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Hikaru has a spare key to Touya’s apartment because their schedules so rarely coincide that when they do have the same evening off, it would be a shame to miss out on a game discussion just because they aren’t off at exactly the same time. Touya had given Hikaru the spare key within two months of moving into his own apartment close to Ichigaya so that he can let himself in without waiting for Touya to arrive.
So it’s not unusual for Hikaru to let himself into Touya’s dark, quiet apartment, turning on the lights, filling the kettle and setting it to boil to start some tea. It is unusual to see the table covered in thin, hard-covered booklets, the go board that usually occupies that space sitting on the floor instead.
Hikaru doesn’t mean to snoop. He fully intends to simply place the stack of booklets on the floor so that he can replace them with the go board. As he’s shifting the stack, however, the top one slips off and falls open—to the full-page photograph of a demure-looking young woman in a kimono.
Hikaru stares. For one insane moment, he wonders if this is the kind of porn Touya consumes: still photos of fully clad women, probably because he yet to figure out that the internet is good for things other than go.
As he reaches down to pick up the booklet, his eyes land on the other page—the text-filled resume. Age, occupation, hobbies—
It dawns on him that he is looking at an omiai profile. Do people still do physical profiles? Surely it would be more convenient to do everything online on this day and age. Then again, he thinks, glancing at the kimono-clad young woman in the photo, isn’t Touya’s family particularly well-off? Maybe this is still how well-off families go about things.
Hikaru peeks at the other profiles, then.
Most of them are in regular-looking clothes; the kimono is the exception. He doesn’t mean to look, but he finds himself glancing through the profiles. Secretary; librarian; surgeon-in-training; accountant. Not a single candidate in go or shogi or any other profession similar to theirs.
It’s not surprising, when he thinks about it. There are so few women who professionally play go and shogi to begin with, and Hikaru thinks he probably knows most of them by face if not by name. Most of them are already married, and of those who aren’t, those interested in marriage are already dating someone.
It makes Hikaru’s chest hot to think of any of the women he knows in the go world entering the omiai market in the hope of scoring Touya. He doesn’t interrogate that feeling. Touya his his rival, after all. There is a world that belongs to only Hikaru and Touya, where the two of them pursue the same heights, spurring each other ever higher. If Touya had a wife who played go, Hikaru wouldn’t have a key to his place. They wouldn’t be able to play late into the night and overnight at each other’s places.
Marriage, Hikaru realizes with a sinking feeling in his chest that goes all the way down into his stomach, would change absolutely everything about his life, even if it was only Touya’s marriage and not Hikaru’s own. Touya’s priorities would shift away—if not from go, then certainly from his fixation on Hikaru. There might be a child, before long, who would surely take even more priority than a wife.
The temperature seems to drop in the room. Hikaru feels suddenly cold and alone, and wonders to himself if he ought to be looking into finding a wife of his own. His instincts protest the idea on a bone-deep level, but—what else is he supposed to do with himself if Touya finds a wife?
Marriage is not a thing on Hikaru’s radar in any way because he is only in his early twenties and it’s barely on the radar of anyone in his age group, whether or not they’re part of the professional go world.
He doesn’t need to think on the subject for very long before realizing that however lonely he might be if Touya gets a wife and prioritizes her over time with Hikaru, he cannot find it in himself to do the same. Hikaru cannot imagine what he would want with a wife, nor she with him.
Hikaru’s world is made up of go and only go, as he’s always been certain was also true of Touya. He can’t imagine a marriage would work for himself unless his partner was also part of the world of go. What would they talk about otherwise? Moments ago, he would have said without a thought that Touya was bound to feel the same.
But there are other reasons to get married, aren’t there? There are those who want to come home to a warm homecooked meal and a smile; to children and a family. If Hikaru wants to go somewhere for a homecooked meal, he can go to his mother; and he’s never particularly craved children or a family of his own.
But on these counts, it’s harder to assert that Touya is bound to feel the same. Touya’s parents are warm but quiet, and Touya is on his best behavior around them. Hikaru realizes suddenly that he can imagine Touya craving a family of his own—a spouse, if not children—where he can experience the ease of familiarity without having to be the golden child he is in his parents’ eyes as opposed to the determined, demanding diva that he is.
Then again, is that the sort of relationship one expects when entering into an arranged marriage? Hikaru imagines it would be just as much pressure to be prim and proper and polite, if not more so than with his parents.
Hikaru’s never really subscribed to the perspective that romance has to be part of a marriage to make it work. But in this day and age, where arranged marriages are increasingly considered a relic of the old-fashioned and the sheltered, it had seemed obvious to him that he could simply remain single. He’d assumed, naively, that Touya would do the same.
When he thinks about it with the stack of omiai profiles in front of him, he sees with complete clarity what he has been missing: family dynamics. Touya has always lived his life in service of family expectations, while Hikaru has always simply done what he wanted.
Touya’s family expectations mainly steer him in the direction of excelling at go, which made their paths seem to converge in their childhoods and teenage years. But now that they are marriageable age, perhaps they are to diverge in this one way.
Hikaru hears the door open and he quickly gathers up the profiles and tries to restore the stack and shove it aside.
“Tadaima, sorry for making you wait,” Touya says as he takes off his shoes.
Hikaru has just managed to shove the haphazard stack into the corner and move the go board onto the table. He attempts to look as innocent as possible—only for the stack of profiles to collapse like an admission of guilt.
Touya’s face goes still as his gaze slides past Hikaru to glance at the stack before landing on Hikaru like an accusation that cannot be denied.
“I wasn’t trying to look,” Hikaru defends himself. “I was just trying to make space on the table for the go board when one fell open and—well, don’t most of these things happen online these days? Who actually uses physical booklets in this day and age?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Touya says, as if this isn’t about him at all. That tone flips a switch in Hikaru’s gut, turning anxiety to irritation in an instant. It’s a particular skill of Touya’s, taking Hikaru into a state of agitation in no time at all.
“Are these someone else’s miai profiles, then? What were they doing on your table?”
Touya rolls his eyes as if Hikaru is the one acting odd.
