[Jagi]
by metisket
All the Pieces
Waya got a phone call from Touya Akira on Monday. Looking back on it, that was clearly the point at which he should have given up on the week.
* * *
“Of course Shindou and Touya are on a different level.”
“Absolutely. There’s no comparison. Everyone else just trails after them.”
“Ogata and Kurata have stalled, no question.”
“Kuwabara is barely hanging on!”
“Shindou and Touya are the ones who are the future of go. What’s Go Weekly calling them? The new wave?”
“Rising stars! Not like us old men.”
Yes, yes, we all know how shiny they are, Waya thought irritably. They’re freaking blinding. Do we really have to talk about it all the damn time?
Soon any old men hanging around the Institute drooling over Shindou and Touya would be in danger of having Waya chuck a goke at them, respect for elders be damned. It had been three years since that first Hokuto Cup, and they were still getting more popular by the day.
It was disgusting.
“Hey, Waya! You done with your game already? Man, did you crush him or something?”
Oh. And there it was, the old familiar guilt that came of thinking resentful thoughts about Shindou and then being confronted with his cheerful, friendly face.
Lying face, Waya reminded himself. Cheerful, friendly, lying face.
The reminder didn’t make him feel any less guilty.
“What are you talking about?” He snapped. Damn guilt, anyway. “If you’re out here, you crushed your guy, too. And you were playing Saeki-san! I was just playing some random 2-dan, but you! Traitor!”
“I’m not a traitor!” Shindou flailed. “I didn’t mean to!”
“You’re saying you crushed him accidentally? Oh, yeah, that’ll go over well. Bring that up at Morishita-sensei’s, why don’t you. Make the poor guy cry in front of everyone.”
“That’s not what I meant!” Shindou insisted, even though it obviously had been.
Waya hated geniuses. He hated them, he hated being surrounded by them, and most of all he hated that he wasn’t one of them. He thought he could have put up with everything just fine if he had been.
“Anyway, we’re both done early,” Shindou said. “So let’s get ramen!”
Then again, maybe Waya’s problem with Shindou wasn’t the depressing level of genius. Maybe it was the ramen obsession.
“Okonomiyaki or nothing,” Waya said firmly. You had to be firm with Shindou, otherwise he’d make that face and you’d cave.
Shindou’s expression went dangerously blank for just a second, then the smile came back. “No way. What’s the point of getting okonomiyaki anywhere but Hiroshima?”
When the hell were you in Hiroshima, you homebody? Waya wondered. Unless someone shipped him away for a game, Shindou didn’t willingly leave Tokyo…ever, as far as Waya could tell. And he didn’t remember Shindou playing any games in Hiroshima.
No point in asking Shindou about it, though. No point in asking Shindou about anything.
“Next you’re gonna say what’s the point of getting beer anywhere but Sapporo, and then I will hurt you.”
“Ogata-san was on a rant last month about how Sapporo beer isn’t even brewed in Sapporo anymore and the world is ending,” Shindou said. “You’re going to turn out a big old drunk just like him.” He was apparently pleased with the thought. Waya did not understand Shindou’s relationship with Ogata, and he deeply did not want to.
“In one more minute, Shindou, I’m going to drag you to okonomiyaki and force-feed you,” he warned.
“Sushi?” Shindou wheedled. “You like sushi! It’s not ramen! We can-”
He was blessedly interrupted by his gagaku ringtone.
And to think, before Shindou got one, Waya would have said that getting a gagaku ringtone was impossible. It was a very Shindou combination of the traditional and the tacky, though. Waya was sort of impressed.
“Oh, hey, Akari! What’s up? Oh. Yeah, totally. Totally! I can make it…uh. Thursday? Like around 4? Awesome. Oh, jeez, Akari, no. You can’t pay me. Because I’ll throw the money away in the bushes, don’t be stupid. Shut up! Uh huh. I said Thursday. I said! Right. Okay. See ya.”
He hung up and scowled at the phone. “Stupid Akari,” he muttered.
“Who’s Akari?” Waya asked. Clearly someone Shindou knew well. Clearly someone Shindou had known for a long time, because he’d just completely reverted to kid mode, there.
“Girl I know,” he said carelessly, then grinned at Waya. “Sushi?”
A girl he knows, sure. A girl he knows well enough to call by her given name. A girl who was offering to pay him money for…most likely go. But possibly dinner or sexual favors. Who knew?
And Shindou probably didn’t even think of this as keeping secrets. Letting on as little as possible was just reflex for him.
Waya realized he was missing Isumi. If Isumi had been there, he would have smiled his oh, Shindou smile at Waya. And then it would have been funny instead of…instead of…
Gah.
“Fine, sushi!” Waya snapped.
Shindou gave him the innocent eyes. “Did something happen with your game? You seem like you’re kind of in a lousy mood.”
Of course. If there was something bothering him, what could it possibly be but go?
As far as Waya was concerned, go was a career. It was a good career; it was a career he enjoyed, but, at the end of the day, it was mainly the method by which he fed himself. Maybe some of the fun had gotten sucked out of it when it became a thing he had to do instead of a thing he chose to do. Except he’d chosen to have to do it. God, maybe he just couldn’t be made happy.
Whatever, he still really liked go, even if it was his job. He scored major points over every salaryman in creation.
He didn’t know what the hell go was for Shindou. Life, maybe. Which was just as true of Touya, but at least with Touya it made some kind of sense, because Touya’s whole upbringing had been about go. Unlike Shindou, who’d randomly flung himself into it at the age of twelve like a man possessed.
The whole thing made Waya’s head hurt.
“My game was fine, sushi is fine, everything is fine!” he insisted.
Shindou looked dubious. “When’s Isumi-san getting back?” he asked.
Waya never could figure out a thing about Shindou, and yet Shindou saw right through him. How was that fair?
“Sunday,” he answered immediately.
Shindou just nodded. It was only natural that Shindou would understand; he was even worse than Waya with the freaky dependency. In fact, it was strange that Touya hadn’t shown up yet. Realistically speaking, Shindou had been bound to crush poor Saeki pretty quickly, and Touya should have been waiting around.
As if conjured by the thought, Shindou’s phone rang again.
Waya remembered when Shindou had first gotten that phone. No one had been able to talk directly to him for months. You’d had to go around the corner and call him if you actually wanted his attention.
“Touya!” Shindou said fondly into the phone. “How’d it go?”
Oh, right. Touya was at some Meijin Tournament thing in Nagoya. So that was why Waya was getting this quality one-on-one time with Shindou.
Which he’d never really had, he realized. Even back when they were insei, Isumi had been around. And lately, there was Touya. God, there was always Touya. Waya had never spent much more than ten minutes alone with Shindou in all the time they’d known each other. He hardly knew how to act around him without a buffer. Strange.
He was distracted from this train of thought by the opening of another Shindou/Touya game discussion death match.
“Mm, that’s because you cling to the corners like they’re love of your life,” Shindou told the phone.
That was a total lie. Waya could faintly hear Touya shrieking as much on the other end of the line.
