Yoshitaka Waya was in a foul mood.

	It had begun roughly a few weeks earlier, when Touya Akira had moved in with them, into the three room apartment that he, Isumi, and that infernal Shindou shared. The arrangement had been to split the rent equally, but since there were only three rooms, and Shindou and Touya were the same age, and it had been Shindou in the first place who had broached the idea of allowing Touya to join them, Touya and Shindou shared a room.

	Waya was perfectly fine with that. It meant that he got to keep his own space and his privacy. As neat as his housemates were, it would have driven any of them crazy to have to share rooms with him.

	It helped that Touya was better at housework and cooking than all the three of them, having had to fend for himself from time to time, when his parents were overseas, and of course this was /Touya/ Akira, Go prodigy, genius extrodinaire, finally willing to speak to him and even play casual games with him. Waya had learnt much playing him that way.

	No, it wasn't really Touya Akira.

	It wasn't Shindou alone, either- they had been living together for about a month, he and Shindou and Isumi, without any trouble at all, until Touya came in.

	Maybe they were born lifetime rivals, and that counted for something, but the two of them simply couldn't get together without something happening, and they couldn't seem to stay apart.

	They'd play brilliant and intense matches quietly, and they'd blow up at each other analysing them. They'd talk, and get excited about the smallest things. And they'd quarrel, and they'd fight, and they'd stomp off to sulk for days at a time.

	And they would keep him up, nights.

	It didn't help that Isumi found everything screamingly funny. Behind his gentle, sweet, good-boy facade was an evil streak of humour maybe about a mile wide, and Waya, who knew Isumi better than anyone else at all, /knew/ this.

	Waya himself did not find anything of the remotest amusement in the entire situation. Isumi, after all, had Waya's room as buffer between his own and that of the Eternal Rivals', and thus assuredly did not spend his nights listening to that infernal racket and thinking about the person, singular, in the room next to his, who Did Not Have To Listen To Any Of That, and was undoubtedly sleeping soundly.

	Everything conspired, in the end, to affect his game, and so it was with the profoundest relief, that he had accepted Isumi's proposal of visiting the Chinese Go Academy he'd studied at, following up on an invitation extended at the Hokuto Cup, what seemed like years ago.

	The trip was the perfect solution to things, he had thought. Visit China, learn the Chinese style, play top Chinese players- and get away from Shindou-and-Touya. It had seemed so at first, too. Despite the odd behavior of Isumi's friends at the Hokuto Cup, most of the players he had met had been polite, friendly, and more than willing to play game after fame of Go.

	The last thing he had anticipated happening was to meet an evil, hyperactive, caffiene-addicted, evil clone of himself.

	Waya scowled. An Isumi-clinging, evil chibi clone. The little devil- he refused to think of him by his given name, which was Le Ping- for some reason had made like Isumi was a magnet pole and himself a heap of scrap iron the instant they had met, sticking to Isumi like a, a- leech.

	Not that he minded the brat intruding on his privacy, no. What privacy was there