“It’s my mom’s idea,” he says as if Hikaru can’t feel the steam coming out of his own ears. “I looked through them because I told her I would. I’m trying to find an excuse to explain why I can’t choose one that won’t just result in another pile of profiles showing up at my door.”
The rage is turning to bitterness at the back of Hikaru’s throat. He knows, on some level, that he is being unreasonable. Touya is making it very clear that he’s not interested—but it also sounds like he could be interested if his mother brought the profile of the right girl, and this thought makes something shrivel and curl up in Hikaru’s chest.
“You should try the girl in the kimono,” Hikaru says without looking Touya in the eye, the words burning his throat on the way out.
“Excuse me?” Touya’s eyes narrow and Hikaru can feel the impending explosion. It is a comfort in its familiarity, compared to the unfamiliar bitterness welling up from within him.
“You dress like an old man, she dresses like an old woman, you’d be perfect for each other.”
“Shindou, what’s wrong with you?” Touya’s question is articulated through gritted teeth, and it’s the hurt that flashes in his eye that makes Hikaru hesitate before immediately snapping back with something he would surely regret. “You know she’s not my type.”
Hikaru blinks, the bitterness and rage curdling into confusion and hurt.
“How would I know that? You’ve never told me your type.”
Touya stares at him like Hikaru is being particularly obtuse, to such an extent that Hikaru almost wonders if he’s missed something—but he’s sure he hasn’t. If Touya would have mentioned his preference in girls, Hikaru would remember that. He remembers everything Touya’s ever said to him—if not in exact phrasing, then at least in approximation. Akari’s told him it’s creepy several times over the years how he obsesses over every word that comes out of Touya’s mouth even now that their lives overlap as regularly as they do. Hikaru had stuck his tongue out at her, because he’d never asked her opinion on the subject anyway.
“Maybe not in detail, but certainly I’ve made it clear I don’t like women.”
“What?” Hikaru is so taken aback that the bitterness and anger, so impossible to see past a mere moment ago, shatter and fall away without a trace.
Touya frowns at him.
“What? Are you about to tell me you weren’t really listening?”
It occurs to Hikaru that Touya has mentioned preferring men. It was an offhand comment, and when he’d looked at Hikaru and asked what he’d thought, Hikaru had responded that he thought it was perfectly normal, because he’d thought Touya was talking about go opponents.
He opens his mouth to tell Touya the truth and freezes.
He looks into Touya’s eyes and doesn’t even get as far as opening his mouth before he is struck by the memory of the way Touya had looked so small and vulnerable confessing something Hikaru had taken completely the wrong way—
“I was,” he says, and takes comfort in the fact that it’s true.
He also will have to make some mental adjustments around the idea that Touya had not in fact been confession to some streak of misogyny, and oh wow, Hikaru might have been way too quick to accept that just because it was Touya now that he thinks back.
In fact, he thinks there is very little he couldn’t accept from Touya.
Hikaru knows that some men prefer men and some women prefer women, but he’s never really considered this as a true possibility for himself or the people in his life.
Knowing that this is a possibility for Touya, that it has been for years, at the very least since he tried to come out to Hikaru, is warping Hikaru’s worldview in real-time. He can feel the edges of his understanding of the universe contracting and reforming around the idea that Touya prefers men.
Hikaru’s mouth is dry and his heart is racing, and it feels like he ought to know why, though that reason is just out of reach.
“What if you said you were dating me?” his mouth blurts, entirely without permission from his brain.
Touya blinks at him.
“I’m sorry?”
“You know.” Hikaru swallows thickly, because he has no idea what his mouth is getting him into, but it’s certainly better than confessing that he has no idea what he’s doing. “We spend so much time together anyway, and I’ve never had a girlfriend either. You could just—tell your parents we’re dating.”
Touya stares at him for a long, searching moment. Then he exhales, sharp and harsh, in exasperation.
“You make it sound so simple. What do you expect will happen when you do want a girlfriend?”
“I don’t think I ever will,” says Hikaru, and he means it, though he also understands the skepticism in Touya’s eyes. It’s not like Hikaru can give any clear explanation for his certainty the way Touya can. It simply feels true. “Really. I don’t even know what I’d do with a girlfriend or a wife or—or even a boyfriend, unless I could talk with them about go. But I don’t know why I’d go looking to someone else for that when I have you.”
Touya’s sigh is a lot less sharp and a lot more weary this time.
“You do realize that there’s more to life than go, don’t you?”
“Of course,” Hikaru blinks. “There’s also more to life than chasing the societal ideal of a spouse and kids or whatever.”
Touya sighs again.
“You do realize that if we do this, it will likely impact your relationship with my father—and I couldn’t tell you in what way.”
Hikaru hesitates. He hadn’t thought of this.
Hikaru has developed a relationship with Touya’s father over the years that one could reasonably describe as friendly. Hikaru hasn’t quite found it in himself to talk about Sai with anyone yet—not even with the younger Touya—but he is acutely aware that there is no one alive who perceived Sai more clearly than the elder Touya.
He’s respected Hikaru’s request to not speak about Sai, but he does go out of his way to make conversation with Hikaru whenever they are in proximity to each other. Though he never mentions Sai, Hikaru can feel his mentor there just on the periphery of their conversation.
It feels nice, and while the younger Touya still periodically references the promise Hikaru once made him to share Sai’s story, those moments with the elder Touya are the ones that feel the closest to Sai away from the go board.
He doesn’t want to lose that place of ease and closeness.
At the same time, the preservation of those moments seems a foolish reason to let Touya get roped into an arranged marriage neither of them want him to be in.
“It’s fine,” Hikaru shrugs, deliberately affecting carelessness. “It’s not like—I mean in movies like this they kiss and stuff but it’s not like you’d ever kiss anybody in front of your parents, right?”
Touya looks horrified. “What movies? No!”
Hikaru perks up. “You should watch at least a few pop culture staple movies, so we can point out we’ve been going on dates and stuff.”
Touya has gone from horrified to annoyed.
“Don’t try to turn this situation to your advantage, Shindou.”
