as though she was still the insei she had been before she had left it all behind. Why she was hesitating? Did this seem silly to her? She took a step forward, but without removing her shoes, treading carefully so as not to let the water over the tops.

"There, where's the harm in that?" he said "What happened to your spontaneity? Don't you take chances anymore, do things to surprise people? It's like with-"

"Like with my Go?" she finished for him as she arrived at the bottom, and they both smiled because it had to be the tenth time today he'd likened something to Go. Then her expression changed; the smile turned mischievous. "Sometimes," she replied and, quicker than Waya could react, she'd snatched his shoes and was running back up out of the fountain and into the night.

"Wait! Nase! Wait for me! I don't know this city! Come back! I can't speak English!" Waya gave chase but, with her sneakers still on, Nase was faster. The hardness of the paving stones struck the soles of his feet as he ran after her, away from the streetlights and into the gloom of a park. He could see her pink top bobbing ahead and picked up speed as he felt soft earth beneath his feet. He could catch her, he was fitter than most Go pros, or so he often told himself; not that that was saying much. "Nase!" Then on an impulse he called her NetGo name: "Pachie!" Ahead of him he saw something strange. Her pink-clad form was moving upwards in the air. He approached. Shapes in the darkness took form as he recognized the outlines of swings and slides, they were in a playground, and Nase was climbing a rope net.

He started climbing toward the giggling, then realized she was on the other side of the net: hanging on with one hand and waving his shoes with the other. "Come back," he repeated, and, as he got within reach, he put a hand through the net and grabbed her ankle. The surprise almost made her lose her balance and she let go of the shoes as she clung on. They made a dull thud in the sand below and she gave another laugh, but just a tiny one.

Letting go, he climbed up level with her.

"Come back really, I mean." He forced himself to go on. "Why don't you come back to Japan?" He heard her catch her breath, but the darkness hid her expression.

"Don't tell me you haven't thought about it. You never really gave up, did you? you still play NetGo…Don't you Pachie?" With a single movement she released her hold on the net and pushed off into nothing, landing softly somewhere in the dark. He descended slowly; she was waiting.

"How did you find me on NetGo?" she asked. "You challenged 'Pachie' again and again…Why?"

He rounded the net, searching for his shoes. "There's a kind of play I always watch for on NetGo."

"You took me for Sai? You can't have! I lose so often." She sounded incredulous.

"But your style has a certain something that's like-"

"Oh, any player who's studied Shusaku would…" She trailed off. "Are you still hoping Sai'll come back?"

"I want to play him and I'd like to thank him too." Waya tied his shoes. "No one has done more for internet Go: great players flocking to the web, more people learning and more people on my website, downloading my Go problems, then my videos, and then I get a call from a TV company and…I'm better known in Japan than Shindou is, even though I'm nowhere near his level."

She said nothing and he wished it wasn't so damn dark, so he would have been able to see her face.

"People ask about you," he continued. "The girls who want lessons, so many saw you on the Ki-in poster. They all ask me what happened to you."

"Aren't those girls more interested in you?" she teased.

"They're interested in Go or they don't last five minutes in my study group!"

They started to walk back toward the lights. "It's hard to fail," she said, "At the pro exam, at the university entrance exam, at making a good marriage…And all because of Go. I want to do something well. I teach Japanese well." They made their way past sweet-smelling food courts, cafés and gaily-lit restaurant boats along the waterfront. The place bathed in a backdrop of pop music, giving the sensation of an eternal Friday night. Finally, beneath the rising whine of a monorail train, they made for the ferry port. "But I still dream of being a pro," she said. "And every year I find I'm counting the chances I have left. I guess then once I'm thirty those dreams will finally die away."

"But you've lost already if you never try," he said. "Come home Nase."

***

Standing together on the rear deck of a ferry, they watched the harbour lights grow smaller. "Maybe," she finally replied. It wasn't so much an answer as a promise that this was a game they would continue.

