| Hikaru no Go: Left-Handed Go
Professional go players will do whatever it takes to win; truly dedicated professional go players will do whatever it takes just to play. Spoilers of reasonable size for Hikaru no Go.
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| Akira stared down at the plaster cast mummifying his right hand with
something like confusion. The doctor helped him get the sling over his
head and got his right arm settled in it; then, in as stern a voice as
he could muster: "You must not use that hand, Touya-san. Move
your right arm as little as possible, try not to get the cast wet, and
if you must take your arm out of the sling, be sure to hold it up instead
of letting it dangle. Do you understand?"
"Not at all?" Surreptitiously, Akira tried to move the fingers of his right hand. They wouldn't so much as flex, and he got a shooting pain up along his forearm for his troubles; he hissed and gritted his teeth. The nurse who was tending to the scrape on his cheek, misunderstanding, promptly apologized in an undertone and patted the smaller wound more gently. "Not at all," the doctor repeated. "I understand that it will be difficult for you--" You don't understand at all, Akira thought mournfully. "--but if you want to regain full use of that hand, you must keep it absolutely immobilized for the next month, at least." He sighed, redoubled his stern tone, and added, "I know. You can't imagine doing without that hand for a day, let alone a month, but let me repeat, just so you understand that I am perfectly serious, Touya-san: if you don't want to be crippled for the rest of your life, do not use that hand at all." Akira stared disbelievingly at the doctor until the muted scream of first-aid tape being dispensed startled him. The nurse taped a soft bandage to his cheek, smiled at him, and then handed him an ice pack; Akira smiled a distracted thank-you at her and clumsily reached across to put the ice pack on his right eye, the one that was swelling. "You're very lucky," the doctor added in a more normal tone of voice, turning away to shuffle through the papers in Akira's brand-new hospital file. "You walked away from being hit by a car with only a broken hand and assorted contusions. I don't have to tell you it could be worse." "Mm," Akira said, shivering a little. "Go home and get some sleep," the doctor said. "You'll need it." ===== "Man, Touya, you look like hell," Hikaru said, tucking Akira's hospital discharge papers in his pocket and trying to grin normally. "C'mon, let's get you home." "Mm," Akira said again, deciding that was all that was really called for. Hikaru sighed and bundled them both into a cab, where Akira promptly fell asleep on his shoulder, cold water from his ice pack dripping down the front of Hikaru's shirt. ===== "Hey, ugly." No response. Hikaru sighed, shoved the door the rest of the way open, and stepped into the room. "Touya." Akira didn't even look up, just rested his battered forehead against the wall and breathed quietly. Behind him, the goban was set up for a game, but otherwise untouched. "... Touya. Come on, don't space out on me now." Akira mumbled something, something with a hitch of breath in the middle of it. "Eh? What was that?" Akira swallowed another deep breath, then mumbled, "I can't play." Before Hikaru could say anything else, Akira whirled and pinned him with a sharp glare. Well, as sharp as it could get, with one eye swollen nearly shut. "And I don't want to hear anything about 'it's only for a month' or 'think of it as a vacation' or especially 'you're lucky to just be alive', not from you, Shindou. You wouldn't want to go an entire month without playing any more than I do, and you know it." "Hey!" Hikaru held both hands up as a warding gesture, looking a tad flustered by the sudden attack. "I wasn't... I wouldn't..." And then Akira just looked tired. "I suppose." He drummed on his cast with the fingers of his left hand. "Uh... what about on the net? Can't you play there?" "Well... yes, sort of. But it's just not the same, and trying to use the mouse with my left hand makes my arm hurt." Hikaru thought about this for a moment, sitting down at the goban. "What about using your left hand on the stones? Can you do that?" "No!" Akira flung himself onto the opposite cushion, clumsily knocking the lid off the bowl of go stones with his left hand. "I can barely pick up the stones! Watch!" His fingers dipped into the bowl, coming out with a white stone caught between his thumb and first finger. He tried to shift the stone to sit between his first two fingers--a movement that, with his right hand, was as natural and as quick as breathing--and it tumbled from his clumsy wrong-handed grasp to fall back into the bowl with a click. He let his head drop and rubbed his temples clumsily. "I can't do it." Hikaru considered the battered apparition on the other side of the goban for a moment, then declared, "Stop feeling so damn sorry for yourself, Touya." Akira's head jerked up and he fixed Hikaru with a fierce glare. "What?" "You didn't just learn to play go overnight, did you?" Hikaru's jaw jutted out stubbornly. "You looked at the stones one day and suddenly you woke up a three-dan, is that it?" "Of course not!" Akira said, flustered. "Don't be stupid, Shindou!" "I'm not being stupid!" Hikaru retorted. "Don't just try to use your left hand for five minutes and then declare you can't do it! You've got to practice that too." He opened the other bowl. "Come on, let's play." "But..." "Fine!" Hikaru rolled his eyes. "How about this?" And wrapping his right arm around his body, Hikaru shoved his right hand under his belt and dug his left hand into the bowl of stones. "There. Now we're even. Left hand versus left hand, Touya. Now nigiri." "But..." Hikaru fixed Akira with a glare that was nothing short of impressive. "Nigiri, Touya." And Akira did, angrily slamming his left hand into the bowl with something