Title: Teaching Go
Author: Luce Red
Series: Hikaru no Go
Disclaimer: Characters are the property of Hotta and Obata
Pairing/Notes: General fic.  Hint of AkiraHikaru.  Shidougo refers to 'teaching Go', played between players of vastly different skill levels, for example, between teacher and pupil.  Third of the In Vino Veritas series.
Summary: Hikaru has never played shidougo.

----------------------

This time, Touya pulled up a chair for himself and sat down at the tiny table, watching Kuwabara and Shindou take turns to pour each other sake.  "Shindou..." he began, unsure if he should interrupt them.

Shindou turned to him with the goofiest smile he had ever seen.  "Touya!" he said.  "You found us... hic!" he gave a drunken hiccup, and without warning, reached out and grabbed Touya's right hand before he could protest, before displaying the appendage, for Kuwabara's apparent inspection. "See, didn't I tell you that Touya's hands are the nicest?" he demanded, his voice haughty with triumph.  "When he plays Go, you can't take your eyes off his hands.  Who would be interested in looking at your skinny, wrinkly hands, old man?"

"Shindou!" Touya tried to pull his hand back, but Shindou only turned to him again, his grip still tight.  "Touya," he said.  "You're still my rival, right?" he asked, then seemingly satisfied with something he saw on Touya's face, pushed a cup towards him, and splashed sake into it.  "Drink up, Touya!"

Touya shifted his chair closer.  At least Shindou didn't persist in trying to shove his hand in Kuwabara's face again.  Frankly, he was half-afraid that Shindou would try to do something more embarrassing, but all Shindou seem to do was to turn his attention back to Kuwabara.  Touya was only a little surprised to see that Shindou had placed his old, battered magnetic Go set on the table between the two of them, and it looked like they were in the process of going over the afternoon's game.  Shindou released his hand as he started to point out a formation on the Go board, his words tumbling over one another in his haste.

The first game of the Honinbou finals, which had taken two days, had ended that afternoon.  As Touya feared, the game had been a circus the first day, leading to consternation among everyone but the participants.  To add to the insult, Shindou and Kuwabara had openly grinned at the various reactions they got.  Touya had had to restrain himself from yelling at the two of them for insulting the game of Go.

However, with one hour to the finish on the second day, just as nearly everyone was about to assign this game mentally under the annals of "utterly stupid games played by pros," Shindou and Kuwabara had stunned the observers, the game officials, and the reporters by simultaneously launching themselves into the game and finishing it with lightning speed that made commentary utterly useless.  Touya thought he saw the game recorders nearly cry from the stress of trying to record each hand accurately, a task that was near-impossible due to the speed at which the stones seem to position themselves onto the Go board.  Neither Shindou nor Kuwabara noticed; in that hour, their concentration had been total and they seemed to have ignored the existence of everyone else in the world.

They had also played one of the most brilliant games to appear in the Go world in the last few months.

By the time Kuwabara indicated his resignation with a toss of his stones, Touya could see that even the older pros were practically salivating over themselves to start the post-game discussion.  That was when Shindou, his face flushed from exertion, had turned to the empty air to his left, and before the dozens of watching eyes, loudly asked, "How did I do, Sai?"

Silence had fallen on the room with the force of a sledgehammer after that.  It didn't help that Shindou, upon realizing what he had said, had clapped both hands over his mouth, and turned the colour of his white stones.  He stood up then, stumbling from slightly numb legs, and tried to leave.  When the reporters and the pros clamoured to ask him what he meant by the reference to Sai, he had muttered "Leave me alone!" before running away.

A dozen reporters and dozens of Go friends hadn't been able to find him. Then again, a dozen reporters and dozens of Go friends didn't know about his drinking buddy or his watering hole.

Touya gave a start as Shindou tugged at his hand.  "Drink, Touya!" he urged, before his attention turned to the Go board again.  "I knew it!" he exclaimed to Kuwabara.  "I was thinking of opening over here too," he pointed, with a glare at the older pro.  "That was when you tried to distract me, by upsetting your go-ke, wasn't it?  Stones flying all over the floor.  'Accident', indeed!" he accused.

