[Rhine]
by lacygrey
Slipping through my fingers
The sound of rake on gravel and smells of woodsmoke and newly turned soil greeted him as Akira came in through the gate.
His mother was dressed in coveralls and working in a corner of the garden, heaping the last of the autumn‘s prunings onto a bonfire, her face glowing in the heat. She’d been planting too; little green leaves pointed out of the dark soil in a neat row. Akira didn’t recognize them, but then, they wouldn’t show their true selves before summer, when the flowers appeared.
Smiling in greeting she hurried to meet him, seeming almost joyous, more relaxed somehow than yesterday.
"I‘ve been making the most of the spring weather."
"It’s going to be lovely, mother."
The fire chose that moment to cough up an ugly cloud of smoke. Akiko ran back and shored it up, adding some more dry leaves.
"It‘s fine," she called. "It‘s under control. Everything’s fine now."
..... ..... .....
A day earlier
Akiko liked gardening as she liked many things. Take Go for example, which she also liked very much. After all, opportunities had never been lacking, with father, husband and son all professional Go players. But Go was just one beautiful activity in a world of beautiful activities: Akiko also loved tennis, calligraphy, cookery, embroidery and, lately, quilting.
She would get her quilting fabrics by mail order from all over the world. So, that day she wasn’t surprised to receive a soft parcel with foreign stamps and methodical angular kanji, addressed simply to "Touya" followed by her address.
Impatient to see whether the patterns looked as good as in the catalogue she rushed inside, cutting the strings with the garden scissors that are were in her apron and ripping into the brown paper. That’s when she got the surprise of her life, for the package didn’t contain the fancy cotton prints she’d been expecting but cloth of a single color: lavender. One of her son's suits; she recognized it immediately -- it was one they had chosen together. But why should it come in a parcel from abroad? Akira hadn't been away.
There must be a reasonable explanation -- her son's clothes couldn’t go travelling without him. She went to check the sender's address, and as she did an envelope fell from the package, marked with her son's name but unsealed.
What should she do? Ripped brown paper lay all over the table. She could explain the mistake, just give everything to Akira but already some sixth sense was pricking her, her heart beating too fast.
There was no sender's address on the scraps of paper but the stamps were from Korea, somewhere Akira had never been. She decided to reassure herself that this was not something serious.
Carefully she drew a correspondence card from the envelope. Brilliant white and heavy, the quality of the paper spoke more to her than the message though, as every word of the careful brown script was in Korean, a language in which she could only speak tourist phrases and could not read at all.
Sighing, she turned the card over. Its quality and grain alone seemed to say money, class. On the reverse she found something she could read -- a Go problem. It was a complex one, but what made her catch her breath was the way the stones were drawn: not with the usual circles, but each one in the shape of a heart.
This coupled with her son's clothes! She knew her son was growing up but he was only fifteen! This was so sudden.
Much more perturbed and none the wiser, she sat down heavily at the kitchen table. It had to be a love letter, if only because of the hearts, which, to tell the truth, Akiko found a little in bad taste. If this was what it looked like, it was best that she know the truth. She had the rest of the day before Akira would return: enough time to find out.
First she went to Akira's room, took out the bilingual dictionary and started to try to decipher the letter. At the end of an hour she had pieced together a sentence with ‘thanks’, ‘hospitality’ and ‘visit’. That seemed innocent enough. Working the other way she looked up the Korean for 'love', ‘attraction’ and ‘girlfriend', but when she scanned the letter, she drew a blank.
She eyed Akira’s PC warily. Although she knew that the World Wide Web could answer many questions, they hadn’t been connected for long and she had yet to add the internet to her list of beautiful things.
Another oddity about the letter was how it wasn’t signed. One side had words; the other bore the Go problem, with more heart-shaped Go stones in a corner and a single sentence under the main diagram. The words for 'black' and 'live' featured. That made the sentence 'Can black live?' An obvious question for what was obviously a life and death problem, but not one with an obvious answer.