“Uh, okay. If that’s what you have to tell yourself. But admit it, he just about wiped you out after that stupid ko fight in the bottom right-”
Waya had used Shindou’s phone, and he was aware that the sound was set annoyingly low. Which made the fact that he could hear Touya from a couple feet away really impressive.
Shindou was smiling at the phone. Shindou, lest there be any doubt, was weird.
“Yeah, yeah,” he murmured into the tirade, which miraculously shut Touya up. “When are you getting back?” He frowned at the answer, looking surprisingly upset. “Huh. That long?”
Shindou almost never looked upset. And when he did, he had the alarming habit of, you know, crying in public and quitting go and crazy shit like that. So Waya was inclined to be a little nervous about this.
“No, It’s fine.”
It was clearly not fine.
“I said I’ll be fine! Jeez, it’s been-” he glanced up at Waya and obviously cut off that sentence. “It’s been years. What? Going to lunch with Waya. You…? Uh. I’m not sure he…. Okay? Hang on.”
He lowered the phone and gave Waya a look halfway between alarmed and amused. “He wants to talk to you,” he said, then tossed the phone to Waya and wandered off. Or ran away, depending on how you wanted to look at it.
Shindou, you jerk.
“What’s up?” Waya said dubiously to the phone. It wasn’t quite that he and Touya didn’t get along. It was more that they didn’t even exist on the same plane.
“Waya,” Touya said, sounding as much like a distant bastard as he ever did. “I’m sorry to bother you out of the blue like this.”
And he paused, like there was any answer Waya could give to that.
“It’s…fine?” he tried.
“Everyone seems to think so today,” Touya snapped. Waya let that one go, though, because he could tell it was directed at Shindou. He had sympathy for that. “If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like you to look out for Shindou until I get back on Friday,” Touya went on.
“You what?” Waya yelped.
“I’d like you to look out for Shindou,” Touya repeated in the tone of a guy rapidly losing patience. He didn’t have any right to lose patience; he’d just randomly asked Waya to babysit his rival. What the hell? “This is a bad time of year for him.”
“Why?” Waya asked without much hope of a sane answer.
“He doesn’t like the spring,” Touya said irritably. News to Waya. “Look, if it is too much trouble, I’ll cancel my teaching games and-”
“Whoa whoa whoa!” Cancel his teaching games? Piss off the entire Institute? The hell? Standing between Shindou and Touya had to be the scariest place on earth. “I’ll do it! I mean, I guess I will, I still don’t really have a clue what you want me to do, but…”
“Thank you,” Touya said. He really sounded sincere about it, too. Relieved, even.
Freaky.
“If you could check on him once a day. Is Isumi-san available?”
Is Isumi-san available. Who said things like that?
“He’s in China,” Waya said. “And Shindou’ll want to know why I’m suddenly stalking him.”
“Tell him I made you,” Touya said, in his scary competition voice. “Thank you again, Waya.”
He hung up, and Waya stared blankly at the phone like it might tell him what the hell that had been about. It didn’t. It just sat there being obnoxiously yellow. Keeping its secrets, then. A lot like its owner and that idiot Touya.
The damn secrets. Why? Was it go players, Japanese people, just people in general? Waya had no idea. All he knew was that people in TV dramas always seemed to share meaningful thoughts or come to deep and silent understandings, more or less like Touya and Shindou had. Meanwhile, all Waya had managed to do was learn when to shut up and stop asking.
Maybe he’d been brought up wrong.
Shindou took this time to saunter back, looking not nearly as guilty as he ought to. “So what did he say?” he asked.
Waya thought about all these secrets. He thought about how much they had always, always pissed him off. He decided he didn’t want any part of that, brought up wrong or not.
“He told me to stalk you until he gets back,” he said.
“He what?” Shindou yelped.
There. That had worked out well.
* * *
T minus three days until Touya got back.
“Since when do you listen to Touya, anyway?” Shindou muttered, as bad-tempered as he ever got. Like he was the one being put out.
“He made weird threats,” Waya insisted, not a bit happier about it. “And anything he did would have been my fault, and that would have been even more irritating than following you around. What the hell is your problem with spring, anyway?”
“I don’t have a problem with spring; Touya’s crazy,” Shindou blatantly lied, eyes wandering over the titles of the books on the shelf in front of him.
This would turn out to be an entire week of lying and question dodging, Waya just knew it. He was going to end up killing Shindou, and then Touya would kill him, and then Touya would go to jail. Weekly Go would have a headline that read The Future of Go Destroyed in Massive Bloodbath.
“Are you planning on buying anything, or are we just going to stand here and think about it all day?” Waya asked impatiently.
“Nobody asked you to come with me,” Shindou said.
Sulking. He was sulking.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Waya snapped.
“Anyway, they hardly ever have anything new; it’s annoying,” Shindou went on, ignoring him. “I’ve read these already.”
Waya took that in, then slowly turned to study the huge selection of go books the massive Kinokuniya in Shinjuku contained. Ridiculously huge. Waya would have thought it would take a person decades to read them all.
One thing was for sure. You couldn’t say Shindou didn’t work for it.
“So what do you recommend?” he asked, feeling a little dazed.
Shindou blinked at him, distracted from his funk. “Oh. Well, Touya-sensei’s, obviously. Especially his new one; did you read that?”
Waya hadn’t even known that Touya-sensei had written another book. He shook his head.
“It’s awesome!” Shindou burbled. Moods like quicksilver, Shindou. “Because he’s been all over the world now, you know? I think he’s gotten a chance to study more takes on go than just about anybody. So he’s got all this-like, he says Koreans always teach this and that, which is way better than the Japanese way, or the Chinese do it this way, or here’s a talk he had with that bastard Ko Young-Ha about the new rules. Oh, and old stuff, too, like what Go Seigen said about fuseki theory back when they were first playing with komi, which is really cool. It’s totally worth it. And Ichiryu-sensei’s book isn’t half bad, either, but it’s not…he just doesn’t own go the way Touya-sensei and Kuwabara-sensei do. Kuwabara-sensei only wrote one book a while ago. It’s pretty good, though. It has a bunch of weird dirty jokes based on joseki that are seriously the biggest geek-out I’ve ever seen in print. And that’s saying something.”
Waya blinked. In spite of the fact that Shindou never seemed to think about anything but go, it was surprisingly hard to picture him studying as much as he clearly did. Especially since he was still so clueless when it came to things like…everything not directly related to playing go.
“Which one’s Touya-sensei’s new book?” he asked. Shindou bounced over to the right shelf and then passed the book to Waya. With enthusiasm, like a good salesman.
Maybe this stalking Shindou thing wouldn’t be so bad, after all.
“Ramen?” Shindou asked brightly.
Waya sighed.
* * *
Wednesday. Touya would be back in two days.
Shindou seemed determined to make them as painful as possible.
“I always go to Touya’s go salon on Wednesdays,” he said stubbornly.
“Yeah, and that’s fine, but you didn’t warn me that lady was going to freak the hell out,” Waya said.
“Well.” Shindou had the grace to look embarrassed. “I didn’t know she was gonna…Ichikawa-san is really, um. She’s a big Touya fan. But I didn’t know she’d think I was replacing him. That’s crazy, anyway. Why would I come to his go salon to replace him?”