like his usual authority. ===== The first two hands went very slowly, and Akira muttered a blistering curse every time a stone fell from his fingers back into the bowl. He did note with some tiny satisfaction that Hikaru appeared to be even worse at using his left hand (it probably had something to do with the fact that Akira had already been using his left hand to do everything for a day already); but Hikaru didn't curse when he dropped a stone. At worst, he sighed and tried again. It was making Akira acutely aware of how petty he sounded, and he forced himself to stop snapping at the stones. Hikaru placed his next stone, with a soft and apologetic tik instead of the usual firm pachi, and dug his fingers back into the bowl, waiting. Akira moved to claim another section of the board--and the stone slipped from between his fingers halfway there, dropping onto the board and skidding along. He stared at it in shock, hand still suspended over the board. Hikaru immediately clapped his left hand over his eyes. "I didn't see that, Touya! Pick it up and play it again!" "No." The word came out uncertain and soft, and Akira grimaced and repeated himself, a little louder. "No. I placed the stone on the board and took my fingers off it. I'll play it from where I placed it." "Are you sure?" Hikaru lowered his hand a little, peering at Akira's face over the top of his hand. "Really, it's okay..." "I'll play it where I placed it, Shindou," Akira growled. "But that's a terrible move, Touya." "Shut up and play!" "...fine!" Three rounds later Hikaru dropped his own stone onto a bad section of the board. Akira promptly accused him of doing it just to make him feel better, and they snapped at each other for a while before they picked up the game again. ===== "... I have nothing. Thank you very much." "Thank you very much. ...it got easier, didn't it?" "... yes. I think... I can do this. It isn't as natural, but..." "Told you! Another game?" "All right. You take white this time, since you won." "Bah, it wasn't a real win, what with those totally awful moves you kept making." "Shut up! I just dropped a few stones! ... and it was real enough. It was go." "... I suppose so." ===== "So I have to use my left hand? What's the point of that, Shindou?" "It's just for fun, Waya! And if you drop a stone on the board, you have to play it where it falls. That's the rule." "Guess I better not drop one, huh?" "Heh. Heh heh heh yeah right we'll see." "Hey, shut up! Please." "Heh heh heh please." ===== "AUUUUGH!" "No, you have to leave it there! That's the rule, Waya!" "AUUUUUUUUGH!" pachi "... AUUUUUUUUUUGH I hate you, Shindou." "Ha!" ===== "No, you have to leave it there, Isumi! That's the rule!" "B-but... that's a terrible move, Waya..." "That's kinda the point! It'll teach you to be more careful next time! My turn..." pachi "... oh dear." "Heh." ===== pachi
"Thank you very much. ... hm. Speed go with my left hand... I'm definitely getting better at this..." "And I'm not? Well, thank you very much..." "I didn't say that!" "You implied it, Touya!" "I did no such thing! And it isn't my fault that you keep losing, Shindou." "I can't wait until you get that damn cast off next week, Touya. Because I'm going to beat the crap out of you once you're healthy again." "Shut up. In the meantime, another game." ===== The match wasn't going well at all; despite his very pointed attempts to ignore everything but the game, Isumi could feel Ochi's narrowed eyes on him, and he could also feel the title slipping from his grasp. I'm losing by two moku and Ochi isn't going to let me make that up without a fight, he thought, touching his fingers to the cool wood of his bowl. I think... yes, if I attack there... Isumi slipped a white stone from his bowl and slapped it down. Don't see it, Ochi. Give me just one more round... one more... Ochi studied the board with narrowed eyes, then hissed out a quiet exclamation through his teeth and disrupted Isumi's pattern. Isumi winced internally. That's done it. I might be able to salvage this game, but only if he makes a mistake... still, I'll give it a few more hands. He didn't know exactly what drove him to do it--fatalism, perhaps, believing that the game was close to lost already. Why not? It'll make Waya laugh when I tell him about it, afterwards. And, moving dreamily, he picked up his bowl and moved it to the other side of the goban, slipping the fingers of his left hand into the white stones. Ochi's eyes followed the motion, confused and disturbed behind thick glasses. He was staring at Isumi's bowl so fixedly that the firm pachi of Isumi's next move took him completely by surprise. Jerking his head back up, Ochi scanned the board, requiring a few extra seconds to discover and comprehend Isumi's next move. With a muttered grumble Ochi slapped his next stone down on the board, barely taking his eyes off Isumi's misplaced bowl. Isumi did not quite blink, except internally. That was... that was a blunder, Ochi. Fishing out another white stone, he moved to take advantage of the sudden opening, his left hand gliding over the goban. Ochi, who had automatically reverted to watching Isumi's right hand, jerked his eyes to follow the new movement a moment too late. pachi ===== All in all, Isumi thought later, it was the easiest win he'd ever had against Ochi. |
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===== COMMENTS: Look at that. The first time I get my hands on Touya Akira and I arrange for him to get hit by a car. I'm very cruel. That being said, Akira is difficult for me to write correctly. Hikaru isn't much easier; I've always been better with less central characters. However, in the editing process Hikaru eventually changed into something that seemed to be Hikaru, more or less; Touya still bugs me a bit but I judge him largely successful. And I love me some Waya. I do. Doesn't everybody? Waya and Isumi, man, they're both such great people. |