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mirabellafic2010-06-05 10:23 pm
mirabella) wrote in mirabellafic2010-06-05 10:23 pm
Entry tags:
Arcadia fic, Shindou/Touya, G
There's no real point to this. I just wanted Arcadia!Isumi.
Isumi is getting a faintly unsettling vibe from the man sitting across the goban from him, and he can't quite figure out why.
His name is Tsuzuki, and he looks a few years younger than Isumi himself. Isumi knows so many Tsuzukis that he mostly tells them apart by context and dan level, but this one, he thinks, would stand out. This Tsuzuki somehow manages to sprawl comfortably in the hideous folding chair, a cheerful blaze of yellow from his high-tops to his shirt to the bleached front layers of his hair, rambling on about soccer and pop stars and some heinous sin against continuity perpetrated during D. Grey-Man's transition from manga to anime, and his Go…
His Go is so very not what Isumi expected to find from an amateur at this rambunctious salon, and it's thrown Isumi off and started that too-familiar cold pooling into the pit of his stomach; that cold that, sooner or later, always creeps up and wraps around his brain until whatever synapses are responsible for telling Isumi where best to lay his stones shut down and fall silent, one by one.
Tsuzuki lays down a stone in a spot Isumi was praying he'd overlook – and until now had felt a little silly for praying, because most pros under Isumi's dan level and a few above it would have overlooked that move as well. Isumi half expects him to gloat, jokingly or no, as Waya would; instead he looks up at Isumi and smiles, sunny and sure of himself, as if he'd done something ordinary and not remarkable at all.
"So what's the gossip from the Institute?" he asks. "I mean, I read Weekly Go all the time, but you know those guys. Weird, huh? Sometimes it seems like people you read about in the papers shouldn't be real or something."
Isumi shakes his head a little, drawn out of contemplating his next move by the more mundane contemplation of how Tsuzuki can play such astonishing Go while the entire contents of his brain appear to be coming out his mouth. Isumi really ought to introduce him to Waya. "I don't really know much gossip," he admits. "Unless you want to hear how Waya tried to kill himself by eating his weight in sushi after he got knocked out of the Ouza preliminaries in the third round."
Tsuzuki whoops with laughter, causing the old men at the table next to him to glare. Isumi smiles apologetically at them and lays a stone.
When Tsuzuki is done laughing, he looks down at the stone, then up at Isumi, his head tilted quizzically to the side. "I don't think you can save from there," he says bluntly.
He's right. At this point, Isumi, five-dan and playing against an amateur, is playing to minimize the inevitable damage. He doesn't think he's had a game this harmful to his ego since he played China's Le Ping after the last North Star cup, when Le Ping's friend Yang Hai had surveyed the board, shaken his head sadly, clapped Isumi on the shoulder, and said, Come to China, Isumi-san. We'll fix this. Sometimes – now, for instance – Isumi thinks he should take Yang Hai up on his offer. "Wait and see," he tells Tsuzuki, trying for zen and probably failing.
"You're defending," Tsuzuki says. "Why? You're playing an amateur in a crappy Go salon, you can't be losing your nerve."
"Maybe I'm having an off day," Isumi jokes weakly, and tries to change the subject. "Nase three-dan just got married, did the papers say? She married a man who was an insei with us. He's a chemical engineer now. She tells him Go sharpened his brain."
"Go does that," says Tsuzuki, looking suddenly thoughtful. "People think it teaches you how to look for weakness, and I guess it does. I know it does. But it teaches you how to look for strength too, and that can be a lot more interesting."
Isumi looks up, surprised. "That's what Touya Meijin said last week."
Tsuzuki doesn't look up from where he's surveying the board, and Isumi can't quite put his finger on what about him just changed. "I remember reading in Weekly Go that you'd been going to his study sessions. He's something, isn't he?"
A little exasperated, Isumi reflects that between League preliminaries, title matches, and international competitions, Weekly Go should have more interesting things to talk about than Touya Meijin's study sessions.
"Who do you play when you're there?" Tsuzuki asks, leaning back to stretch, eyes still on the board. "Doesn't he have a son who's a good Go player? Do you ever play him?"
"Sometimes, but he isn't usually there," Isumi says as Tsuzuki picks up a stone. "He's a special agent of some sort, and he's very busy. Mostly I play Ashiwara nine-dan, or Ochi six-dan."
He's starting to wonder if he's seeing things. There's nothing off about Tsuzuki's movements, no overt reaction to Isumi's statement; nothing that should make Isumi feel like the ground under him has just turned into bone-cracking ice over a vast and bottomless dark. Tsuzuki smiles at Isumi, eyes as bright and empty as a doll's, and places his stone.