“Yes, that was crazy,” Waya agreed. “She acted like you were cheating on him or-oh, my God. Are you sleeping with Touya?”
Shindou gave him the wide-eyed look of false innocence. “Are you asking because you’re sleeping with Isumi-san?”
“What!?”
“I just thought you might want company with the gay thing.”
“I never said I was gay!”
“Okay.”
“Isumi-san! Why Isumi-san!?”
“Uh, if you’re not, then whatever. Sorry for mentioning it.”
“You!”
“Do you want to get ramen?”
“Oh no, I know what you’re doing now.”
“…Trying to get you to pay for ramen?”
“Dodging the question. You’re a huge question-dodger, is what you are, this is just like the Sai thing.”
“You never asked me if I was sleeping with Sai. Heh. That would have been really weird, because we were, like, thirteen. Heh.”
“Oh my God, Shindou. Do you even know how to answer a question?”
“He’s my best friend.”
“Sai?”
“…Touya. Is my best friend now.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
“And yet you still haven’t answered the question.”
“Sure I have. Ramen?”
“Shindou. I hate you.”
“Aw, Isumi-san will be back on Sunday!”
“What does that have to do with anything!?”
* * *
One more day. One more day.
“I promised Akari on Monday, back when I didn’t know I was going to have a stalker all week,” Shindou said. “So we’re going whether you like it or not.”
He was being surprising hostile about this, Waya thought. He’d expected that Shindou would calm down about it, but actually he was getting worse as the week went on. As irritating as Shindou could sometimes be, he was pretty good-humored. Apparently having someone follow him around really got to him. Waya had to wonder if he’d had a weird stalker experience at some point.
It wasn’t like he’d have told anybody about it, if he had.
“She’ll want to pay you,” Shindou was saying. “Don’t let her. Her go club is completely broke; no way can they afford us. I hope she goes to a university with a good go club. So far she’s only ever been in these tiny ones.”
“How do you know this girl?” Waya asked, feeling like he might get an answer now that he was actually going to meet her.
“Huh?” Shindou looked like he couldn’t imagine why Waya would want to know, which sort of made Waya want to punch him in the face. “She was my neighbor when we were kids.”
“And she just happened to play go?” Maybe it was something all the kids on the block had picked up at the same time.
“She started playing after I did. I don’t know why; she was never all that good at it.”
She’d probably learned so she would have something in common with Shindou. Waya wasn’t sure why that thought was so depressing.
“Hikaru!” said the cute girl who opened the door, with a bright smile that Waya felt was utterly, utterly wasted on Shindou. “I’m so glad you could come!”
Shindou smiled. “No big deal,” he said.
No big deal for two pros to show up and tutor your go club for free. Sure. Waya couldn’t decide if Shindou was being generous or stupid.
“Of course it’s a big deal, Hikaru,” she said impatiently. Waya was proud. “So who did you bring with you?”
“Oh.” Shindou had clearly forgotten introductions were needed; Shindou should never be allowed out to torment society. “Waya. Waya Yoshitaka, he’s a 4-dan.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Waya-sensei,” she said with perfect politeness, which proved that whatever was wrong with Shindou wasn’t the fault of the neighborhood he’d grown up in. “I’m Fujisaki Akari.”
“Fujisaki-san,” Waya said. “Nice to meet you. You don’t have to call me sensei.” It was weird. She was Shindou’s friend.
She raised an eyebrow. “Waya-kun?”
“Can we play go already?” Shindou cut in. The years might pass, he might act like a professional at random moments, but in his heart, he was still a brat.
“You’re the one standing around in the hallway,” Fujisaki pointed out.
It turned out that standing in the hallway had been the smart choice. The minute they got inside the room, they were swarmed by, like, six squealing girls who all wanted Shindou’s autograph. Apparently this was just the girls’ half of the club.
This was a definite step down from the old men in the Institute.
They weren’t bad at go, though, once they’d calmed the hell down. Made sense, really. How many years of professional, free tutoring had they gotten? And Shindou was a surprisingly good teacher. Focused.
Weird that he’d do this kind of thing, though. Waya would have pegged him as the kind of guy who left the past in the past and burned all his bridges behind him. But then, the rumor was he was obsessed with Shuusaku. You couldn’t get more past-loving than that.
Being confused about Shindou was nothing new. Waya was used to it. And apart from that, tutoring the go club turned out to be kind of fun.
“Did you do anything for Golden Week, Hikaru?” Fujisaki asked as they cleaned up afterward. From the look of it, she’d wanted a private chat; she’d just about frog marched the rest of the club out the door.
Shindou frowned at her. “Why would I?”
Fujisaki rolled her eyes. “How about you, Waya-kun?”
“I’ve been stalking Shindou for Golden Week,” Waya explained.
Fujisaki, he thought, must be really used to Shindou by now. The only reaction that statement got out of her was a quirked eyebrow and a “Riiiiight.”
“Anyway,” she said, dropping that subject for the good of all, “our mothers are both complaining that they never see you, Hikaru, so you’re supposed to come for dinner.”
“Why does your mother want to see me?” Shindou demanded suspiciously.
“‘Akari, dear, when is Hikaru going to make an honest woman of you?’” Fujisaki said in a high-pitched voice. Presumably a mother-imitation.
“Akari!” Shindou wailed. “Are you ever going to tell her about Tsutsui-sempai? This is crazy! Do you know the looks she gives me?”
“It serves you right,” Fujisaki said calmly. She was a pro at bullying Shindou, and on top of that, she was decent at go. Waya was really getting to like her, despite all the squealing girls she’d inflicted on him.
“How does it serve me right?” Shindou wanted to know.
“And she’ll find out about Kimihiro when I invite her to the wedding,” Fujisaki said, ignoring him.
“You’re getting married?” Shindou brightened up.
“When I feel like it,” she answered quellingly. “I’m only in high school, Hikaru. I won’t get married for years.” Shindou’s shoulders slumped.
Waya felt like he ought to be taking notes on her technique.
* * *
Waya went with Shindou to the airport. To pass him off. To prove that he’d done his duty. Maybe to grab Touya by the collar and scream how could you do this to me?
He thought, later, that he really should have known better than to push his luck like that. If he’d had any sense, he would have run at the first opportunity.
“So I was thinking,” Shindou said, as they stood outside the gate and waited for Touya.
“Be still my heart,” Waya muttered, then jumped back to dodge Shindou’s elbow.
“Your problem,” Shindou continued pointedly. “Is that you let yourself get distracted. You’re pretty much always right the first time, but you let people put you off, and then you screw up.”
Waya stared, but Shindou, as usual, was giving nothing away; he was looking vaguely off toward a stand of discount watches. “Is this supposed to be my problem in go or in life?” Waya asked. And what the hell brought this on? he wailed to himself.
Shindou turned back to him, eyebrows raised. “Same difference,” he said. And then, just because Waya wasn’t blindsided enough, “You have good instincts. That’s what Sai said about you.”
Waya experienced a moment of what he feared might be complete brain death, but no, because then his mind shifted into hysterical high gear, rattling off all the reasons that simple Shindou-statement was utterly impossible.