Taking the letter to the goban, she set out to solve it, to try to know at least a little of the mysterious woman who must have sent the parcel. Another three hours later she found a way for black to live. It was a tortuous path and she wondered about the clever mind that could have created this puzzle. Had Akira found a Korean girl who was his equal in Go?
She thought about herself and Kouyou. How, when he was first a student of her father, she would send him messages with bits of Go in them. But she had never taken his clothes.
The thought of the clothes in the parcel was starting to make her feel sick and her mind turn in circles Her mind was turning in circles. Had her only child given himself body and go-playing soul to someone from across the sea whom she had never seen? She had to get out of the house, find someone to help her, someone she could talk to in confidence.
But who?
..... ..... .....
Across the cramped office behind the Go club room at Kaio High School, the proud faces of the Japanese and Korean soccer teams looked at another, heralding the World Cup their countries would be hosting together in just a few months’ time.
Yun-sensei sat at his desk looking at Touya Akiko as she struggled to word her request. It wasn’t often that he met parents of students who had already graduated but he remembered Akiko Touya from a parents’ day a couple of years ago. He remembered her kindness towards him for including Akira in the school Go team. How much more serene she had seemed that day.
"A confidential issue." she’d said on the phone. Now Yun-sensei listened sagely while Touya-san expressed concerns about her son. He had had an admiring letter from a girl. she didn’t know for sure. She needed a translation.
Touya Akiko was wearing a very worried frown just over a letter. Surely this wasn’t the first fan letter or even love letter that young Touya had received.
"I wanted to ask someone outside of the family. It’s not just the letter it’s, well..." She pulled an elegant card out of her purse.
The first thing he saw was the Go problem. First he smiled in surprise, then he saw how difficult it was. His eyes met Touya-san’s soft ones and he read apprehension.
"You see?" She understood the level of the puzzle too. Yun-sensei looked again at the card, the simple words, the cryptic signature.
"I just wanted to know if she seemed serious." Touya Akiko was rubbing the strap of her purse between her fingers again. "Akira-kun is quite reserved. I don’t imagine him... I opened it by accident. I thought it was for me,” she trailed off, then composed herself once more. "Does the letter talk about love?”
Yun-sensei took a few seconds to examine her confused face.
"This is a formal letter thanking your son for a pleasant stay in Japan. Have you had a houseguest recently, perhaps during the Hokuto cup?"
"No, but... We've been largely away, my husband and I."
"I think this is from one of your son's rivals in Korea, Yeongha Ko."
Yun-sensei pulled out a Go magazine with a picture of a redheaded girl on the cover.
"But she's..."
"He's" Yun-sensei corrected.
"I don't think your son has received a love letter, Touya-san. It’s more like a little joke between rivals, a challenge. And look, instead of a signature, a play on words. His family name is the same as the Japanese name for this stone position: eternity." He pointed to the stones drawn in the corner, which showed a Ko.
"Oh, okay." Touya-san seemed only slightly calmed by his words. Perhaps she was disappointed, but then she brightened and said, "I can't thank you enough."
He could tell from her expression that she still thought something wasn’t right. He supposed the stones being drawn as hearts was rather exceptional. But then Yeongha Ko was rather exceptional, you only needed to read the magazines.
Touya Akiko looked at the cover picture one last time before giving a half-hearted little laugh and saying "Well then, I suppose ‘Boys will be boys’."
..... ..... .....
As she wandered home she considered it all again: what Yun-sensei told her and what her instincts did. She’d always known her son was different. A girlfriend? Now that would have been too simple. In truth, she too was one of a kind. Could it be that she was destined to remain the only woman in Akira’s life?
Fortunately Akiko had hidden the clothes and torn paper earlier, as Akira had gotten home ahead of her.
He didn’t hear her enter; all his attention was on the computer. On the screen, a game was slowly developing into a battle. Akira wasn’t playing but he was as concentrated as if he were, his features lit up by the glow from the screen.
His skin was paler and his hair still darker than her own. Lately, his face was beginning to show the same strong lines as his father. Did others think he was attractive? She couldn’t see him with clear eyes and she knew it. She thought he was perfect -- but of course she would -- he was her son.
