Happy Halloween!
Oct. 31st, 2003 01:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sakon76In honor of Halloween, a day where I (grumble, mutter, moan) do not get to dress up at work and miss out on trick-or-treaters, I present to you the following unfinished plotbunny. Inspired by Aishuu's Seance de Go, here is
Akira heard the rain start hitting the roof over the chatter of the voices. Automatically he looked up and towards the front door. As expected, a figure was starting to fade in from the shadows. It was only a few seconds until Hikaru's form was complete, his gray eyes meeting Akira's questioningly. Akira tilted his head slightly, an unspoken invitation of "Come in," and turned his attention back to the game board as the ghost stepped up and into the house.
This gathering was a small one, and Akira hadn't expected it to drag on so long. He'd checked the weather report that morning, as always, and had thought the others would be gone by now so that he would be alone to play a game with Shindou. The ghost of his rival had never before appeared when Akira was with someone else.
Shindou sat between Akira and Ochi, looking curiously at the board all of them were clustered around. "Whose game?" he asked.
No one answered.
The others didn't seem to see or hear Hikaru. Akira couldn't answer without sounding like he was talking to himself.
"Wait, so when Ogata-san moved here, he was anticipating Kurata's move three steps ahead?" Waya asked, pointing to a particular black stone.
"Ah," Hikaru said, enlightened. He leaned closer to the board, brow slightly furrowed. "But... that's not right, Waya! Just look here!" He pointed at a white stone. "Kurata saw it coming!"
No one, of course, heard him.
"I think Kurata saw it coming," Akira said with a small smile. "Look here." He pointed where Shindou had.
"Eh? No way." Waya peered at the stone, then scratched his head. "Damn, you're right."
"Oh, fine, take all my credit!" Hikaru admonished Akira.
~*~
Hikaru looked at his hands. They seemed solid to him. He could feel himself and he could touch Touya. But anything else was like so much fog. He just passed through it. Or it passed through him. Either way, he couldn't feel a thing. Not a person. Not a Go stone.
Touya had said that he felt as cold as ice. Sai had felt much the same to Hikaru when he'd been alive. The memory of that grave chill kept Hikaru from touching Touya too often. Even though Touya's body heat felt like spilled fire.
Hikaru raised a hand and touched Ochi's shoulder. It was weird seeing his solid-seeming hand sink into that solid-seeming flesh without feeling anything.
He didn't expect Ochi to shudder violently and twist away from him, clasping a hand to where Hikaru had touched, rubbing his skin.
"Ochi?" Waya asked.
"I thought I felt something touch me," Ochi replied, staring at where Hikaru was. "Something cold."
Touya was glaring at Hikaru. Covering up his surprise, Hikaru smirked at his rival. "They're going to think you're mad at Ochi." He could tell that Touya wanted to yell at him but couldn't. They didn't have the same kind of mind link that Hikaru had had with Sai--though to be fair, he'd ended up yelling at Sai aloud half the time anyway.
Hikaru flipped his fan open and contemplated the possibilities. Touya couldn't yell at him. No one else knew he was present. Slowly his grin widened.
He stood up and circled the group, aware of Touya trying to keep an eye on him without being obvious about it. Half of the fun, he admitted to himself, was harassing Touya when he couldn't strike back.
A quick touch had Waya rubbing at the hairs suddenly standing up on his arms.
Touya studiously ignored Hikaru, concentrating hard on the goban.
Hikaru's fingers on the back of Isumi's neck had the man shivering. "Someone must be walking over my grave," Isumi commented, trying to laugh the chill off.
Finally Hikaru knelt behind Touya, who tensed.
Hikaru ran soft fingers through Touya's hair. It was regretful that he'd died in such a stupid way. Touya's hair was thick and silky and he'd never touched it before. Now it was a marvel, his rival the only person he could touch. He could even smell the shampoo Touya had used. His fingers brushed Touya's molten skin.
"Knock it off, Shindou!" The movement was nearly instantaneous as Touya finally snapped and knocked Hikaru's hand away. "We're trying to study the game here!"
"You stopped talking about the game five minutes ago!" Hikaru snapped back.
"We're taking a break to get our thoughts together! Unlike some people who don't have any!"
