Blind Luck2: No Way Back Chapter 19/19 (+epilogue)
Blind Luck2: No Way Back
Chapter 19
Chapter 19
Touya Kouyo.
Sai stiffened; Touya Kouyo, one time holder of 5 Go titles, the best player in Japan, maybe in the entire world. Touya Kouyo, his opponent in _that_ game. Even if Sai didn't remember him, he remembered the moves after the man's son had prompted him.
Suddenly Sai was nervous, more nervous than had been when he started his job two days ago. Here was the man Hikaru had called the former ghost's rival; the one whose ability matched Sai’s own. Or it had when he had still been sighted, even if he had been a ghost then and Hikaru had to use subterfuge in order to let him play this man.
But now things were different, he was different; maybe Touya-san was different too. Would the man still want to play him, or was he here merely out of curiosity?
'Again, sorry to startle you; I didn't know I'd be able to get here so soon, I was lucky I could get out of my commitments as fast as I did, and I took the first flight out,' the man sounded insecure. It momentarily surprised Sai; why, it was almost as though the other man was nervous as well. Now there was a thought!
'Akira phoned me some days ago, letting me know that you were here. He told me all about you, all the trouble you've had in the past year,' the man continued.
Ice suddenly lanced through Sai; he knows! He knows about the shelter, he knows I am, was, destitute, oh god!
'He told me of your amnesia and of your blindness,' Touya went on unerringly merciless, like a surgeon wielding a scalpel, making Sai's world slowly start to spin; he knows it all!
'But I'm so glad to learn you've re-found your ability to play. I've seen the /kifu/ of some of the games you've played with my boy, absolutely fascinating!' the former 5-times-titleholder said animatedly and then added 'Shall we play?' when Sai didn't respond.
He came back to himself as he always did at the offer of a game; it was like using smelling salts on a fainting person, it never failed to rouse him.
'Yes. Yes, of course,' he said and retook his seat, feeling numb still. His rival knew all these embarrassing things about him, no secrets were left to him, except for those known only to Hikaru and himself. But even so Sai felt horribly exposed and small.
'I understand you don't /nigiri/?' Touya said after sitting down and moving his chair closer to the table. Sai could hear the rustle of the stones in the /goke/ as the older man removed each in turn from the Goban before him.
'Either color is fine by me,' Sai said a little listlessly. '6 and half /komi/?' he added, swallowing awfully loud to his own ears, trying to get himself into a game playing mood.
'Yes.' came Touya's firm reply.
'Alright. Hajimemashita,' the man added after some moments, and there was that slight current of air that indicated that he had bowed.
Sai bowed, 'Hajimemashita.'
xXXx
The moment Touya's first stone hit the board, it was like all the world disappeared leaving only the set of twice 19 lines and the junctions they made on a field of wood and the stones that might be placed at each of these junctions.
The permutations of a game of Go are endless and so are the opportunities for conquest on that wooden field. The sheer number of possibilities started to fill Sai’s head at an alarming rate; for he knew that with this opponent he would have to pull out all the stops just to keep up with him, never mind getting ahead.
Even knowing that, it was barely 15 hands into the game that Sai realized he was falling behind. It was not just the shear brilliance of his opponent and the almost palpable pressure the man exuded, but it was also that the former ghost found himself ill prepared for this game.
From Hikaru's account of the last game Sai had played against Touya on NetGo, his ghostly self had had days to prepare for the battle and had studied the /kifu/ of many of Touya's games beforehand.
But he wasn't that ghost anymore, nor did he remember any of the games he had studied then. Really, he could only remember games he had actually played back then and only after being prompted by somebody!
Sai felt a moment of utter despair before he realized that he of course did remember that one game, because young Touya had read it out to him. He quickly called it up on a second Goban in his mind, and hastily started doing what he should have done much earlier; analyze the game.
The analysis confirmed the one thing he already knew; that it was a truly brilliant game. It also helped him to familiarize him a little bit with the Go master's style. But he as he worked through the game he became aware that this one /kifu/, no matter of how brilliant a game, would not yield enough information to get firm enough grasp on the other man's style for the battle he now faced.
In exasperation the former ghost abandoned the analysis when its low yield became clear and he also realized he hadn't made a move in the current game in quite a while. He turned his mind back to the first Goban and tried to put the new found knowledge, little as it was, to use.
A few more hands were played before Sai made another foray into his mind-space; this time he decided to analyze the current game, much like he had done with the twin games of himself against Akira and Hikaru. It would mean another long delay before he could play his next move, but his current opponent had not made a sound of complaint at Sai's ultra-slow moves, and he supposed that in world class professional Go, games could take a very long time.
So he hoped that as long as Touya didn't start prompting him for moves he was not going too slowly. He knew he was skirting the limits of common courtesy of social game playing at this speed, but then he reckoned that this really wasn’t a mere social game; this was a real battle, not unlike the first few games he had played against Ogata, even if this time there were no discernible stakes in the game.
Once he finished his mental analysis, he ever so slowly started making moves on the real Goban, continually readjusting his mind's boards as the counter moves came in and reforming his strategy accordingly. From then on, Sai found that the former Meijin's moves weren't much quicker than his own, hopefully indicating that his moves were at least challenging.
It mortified him to think that he wasn’t giving the grand master a worthy game, really that would be a very grave insult towards a 5 times title holder.
It was another 50 moves later that Sai realized that his moves may be thought provoking but they were not nearly good enough. As he played out the game in his head he counted a minimum loss of 10 points. He cursed himself for having been so ill prepared, and he cursed himself again for not starting that analysis sooner and he cursed himself for being blind.
His heart contracted at the thought of having lost by so many points. And he berated himself for ever thinking he could play an equal game with someone of Touya-san's stature. He was a blind fool with delusions of grandeur, just like Dama had implied. A fool!
