[amar]
FISHES TO WISHES
by qem_chibati
Touya Akira didn't often play online games, but he usually made an effort to at least check out once every month the Go websites. There were three things he liked to check up on. One, what was going on around the world of Go; two, if there were any interesting upcoming new Go players; and thirdly if there was any news about Sai, since even now Go players still liked to play around with matching up the secret identity - it was considered to be the great mystery of the Go world.
Though Shindou while he had admitted a connection was still remaining annoyingly closemouthed about the entire thing - despite the promise for someday, it had never come around.
Touya usually played under his own name so it was no surprise that he was challenged as soon as he logged on by a player called "xxx".
Touya Akira has accepted Game 135435#
The game had assigned "xxx" with black and Touya with white. The game was suspiciously familiar in how it started.
Touya Akira has sent a message:: Are you Sai? Or Shindou? is that you
There was no response, though after that rather familiar starting move, the one that had a long history with, Akira, he hadn’t really expected one.
The game went back and forth for a few turns. Akira frowned. Though the level of this game was quite high and the beginning the same it didn't have the same flawless style as Sai. The pattern that was already forming, was a much more familiar one.
Touya Akira has sent a message:: Shindou? Is that you?
Later still in the game Touya had his answer.
Touya Akira has sent a message:: Shindou I know its you, this is your go, no one else would be stupid enough to play a move like that tengen.
Despite, (or possibly because, if the grinding of Touya's teeth were any sign) of the inanity of the moves Touya lost by five moku - a huge loss further cementing the fact that it must be Shindou - who else could be that good while playing like that?
-
"And that officer was the first known game with the player xxx. Unfortunately I have never been able to validate whether it was Shindou or not, since xxx does not respond to any messages, and Meijin Shindou hasn't been seen since the match with Gosei Ochi, that morning." Kisei Touya Akira explained calmly across the table to the two seated policemen investigating Shindou Hikaru's disappearance.
-
"WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THAT DAMN SHINDOU!" Waya cursed with his fists emphasising his frustration on the table. "If he is skiving off matches to play online, I will kill him with my bare hands!"
"Calm down", Isumi soothed. "Shindou isn't the sort to do such a thing. He loves Go -"
“Yeah and 5 is a prime number - I get it” Waya mumbled.
"Though he did stop playing that one time..." Nase said cautiously this topic was sensitive amongst the group…
"But he stopped playing Go all together at that time" Isumi returned. "And his family is worried this time round - he hasn't been home in over two weeks - nor to the dinner Waya promised him after that last match for beating Ochi… Can you honestly imagine Shindou giving up on ramen and mochi?"
"True, true" Waya said now feeling tired. Hikaru was so much like his name, that without him the Go world seemed much darker, and no matter how hard they had tried, no one had been able to get through to that Sadame ring tone on Shindou’s phone.
-
Waya squirmed uncomfortably in his seat. The white haired officer (Kita-san?) was starting at him as he was talking and it was making him feel uncomfortable. The other officer, Naruse, Waya think he said he was, was being much nicer, but Waya suspected that this might be part of some cop act and the idea that they could possibly suspect him for being behind Shindou's disappearance was depressing.
"What do you know about the online go players xxx and Sai3?"
"Oh! They’re the same person!" Waya hastened to explain. "Sai3 is just a simpler way of saying xxx in person, but it is definitely referring to the user name xxx. See oh... Maybe twenty years ago now, there was this infamous player called Sai - no one knew who he was only that he was incredibly good, being able to beat the Meijin of the time. Except then you got all these crappy wannabe players that kept taking his name, so Sai2 became an insult... To avoid confusion, a couple of the Go players started referring to the original Sai as X - it made it less confusing when retelling the story to newcomers over the years. Some of his moves are similar to Sai, we're pretty sure xxx has studied Sai's kifu, as well as possibly Sai’s sources of inspiration from the Edo period - you can see traces in some of the moves he makes. So if X is Sai, then XXX is 3 times Sai, Sai3, step up from a stupid noob but still a noob because everyone thinks it's Shindou being an idiot. Aha, it started off as a joke in China but it spread across quite quickly in the month XXX has been online." Waya rambled feeling embarrassed at having to explain silly complicated Go player jokes.
"Who do you think the player is though?" Naruse continued to push.
"Um. Well most people are convinced it's Shindou. I'm not sure, he's definitely related to Shindou, but if it is actually Shindou then there's someone else helping him. I've known Shindou for the better part of two decades, and he really sucks at computers, where as this XXX is definitely very good at them."