Kuwabara's eyes were narrowed too.  "If you are so easily distracted by a simple incident like that, you don't deserve to play with me."

Shindou's eyes flashed as he knocked back a drink.  "Then you pretended that you couldn't figure out which hand to play!" Shindou pointed his sake cup, in lieu of a finger, at him. "You hemmed and hawed for a good fifteen minutes.  You didn't fool anyone, old man."

"And that was when you started to 'stir' your go-ke, wasn't it?" Kuwabara asked, "Didn't anyone tell you that it's rude to stick your fingers into your go-ke before it was time to make a move, punk?" Kuwabara looked blandly upwards, sipping from his cup.

"Che!" Shindou snorted.  "Anything you can do, I can do better, old man!"  He reached out to pour more sake for the two of them.  "Drink up!" he demanded.

"Oh?" Kuwabara took the refilled cup and drained it.  "Was that why you took thirty minutes to play this hand?" he extended a finger, yellowed from the cigarettes, at the corner of the Go board.  "And you put down the stone so loudly that it gave everyone a start."

"You were pretending to snore!" Shindou said, getting increasingly boisterous.  "And like you can talk!  You took one hour to play the next hand."

"You started to play 'spin the bottle' with your go-ke cover," Kuwabara said.  "I wanted to let you play to your heart's content, little boy." 

Shindou spluttered.  "You were picking out dirt from beneath your fingernails," he said loudly.  "Do you know how disgusting that is?"

"You hummed 'Old Macdonald had a farm', and you made your white stones moo at each other."

"You picked lint from your clothes, and flicked them in my direction."

"Well, you slurped your tea extra loudly," Kuwabara countered.

"You pretended to choke!" Shindou said, his eyes bright.

"You faked a cough!" Kuwabara accused, his brow furrowed, finally showing signs of agitation.

"Cheater!"

"Punk!"

"Banzai!"  The shout from both voices was loud enough to make the proprietor look up.

And before Touya's mystified eyes, the two snatched up their cups, clashed them together in a fervent toast--spilling half the contents--and drank up.

Shindou wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his white shirt, slapping down his cup with a loud clang.  "And it's all your fault that we didn't play more than thirty hands on the first day, old man," he said.

"I wanted to make it easy for you to seal the game," Kuwabara said, laying down his cup more gently; the toast seemed to have driven the agitation from his demeanor.  His martyred look fooled no one.

Shindou snorted, and poured more sake.  "You don't make it easy for anyone, you... you old fossil," he jabbed a finger at the Go board again.  "Who plays that hand these days?" he demanded.

"I wanted to rattle you," Kuwabara admitted, as he ignored Shindou's 'hah'.  "It was popular, oh, more than one hundred years ago.  I didn't expect you to know the correct response to that."

Shindou stuck out his tongue briefly.  "I know more than you think," he declared. 

"It's quite rare.  Hardly anyone uses it now.  I learnt about that hand from my teacher through shidougo."

"Shidougo..."  Frowning as he tried to recall, Shindou said, "I don't think I've ever had anyone play shidougo with me."  He turned to Touya.  "Touya, do you know?"

Touya stared at him in amazement.  "How would I know?" he asked, trying to sound reasonable.

Shindou's lower lip stuck out a little.  "But I thought you'd know.  You know me best."

"But not about how you learnt Go."

"So from what you know, no one has ever played shidougo with Shindou?" Kuwabara asked.

"The first game we ever played was an even game, sort of..." Touya glanced at Shindou at that.  "After that..."

"After that I went for a few Go classes, and later I joined the school Go club!" Shindou said, with the air of someone making a sudden discovery.  "So, no shidougo!"

"That's a little unusual.  Even Touya-kun must have played his share of shidougo games with his father," Kuwabara said, nodding at Touya.  "No wonder you play the way you do," he said to Shindou.

"What do you mean by that?" Shindou asked suspiciously, turning his attention to Kuwabara.