Just to be safe Sai replayed the predicted end of the game again in his mind; and again came up with over 10 points down as the very best scenario.
He hung his head to hide the tears that had formed, but he wouldn't let himself out of admitting his failure so he sucked in a breath, bowed lower and said, 'I have lost.'
'I'm sorry,' he added, 'I should not have played without a handicap, I'm just not strong enough to give you a worthy game. I...,' here he swallowed, working up to say what felt as the truth, 'Maybe I'm not who I thought I was, maybe I'm not the SAI from NetGo...'
There, he'd said it. He hadn't known he was going to say that, but he realized as he said it that it was what he felt in his hart to be true. After all, he remembered only vague snippets from before, and while he believed in what the boy had told him, it was just too fantastical to possible be true, wasn't it?
No matter what else was in confusion, one thing was painfully clear: this game proved conclusively that Blind Mayō from the Harborstreet Men's Shelter was not ever going to be in the same league as Touya Meijin, 5 times title holder, or SAI from NetGo. And he really should have known better than to ever think he could be. Stupid, stupid fool!
Sai felt himself start to shake under the onslaught of his emotions and he couldn't stop either the tears or his sobs. The sudden shock of a large male hand gripping his left shoulder made him gulp and freeze. Touya-san's breathing now came from close in front of him indicating it was his hand on the blind man's shoulder. The hand shook his shoulder once and then gripped tighter, but not painfully so.
'Now, you listen to me,' the other man's voice boomed, 'I don't know who told you such non-sense, but I can tell you here and now that you _are_ the SAI I played on NetGo, there is no doubt about that!' With that the man pressed down one more time before letting go and making the faux leather of his seat creak as he sat back down.
'But...?' Sai stammered. But he had lost so spectacularly, so unworthy of SAI, how could the Meijin still think that?
'Oh there are differences,' Touya began, 'after some years there are bound to be. And Akira-kun tells me you've only started to play again last week, whereas I've been training non-stop for the past two years, so I guess you're a little behind now. And I can tell your sense of space has changed, is probably all those walks you took this last year! And it can't be easy to play blind like that, either.'
'But despite all that, I'd recognize SAI's style out of thousands and let me tell you; you are he.'
The Meijin sounded so sure that Sai was slowly starting to believe it. Still he couldn't resist asking, 'Really?' in a very small voice.
'Yes, really,' the man confirmed.
It was almost surreal. Here he was, an impossibility, a man born a thousand years ago, who had died and had become a ghost only to be alive again today, but with no real memory of all those events. Sai had believed what Hikaru had told him, honestly he had! But his own inability to recall any of it in anything more than snippets which could so easily have been figments of an over active imagination, had given him a deep seated doubt.
Now he found himself acknowledged by a man who had neither reason to either help or hinder him; the Meijin could play him with or without bringing up his past as SAI of NetGo. No, the Meijin had reassured him that even though he had lost so badly, he was indeed who he thought he was. Sai’s relief was monumental, for losing his identity twice would have been a nasty blow indeed!
‘Ichikawa, time for tea!’ Touya boomed, adding towards Sai, ‘I want to know what you were thinking here, around 12-15.’ A distinct displacement of air hinted at a wave of the man’s arm across the Goban. Sai realized he referred to a gambit he had tried to set up earlier but that had become defunct pretty fast when the master player had attacked him elsewhere.
‘This is quite a new thing in your style, it needs work still, but I can see its possibilities,’ the Meijin’s steady voice continued.
‘The idea was to connect the formation at 13-16 and the still empty space at 9-10, so that…’
And so they fell into a pleasantly long conversation on game strategies, only briefly interrupted by the arrival of tea and cake as lunch. It wasn’t until very late that night, while laying his head on his pillow that the blind man realized that he hadn’t had a chance to play Ogata, Hikaru or young Touya, even though they had all been at the club that day.
None of them had let any disappointment show, nor had any of them wavered in their enthusiasm about the first game played that day, even commending him on a game well played, and utterly playing down his defeat.
After dinner Touya had suggested a second game, having tentatively inquired if the blind man felt up to it so soon. Sai had still felt knackered after that first harrowing game, but he was too tempted to say ‘no’ to any invite to play from this man. And so he said yes, and got duly clobbered again; being no more prepared than he had been that morning and having to combat his growing exhaustion from that day and the days and weeks past.
So there hadn’t been time to do any thinking that day until after bedtime. And lying in bed, being really too emotionally drained to fall asleep fast, Sai reflected on his new life, a flood of warmth permeated him; the unwavering support of his new friends shining like a star in his dark world and lighting his as yet empty Goban, that awaited the endless permutations of so many great games to come.
Yes, the future looked bright indeed!
oOOo
End of part 2.
xXxXx
There will be an epilogue to this part as well, so stick around!
Thanks to everybody who reviewed! <3 <3 <3
I’ve answered all those that I could, so all those that were not anonymous and that did take personal messaging. Thanks again!!!
aoi65 asked in the reviews if I was going to write this chapter from Touya sr.’s point-of-view. Since you’ve just read it, you already know I didn’t.
In this story I set myself the task of writing one POV only and rigorously stuck to that resolution. Of course I seriously snookered myself by picking a blind character as my very first hero! Yes, very dumb. But hey, I did learn a lot from the experience.
I do, however, feel free to write the epilogues in a much free-er style and POV, so expect to see some of those appear at the end of this trilogy.
‘Trilogy,’ yes, you read that right. Sai & co. will be back in part 3: ‘The Ever Winding Road.’ I’ve written about half of it already. And will most likely start upping after the epilogue to this has gone up. If I don’t get cold feet, that is…
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