Chapter Text
“– we should have called ahead of time. This is such an invasion of privacy, you really ought to treat him with more respect–”
“Oh, shut up,” Hikaru hissed against the side of his neck. The punk all but shoved Akira into his grandfather’s house.
Clearly unexpected but not uninvited. “Shoes off, boy, or I’ll dox ya’!” Heihachi’s scratchy voice terrorized them from somewhere deeper in the house.
“If you can beat me in a game, I’ll even let you!” But still, Hikaru listened, kicking his shoes off in monstrous directions. Akira had the decency to at least leave them outside.
A muffled scoff echoed. “Brat.”
Hikaru had been too busy stationing himself as a lever to lift Akira up the stairs to respond.
What kind of insolence– “We’re not even going to greet him?”
“You can greet him all you want later.”
“Idiot!”
“Oh, so Akira-chan’s allowed to enter my attic, but I’m not?” The words were overlaid with the sound of the running sink. “Actually, nevermind, I don’t wanna know what you two’re gonna do up there.”
Betrayed by the way his ears went hot, Akira quickly remembered why Hikaru tried to (unsuccessfully) keep the Meijin out of his grandfather’s vicinity. Hikaru was a carbon copy of Heihachi in many, many, ways: driven, chucklesome, unexpectedly careful, though not entirely mindful. But this particular trait was not one of them.
And thank all goodness for that.
The genius behind him also seemed to quickly remember this. Fingers digging into Akira’s shoulders and face hiding against Akira’s back, Hikaru stomped up the stairs after him. “Just wait ‘til I come back down, old man.”
Heihachi’s laugh was unforgivable.
But it soon ceased to matter as the sight of a goban caught his eye. Hikaru huffed an amused breath at the way he took it in. Akira immediately knew it was the oldest goban he had ever seen - pure kaya, fading gridlines, and craftsmanship that spoke for time-worn techniques. It looked as though it had waited centuries to be well-taken care of.
Hikaru took his hand and led him closer to it, and Akira accepted, brushing his fingers over its surface - it must have been cleaned just recently. Hikaru only watched, occasionally breaking the silence to let him in on another secret.
“There used to be a bloodstain there,” toward the intersection where Akira's hands were, 'that disappeared when Sai left.”
Akira soaked it all in. “Sai’s blood?”
“Torajirou’s.” Hikaru seated himself next to him and ran his own fingers over the spot, searching. “Akari’d looked so spooked when I asked her if she noticed. I think I was the only one who could see it.”
“She was with you when you found it?” Akira’s heart wrung with jealousy.
A nostalgic smile formed on Hikaru’s face. “I dragged her into helping me sell something from up here for extra cash. We deci-... I decided we were going with this board, then she ran out bawling when I started talking to someone else,” he narrated sheepishly, as if he hardly recognized the him of the past.
Perhaps because it had been another person. Someone Akira couldn’t help but want to know but also feel grateful that he didn’t. After all, it was the person that had existed before this cursed goban where Hikaru had found Sai.
Akira imagined being Akari watching something historic happen to Hikaru and not knowing it. “Did he frighten you?”
Hikaru snickered. “Not intentionally. But I did wind up in the hospital. Scared the shit outta me at my history test the next morning too. I thought it’d been a dream.” His eyes fell shut as affection rolled off of him in waves. “Sometimes I still think it was a dream.”
Akira hid his mirth. “You’re not creative enough to dream up someone like that.”
The glare was worth it. “Listen. I could probably dream him up now, but sure. Back then, there was no way I could have thought up some go nerd from the Heian era.”
And the shoe dropped, possibly right on top of Akira’s head, at terminal velocity.
“Heian?” he choked.
But Hikaru merely hummed a yes. “He was the emperor’s tutor.”
“The emperor…” Akira blinked hard. No matter which emperor, ‘old joseki’ had been a severe understatement.
“One of his rivals was jealous and accused him of stealing territory during a game. He was exiled from the capital.” Hikaru withdrew his hand from the goban, as if speaking these words into existence was finally making it all too real for him. “He drowned himself.”
Akira finally looked up at him. The loss Hikaru felt was palpable, but Akira knew the reality. Sai’s first death was hardly what Hikaru had been mourning all these years.
Hikaru met his gaze. “His soul was tied to this goban and he got another chance to fulfill his wish to find the Hand of God.”
