Swinging a Sword at the Waves

A Hikaru no Go Fanfiction
By Cabbitshivers

Chapter Two

Kotoba Yori Kissu De

Hikaru bit back another frustrated sigh and once again began to play with his food.

The voice’s of his friends Waya and Isumi chatting animatedly about one thing or another lapped at the edges of his mind like the tips of fleeting waves, as he pushed another one of his French fries through the small puddle of ketchup on his empty burger wrapper.

He wasn’t really paying much attention to what they were talking about, though the words ‘Go’ and ‘Tournament’ were being mentioned in the same sentence often enough that he should be sitting rapt and attentive to their every word. He still had last nights dream on his mind, and Sai’s translation of it, and what the ghost had revealed of the inner workings of his subconscious mind was annoying the hell out of him. That Sai’s deciphering had given away nothing positive at all was frustrating, and the ghost’s continual silence wasn’t helping much, either. He could see him out of the corner of his eye, sitting beside him in the space he unconsciously left for him on the plastic bench, arms folded within his sleeves, head bowed, and brooding. The light blanket of melancholy coming from Sai was probably adding to his current mood, if not completely responsible for it.

Damnitt! He was supposed to be having a good time, not once again thinking about that stupid dream he’d had! His friends had dragged him off here to McDonald’s specifically to take his mind off of whatever had been bothering him all morning and had caused him to lose his first and second games to Waya, though they knew he hated the food here. He was supposed to be sitting down, eating his Big Mac with something resembling gusto, drowning his fries and his sorrow in tomato ketchup, and having a generally good time with his friends. Instead, he was sitting down, placed between a gloomy ghost, a fidgeting Fuku, and getting kicked in the shins each time Iijima who sat across from him shifted his tall, lanky body. He wasn’t even really eating. He’d managed to swallow down half of his burger before Waya had stolen the rest, and his chips had gotten so cold now that they tasted like cardboard, even with all the ketchup he had smothered them in. It also wasn’t helping much that a loud, complaining brat was in the next booth over who noisily shouted his displeasure every thirty seconds. Hikaru wasn’t sure who was annoying him the most at the moment; the loud brat, the mother trying to shush it, or the pouting ghost moping next to him. He shoved another cold chip into his mouth and forced himself to swallow it. He could barely contain the grimace that wanted to swim across his features. Gross – it really was disgusting.

He turned his attention to Waya and Isumi, and tried to fixate himself on their conversation. They were discussing something about a recent win a 5-Dan had secured against a 6-Dan – Hikaru hadn’t caught their names – and were currently engaged deep in a systematic discussion and dissimilation of the moves. Hikaru was just beginning to catch the drift of the game being discussed, when the brat let out a loud screech and the flimsy thread of his attention was broken. He looked to the side, flinching at the volume, then became concerned when he saw Sai. The ghost was still looking worried, and his silence was becoming disturbing. What should be an intriguing and interesting discussion which would normally have the ghost riveted to whatever Isumi and Waya were saying was being completely passed over by the spirit. It was as if he wasn’t even listening. He just sat there, looking down at the table in front of him, toying with the fan that rested between his shifting fingers.

‘There’s something you’re hiding from yourself that is taking a lot of effort to keep secret, Hikaru…’

The green-eyed boy blinked and shoved another cold and drowned fry into his mouth. Why couldn’t he get last night out of his head! It was just a stupid dream, and a stupid analysis. He didn’t even believe in dream meanings, so why the hell was it all bothering him so damn much? It wasn’t as if dreams could tell you the secrets of the future, or anything, and it wasn’t as if Touya Akira was going to come trouncing into McDonald’s to squash him with a giant Go stone.

He tried to shake off the thickening murk that was hazing his mind, but whether it was coming from either Sai, or himself, it didn’t seem to want to budge. He sighed, loudly, and reached for his soda, hoping to wash down the nauseating aftertaste of the fries in a way he’d like to wash last night’s occurrences out of his mind. They had cost him two games already today. If he kept up with his current strength of concentration he’d lose his games for the rest of the week. Despair greeted him at that thought. He’d never catch up to Touya and show him his true strength if he kept letting some stupid thing like a bad dream get in the way of his winning the games… Stupid dreams. And stupid Touya, too.