“You get an excuse to give to your parents about why you don’t want an arranged marriage, and I get to make you watch some movies so you’re less tragically out of touch.”
“Given how much time we spend in go salons together, I very much doubt you’re as in touch with pop culture as you think you are.”
“Maybe! All the more reason for you to meet me at my level.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Fine, just the occasional movie. For as long as we’re together. A movie a month?”
“A movie a year.”
They settle at five movies a year, and Hikaru considers this a win.
*
Akira has known he was into men for as long as he has been aware what attraction was.
He’s also been in love with Hikaru for as long as he’s been aware that he could fall in love.
He can’t pinpoint a moment when he realized that his obsession with the amateur his age who beat him effortlessly before he even knew how to hold a go stone had transformed into something more, but he knows it was certainly before Hikaru failed to show up for a streak of matches after passing the pro exams.
It had taken him a year or so after to figure it out enough to articulate his feelings for the other boy, even within the privacy of his own mind, but in retrospect, he knows he had well and truly fallen by then.
He’s aware he hasn’t been subtle, and there is a part of him that is certain his parents know—not only that he is gay, but that he is madly gone on one Shindou Hikaru.
He’s not sure whether his mother has started giving him omiai profiles to encourage him to come out to her, or as encouragement to get over his tragic one-sided love.
It’s foolish, this idea of Hikaru’s, because if he’s right and his parents have noticed, their reactions have the potential to ruin everything.
There are so many ways this could go horribly wrong. He can just imagine his parents revealing his feelings for Hikaru, ruining his friendship and giving away the lie in one felled swoop. It seems equally likely that Hikaru will say something that will give away his obliviousness, which might reveal to his parents that their relationship is not as sincere as they claim; the idea of carrying on a fake relationship with Hikaru for the sake of his parents who know he is lying but without being able to tell Hikaru why is excruciating, even within the confines of his mind.
There is also, of course, the possibility that his parents will start on about the need for a spouse who can have children. Akira doesn’t think his parents are the type to be so concerned with that sort of thing, but one never truly knows when there are no queer siblings or other close family to prove his parents will accept this aspect of him.
At the same time, it’s a chance to live out a fantasy that Akira never thought he would get: Hikaru wants to take Akira on dates. Their lives revolve around go, and Akira has no problem with that; but his heart beats a little bit faster at the thought of doing things with Hikaru just to spend time together. If he’s being completely wishful, he would probably want to go on dates that involved picnics in the park; maybe a museum. Akira has read books for school and seen his fair share of movies, but he prefers real life to fiction. He’s not much interested in watching imaginary stories unfold, whether on a screen or through words.
He wonders, sometimes, if this is why Hikaru is not comfortable telling him about Sai—if he worries that Akira will treat his story with the same casual dismissal he reserves for fiction.
To Akira, the difference is clear, but he is aware that Hikaru might not feel that way.
And at the end of the day, movie dates with Hikaru are better than no dates at all, even if they are bound to argue over the movies as much as they argue over their games of go.
Akira is scared to death of this leap he is taking.
He also can’t believe he got this lucky.
*
It’s Hikaru’s idea to rehearse their coming out with his parents before Akira’s.
They both know that their mothers know who each other are, but they are not aware that they have each other’s phone numbers, much less that they meet up regularly to chat.
They find out when the first thing Hikaru’s mother does upon their announcement is to smile widely and ask if they’ve told Akira’s mother yet.
“Then you should go and tell her now,” says Hikaru’s mother. “I’ll tell her you’re on your way.”
“Shindou-san,” Akira protests, and he knows his alarm must be written across his face.
Hikaru’s mother’s eyes go soft and her hands pause over her phone.
“Your mother wishes you’d talk to her more, you know? I’m honored that you felt comfortable telling me first, but the truth is, I didn’t even know that much about your relationship with Hikaru until your mother told me how long you two have been chasing each other.”
Akira feels his face heat.
“I support Hikaru, but he doesn’t really tell me much.”
“I do too!” Hikaru objects.
“Sometimes, but mostly I’m always playing catch—up with your life. I’m not complaining, Hikaru, I’m talking to Akira-san. This is my relationship with Hikaru; but that’s not the relationship you have with your mother, is it?”
It isn’t.
“I’m sorry for making you play mediator, Shindou-san. I’ll take Hikaru to go talk to my mother now.”
Hikaru’s mother smiles. “I’m glad. I’ll text her that you’re coming—nothing else, okay?”
“Okay.”
It’s only after he’s dragged an unusually compliant Hikaru outside that Hikaru says, “Hikaru?”
Akira stares at him, uncomprehending.
“You called me Hikaru.”
He realizes then that he had. He cannot quite meet Hikaru’s eyes as he says, “It’s not like I can call you Shindou in front of your parents.”
“Hm,” Hikaru says. “I guess I should call you Akira too, then, when we meet your parents.”
The feeling in Akira’s chest at the thought of Hikaru using his given name, not because he wants to but to perpetuate their ruse, is beyond articulation. It twists painfully and makes him feel light and buoyant all at once.
“I guess you should.”
Akira’s mother is waiting for them when they arrive. She pours them tea and smiles as they tell her they’re together.
“I’m so happy for you, Akira-san,” she smiles. “I’m sorry if the miai photos made you…uncomfortable.”
His mother’s words ease something in him and he smiles back.
“Thank you for understanding.”
“I just want you to be happy,” says his mother, reaching across the table to take his hand in hers. “It doesn’t matter to me if that means marriage or grandchildren, but your father and I are hardly ever here and I just wanted you not to be alone. And I’m so glad you already aren’t.”
“I never have been,” Akira says, and it’s true.
He might not have the sort of relationship with Hikaru he is lying to his mother about—the sort of relationship he secretly wishes for—but his life is firmly and irrevocably entwined with Hikaru’s. He doesn’t think either of them could untangle themselves if they wanted to—and he doesn’t think Hikaru will try again.
He looks sideways at Hikaru, and sees a thoughtful expression on his face.
The initial fondness is polluted by a thrum of anxiety.