"Oh" staring officer interjected his voice making Waya jump, used to being allowed to ramble, "and what makes you say that?"
"The same reason why everyone's convinced it's Shindou. He's utterly obsessed with Shindou's opponents - and any match Shindou's missed so far, this players been conspicuously online and at the first opportunity for a missed match he challenges them online. Those user names aren't well known - hell Kitajima-san was so freaked out he logged off registered a new user name right then and there and still got challenged when he logged back on. It's hast to be someone with some pretty mean hacking skills - it’s down right creepy the way they’re spying on us all."
"Oh?" skeptical officer raised an eyebrow, "I thought it was the playing style that had everyone convinced."
"I’m not convinced it’s completely Shindou’s style actually. The universal theory for Shindou's playing style is, you have to keep an open mind about the really dumb moves. Because sometimes it's a really dumb move, but sometimes it's actually the one that's going to win him the game if you don't pay it enough attention. That really troublesome playing style Sai3 definitely specializes in. But this guy, he's a little bit more graceful sometimes. I've noticed amongst the amateur players - he tends to focus less on a surprise strategy and more on graceful strength... The style is still related - same sorts of moves, just a different focus. It's not that easy to spot and if I hadn't been looking for it, I probably wouldn't have known."
"Why were you looking for it?" the other eyebrow was raised now.
"Because the only known thing this Sai3 person has said is "I'm still strong, aren't I?" - which was sent to the opponent he was playing by the user name of Zelda. The only known words the original Sai said online was to the user name Zelda - "I'm strong aren't I?" which combined with the times the player had been online - after school, weekends, holidays - was said to be the most convincing proof that the Sai player was a kid."
"And how do you know all this?"
Waya grinned. "I'm one of the biggest authorities on netGo, having play it for over twenty years since the webolution first came around and my first user name was Zelda - I was the original and the current one is an insei that I help teach, Nara Shikamaru."
"There was someone who suggested that the original Sai might be Shindou Hikaru.”
"I think whatever this is, it's related to the original Sai - but that phrase is now almost common knowledge, and Shindou - and those two have always been related since the very beginning. But it has to be at least two people in both cases. Back then Shindou really sucked at Go, and he still sucks at computers.”
-
It was the next person that the officers spoke to that proved to be most helpful. Honinbou Ogata, who had experienced much frustration with anonymous Go players in his past, had written to the Go servers in question and had gained information about the IP address the player XXX consistently used.
Doing some further IP tracking, Ogata had turned up the name of an Internet Café. Unfortunately investigating the place hadn’t turned up any results. Ogata had staked the café out - which utterly stunk, but hadn’t seen a sign of another person other than the manager Mitani-san - all while XXX was playing - with the café’s IP address.
Mitani-san had been a lovely woman, who was quite concerned about the smell saying that the owner had fixed it only the other day and knew Shindou quite well - he had been school friends with her younger brother and his wife, and had taken to playing Go against the owner Sakurazaku-san every now and then. Unfortunately the last time she claimed to have seen Shindou was a week before Shindou had disappeared.
-
Mitani-san, confirmed what Ogata said, while apologizing for the strong scent of decay, saying that the place was going to be fumigated on Friday to find out what was causing it. “The owner always manages to fix it with one of her air freshener tags, but the smell comes back too quickly.”
Kita and Naru looked at each other and nodded slightly.
Kita asked if they could come inside and have a look around and the Manager Mitani-san agreed quite easily.
It was located towards the back, where the floor boards were a little loose, that Kita was able to pry the boards up - only to find a dismembered arm.
Naruse was on his cell phone, speed dialing the head office, calling in for forensics and arranging for a warrant, as Mitani-san fainted in horror in the background.
-
XXX would like to play a game with you.
Touya selected the cancel button then went to send a private message to the user name.
Touya Akira:: Listen Shindou, you sick freak, everyone is worried about you, go home and stop playing these stupid excuses of a Go game!”
XXX:: Sorry Touya-san but the one who controls the computer is not Shindou-san but instead I, the great Watanuki-sama. Please will you play this one last game? It’s important.
Touya Akira:: Is this some sort of a sick joke?
But only the pop-up box saying “XXX would like to play a game with you.” responded.
