There are few in this world with consummate skill like yours;

Touya shuffled down the darkened hallway, not sure why anyone, let alone Shindou, would bother coming here. He hadn't exactly hidden his surprise well either, wincing as he remembered the laughter from the clerk on the second floor. Even Shindou-kun can be serious sometimes, he'd reminded Touya.

The door was ajar, so he pushed it open, inhaling sharply as soon as his eyes adjusted to the harsh florescent light.

"Touya?"

Shindou was looking at him with huge eyes, his expression the haunted one he sometimes got when they played a particularly intense game or anyone compared him to the NetGo player, Sai. He was also surrounded by thousands and thousands of kifu, really old ones, with a stack a foot high piled up on the table in front of him.

"I--" Touya shook his head, forcing himself to focus. He was good at that, focusing. "I knew you had a match this morning, so I thought I'd ask if you had any time to play this afternoon. The man at the desk told me you'd be here."

"Yeah," said Shindou quietly, looking embarrassed for some reason. "I like come here sometimes."

"I've never been in here."

Touya had practically grown up at the Go Institute, tagging along with his father before he'd turned pro and there for work almost every day since. He hadn't thought there was any part of the building that he didn't know backward and forward, but as always Shindou had managed to catch him off-guard.

Shindou cleared off the paper-covered stool next to him, sweeping kifu to the floor like they were a stack of used manga instead of valuable historical documents. Touya quickly squashed the urge to yell.

"You wanna wait here with me until I'm done?" Shindou asked.

"If you don't mind." Touya's fingers itched to touch everything in the tiny archive. He sat down next to Shindou and folded his hands primly on his lap.

"Shusaku," said Shindou, gesturing at the games he had spread out in front of him.

I'm not surprised, Touya thought. It's always Shusaku with you.

The corners of Shindou's mouth were turned down, and Touya found himself at a loss. "He was a genius," Shindou went on.

I want to know about you and Shusaku, Touya wanted to say. He'd had this thought at least a hundred times, maybe a thousand times or more. Why is it always Shusaku? What happened to you? Instead he said, "I know that. Everyone knows that."

"People compared Sai to Shusaku," said Shindou casually, too casually for someone who never mentioned Sai without being provoked.

Touya picked up one game, tracking the moves of Shusaku and his opponent, and admired Shusaku's dominance and skill, evident even through the old record. "And people compare you to Sai." He pointed at a move black had made in yose. "See that? You do that even better. If you were playing this opponent, your win would have been sealed two moves earlier."

Shindou's eyes widened and he leaned over to get a better look, his shoulder brushing against Touya's. "Oh. You're right."

"Hmm." Touya smirked. "But I'd have done it three moves earlier."

The haunted expression was completely gone from Shindou's face once he started yelling, but now Touya was worried about the safety of the display cases.



There are none among us with too little to do like me

"Touya, are you done yet?" Shindou was definitely whining now, and that was never good. Touya held firm anyway and peered over the top of his book.

"I'm studying." He had no idea why he kept inviting Shindou over on nights when he had studying to do. He had no idea why Shindou kept accepting, when all he'd do was lay around, eat all of Touya's ramen, and complain. "I have language classes, unlike you, and I would rather not fail at them, also unlike you."

Shindou's mouth dropped open in protest. "I don't like failing!"

"Could have fooled me," Touya retorted. He stared at the page, cursing to himself when he realized he wasn't absorbing any of its information.

"What is that supposed to mean?"

Touya closed the book around his hand. "It means you should have beaten Ashiwara in your Meijin match."

"You think I don't know that?" Shindou said. He was looking at his hands. Touya sighed. "He surprised me."

"He shouldn't have," Touya said. "You're better than him. I know it, he knows it, and you know it."

Shindou picked at his fingernails.

"I know you want to play the higher dans..."

"Go back to your book," said Shindou, sounding distant.

Touya put the book down. He stood up and sat on the floor next to Shindou. "Do you want to go over your match?"

"Why, so you can yell at me like I'm a stupid little kid?" asked Shindou.

"You're the same age as me," Touya reminded him. "I...I just wanted to play you in the next round."

Shindou looked up finally. "Oh." His face broke into a grin. "You get to play me in the third round of the Honinbo tournament next month."

Touya smiled a little. He crawled over to his goban and pulled it over, handing Shindou the black stones. "I do. Now let me point out all of your mistakes, so when I beat you then that won't be a surprise."

"Weren't you studying?" Shindou said, pulling the top of the goke.

"Yes, but I can study later."

"Why do you even do all that boring language stuff? It's like school, and we don't even have to go anymore!"

Touya shrugged. "Not everything's about Go."

"Since when?" said Shindou accusingly.

"Since..." He and Shindou went about recreating the game, Touya taking Ashiwara's place. "Since never."

Shindou laughed.

"I've told you, I want to play against Korean and Chinese players and come off as reasonably intelligent. We represent an entire country, you know. Besides, I like studying--"

Shindou made a derisive noise and unthinkingly corrected one of Touya's stones. Touya was still sometimes taken aback by Shindou's ability to recall any match.

"I do! It helps me concentrate."

"Go helps me concentrate. I don't need anything else."

Like Touya didn't know that. Like he didn't know everything about Shindou's Go.



After we part, at the bamboo window on nights of wind and snow,

"My mom knows I'm staying here tonight," Shindou announced, bounding back into the front room. He plopped down onto the cushion again, legs stretched wide on either side of the goban.

