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fandomweekly2024-09-09 04:17 pm
yoshishisha) wrote in fandomweekly2024-09-09 04:17 pm
Entry tags:
[#232] Grief (Hikaru no Go)
Theme Prompt: Coffee shop
Title: Grief
Fandom: Hikaru no Go
Rating/Warnings: Spoilers for Sai
Bonus: Yes
Word Count: 1000
Summary: Hikaru goes back in times and grieves in a coffee shop.
Grief wasn’t unfamiliar to Hikaru. It couldn’t be, not with the way he’d lost Sai, a dark veil over what should have been a crowning achievement.
It was as familiar as guilt was, as misplaced as it might be. Guilt was even more of an aberration than grief because he knew he shouldn’t feel it, knew Sai had accomplished everything he’d ever wanted with him, and had left perfectly satisfied. Guilt made him feel even more guilty in that it was selfish, as he wanted Sai back solely for his own satisfaction and not due to any wish for reparation on his part.
Maybe that was why he’d felt so glad when he’d gone back. Back to the past, where his first thought hadn’t been the life he’d built and lost with the travel, but rather the desperate wish to see Sai again, to hear his voice, to play together like they hadn’t in so long.
He’d been shaking as he’d knocked at his grandfather’s door, breathing too fast and only rendered presentable by the fact that he didn’t want Sai’s first sight of him to be… the mess he was inside. He wanted to leave a good impression on Sai this time.
He’d gone up to the attic, had unearthed the goban, but… There had been no blood. The goban was the same, cuffed in exactly the same places, grooves feeling all too familiar to Hikaru’s smaller hands. And yet, no Sai.
He took the goban nonetheless. He cried over it as he started the familiar game that had taken over his life with Sai’s departure.
He didn’t manage to finish it.
_ _
It was strange, how differently grief sat in his body now that Hikaru was back to 12 years old. As an adult losing Sai, grief had felt all encompassing, dogging every step of his life and impossible to escape from for all that it became easier to bear. It had been like grief had changed him on a fundamental level, and Hikaru didn’t like how it felt to live with it no longer engraved in his bones.
Grief was far too easy to forget as a child. It was like his brain wouldn’t hold on to it. There one moment, and gone the next. Unpredictable sneak attacks that wouldn’t remain even when Hikaru wanted to revel in it. His brain wouldn’t let him hold on to grief anymore, not in the way he was used to keeping it close to his heart at all times like a friend.
He came into a by-now familiar coffee shop, grief only remembered by the goban he’d taken to carrying everywhere in case grief hit him again and he needed to feel Sai. He couldn’t step foot into Ichikawa's salon anymore, not when it was made jarring by Sai’s absence and everyone there was a stranger. He couldn’t stand to follow the same step of his previous life, places once familiar becoming like poison and filling him with unease.
He took a seat at his usual table, close enough to the counter that he could see the snacks on display, yet far enough that he wouldn’t be bothered by the movement of the regular clientele. The nice waitstaff who’d taken a shine to him over the course of his latest visits came by his table.
“I might need something stronger than coffee this time,” he said with a tired smile, still waiting, craving for the grief to fill him again.
“You’re 12 at most, and the last time I gave you coffee, you spat it out and cried all over your board game as you cleaned it up. You’re getting the sweetest matcha latte I can make and that’s it.”
Hikaru felt like he had the right to be offended by this, because 1) There were extenuating circumstances about him crying over the goban. One of the coffee stains wouldn’t leave, and the sight of it looked like Sai’s blood, and the sudden grief had hit him like a truck.
And 2) the waitress couldn’t be older than 15, and she was rude to boot so she had a lot of nerve telling him he was too young for anything like the age difference was anything to write home about. He waited until she’d turned back to stick his tongue out at her, then went over the familiar ritual of pulling his goban and stones out of his bag and setting them up on the table.
He lost himself in the motions and the familiar rhythm of the game, barely noticing when his drink arrived. Unfortunately for him, it was indeed delicious so he couldn’t even gloat at the waitress. The combination of the too sweet matcha with the bitterness of that last game filled him with grief again, but this time it was tears of relief that flooded his eyes as he played. Relief that he hadn’t lost this sensation, that he could still tap into it on command, like phoning a familiar friend.
“Whose game is this?”
A voice pulled him out of his contemplation, and for a moment he wondered what kind of insensitive idiot would bother a bedraggled teenager crying over a goban. He shouldn’t have been surprised by the face he met when he raised his eyes.
“Akira,” he breathed.
The other boy took that as an invitation to sit opposite Hikaru, for all that he seemed to be regretting the emotional outburst. His eyes were still on the goban though, a hungry look Hikaru had seen before and was craving again.
“Whose game is this?” the boy repeated again, and Hikaru placed the next stone, like it held the answer to the rest of his life.
“My teacher’s,” he said, voice barely cracking this time and grief left with the word. He didn’t try to hold it back this time, didn’t try to hold on to it and keep it near his heart. It would come back in due time. “Want to play?”
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