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answer_keyby kexing
Remembrance Part 3
Akira wakes up in a panic, gasping for air and struggling to remember his own name for a moment. He spends a couple of minutes unmoving, feeling like a child that desperately wishes that his parents were here to make things better. But that isn’t going to happen so he forces himself to get up. It is still dark outside so he tries to keep himself busy with go problems. When the stores open he goes out and buys himself a foldable go board. As embarrassing as it might be, having a go board is reassuring. Go has always been an anchoring presence in his life and now he eases the pressing feeling in his chest by sitting down and laying out some games. Real or not, there is something desperately reassuring about the feeling of stones against his fingertips and when he finally leaves the hotel his hands have stopped trembling.
Shindou still doesn’t turn his head as the door to the store opens so Akira pointedly clears his throat. At least this time he recognizes Akira immediately.
“Oh, great. It’s you again. Didn’t I tell you to fuck off?”
Akira ignores that completely. No matter how terrible his night was the simple act of laying out a few games has done wonders for his nerves and he is filled with determination. The cold is there, thick and heavy, but it seems to have a harder time getting to him right now.
“You never answered my question yesterday,” he simply says.
Shindou stares at him blankly so he clarifies
“About the go. If you ever wanted to play.”
Shindou’s face twists.
”Oh for fuck’s sake, not again. I told you yesterday, I don’t give a damn about what my grandfather wants.”
“And I told you yesterday that he didn’t send me.”
It is around now Shindou would normally start getting agitated, emitting all heat and anger. But in here, he doesn’t. He seems bitter and resigned and even if his resentment appears to be growing there is no heat in it.
“Sure, that sounds probable. But you know what, I don’t care. I told you before. Fuck off.”
And Akira, like he often does around Shindou, regresses to a grade school kid.
“Make me,” he says.
Shindou stares at him.
“I’ll have you thrown out of the store.”
“I’ll sit outside and wait for you,” Akira says without hesitation.
“God, you really are crazy,” Shindou shakes his head and for the first time Akira hears a hint of true exasperation behind then flat tone. “Fine. You know what, I don’t care. Stay here, I’m not going to talk to you.”
“Tell you what,” Akira says “You talk to me for an hour and I’ll leave for the day. Otherwise I’ll stay here until you close.”
He can see Shindou struggle with that for moment, but in the end an hour is apparently an acceptable price to get Akira out of his sight.
“Fine, one hour,” he says, obviously disgruntled. “So talk.”
Akira is sort of balance by the fact that this actually worked, but he quickly finds his feet.
“Go,” he prompts. You’ve never wanted to play? You have never met anyone who made you want to play?”
Shindou stares at him again.
“It’s a stupid board game. Who the hell would make me want to play a stupid board game?”
Akira still wants to yell at him on principle just for saying that but this is probably not the time. The cold is twining itself around him, trying to get a hold of him. He shivers slightly, but he is warmer today and more optimistic, and that makes it easier to resist.
“Fine. Then do you know any go players? Except your grandfather, I mean?”
Shindou smiles unpleasantly at him and answers in one syllable.
“No.”
Clearly he has decided to be as unhelpful as possible. Akira spends the hour pressing and probing him but he doesn’t learn anything at all. Shindou doesn’t know anything about go, doesn’t want to know anything about go and has probably never played a stone in his life. He sounds hollow and bitter and appears to be in constant conflict with his whole family about his refusal to get engaged in anything. Sometime Akira sees a glimpse of something else under the emptiness but nothing that makes him hopefull. The only thing he can see in the cracks of indifference is pain.
Exactly one hour later Shindou points at the clock.
“So,” he says pleasantly, “this wasn’t fun at all. Now get out.”
Akira really wants to argue for the sake of it, but a promise is a promise, so he leaves without protest.
He spends the rest of the day at an Internet café searching for Sai. He scours Weekly Go and then every other go-related site he can find, hoping to come across any record, any reference to Sai or anything that could possibly be one of his games, but nothing shows up. In this Tokyo no Sai has spread any ripples across the go world.
He does stumble across himself. He is included in an article about his father, sitting beside him with short hair and blank eyes. He is still a go player here, apparently. Something twists in Akira’s chest and it is morbid curiosity that makes him search out some of his own games. It is a stupid thing to do of course. Because when he starts looking at them he can feel the cold seeping in through his neck. The games are empty. Adequate. Not horrible the most of them. But empty. And Akira remembers again the feeling from the store and the go board in front of him with all answers entirely out of his reach. He quickly shuts down the browser but it takes a while for his breathing to calm down.
He doesn’t want to go to sleep that night so he sits up and tries to make a list of things to ask Shindou. But the exhaustion overwhelms him, and sometime before dawn he falls asleep despites his efforts. The nightmares come as soon as his eyes fall close.
He dreams that he is playing a go game in a cave of ice, but every move he makes disappears as soon as he places the stone. There is supposed to be someone sitting opposite him, but the only thing there is a gaping hole. The whole time he hears someone screaming and he knows that voice but he is forgetting, memories slipping out like sand between his fingers. He tries to get up and follow the scream but he can’t - he is stuck in front of the board - and the ground is opening under him pulling him down into a thick, tarlike darkness.
It is almost evening when he wakes up with a heart that seems to be pounding out of his chest. Like the day before he experiences the same uncertainty of who he even is. Whatever walls that protects him from the cold when he is awake obviously does not work when he is asleep.
There isn’t much time left until the shops starts closing and Akira sincerely doubts that Shindou would let him into his home so he runs the whole way to the subway.
Shindou stares at him as he enters gasping half an hour before closing.
“What the hell. Didn’t I get rid of you yesterday?”
“Only for the day,” Akira reminds him.
“What the hell do you want from me?” and there is that anger again. It might not be warmth, but nor is it indifference and Akira takes comfort in that. If anyone in the world is capable of riling Shindou up, it has to be him.
”I want you to tell me about go.”
Shindou’s face twists again.
“Stop it,” he says. “I haven’t magically become interested in it since yesterday. Just go home and tell him to mind his own business.”