He refocuses on his mother.
*
Hikaru has always thought that his family was warm where Touya’s—Akira’s—was cold, so realizing that their lives don’t actually exist on such a simple binary is an eye-opening moment for him. There is warmth between the Touya family that his own lacks, and vice versa.
Both his and Akira’s moms seem unsurprised and unbothered by the idea of Hikaru and Touya—Akira—together, and this, too, is forcing him to reevaluate his sense of the world.
It doesn’t actually seem like they need much of a ruse—they could probably just keep living the way they have been, with the only difference being that their mothers think they’re dating.
For a week or so after they tell their mothers, Hikaru is scared that Akira will suggest such a thing.
He never does, so when they bump into each other in the Go Institute by happenstance the following week, Hikaru asks Akira to come with him to an action movie the following week.
Akira heaves a world-weary sigh and rolls his eyes but agrees.
Hikaru is so delighted that he barely notices the strange looks they get from everyone around them.
“You go to movies?” he hears someone ask Akira as he leaves, walking as fast as he can to his appointment.
“Not usually,” Akira’s voice follows him down the hallway. “It’s more Shindou’s thing.”
The comment makes Hikaru’s chest contract, and he isn’t sure why. He’s late to a meeting, though, and doesn’t have time to think about it.
*
Akira doesn’t take to action films—he can’t follow the flashy action sequences and is not comfortable asking for explanations in a movie theater, even in a whisper. Hikaru tries a rom-com next, and while this time Akira is not confused by the plot or the visual sequences, he ends the film practically vibrating with irritation at the overly convenient plot.
It’s only after those two failed experiments that Hikaru realizes what he ought to have known from the beginning: they should be watching movies at one of their apartments, where they can pause for explanations and arguments to their hearts’ content.
Their third film is a 130-minute alien action movie that it takes them a solid three hours to watch between all the pausing to explain and argue about said explanations.
Hikaru is beginning to think that he will never get Akira to appreciate a movie; but he enjoys these movie evenings all the same.
By the time they arrange their first movie night, they have been “pretending to date” for a solid six months. Their work comes first, and they still meet up just as much as they always did to discuss games; they still call late at night after one of them has had a particularly striking public game to yell at each other about their moves, even if they have to be up early the following morning.
It's nice to occasionally spend time arguing about something that isn’t go.
People have asked Hikaru over the years if he doesn’t find his relationship with Touya Akira exhausting. They argue all the time, even in public, and the perception among their peers is that Touya Akira is a beacon of perception beyond the reach of mere mortals. Surely, many of them have asked, Hikaru must find it tiring to be held to his impossibly high standards, and have to argue when he inevitably falls short?
Hikaru has by now had ample practice having this conversation, and so he knows the best way to deal with such questions is to laugh them off and change the subject.
No one has ever believed him when he’s tried to explain that he finds arguing with Touya Akira to be an activity that makes him feel more energized than anything.
Nor can he explain to people who don’t see them in private that their relationship isn’t always yelling and arguing.
Akira strives to understand Hikaru on a bone-deep level in a way that no one else has ever tried to do. He notices small things about Hikaru that no one else does, and he catalogues them even if he cannot understand them. He does not ask excessive questions—in fact, Akira barely ever asks Hikaru anything. He simply watches him, as if he knows that Hikaru will explain if he wants to without needing to be asked.
For a long time, Hikaru had believed that Akira was so observant because he was still searching for Sai—trying to solve that eternal mystery of the go master inside Hikaru.
Maybe this is why Hikaru hasn’t been able to bring himself to tell Akira the truth about Sai yet. He knows, on some level, that by now the behavior is bound to be more about Hikaru than Sai, but he fears losing Akira’s fixation and attention.
He likes entering a room and feeling Akira’s eyes land on him, quick and sure. He likes feeling like he is the center of one Touya Akira’s world, even though he knows that’s not actually true.
Over the past six months, Hikaru has found himself harboring a shameful, selfish fantasy that Akira watches him because he wants him in the way of romance dramas.
He knows better, of course—it’s rude to assume that just because your best friend prefers your gender, he will want you. It’s even ruder to hope for it when you’re not even… Hikaru knows that, and tries not to let it show. The last thing he wants is to damage his real relationship with Akira over his inability to properly draw the line between their fake relationship and his ego.
It is only now dawning on him that the way they discussed their fake relationship, there is no real end in sight. Akira had asked what Hikaru would do if he wanted to date someone else, but there had been no mention of what Akira might do if he found someone he wanted to date for real.
Hikaru is getting used to the way his gut twists at the thought, and is learning to ignore the sensation. Mostly.
He dares to ask Akira about this one day when they’re going over one of Akira’s games in his apartment close to midnight.
“What do you mean?” Akira asks without looking up from the board, as if perhaps the late hour or his fixation on the game make this very simple question difficult to parse.”
“You know, since you might actually want to get laid one of these days.”
“Oh. Well, there are always apps for that.”
Hikaru stares. “But we’re dating.”
“I’m not saying I’d date them. Also you asked.”
“We’re public figures, Touya! You can’t just go on an app to get laid.”
“It’s not like I have,” Akira says, finally looking up at Hikaru with a scowl. “You asked what I would do if I wanted to get laid. I responded. I’m not saying it’s something on my to-do list.”
“I meant like—if you wanted to date someone for real,” Hikaru says.
Akira stares. “What was it you said about not being interested in anything other than go? I think it’s much the same for me.”
“But you actually like boys.”
“So? No one’s ever died of not having sex, Hikaru.”
It makes Hikaru’s heart skip a beat whenever Akira calls him by his given name when they’re in private. It almost feels like—this intimacy they’re pretending to grow between them is real.
“Yes, but I mean—at some point you’re going to want to, right? Then what?”
“Shindou, I keep saying this isn’t a concern of mine right now. What is this really about? Are you saying you want to get laid?”
“No! That’s never been a priority of mine.”
“Then what the hell are we arguing about, Hikaru?”
“I want to know there will be some warning when this ends, and I want to know when to expect it!”