"Oh Shindou, you idiot." Akira admonished the screen, making Akiko jump.
"Idiot, idiot...Why did you?..."
Then he saw her and gave a nervous little smile, like a child caught with his hand in the sweet jar.
As if to explain himself he said, "Its Shindou, he’s just gone and…" He signaled to the game screwing his face up in pitying exasperation. "Just look."
Akira turned around to look again himself, as though the temptation was too strong.
"Oh." His voice sounded surprised. A few more moves had been added. “Unless...”
"I think Shindou-kun is only trying to look careless." said Akiko with a smile.
"But he’s being so foolish." Akira was back to his serious critical face that made Akiko fear for his future students. "Yeongha will learn all Shindou’s strategies before their next real match."
Akiko took in the name without a flinch and asked. "Don’t you think that Shindou-kun might be doing the same? I mean learning all the strategies of this…"
"Yeongha." His voice betrayed neither warmth nor coldness. "He’s the Korean pro who beat Shindou in the final at the cup. Shindou wants revenge...by internet." Akira gave an exasperated sigh. "Shindou should wait and make it count; prove himself in an official match."
"Who’s the stronger player?" asked Akiko.
"Yeongha -- for the moment." He was appraising them as players, it seemed, nothing more complicated than that.
"Who do you want to see win, Akira-san?"
Then he looked at her with a softer expression, like one she remembered from his youngest days and the one she knew from her own mirror and answered, "Shindou."
..... ..... .....
The next day was bright and Akiko spent it working outside in the garden. She made the most of the dry spell to burn the rest of the garden rubbish.
When the flames were good and high she gathered together all the bits of the package, the clothes and the letter. Then she threw them on with the cracking twigs. That suit would soon have been too small anyway; the only loss was her worries. There would be no explanations to seek, no answers to give. All would carry on like before.
Akiko basked in the warm glow from the fire until she heard someone open the gate and turned to welcome her son back home.
END
Slipping through my fingers
The sound of rake on gravel and smells of woodsmoke and newly turned soil greeted him as Akira came in through the gate.
His mother was dressed in coveralls and working in a corner of the garden, heaping the last of the autumn‘s prunings onto a bonfire, her face glowing in the heat. She’d been planting too; little green leaves pointed out of the dark soil in a neat row. Akira didn’t recognize them, but then, they wouldn’t show their true selves before summer, when the flowers appeared.
Smiling in greeting she hurried to meet him, seeming almost joyous, more relaxed somehow than yesterday.
"I‘ve been making the most of the spring weather."
"It’s going to be lovely, mother."
The fire chose that moment to cough up an ugly cloud of smoke. Akiko ran back and shored it up, adding some more dry leaves.
"It‘s fine," she called. "It‘s under control. Everything’s fine now."
..... ..... .....
A day earlier
Akiko liked gardening as she liked many things. Take Go for example, which she also liked very much. After all, opportunities had never been lacking, with father, husband and son all professional Go players. But Go was just one beautiful activity in a world of beautiful activities: Akiko also loved tennis, calligraphy, cookery, embroidery and, lately, quilting.
She would get her quilting fabrics by mail order from all over the world. So, that day she wasn’t surprised to receive a soft parcel with foreign stamps and methodical angular kanji, addressed simply to "Touya" followed by her address.
Impatient to see whether the patterns looked as good as in the catalogue she rushed inside, cutting the strings with the garden scissors that are were in her apron and ripping into the brown paper. That’s when she got the surprise of her life, for the package didn’t contain the fancy cotton prints she’d been expecting but cloth of a single color: lavender. One of her son's suits; she recognized it immediately -- it was one they had chosen together. But why should it come in a parcel from abroad? Akira hadn't been away.
There must be a reasonable explanation -- her son's clothes couldn’t go travelling without him. She went to check the sender's address, and as she did an envelope fell from the package, marked with her son's name but unsealed.