All throughout their conversations yesterday Shindou remained dead certain that Akira is here on the behalf of his grandfather and that is apparently also true today. For some reason his grandfather’s involvement seems to hurt Shindou immensely. In the real world Akira has always seen Shindou and his grandfather as close but it doesn’t surprise him that in here, all the people Shindou values are the ones that hurt him.
“I told you. This has nothing to do with your grandfather. I just want you to talk to me about it.”
“But I don’t know anything about go, ok. It doesn’t matter to me.”
“Fine,” Akira replies changing tracks. “Then what does matter to you?”
Shindou freezes and for a moment his face seems to be crumbling. It is as if Akira just punched him instead of asking a question. Then he moves. He gets very, very close to Akira, grabs his collar and his voice is low when he says,
“Here is what matters to me. Nothing. Do you understand that? Nothing matters to me.”
And Akira believes him. He believes him absolutely and it takes the air out of his lungs.
With the same firm grip on his collar and Shindou simply lifts Akira and physically drags him out the store slamming the door shut in his face and locking it. Akira is so taken off guard that he doesn’t even find it in him to protest until it is too late. He stays outside the door for more than an hour but Shindou doesn’t come out and Akira suspects that he can stay inside the store the whole night if he is properly motivated so Akira finally gives up and returns to the Internet café.
He goes back to the store the next day, completely exhausted after a night filled with the same cold-drenched nightmares. Shindou doesn’t even seem surprised to see him.
“Again,” he says tiredly, as Akira leans against the counter. “Do I have to punch you in the face to get you to leave?”
“That really wouldn’t help much.” Akira says, and it is the absolute truth, because even if he believes Shindou to be capable of it, Akira has spent his last few nights being tormented by Hell so physical violence isn’t terribly intimidating. Right now, a punch in the face only seems like a passable substitute for coffee.
There is probably something in his voice that reflects his feelings because Shindou stares at him for a moment and then starts lightly kicking the counter with one of his feet. He seems jittery today and Akira doesn’t know if that is a good or a bad thing.
“So how can I make you go away?”
They have already had this conversation, and Akira looks down at the counter and takes a few moments to consider if he wants to tell Shindou just that or if he’d rather tell him to fuck off. He is desperately tired and he can feel the cold in the store waiting for him. He looks up and for the first time here really looks at Shindou up close. Shindou is freezing he realizes. He is shaking; small constant tremors run though his body, his arms are covered in goose bumps and his lips and fingertips are blue-tinged from cold. Even with the despair twisting in the store the temperature shouldn’t be low enough to make Shindou react like that.
“You’re cold,” he says quietly.
Shindou looks down on his arms and then smiles a bit bitterly.
“I’m always cold,” he says. “They thought there was something wrong with me when I was a kid, but no doctor could ever find anything. Not like it matters, anyway. What, you want to warm me up?”
The last part is obviously said to spite him, but it is true nonetheless. He understands what cold Shindou is caught up in. He has felt it himself, in this very store and in every dream he has had since he came to this place, pulling him down into a suffocating darkness, and the thought of living a lifetime of it is absolutely terrifying. How long have you been here? he thinks. How long have you been caught up in this cold?
Unthinkingly, he reaches out for Shindou who flinches away from his hand like it’s poison.
“That wasn’t an invitation,” he snarls and turns his back to Akira who can feel his own cheeks heat more than they probably should.
“Sorry,” he mutters, “but you’re so cold.”
“Didn’t I just tell you it doesn’t matter? Don’t you have other things to do than to hang around here bothering me?”
Akira is too tired to get in to that argument right now, and too tired to even try to be subtle about his questions.
“No,” he says. “You want to tell me about when you grew up?”
Somewhere in Shindou’s childhood he was supposed to meet Sai but didn’t. It is an awfully lot of territory to cover but Akira remains optimistic. Even though it is possible Sai and Shindou met by pure chance Akira has always suspected that Sai’s story was firmly entrenched in Shindou’s childhood. He still hasn’t figured out how Shindou could be playing Sai’s go one day and only his own the next, but he has gotten as far as concluding that even though the shadow of Sai is clearly visible in Shindou’s go Sai actually was a separate person. And if he was such a large part of Shindou’s childhood then Akira should be able to find some clues about him by getting to know Shindou’s past. Maybe his biggest error so far has been only asking Shindou things that could be connected to go.
Shindou stares at him like Akira just threatened to rob the store. But the expression in his face at least isn’t apathy which counts as a victory.
“God, you are absolutely nuts, did anyone tell you that?! What do you even-” then he casts a glance at Akira’s face and cuts off, looking exhausted. “Ok, fine. Great. My childhood. In excruciating detail. If I tell you, will you just leave?”
Akira really doesn’t want to agree to leave. He is running out of time. But he also realizes that his only chance is to keep Shindou talking. Plus Akira can feel himself getting more and more susceptible to the despair. Even as he’s talking to Shindou he feels his own memories getting vague and the cold is seeping into his skin like it is being absorbed. If he stays in the store for too long at a time he is afraid that he will lose himself like Shindou has and that they both will get caught here forever. So he promises to leave after Shindou tells him.
And Shindou does.
When Akira leaves the store his fists are clenched so tightly that he has a hard time opening them. Shindou’s childhood here has according to Shindou been largely uneventful. No terrible abuse or loss of loved ones. The main conflict in the family has seemingly always been Shindou’s complete apathy towards everything. But small pieces that came up in the story, things Shindou mentioned with indifference, almost made Akira sick. Like the fact that Shindou has a burn covering a substantial part of his lower arm. When Akira asked about it Shindou smiled wryly “I put my arm in a fire once,” he caught Akira’s expression and added, “I told you, I’m always cold. I wanted to see if it would warm me up.”
Akira was so horrified by this the only thing he actually got out was,
“Did it?”
“Warm me up? No. Nothing warms me up.”
Not only does he feel sick, he didn’t find out anything that could possibly be of use. No one connected to Shindou’s childhood could possibly be Sai. The most prominent adults there are Shindou’s parents and his grandparents. The idea that any of them could be Sai is absurd. Akira is feeling frustrated and helpless and unsure what to do, but in the end he tries another Internet café. This time he chooses a café that is open all night and buys a substantial amount of coffee. He really does not want to fall asleep.
