![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Round 1 - cumulonimbus, "Solitaire", Fic (○)
Pseudonym: cumulonimbus
Title: Solitaire
Characters/Pairings: Ogata, Akira, Hikaru
Rating: G
Warnings/Contains: n/a
Summary/Notes: Who do you play when there is no one else there?
Once upon a time, in a village halfway up and halfway down a mountain, that was too big to be a hamlet, and too small to be a town, there was a boy. Not a particularly tall boy nor a particularly short boy, not a fast or a strong or a handsome or an ugly boy. Just a boy. And his name was Seiji.
Of course, if you asked Seiji, he would have said that he was a particularly smart boy but there was no way to tell that because Seiji was the only boy in the village except for Ashiwara, who was a very small boy indeed and too little to do anything but sleep and cry.
As Seiji grew up, the adults of the village shook their heads and grumbled amongst themselves how youth was wasted on the young, for Seiji wasn’t interested in the toys and games that they delighted in giving him (after all, who else was going to use them). Instead, he followed Touya Kouyou around like a little shadow.
“Sometimes,” he said one day to Touya-sensei, as they took a lunchtime stroll around the dusty path that looped its way carelessly around the village, “I wish that I wasn’t the only boy in the village.”
“Not the only one,” Touya-sensei said, looking pointedly past Seiji to where Ashiwara was toddling along next to him, clutching Seiji’s hand in sticky fingers. He’d probably been smearing them all over Seiji’s clean white shirt too but Seiji was very carefully not looking to check.
Seiji sighed as he so often sighed when Ashiwara was mentioned as a possible playmate. “But he can’t play games. Not like you read about in books. They need lots of boys to play.”
Touya-sensei was quiet for a moment and Seiji wondered if his words had been taken as rude. After all, Touya-sensei liked Ashiwara. He laughed a lot, and gave Touya-sensei’s wife kisses.
“Perhaps, you need a game that doesn’t require lots of boys. Perhaps you should be looking for a game that just needs one - a game that could be just for you but that you could play with the men, if you were so inclined.”
“There are games like that too?” Seiji asked.
“There are all kinds of games, if you look for them,” Touya-sensei said, and his eyes crinkled as he smiled one of his rare smiles and turned them back towards the house. Seiji hastily tugged Ashiwara around the puddle in the bend of the road and pondered that idea. It was very boring trying to play knights and dragons, if there was no one to be the dragon, or robbers and princesses if there were no princesses to rescue.
A game for one was a very logical thing to search for.
* * * * *
It was not surprising to anyone but Seiji that, when Touya-sensei had a son, he asked Seiji to be his tutor. After all, who else was there besides Touya-sensei himself that was so learned in lore or so talented at strategy? And everyone knew that Seiji was devoted to Touya-sensei and the child could have no guardian more loyal.
“Maybe Akira will like to play games,” Ashiwara said, as they hid away under the willow during the naming feast. Even Ashiwara should have been too old now to think of playing as boys play, but somehow he still smiled the same smile he’d always smiled and laughed the same boyish laugh. Seiji knew that Akira would always have an eager playmate, even if he was so much older.
“Maybe he’ll be an excellent scholar and study go as his father does,” Seiji countered, a smile lurking around the corners of his mouth as he sipped the excellent wine that had been brought out for the occasion. Ashiwara did play go but not with anything that could be called dedication. It was always Seiji who was found sitting at the board for hours at a time, contented in his own company.
“With you as his tutor, I think he’ll be very good.”
Seiji did smile at that easy compliment. Finishing his cup, he put it carefully on the grass beside him and lay back next to Ashiwara, watching the sunset through the leaves above them. He was improving but there was still a very long way to go before he could challenge Touya-sensei or his regular opponent Kuwabara-sensei, of the Honinbou village across the mountain.
Had she been there, Akira’s mother might have said that Akira might follow both paths and, as mothers often are, she would have been right.
When Akira was ten, a new family moved to the village. This in itself would have been a significant event, as new faces were far and few between in that part of the world, where most families could tell you about this great oak that their great great grandfather planted, and this farm which their great great great grandmother had bought with her inheritance. But no, the Shindou family were special because they moved with their son Hikaru, who was almost exactly of an age with Akira.
“Seiji-sensei,” Akira said to him one morning as they sat in Touya Kouyou’s study with their books.
Seiji made a non-committal noise of listening and continued with his bookkeeping.
“Why does Hikaru-kun not spend time in lessons?”