Akira stares at Hikaru, his mouth slightly open as the words dissipate in the air between them, leaving a thick, heavy sort of silence. It takes several heartbeats for Akira to break it.
“If you want out, you need to just tell me, Shindou.”
“I don’t, that’s what I’m saying,” Hikaru almost whines. “I’m trying to say—I mean, it’s not like we can keep on like this forever, right?”
Akira tilts his head, looking almost guilty, and the hope that sparks in Hikaru’s chest drives him to blurt out his thoughts.
“Wait—are you saying you wouldn’t mind pretending forever?”
Akira looks away. “It’s not like I’d ever find anyone I can talk to as openly as I can with you. And…it’s been nice, this thing we have, even if it isn’t quite actual dating.”
Hikaru should reassure him that even if he ends up dating someone for real, they can still be whatever they are now. The words stick like glue in his throat and won’t come out.
“But if you want to end it,” Akira says, clearly misunderstanding Hikaru’s silence, “just let me know. I’ll tell my mom it was my fault, and ask her to tell your mom, if you want.”
“No, I—I like this too. I like the idea that—we’re not just some kind of holding pattern until one of us finds something real.”
At last, Akira looks up at Hikaru and their eyes meet. There’s something like hope in his eyes, or maybe grief. Hikaru never knew until this moment that the two could look so very alike.
“Are you sure?” asks Akira, and Hikaru can only reply in the affirmative.
“But seriously, Akira, what about sex?”
“My answer hasn’t changed.”
“No, but seriously, we can’t go on apps. What if the Go Institute finds out?”
“Why would they find out, and it’s not that big a deal.”
“It is if everyone thinks we’re dating. What if we tried having sex?”
Akira stares at Hikaru, and in that stretch of silence, his brain catches up with his mouth and he balks.
Akira rolls his eyes despite the flush of his cheeks.
“You really need to learn to think before you speak. Don’t worry, Shindou. I’m not on any apps and don’t plan to be in the near future.”
“But—”
“Don’t you think it’s time for you to head home?”
Hikaru lets Akira change the subject with some relief. “The last train is already gone. I’ll just stay here.”
“You’re so entitled,” Akira sighs, rolling his eyes.
It’s not a real imposition, Hikaru knows, because he’s done this before. Akira usually sleeps on a futon with an insulating pad underneath; when Hikaru stays over, he lays the two out separately and covers the pad in a sheet, which is then Hikaru’s futon for the night.
Hikaru struggles to fall asleep, his own unthinking offer swirling through his mind.
He’s never really considered having sex in any real way. Of course he’s watched porn and imagined doing those things, or looked at a celebrity and thought they looked hot. But none of this has ever really translated into wanting to sleep with someone in real life.
But when he thinks about sleeping with Akira, his stomach does flipflops and his heartrate picks up in a way that feels like maybe he would be more than a little enthusiastic about that.
It’s so strange. Wouldn’t he know if he wanted to have sex with his best friend? They find every excuse possible to be in each other’s presence—all the more in the last six months that they’ve been pretending to date. Surely he would have felt this impulse sooner if he seriously wanted to be having sex with Akira?
Hikaru is keeping his eyes closed, pretending to sleep as he has his crisis, but as his mind whirls and Akira’s side of the room remains silent, he dares to open his eyes and look across the dark room.
The city lights filtering through the window beneath the curtain are more than enough to illuminate Akira’s face.
It strikes Hikaru that even asleep with his hair falling across his face, Akira is beautiful. At the same time, the thought has the flavor of something ancient and familiar that he’s always known.
He supposes he has known that Akira is beautiful, though he’s never quite let himself think of it in those terms.
Does he want to have sex with Akira? How long has he wanted to?
He’s not sure about the sex part, but he definitely wants to go across the room to brush Akira’s hair out of his face—and then maybe stare at him some more without that hair in the way.
Is he in love with Akira? It’s never occurred to Hikaru to wonder.
It would certainly make sense.
Hikaru doesn’t end up getting a wink of sleep that night.
When he wakes in the morning, he tells Akira he has an important thing to do before he goes to the Go Institute and rushes home. It’s not a lie, exactly. He goes straight to his computer and looks up how men have sex. He also watches some gay porn, trying to imagine doing those things specifically with Akira.
He is nearly late to work, and has no clear answers for it.
*
Akira tries not to think about Hikaru’s thoughtless offer to have sex with him. It could so easily become fuel under the fire of Akira’s fantasies, but he is determined not to be that kind of friend. Hikaru didn’t mean it—he’d simply spoken without thinking, as he is wont to do. It had been obvious from the look on his face. It would be wrong of Akira to take advantage of some thoughtless words and fantasize about his friend.
Above all, if he did get himself off to a fantasy about Hikaru, he’s not sure he could look Hikaru in the eye afterwards. Hikaru would be bound to demand to know why, and—the whole scenario is humiliating enough in his imagination to hold his fantasies at bay.
Which is why Akira drops his head into his hands when Hikaru comes to visit a mere week later and suggests again that they have sex.
“Please think before you speak,” Akira groans into his hands. “I’m fine, I don’t need pity sex.”
“No, but see, you’re right that I hadn’t thought it through last week, but now I have.” Hikaru sounds entirely too excited for this subject. He sounds the way Akira usually associates with his excitement over a particularly good move on the go board. “If we’re going to make this work indefinitely, we’re going to need to let off steam at some point, right? Why wait until it’s a problem? If we can help each other get off, we’ll be set for life, right?”
Akira decides, privately, that even if this is the strangest sort of proposal imaginable, it is as close to a marriage proposal as he is ever going to get from Hikaru, and he is going to remember and treasure the memory.
That doesn’t mean he has to let Hikaru know that, though.
“You don’t even like men.”
“I don’t think I care about gender? I did my research about how men have sex and decided I wouldn’t mind with you, though.”
“Wouldn’t mind. The height of passion.”
“I don’t know, I’ve never had sex, and everyone says the first time hurts!”
“For the bottom more than the top,” Akira rolls his eyes. Hikaru stares, apparently uncomprehending. “Bottom is the person who is—”
“I know, I just—you would rather bottom?”