That is futile of course because his utter exhaustion isn’t natural. Even in front of the computer he can’t manage to keep his eyes open and he is distantly aware that his head hits the keyboard as he falls asleep.
He dreams about the black tarlike darkness, engulfing him, draining out his past. He can hear the screaming again, but if it is fading and dying away and in the dream that devastates him even though he can’t remember why. The darkness is seeping into him thick and liquid and no air is coming into his lungs. Slowly he stops existing.
He wakes up half lying across the computer table. No one in the café has bothered to wake him up. He doesn’t understand what he is doing here. He has to meet his father for lunch in an hour, has to sit and endure that disappointed gaze and pretend that go has any significance to him anymore. How did he even end up here? And why is he wearing clothes he doesn’t even remember buying? And what in the world happened to his hair? He probably should be upset over all these things, but he is too tired. It’s not like it matters. It’s not like anything matters. It is just a pointless succession of days where the whole world is gray and empty. He can just – And like a rubber band his mind snaps into place again and he grips the table in front of him so hard that his knuckles turn white. For a moment he thinks he is going to throw up. That wasn’t me he tells himself. That won’t ever be me. He feels paralyzed with exhaustion but he can’t afford to sit still. Get Shindou out of here first, break down later.
When he comes back to the store this time not only does Shindou remember him but he almost seems to perk up a bit at the sight. However, Akira acknowledges that this can just be wishful thinking.
He slumps against the counter and Shindou studies his face.
“Rough night, huh?”
That is a massive understatement but Akira is too tired to get into that.
“Yes,” he just agrees. “Rough night.”
“I wasn’t sure you were coming back.” Shindou informs him, and Akira has no clue why Shindou would think that now and not after the time when Shindou dragged him out of the store by his collar. He points this out and Shindou sort of shrugs.
“Yeah, but you know, you didn’t come yesterday.”
“I didn’t come-“
Something cold twists in his stomach. How long was I asleep?
“What day is it?”
“God, you are so weird. I can’t believe people let you walk outside alone.” He looks at Akira and sighs. “It’s Thursday, ok.”
Thursday? One day left. Akira has to fight down panic for a moment. On the other hand this is basically the most Shindou has said to him without being blackmailed into it, so maybe Akira’s attempts are having some effect after all. If only he could get a clue to who the hell Sai is...
“This is going to sound strange-” he starts, but Shindou cuts him off immediately.
“Everything you say sounds strange.” He glances at Akira again. “Hey, can’t we just talk about other stuff for a while?”
“Other stuff?”
“Yeah, I mean. Stuff.”
The fact that Shindou actually wants to talk to him is comforting, but there is something desperate in the question, and it hurts.
“Like what?”
Shindou’s face does that crumpling thing again, as if he hasn’t even considered what sort of stuff he was talking about.
“I dunno. Stuff. There are never any people here, really. Just Akari, sometimes, and she never stays. I just thought... There have to be other things you like.”
That is true, Akira realizes, he has never seen other people in the store. Just Shindou, day after day, completely alone, caught up in the cold. It makes him angry just to think about. He is once again hit with the desire to shake Shindou out of this, to make him start caring. The cold, the fear and the draining exhaustion are working against him, exacerbating his frustration.
“Stuff I like,” he says. “What about stuff you like?”
Shindou’s face closes down, like a curtain being drawn. Like last time he reacts to any mention of caring as if it was a slap in the face
“I thought we had this conversation already.”
“I don’t care if we had it,” Akira can feel his voice rising. “I don’t care. There has to be something.”
“No there doesn’t! How hard is it to get that? How hard is it for anyone to get that?!”
“But there is, you say there isn’t, but there is. I know there is. Don’t tell me of all people that you don’t care about anything.”
Akira knows it isn’t fair. He is talking to the Shindou he knows, not this version, but he can’t seem to stop the words from coming out.
And Shindou snap. He backs away defensively and yells,
“Stop it, just stop it. Do you think I want this? Do you think I haven’t tried? It has always been like this. It has always been cold and gray and fucking empty. This is the only thing I will ever be, get it?! There is nothing. I'm nothing. This is all there is!!”
And for a moment his face is filled with such utter agony that Akira feels it like a phantom pain in his heart.
This is all there is.
Akira shouldn’t have started this. And he should end it right now, but he can’t. The whole week has finally pushed him so close to his breaking point that he can almost hear something in himself snapping as well.
“But it isn’t!!” he is yelling now too, and it should be normal for them, but there is nothing normal about this fight. “Can you just listen to me?! Because-“
“Oh, fuck you. I don’t want to hear this fucking speech again. You tell whoever it was that told you to stalk me to fuck off. Because let’s be honest, you’re not hanging around her every day for my sparkling personality, are you.”
Then, true to form, Shindou solves this conflict by running away. Or rather, by going into the backroom and slamming the door shut behind himself and Akira is so angry he literally goes and kicks at the door until Shindou threatens to call security.
Eventually, Akira just slumps on the floor on the other side of the door. He can feel the anger subsiding, leaving him drained.
“Look,” he says very quietly. “I’m sorry. I just…” He doesn’t know what to say. He has even run out of questions. ”No one told me to come here,” he says again. “I’m asking because I want to know.”
“Because my childhood is a period of great interest to you.” Shindou sounds as hollow and drained as he does.
Akira laughs a bit, because that is the only option besides crying right now.
“Maybe I was hoping for some skeletons in your closet,” he says. He is very rarely flippant, but apparently the fatigue is getting to him.
He can hear Shindou snort.
“I think my grandfather had a haunted go board in a shed once. Does that make you happy?”
A haunted go board – Akira suddenly remembers that go board. Not with a ghost obviously, just put away in Shindou’s grandfather’s shed. Shindou had shown him the board once. It was a beautiful board made from kaya wood. Akira could tell it was very old just by looking at it. He told Shindou that and Shindou had grinned.