“There are many things that you will have to know to lead the village that he will never need. That and your father places a great value on your education. He doesn’t seem to have the supervision that you do, or the guidance.”
Akira frowned.
“But he always looks like he’s having fun, even if he’s not playing go.”
Now Seiji had never played in such a carefree way as Hikaru, had never had playmates to follow or older boys to look up to, so he could not recognise the wistful look on Akira’s face.
“Some day you will be grateful for this, Akira-kun,” Seiji said instead. “And we can play a game once you’ve finished your translation. No need to go out in the rain.”
Ashiwara had much cause to laugh at Seiji in the months and years that followed, for Akira became more and more distracted from his studies. It was not, as Touya Kouyou pointed out, a matter of him lacking any knowledge that he should have, but more a sigh as he looked out the window and saw a small figure running past or a frown when Seiji suggested that he finish a book over the weekend.
It was small consolation for him that the sharing of pleasures went both ways, for when Hikaru showed a talent for go, it was Seiji who was recruited to tutor him. And as for the first time Hikaru beat Akira! Well, it was a fortunate thing indeed that they did not notice when he beat a hasty retreat to share a drink with Ashiwara well clear of their squabbling.
He was hardly surprised when Hikaru, a promising youth of sixteen, vanished overnight from the attic room of his parents’ cottage, leaving no sign of planning any such venture. He left behind a note ‘Go is not a game for one’, that even Akira seemed incapable of deciphering. After all, Akira himself was in the village and showed no signs of wishing to study elsewhere.
A shadow fell over the village, then, and Touya Kouyou summoned those of his council to a meeting, and summoned also young Akira, who was then deemed old enough to speak before his elders in a way not embarrassing to his father.
“He has been talking of going on a quest,” Akira volunteered, tugging his lower lip between his teeth. Seiji fought the urge to reprimand him on the spot. “There isn’t much for him to do here.”
“Not a child and yet not a man,” Touya Kouyou mused. Many of the others were nodding.
“As this vanishing act shows,” Seiji said.
“I want to go after him,” said Akira, when it became obvious that none of them had anything useful to contribute. “I have never seen the villages that he has seen or experienced the sights. May I, Father?”
And with great reluctance, Touya Kouyou and the elders of his council sent Akira out into the world. He was not quite alone, for Touya Kouyou gifted to him a pony for his bags, and recruited a trader to be his guide, and a firm promise to return by midsummer, some three months hence.
Seiji watched him go in the mists of the spring morning with some confusion. After all, for some ten years he had been Akira’s tutor but it appeared the boy was released from the nest.
“You’re not that old yet,” Ashiwara said. “And you were getting bored of grammar anyway.”
Seiji laughed. That was true enough, but he was also down two of his better opponents. Life gives and she takes away, as his father was fond of saying.
* * * * *
It was nigh on Midsummer Day when Akira returned, taller and browner and so scruffy that he was bundled into the house immediately even before greeting his neighbours. Shindou loitered behind him uncharacteristically, not quite meeting Seiji’s eyes. If Akira had grown in the short months, Hikaru seemed even younger. He had grown his hair long until it hid his eyes, and he fidgeted as he waited next to a slender young man escorting them.
“Seiji-sensei!” Akira said, not quite running out of the house in a clothes that showed a good inch of his ankles. “Seiji-sensei, please allow me to introduce Fujiwara no Sai. Sai-san, this is Seiji-sensei, who is my tutor. He is a very strong go player.”
Sai beamed a smile that would have looked more fitting on Hikaru.
“I do hope you will play me, sensei,” he said, almost bouncing on the spot. “Hikaru told me all about your play but I am very keen to see it for myself.”
“I dare say we could arrange something,” Ogata said, frowning as he tried to find his feet in the conversation. “Akira-kun, Hikaru-kun, I believe your parents would like you to greet them before you run off to play. Fujiwara-san, please allow me to find you suitable accommodation.”
Five hours later, he was staring at the goban, facing his first defeat to anyone but Touya Kouyou since he turned fifteen.
“Excellent,” Hikaru said not quite quietly enough. “That will distract both of them, and maybe we’ll get to go a bit further next time.”
The moment broke, and Sai and Seiji shared a look of commiseration before collaring their respective charges.
Go to opponent's entry: Round 1 - akota, "Too Much Chocolate", Fic (●)
Go to vote: Kawahagi Middle School vs. Five-Colored Cloud - Third Board Match
Title: Solitaire
Characters/Pairings: Ogata, Akira, Hikaru
Rating: G
Warnings/Contains: n/a
Summary/Notes: Who do you play when there is no one else there?