FIN

For Blind Go guessing needs

lacygrey — Mon, 17 May 2010 20:02:47 GMT

My fic can be found:

- On this journal (see below)
- At the dreamwidth drabble fest
- In the round robin at kifu_archive
- On ff.net

[Fic] Soliloquy

lacygrey — Mon, 17 May 2010 19:36:29 GMT

Title: Soliloquy
Fandom: Hikaru no go
Characters: Sai
Genre: Angst
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 410
Warnings: Implied suicide
Disclaimer: Hikaru no go is the property of Yumi Hotta and Takeshi Obata. This is a nonprofit-making fanfiction
Author Notes: Thanks to onkoona for her advice and encouragement.
Summary: A path to the moon

Soliloquy

Northwards, I wander alone, without servant or destination, where the moonlight on the lake shines like a path all the way to the moon itself.

My love for Go was born in the city of the moon, born through sharing. To play for personal gain is to turn from that beauty, that synergy, where the meeting of white and black brings wisdom that we take to our next game and our next, growing through each stone placed, whether it leads us toward victory or defeat. And with each move, like each word in a tale told by thousands, we mark our passage in the memories of our opponents, in their Go and the Go of their future opponents. This is a path the cheater cannot know; a path paved with love. This is the path I am leaving.

Mother, you who gave me this life and my love of Go, do not cry for me. I have had the honor and privilege of our name, the chance to be born in a house where I knew an easy existence, and to have lived this love for a simple game. I will not let my dishonor harm you or those who have nurtured me: I would rather wipe my name from the scrolls of history. Were I not of the Fujiwara, my shame could not hurt you; were I simply Sai, not Sai of the Fujiwara, but simply Sai of Go. And yet, were I born among the common people, I could have known neither my love nor such desolation and dishonor. Should I call this luck to have known a noble birth, to have had this chance? Or should I long for ignorance: to have never known, nor loved, nor lost.

From the left palace, shallow steps lead beyond the domain to the waters reflecting the moon and the path there that beckons. But who has taken my place at the palace? Someone who never saw the way toward the Hand of God lit up by the joy of a student’s discovery and who, by cheating, cannot truly learn or grow himself. He will tutor in my place, but will he teach his self-centered ways? So will the children of Go all one day be selfish? For my love lies in the hands of someone who never understood, and who could not reach the Hand of God any more than I, in following this shining path, could reach the moon.

[Fic] The Pros and Cons of Daydreaming

lacygrey — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 15:14:42 GMT

Title: The Pros and Cons of Daydreaming
Fandom: Hikaru no go
Pairing: Akira/Hikaru
Genre: Romance (in shades of crack, angst and fluff).
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3471
Warnings: Usual series spoilers; clothes jokes.
Disclaimer: Hikaru no go is the property of Yumi Hotta and Takeshi Obata. This is a nonprofit-making fanfiction
Author Notes: Inspiration for part of this story came from a remark at www.hikarunogoworld.com on Hikaru’s multitude of teeshirts. I have also made a list of fanworks on similar themes at the end of this fic. I want to thank my diligent beta ladyseishou for helping me to shape this fic, and particularly for giving me the go slogan!
Summary: One confession leads to another…

The pros and cons of daydreaming

“An appalling insult to a noble and ancient game. Shindou, you are beyond belief.”

It would have been a reproach, the start of an argument, and Hikaru would have found a cutting retaliation within the half second, were it not… that Touya breathed the words softly, jokingly, in a smiling-almost-laughing voice as they lay wrapped around one another. Here and now, under the window, in the glow of early morning, Touya looked beautiful and peaceful, the light making his hair shine and his skin glow in the same colors as the dawn, his hand caressing Hikaru’s naked back as though this had already become the most familiar of actions.

Hikaru pulled himself up on one elbow, feeling a pleasant warmth of tiredness though his muscles as he moved. He looked down into Touya’s face and countered, softly, “You mean nothing like that ever happened to you when you were thirteen?”