“Yeah,” he agreed “it is very old,” and then, “You know, everything started here. I mean, without this board I would never have gotten into go.”
Akira remembers trying to decipher that, because in his experience an old go board, no matter how beautiful, wouldn’t be enough to make Shindou interested in anything. At the time he said as much to Shindou who immediately took offence, and then they were off yelling. Akira never asked again. But he has wondered.
Suddenly he remembers what the man actually said about Shindou when Akira asked about the deal.
“He was trying to reacquire a ghost.”
A go board with a ghost. Shindou playing impossible games without even knowing how to hold the stones. Shindou arguing with thin air in front of a subway station.
Akira’s brain screeches to a halt for a minute. No way, he thinks. That is not actually possible.
Shindou’s games going from brilliant to horrible. Sai who only played over the Internet. Shindou at the Internet café.
But then-
That makes sense. That actually makes sense. Akira would have called it absolutely impossible but he is sitting around in Hell at the moment, so the word “impossible” has pretty much lost all meaning. There are a thousand things he wants to ask, and so many complicated feelings to sort out, but he hasn't got the time. Later. Right now there is only one thing on his mind. No matter how incomprehensible it is, Sai is in that go board and if that’s so then Akira should be able to get the board to Shindou to get him to remember. The relief is so overwhelming that he his legs feels weak even though he is sitting down.
“Yes,” he says, his voice shaky. “That did, in fact, make me happy.”
Then he gets up.
“You’re leaving?” Shindou asks from behind the door and Akira can feel himself smile for the first time this week.
“Don’t worry. I’ll come back.”
He can hear Shindou snort again on the other side of the door, but tone has lost some of that hollowness and Akira takes heart from it. This is going to be alright, he thinks. We are going to be alright. And he takes off.
He goes to the same payphone that he used the first day. He has Shindou’s grandparents’ number properly saved in his mobile phone and he feels a moment of gratitude for the fact that his phone has contact numbers for basically half the people in Shindou’s life. He is a bit worried if Shindou’s grandfather will even help him, but if he remembers the rules correctly no being made by Hell can consciously hinder him, lie to him or refuse him information. He will find out where that damn board is and then he will get it no matter what.
Shindou’s grandfather answers the phone and sounds delighted when Akira introduces himself as a friend of Shindou's, and even more delighted when he learns that Akira is a go player.
“That boy needs proper company. No guidance, no drive. That‘s what’s wrong with him. He sat around staring into thin air even as a kid. You couldn’t get him to care about anything. I tried, I can tell you, everybody tried, but he was just from a bad stock.”
Akira can’t imagine Shindou’s real grandfather ever saying anything like that, especially to a stranger. But things being the way they are, Akira just grinds his teeth and hums politely. Even if he rules say he can’t be hindered, lied to or refused information, he has no desire to see what loopholes there are if he were to start a fight.
He tentatively brings up the go board. He heard about if from Shindou and he is very interested in buying it. If it isn’t too much trouble, could he maybe even come and look at it?
Shindou’s grandfather sounds genuinely regretful when he answers.
“I’m awfully sorry. I think I got it from a relative ages ago, but I can’t even understand how Hikaru can remember it. The shed it was stored in burnt down when he was just a kid and the go board got destroyed. There is nothing left of it.”
Akira stands still for a very long time after Shindou’s grandfather hangs up the phone. The go board is gone. How is that even possible? That can’t be possible. If the go board is gone that means that-
“If you have any questions while inside Hell, please use the red phone beside the blue door.”
And Akira realizes with a rising dread that he does have a question, one he should have asked even before he went in, but that he didn’t even consider back then. His legs are shaking all the way to the blue door. It is still there, with the red phone placed oddly beside it. It takes him tremendous effort to just lift it off its handle.
“I have a question,” he says into the receiver, but there is no reply. Then the air near him ripples and the man with the painted face steps out through thin air.
“Touya-san,” he says pleasantly. “You called?”
Akira is chilled to his bones, and his mouth feels like cotton.
“I-” he begins, then swallows and starts again.
“During our first meeting you told me that to make Shindou remember I needed Sai.”
The man’s looks at Akira with the same fixed smile. He appears to be waiting.
“Is that possible? Does Sai even exist in this world?”
The man keeps on smiling. “Sadly for you, no. As you had a chance to notice Shindou Hikaru’s fears are based on never being able to play go. In this reality Sai stopped existing before they could meet.”
He should have asked that a long time ago, he should have understood that a long time ago but it still feels like getting hit in the stomach.
“And I can’t make him remember without Sai?”
It comes out as a question, but he already knows the answer.
“No,” the man says mildly “Not without Sai. That is not how the rules work.”
“So you gave me a task that is impossible to accomplice.”
The man’s face doesn’t change, but for a moment, through what feels almost like a crevice in the air, Akira can feel his hunger. It opens up like a bottomless hole, impossible to fill. This is what the cold is made of; this desperate, insatiable, maddening hunger.
“We are Hell, Touya-san. Just because we have guidelines to follow doesn’t mean that we have to play fair. And this way we can save up on compensation.”
The painted face seems to be cracking at the seams and the smile grows impossibly wide “But we will miss you if you leave Touya Akira. Your despair is delicious.”
Akira should have realized this. All this time he has been sidetracked by the absurdity of what was happening, when he should have wondered what Hells agenda in all this was. Hell wasn’t allowed to harm Akira directly or to lay claim to him and purposefully catch him in a world of his own despair, but because they are so close – so very similar – Hell could get him caught up in Shindou’s despair instead. There was never any even ground here to begin with, never any way to get Shindou out. Akira was just an added bonus, sent in here to get lost. He feels the cold presence tighten around him; touching something deeper than it has before, making his vision blurry. He flinches back violently, feeling sick and the feeling eases, but remnants of the cold still lingers, chilling him to the bone.
The man is still endlessly smiling.
“I apologize, I overstepped my boundaries. But stay here Touya Akira, embrace your despair and fall. Rest assured, we will take good care of you."