He’d played Sai online the once, but so had a lot of other people. It hadn’t been a memorable game. He’d definitely never met Sai. Even if he had met Sai (which he hadn’t), why would Sai have then told Shindou about him-him! Waya Yoshitaka, who, in Sai’s eyes, was synonymous with nobody? He wouldn’t. And they’d never met. And if Shindou had just said that to mess with him, death.
“I see it’s only taken you a week to drive Waya insane,” came Touya Akira’s voice. Touya had snuck up on him when he was busy with hysteria, and because Touya and Shindou were mind-linked, he was going to interrupt the conversation now before Waya got a chance to demand answers.
Not that he would have gotten answers. Of course he wouldn’t have. Touya had probably just spared him the elevated blood pressure.
“How was the week?” Touya went on, politely overlooking the gaping-fish faces Waya was still making.
“I can’t believe you made Waya stalk me,” Shindou said, with an honest-to-god pout.
“I can’t believe you went bizarre and quit go,” Touya answered, unimpressed by the pouting.
“Four years ago,” Shindou said incredulously. “I quit go one time four years ago, and you know it won’t happen again!”
“You’ve always been strange and unpredictable,” Touya insisted. “I didn’t want to risk it.”
“Speaking of strange,” Shindou snapped, “Ichikawa-san almost beat up Waya because of you.”
“I refuse to accept responsibility for anything Ichikawa-san does.” It was clearly something he said a lot.
“You were the one who made Waya stalk me!”
“You were the one who took him to the go salon.”
“You know I always go there on Wednesdays!”
“I thought you’d make an exception! You do know Ichikawa-san.”
“If you hadn’t made Waya stalk me, it wouldn’t have been a problem!”
“If you hadn’t quit go, I wouldn’t have made Waya stalk you!”
“I said-”
“Touya,” Waya interrupted. “I’m glad you’re back. I’m so glad. You have no idea. I’m leaving now. He’s your problem.”
Touya smiled that sweet, for-reporters-and-students smile of his. Waya’d never gotten it aimed in his direction before. No wonder they all made the mistake of thinking Touya was cute.
“I’m sorry for the trouble, Waya,” he said. And it almost sounded believable. “Thank you for all of your time.”
And then he bowed. The formal freak.
“Yeah, okay,” Waya said. “No problem. I’ll. See you guys. Later.” He ran away.
Next time, Touya could cancel his real games for all Waya cared. So what if the Institute flew into a rage and cracked down on everyone? The point was, Waya was never
babysitting Shindou again. Never.
* * *
Sunday. It was finally, finally Sunday. The week from hell was over.
“I am so glad you’re back,” Waya said fervently, barely restraining himself from grabbing Isumi’s shirt and wailing into his neck. Because that would be weird, and Isumi might just turn around and go back to China, and then Waya would die.
Isumi smiled his incredibly normal smile, and Waya felt like swooning from relief. “I’m glad to be back,” Isumi said. “But I have to wonder why you’re so…?”
Yes. Why was he so?
“I swear he’s crazier when you’re gone,” Waya said. He himself was trying to sound sane, but he doubted it really came off that way. “And Touya was gone, too, and oh God I never thought I’d say this but I missed Touya so much. How could you two just go and leave me like this? Alone! All alone with that!”
“And by ‘that’ I assume you mean Shindou?”
“He said…! Never mind what he said! And then he dragged me to this place with half a dozen teenage girls and there was giggling and squealing and there was so much goddamn ramen, Isumi-san, you have no idea. So much ramen.”
Isumi was laughing. That was okay, though. He was allowed to laugh all he wanted as long as he didn’t abandon Waya for China. Awful, go-player-stealing country, China.
“He said Sai said I have good instincts!”
“You do have good instincts,” Isumi agreed.
“That’s not the point!” Waya knew he needed to get the hysteria under control, but God. “Sai! Sai is the point!” Isumi just smiled at him. He could be so unhelpful. “And good instincts? What does that even mean? If I’ve got such freaking good instincts, why do I always lose to the pair of you?”
“You let yourself be distracted.”
“Oh my God, are you two conspiring!?”
“Waya.”
“And I almost got killed by some woman I don’t even know!”
“Waya.”
“And I told Touya I was glad to see him!”
“Waya!”
“What!?”
“Tell me the rest at McDonald’s?”
“Oh.” McDonald’s. That was. About as far from ramen as you could get. “Okay.” Oh, hell, he hadn’t even let Isumi talk yet. Shindou’s manners must be contagious. “How was China, anyway, Isumi-san?”
“I always enjoy it,” he said. “You really should come next time. Yang Hai-san always asks why you don’t.”
Because it was Isumi’s thing, and Waya didn’t want to intrude. But…maybe next time. Better to feel like he was intruding than to have to babysit Shindou, that was a fact.
“And I think Le Ping may be taller than you by now,” Isumi went on. “I want to compare.”
“Okay, maybe this, right here, is the reason I haven’t gone.”
“I don’t know why you’re so set against meeting Le Ping.”
“You act like we’re the same person!”
“Well, you look so much alike.”
“Isumi-san!”
Isumi chuckled, and Waya wondered why it was impossible to get really mad at him.
“You haven’t explained why you were spending so much time with Shindou,” Isumi said later, as they were standing on the subway platform.
“Every day,” Waya moaned.
“Why?” Isumi asked, puzzled.
“Touya made me.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“It’s Touya’s fault! He was all, ‘If you don’t watch Shindou for me I’ll cancel my games and set fire to the building’ or whatever, I had to!”
“…Set fire to the building?”
“Apparently Shindou hates spring. Who the hell hates spring?”
“Wait.” Isumi set all his bags down and turned to study Waya. Maybe that had been a lot of information to hit him with at once. “Did you ask Shindou why he hates spring?”
“Oh, you know Shindou,” Waya said impatiently. “I don’t know what the hell his problem is, but he gets that look like someone died, and then you can’t ask him anything. Or he dodges the question. He said he didn’t hate spring, the enormous liar.”
“I see,” Isumi said, even though he obviously didn’t see any more than Waya did. “Did he seem happy to have you around?”
“He seemed to resent me for stalking him,” Waya said. “And I can’t even blame him for it; that was the one normal thing he did this week. But I decided, I’m through with trying to understand him!”
“You keep saying that.”
“No, from now on, I’m taking a page out of Ochi’s book. Who cares about Shindou, anyway? I don’t care!”
“Of course not.” Isumi’s smile was starting to look a little like a smirk, but Waya chose to ignore that.
“He never makes any sense and he eats a stupid amount of ramen. And that’s another thing! No ramen for six months!”
“…Good luck with that, Waya.”
Okay, maybe the ramen thing was impossible, but he was serious about the worrying: he was going to do less of it. It clearly wasn’t written in the stars that Waya Yoshitaka was supposed to worry about Shindou Hikaru. Because that was Touya’s job. Thank God.
“Anyway,” Waya said, “why are we talking about Shindou? I’m complaining about him over lunch, right? So tell me more about China. Is Yang Hai-san still a pervert?”
“Waya!”