Once upon a time, in a village halfway up and halfway down a mountain, that was too big to be a hamlet, and too small to be a town, there was a boy. Not a particularly tall boy nor a particularly short boy, not a fast or a strong or a handsome or an ugly boy. Just a boy. And his name was Seiji.
Of course, if you asked Seiji, he would have said that he was a particularly smart boy but there was no way to tell that because Seiji was the only boy in the village except for Ashiwara, who was a very small boy indeed and too little to do anything but sleep and cry.
As Seiji grew up, the adults of the village shook their heads and grumbled amongst themselves how youth was wasted on the young, for Seiji wasn’t interested in the toys and games that they delighted in giving him (after all, who else was going to use them). Instead, he followed Touya Kouyou around like a little shadow.
“Sometimes,” he said one day to Touya-sensei, as they took a lunchtime stroll around the dusty path that looped its way carelessly around the village, “I wish that I wasn’t the only boy in the village.”
“Not the only one,” Touya-sensei said, looking pointedly past Seiji to where Ashiwara was toddling along next to him, clutching Seiji’s hand in sticky fingers. He’d probably been smearing them all over Seiji’s clean white shirt too but Seiji was very carefully not looking to check.
Seiji sighed as he so often sighed when Ashiwara was mentioned as a possible playmate. “But he can’t play games. Not like you read about in books. They need lots of boys to play.”
Touya-sensei was quiet for a moment and Seiji wondered if his words had been taken as rude. After all, Touya-sensei liked Ashiwara. He laughed a lot, and gave Touya-sensei’s wife kisses.
“Perhaps, you need a game that doesn’t require lots of boys. Perhaps you should be looking for a game that just needs one - a game that could be just for you but that you could play with the men, if you were so inclined.”
“There are games like that too?” Seiji asked.
“There are all kinds of games, if you look for them,” Touya-sensei said, and his eyes crinkled as he smiled one of his rare smiles and turned them back towards the house. Seiji hastily tugged Ashiwara around the puddle in the bend of the road and pondered that idea. It was very boring trying to play knights and dragons, if there was no one to be the dragon, or robbers and princesses if there were no princesses to rescue.
A game for one was a very logical thing to search for.
* * * * *
It was not surprising to anyone but Seiji that, when Touya-sensei had a son, he asked Seiji to be his tutor. After all, who else was there besides Touya-sensei himself that was so learned in lore or so talented at strategy? And everyone knew that Seiji was devoted to Touya-sensei and the child could have no guardian more loyal.
“Maybe Akira will like to play games,” Ashiwara said, as they hid away under the willow during the naming feast. Even Ashiwara should have been too old now to think of playing as boys play, but somehow he still smiled the same smile he’d always smiled and laughed the same boyish laugh. Seiji knew that Akira would always have an eager playmate, even if he was so much older.
“Maybe he’ll be an excellent scholar and study go as his father does,” Seiji countered, a smile lurking around the corners of his mouth as he sipped the excellent wine that had been brought out for the occasion. Ashiwara did play go but not with anything that could be called dedication. It was always Seiji who was found sitting at the board for hours at a time, contented in his own company.
“With you as his tutor, I think he’ll be very good.”
Seiji did smile at that easy compliment. Finishing his cup, he put it carefully on the grass beside him and lay back next to Ashiwara, watching the sunset through the leaves above them. He was improving but there was still a very long way to go before he could challenge Touya-sensei or his regular opponent Kuwabara-sensei, of the Honinbou village across the mountain.
Had she been there, Akira’s mother might have said that Akira might follow both paths and, as mothers often are, she would have been right.
When Akira was ten, a new family moved to the village. This in itself would have been a significant event, as new faces were far and few between in that part of the world, where most families could tell you about this great oak that their great great grandfather planted, and this farm which their great great great grandmother had bought with her inheritance. But no, the Shindou family were special because they moved with their son Hikaru, who was almost exactly of an age with Akira.
“Seiji-sensei,” Akira said to him one morning as they sat in Touya Kouyou’s study with their books.
Seiji made a non-committal noise of listening and continued with his bookkeeping.
“Why does Hikaru-kun not spend time in lessons?”
“There are many things that you will have to know to lead the village that he will never need. That and your father places a great value on your education. He doesn’t seem to have the supervision that you do, or the guidance.”
Akira frowned.