With that he is gone but Akira remains shaking and unable to move for a very, very long time.
kexingRemembrance Part 3
Akira wakes up in a panic, gasping for air and struggling to remember his own name for a moment. He spends a couple of minutes unmoving, feeling like a child that desperately wishes that his parents were here to make things better. But that isn’t going to happen so he forces himself to get up. It is still dark outside so he tries to keep himself busy with go problems. When the stores open he goes out and buys himself a foldable go board. As embarrassing as it might be, having a go board is reassuring. Go has always been an anchoring presence in his life and now he eases the pressing feeling in his chest by sitting down and laying out some games. Real or not, there is something desperately reassuring about the feeling of stones against his fingertips and when he finally leaves the hotel his hands have stopped trembling.
Shindou still doesn’t turn his head as the door to the store opens so Akira pointedly clears his throat. At least this time he recognizes Akira immediately.
“Oh, great. It’s you again. Didn’t I tell you to fuck off?”
Akira ignores that completely. No matter how terrible his night was the simple act of laying out a few games has done wonders for his nerves and he is filled with determination. The cold is there, thick and heavy, but it seems to have a harder time getting to him right now.
“You never answered my question yesterday,” he simply says.
Shindou stares at him blankly so he clarifies
“About the go. If you ever wanted to play.”
Shindou’s face twists.
”Oh for fuck’s sake, not again. I told you yesterday, I don’t give a damn about what my grandfather wants.”
“And I told you yesterday that he didn’t send me.”
It is around now Shindou would normally start getting agitated, emitting all heat and anger. But in here, he doesn’t. He seems bitter and resigned and even if his resentment appears to be growing there is no heat in it.
“Sure, that sounds probable. But you know what, I don’t care. I told you before. Fuck off.”
And Akira, like he often does around Shindou, regresses to a grade school kid.
“Make me,” he says.
Shindou stares at him.
“I’ll have you thrown out of the store.”
“I’ll sit outside and wait for you,” Akira says without hesitation.
“God, you really are crazy,” Shindou shakes his head and for the first time Akira hears a hint of true exasperation behind then flat tone. “Fine. You know what, I don’t care. Stay here, I’m not going to talk to you.”
“Tell you what,” Akira says “You talk to me for an hour and I’ll leave for the day. Otherwise I’ll stay here until you close.”
He can see Shindou struggle with that for moment, but in the end an hour is apparently an acceptable price to get Akira out of his sight.
“Fine, one hour,” he says, obviously disgruntled. “So talk.”
Akira is sort of balance by the fact that this actually worked, but he quickly finds his feet.
“Go,” he prompts. You’ve never wanted to play? You have never met anyone who made you want to play?”
Shindou stares at him again.
“It’s a stupid board game. Who the hell would make me want to play a stupid board game?”
Akira still wants to yell at him on principle just for saying that but this is probably not the time. The cold is twining itself around him, trying to get a hold of him. He shivers slightly, but he is warmer today and more optimistic, and that makes it easier to resist.
“Fine. Then do you know any go players? Except your grandfather, I mean?”
Shindou smiles unpleasantly at him and answers in one syllable.
“No.”
Clearly he has decided to be as unhelpful as possible. Akira spends the hour pressing and probing him but he doesn’t learn anything at all. Shindou doesn’t know anything about go, doesn’t want to know anything about go and has probably never played a stone in his life. He sounds hollow and bitter and appears to be in constant conflict with his whole family about his refusal to get engaged in anything. Sometime Akira sees a glimpse of something else under the emptiness but nothing that makes him hopefull. The only thing he can see in the cracks of indifference is pain.
Exactly one hour later Shindou points at the clock.
“So,” he says pleasantly, “this wasn’t fun at all. Now get out.”
Akira really wants to argue for the sake of it, but a promise is a promise, so he leaves without protest.
He spends the rest of the day at an Internet café searching for Sai. He scours Weekly Go and then every other go-related site he can find, hoping to come across any record, any reference to Sai or anything that could possibly be one of his games, but nothing shows up. In this Tokyo no Sai has spread any ripples across the go world.
He does stumble across himself. He is included in an article about his father, sitting beside him with short hair and blank eyes. He is still a go player here, apparently. Something twists in Akira’s chest and it is morbid curiosity that makes him search out some of his own games. It is a stupid thing to do of course. Because when he starts looking at them he can feel the cold seeping in through his neck. The games are empty. Adequate. Not horrible the most of them. But empty. And Akira remembers again the feeling from the store and the go board in front of him with all answers entirely out of his reach. He quickly shuts down the browser but it takes a while for his breathing to calm down.
He doesn’t want to go to sleep that night so he sits up and tries to make a list of things to ask Shindou. But the exhaustion overwhelms him, and sometime before dawn he falls asleep despites his efforts. The nightmares come as soon as his eyes fall close.
He dreams that he is playing a go game in a cave of ice, but every move he makes disappears as soon as he places the stone. There is supposed to be someone sitting opposite him, but the only thing there is a gaping hole. The whole time he hears someone screaming and he knows that voice but he is forgetting, memories slipping out like sand between his fingers. He tries to get up and follow the scream but he can’t - he is stuck in front of the board - and the ground is opening under him pulling him down into a thick, tarlike darkness.
It is almost evening when he wakes up with a heart that seems to be pounding out of his chest. Like the day before he experiences the same uncertainty of who he even is. Whatever walls that protects him from the cold when he is awake obviously does not work when he is asleep.
There isn’t much time left until the shops starts closing and Akira sincerely doubts that Shindou would let him into his home so he runs the whole way to the subway.
Shindou stares at him as he enters gasping half an hour before closing.
“What the hell. Didn’t I get rid of you yesterday?”
“Only for the day,” Akira reminds him.
“What the hell do you want from me?” and there is that anger again. It might not be warmth, but nor is it indifference and Akira takes comfort in that. If anyone in the world is capable of riling Shindou up, it has to be him.
”I want you to tell me about go.”
Shindou’s face twists again.
“Stop it,” he says. “I haven’t magically become interested in it since yesterday. Just go home and tell him to mind his own business.”