Akira stares. “Were you seriously offering to bottom?”
Hikaru frowns. “Why are you looking at me like that? Everyone says once you get into it it feels better.”
“Who is everyone?”
“The internet? Also I went to a bar in Shinjuku and asked some people.”
Akira drops his face back into his hands.
“Akira? Akira, so do you want to?”
Akira is so full of frustration and lust and rage and laughter and adoration that he feels entirely beyond words.
“Come on, Akira, I didn’t mean to upset you.” Hikaru’s voice has taken on a wheedling quality. “Is it that you would rather bottom? We can take turns, you know?”
Akira takes several deep breaths before he raises his head from his hands.
“How about we try kissing first?”
Hikaru tries kissing him right then. He moves in with far too much force, and their teeth knock together through their lips. They jerk away from each other with identical grimaces.
“Sorry!” says Hikaru. “Sorry, I’ve never done this.”
I can tell, Akira almost snarks, but swallows the words when he sees the genuine vulnerability on Hikaru’s face.
“Lucky for both of us,” Akira says, reaching out, “I have at least a little experience to share.”
“Wait, you do? With who? Do I know them?”
Akira rolls his eyes and kisses him, gently.
Hikaru takes to kissing as easily as he took to go.
There are no protocols for how to kiss the friend you’ve been in love with for the better part of a decade who is only kissing you because he’s decided it’s the most practical way for you both to get off.
Akira tries to enjoy it without reading into Hikaru’s every touch. It would be too easy to let himself imagine his love is reciprocated, but that’s not why Hikaru is doing this. He must not allow himself to get the wrong idea.
It’s a tightrope walk, and when they inevitably escalate to sex, it takes everything in Akira not to cry—and even then he fails.
“Does it hurt so much?” asks Hikaru, alarmed. “Sorry, I didn’t—”
“It doesn’t hurt, it’s just overwhelming,” Akira says, tightening his legs around Hikaru to keep him from pulling away. “Keep going.”
Hikaru does, but Akira already senses that it might be hard to get him to try this again.
Pretending is so much harder when laid bare in body and emotion before the person one wants and values more than any other in all the world.
Akira tells himself that at least he got to be with Hikaru this one time. It’s more than he ever thought he would get.
*
If Hikaru had had any doubts that he was in love with Akira, they’re gone by the time he loses his virginity to him.
Akira cries, and he says it’s not because it hurt, but Hikaru’s not sure if that’s true.
Things keep on between them afterward as if nothing has changed, though perhaps they touch each other ever so slightly more than they used to. Hikaru frequently finds himself with a hand on the small of Akira’s back, and Akira is increasingly inclined to reach over and squeeze Hikaru’s hand for attention, reassurance, or admonition, even in public.
Days turn to months turn to years, but they don’t try it again.
Hikaru doesn’t know how to suggest they try again without feeling like a selfish asshole using his friend to get off—especially after the first time made Akira cry.
Nor can he find it in himself to suggest they date for real.
It’s not just fear of losing everything he has built with Akira. This platonic life partners who maybe sometimes have sex dynamic is more than most people get out of unrequited love, and wanting more just feels like looking a gift horse in the mouth, but that’s not what nags at the back of his brain and holds him still.
He promised Akira once a long time ago to tell him the truth about Sai, but he never has.
Hikaru can’t fully explain why, except that talking about Sai has become that much harder as the years have passed.
Within Hikaru, in his go, in his reality, Sai is as strongly present as he ever was. Hikaru still turns to Shuusaku’s games when he is stuck or feeling a little lost; he makes sure to visit Shuusaku’s grave at least once a year during Obon in August, since Golden Week isn’t usually a very convenient time to make that trip given his other responsibilities.
He does grieve Sai every May, and he thinks that Akira already knows that.
But he’s never told anyone about Sai, and over the years, it’s begun to feel like an impossible story to tell.
He is held in limbo until the tenth anniversary of Sai’s disappearance. This year he does intend to visit Shuusaku’s grave on that day in May—and so he invites Akira.
He does not explain, but Akira does not need an explanation.
“I would be honored,” he says, and he sounds like he means it.
For the first time in years, Hikaru feels like he might cry like a teenager again.
*
Though Hikaru doesn’t explain much, Akira has gathered a few things about Sai over the years.
He is certain that Sai was Hikaru’s mentor in go, the same way Akira’s was his father. He also gathers that Sai is dead, and that he died in May. He does not understand how Sai could possibly have played as Hikaru those first two times they played, but he is certain that he somehow did.
While Akira does not ask where Hikaru wants him to accompany him on the tenth anniversary of the beginning of Hikaru’s months-long forfeit streak, he is not surprised when Hikaru’s destination turns out to be a cemetery.
It does surprise him that the cemetery is Shuusaku’s.
Like anyone who paid attention to Sai’s go, he is aware that Sai’s play style was heavily based on Shuusaku’s, and attributed Hikaru’s tendency to turn to Shuusaku’s game records as a trait inherited from his mentor. He wonders for the first time, watching Hikaru light an incense stick, if there is a deeper connection than he previously assumed.
Hikaru bows in respect, and Akira does too.
They are both bowing before the grave when Hikaru speaks.
“I’m not just paying respects to Shuusaku, just so you know. Sai loved him, and I respect him, but I only know him through Sai’s stories. What I do know is that he was smarter than me, because he just let Sai play go. I didn’t know anything about go when I met Sai, so I didn’t understand his genius. I met you and wanted to beat you, and so I was selfish and told him I wanted to play.”
Akira rises carefully from his bow and tries to figure out how to phrase his confusion delicately.
“Hikaru,” he says, his voice soft. “I don’t understand. It sounds like you’re saying Sai knew Shuusaku personally. And of course you know Shuusaku through more than stories—you study his go all the time.”
Hikaru looks at Akira, rising slowly from his bow, his face inscrutable. The grief in his eyes goes so deep that they look hollow. Without knowing how, Akira knows he has said something wrong. He swallows and tries again, desperate not to lose Hikaru to his grief again.
