[beard]
MADE TO MEASURE
by thephoenixboy
There are times when Touya passes the groups of teenagers in the streets on the weekends and wonders where they’re going. Is there a new movie playing at the theatre, a game at the stadium? Are they just going to hang out in the park or downtown? Their existence seems so separate from his own that it’s hard to believe that they’re the same age.
There are times when he wonders if he can lay the blame squarely at the feet of his suit. Suits, rather, as he has grown out of more than a few since he started wearing them to help out at his father’s go salon.
When he was very small, he hated wearing them, hated the stiff collars and the too-long sleeves with ‘room to grow in to’. His father had taken him aside once before their daily game of go and spoke to him seriously. “Akira-kun, wearing a suit is a way of saying that you respect your opponent and that you respect the game.” After that he learned to live with it. It was true: Ogata-san always wore a suit when he came to the house to study with Touya’s father.
Over time, the suits stopped being something he even thought about, wearing them as naturally as most boys wore their casual t-shirts and shorts. It was something that made him different, just as he was marked out for playing an old man’s game like go.
When he walked to the shops with his mother, he’d sometimes look at the boys playing soccer in the park and wonder whether, if he asked, she’d mind stopping so he could play for a bit. Touya had always thought that he wouldn't be bad at soccer, if he practiced. After all, the simple strategies involved in moving eleven players around the pitch were nothing compared to the complex webs of strategy that his father’s mind could weave on a goban.
Every time, he remembered his clothes, remembered that his mother would be upset if he dirtied them, and held his silence. After all, the sooner they got back, the sooner he could run to find his father and see if he had time for a game.
Shindou said once that Touya ate ice cream like an old man. Maybe it was true - certainly Shindou or his friend Waya wouldn’t dream of holding an ice cream cone in one hand and a napkin in the other, deftly catching the melted trickles as they made their way down the cone. That said, Touya never went home with a stained shirt, either. He hadn’t managed it, one time, and his mother had simply looked at the white smudge and sighed. It hadn’t happened again.
Maybe those years of strict timetables and careful playtimes have left their mark. Certainly he has never experienced the easy companionship that most boys his age seemed to share with their classmates. That said, he doesn’t particularly want to be dragged out for burgers every evening or waste hours following someone else downtown. He’d far rather spend his weekend on a go marathon with Shindou and maybe Yashiro.
He doesn’t think he’s too reserved either. After all, Ichikawa throws the two of them out of the salon on a regular basis for being too rowdy and behaving like children.
Maybe he’s done things in a slightly strange order and maybe he has missed out on some things. Maybe he isn’t normal, either.
But then, if he was normal, he wouldn’t play go.
Maybe the suits were always a good idea, after all.
by thephoenixboy
There are times when Touya passes the groups of teenagers in the streets on the weekends and wonders where they’re going. Is there a new movie playing at the theatre, a game at the stadium? Are they just going to hang out in the park or downtown? Their existence seems so separate from his own that it’s hard to believe that they’re the same age.
There are times when he wonders if he can lay the blame squarely at the feet of his suit. Suits, rather, as he has grown out of more than a few since he started wearing them to help out at his father’s go salon.
When he was very small, he hated wearing them, hated the stiff collars and the too-long sleeves with ‘room to grow in to’. His father had taken him aside once before their daily game of go and spoke to him seriously. “Akira-kun, wearing a suit is a way of saying that you respect your opponent and that you respect the game.” After that he learned to live with it. It was true: Ogata-san always wore a suit when he came to the house to study with Touya’s father.
Over time, the suits stopped being something he even thought about, wearing them as naturally as most boys wore their casual t-shirts and shorts. It was something that made him different, just as he was marked out for playing an old man’s game like go.
When he walked to the shops with his mother, he’d sometimes look at the boys playing soccer in the park and wonder whether, if he asked, she’d mind stopping so he could play for a bit. Touya had always thought that he wouldn't be bad at soccer, if he practiced. After all, the simple strategies involved in moving eleven players around the pitch were nothing compared to the complex webs of strategy that his father’s mind could weave on a goban.
Every time, he remembered his clothes, remembered that his mother would be upset if he dirtied them, and held his silence. After all, the sooner they got back, the sooner he could run to find his father and see if he had time for a game.
Shindou said once that Touya ate ice cream like an old man. Maybe it was true - certainly Shindou or his friend Waya wouldn’t dream of holding an ice cream cone in one hand and a napkin in the other, deftly catching the melted trickles as they made their way down the cone. That said, Touya never went home with a stained shirt, either. He hadn’t managed it, one time, and his mother had simply looked at the white smudge and sighed. It hadn’t happened again.
Maybe those years of strict timetables and careful playtimes have left their mark. Certainly he has never experienced the easy companionship that most boys his age seemed to share with their classmates. That said, he doesn’t particularly want to be dragged out for burgers every evening or waste hours following someone else downtown. He’d far rather spend his weekend on a go marathon with Shindou and maybe Yashiro.
He doesn’t think he’s too reserved either. After all, Ichikawa throws the two of them out of the salon on a regular basis for being too rowdy and behaving like children.
Maybe he’s done things in a slightly strange order and maybe he has missed out on some things. Maybe he isn’t normal, either.
But then, if he was normal, he wouldn’t play go.
Maybe the suits were always a good idea, after all.