It was good to have everything back to normal.
All the Pieces
Waya got a phone call from Touya Akira on Monday. Looking back on it, that was clearly the point at which he should have given up on the week.
* * *
“Of course Shindou and Touya are on a different level.”
“Absolutely. There’s no comparison. Everyone else just trails after them.”
“Ogata and Kurata have stalled, no question.”
“Kuwabara is barely hanging on!”
“Shindou and Touya are the ones who are the future of go. What’s Go Weekly calling them? The new wave?”
“Rising stars! Not like us old men.”
Yes, yes, we all know how shiny they are, Waya thought irritably. They’re freaking blinding. Do we really have to talk about it all the damn time?
Soon any old men hanging around the Institute drooling over Shindou and Touya would be in danger of having Waya chuck a goke at them, respect for elders be damned. It had been three years since that first Hokuto Cup, and they were still getting more popular by the day.
It was disgusting.
“Hey, Waya! You done with your game already? Man, did you crush him or something?”
Oh. And there it was, the old familiar guilt that came of thinking resentful thoughts about Shindou and then being confronted with his cheerful, friendly face.
Lying face, Waya reminded himself. Cheerful, friendly, lying face.
The reminder didn’t make him feel any less guilty.
“What are you talking about?” He snapped. Damn guilt, anyway. “If you’re out here, you crushed your guy, too. And you were playing Saeki-san! I was just playing some random 2-dan, but you! Traitor!”
“I’m not a traitor!” Shindou flailed. “I didn’t mean to!”
“You’re saying you crushed him accidentally? Oh, yeah, that’ll go over well. Bring that up at Morishita-sensei’s, why don’t you. Make the poor guy cry in front of everyone.”
“That’s not what I meant!” Shindou insisted, even though it obviously had been.
Waya hated geniuses. He hated them, he hated being surrounded by them, and most of all he hated that he wasn’t one of them. He thought he could have put up with everything just fine if he had been.
“Anyway, we’re both done early,” Shindou said. “So let’s get ramen!”
Then again, maybe Waya’s problem with Shindou wasn’t the depressing level of genius. Maybe it was the ramen obsession.
“Okonomiyaki or nothing,” Waya said firmly. You had to be firm with Shindou, otherwise he’d make that face and you’d cave.
Shindou’s expression went dangerously blank for just a second, then the smile came back. “No way. What’s the point of getting okonomiyaki anywhere but Hiroshima?”
When the hell were you in Hiroshima, you homebody? Waya wondered. Unless someone shipped him away for a game, Shindou didn’t willingly leave Tokyo…ever, as far as Waya could tell. And he didn’t remember Shindou playing any games in Hiroshima.
No point in asking Shindou about it, though. No point in asking Shindou about anything.
“Next you’re gonna say what’s the point of getting beer anywhere but Sapporo, and then I will hurt you.”
“Ogata-san was on a rant last month about how Sapporo beer isn’t even brewed in Sapporo anymore and the world is ending,” Shindou said. “You’re going to turn out a big old drunk just like him.” He was apparently pleased with the thought. Waya did not understand Shindou’s relationship with Ogata, and he deeply did not want to.
“In one more minute, Shindou, I’m going to drag you to okonomiyaki and force-feed you,” he warned.
“Sushi?” Shindou wheedled. “You like sushi! It’s not ramen! We can-”
He was blessedly interrupted by his gagaku ringtone.
And to think, before Shindou got one, Waya would have said that getting a gagaku ringtone was impossible. It was a very Shindou combination of the traditional and the tacky, though. Waya was sort of impressed.
“Oh, hey, Akari! What’s up? Oh. Yeah, totally. Totally! I can make it…uh. Thursday? Like around 4? Awesome. Oh, jeez, Akari, no. You can’t pay me. Because I’ll throw the money away in the bushes, don’t be stupid. Shut up! Uh huh. I said Thursday. I said! Right. Okay. See ya.”
He hung up and scowled at the phone. “Stupid Akari,” he muttered.
“Who’s Akari?” Waya asked. Clearly someone Shindou knew well. Clearly someone Shindou had known for a long time, because he’d just completely reverted to kid mode, there.
“Girl I know,” he said carelessly, then grinned at Waya. “Sushi?”
A girl he knows, sure. A girl he knows well enough to call by her given name. A girl who was offering to pay him money for…most likely go. But possibly dinner or sexual favors. Who knew?
And Shindou probably didn’t even think of this as keeping secrets. Letting on as little as possible was just reflex for him.
Waya realized he was missing Isumi. If Isumi had been there, he would have smiled his oh, Shindou smile at Waya. And then it would have been funny instead of…instead of…
Gah.
“Fine, sushi!” Waya snapped.
Shindou gave him the innocent eyes. “Did something happen with your game? You seem like you’re kind of in a lousy mood.”
Of course. If there was something bothering him, what could it possibly be but go?
As far as Waya was concerned, go was a career. It was a good career; it was a career he enjoyed, but, at the end of the day, it was mainly the method by which he fed himself. Maybe some of the fun had gotten sucked out of it when it became a thing he had to do instead of a thing he chose to do. Except he’d chosen to have to do it. God, maybe he just couldn’t be made happy.
Whatever, he still really liked go, even if it was his job. He scored major points over every salaryman in creation.
He didn’t know what the hell go was for Shindou. Life, maybe. Which was just as true of Touya, but at least with Touya it made some kind of sense, because Touya’s whole upbringing had been about go. Unlike Shindou, who’d randomly flung himself into it at the age of twelve like a man possessed.
The whole thing made Waya’s head hurt.
“My game was fine, sushi is fine, everything is fine!” he insisted.
Shindou looked dubious. “When’s Isumi-san getting back?” he asked.
Waya never could figure out a thing about Shindou, and yet Shindou saw right through him. How was that fair?
“Sunday,” he answered immediately.
Shindou just nodded. It was only natural that Shindou would understand; he was even worse than Waya with the freaky dependency. In fact, it was strange that Touya hadn’t shown up yet. Realistically speaking, Shindou had been bound to crush poor Saeki pretty quickly, and Touya should have been waiting around.
As if conjured by the thought, Shindou’s phone rang again.
Waya remembered when Shindou had first gotten that phone. No one had been able to talk directly to him for months. You’d had to go around the corner and call him if you actually wanted his attention.
“Touya!” Shindou said fondly into the phone. “How’d it go?”
Oh, right. Touya was at some Meijin Tournament thing in Nagoya. So that was why Waya was getting this quality one-on-one time with Shindou.
Which he’d never really had, he realized. Even back when they were insei, Isumi had been around. And lately, there was Touya. God, there was always Touya. Waya had never spent much more than ten minutes alone with Shindou in all the time they’d known each other. He hardly knew how to act around him without a buffer. Strange.
He was distracted from this train of thought by the opening of another Shindou/Touya game discussion death match.
“Mm, that’s because you cling to the corners like they’re love of your life,” Shindou told the phone.
That was a total lie. Waya could faintly hear Touya shrieking as much on the other end of the line.
