My friend recommended this fic to me by saying "drop everything and read this right now." It's that good!

I absolutely loved this. You expressed such a rich, nuanced understanding of these characters, even the ones that are minimally mentioned, like Waya and Isumi. I have a bad habit of reading too quickly, but there were so many great lines that made me sit up and savor them. Once I knew what I was in for, I started over from the beginning to read much more slowly. :) Writing around the original dialogue was an inspired decision and you had the skill to make it a good one; this felt like reading the manga for the first time again, which is the highest compliment I could give a Hikago fic.

Along with your spot-on characterizations (seriously, this comment is going to dissolve into me quoting my favorite lines in just a bit), I really liked the dream interludes and references to premodern Japan. It was a lovely homage to traditional Japanese storytelling. The scene with Ochi laying out Touya's kifu and saying it looked like a kimono slightly revealing a collarbone, as well as the allusions in the ending-- perfect.

Did you choose your title because you were reframing these scenes from Ochi's POV? I would love to read a fully Rashomon-style Hikago fic by you, with more characters POVs someday!

My favorite lines:

Touya withdraws suddenly behind a polite smile, all the energy that animated him when he was talking about Shindou hidden as though with the snap of a fan.

But Touya is already somewhere else, biting his lip and looking away as if he were reading twenty moves ahead in some game Ochi can't see.

The game is Shindou's against a Korean kenkyuusei, and it is brilliant. Not so much in the opening, which is Shindou all over, too risky and too aggressive, and a move in the midgame makes Ochi's mouth quirk in a smug, tight smile. But then Touya's fingers click down a white stone and suddenly the game opens out before Ochi like a rag unfurling into a banner – the move he thought was a mistake has cut the Korean's entire lower right quadrant adrift and flayed his formations in the center of the board. This isn't a go game anymore, it's a very artistic homicide.

Love the image of a rag unfurling into a banner.

Ochi is well aware, bitterly aware, that there are many things about him that other people find objectionable, but he's never really been untruthful until now.

Touya's go is flawless but oddly constrained, as if he were waiting for something, some move on his opponent's part that will fit with his own like a key in a lock – as if he were waiting for the Hand of God in some strange way that even Touya himself only dimly understands. Even now, after Ochi's bedroom has been so filled to overflowing with Touya and his go that the sense of him pervades the room like an unquiet ghost, Ochi still doesn't know what is holding Touya back.

Lovely incisive description of Touya's go.

Insei and professional go players, Ochi has found, don't think about the game in the same way as people who are merely very good at it. They understand things that casual visitors to go salons don't. One thing they understand is that a kifu isn't merely a record of moves; it's a window opening into someone's mind. Studying moves is how he knows that Shindou's thoughts are as disorganized as his hair, that Isumi doesn't trust himself, that Waya's generosity sometimes overrides his common sense, that Fuku will probably never pass the pro exam because he wants to get along more than he wants to win. Ochi is not by nature a messy person, but he has downloaded and printed out every kifu of Touya Akira's matches that he can get his hands on and now they're spread all over his room, angling against each other, as subtly and inadvertently revealing as a silk kimono slipping off from a collarbone.

This whole paragraph is perfection!