All throughout their conversations yesterday Shindou remained dead certain that Akira is here on the behalf of his grandfather and that is apparently also true today. For some reason his grandfather’s involvement seems to hurt Shindou immensely. In the real world Akira has always seen Shindou and his grandfather as close but it doesn’t surprise him that in here, all the people Shindou values are the ones that hurt him.
“I told you. This has nothing to do with your grandfather. I just want you to talk to me about it.”
“But I don’t know anything about go, ok. It doesn’t matter to me.”
“Fine,” Akira replies changing tracks. “Then what does matter to you?”
Shindou freezes and for a moment his face seems to be crumbling. It is as if Akira just punched him instead of asking a question. Then he moves. He gets very, very close to Akira, grabs his collar and his voice is low when he says,
“Here is what matters to me. Nothing. Do you understand that? Nothing matters to me.”
And Akira believes him. He believes him absolutely and it takes the air out of his lungs.
With the same firm grip on his collar and Shindou simply lifts Akira and physically drags him out the store slamming the door shut in his face and locking it. Akira is so taken off guard that he doesn’t even find it in him to protest until it is too late. He stays outside the door for more than an hour but Shindou doesn’t come out and Akira suspects that he can stay inside the store the whole night if he is properly motivated so Akira finally gives up and returns to the Internet café.
He goes back to the store the next day, completely exhausted after a night filled with the same cold-drenched nightmares. Shindou doesn’t even seem surprised to see him.
“Again,” he says tiredly, as Akira leans against the counter. “Do I have to punch you in the face to get you to leave?”
“That really wouldn’t help much.” Akira says, and it is the absolute truth, because even if he believes Shindou to be capable of it, Akira has spent his last few nights being tormented by Hell so physical violence isn’t terribly intimidating. Right now, a punch in the face only seems like a passable substitute for coffee.
There is probably something in his voice that reflects his feelings because Shindou stares at him for a moment and then starts lightly kicking the counter with one of his feet. He seems jittery today and Akira doesn’t know if that is a good or a bad thing.
“So how can I make you go away?”
They have already had this conversation, and Akira looks down at the counter and takes a few moments to consider if he wants to tell Shindou just that or if he’d rather tell him to fuck off. He is desperately tired and he can feel the cold in the store waiting for him. He looks up and for the first time here really looks at Shindou up close. Shindou is freezing he realizes. He is shaking; small constant tremors run though his body, his arms are covered in goose bumps and his lips and fingertips are blue-tinged from cold. Even with the despair twisting in the store the temperature shouldn’t be low enough to make Shindou react like that.
“You’re cold,” he says quietly.
Shindou looks down on his arms and then smiles a bit bitterly.
“I’m always cold,” he says. “They thought there was something wrong with me when I was a kid, but no doctor could ever find anything. Not like it matters, anyway. What, you want to warm me up?”
The last part is obviously said to spite him, but it is true nonetheless. He understands what cold Shindou is caught up in. He has felt it himself, in this very store and in every dream he has had since he came to this place, pulling him down into a suffocating darkness, and the thought of living a lifetime of it is absolutely terrifying. How long have you been here? he thinks. How long have you been caught up in this cold?
Unthinkingly, he reaches out for Shindou who flinches away from his hand like it’s poison.
“That wasn’t an invitation,” he snarls and turns his back to Akira who can feel his own cheeks heat more than they probably should.
“Sorry,” he mutters, “but you’re so cold.”
“Didn’t I just tell you it doesn’t matter? Don’t you have other things to do than to hang around here bothering me?”
Akira is too tired to get in to that argument right now, and too tired to even try to be subtle about his questions.
“No,” he says. “You want to tell me about when you grew up?”
Somewhere in Shindou’s childhood he was supposed to meet Sai but didn’t. It is an awfully lot of territory to cover but Akira remains optimistic. Even though it is possible Sai and Shindou met by pure chance Akira has always suspected that Sai’s story was firmly entrenched in Shindou’s childhood. He still hasn’t figured out how Shindou could be playing Sai’s go one day and only his own the next, but he has gotten as far as concluding that even though the shadow of Sai is clearly visible in Shindou’s go Sai actually was a separate person. And if he was such a large part of Shindou’s childhood then Akira should be able to find some clues about him by getting to know Shindou’s past. Maybe his biggest error so far has been only asking Shindou things that could be connected to go.
Shindou stares at him like Akira just threatened to rob the store. But the expression in his face at least isn’t apathy which counts as a victory.
“God, you are absolutely nuts, did anyone tell you that?! What do you even-” then he casts a glance at Akira’s face and cuts off, looking exhausted. “Ok, fine. Great. My childhood. In excruciating detail. If I tell you, will you just leave?”
Akira really doesn’t want to agree to leave. He is running out of time. But he also realizes that his only chance is to keep Shindou talking. Plus Akira can feel himself getting more and more susceptible to the despair. Even as he’s talking to Shindou he feels his own memories getting vague and the cold is seeping into his skin like it is being absorbed. If he stays in the store for too long at a time he is afraid that he will lose himself like Shindou has and that they both will get caught here forever. So he promises to leave after Shindou tells him.
And Shindou does.
When Akira leaves the store his fists are clenched so tightly that he has a hard time opening them. Shindou’s childhood here has according to Shindou been largely uneventful. No terrible abuse or loss of loved ones. The main conflict in the family has seemingly always been Shindou’s complete apathy towards everything. But small pieces that came up in the story, things Shindou mentioned with indifference, almost made Akira sick. Like the fact that Shindou has a burn covering a substantial part of his lower arm. When Akira asked about it Shindou smiled wryly “I put my arm in a fire once,” he caught Akira’s expression and added, “I told you, I’m always cold. I wanted to see if it would warm me up.”
Akira was so horrified by this the only thing he actually got out was,
“Did it?”
“Warm me up? No. Nothing warms me up.”
Not only does he feel sick, he didn’t find out anything that could possibly be of use. No one connected to Shindou’s childhood could possibly be Sai. The most prominent adults there are Shindou’s parents and his grandparents. The idea that any of them could be Sai is absurd. Akira is feeling frustrated and helpless and unsure what to do, but in the end he tries another Internet café. This time he chooses a café that is open all night and buys a substantial amount of coffee. He really does not want to fall asleep.
