Go Go Igo!

[sakon76]

The bells tolled the warning chime in the middle of Akira's sentence. He finished what he was saying, then released his students to go to their afternoon classes. All but one.

"Imonoyama-san? May I have a word?"

The blond paused and waved his friends to go on ahead of him. "I'll be fine. See you after class."

Ijyuin nodded.

"If you're certain." Takamura was less accepting.

"Go ahead, Suoh."

The door closed behind the pair and Imonoyama turned to face Akira. "I won't take up much of your time," Akira promised. "I just wanted to ask you something." His blue-green eyes met the sapphire ones facing him. "Why did you hire me?"

"I wanted the three of us to get better at Go," Imonoyama replied easily.

Akira tapped the board to his left, where the game he'd played against this student still remained. "Your friends could be insei, if they chose. Fairly strong ones. But you, Imonoyama-san, you give me a hard game. You would be a pro. Why are you having me teach them instead of yourself?"

Imonoyama sighed and set down his satchel, resuming his seat gracefully. "Suoh and Akira need a better grasp on strategy. The three of us will need it. But none of us has time to enroll in the Go club here on campus, and if I taught them myself, the things they would learn would be very different, Touya-sensei."

No time for Go? The very idea felt alien to Akira. "What do you mean?" he asked.

Imonoyama smiled a little. "This is a special school. We take in the odd, the different, the special. If I recall correctly, we approached you for middle school, but you chose Kaiou instead."

"It was my father's school," Akira replied.

Imonoyama nodded. "Of course. We knew that too. But imagine if you had come here. Your brilliance wouldn't have made you into an outcast or a pariah the way it so often does outside. Our schools take diamonds and allow them to shine. Suoh has been giving history lectures at our university since elementary school. Akira has been doing the same for cooking classes."

"And yourself?"

Imonoyama smiled modestly. "At eight I was headhunted by NASA. At nine I took over running the electrical division of the Imonoyama Financial Group. At ten I started running the elementary school."

Akira looked back at the board, at the clean, mischievous play that reminded him vaugely of one other person. "Are you even playing me seriously?"

Imonoyama shrugged. "Go is not my passion," he replied. "For me these games are fun. I learn from them."

Akira considered the vast power of a mind that thought a game at this level "fun." That had been approached by NASA so early. "You could reach the Hand of God," he said, looking up.

"So could you," Imonoyama answered, snapping open a fan that said "GO! Try!" "What we achieve," he continued, folding the fan away, "is all a matter of what we want."

"What do you want?"

"This campus."

Akira blinked. A mind like that, and.... "All you want is a school?"

Imonoyama was unruffled. "If you want to change the world you have to change its children. If I can ensure that everyone who comes into this school leaves it strong, confident, and ready to do what needs doing... then I change the world." In his eyes Akira could see moves being played out not just on a board but in the real world, years in advance. "What Suoh and Akira would learn from me is that 'Kaichou' can plot circles around them. I don't need them to learn that. They already know it. Playing you, they can learn to play the game."

"Why me?"

"Because you're good. And driven. And I thought it would be more fun for us to play against someone our own age."

"I see." Akira thought for a moment. "How much research did you do before choosing me?"

"Enough," Imonoyama replied evasively. "Why?"

"Why me instead of someone else?" Why Akira instead of....

"Instead of Shindou-san?"

Akira nodded levelly.

Imonoyama's grin was unnerving. "He starts next week, sensei. Extra lessons on Tuesdays after our classes let out."