Chapter Text
Touya Akiko knows about Go a lot more than most people. After all, she’s been exposed to it for a good portion of her life. Her husband was once the top Go player in Japan before his retirement from professional games, and her only son seems to want to follow his father’s footsteps. She isn’t the kind of person that can stay clueless about something that’s so intertwined with the lives of the people around her.
While Akiko has never really understood what draws people to the game to the point of near obsession, she has been in a position over the years to see the true and honest joys the game has brought to the men in her family. And that has always been enough to nurture a certain kind of love for the game in her— not for wanting to play it, but for the happiness it brings.
The only time Akiko ever had reservations about the game was the realization that her son spent his childhood almost completely for Go. While this, by itself, isn’t so bad, what worried her the most was that her son spent more time with adults than he ever did with kids his age.
Akira-san was never a problematic child. In fact, he was always relatively quiet, well-behaved, and wise beyond his years. So much so, that some regulars in her family’s Go salon have taken to calling her son “Akira-sensei” when he was still 10! It horrified her to hear that, and she remembered thinking it couldn’t be good for a kid to always be put on such pedestals. Luckily, Akira-san’s personality lets him ignore the honorific rather than revel in it. It also helps that Ichikawa-san is always there to keep treating him appropriately for his age. And, when he attended his father’s study group, no one there really treated him particularly differently.
While grateful for his maturity, Akiko couldn’t help but wonder if she should be encouraging him to hang out with friends more, go to the movies, attend sports matches, and play video games, or whatever it is kids do these days. There was even one time she seriously considered subtly nudging him to skip school. Really, where was all the teenage angst and rebellion that she had mentally prepared herself for?
When Akira-san asked for permission to let fellow professionals stay at their house to prepare for the Hokuto Cup, Akiko was ecstatic! Yes, it was still about Go and more for work than for actually hanging out, but his two teammates were about the same age. Akiko has never seen her son interact with kids his age outside of school and during some Go tournaments. It’s his first time having anyone over at their house. Akiko was only slightly sad she wasn’t there to witness it.
Imagine her astonishment when a few months after that, Akira-san asks for permission over dinner to have Shindou-kun come over and use the goban in the house. Their family Go salon is hosting a small amateur tournament on the day they both usually go to practice. In her surprise and excitement, Akiko uncharacteristically gives the OK before her husband could even get a word out.
She’s only ever seen him that one time he visited her husband in the hospital, but Shindou-kun is almost exactly the way Akiko imagined he would be. A little brash and impulsive, but overall kind. He has a surprising knowledge of proper conduct even if he realizes the situation a little too late before he’s able to correct himself. It makes Akiko laugh, the way he tries so hard.
Shindou-kun is very different from Akira-san personality-wise. She would have thought he’d be the type of person Akira-san would have a difficult time interacting with. To her surprise, the conversation between them flows naturally. The realization that her son actually has a friend (and maybe others, too) that she just didn’t know about makes her tear up in relief.
As the boys settle down in front of the goban in the living room, Akiko excuses herself so she can go prepare some snacks and tea for them. When she comes back with the snacks, they’re both so focused on the game before them that she doesn’t have the heart to tell them to take a break yet. So she informs them about the snacks as she leaves it nearby, and she goes to do other chores for the day.
It’s about three hours later, when Akiko is hanging up some laundry outside, that she hears yelling from inside the house. She immediately pins down some clothes haphazardly so they aren’t blown away by the wind and rushes back to the house in a panic.
It is when she reaches the living room that she actually hears what the yelling is all about.
“No, no, no! See, if you place the black stone there, I can place my white stone here!”
“But then, I can just respond with a stone over here, though.”
“That’s assuming your opponent doesn’t notice what you’re trying to do!”
“You didn’t earlier!”
“I did!”
“Then why didn’t you stop this side from expanding?”
“There was also a possibility of this corner being targeted!”
“You just didn’t notice!”
“I’m just looking at the broader picture!”
Go. It’s about Go. It wasn’t an emergency, it was just Go. Two teenage boys are arguing about Go in her living room. Akira-san is yelling because of Go.
Akiko could feel her knees weakening as she relaxes at the knowledge that it wasn’t anything serious. At the same time, she’s struggling to be completely calm about the realization that this might actually be the first time she’s heard her son even remotely raise his voice. They are arguing about how to move the stones, and her son is yelling at another kid his age who is yelling back just as loud.
In front of her very eyes, for the very first time, her usually quiet and mature 15-year-old son is behaving more like his age than she’s ever seen him. She couldn’t help it. The laugh was ripped out of her throat in her disbelief.
Both boys turn to look in her direction and immediately stop their argument. Shindou-kun just looked slightly downward, with a hand rubbing the back of his neck. “Sorry, we got too loud again, didn’t we?” Apparently this happened often.
She could see her son’s face turning red in embarrassment. He looked about ready to apologize for his behavior. So Akiko tried to hold it in, she really did. But she just burst out laughing in the most unseemly way she’s ever laughed in years. The boys are now looking at her weirdly.
“Oh no, no. Don’t mind me.” She says in between laughs that she’s managed to more elegantly control. She gestures towards the goban between them. “Carry on.”
Akiko then closes the door to the living room, a smile still on her face. She wipes away the tears that have escaped the corners of her eyes, and walks back to the laundry she left behind. What was she even worried about? Her son seems to be doing just fine.