“I don’t want to pressure you, but—will you tell me in a way that I can understand?”
Hikaru shuts his eyes.
“I’ve never told anyone. I’m not sure I know how to tell it.”
Akira does not offer suggestions, because he understands enough to know that this is likely not a simple tale.
He simply waits.
“Do you believe in ghosts?” asks Hikaru at last, looking at Shuusaku’s grave instead of at Akira.
Akira looks at Hikaru’s profile and thinks not about his own feelings about ghosts in general, but about why Hikaru would ask him such a question.
Hikaru is not, generally speaking, a very superstitious sort of person. But Akira knows he believes in ghosts and souls. He feels, suddenly, that he might be getting an inkling of the piece that he has been missing in the story of Sai all this time.
“I’ve never seen one myself,” he responds carefully.
“I have,” Hikaru says. “He was haunting this go board in my grandpa’s attic.”
The tale that Hikaru tells then is fantastical and impossible, but slots so perfectly into Akira’s nonsensical memories of both Hikaru and Sai, so deftly transforms the chaos into something comprehensible, that he cannot help but believe every word.
He listens in silence, standing before Shuusaku’s grave as the sun reaches its zenith above them and starts its descent.
The story ends on a day in Golden Week, with the disappearance of the ghost called Fujiwara no Sai.
“And so you stopped playing.” Akira already knew it, and it seems more than obvious, but now that it is all being laid out in words, he supposes he wants to make sure.
“Not immediately. I thought I was missing something at first. I went to Hiroshima, I came here, and I thought if I just looked hard enough I could find him. And then I went to the Go Institute where they keep the records of Shuusaku’s games, and—Touya, I hadn’t even realized how little I’d understood of his genius until I read those. And I knew—Torajirou had it right, letting Sai play. I was ignorant and selfish and…” Hikaru covers his eyes.
Akira reaches out to place a hand on his shoulder.
“I’m glad you did,” he says, the raw, honest truth from the depths of his soul. His interest in Hikaru was certainly sparked by Sai, but his fascination with Sai has long since been superseded by Hikaru.
Akira is grateful that Hikaru chose to play—grateful that Sai chose to teach him rather than demand to be allowed to play for him.
“I wonder, sometimes, if I was in love with you even then.”
The words are so out of left field that Akira thinks for a moment that he misheard.
“It was always you, you know? I knew you were stronger than I was, but I wanted to chase you, to be your equal, to be someone you respected. I called it rivalry, but you were—I had any number of people to aspire to in go, but you meant more to me.”
“Hikaru—”
“I’m not saying this as a guilt trip or expecting anything from you or—I just, I think I didn’t realize until I was telling this story how much I was just chasing after you.”
Akira can’t help but smile at that, thinking of the way Hikaru had told all his peers they were rivals long before they’d had a chance to play for real.
“I think the entire go world knew that.”
“Yes, but I mean—”
Akira reaches out and lets his fingers slide between Hikaru’s fingers covering his face—a question. Hikaru’s hand comes away from his face, and as he peers at Akira, their fingers slide together and interlock so that Akira’s hand is cupping Hikaru’s.
“I was infatuated with you too, all the way back then when I had no idea what to make of your wildly fluctuating go skills and the way you would come chasing after me only to pull back and run off just as I thought I’d get to play you.”
Hikaru’s other hand comes away from his face and he looks down at their hands with a soft, sad smile of unmistakable resignation. Akira turns his hand so that their fingers are interlocking properly. He tightens his hold, pulling Hikaru’s attention back to himself and out of whatever he is thinking.
They are in front of the graves of Honinbou Shuusaku and Sai. Akira is going to do this properly, just in case they’re watching.
“I am only calling it infatuated because I didn’t know you or myself enough to call it love in any meaningful sense of the word. But, Hikaru—I’ve had ten years to get to know you, actually you with no confusion about who I’m seeing, and so I hope you can believe me when I tell you that I love you, and it’s so tied up in my go and who I am that I expect I will never be able to stop.”
“Even if we have a fight and break up?”
“Even then.”
“But—you were miserable when we had sex.”
Akira heaves a sigh. “Must we discuss this in front of your ghost’s last host’s grave?”
“I don’t think they’re here.”
“That’s hardly the point, now, is it? I never saw Sai when you could see him, but he was still there, wasn’t he?”
Hikaru goes bright red as if it’s only just occurred to him that ghosts might be watching that he cannot see.
“When I say sex,” he says to the empty graveyard, “I’m just talking metaphorically.”
“Please stop before someone living hears you,” Akira says, tugging at him by the hand where their fingers are entangled.
“I’m trying to make it better,” Hikaru insists.
Akira drags Hikaru to a business hotel by the local station, where he proceeds to explain to Hikaru exactly why he was crying. His descriptions of how it feels to try to tell oneself that this is not about love when his every instinct is telling him that this is an act of love, how devastating it had felt moment to moment forcing himself to remember that they are not in fact in love—perhaps he goes a little too far, because the look of shocked horror and guilt on Hikaru’s face is not one he intended to cause.
“I’m sorry,” says Hikaru, wrapping his arms around Akira. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t intend that at all.”
“I know,” Akira says, stroking his hair and his back. “I knew it then, too.”
“I felt like—I couldn’t tell you I loved you without being able to tell you about Sai, and I didn’t know how to tell you, and I was so lost in my head that I only hurt you more.”
Akira wraps his arms around Hikaru and very deliberately does not comment on the strange linking of two unrelated things.
He thinks, in a way, that he can understand Hikaru drawing that line for himself.
And yet…
“If you’d been in love with anybody else, would you have had the same rule? You have to tell them about Sai before you call tell them you’re in love?”
Hikaru pulls away to frown at Akira.
“First off, I’ve never been in love with anyone else.”
“That’s not the question,” says Akira, though his heart clenches at the admission. He will unpack later the joy that they are each other’s first and only loves. “Say things go south and we break up, and you fall for someone else. Do you think you’d feel like you’d have to tell them about Sai?”