As he took long sip of his raspberry coke, swishing it around in his mouth to rid it of the ketchup taste, he felt a sudden slight constriction of emotions around him, just as he heard a small, shocked-sounding gasp to his right. Sai. His throat tightened a little at the first sound he had heard the specter make since he had awoken that morning to his silence, and he swallowed the liquid just as he turned to see what was wrong with the ghost, hearing him call his name at the same time.

{“Hikaru?”}

{“What is it, Sai? What’s wrong?”} He looked at the spirit, whose face was turned completely away from him. Following where Sai was looking, his gaze fell upon a couple in the booth across from them. His lips curled in annoyance as he saw what they were doing. Kissing. Though that in itself wasn’t such a bad thing, doing it in public was just something people didn’t do. It was private. That they were lip-locked in the middle of a crowded McDonald’s restaurant was tantamount to vulgarism, and that was something that Hikaru wanted no part in. He turned away from the scene, mildly put out, and went back to sipping his drink. {“That’s gross.”} He said.

He saw out of the corner of his eye Sai turn towards him, though he missed the shocked look on his face. He heard it in his voice, however, when the ghost spoke to him.

{“Aren’t you going to do something, Hikaru?”}

One of Hikaru’s eyebrows rose. {“Do what?”} He asked, taking a sip of cola. {“It’s their choice to be doing that. It’s none of my business, Sai.”}

{"But,"} Spluttered the ghost. {“But he’s eating her!”}

It was lucky that Hikaru had just finished swallowing his mouthful of drink; else he would have found it spraying from his nose all over the table. {“WHAT?”} He shrieked. He shot his eyes back over at the kissing couple, and focused on their merging lips to see if there actually was any sort of eating involved. What he saw only convinced him that the ghost that was permanently attached to his consciousness was also marginally insane. {“What are you talking about! They’re just kissing!”}

Sai looked at him, horrified. {“You mean there’s a name for this!”} He asked, sounding almost disgusted. {“He’s eating her, Hikaru! Eating!”}

Yep. Sai was insane. Either that or he didn’t have a clue what kissing was… oh… Oh. Well… that was something he hadn’t thought about before. Sai was from a thousand years ago, and kissing had been introduced by the Europeans when they had first started trading with Japan. That would have been, like, what? Five hundred and something years ago? Or was it less than that? And then there was Shuusaku, who wasn’t likely to have been exposed to the perversion that it was back then… Hikaru felt like smacking himself on the forehead, but after a moment’s decision decided that it wouldn’t be the smartest thing to do with his friends around, who were liable to ask him why he had suddenly whacked himself on the head for no apparent reason. He sighed, flushing lightly. Another thing to explain to Sai. How was he going to word this? And how was it that the spirit had gone through two years aware in this time without having ever seen someone kissing? Surely he had seen his mother and father kissing each other? But come to think of it, he hadn’t caught them doing that himself in quite a while.

{“He’s not eating her, Sai.”} He said, breaking the slightly hysterical ghost out of his growing horror. {“It’s kissing. They’re not hurting each other.”}

Sai looked at him, his indigo eyes wide in his pale face. {“But she’s moaning. Are you sure he’s not eating her? He could be a youkai.”}

Hikaru blinked, and then concentrated. Beneath all the chatter at his and the surrounding tables, and the whinging little brat in the booth behind his, he could faintly hear the sound of the girl moaning. He cringed. {“She’s moaning because she likes it, Sai."}  He told him reluctantly, trying not to think about anything that was going on in the booth across from theirs, though considering that that was what he was discussing it was an impossible task to achieve. {“And he’s not a youkai. They don’t exist.”}

{“What about in the microwave?”}

{“That’s not a youkai, Sai!”} Hikaru sighed. The ghost was silent for a moment, and Hikaru looked over to see him watching the couple with what he knew by experience to be a curious look in his eyes.