"Ochi, huh?" he says casually. "I hear he's working his way up through the Judan league."
"Yes, there's… there's talk that he might take the title this round," Isumi says, eyeing the spot Tsuzuki set down his stone. It looks like a mistake, but Isumi doesn't trust it, not from this man.
Tsuzuki picks up another stone, flips it in his fingers, and his smile is more genuine now, pleased and soft and a little secretive. "Nah," he says. "I don't think he will."
Isumi swallows and forces himself to stop second-guessing long enough to place his stone. Stupid, he tells himself, to be this unnerved by power where he hadn't expected to find it. But he is, and when he goes for the atari, he sets his stone down on the wrong side. On a reflex he shouldn't even have, he picks it back up and sets it down in the correct position – then realizes what he just did.
Staring down at the board, Isumi says a word he doesn't think he's said since he was ten years old and his mother washed his mouth out with soap.
Tsuzuki somehow manages to cackle kindly. "C'mon, Isumi-san, never mind and let's just finish the game. You haven't told me about Akira Touya yet."
Ruefully, Isumi surveys the board. "We didn't have long until yose anyway, and I would have lost," he says. "You were playing extremely well and I was playing badly. Have you thought about taking the pro exam yourself, Tsuzuki-san?"
For a minute, Tsuzuki looks wistful. "Nah, not really," he says. "I… don't think I'd like being in the public eye that much. I kind of like my privacy. There's – well, there's a guy, and it wouldn't look too good for him if anyone found out, you know? It's not just that, I mean. There are too many things I can do now that I couldn't if I went pro. And it's fun, you know? Playing in salons. Especially the one right down the street from the Go Institute, because then pros like you come in sometimes to do shidougo."
If this was a teaching game for anyone, Isumi thinks wryly, it wasn't Tsuzuki. "I hope you'll think about it anyway," he says honestly. "And, your boyfriend – I hope one day he'll be in a better position to be open about things. It must be hard, the secrecy."
"Maybe one day. But not yet," Tsuzuki says quietly, sliding his fingers into his goke to feel the smooth slate against his skin. "Hey, do me a favor, would you?"
"Sure, if I can."
"When you see Akira Touya next, replay this game for him, would you? I'd like to think I kind of met him by proxy. And if I see you again, you can tell me what he said."
"Of course," Isumi says, meaning it, and finds himself hoping he'll meet Tsuzuki again. Isumi doesn't have any friends who aren't Go pros; strange and unnerving vibes or no, he thinks Tsuzuki might be an interesting place to start. "Thank you for the game."
Later, Isumi will try to keep his promise. He will lay down a dozen moves before Akira goes as white as death and puts his hand flat on the goban to stop the stones. Before Isumi quite knows what is going on, he will be back in his own apartment, Akira at the window, Ogata-san looming in the doorway, with a half-packed suitcase in front of him.
With fingers that shake too much to hold any stones at all, Isumi will start to dial Waya's number. Then, remembering the North Star Cup and another promise made over a goban, he will start over and dial Yang Hai's instead.
Isumi is getting a faintly unsettling vibe from the man sitting across the goban from him, and he can't quite figure out why.
His name is Tsuzuki, and he looks a few years younger than Isumi himself. Isumi knows so many Tsuzukis that he mostly tells them apart by context and dan level, but this one, he thinks, would stand out. This Tsuzuki somehow manages to sprawl comfortably in the hideous folding chair, a cheerful blaze of yellow from his high-tops to his shirt to the bleached front layers of his hair, rambling on about soccer and pop stars and some heinous sin against continuity perpetrated during D. Grey-Man's transition from manga to anime, and his Go…
His Go is so very not what Isumi expected to find from an amateur at this rambunctious salon, and it's thrown Isumi off and started that too-familiar cold pooling into the pit of his stomach; that cold that, sooner or later, always creeps up and wraps around his brain until whatever synapses are responsible for telling Isumi where best to lay his stones shut down and fall silent, one by one.
Tsuzuki lays down a stone in a spot Isumi was praying he'd overlook – and until now had felt a little silly for praying, because most pros under Isumi's dan level and a few above it would have overlooked that move as well. Isumi half expects him to gloat, jokingly or no, as Waya would; instead he looks up at Isumi and smiles, sunny and sure of himself, as if he'd done something ordinary and not remarkable at all.