That is futile of course because his utter exhaustion isn’t natural. Even in front of the computer he can’t manage to keep his eyes open and he is distantly aware that his head hits the keyboard as he falls asleep.
He dreams about the black tarlike darkness, engulfing him, draining out his past. He can hear the screaming again, but if it is fading and dying away and in the dream that devastates him even though he can’t remember why. The darkness is seeping into him thick and liquid and no air is coming into his lungs. Slowly he stops existing.
He wakes up half lying across the computer table. No one in the café has bothered to wake him up. He doesn’t understand what he is doing here. He has to meet his father for lunch in an hour, has to sit and endure that disappointed gaze and pretend that go has any significance to him anymore. How did he even end up here? And why is he wearing clothes he doesn’t even remember buying? And what in the world happened to his hair? He probably should be upset over all these things, but he is too tired. It’s not like it matters. It’s not like anything matters. It is just a pointless succession of days where the whole world is gray and empty. He can just – And like a rubber band his mind snaps into place again and he grips the table in front of him so hard that his knuckles turn white. For a moment he thinks he is going to throw up. That wasn’t me he tells himself. That won’t ever be me. He feels paralyzed with exhaustion but he can’t afford to sit still. Get Shindou out of here first, break down later.
When he comes back to the store this time not only does Shindou remember him but he almost seems to perk up a bit at the sight. However, Akira acknowledges that this can just be wishful thinking.
He slumps against the counter and Shindou studies his face.
“Rough night, huh?”
That is a massive understatement but Akira is too tired to get into that.
“Yes,” he just agrees. “Rough night.”
“I wasn’t sure you were coming back.” Shindou informs him, and Akira has no clue why Shindou would think that now and not after the time when Shindou dragged him out of the store by his collar. He points this out and Shindou sort of shrugs.
“Yeah, but you know, you didn’t come yesterday.”
“I didn’t come-“
Something cold twists in his stomach. How long was I asleep?
“What day is it?”
“God, you are so weird. I can’t believe people let you walk outside alone.” He looks at Akira and sighs. “It’s Thursday, ok.”
Thursday? One day left. Akira has to fight down panic for a moment. On the other hand this is basically the most Shindou has said to him without being blackmailed into it, so maybe Akira’s attempts are having some effect after all. If only he could get a clue to who the hell Sai is...
“This is going to sound strange-” he starts, but Shindou cuts him off immediately.
“Everything you say sounds strange.” He glances at Akira again. “Hey, can’t we just talk about other stuff for a while?”
“Other stuff?”
“Yeah, I mean. Stuff.”
The fact that Shindou actually wants to talk to him is comforting, but there is something desperate in the question, and it hurts.
“Like what?”
Shindou’s face does that crumpling thing again, as if he hasn’t even considered what sort of stuff he was talking about.
“I dunno. Stuff. There are never any people here, really. Just Akari, sometimes, and she never stays. I just thought... There have to be other things you like.”
That is true, Akira realizes, he has never seen other people in the store. Just Shindou, day after day, completely alone, caught up in the cold. It makes him angry just to think about. He is once again hit with the desire to shake Shindou out of this, to make him start caring. The cold, the fear and the draining exhaustion are working against him, exacerbating his frustration.
“Stuff I like,” he says. “What about stuff you like?”
Shindou’s face closes down, like a curtain being drawn. Like last time he reacts to any mention of caring as if it was a slap in the face
“I thought we had this conversation already.”
“I don’t care if we had it,” Akira can feel his voice rising. “I don’t care. There has to be something.”
“No there doesn’t! How hard is it to get that? How hard is it for anyone to get that?!”
“But there is, you say there isn’t, but there is. I know there is. Don’t tell me of all people that you don’t care about anything.”
Akira knows it isn’t fair. He is talking to the Shindou he knows, not this version, but he can’t seem to stop the words from coming out.
And Shindou snap. He backs away defensively and yells,
“Stop it, just stop it. Do you think I want this? Do you think I haven’t tried? It has always been like this. It has always been cold and gray and fucking empty. This is the only thing I will ever be, get it?! There is nothing. I'm nothing. This is all there is!!”
And for a moment his face is filled with such utter agony that Akira feels it like a phantom pain in his heart.
This is all there is.
Akira shouldn’t have started this. And he should end it right now, but he can’t. The whole week has finally pushed him so close to his breaking point that he can almost hear something in himself snapping as well.
“But it isn’t!!” he is yelling now too, and it should be normal for them, but there is nothing normal about this fight. “Can you just listen to me?! Because-“
“Oh, fuck you. I don’t want to hear this fucking speech again. You tell whoever it was that told you to stalk me to fuck off. Because let’s be honest, you’re not hanging around her every day for my sparkling personality, are you.”
Then, true to form, Shindou solves this conflict by running away. Or rather, by going into the backroom and slamming the door shut behind himself and Akira is so angry he literally goes and kicks at the door until Shindou threatens to call security.
Eventually, Akira just slumps on the floor on the other side of the door. He can feel the anger subsiding, leaving him drained.
“Look,” he says very quietly. “I’m sorry. I just…” He doesn’t know what to say. He has even run out of questions. ”No one told me to come here,” he says again. “I’m asking because I want to know.”
“Because my childhood is a period of great interest to you.” Shindou sounds as hollow and drained as he does.
Akira laughs a bit, because that is the only option besides crying right now.
“Maybe I was hoping for some skeletons in your closet,” he says. He is very rarely flippant, but apparently the fatigue is getting to him.
He can hear Shindou snort.
“I think my grandfather had a haunted go board in a shed once. Does that make you happy?”
A haunted go board – Akira suddenly remembers that go board. Not with a ghost obviously, just put away in Shindou’s grandfather’s shed. Shindou had shown him the board once. It was a beautiful board made from kaya wood. Akira could tell it was very old just by looking at it. He told Shindou that and Shindou had grinned.