{“What is kissing, Hikaru?”}

Hikaru grimaced. He really didn’t want to have to explain. {“It’s a custom that the English people brought over when they landed here. It’s a sign of affection between two people. People like it, so I guess that’s why they do it.”}

Sai looked away from the couple and met Hikaru’s eyes with burning curiosity. {“Yes, Hikaru, but how?”}

Hikaru’s expression became pained, and he shifted his eyes away from the inquisitive ones of his symbiont. {“Well, see…”} He brought his hands down onto his lap and twisted his fingers together nervously. {“When two people like each other they… um… show it by, um, pressing their lips together, and, ah… sucking.”}

{“Sucking?”} Sai questioned, raising one eyebrow in interest. {“At each others lips?”}

Hikaru nodded.

{“And that feels good?”}

Hikaru nodded again.

{“But they’re not just sucking, Hikaru.”}

Sai sounded polite, but he knew that the spirit wouldn’t let it rest until he knew it all. He spared a glance back at that disturbing booth, and noticed that yes, they were slightly more than just sucking now.

{“Well, you see…”} He continued, his face becoming decidedly flushed now. {“When two people really like each other… they… use their tongues.”}

Sai cocked his head to the side. {“To do what?”}

Hikaru was sure he was tomato red by now. {“To, um, play with the other person’s tongue.”}

{“Play? How?”}

Hikaru was certain now that his embarrassment was going to send him exploding up to the ceiling. Why did Sai have to ask so many questions? Couldn’t he tell that he didn’t want to answer them anymore?

{“How, Hikaru? How?”} The ghost prodded.

{“They… they put them in each others mouths and…”} Hikaru’s eyes widened. He was not having this conversation! {“I don’t wanna talk about it! No more questions, Sai!”} And he clammed up.

{“But Hikaruuuuuuu….”} Sai wined.

{“No!”} Hikaru shot back, turning away from the ghost at his side and back to his decidedly dead-looking fries. {“This isn’t something that you talk about with other people!”} The fries looked like victims from a horrid murder scene, doused in the ketchup like they were. Hikaru wasn’t sure he could bring himself to put another anywhere near his mouth.

{“But you’re not other people, Hikaru.”} Sai’s importunate voice floated through his mind.

{“No, Sai.”} He said, wrapping the fries and sauce up in the burger wrapper they were on.

{“But-”}

“No!” And he slammed the wrapper full of cold fries and ketchup onto the table, making all of the occupants at it jump and the specter at his side to fall silent abruptly.

“Ah, Shindou?” Someone asked.

Hikaru lifted his eyes; aware suddenly of the attention another argument with Sai had yet again brought to him. Everyone at the table was staring at him, and he’d probably spoken that last “no” out loud, too. Waya had that odd expression on his face again that he’d been wearing most of that morning, as if he was the one who had been eating the cardboard fries, and Isumi looked even more sad than usual, almost as though he was regretful that Hikaru appeared to be losing his mind.

“Are you alright?” Iijima asked him quietly, almost cautiously, Hikaru thought. His face flushed with heat in a mixture of embarrassment and anger. Shooting a glare at the specter at his side, he was even more embarrassed to see that his outburst had also managed to snap the locked lips of the kissing couple apart, and they were also staring over at him with expressions of sane people marveling over a crazy one.

{“Great,”} He thought. {“Thanks, Sai.”}

He heard Sai apologize in his mind as he returned his eyes back to Waya, who was looking down at the jumbled mess of ketchup, fries and burger wrapper that he’d smeared all over the table and his hand in his fit of negativity. He groaned, and rolled his eyes heavenward.

“Yeah, I’m alright.” He groused. “Just replaying this morning’s games in my head.” He reached for a napkin in front of Ochi and attempted to clean the mess from his hand. The fries looked even worse now than they did before.

“What’s up with that anyway, Shindou?” Waya asked as Hikaru cleaned between his fingers. “You haven’t played that badly in months. Your mistakes were like those you find in the ‘Igo for Dummies’ manual, and you were zoned out for most of the morning. Then, you stared at that kissing couple for three minutes and killed your fries.”

As Hikaru’s face flooded with heat, Waya leaned over the table separating them and pushed his face uncomfortably close to Hikaru’s.

“You’re not doing drugs, are you?” Waya asked him in quiet audacity.