And of course, of course, of course, that was why Hikaru had spat up some vision about the Divine Move before he ever knew the intricacies of the game. He'd just been regurgitating the words of his teacher.
“Through Kuwabara Torajirou,” Akira finished for him. “And you.”
He suddenly looked as tired as his soul must have felt. “There’s barely any record of a Fujiwara no Sai anywhere else. What did you think I was doing in Kyoto?”
It dawned on Akira late enough to make him feel stupid. “The Imperial Palace…"
To think Hikaru had been nurtured by anyone but a Heian man (a Fujiwara nobleman, above all) was laughable because of course that was why he fussed over the quality of those silly patterned tate-eboshi's, and knew about oddly specific samurai zumba routines, and genuine keichou flower bowls, and the health benefits of savory chimaki, and was interested in the koma despite cringing at its sound, and his whole deal with that fan, and his timeless, genius go.
Akira lifted his jaw off the floor. “Did you…”
Did you find him?
The pain in Hikaru’s eyes should have been enough of an answer, but he dignified it with words. “I never asked him much about himself, so he never told me. I don't even know which emperor he tutored." He gave Akira a smile full of sheepish hope, as if he was letting the Meijin in on his most whimsical pipe dream. "But I finally found those first few games with Torajirou, so it'll be easier to match something to the style. There’s still a lot left for us to look through. ”
Right. The ancient and genius go of the first page (among millions of pages) of games with Kuwabara Torajirou was a Sai from his own time. A Sai, who was erased from his own time. Akira should have known that Hikaru would continue looking as long as it took to find something, but he warmed at the 'us.'
“You know, he cried before that game. At your salon.” Hikaru was deflecting, that much the Meijin could tell. “I could feel all of it. How happy he was to play again. How nauseous he felt when I first told him I’d never let him play. At some point, I couldn’t even tell which of us was having the most fun playing go. It might have been him the whole time.”
Akira was quick to give him a verbal slap on the wrist. “He couldn’t have brought you this far if you didn’t love it yourself. I’m sure he knew that too.”
Hikaru stared at him for a second, shocked. Then surrendered. “I know. You’re right.”
Then Akira wondered a horrible thought out loud. “Did you… Have you ever... regretted pla–”
“No!” It was declared without an ounce of doubt, and Akira eased. “No. I once thought I didn't deserve to play... but I’ve never regretted playing for myself. I just… I wish I’d let him play more. I should’ve listened when he said his time was up. I always blamed him for not saying goodbye, but… I hadn’t even let him.”
And there was simply nothing Akira could have said to share that burden.
Hikaru must have accepted his company alone as a comfort because he gave Akira a brief smile. More for Akira's sake than anything. “He’d been off for a little while. Kept asking to play and play and got mad that I still couldn’t beat him… He was just so restless after that net-go match with your dad, I should’ve–”
“You were playing net-go for him that day! At the internet café!” It spilled out of Akira’s mouth without a second of thought. He regretted it immediately. Hikaru had just begun to open up, how could he be so selfish?
But Hikaru laughed at him, unsurprised and tender. “I hoped you’d forget. I wasn’t ready to talk about it. I’m sorry I lied.”
Akira had long since forgiven him and forgotten it. He was simply in awe of Hikaru taking his questions in stride. He reached for the goke’s on the floor and, one by one, began setting the board with a game. He had replayed it so often that he knew the shapes like the back of his hand. “What did he think of that game with my father? Was he satisfied?”
And Hikaru’s face fell. “Yeah. I’d never seen him so happy. I felt it in my bones.” His eyes rose to the ceiling, a plea. “And then I ruined it.”
“Ruined it?” Akira could not think of a single thing that might have ruined the utter divinity of that game.
“I was so busy studying the game when it ended…” The frustration in his voice was jarring. Hikaru should know that anyone would have been absolutely taken by that game, let alone the person playing for one of its participants. “Why couldn’t I have just shut up and let him have it? I just had to open my mouth about something I thought he glossed over.”
Akira paused, the final stone of the game - of Sai’s - clinking loudly in the silence. “He made a mistake?”
“He didn’t.” Hikaru’s frenzied eyes fell back on him. “Sai never makes mistakes. But at the time I just couldn't sit still without showing him something your dad could’ve done that might have made him lose. Like it made me better. Or something.”
Akira’s eyes roved over the game before him, searching for a single imperfection, and he came up empty. Part of him wondered if he had truly been searching at all. He couldn’t even conceive the idea of a flaw existing in this game.