“I won, I was too angry to let that player get the best of me and after that I went away from the computer - Tidal, who I think is Honinbou Ogata, challenged XXX to a game. When I came back, he’d disappeared - before the game had been finished, Ogata winning by a time out forfeit from his opponent. The playing style for that match was more graceful than Meijin Shindou’s usual game, but the previous one was definitely him. No one knows Shindou’s Go like I do.”
The Keisei’s face looked downcast as he continued. “As far as I’m aware since you’ve found Shindou’s body, no one has seen any activity of xxx being online at all, though he was logged in until the igopro server went down for maintenance.”
-
“ARGH!” Naru screamed in private. Much to his and Kita-san’s annoyance, they’d solved one mystery only to uncover more. They’d found Shindou’s body, or at least they thought they did. A clear glass box of approximately the same mass as Shindou, identified his death as being another victim of the international serial killer X - who was very soon to become known as Sai since no one else could be thought to be the sick bastard playing Shindou Hikaru online. The arm in the computer shop was an oddity - the first amongst X's victims to have body parts located elsewhere, but the owner of the internet café Sakurazaku Setsuna the most likely suspect had gone completely missing.
They’d found a Trojan horse on the computer - a program labeled flasher - right above where the arm had been found. Before the program activated it’s destruction sequence which overwrote the data across the entire computer to the point where the computer forensics team were having trouble recovering the original image of the hard-drive, they learned that it had been sending data to another server called streaker that had since been taken off-line and sold to another company - then sold again in the street computer markets to which the police had been unable to locate.
The company that had provided the server apologized but it had been a planned upgrade for over a year - and the payment address that they gave the police did not exist - being only an abandoned field.
This XXX was definitely suspicious, while they’d assisted with drawing attention to the Internet Café which otherwise would have been ignored - Mitani Yuki and his wife Akari had no idea that Shindou Hikaru met with the owner of his sisters workplace or that Shindou was even a regular visitor of the café, there was the question of why they hadn’t come to the police directly as well as the fact that, that particular program had been located over a particular arm.
None of Shindou’s group knew of anyone who spelled their name as April 1st, other than in a manga.
It was like they had been chasing ghosts, but that was ridiculous and something that could only come out of a manga. A bad manga with no plot, no climax and no resolution, since they still hadn't been able to locate the answers they needed.
But that couldn't be possible. Right?
by qem_chibati
Touya Akira didn't often play online games, but he usually made an effort to at least check out once every month the Go websites. There were three things he liked to check up on. One, what was going on around the world of Go; two, if there were any interesting upcoming new Go players; and thirdly if there was any news about Sai, since even now Go players still liked to play around with matching up the secret identity - it was considered to be the great mystery of the Go world.
Though Shindou while he had admitted a connection was still remaining annoyingly closemouthed about the entire thing - despite the promise for someday, it had never come around.
Touya usually played under his own name so it was no surprise that he was challenged as soon as he logged on by a player called "xxx".
Touya Akira has accepted Game 135435#
The game had assigned "xxx" with black and Touya with white. The game was suspiciously familiar in how it started.
Touya Akira has sent a message:: Are you Sai? Or Shindou? is that you
There was no response, though after that rather familiar starting move, the one that had a long history with, Akira, he hadn’t really expected one.
The game went back and forth for a few turns. Akira frowned. Though the level of this game was quite high and the beginning the same it didn't have the same flawless style as Sai. The pattern that was already forming, was a much more familiar one.
Touya Akira has sent a message:: Shindou? Is that you?
Later still in the game Touya had his answer.
Touya Akira has sent a message:: Shindou I know its you, this is your go, no one else would be stupid enough to play a move like that tengen.
Despite, (or possibly because, if the grinding of Touya's teeth were any sign) of the inanity of the moves Touya lost by five moku - a huge loss further cementing the fact that it must be Shindou - who else could be that good while playing like that?
-
"And that officer was the first known game with the player xxx. Unfortunately I have never been able to validate whether it was Shindou or not, since xxx does not respond to any messages, and Meijin Shindou hasn't been seen since the match with Gosei Ochi, that morning." Kisei Touya Akira explained calmly across the table to the two seated policemen investigating Shindou Hikaru's disappearance.
-
"WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THAT DAMN SHINDOU!" Waya cursed with his fists emphasising his frustration on the table. "If he is skiving off matches to play online, I will kill him with my bare hands!"
"Calm down", Isumi soothed. "Shindou isn't the sort to do such a thing. He loves Go -"
“Yeah and 5 is a prime number - I get it” Waya mumbled.