Hikaru jerked his head back. “No!” He yelled, his eyes narrow and flashing. He could hear Sai chuckling beside him and it only served to fuel his frustration. “What the hell made you think that!” {“And you shut up over there!”}

Waya sat back. “Come on, Shindou!” He complained exasperatedly. “You’ve always been a little weird. And anyway, I’m just kidding. You didn’t need to take it so personally.”

Hikaru slouched down in his seat, his left shoulder touching the arm of Fuku and his right feeling the familiar fuzziness of Sai. He crossed his arms and glared. “It didn’t sound like you were kidding,” He grumbled.

“Well I was. And are you gonna eat that?”

“Eat what?” He muttered.

“The apple pie.”

“Not mine,” Hikaru turned his face away and glared at one of the paintings that lined the walls.

“Oh,” Waya sounded disappointed. “Fuku?”

“No,” The other boy replied.

“But I’m really hungry.”

“Buy your own, Waya.”

Hikaru sighed, and let the irritation drain out of him. It wasn’t going to work. Getting angry wouldn’t help get last night’s conversation with Sai out of his mind, nor would it correct the two losses he’d sustained that morning. Regretfully, he made a decision. It wasn’t one he was happy with, in fact he was infuriated that he even had to make it, but thinking about it he decided that he would pretty much be worthless for any serious Go until he had a severe conversation with the ghost at his side. And he couldn’t really do that in a McDonald’s restaurant.

{“Move, Sai.”} He said, turning on the bench seat.

{“Hikaru?”}

{“We’re leaving.”}

“Shindou?” Isumi asked.

“Make up some excuse to Sensei for me, will you?” Hikaru said as he slid out of the bench, grabbing his bag at his feet.

“Why? Where are you going?” Waya questioned.

{“Hikaru?”}

“Home,” Hikaru answered. “I’m not up to playing, today.” {“We need to have a talk, Sai.”}

He ignored the further questions of his friends as he left the restaurant. He could feel their eyes burning through his backpack into his back even as he emerged out onto the sidewalk, busy with people who regardless of how dexterous he or they were, jostled him from side to side in their hurry. For a moment he wished he was like Sai, able to pass through crowds without having shoulders or bags, and sometimes even feet colliding with another part of his person. But when the natural afterthought of what it would feel like to have people actually pass through his body made him shudder, he put all considerations of being Sai out of his mind.

Stupid Sai. Damnitt. The ghost did nothing but complicate his life in the most chaotic way imaginable. First he had to attach himself to his soul, then he made him throw up, and then he got him addicted to the game of Go which all too soon became the air in his lungs and the blood in his veins and all because Sai just had to attain the Hand of God. And now Hikaru was in a situation where he just had to prove himself to Touya, so they were both stuck, really, in this horrible glut of having to prove something to themselves, and neither of them giving the other an inch.

{“Hikaru?”} Came Sai’s dulcet tones, sounding almost cautious. For the hundredth time since Sai became attached to him Hikaru found himself wondering just how much more of a female he could be. Then immediately felt bad for even thinking it. Though Sai sometimes looked female with his long hair and stained lips, and sometimes acted as though he was barely older than Fuku, Sai played Go as if he was a Shogun planning the battle of his life, and no female could ever play Go like that.

“What?” He sighed, immediately regretful. He knew what Sai was going to say next.

{“It’s about my dream analysis, isn’t it?”}

Hikaru exhaled. “Yeah.”

{“I’m sorry, Hikaru. If you want to talk about it…”}

“Not particularly,” Hikaru rebutted sourly. “But it’s not as if I have a choice. If I want to forget this we’re going to have to talk about it.”

{“Forget?”} Sai echoed. Hikaru could feel his confusion. {“But why should you want to forget, Hikaru? It’s important!”}

“It’s just a dream, Sai,” He said, swiveling his shoulders to avoid making contact with a man moving swiftly in the opposite direction.

{“They’re not just dreams, Hikaru!”} Sai tried to enforce. {“They’re insights into your subconscious! They have meaning! You should listen to yours, not ignore it.”}

“Yeah, well maybe you got it wrong, Sai! Did ya ever think about that?”

Sai’s face became lit with righteous anger. {“I did not!”} He shouted back. {“I interpreted it right!”}

Hikaru’s eyes flashed. “Say’s you!”

{“And a Shinto Priestess!”} Sai reminded him furiously.

