branching out is healthy, right?
Hikaru no Go! ...Because Hikaru is happy like the sunshine. In the words of
arboretum.
The fic is actually more about Hikaru's long-suffering mom, though. Mitsuko. I just throw the name out there because I feel vaguely guilty that I had to go LOOK IT UP.
This is another Zephy prompt that ran over (any!Hikaru: trophy, sitting, bellybutton). Yay, Zephy prompts. :)
Hikaru no Go does not belong to me any more than D.Gray-Man does. Alas.
Echoes
Hikaru's old room was full of dust and sunshine.
She knew she should clean it more often, but she'd been trained out of the habit. She'd done his laundry while he lived at home, but she hadn't cleaned his room in years. She hadn't needed to. Hikaru had kept his room spotlessly neat, as if he had incredible discipline. As if he had secrets.
(I don't care if you clean it, Mom, jeez, it's not like I sleep in there. I'll dust it when I come to visit. Whatever, stop feeling all guilty. Anyway, I thought you were going to use it for storage or something.)
There was so little left to clean, in any case. He'd taken or given away his books and magazines. He'd taken his goban and his stereo and his posters. All that was left were the stickers on the refrigerator and a small line of soccer trophies on the empty bookshelf.
(Oh, man, I can't take these with me. Touya would make fun of me until I had to kill him. If he even knows what soccer is.)
She dusted each of the trophies with incredible care, though she knew that Hikaru would never notice. She and Hikaru had always missed each other, somehow. There was no malice, no intent behind it; it just happened. It happened, and now she had no idea who her son was, and he had no idea she was interested.
(God, Mom, don't bother me about it. It went okay, okay? It's not like you care about go anyway. You always say so.)
She'd taken pains to meet Hikaru's friends. She'd met Waya Yoshitaka, who was loud and brash and very like Hikaru. She'd met Isumi Shinichirou, calm and quiet, the boy who had magically coaxed her son out of depression. She'd met Touya Akira, the roommate, so polite and formal it was unnerving, at least until he started shouting at her son. Apparently Hikaru had that effect on everyone. She'd met so many of them, but she still didn't understand. Even when they weren't talking specifically about games, they seemed to speak in a strange code that only they understood.
(Shut up, Waya, they won't try to identify you by your bellybutton! Jeez, if you're going to get like this every time we play China, maybe you should just give up on the international stuff. Then stop with the crazy bellybutton talk!)
In some ways, the go parents were even less help than their children. While a few of them were baffled by the extent of their children's love for the game, none of them had been caught as completely off-guard as she had. All of them had had years of warning; an interest that built slowly to a career. All of them understood, if not the game, then the motivation behind playing it. She still had no idea.
(What do you mean, why do I play go? It's awesome, that's why. I could teach you to play, if you want. I'd be better than Grandpa! Huh. Why do you want to know why I like it, then, if you don't wanna play?)
The room was as clean as if Hikaru had done it himself, but still so empty. She sat on his bed and looked out his window, as she'd seen him do a thousand times. She wondered what he'd been looking for. There was so little about him that she understood, after all. She hadn't understood the years when he'd chattered and shouted to himself, alone in this room. Hadn't understood the months of terrible silence that had followed. Then when the silence ended, it hadn't been replaced by chatter, as she'd hoped, but by the endless click of go stones. Her cheerful little boy had never really returned. She didn't understand.
(Why...why did I stop playing go? It's been years, why are you...? I mean, well. I lost…something. I lost something, and I guess I...didn't know what I was supposed to be doing. Without. Why would you ask me now? It's not like you care if I play go.)
She left the room to its sunshine and its secrets.