“Yeah,” he agreed “it is very old,” and then, “You know, everything started here. I mean, without this board I would never have gotten into go.”
Akira remembers trying to decipher that, because in his experience an old go board, no matter how beautiful, wouldn’t be enough to make Shindou interested in anything. At the time he said as much to Shindou who immediately took offence, and then they were off yelling. Akira never asked again. But he has wondered.
Suddenly he remembers what the man actually said about Shindou when Akira asked about the deal.
“He was trying to reacquire a ghost.”
A go board with a ghost. Shindou playing impossible games without even knowing how to hold the stones. Shindou arguing with thin air in front of a subway station.
Akira’s brain screeches to a halt for a minute. No way, he thinks. That is not actually possible.
Shindou’s games going from brilliant to horrible. Sai who only played over the Internet. Shindou at the Internet café.
But then-
That makes sense. That actually makes sense. Akira would have called it absolutely impossible but he is sitting around in Hell at the moment, so the word “impossible” has pretty much lost all meaning. There are a thousand things he wants to ask, and so many complicated feelings to sort out, but he hasn't got the time. Later. Right now there is only one thing on his mind. No matter how incomprehensible it is, Sai is in that go board and if that’s so then Akira should be able to get the board to Shindou to get him to remember. The relief is so overwhelming that he his legs feels weak even though he is sitting down.
“Yes,” he says, his voice shaky. “That did, in fact, make me happy.”
Then he gets up.
“You’re leaving?” Shindou asks from behind the door and Akira can feel himself smile for the first time this week.
“Don’t worry. I’ll come back.”
He can hear Shindou snort again on the other side of the door, but tone has lost some of that hollowness and Akira takes heart from it. This is going to be alright, he thinks. We are going to be alright. And he takes off.
He goes to the same payphone that he used the first day. He has Shindou’s grandparents’ number properly saved in his mobile phone and he feels a moment of gratitude for the fact that his phone has contact numbers for basically half the people in Shindou’s life. He is a bit worried if Shindou’s grandfather will even help him, but if he remembers the rules correctly no being made by Hell can consciously hinder him, lie to him or refuse him information. He will find out where that damn board is and then he will get it no matter what.
Shindou’s grandfather answers the phone and sounds delighted when Akira introduces himself as a friend of Shindou's, and even more delighted when he learns that Akira is a go player.
“That boy needs proper company. No guidance, no drive. That‘s what’s wrong with him. He sat around staring into thin air even as a kid. You couldn’t get him to care about anything. I tried, I can tell you, everybody tried, but he was just from a bad stock.”
Akira can’t imagine Shindou’s real grandfather ever saying anything like that, especially to a stranger. But things being the way they are, Akira just grinds his teeth and hums politely. Even if he rules say he can’t be hindered, lied to or refused information, he has no desire to see what loopholes there are if he were to start a fight.
He tentatively brings up the go board. He heard about if from Shindou and he is very interested in buying it. If it isn’t too much trouble, could he maybe even come and look at it?
Shindou’s grandfather sounds genuinely regretful when he answers.
“I’m awfully sorry. I think I got it from a relative ages ago, but I can’t even understand how Hikaru can remember it. The shed it was stored in burnt down when he was just a kid and the go board got destroyed. There is nothing left of it.”
Akira stands still for a very long time after Shindou’s grandfather hangs up the phone. The go board is gone. How is that even possible? That can’t be possible. If the go board is gone that means that-
“If you have any questions while inside Hell, please use the red phone beside the blue door.”
And Akira realizes with a rising dread that he does have a question, one he should have asked even before he went in, but that he didn’t even consider back then. His legs are shaking all the way to the blue door. It is still there, with the red phone placed oddly beside it. It takes him tremendous effort to just lift it off its handle.
“I have a question,” he says into the receiver, but there is no reply. Then the air near him ripples and the man with the painted face steps out through thin air.
“Touya-san,” he says pleasantly. “You called?”
Akira is chilled to his bones, and his mouth feels like cotton.
“I-” he begins, then swallows and starts again.
“During our first meeting you told me that to make Shindou remember I needed Sai.”
The man’s looks at Akira with the same fixed smile. He appears to be waiting.
“Is that possible? Does Sai even exist in this world?”
The man keeps on smiling. “Sadly for you, no. As you had a chance to notice Shindou Hikaru’s fears are based on never being able to play go. In this reality Sai stopped existing before they could meet.”
He should have asked that a long time ago, he should have understood that a long time ago but it still feels like getting hit in the stomach.
“And I can’t make him remember without Sai?”
It comes out as a question, but he already knows the answer.
“No,” the man says mildly “Not without Sai. That is not how the rules work.”
“So you gave me a task that is impossible to accomplice.”
The man’s face doesn’t change, but for a moment, through what feels almost like a crevice in the air, Akira can feel his hunger. It opens up like a bottomless hole, impossible to fill. This is what the cold is made of; this desperate, insatiable, maddening hunger.
“We are Hell, Touya-san. Just because we have guidelines to follow doesn’t mean that we have to play fair. And this way we can save up on compensation.”
The painted face seems to be cracking at the seams and the smile grows impossibly wide “But we will miss you if you leave Touya Akira. Your despair is delicious.”
Akira should have realized this. All this time he has been sidetracked by the absurdity of what was happening, when he should have wondered what Hells agenda in all this was. Hell wasn’t allowed to harm Akira directly or to lay claim to him and purposefully catch him in a world of his own despair, but because they are so close – so very similar – Hell could get him caught up in Shindou’s despair instead. There was never any even ground here to begin with, never any way to get Shindou out. Akira was just an added bonus, sent in here to get lost. He feels the cold presence tighten around him; touching something deeper than it has before, making his vision blurry. He flinches back violently, feeling sick and the feeling eases, but remnants of the cold still lingers, chilling him to the bone.
The man is still endlessly smiling.
“I apologize, I overstepped my boundaries. But stay here Touya Akira, embrace your despair and fall. Rest assured, we will take good care of you."
With that he is gone but Akira remains shaking and unable to move for a very, very long time.
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Date: 2013-09-26 12:19 pm (UTC)