“I don’t care!” Hikaru shouted, turning a corner sharply and striding down the different street. He could hear Sai’s sleeves snapping in the air as he flapped them emphatically in the corner of his vision.

{“But, Hikaru!”}

“I have the prelim’s coming up!” He snapped, his glare fixed on the pedestrian crossing glimpsed through the thinning crowd of perambulators. With an angry jerk he hiked the strap of his slipping backpack up higher over his shoulder. “I can’t afford to be distracted by stupid dreams and your stupid interpretation of them!”

{“But, Hikaru!”}

Sai’s whining just made him even angrier. “I can barely afford what mistakes I make by myself, as it is!” He yelled. “Touya’s so far ahead now, and if I don’t move up to a pro soon, the distance between us is going to double! It’s your fault I lost those two games this morning!”

{“Hikaru?”}

Sai’s whinging had taken on a strange edge, but Hikaru was too worked up now to pay any special attention to it, or the slight compression of concerned emotions surrounding him. “If you had kept your ‘interpretations’ to yourself I wouldn’t have been distracted thinking about whatever the hell it was that you seem to think that I’m ‘hiding’ from myself, and--”

{“Hikaru!”}

A definite edge this time. Frustrated beyond imagining, irate passion making the muscles of his arms and legs tremble inside of his skin, he spun on the spot and confronted the wide-eyed spirit a meter behind him.

“What!?” He demanded; voice clear and loud, just as the sound of a horn blasted to his left and the ground beneath his feet shuddered. Why was Sai looking at him like that, with his mouth wide open and arms stretched out as if he were about to grab something?

‘God,’ He thought, as realization hit hard and fast - coinciding with the agonized yell that suddenly rent his brain, and compressed the fear around him so hard that it hurt.

Sai was screaming.

{“NO!”}

His eyes closed as the chant rose in his head. I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m dead. And the impact and derangement of movement went almost unfelt in the cocoon of panic and despair that Sai’s emotions had slammed down around him. His vision was yanked sideways; the landscape around him smearing as though it was a child’s finger-painting. He thought he screamed, but he couldn’t remember opening his mouth. His gut wrenched, and for a moment it felt as though the core of himself was pulled out from inside and flung over his shoulder. In the next moment that came he was sure he was dead.

It wasn’t until the sound of the wailing horn and screeching tires passed through into his right ear, and he felt the cold ground hard beneath his knees that he considered that maybe he wasn’t dead after all. He hurt. His entire body throbbed with the memory of the pain the claustrophobic emotions had caused. But he wasn’t lying on the ground, broken. He could feel everything was still attached. He could feel the yielding fuzziness of Sai pressed against his chest and the side of his face.

“Shit,” He said as everything jolted into reason.

Sai must have grabbed him. He must have pulled him back onto the sidewalk out of the path of the oncoming car he’d been too preoccupied to notice. Sai had saved his life, while he had been yelling angrily at him for no real reason at all…

“God,” He breathed. What an idiot he was. He turned his head, looking back over to the road where he had stood only a few seconds before. There, suspiciously flat through the middle, was his backpack. That could have been me!

“Oh, my gosh!” He heard a woman to the side of him say.

“Idiot boy,” Uttered another.

“What happened?” Yet someone else.

“Sai,” He murmured.

The fuzziness beneath his cheek shifted slightly, and something brushed smoothly over his hair.

{“Hikaru?”}

Hikaru let out the breath he had seemed to be holding since he glimpsed the death of his bag. “Sai…”

{“It’s all right, Hikaru. You’re all right.”}

Later, he couldn’t recall how it was that he’d gotten home. When his mother met him at the foot of the stairs, surprised at the early arrival, his shakes had already stopped. He couldn’t bring himself to tell her what had almost happened while she was smiling at him. Instead he turned and walked up to his room, Sai the comforting pale shadow at his side.

“To think,” He said to Sai as his bedroom door closed behind them. “I almost became a shadow, myself.”

Sai’s eyes seemed to cry at him as he said that. His hands wrung themselves in his sleeves.

“Thanks, Sai.” Hikaru smiled.

{“You’re welcome, Hikaru.”}

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Chapter 2
Through Kisses More Than Words
Completed 30-04-06