“Uh, okay. If that’s what you have to tell yourself. But admit it, he just about wiped you out after that stupid ko fight in the bottom right-”
Waya had used Shindou’s phone, and he was aware that the sound was set annoyingly low. Which made the fact that he could hear Touya from a couple feet away really impressive.
Shindou was smiling at the phone. Shindou, lest there be any doubt, was weird.
“Yeah, yeah,” he murmured into the tirade, which miraculously shut Touya up. “When are you getting back?” He frowned at the answer, looking surprisingly upset. “Huh. That long?”
Shindou almost never looked upset. And when he did, he had the alarming habit of, you know, crying in public and quitting go and crazy shit like that. So Waya was inclined to be a little nervous about this.
“No, It’s fine.”
It was clearly not fine.
“I said I’ll be fine! Jeez, it’s been-” he glanced up at Waya and obviously cut off that sentence. “It’s been years. What? Going to lunch with Waya. You…? Uh. I’m not sure he…. Okay? Hang on.”
He lowered the phone and gave Waya a look halfway between alarmed and amused. “He wants to talk to you,” he said, then tossed the phone to Waya and wandered off. Or ran away, depending on how you wanted to look at it.
Shindou, you jerk.
“What’s up?” Waya said dubiously to the phone. It wasn’t quite that he and Touya didn’t get along. It was more that they didn’t even exist on the same plane.
“Waya,” Touya said, sounding as much like a distant bastard as he ever did. “I’m sorry to bother you out of the blue like this.”
And he paused, like there was any answer Waya could give to that.
“It’s…fine?” he tried.
“Everyone seems to think so today,” Touya snapped. Waya let that one go, though, because he could tell it was directed at Shindou. He had sympathy for that. “If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like you to look out for Shindou until I get back on Friday,” Touya went on.
“You what?” Waya yelped.
“I’d like you to look out for Shindou,” Touya repeated in the tone of a guy rapidly losing patience. He didn’t have any right to lose patience; he’d just randomly asked Waya to babysit his rival. What the hell? “This is a bad time of year for him.”
“Why?” Waya asked without much hope of a sane answer.
“He doesn’t like the spring,” Touya said irritably. News to Waya. “Look, if it is too much trouble, I’ll cancel my teaching games and-”
“Whoa whoa whoa!” Cancel his teaching games? Piss off the entire Institute? The hell? Standing between Shindou and Touya had to be the scariest place on earth. “I’ll do it! I mean, I guess I will, I still don’t really have a clue what you want me to do, but…”
“Thank you,” Touya said. He really sounded sincere about it, too. Relieved, even.
Freaky.
“If you could check on him once a day. Is Isumi-san available?”
Is Isumi-san available. Who said things like that?
“He’s in China,” Waya said. “And Shindou’ll want to know why I’m suddenly stalking him.”
“Tell him I made you,” Touya said, in his scary competition voice. “Thank you again, Waya.”
He hung up, and Waya stared blankly at the phone like it might tell him what the hell that had been about. It didn’t. It just sat there being obnoxiously yellow. Keeping its secrets, then. A lot like its owner and that idiot Touya.
The damn secrets. Why? Was it go players, Japanese people, just people in general? Waya had no idea. All he knew was that people in TV dramas always seemed to share meaningful thoughts or come to deep and silent understandings, more or less like Touya and Shindou had. Meanwhile, all Waya had managed to do was learn when to shut up and stop asking.
Maybe he’d been brought up wrong.
Shindou took this time to saunter back, looking not nearly as guilty as he ought to. “So what did he say?” he asked.
Waya thought about all these secrets. He thought about how much they had always, always pissed him off. He decided he didn’t want any part of that, brought up wrong or not.
“He told me to stalk you until he gets back,” he said.
“He what?” Shindou yelped.
There. That had worked out well.
* * *
T minus three days until Touya got back.
“Since when do you listen to Touya, anyway?” Shindou muttered, as bad-tempered as he ever got. Like he was the one being put out.
“He made weird threats,” Waya insisted, not a bit happier about it. “And anything he did would have been my fault, and that would have been even more irritating than following you around. What the hell is your problem with spring, anyway?”
“I don’t have a problem with spring; Touya’s crazy,” Shindou blatantly lied, eyes wandering over the titles of the books on the shelf in front of him.
This would turn out to be an entire week of lying and question dodging, Waya just knew it. He was going to end up killing Shindou, and then Touya would kill him, and then Touya would go to jail. Weekly Go would have a headline that read The Future of Go Destroyed in Massive Bloodbath.
“Are you planning on buying anything, or are we just going to stand here and think about it all day?” Waya asked impatiently.
“Nobody asked you to come with me,” Shindou said.
Sulking. He was sulking.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Waya snapped.
“Anyway, they hardly ever have anything new; it’s annoying,” Shindou went on, ignoring him. “I’ve read these already.”
Waya took that in, then slowly turned to study the huge selection of go books the massive Kinokuniya in Shinjuku contained. Ridiculously huge. Waya would have thought it would take a person decades to read them all.
One thing was for sure. You couldn’t say Shindou didn’t work for it.
“So what do you recommend?” he asked, feeling a little dazed.
Shindou blinked at him, distracted from his funk. “Oh. Well, Touya-sensei’s, obviously. Especially his new one; did you read that?”
Waya hadn’t even known that Touya-sensei had written another book. He shook his head.
“It’s awesome!” Shindou burbled. Moods like quicksilver, Shindou. “Because he’s been all over the world now, you know? I think he’s gotten a chance to study more takes on go than just about anybody. So he’s got all this-like, he says Koreans always teach this and that, which is way better than the Japanese way, or the Chinese do it this way, or here’s a talk he had with that bastard Ko Young-Ha about the new rules. Oh, and old stuff, too, like what Go Seigen said about fuseki theory back when they were first playing with komi, which is really cool. It’s totally worth it. And Ichiryu-sensei’s book isn’t half bad, either, but it’s not…he just doesn’t own go the way Touya-sensei and Kuwabara-sensei do. Kuwabara-sensei only wrote one book a while ago. It’s pretty good, though. It has a bunch of weird dirty jokes based on joseki that are seriously the biggest geek-out I’ve ever seen in print. And that’s saying something.”
Waya blinked. In spite of the fact that Shindou never seemed to think about anything but go, it was surprisingly hard to picture him studying as much as he clearly did. Especially since he was still so clueless when it came to things like…everything not directly related to playing go.
“Which one’s Touya-sensei’s new book?” he asked. Shindou bounced over to the right shelf and then passed the book to Waya. With enthusiasm, like a good salesman.
Maybe this stalking Shindou thing wouldn’t be so bad, after all.
“Ramen?” Shindou asked brightly.
Waya sighed.
* * *
Wednesday. Touya would be back in two days.
Shindou seemed determined to make them as painful as possible.
“I always go to Touya’s go salon on Wednesdays,” he said stubbornly.
“Yeah, and that’s fine, but you didn’t warn me that lady was going to freak the hell out,” Waya said.
“Well.” Shindou had the grace to look embarrassed. “I didn’t know she was gonna…Ichikawa-san is really, um. She’s a big Touya fan. But I didn’t know she’d think I was replacing him. That’s crazy, anyway. Why would I come to his go salon to replace him?”