“Of course not,” Touya replied with a teasing tone. “That only happens to people who repress their desires and don’t allow themselves to fantasize.” The green in Touya’s eyes glinted, dangerously. “Was it always me you were playing in your dream?”

“I wasn’t just playing you, I won every game.” Hikaru smiled defiantly. Surprisingly, Touya looked somewhat happy at that. The thought of Touya being pleased at defeat was strange, even if they were only talking about his dreams.

“Clearly, your pre-adolescent subconscious had made an important association already – even if the rest of you took a while to catch on.”

Hikaru closed his eyes for a second as he pushed away unbidden images of he and Touya as chibi-style childhood sweethearts. Romance had just seemed plain silly to him.

As he opened them he thought he saw a momentary change in Touya’s expression, like an unvoiced thought, but then Touya was grinning at him and saying, “So now I know why you were so shy of playing me back then!”

Hikaru stiffened, he didn’t want to joke about back then, but he didn’t want to ruin the mood either. He swallowed his retort, and simply said, “You know that was because of something else entirely.” He sighed. “I wish I hadn’t told you about the dreams.”

“No, but this is fascinating.” Touya pushed him gently face down on the futon, and began to work the tightened muscles of his shoulder blades with tiny circular motions of his thumbs. “So,” Touya probed again, “What did he have to say about it?” Hikaru tensed again but said nothing, Touya continued working on his back, his strong hands firm and precise, but gentle. Slowly Hikaru relaxed. “After all,” Touya went on, “He can’t very well have missed something like that if he was with you all the time. He was in your head, wouldn’t he have known?”

No…No… No… Stop, Hikaru’s thoughts insisted. How had he let them veer onto the dubious topic of Sai and sex education? Somewhat riled he replied, “He said that it was absolutely nothing to be ashamed about. It was perfectly normal for young players of my age. That it showed that I was motivated about progressing in my go.”

Hikaru felt Touya's body begin to tremble with suppressed mirth, and then he burst out laughing. Damn him. But before Hikaru could turn around to say something about it, he felt Touya’s breath close his ear. "Did he say anything about me?” he whispered. “Did he offer you any romantic advice?”

“No, of course not,” Hikaru retorted. “The dreams were about winning at go, not about you. But‒” Touya paused, his hands unmoving on Hikaru’s shoulders, “It's true that after that he did lay off hinting about Akari.”

“A-ha!” Touya resumed the massage. “Perhaps Sai understood more than he was letting on.” He started to smooth his hands, one after the other, following the contour of Hikaru’s hips, from where they touched the futon up towards his spine. “Do you remember me in the dream, what was I wearing? Err, was I wearing…anything?”

“Stop, I already told you. It wasn’t like that. I told you it was about the game.”

“And the game, do you remember it?”

No…no…What did he want? Kifu? “No, I never remembered afterwards.”

“Or perhaps you didn’t feel like ‘recreating the game’ for Sai,” Touya suggested, mockingly.

That did it. Hikaru couldn’t see Touya's face from where he was laying, but he guessed Touya was enjoying his discomfort. And while he didn’t think Touya's comments were made from jealousy, he felt that Touya had gone too far. He took a deep breath.

“Give over. Can’t we talk about something else?” He’d revealed an embarrassing secret and now he was feeling terribly vulnerable.

Touya though, seemed oblivious to the effect he’d provoked and was running his hands up the length of Hikaru’s back, using just enough pressure so that Hikaru felt his skin being pushed forward like a small wave in front of Touya’s fingers. And he was doing an excellent job, because Hikaru was having difficultly staying angry. He tried another tactic, hoping Touya would stop his probing. “Hey Touya, why don’t you tell me what you used to dream about?”

What would Touya say to that? Would Touya answer him seriously? He hoped so because when his guard was down like this, Hikaru wanted nothing more than to crawl in close and discover everything that made Touya, Touya.

“Oh I never had any dreams of that sort,” Touya replied, and a door seemed to snap shut between them.