"So what's the gossip from the Institute?" he asks. "I mean, I read Weekly Go all the time, but you know those guys. Weird, huh? Sometimes it seems like people you read about in the papers shouldn't be real or something."
Isumi shakes his head a little, drawn out of contemplating his next move by the more mundane contemplation of how Tsuzuki can play such astonishing Go while the entire contents of his brain appear to be coming out his mouth. Isumi really ought to introduce him to Waya. "I don't really know much gossip," he admits. "Unless you want to hear how Waya tried to kill himself by eating his weight in sushi after he got knocked out of the Ouza preliminaries in the third round."
Tsuzuki whoops with laughter, causing the old men at the table next to him to glare. Isumi smiles apologetically at them and lays a stone.
When Tsuzuki is done laughing, he looks down at the stone, then up at Isumi, his head tilted quizzically to the side. "I don't think you can save from there," he says bluntly.
He's right. At this point, Isumi, five-dan and playing against an amateur, is playing to minimize the inevitable damage. He doesn't think he's had a game this harmful to his ego since he played China's Le Ping after the last North Star cup, when Le Ping's friend Yang Hai had surveyed the board, shaken his head sadly, clapped Isumi on the shoulder, and said, Come to China, Isumi-san. We'll fix this. Sometimes – now, for instance – Isumi thinks he should take Yang Hai up on his offer. "Wait and see," he tells Tsuzuki, trying for zen and probably failing.
"You're defending," Tsuzuki says. "Why? You're playing an amateur in a crappy Go salon, you can't be losing your nerve."
"Maybe I'm having an off day," Isumi jokes weakly, and tries to change the subject. "Nase three-dan just got married, did the papers say? She married a man who was an insei with us. He's a chemical engineer now. She tells him Go sharpened his brain."
"Go does that," says Tsuzuki, looking suddenly thoughtful. "People think it teaches you how to look for weakness, and I guess it does. I know it does. But it teaches you how to look for strength too, and that can be a lot more interesting."
Isumi looks up, surprised. "That's what Touya Meijin said last week."
Tsuzuki doesn't look up from where he's surveying the board, and Isumi can't quite put his finger on what about him just changed. "I remember reading in Weekly Go that you'd been going to his study sessions. He's something, isn't he?"
A little exasperated, Isumi reflects that between League preliminaries, title matches, and international competitions, Weekly Go should have more interesting things to talk about than Touya Meijin's study sessions.
"Who do you play when you're there?" Tsuzuki asks, leaning back to stretch, eyes still on the board. "Doesn't he have a son who's a good Go player? Do you ever play him?"
"Sometimes, but he isn't usually there," Isumi says as Tsuzuki picks up a stone. "He's a special agent of some sort, and he's very busy. Mostly I play Ashiwara nine-dan, or Ochi six-dan."
He's starting to wonder if he's seeing things. There's nothing off about Tsuzuki's movements, no overt reaction to Isumi's statement; nothing that should make Isumi feel like the ground under him has just turned into bone-cracking ice over a vast and bottomless dark. Tsuzuki smiles at Isumi, eyes as bright and empty as a doll's, and places his stone.
"Ochi, huh?" he says casually. "I hear he's working his way up through the Judan league."
"Yes, there's… there's talk that he might take the title this round," Isumi says, eyeing the spot Tsuzuki set down his stone. It looks like a mistake, but Isumi doesn't trust it, not from this man.
Tsuzuki picks up another stone, flips it in his fingers, and his smile is more genuine now, pleased and soft and a little secretive. "Nah," he says. "I don't think he will."
Isumi swallows and forces himself to stop second-guessing long enough to place his stone. Stupid, he tells himself, to be this unnerved by power where he hadn't expected to find it. But he is, and when he goes for the atari, he sets his stone down on the wrong side. On a reflex he shouldn't even have, he picks it back up and sets it down in the correct position – then realizes what he just did.
Staring down at the board, Isumi says a word he doesn't think he's said since he was ten years old and his mother washed his mouth out with soap.
Tsuzuki somehow manages to cackle kindly. "C'mon, Isumi-san, never mind and let's just finish the game. You haven't told me about Akira Touya yet."
Ruefully, Isumi surveys the board. "We didn't have long until yose anyway, and I would have lost," he says. "You were playing extremely well and I was playing badly. Have you thought about taking the pro exam yourself, Tsuzuki-san?"