“Yes, that was crazy,” Waya agreed. “She acted like you were cheating on him or-oh, my God. Are you sleeping with Touya?”
Shindou gave him the wide-eyed look of false innocence. “Are you asking because you’re sleeping with Isumi-san?”
“What!?”
“I just thought you might want company with the gay thing.”
“I never said I was gay!”
“Okay.”
“Isumi-san! Why Isumi-san!?”
“Uh, if you’re not, then whatever. Sorry for mentioning it.”
“You!”
“Do you want to get ramen?”
“Oh no, I know what you’re doing now.”
“…Trying to get you to pay for ramen?”
“Dodging the question. You’re a huge question-dodger, is what you are, this is just like the Sai thing.”
“You never asked me if I was sleeping with Sai. Heh. That would have been really weird, because we were, like, thirteen. Heh.”
“Oh my God, Shindou. Do you even know how to answer a question?”
“He’s my best friend.”
“Sai?”
“…Touya. Is my best friend now.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
“And yet you still haven’t answered the question.”
“Sure I have. Ramen?”
“Shindou. I hate you.”
“Aw, Isumi-san will be back on Sunday!”
“What does that have to do with anything!?”
* * *
One more day. One more day.
“I promised Akari on Monday, back when I didn’t know I was going to have a stalker all week,” Shindou said. “So we’re going whether you like it or not.”
He was being surprising hostile about this, Waya thought. He’d expected that Shindou would calm down about it, but actually he was getting worse as the week went on. As irritating as Shindou could sometimes be, he was pretty good-humored. Apparently having someone follow him around really got to him. Waya had to wonder if he’d had a weird stalker experience at some point.
It wasn’t like he’d have told anybody about it, if he had.
“She’ll want to pay you,” Shindou was saying. “Don’t let her. Her go club is completely broke; no way can they afford us. I hope she goes to a university with a good go club. So far she’s only ever been in these tiny ones.”
“How do you know this girl?” Waya asked, feeling like he might get an answer now that he was actually going to meet her.
“Huh?” Shindou looked like he couldn’t imagine why Waya would want to know, which sort of made Waya want to punch him in the face. “She was my neighbor when we were kids.”
“And she just happened to play go?” Maybe it was something all the kids on the block had picked up at the same time.
“She started playing after I did. I don’t know why; she was never all that good at it.”
She’d probably learned so she would have something in common with Shindou. Waya wasn’t sure why that thought was so depressing.
“Hikaru!” said the cute girl who opened the door, with a bright smile that Waya felt was utterly, utterly wasted on Shindou. “I’m so glad you could come!”
Shindou smiled. “No big deal,” he said.
No big deal for two pros to show up and tutor your go club for free. Sure. Waya couldn’t decide if Shindou was being generous or stupid.
“Of course it’s a big deal, Hikaru,” she said impatiently. Waya was proud. “So who did you bring with you?”
“Oh.” Shindou had clearly forgotten introductions were needed; Shindou should never be allowed out to torment society. “Waya. Waya Yoshitaka, he’s a 4-dan.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Waya-sensei,” she said with perfect politeness, which proved that whatever was wrong with Shindou wasn’t the fault of the neighborhood he’d grown up in. “I’m Fujisaki Akari.”
“Fujisaki-san,” Waya said. “Nice to meet you. You don’t have to call me sensei.” It was weird. She was Shindou’s friend.
She raised an eyebrow. “Waya-kun?”
“Can we play go already?” Shindou cut in. The years might pass, he might act like a professional at random moments, but in his heart, he was still a brat.
“You’re the one standing around in the hallway,” Fujisaki pointed out.
It turned out that standing in the hallway had been the smart choice. The minute they got inside the room, they were swarmed by, like, six squealing girls who all wanted Shindou’s autograph. Apparently this was just the girls’ half of the club.
This was a definite step down from the old men in the Institute.
They weren’t bad at go, though, once they’d calmed the hell down. Made sense, really. How many years of professional, free tutoring had they gotten? And Shindou was a surprisingly good teacher. Focused.
Weird that he’d do this kind of thing, though. Waya would have pegged him as the kind of guy who left the past in the past and burned all his bridges behind him. But then, the rumor was he was obsessed with Shuusaku. You couldn’t get more past-loving than that.
Being confused about Shindou was nothing new. Waya was used to it. And apart from that, tutoring the go club turned out to be kind of fun.
“Did you do anything for Golden Week, Hikaru?” Fujisaki asked as they cleaned up afterward. From the look of it, she’d wanted a private chat; she’d just about frog marched the rest of the club out the door.
Shindou frowned at her. “Why would I?”
Fujisaki rolled her eyes. “How about you, Waya-kun?”
“I’ve been stalking Shindou for Golden Week,” Waya explained.
Fujisaki, he thought, must be really used to Shindou by now. The only reaction that statement got out of her was a quirked eyebrow and a “Riiiiight.”
“Anyway,” she said, dropping that subject for the good of all, “our mothers are both complaining that they never see you, Hikaru, so you’re supposed to come for dinner.”
“Why does your mother want to see me?” Shindou demanded suspiciously.
“‘Akari, dear, when is Hikaru going to make an honest woman of you?’” Fujisaki said in a high-pitched voice. Presumably a mother-imitation.
“Akari!” Shindou wailed. “Are you ever going to tell her about Tsutsui-sempai? This is crazy! Do you know the looks she gives me?”
“It serves you right,” Fujisaki said calmly. She was a pro at bullying Shindou, and on top of that, she was decent at go. Waya was really getting to like her, despite all the squealing girls she’d inflicted on him.
“How does it serve me right?” Shindou wanted to know.
“And she’ll find out about Kimihiro when I invite her to the wedding,” Fujisaki said, ignoring him.
“You’re getting married?” Shindou brightened up.
“When I feel like it,” she answered quellingly. “I’m only in high school, Hikaru. I won’t get married for years.” Shindou’s shoulders slumped.
Waya felt like he ought to be taking notes on her technique.
* * *
Waya went with Shindou to the airport. To pass him off. To prove that he’d done his duty. Maybe to grab Touya by the collar and scream how could you do this to me?
He thought, later, that he really should have known better than to push his luck like that. If he’d had any sense, he would have run at the first opportunity.
“So I was thinking,” Shindou said, as they stood outside the gate and waited for Touya.
“Be still my heart,” Waya muttered, then jumped back to dodge Shindou’s elbow.
“Your problem,” Shindou continued pointedly. “Is that you let yourself get distracted. You’re pretty much always right the first time, but you let people put you off, and then you screw up.”
Waya stared, but Shindou, as usual, was giving nothing away; he was looking vaguely off toward a stand of discount watches. “Is this supposed to be my problem in go or in life?” Waya asked. And what the hell brought this on? he wailed to himself.
Shindou turned back to him, eyebrows raised. “Same difference,” he said. And then, just because Waya wasn’t blindsided enough, “You have good instincts. That’s what Sai said about you.”
Waya experienced a moment of what he feared might be complete brain death, but no, because then his mind shifted into hysterical high gear, rattling off all the reasons that simple Shindou-statement was utterly impossible.