“I see." Hikaru couldn't help feeling defensive. "You were above that.”

Hikaru felt Touya give a shrug. “I mean I never repressed my desires. I always knew what I wanted.” But then his hands stilled, his fingers resting softly in the small Hikaru's back. Hikaru knew that he was thinking over something, “Life was simple," Touya said finally, his voice soft, the words even, flat.

Hikaru rolled over so he could see Touya, afraid he'd said the wrong thing and somehow upset him. But Touya was smiling, sitting over him, long legs drawn up beside him, curves of his muscles highlighted by the light and shadows of the new day. Hikaru looked deeply into Touya’s eyes, admiring the tiny black flecks in his irises, aware of the persuasive effect he could have on Touya with his own eyes. It was something he’d learned quickly since he’d had the right to look as long as he wanted.

"I'm curious," he asked quietly. "Did you ever have dreams about me then? You know, when we were teens?" and Hikaru read the answer, with some satisfaction, before Touya even said a word aloud.

“Yes.”

Hikaru couldn’t stop himself from betraying a flash of excitement. Perhaps Touya wasn’t so different from him after all, whatever he might claim.

Touya was quick to sense Hikaru's mood and frowned. “They weren’t at all erotic dreams you understand,” he added quickly. Touya shifted self-consciously, pulling away so that they were no longer touching.

“Tell me,” Hikaru prompted, sitting up but keeping his gaze fixed on Touya.

“Okay. Well you must have been an insei by then and in my dream, instead of avoiding me all the time, we were actually sitting at a goban...playing and…”

“Excuse me! When I was an insei, you were avoiding me.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is too.”

There Touya stopped and said nothing to disagree or pursue the argument. With the fingertips of his hand, he traced down Hikaru’s cheek to his chin, then from his shoulder and along his arm to reach to for his hand. Touya's hand squeezed tight around his own. “Its not important now, is it? And anyway, if the games in our dreams were better than ones we really would have played, isn’t it perhaps better that we only played together in our dreams?”

Though Hikaru thought he detected a slight hint of condescension, he couldn’t help being happy to learn that he’d somehow got under Touya’s skin enough when they were teens, enough to become part of Touya's dreams as well.

“So.” Touya squeezed his hand playfully. “In my dream, we were playing go together and you were wearing this bright yellow shirt.” As he said this, Touya put his other hand up as if to shade his eyes. “Really, a very bright yellow. Annoyingly, painfully yellow. Totally obnox…”

Hikaru interrupted him by pulling his own hand out of Touya’s loose grip to capture the hand that Touya was now waving around as if he was trying to beat off a swarm of insects. “And so?”

“I reached over and grabbed and ripped that shirt right off of you,” Touya said smirking defiantly.

“What!!” Hikaru dropped Touya’s hand and clapped his own to his forehead. “You said that your dreams weren’t erotic, and now you say that your preadolescent subconcious is resorting to violence to get me naked!!!”

“No, not at all.” Touya took a serious air, but there was still a tinge of humour under the surface of his words.

Hikaru almost laughed. “Is there an innocent reason for ripping my clothes off? Didn’t I retaliate? What did you do then?”

Touya tipped his head forward and looked down at him through the dark curtain of his hair. "I tore the shirt up into little pieces. It was very satisfying."

“And me? What was I doing all this time, sitting there, half naked, with you more interested in destroying my clothes than playing me…Or even ravishing me?” he added, sarcastically. “What happened when you’d finished ripping up my shirt?”

“That’s the funny thing. When I looked back at you, you were fully dressed again, except this time you had a green shirt, violent florescent green with a huge number 5.” He traced the figure a hair’s breadth from Hikaru’s chest, shaking his head. “A true insult to the senses.”

“Huh?”

“It had to go.”

“So you did what? You attacked me again? ”

Touya nodded. “The second shirt I simply stuffed in with the refuse as quick as I could.”

“And by the time you were done I was dressed again, is that it?”