"Though he did stop playing that one time..." Nase said cautiously this topic was sensitive amongst the group…
"But he stopped playing Go all together at that time" Isumi returned. "And his family is worried this time round - he hasn't been home in over two weeks - nor to the dinner Waya promised him after that last match for beating Ochi… Can you honestly imagine Shindou giving up on ramen and mochi?"
"True, true" Waya said now feeling tired. Hikaru was so much like his name, that without him the Go world seemed much darker, and no matter how hard they had tried, no one had been able to get through to that Sadame ring tone on Shindou’s phone.
-
Waya squirmed uncomfortably in his seat. The white haired officer (Kita-san?) was starting at him as he was talking and it was making him feel uncomfortable. The other officer, Naruse, Waya think he said he was, was being much nicer, but Waya suspected that this might be part of some cop act and the idea that they could possibly suspect him for being behind Shindou's disappearance was depressing.
"What do you know about the online go players xxx and Sai3?"
"Oh! They’re the same person!" Waya hastened to explain. "Sai3 is just a simpler way of saying xxx in person, but it is definitely referring to the user name xxx. See oh... Maybe twenty years ago now, there was this infamous player called Sai - no one knew who he was only that he was incredibly good, being able to beat the Meijin of the time. Except then you got all these crappy wannabe players that kept taking his name, so Sai2 became an insult... To avoid confusion, a couple of the Go players started referring to the original Sai as X - it made it less confusing when retelling the story to newcomers over the years. Some of his moves are similar to Sai, we're pretty sure xxx has studied Sai's kifu, as well as possibly Sai’s sources of inspiration from the Edo period - you can see traces in some of the moves he makes. So if X is Sai, then XXX is 3 times Sai, Sai3, step up from a stupid noob but still a noob because everyone thinks it's Shindou being an idiot. Aha, it started off as a joke in China but it spread across quite quickly in the month XXX has been online." Waya rambled feeling embarrassed at having to explain silly complicated Go player jokes.
"Who do you think the player is though?" Naruse continued to push.
"Um. Well most people are convinced it's Shindou. I'm not sure, he's definitely related to Shindou, but if it is actually Shindou then there's someone else helping him. I've known Shindou for the better part of two decades, and he really sucks at computers, where as this XXX is definitely very good at them."
"Oh" staring officer interjected his voice making Waya jump, used to being allowed to ramble, "and what makes you say that?"
"The same reason why everyone's convinced it's Shindou. He's utterly obsessed with Shindou's opponents - and any match Shindou's missed so far, this players been conspicuously online and at the first opportunity for a missed match he challenges them online. Those user names aren't well known - hell Kitajima-san was so freaked out he logged off registered a new user name right then and there and still got challenged when he logged back on. It's hast to be someone with some pretty mean hacking skills - it’s down right creepy the way they’re spying on us all."
"Oh?" skeptical officer raised an eyebrow, "I thought it was the playing style that had everyone convinced."
"I’m not convinced it’s completely Shindou’s style actually. The universal theory for Shindou's playing style is, you have to keep an open mind about the really dumb moves. Because sometimes it's a really dumb move, but sometimes it's actually the one that's going to win him the game if you don't pay it enough attention. That really troublesome playing style Sai3 definitely specializes in. But this guy, he's a little bit more graceful sometimes. I've noticed amongst the amateur players - he tends to focus less on a surprise strategy and more on graceful strength... The style is still related - same sorts of moves, just a different focus. It's not that easy to spot and if I hadn't been looking for it, I probably wouldn't have known."
"Why were you looking for it?" the other eyebrow was raised now.
"Because the only known thing this Sai3 person has said is "I'm still strong, aren't I?" - which was sent to the opponent he was playing by the user name of Zelda. The only known words the original Sai said online was to the user name Zelda - "I'm strong aren't I?" which combined with the times the player had been online - after school, weekends, holidays - was said to be the most convincing proof that the Sai player was a kid."
"And how do you know all this?"
Waya grinned. "I'm one of the biggest authorities on netGo, having play it for over twenty years since the webolution first came around and my first user name was Zelda - I was the original and the current one is an insei that I help teach, Nara Shikamaru."
"There was someone who suggested that the original Sai might be Shindou Hikaru.”
"I think whatever this is, it's related to the original Sai - but that phrase is now almost common knowledge, and Shindou - and those two have always been related since the very beginning. But it has to be at least two people in both cases. Back then Shindou really sucked at Go, and he still sucks at computers.”