What should she do? Ripped brown paper lay all over the table. She could explain the mistake, just give everything to Akira but already some sixth sense was pricking her, her heart beating too fast.
There was no sender's address on the scraps of paper but the stamps were from Korea, somewhere Akira had never been. She decided to reassure herself that this was not something serious.
Carefully she drew a correspondence card from the envelope. Brilliant white and heavy, the quality of the paper spoke more to her than the message though, as every word of the careful brown script was in Korean, a language in which she could only speak tourist phrases and could not read at all.
Sighing, she turned the card over. Its quality and grain alone seemed to say money, class. On the reverse she found something she could read -- a Go problem. It was a complex one, but what made her catch her breath was the way the stones were drawn: not with the usual circles, but each one in the shape of a heart.
This coupled with her son's clothes! She knew her son was growing up but he was only fifteen! This was so sudden.
Much more perturbed and none the wiser, she sat down heavily at the kitchen table. It had to be a love letter, if only because of the hearts, which, to tell the truth, Akiko found a little in bad taste. If this was what it looked like, it was best that she know the truth. She had the rest of the day before Akira would return: enough time to find out.
First she went to Akira's room, took out the bilingual dictionary and started to try to decipher the letter. At the end of an hour she had pieced together a sentence with ‘thanks’, ‘hospitality’ and ‘visit’. That seemed innocent enough. Working the other way she looked up the Korean for 'love', ‘attraction’ and ‘girlfriend', but when she scanned the letter, she drew a blank.
She eyed Akira’s PC warily. Although she knew that the World Wide Web could answer many questions, they hadn’t been connected for long and she had yet to add the internet to her list of beautiful things.
Another oddity about the letter was how it wasn’t signed. One side had words; the other bore the Go problem, with more heart-shaped Go stones in a corner and a single sentence under the main diagram. The words for 'black' and 'live' featured. That made the sentence 'Can black live?' An obvious question for what was obviously a life and death problem, but not one with an obvious answer.
Taking the letter to the goban, she set out to solve it, to try to know at least a little of the mysterious woman who must have sent the parcel. Another three hours later she found a way for black to live. It was a tortuous path and she wondered about the clever mind that could have created this puzzle. Had Akira found a Korean girl who was his equal in Go?
She thought about herself and Kouyou. How, when he was first a student of her father, she would send him messages with bits of Go in them. But she had never taken his clothes.
The thought of the clothes in the parcel was starting to make her feel sick and her mind turn in circles Her mind was turning in circles. Had her only child given himself body and go-playing soul to someone from across the sea whom she had never seen? She had to get out of the house, find someone to help her, someone she could talk to in confidence.
But who?
..... ..... .....
Across the cramped office behind the Go club room at Kaio High School, the proud faces of the Japanese and Korean soccer teams looked at another, heralding the World Cup their countries would be hosting together in just a few months’ time.
Yun-sensei sat at his desk looking at Touya Akiko as she struggled to word her request. It wasn’t often that he met parents of students who had already graduated but he remembered Akiko Touya from a parents’ day a couple of years ago. He remembered her kindness towards him for including Akira in the school Go team. How much more serene she had seemed that day.
"A confidential issue." she’d said on the phone. Now Yun-sensei listened sagely while Touya-san expressed concerns about her son. He had had an admiring letter from a girl. she didn’t know for sure. She needed a translation.
Touya Akiko was wearing a very worried frown just over a letter. Surely this wasn’t the first fan letter or even love letter that young Touya had received.
"I wanted to ask someone outside of the family. It’s not just the letter it’s, well..." She pulled an elegant card out of her purse.
The first thing he saw was the Go problem. First he smiled in surprise, then he saw how difficult it was. His eyes met Touya-san’s soft ones and he read apprehension.
"You see?" She understood the level of the puzzle too. Yun-sensei looked again at the card, the simple words, the cryptic signature.
"I just wanted to know if she seemed serious." Touya Akiko was rubbing the strap of her purse between her fingers again. "Akira-kun is quite reserved. I don’t imagine him... I opened it by accident. I thought it was for me,” she trailed off, then composed herself once more. "Does the letter talk about love?”