“But he always looks like he’s having fun, even if he’s not playing go.”
Now Seiji had never played in such a carefree way as Hikaru, had never had playmates to follow or older boys to look up to, so he could not recognise the wistful look on Akira’s face.
“Some day you will be grateful for this, Akira-kun,” Seiji said instead. “And we can play a game once you’ve finished your translation. No need to go out in the rain.”
Ashiwara had much cause to laugh at Seiji in the months and years that followed, for Akira became more and more distracted from his studies. It was not, as Touya Kouyou pointed out, a matter of him lacking any knowledge that he should have, but more a sigh as he looked out the window and saw a small figure running past or a frown when Seiji suggested that he finish a book over the weekend.
It was small consolation for him that the sharing of pleasures went both ways, for when Hikaru showed a talent for go, it was Seiji who was recruited to tutor him. And as for the first time Hikaru beat Akira! Well, it was a fortunate thing indeed that they did not notice when he beat a hasty retreat to share a drink with Ashiwara well clear of their squabbling.
He was hardly surprised when Hikaru, a promising youth of sixteen, vanished overnight from the attic room of his parents’ cottage, leaving no sign of planning any such venture. He left behind a note ‘Go is not a game for one’, that even Akira seemed incapable of deciphering. After all, Akira himself was in the village and showed no signs of wishing to study elsewhere.
A shadow fell over the village, then, and Touya Kouyou summoned those of his council to a meeting, and summoned also young Akira, who was then deemed old enough to speak before his elders in a way not embarrassing to his father.
“He has been talking of going on a quest,” Akira volunteered, tugging his lower lip between his teeth. Seiji fought the urge to reprimand him on the spot. “There isn’t much for him to do here.”
“Not a child and yet not a man,” Touya Kouyou mused. Many of the others were nodding.
“As this vanishing act shows,” Seiji said.
“I want to go after him,” said Akira, when it became obvious that none of them had anything useful to contribute. “I have never seen the villages that he has seen or experienced the sights. May I, Father?”
And with great reluctance, Touya Kouyou and the elders of his council sent Akira out into the world. He was not quite alone, for Touya Kouyou gifted to him a pony for his bags, and recruited a trader to be his guide, and a firm promise to return by midsummer, some three months hence.
Seiji watched him go in the mists of the spring morning with some confusion. After all, for some ten years he had been Akira’s tutor but it appeared the boy was released from the nest.
“You’re not that old yet,” Ashiwara said. “And you were getting bored of grammar anyway.”
Seiji laughed. That was true enough, but he was also down two of his better opponents. Life gives and she takes away, as his father was fond of saying.
* * * * *
It was nigh on Midsummer Day when Akira returned, taller and browner and so scruffy that he was bundled into the house immediately even before greeting his neighbours. Shindou loitered behind him uncharacteristically, not quite meeting Seiji’s eyes. If Akira had grown in the short months, Hikaru seemed even younger. He had grown his hair long until it hid his eyes, and he fidgeted as he waited next to a slender young man escorting them.
“Seiji-sensei!” Akira said, not quite running out of the house in a clothes that showed a good inch of his ankles. “Seiji-sensei, please allow me to introduce Fujiwara no Sai. Sai-san, this is Seiji-sensei, who is my tutor. He is a very strong go player.”
Sai beamed a smile that would have looked more fitting on Hikaru.
“I do hope you will play me, sensei,” he said, almost bouncing on the spot. “Hikaru told me all about your play but I am very keen to see it for myself.”
“I dare say we could arrange something,” Ogata said, frowning as he tried to find his feet in the conversation. “Akira-kun, Hikaru-kun, I believe your parents would like you to greet them before you run off to play. Fujiwara-san, please allow me to find you suitable accommodation.”
Five hours later, he was staring at the goban, facing his first defeat to anyone but Touya Kouyou since he turned fifteen.
“Excellent,” Hikaru said not quite quietly enough. “That will distract both of them, and maybe we’ll get to go a bit further next time.”
The moment broke, and Sai and Seiji shared a look of commiseration before collaring their respective charges.
Go to opponent's entry: Round 1 - akota, "Too Much Chocolate", Fic (●)
Go to vote: Kawahagi Middle School vs. Five-Colored Cloud - Third Board Match
no subject
(Anonymous) 2012-07-20 10:09 am (UTC)(link)I suspect Seiji's lonely days are well behind him now!
Thank you!
Kyuba
no subject
(Anonymous) 2012-08-18 07:12 pm (UTC)(link)