“An abominable hooded cardigan…sacrifice by the waste disposal. But the shirts they kept coming every time I looked around. And every time the dream recurred you had even more new ghastly outfits.”

Hikaru had never credited Touya for having the slightest fashion sense before he turned eighteen, but it hadn’t occurred to him that his own taste in clothing might have appalled his rival to this extent. “How long did this go on? How many thousands of Yen of my clothes did you throw away, tear up, or otherwise annihilate. Hey, you didn’t touch my orange Puffa jacket, did you?”

“Three separate black sacks, in the river, and that horrid tank top, the one you wore at your Shin-Shoden match, I buried it.”

“No. Wait a minute. The Shin-Shoden series? Do you mean these dreams continued even once I’d turned pro?” Touya looked slightly uncomfortable. “It is over now, isn’t it? I mean, I don’t have to lock my closet in case you...?”

“Shindou, it was only a dream. And, anyway, its over. Really, in the end I just made a big gaudy heap, doused it with kerosene and set light to it.” Hikaru winced. “It could be seen for miles,” Touya said contentedly. Then his face fell slightly and he looked away a second as if wondering whether he should continue. “That was sort of good actually because by then it had stopped being a dream and started being just something I made up to please myself: imagining we were stranded on a deserted island together and signaling for help.”

“To please yourself? And what about me? I liked those clothes you know, I would have been so mad if you’d done that for real. What did I do then?” What did your imagination have me do? Hikaru wondered pensively.

“By then you really had run out of shirts, and you were sitting there with the light of the fire showing off your golden tanned skin in the deepening subtropical evening.” Touya affirmed, in a matter-of-fact tone.

What sort of fantasy was this? thought Hikaru.

Touya touched a patch of Hikaru’s shoulder where the early sun had already warmed the skin, and then went on, like someone narrating a true experience. “It didn’t matter anymore that your shirts were gone because I imagined we were on a deserted South Pacific island and it wasn’t cold, even when the fire died down. Besides…you had me to keep you warm.” Hikaru didn’t know whether to feel disturbed or intrigued. Here was Touya, confessing to have cast him as some sort of star in his teenage fantasies. “And we didn’t need to be rescued at all in the end because the island had everything we might need. Touya he kissed the shoulder he’d been touching, putting his arm around the other. “We had shells to use as go stones, sand to draw out goban, one three times normal size, because we had all the time in the world to play games that lasted weeks. There was food and fresh water; there was even a hot spring and a waterfall, and shady palm trees, cool caves, endless sandy beaches…”

This was starting to sound like a holiday destination and Hikaru was about to say so but then Touya voice changed and he said in a tone that was soft but serious, “Very importantly several things were not on our island. Your girlfriend wasn’t there for a start, or any other inconvenient realities.”

“What?” Hikaru cried. “You mean you went on with this even after the Hokuto cup?”

“Yes, for a few more years. It was a true paradise – palm trees, sunshine, a coral reef and lagoon – there were no prying eyes, no tiring expeditions to the other end of the country for conferences and demonstrations. No one else was there but us. I didn’t have to hear Waya’s cynicism, suffer those knowing looks from Ochi. I didn’t even miss friends like Ashiwara and Ich-chan. There on the island everything was possible: you and I could make love in the open air or play go all day long.”

“So, err…in your fantasy I liked you too then?” Hikaru didn’t quite manage to keep his voice even.

Touya went on without answering, drawing Hikaru’s hand to his chest with his own as he said, “Above all on that island there was no Sai, because, you know, I thought…I very selfishly wanted you for myself. I wanted you to admire my game, my go, me.”

Sai again. “There was never any call for you to be jealous of Sai.”

“I didn’t know who…what he was. And for a long time too, I didn’t know that he wasn’t around anymore.”

“How could you know?” Hikaru said. “I wish I’d told you sooner,…better.”