Touya raised an eyebrow at Shindou's position. He habitually knelt when playing Go on the floor due to years of discipline under his father's watchful eye, but Shindou always managed to contort himself in the most creative ways.

As if reading Touya's mind, Shindou bent forward, resting one elbow on his thigh, and pulled a goke and his fan between his legs.

"What are we going to do about food?" Shindou asked, pulling Touya's attention away from his sprawl. "It's not like we can go out somewhere in this."

This was an increasingly violent thunderstorm. Touya could hear the wind howling outside, shaking the windows. "Is food all you ever think about?"

"Yes. And Go."

Touya smiled, despite himself. "I have food here. We'll eat after we play a game, all right?"

"Yeah, as long as you don't kill me with your cooking," grumbled Shindou.

"I can cook just fine!"

"Right, right, of course. Do you want to nigiri?"

"Even you can manage ramen," muttered Touya irritably as he put down two stones. He won black, and they started to play.

Shindou fidgeted, drumming his fan against the floor and the side of the goban, spending more of his time staring out the rattling windows than paying attention to the game. The wind and thunder were loud, but Touya never took it well when Shindou didn't give a game his full attention.

"It's getting cold, too. Do you think we'll get snow?" asked Shindou as he carelessly played his next hand.

Touya narrowed his eyes. He could have Shindou surrounded and beaten in less than ten moves with that level of play. "That move was utterly stupid," he said, exasperated.

Shindou looked away from the window. "Huh?"

"Stupid!" shouted Touya. "You're not even paying attention!"

"I am so paying attention! I just didn't realize we were playing for the Gosei championship here."

Touya gritted his teeth. "I want you to play seriously."

Shindou sat up a little straighter, drew his legs in. His eyes were bright. "Touya Akira, seeker of the elusive casual game."

"Don't do that, Shindou."

"Don't do what?"

"Don't act like I'm some sort of weirdo just because I want you to play your best. When you're playing me, I want you playing me!"

Shindou stared at him, the rain forgotten. "You don't need my help being a weirdo!"

Touya let out a giant sigh and pointed at the board. "Look at this! Look at how you're playing. This isn't your best; this isn't even your sort of best. What is going on with you?"

"Nothing is going on!" Shindou yelled. His face was flushed. "It's not my fault you're wound tighter than a Slinky."

"It's not nothing!" Touya thought his face must have been pretty red, too. "First you're in some dusty room filled with Shusaku kifu and talking about...about Sai, then you're losing matches you should have won, and now you won't even play me!"

The air in the room felt heavy, tangible, like Touya could cut through it by slamming down a stone. Shindou's eyes were as wide as saucers, the rise and fall of his chest erratic.

"Are you quitting Go again?" Touya said finally, dropping his gaze.

"What?! Never!"

"If you don't want to play me--"

"I do! All I ever want to do is play y--"

"If you've passed me...I know you want to play like Shusaku and like Sai. I know I'm not as good as Sai was yet -- I played him, I know. But if I'm not your rival anymore, than what's the point--"

"The point is!" yelled Shindou, cutting him off. Touya blinked and looked up. "The point is," he repeated, voice suddenly low and steady, "my Go's not about Shusaku, or even Sai."

"It's not?" Touya didn't know why he sounded so young.

"No. Not entirely, not anymore." Shindou straightened his spine and folded his legs underneath his body -- perfect seiza complete with fan across his lap. "You know who else it is, Touya," he said darkly. "You know. So knock it off."

Touya swallowed down the lump that'd formed in his throat. Shindou cleared the board.

"Play, Touya." Touya played.

They placed the first few stones, shaky fingers finding relief in well-traveled paths. Touya ventured a glance at Shindou about ten hands in and saw his eyes alight with challenge. He was chewing on the end of his fan.

"I was letting go," Shindou murmured when he caught Touya looking. "That's all. But I'm okay now."

"Oh," said Touya, at a loss. He started breathing again.

Outside, the wind howled and shrieked and finally died. Inside, Shindou won by three and a half moku.



In the light and shadow of a solitary lantern I will play over the Games of Wu.

"What are you doing?"

"And then you went here."

"That wasn't me."

"And then I played here."

"Touya..."

"Then you here, and I went here, and then you killed this entire cluster. I worked so hard on that group, too."

"Touya, listen to me!"

"I'd never met anyone else my age who could play like you."

"That was...that was Sai, Touya, not me. That's what I wanted to tell you...those first games we played were Sai. I-- I didn't know how..."

Touya looked up. The patrons of Touya Kouyo's salon were watching them, but Touya didn't care. "I've never met anyone else who could play like you," he insisted. He cleared away the record of their first game and pushed the black stones in Shindou's direction. "Play me, Hikaru."

"But--"

"Play."

"Like I have time to play you all night and day," grumbled Shindou, but he sat down and immediately placed his first stone.

The first game turned into the second, then the third, and the patrons cleared out two-by-two. But Touya didn't notice; he was flying, flying, something ineffable clenching in his chest spelled out in black and white on the goban.

"Akira-kun, we're closing now," said Ichikawa, ducking her head into the back room. "It's getting dark."

Shindou's shock of blond hair spilled over his forehead, casting his face in shadow. He studied Touya's last move and chewed on his bottom lip.

"We'll just be a little while more, Ichikawa-san. I can finish up for you here," said Touya, smiling kindly at her. "Please leave a light on."

END.