For a minute, Tsuzuki looks wistful. "Nah, not really," he says. "I… don't think I'd like being in the public eye that much. I kind of like my privacy. There's – well, there's a guy, and it wouldn't look too good for him if anyone found out, you know? It's not just that, I mean. There are too many things I can do now that I couldn't if I went pro. And it's fun, you know? Playing in salons. Especially the one right down the street from the Go Institute, because then pros like you come in sometimes to do shidougo."
If this was a teaching game for anyone, Isumi thinks wryly, it wasn't Tsuzuki. "I hope you'll think about it anyway," he says honestly. "And, your boyfriend – I hope one day he'll be in a better position to be open about things. It must be hard, the secrecy."
"Maybe one day. But not yet," Tsuzuki says quietly, sliding his fingers into his goke to feel the smooth slate against his skin. "Hey, do me a favor, would you?"
"Sure, if I can."
"When you see Akira Touya next, replay this game for him, would you? I'd like to think I kind of met him by proxy. And if I see you again, you can tell me what he said."
"Of course," Isumi says, meaning it, and finds himself hoping he'll meet Tsuzuki again. Isumi doesn't have any friends who aren't Go pros; strange and unnerving vibes or no, he thinks Tsuzuki might be an interesting place to start. "Thank you for the game."
Later, Isumi will try to keep his promise. He will lay down a dozen moves before Akira goes as white as death and puts his hand flat on the goban to stop the stones. Before Isumi quite knows what is going on, he will be back in his own apartment, Akira at the window, Ogata-san looming in the doorway, with a half-packed suitcase in front of him.
With fingers that shake too much to hold any stones at all, Isumi will start to dial Waya's number. Then, remembering the North Star Cup and another promise made over a goban, he will start over and dial Yang Hai's instead.
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Yeah, I think that's about how long it took me to burn through Hikaru no Go. There's just no putting it down once you get started.
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Anyways, as I said, lovely 'verse.
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(Anonymous) 2011-10-08 11:31 pm (UTC)(link)I just wanted to say that this verse is by far the most exciting Hikago fic I've read in the last few days, and I've read a LOT. It's sad that there probably won't be more, but I'm happy to have read what's there. Thank you for writing and sharing this!
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(Anonymous) 2011-11-10 06:33 am (UTC)(link)Thanks again for sharing.
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But I write as well, and I know that one of the most obnoxious things out there is some reader presumptuously demanding things. And I don't want to be That Guy. I would, however, like to express my pure joy in finding this 'verse, and my appreciation of all the work and art that has clearly gone into it. It is exceedingly well-written, it pulls the reader along like few stories I've read have, and your characterizations- while adapted to this unusual AU- are remarkably true to canon. It's all quite brilliant.
And because I can't help myself, I would like to humbly inquire as to whether you have any intention of writing any further in this universe, or if you have other installments elsewhere. If not, what stands already written is still one hell of an arc, and something I will without a doubt be returning to in the future. But this is the kind of story where even installments with 'no real point' are just as delicious as the central storyline. I do love those.
Anyhoo, thank you for sharing this story. And even if there isn't any more to come, thank you for writing it in the first place. I think I'm going to go back and reread it, now that I can do so at something other than a breathless, frantic pace. ;)
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I don't have any more full-length installments, but I usually take requests for Christmas drabbles, and for the last couple of years people have requested Arcadia!Shindou and Touya. So here are those:
2010
2011
loving it!
(Anonymous) 2012-02-18 05:56 pm (UTC)(link)Squealing with joy. Seriously. This still remains as my favorite HnG fic. The way you changed the setting to serial killer/detective and the twist between Hikaru and Sai's relationship, but still able to keep the Hikaru/Akira dynamics with their characters...
Looking forward to your updates :)
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This is so incredibly bone-chillingly dark and wonderfully perfect. I was sucked into it after only a few paragraphs of the first part on your website, and I just finished it all in one sitting because I couldn't put it down no matter how hard I tried.
I don't know what to say about this other than I love it so much, I want to scream out for more more more. The characters are so well done and IC and the story flows so well and just pulls you along. The banter back and forth between Touya and Shindou is so believeable, and Shindou makes one creepy serial murderer and it works so well. This AU is absolutely brilliant and full of delicious suspense and hotness and gosh, I wish there was more of it to read. Hell, I wish it was a book on it's own. I read the drabbles too, and they made me squeal outloud fhjdffnfnfd You write incredibly well, and if you had something published, I'd get that in a heartbeat. /endless flattering babble sob
Thank you so much for sharing this AU. I'm definitely going to get back to this and re-read it several times, I think.
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(Anonymous) 2013-12-13 08:41 pm (UTC)(link)But will you ever write and ending to this story??.....
~Gally