But Touya continued, “The life I imagined for us there was perfect. For a time the island made real life disappointments bearable. I would escape there often, just in my thoughts.” Hikaru felt his chest tighten. How was it that he had only seen Touya the go player, the rival? It was just plain weird, scary even, that Touya had kept such a secret for so long. How had he lived all that time keeping a part of himself so neatly under wraps? But, then again, hadn't Hikaru also indulged in fantasies about Touya - albeit much more recently.

Touya looked away from Hikaru, as if to look out the window, though it was more like he was just gazing into space. Then he sighed and pursued in a tiny voice, “But in the end, it seemed like I was going mad, with the difference between reality and fantasy getting wider and wider.”

Hikaru stopped him, kissing him, first on his forehead, then softly on the lips. Wasn’t all this over now? He didn’t want Touya to dwell on it. “Its not important now, is it?” Hikaru whispered. But he but saw in Touya’s expression that there was more to come, that he had to let him finish.

“Then one night I had a bad dream about the island, a horrible nightmare. In the dream, I was alone on the island, alone with the palm trees and the hot spring and waterfall and stupid giant goban. All alone with no one to play with to or live with. I think in the dream you had escaped from the island without me or it might have been that you were dead.” A cold feeling spread over Hikaru, joined by a sickening sensation of guilt. The conversation had somehow become very serious, led to something that would change the meaning of things Hikaru remembered and he had an impulse to run away from it, push it away, deny it. But at the same time he had to know everything and this was something Touya needed to tell him. Hikaru willed the dark feeling to go away. He hugged Touya, wondering which of them he was trying to reassure most.

“I realised it had only been a paradise because we were there together. Alone, it all meant nothing. It was terrifying. I understood then that I really always had been alone in this fantasy, and that all along it was a poor substitute for real love and being loved. That was when I was seventeen. So, I told myself that I went out to the island’s biggest beach, waded out into the water and just started swimming, swimming for shore, somewhere, anywhere, searching for something, for someone real.” There was almost the feeling of an apology to his words, which was absurd because Hikaru felt he should be the one apologising. “I think I had to do it, I had to grow beyond that or I would have gone crazy. I had to learn it was possible to live without that, without the hope of having you.” There was nothing bitter in Touya’s voice. Touya had kept so much inside, but what could Hikaru say, when he’d kept the truth about Sai to himself for so long? They’d both played such a closely guarded game, both of them had been such utter idiots.

Touya stared at Hikaru with such a desolate expression it made him want to cry. “And that’s why Ive been so long finding my way back, or even believing I could.” Hikaru urgently wanted to say something to make it better, make it not matter, do something to make up for all that wasted time. But, at a loss, he just held Touya close, so close that he could feel Touya's heart beating through their skin where they touched. He had to show him that, whatever else had happened, he was deeply glad they were together now.

For a long while they stayed like that in silence. Sure he’d learned something more about Touya, a lot more than he’d expected. It felt heavy and he badly wanted to feel normal again. There were still so many questions but it felt too much to handle now, too immense to add anything more. He focused on the changing light from the window, the weight of Touya’s body against his own. There would be time for all that later. There would always be time.

***

“And if, say, I went back to dressing like I used to” Hikaru suggested timidly.

“You’d look as silly as you ever did, its obvious.” He felt fingers reaching into his hair, others tracing his spine and coming to rest at his waist where they took a firm hold.

“You should let me take you clothes shopping someday.” Touya said. He smiled.

“Never,” Hikaru answered, laughing, Touya’s ridiculous suggestion filling him with relief, his touch reawakening a need to press their bodies still closer…

Touya looked back at him with a hint of admiration, all traces of sadness fading from his face. “I think you’re right,” he said with a simple nod.

But Hikaru didn’t take his words in right away. He’d already rolled Touya onto his back, pushing his advantage. “You bet I’m right, Touya. But you’d never admit it…”

And wait, what did Touya just say? When he realised what he’s just heard he started to grin with fierce delight. “Touya! Did you just say that I was right?”