He’d played Sai online the once, but so had a lot of other people. It hadn’t been a memorable game. He’d definitely never met Sai. Even if he had met Sai (which he hadn’t), why would Sai have then told Shindou about him-him! Waya Yoshitaka, who, in Sai’s eyes, was synonymous with nobody? He wouldn’t. And they’d never met. And if Shindou had just said that to mess with him, death.
“I see it’s only taken you a week to drive Waya insane,” came Touya Akira’s voice. Touya had snuck up on him when he was busy with hysteria, and because Touya and Shindou were mind-linked, he was going to interrupt the conversation now before Waya got a chance to demand answers.
Not that he would have gotten answers. Of course he wouldn’t have. Touya had probably just spared him the elevated blood pressure.
“How was the week?” Touya went on, politely overlooking the gaping-fish faces Waya was still making.
“I can’t believe you made Waya stalk me,” Shindou said, with an honest-to-god pout.
“I can’t believe you went bizarre and quit go,” Touya answered, unimpressed by the pouting.
“Four years ago,” Shindou said incredulously. “I quit go one time four years ago, and you know it won’t happen again!”
“You’ve always been strange and unpredictable,” Touya insisted. “I didn’t want to risk it.”
“Speaking of strange,” Shindou snapped, “Ichikawa-san almost beat up Waya because of you.”
“I refuse to accept responsibility for anything Ichikawa-san does.” It was clearly something he said a lot.
“You were the one who made Waya stalk me!”
“You were the one who took him to the go salon.”
“You know I always go there on Wednesdays!”
“I thought you’d make an exception! You do know Ichikawa-san.”
“If you hadn’t made Waya stalk me, it wouldn’t have been a problem!”
“If you hadn’t quit go, I wouldn’t have made Waya stalk you!”
“I said-”
“Touya,” Waya interrupted. “I’m glad you’re back. I’m so glad. You have no idea. I’m leaving now. He’s your problem.”
Touya smiled that sweet, for-reporters-and-students smile of his. Waya’d never gotten it aimed in his direction before. No wonder they all made the mistake of thinking Touya was cute.
“I’m sorry for the trouble, Waya,” he said. And it almost sounded believable. “Thank you for all of your time.”
And then he bowed. The formal freak.
“Yeah, okay,” Waya said. “No problem. I’ll. See you guys. Later.” He ran away.
Next time, Touya could cancel his real games for all Waya cared. So what if the Institute flew into a rage and cracked down on everyone? The point was, Waya was never
babysitting Shindou again. Never.
* * *
Sunday. It was finally, finally Sunday. The week from hell was over.
“I am so glad you’re back,” Waya said fervently, barely restraining himself from grabbing Isumi’s shirt and wailing into his neck. Because that would be weird, and Isumi might just turn around and go back to China, and then Waya would die.
Isumi smiled his incredibly normal smile, and Waya felt like swooning from relief. “I’m glad to be back,” Isumi said. “But I have to wonder why you’re so…?”
Yes. Why was he so?
“I swear he’s crazier when you’re gone,” Waya said. He himself was trying to sound sane, but he doubted it really came off that way. “And Touya was gone, too, and oh God I never thought I’d say this but I missed Touya so much. How could you two just go and leave me like this? Alone! All alone with that!”
“And by ‘that’ I assume you mean Shindou?”
“He said…! Never mind what he said! And then he dragged me to this place with half a dozen teenage girls and there was giggling and squealing and there was so much goddamn ramen, Isumi-san, you have no idea. So much ramen.”
Isumi was laughing. That was okay, though. He was allowed to laugh all he wanted as long as he didn’t abandon Waya for China. Awful, go-player-stealing country, China.
“He said Sai said I have good instincts!”
“You do have good instincts,” Isumi agreed.
“That’s not the point!” Waya knew he needed to get the hysteria under control, but God. “Sai! Sai is the point!” Isumi just smiled at him. He could be so unhelpful. “And good instincts? What does that even mean? If I’ve got such freaking good instincts, why do I always lose to the pair of you?”
“You let yourself be distracted.”
“Oh my God, are you two conspiring!?”
“Waya.”
“And I almost got killed by some woman I don’t even know!”
“Waya.”
“And I told Touya I was glad to see him!”
“Waya!”
“What!?”
“Tell me the rest at McDonald’s?”
“Oh.” McDonald’s. That was. About as far from ramen as you could get. “Okay.” Oh, hell, he hadn’t even let Isumi talk yet. Shindou’s manners must be contagious. “How was China, anyway, Isumi-san?”
“I always enjoy it,” he said. “You really should come next time. Yang Hai-san always asks why you don’t.”
Because it was Isumi’s thing, and Waya didn’t want to intrude. But…maybe next time. Better to feel like he was intruding than to have to babysit Shindou, that was a fact.
“And I think Le Ping may be taller than you by now,” Isumi went on. “I want to compare.”
“Okay, maybe this, right here, is the reason I haven’t gone.”
“I don’t know why you’re so set against meeting Le Ping.”
“You act like we’re the same person!”
“Well, you look so much alike.”
“Isumi-san!”
Isumi chuckled, and Waya wondered why it was impossible to get really mad at him.
“You haven’t explained why you were spending so much time with Shindou,” Isumi said later, as they were standing on the subway platform.
“Every day,” Waya moaned.
“Why?” Isumi asked, puzzled.
“Touya made me.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“It’s Touya’s fault! He was all, ‘If you don’t watch Shindou for me I’ll cancel my games and set fire to the building’ or whatever, I had to!”
“…Set fire to the building?”
“Apparently Shindou hates spring. Who the hell hates spring?”
“Wait.” Isumi set all his bags down and turned to study Waya. Maybe that had been a lot of information to hit him with at once. “Did you ask Shindou why he hates spring?”
“Oh, you know Shindou,” Waya said impatiently. “I don’t know what the hell his problem is, but he gets that look like someone died, and then you can’t ask him anything. Or he dodges the question. He said he didn’t hate spring, the enormous liar.”
“I see,” Isumi said, even though he obviously didn’t see any more than Waya did. “Did he seem happy to have you around?”
“He seemed to resent me for stalking him,” Waya said. “And I can’t even blame him for it; that was the one normal thing he did this week. But I decided, I’m through with trying to understand him!”
“You keep saying that.”
“No, from now on, I’m taking a page out of Ochi’s book. Who cares about Shindou, anyway? I don’t care!”
“Of course not.” Isumi’s smile was starting to look a little like a smirk, but Waya chose to ignore that.
“He never makes any sense and he eats a stupid amount of ramen. And that’s another thing! No ramen for six months!”
“…Good luck with that, Waya.”
Okay, maybe the ramen thing was impossible, but he was serious about the worrying: he was going to do less of it. It clearly wasn’t written in the stars that Waya Yoshitaka was supposed to worry about Shindou Hikaru. Because that was Touya’s job. Thank God.
“Anyway,” Waya said, “why are we talking about Shindou? I’m complaining about him over lunch, right? So tell me more about China. Is Yang Hai-san still a pervert?”
“Waya!”
It was good to have everything back to normal.