"You don't expect your opponent to give you any mercy.  From your Go, I can see that you're used to playing on an equal basis even with the strongest opponents."

"Yeah, well," Shindou's eyes focused on the Go board, but Touya could see that his thoughts were far away.  "The person I played with... he was my friend, and I didn't want him to play shidougo with me.  Now..." he sighed.  "Maybe I should have done so.  Maybe I should have let him play more..."  His face fell, and he slumped in his seat.

Feeling helpless, Touya could only reach up to pat Shindou awkwardly on the back.  He looked up uncertainly, wondering if Kuwabara was about to make a cutting remark. 

But Kuwabara's eyes were sharp.  "This friend of yours..." he said slowly.  "Is he called Sai?"

Touya found himself nodding before he realized what he was doing, and froze. 

Shindou nodded, his eyes still downcast. 

"I've heard the name here and there.  A strange sort of friend," Kuwabara said.  "You think about him often," he went on, "but he's no longer around, is he?" he asked.

"N-no."

"Huh."  Kuwabara took a sip from his cup.  "Even your mentor is like a ghost.  Shindou, you are one strange kid." 

Shindou gave a start at the word 'ghost', and looked up.  Seeing nothing, his gaze turned to the floor again.

Kuwabara put down his cup, and addressed Shindou directly.  "Oy! Shindou!"

"W...what?" 

Touya was relieved for the first time to hear the whine in his voice, as Shindou looked up to regard Kuwabara.

"I hope you don't think you're going to be winning the rest of the games, punk," Kuwabara said.  "You were only lucky today.  I won't make it easy for you in our next game.  Maybe I'll play shidougo with you."

"Che!"  Shindou had sat up to face the older pro directly.  He didn't look like he was dwelling on Sai anymore.  "No way, old man!" he declared.  "Just wait, I'm going to make you eat your words," he said, his eyes red-rimmed but his grin was wide enough to reach his ears.

"I'll look forward to that," Kuwabara said, with a distinctly disbelieving tone.  He poured Shindou more sake.  "Never-played-shidougo-before punk!"

***

Touya called an end to their drunken discussion one hour later.  Shindou's words were starting to slur, and Kuwabara was developing a decidedly salacious grin at the way Shindou was worming himself into Touya's chest.  He settled the bill in tune to Shindou's whispers in his ear about how he was going to kick Kuwabara's ass in the next Honinbou game, and how he was going to get Touya drunk when he did so. 

Kuwabara had the proprietor call taxis for them.  Out of respect, Touya let the older pro take the first one, and waited outside the bar for the next with Shindou.  Shindou muttered under his breath after Kuwabara left, his head stirring from its position on Touya's shoulder.  "He's not playing shidougo with me," he grumbled, then blinked up at Touya.  "You look nice from here, Touya," he said.

"I wish I could say the same for you," Touya said.  Shindou's suit was crumpled; strangely, he looked like any salaryman going home after a drinking session, rather than a Go pro.

"Was... was there a big fuss, after I left, earlier?" Shindou asked after a while, his voice sounding more sober.

"It's all right," Touya said, though he could imagine all too well how the other pros were going to descend upon Shindou the next morning.

"I really wished he could have seen that game!" Shindou said. 

"Shindou..."

"I wouldn't let Sai play shidougo, you know," Shindou confessed suddenly.  "He wanted, but I wouldn't let him.  I said I didn't want him to give in to me."  He sighed.  "I was young and stupid.  He was so much better..."

"You never want anyone to give in to you, Shindou.  You've always wanted to do it by yourself," Touya said.  He thought about what Shindou had been muttering moments before. "Now, you're not going to let Kuwabara-sensei play shidougo with you, are you?"

"Him?" Shindou straightened in his indignation, nearly stumbling over Touya's feet.  He grabbed Touya's hand, as tightly as he had done so earlier that evening, and grinned in relief as he found his balance.  "Old Man Kuwabara had better be careful I don't play shidougo with him instead!"

---------------------