“Only,” whispered Touya, “that I think for the moment, you should just stay exactly as you are.” He bent up to press his mouth firmly over Hikaru’s, and they let the issue drop as they turned their attention to the pleasures of the here and now.

***

Still, as Hikaru reflected later, he needed to be sure to hide his new “Go Players Got the Stones to Do It” tee-shirt before Touya could lay his hands on it.

FIN

Fandom bibliography
When writing this fic Im sure I was heavily influenced by all of the below and a lot more besides. If you think I should add you to this list (or you would like to be removed) please drop me a line.

A very similar setting and ambience can be found in toko’s Pillow talk.

I should probably also mention, harukami’s The sordid truth, though I don’t want to spoil it by saying why.

Hikaru and Akira make a mutual critique of one another’s styles in tristefic’s Opinions.

Clothing destruction can be enjoyed in moonythestrals’ Things that Hikaru Shindou never had to deal with before living with Touya Akira.

And in the Ojiroh Doujinshi The go world’s gem’s treasure.

A goban gets drawn in the sand in Jacob’s ladder by sutlers

And finally, ‘Touya pines; Shindo is oblivious’ is of such frequent occurrence that it was suggested by bookshop for the 2009 blind_go cliché list.

Blind Go and Co

lacygrey — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 17:05:25 GMT

I decided that making anonymous posts to the Kifu Archive support thread was futile, as Im unknown and hence anonymous already - I might as well stay logged-in.

~~BTW I didn't sign up for~~ ~~Blind Go~~ because I don't have a fic archive (yet).

Ah well, I can still enjoy the guessing ^_^ !!

March 21st
I changed my mind about Blind Go.

So Im setting myself the challenge that if I can post more than 10K of fanfiction before Blind Go's May 4th deadline (i.e. enough fic to give guessers a fair idea of my style), I'll participate as a writer as well as a guesser.

Sorted...at least in part

lacygrey — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 17:06:10 GMT

And so it seems that you can just stick pictures, that the LJ 'inbox' lets you send private messages to other users and that
cuts work like this !
Sort of....

Five things that still confuse me about LiveJournal

lacygrey — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 16:00:25 GMT

Identity
I made a dumb choice of username - I find I have a sound-alike namesake (Laceygrey with an E). The system only checks your username characters and doesn’t warn about homophones when you open an account. Im not about to change my username though, as that would put a line through lacygrey beside everything Ive written so far.

And I don’t want to look like Im giving up!

Cuts
As I understand it, having a lot to say in an entry posted to a community gratuitously spams all the friends pages of its members, unless you use a cut to separate off the bulk of your entry content. Cuts sound like a good idea, but following the instructions on the FAQ doesn’t work. When I tried this on test posts to my own journal, they just came up with chunks of HTML in the journal entry followed by the complete text that should have been hidden under the cut.

Ho hum, I need to do more experiments.

Communicating
How do you send a message to just one person on LiveJournal? For the moment, the best I can do is to add a comment to someone’s journal or community entry. Although this is still public and gets sent to all the friends, at least it stays discretely under the comments label and doesn’t spam. I know there’s LiveJournal talk and LiveJournal messenger but, while I understand that these are different things, one point they do have in common is that neither seems to work.

LJ also apparently has a dysfunctional relationship with MSN - but then so do I :(

Pictures
Some people have cool pictures in their backgrounds to their journals. How do they do that? Do they have paid accounts? Some people stick pictures in their entries too, or link to ‘Photobucket’ (What’s that? What's the advantage –bandwidth saving?). Picture sticking isn’t among the HTML codes permitted for entries, so how is it done?

Perhaps there’s a button I haven’t found yet.

LiveJournal upsets people
For reasons that seem to have more to do with moral issues than practical difficulties some outraged users give up on LJ paid accounts or change to Dreamwidth.

This looks serious, but I think I’ll have to save any more investigating until Im feeling less technically challenged.

Hello and welcome

lacygrey — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:20:48 GMT

Im new to livejournal, so please bear with me as I learn the ropes.