“Why are you planning for a break up?” Hikaru asks.
Akira sighs, leaning his forehead on Hikaru’s shoulder to avoid glaring at him in his exasperation.
“I’m not. I’m trying to understand if your need to tell me about Sai is because he’s such a big part of you, or because you needed me to know because…the first few times I met you, I was playing Sai.”
Hikaru is silent for a long moment.
“Both, in a way. When you came to me after—everything you said to me about believing I ought to play, I thought you were talking about Sai. I was so sure you weren’t talking about me. And now…I know you know I’m not Sai. I know you know the difference between me and Sai. You are…” Hikaru swallows, and Akira feels the movement through Hikaru’s throat against his jaw. “There will never be another Sai in my life, and there will never be another you. It will never matter to me that someone understand about Sai more than it matters now, talking to you.”
Akira tightens his arms around Hikaru’s torso.
“Thank you for trusting me with your story and his.”
“One of these days, I think your dad might want to hear some version of it, though—I’m not sure how. And maybe it doesn’t matter now. He knows that Sai is gone, and he’s gone beyond the Japanese go world to discover what more the world holds.”
“I can’t speak for him, of course, but if you feel comfortable telling him one day, I think he would appreciate it.”
Hikaru’s arms tighten around Akira in return.
A moment later, he pulls back.
“We don’t have lube or condoms!”
“For crying out loud, Shindou.”
“Don’t you want to have sex? I want to. I never got to try bottoming.”
Akira laughs. It’s the kind of laughter that rises from the bottom of his belly, and is the most he can remember laughing in a long time.
“What’s so funny?” frowns Hikaru.
“Nothing.”
“It doesn’t seem like nothing. Do you not want to have sex?”
Akira is still laughing as he pulls Hikaru in for a kiss.
“Yes, I want to,” he says when they part. “I’m just happy.”
“Oh, good.”
Hikaru kisses him again.
They eventually go to a convenience store for condoms, lube, and dinner. They spend the night in the little business hotel, making up for lost time.
This time, it’s Hikaru who cries, and Akira thinks he can understand why it alarmed Hikaru so much to see him cry their first time. He wipes tears with the pad of his thumb, kisses them away with his lips, and checks that he is really okay every few thrusts.
“Stop asking,” Hikaru says at last. “I’m more than fine, I just love you so much I can hardly bear it.”
Akira can relate, so he kisses him on the mouth and tries his best to make it good for Hikaru.
*
The most astonishing thing is how little changes after their pretend relationship turns very, very real.
Akira is very much against PDA, whether at work or in front of their parents, so if anything, the frequency with which they touch each other in public goes down.
In private, they are all over each other, and most of their go games and discussions in the privacy of their own apartments acquire a minimum of one or two breaks to make out or have sex where previously they would have been yelling at each other about semantics.
“Do you think we used to argue so much to burn off sexual tension?” Hikaru ponders one day after they’ve gone a mid-game round right there on the floor beside the table.
Akira stares up at him.
“Are you only just now figuring that out?”
“How was I supposed to know?”
“The same way I knew?”
“Then this is your fault more than mine. At least I have the excuse that I didn’t notice. You could have solved it anytime by kissing me.”
“As if it’s so easy to kiss someone you don’t know wants to kiss you back.” Akira softens his retort with a kiss that deepens, turning into the beginning of another round.
They also decide to move in together.
Their mothers are delighted at the announcement.
“It’s about time,” says Hikaru’s mother.
“I don’t mean to pressure you into anything you don’t want to do,” says Akira’s mother, “but how would you feel about a small celebration? It doesn’t have to be a full wedding, but perhaps we could go to a shrine and have dinner?”
Akira does not want to admit to liking the idea before talking to Hikaru.
“If we do that,” Hikaru says slowly, “don’t you think people might see and report on us?”
They’re not followed around by paparazzi in the way of celebrities from the acting and pop music world, but they are occasionally recognized and photographed and posted to social media without their knowledge, much less consent.
“Do you think we should try to hide what we are to each other?”
Hikaru thinks about it.
“No? I mean, I assume most of the people at the Institute know already—”
“They what?”
“And as long as we keep it out of our work, I don’t think anybody will care?”
“What do you mean they know already?” Akira has been under the impression that they’ve been doing quite a good job keeping their private lives private.
“Oh, yeah, Ogata-san makes comments at me every chance he gets.”
Akira rubs his forehead. “That’s harassment. You should report him.”
“Also Waya and Isumi ask me how we’re doing from time to time.”
“You told them?”
“No? I think most people just assume we’ve always been together.”
Akira considers this.
“Like, since before we were fake dating?”
“Hm? Yeah, long before. Now I think back, I think they were making comments since I was 1-dan.”
“You were 1-dan for ages.”
“Since you were 3-dan, then.”
Akira considers this, his hands absently exploring the planes of Hikaru’s back.
“Maybe we should throw a housewarming party.”
“Why?”
“Last time you moved, you invited your peers over, didn’t you? And the only reason you were planning not to this time was in the name of privacy? What’s the point if they all know we’re together?”
“I also figured you wouldn’t like the noise.”
Akira looks at Hikaru fondly.
“I love you, and I like your friends. Invite them over.”
Hikaru buries his nose in the crook of Akira’s neck.
“I’m not sharing you.”
Akira swats his head.
“Obviously you’re not. Or are you jealous of your friends spending time with me?”
“They all think so highly of you. They just find you too intimidating to talk to.”
“And you would rather ban your friends from our home when I’m there than risk them learning to enjoy my company?”
Hikaru sighs.
“When you put it that way, it sounds ridiculous.”
“Because it is. Invite them over, Hikaru.”
“Yes, dear.”
Akira kisses Hikaru, a light peck that's over all too soon. Hikaru throws his arms around his partner's neck and kisses him properly. Akira's palms splay across Hikaru's back, holding him close as he kisses back, and Hikaru thinks of the way those elegant fingers lay stones on the board. He will suggest a game of go as soon as they're done kissing, he thinks even as he tightens his arms around Akira's shoulders and presses himself closer.