Yun-sensei took a few seconds to examine her confused face.
"This is a formal letter thanking your son for a pleasant stay in Japan. Have you had a houseguest recently, perhaps during the Hokuto cup?"
"No, but... We've been largely away, my husband and I."
"I think this is from one of your son's rivals in Korea, Yeongha Ko."
Yun-sensei pulled out a Go magazine with a picture of a redheaded girl on the cover.
"But she's..."
"He's" Yun-sensei corrected.
"I don't think your son has received a love letter, Touya-san. It’s more like a little joke between rivals, a challenge. And look, instead of a signature, a play on words. His family name is the same as the Japanese name for this stone position: eternity." He pointed to the stones drawn in the corner, which showed a Ko.
"Oh, okay." Touya-san seemed only slightly calmed by his words. Perhaps she was disappointed, but then she brightened and said, "I can't thank you enough."
He could tell from her expression that she still thought something wasn’t right. He supposed the stones being drawn as hearts was rather exceptional. But then Yeongha Ko was rather exceptional, you only needed to read the magazines.
Touya Akiko looked at the cover picture one last time before giving a half-hearted little laugh and saying "Well then, I suppose ‘Boys will be boys’."
..... ..... .....
As she wandered home she considered it all again: what Yun-sensei told her and what her instincts did. She’d always known her son was different. A girlfriend? Now that would have been too simple. In truth, she too was one of a kind. Could it be that she was destined to remain the only woman in Akira’s life?
Fortunately Akiko had hidden the clothes and torn paper earlier, as Akira had gotten home ahead of her.
He didn’t hear her enter; all his attention was on the computer. On the screen, a game was slowly developing into a battle. Akira wasn’t playing but he was as concentrated as if he were, his features lit up by the glow from the screen.
His skin was paler and his hair still darker than her own. Lately, his face was beginning to show the same strong lines as his father. Did others think he was attractive? She couldn’t see him with clear eyes and she knew it. She thought he was perfect -- but of course she would -- he was her son.
"Oh Shindou, you idiot." Akira admonished the screen, making Akiko jump.
"Idiot, idiot...Why did you?..."
Then he saw her and gave a nervous little smile, like a child caught with his hand in the sweet jar.
As if to explain himself he said, "Its Shindou, he’s just gone and…" He signaled to the game screwing his face up in pitying exasperation. "Just look."
Akira turned around to look again himself, as though the temptation was too strong.
"Oh." His voice sounded surprised. A few more moves had been added. “Unless...”
"I think Shindou-kun is only trying to look careless." said Akiko with a smile.
"But he’s being so foolish." Akira was back to his serious critical face that made Akiko fear for his future students. "Yeongha will learn all Shindou’s strategies before their next real match."
Akiko took in the name without a flinch and asked. "Don’t you think that Shindou-kun might be doing the same? I mean learning all the strategies of this…"
"Yeongha." His voice betrayed neither warmth nor coldness. "He’s the Korean pro who beat Shindou in the final at the cup. Shindou wants revenge...by internet." Akira gave an exasperated sigh. "Shindou should wait and make it count; prove himself in an official match."
"Who’s the stronger player?" asked Akiko.
"Yeongha -- for the moment." He was appraising them as players, it seemed, nothing more complicated than that.
"Who do you want to see win, Akira-san?"
Then he looked at her with a softer expression, like one she remembered from his youngest days and the one she knew from her own mirror and answered, "Shindou."
..... ..... .....
The next day was bright and Akiko spent it working outside in the garden. She made the most of the dry spell to burn the rest of the garden rubbish.
When the flames were good and high she gathered together all the bits of the package, the clothes and the letter. Then she threw them on with the cracking twigs. That suit would soon have been too small anyway; the only loss was her worries. There would be no explanations to seek, no answers to give. All would carry on like before.
Akiko basked in the warm glow from the fire until she heard someone open the gate and turned to welcome her son back home.
END