He fixed his eyes on Hikaru, disbelieving. “What could have made Sai lose?”
Hikaru looked at him despondently once, before reaching for a stone on the board. With the grace of a magician, he changed the shape in a long sequence, chip by chip. The longer it went on, the wider Akira’s eyes became. Because the result was clear.
His father could have scraped up a victory by 2 moku.
Sai had won the game against his father, but Sai, whose mastery of go had never been successfully challenged, had lost. In a hindsight battle with Hikaru.
“You…” Akira could hardly breathe.
Hikaru looked away, ashamed. “Akira… Do you think he’d still be here if I didn’t say anything then?”
Akira looked at him aghast. “Hikaru, you idiot.”
He flinched, but Akira refused to have it. He took Hikaru’s hand and squeezed it, as if he could sear the words into his skin.
“Of course he wanted to keep playing and stay with you until you finally beat him. It's because he finally realized you could. It’s obvious that after the thousand years he’d spent searching, you were the one he’d been looking for.”
And the words pierced right into Hikaru. His eyes were blown open, welling with pain. “But–” He stuttered on a breath, shaking his head as if ‘no, that’s not possible’ and scoured Akira’s face for a word that might refute it. “He– His wish wasn’t fulfilled. He didn’t find the Hand of God.”
“Maybe not.” Akira pulled his hand close, lips pressing the words into Hikaru’s pulse point, just in case they didn’t make it to his heart another way. “But he must have found something more to wish for.”
As if a floodgate had opened, a cascade of tears made their silent pilgrimage down his face. “How can you possibly know that?”
They both knew already. But Akira was willing to tell him as many times as Hikaru needed to hear it.
“Because I wish for the same.” Hikaru trembled as he pressed a kiss to his fingers. “To play go with you. Endlessly.”
And because Akira knew, with a haunting certainty that he locked deep, deep, within himself where even he could never look at it again, that the only wish more impossible than finding the Hand of God was an endless game of go with Hikaru. For him and for Sai.
Hearing his unsaid words, Hikaru cried, and Akira pulled him close, his own eyes burning. They clung to each other, sitting there for what seemed like hours, with only the sound of broken breathing to soothe them.
Akira hadn't planned on mourning for himself or for Hikaru, they had a lifetime ahead of them after all, but the ache he felt was agonizing nonetheless. He suddenly understood, from his own place high, high, above, where he could never truly know, how Sai might have wanted to evade it for a millennium, how envious he must have felt toward Hikaru during the remainder of their time together, and how guilty he must have felt while feeling so. And how Hikaru must have spent years torturing and punishing himself for it.
Devastated and selfish, Akira begged the gods of time, whose ceaseless march he could not escape and who knew not of compassion but could boundlessly give, for the most bountiful of ephemeral eternities with Hikaru. Then at least when the two of them might find sanctuary in a place far from time's sway and rest that much closer to Sai, they could be free of the misfortunes that once kept them all apart.
Hikaru, fighting against the limpness in his limbs, sat himself back up to look at Akira, fingers stuck in place and coiled around a strand of his hair. “I think I did the right thing keeping him from you.” He gave Akira a wet laugh. “You would have made my life a living hell together.”
Akira made a wilted, offended noise, but at the sound of Hikaru’s laugh, Akira caught his hand and pulled it to his lap, cradled in both of his hands.
“I’m serious! You would have chewed me out together after every game." That got Hikaru a snort. "And maybe he would’ve convinced you to grow your hair to the floor too.”
Akira could not think of something he wanted less. “He can keep his floor length hair to himself, thank you.”
Hikaru’s grin was adoring.
With some amount of resistance, as if he had caught himself staring for too long, he turned to the game on the board. His final secret was solemn. “I've never actually played on this goban.”
And perhaps it was the most shocking, too. “I was wondering why you haven't taken it home. Don't you want to?"
“I... I’ve never had a game I wanted to play on it before.” Hikaru seemed to dislike his choice of words because he immediately backtracked. “We couldn't even finish our last game on my own board, so it always felt... I don't know... wrong to do anything on this one."
Akira lifted himself from the ground and sat across from him, the words left his mouth without guilt.
“Finish that game with me, Hikaru."
Wordlessly, Hikaru smiled, lighter than he had ever looked at Akira before.
Akira heard his unspoken 'thank you’ loud and clear.