-
It was the next person that the officers spoke to that proved to be most helpful. Honinbou Ogata, who had experienced much frustration with anonymous Go players in his past, had written to the Go servers in question and had gained information about the IP address the player XXX consistently used.
Doing some further IP tracking, Ogata had turned up the name of an Internet Café. Unfortunately investigating the place hadn’t turned up any results. Ogata had staked the café out - which utterly stunk, but hadn’t seen a sign of another person other than the manager Mitani-san - all while XXX was playing - with the café’s IP address.
Mitani-san had been a lovely woman, who was quite concerned about the smell saying that the owner had fixed it only the other day and knew Shindou quite well - he had been school friends with her younger brother and his wife, and had taken to playing Go against the owner Sakurazaku-san every now and then. Unfortunately the last time she claimed to have seen Shindou was a week before Shindou had disappeared.
-
Mitani-san, confirmed what Ogata said, while apologizing for the strong scent of decay, saying that the place was going to be fumigated on Friday to find out what was causing it. “The owner always manages to fix it with one of her air freshener tags, but the smell comes back too quickly.”
Kita and Naru looked at each other and nodded slightly.
Kita asked if they could come inside and have a look around and the Manager Mitani-san agreed quite easily.
It was located towards the back, where the floor boards were a little loose, that Kita was able to pry the boards up - only to find a dismembered arm.
Naruse was on his cell phone, speed dialing the head office, calling in for forensics and arranging for a warrant, as Mitani-san fainted in horror in the background.
-
XXX would like to play a game with you.
Touya selected the cancel button then went to send a private message to the user name.
Touya Akira:: Listen Shindou, you sick freak, everyone is worried about you, go home and stop playing these stupid excuses of a Go game!”
XXX:: Sorry Touya-san but the one who controls the computer is not Shindou-san but instead I, the great Watanuki-sama. Please will you play this one last game? It’s important.
Touya Akira:: Is this some sort of a sick joke?
But only the pop-up box saying “XXX would like to play a game with you.” responded.
“I won, I was too angry to let that player get the best of me and after that I went away from the computer - Tidal, who I think is Honinbou Ogata, challenged XXX to a game. When I came back, he’d disappeared - before the game had been finished, Ogata winning by a time out forfeit from his opponent. The playing style for that match was more graceful than Meijin Shindou’s usual game, but the previous one was definitely him. No one knows Shindou’s Go like I do.”
The Keisei’s face looked downcast as he continued. “As far as I’m aware since you’ve found Shindou’s body, no one has seen any activity of xxx being online at all, though he was logged in until the igopro server went down for maintenance.”
-
“ARGH!” Naru screamed in private. Much to his and Kita-san’s annoyance, they’d solved one mystery only to uncover more. They’d found Shindou’s body, or at least they thought they did. A clear glass box of approximately the same mass as Shindou, identified his death as being another victim of the international serial killer X - who was very soon to become known as Sai since no one else could be thought to be the sick bastard playing Shindou Hikaru online. The arm in the computer shop was an oddity - the first amongst X's victims to have body parts located elsewhere, but the owner of the internet café Sakurazaku Setsuna the most likely suspect had gone completely missing.
They’d found a Trojan horse on the computer - a program labeled flasher - right above where the arm had been found. Before the program activated it’s destruction sequence which overwrote the data across the entire computer to the point where the computer forensics team were having trouble recovering the original image of the hard-drive, they learned that it had been sending data to another server called streaker that had since been taken off-line and sold to another company - then sold again in the street computer markets to which the police had been unable to locate.
The company that had provided the server apologized but it had been a planned upgrade for over a year - and the payment address that they gave the police did not exist - being only an abandoned field.
This XXX was definitely suspicious, while they’d assisted with drawing attention to the Internet Café which otherwise would have been ignored - Mitani Yuki and his wife Akari had no idea that Shindou Hikaru met with the owner of his sisters workplace or that Shindou was even a regular visitor of the café, there was the question of why they hadn’t come to the police directly as well as the fact that, that particular program had been located over a particular arm.
None of Shindou’s group knew of anyone who spelled their name as April 1st, other than in a manga.
It was like they had been chasing ghosts, but that was ridiculous and something that could only come out of a manga. A bad manga with no plot, no climax and no resolution, since they still hadn't been able to locate the answers they needed.
But that couldn't be possible. Right?