"Oh, I don't have any thoughts, do I?" Hikaru demanded. "Who was it coming up with all those insights you were passing off as your own?"
"Somebody has to say them! They can't see or hear you!"
Realization froze them both at the same moment.
"Touya-san," Ochi said levelly, adjusting his glasses, "is there something you want to tell us?"
~*~
"Ghost?" Waya asked incredulously. "Shindou's ghost? Come on, Touya."
Shinichirou wasn't quite as dubious. It was hard to believe, of course, but.... "Shindou, if you're really here?" he asked, holding his left hand out. Almost instantly that chill returned, like his hand was encased in ice to the wrist, a deep cold sucking the heat out of his bones. He stood his ground for as long as he could, but it was only a moment or two before he drew his hand back to his chest, rubbing at it to try to return his circulation to normal. The skin was clammy and his hand felt numb.
"Isumi-san?" Waya asked.
Shinichirou nodded respectfully at Touya. "I believe you."
"Hmph," Waya said, then slumped backwards and offered his own hand up. "Hey, Shindou?" Shinichirou watched as his young friend's eyes widened as he stared at his hand. "Can't be," he whispered before drawing the appendage back, also rubbing at it. "Dead's dead."
"He says 'Not always'," Touya reported, his eyes tracking the motion of something no one saw.
Three pairs of eyes--or was it really four, the fourth pair eternally invisible except to Touya?--turned to look at Ochi.
"I don't need convincing," Ochi said shortly, with a nod. "Welcome back, Shindou."
~*~
"It was a dark and stormy night," Shindou began.
Akira glared at him.
"Well it was," Shindou pointed out. "So's tonight." So was every night he came to Akira. "7-8."
Akira placed the stone. "It was a dark and stormy night," he muttered.
"And I was cold and wet and dead."
"Do you have to have such a flair for the melodramatic?" Akira asked, considering his own move.
"I'm a ghost; I'm allowed," Shindou cheekily rebutted.
Akira sighed and repeated the words for their audience, placing his own move on the board.
"Hmm." Shindou tapped his fan against his knee, considering.
"Shindou, where do you go when you're not haunting Touya?" Isumi asked, addressing the space across the goban from Akira--a space that to him surely had to seem empty.
"It's like falling asleep," Hikaru replied absently. "I think I dream of Go, though. 10-5."
"Why only rainy nights?" Waya asked once Akira had relayed Shindou's answer.
Shindou turned to cast a sardonic look at Waya. "Duh, it was raining when I died, Waya."
"Things have a cycle, a proper way of being," Ochi agreed.
"Why are you not being weirded out by this?" Waya asked Ochi.
Ochi looked flatly at Waya. "'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy'," he quoted. "I'm not as narrow-minded as some people." He looked back at the board. "My great-uncle was allegedly haunted by a ghost as well. I don't know. I never met the man."
~*~
Shindou sighed and was already starting to blur around the edges. "I lose," he said.
"Don't you... don't you want to stay and talk over the game?" Akira asked hesitantly, not wanting Hikaru to disappear too soon. It felt like cheating, somehow, when he could go over games at his leisure and Shindou couldn't.
The ghost shook his head with a smile. "Can't." He nodded toward the windows. "The rain's stopping. Before our next game, maybe?"
Akira nodded. "See you then. Tanke care, Shindou."
"Take care, Touya."
And like that, he was gone. Akira sighed in disappointment. Then he became aware of the other three leaning over the board from all angles, studying the game closely.
"Wow," said Waya.
"Hmm. Typical Shindou," Ochi said.
Only Isumi was watching Akira's face. He blinked and straightened at the realization. Isumi favored him with a soft, enigmatic smile, then turned his attention to the played game as well.
~*~
It quickly became traditional for the four of them to gather on rainy nights and spend their time in game analysis, waiting for their fifth. Whether it was just acute awareness of shifts in Touya Akira's behavior or some developing sensitivity of his own, Waya found that he was able to know when Shindou was in the room even before Touya moved aside to make room for him. Sometimes he even thought that he glimpsed a flash of bleached bangs out of the corner of his eye, but when he looked more carefully, there was never anything there.
His mother had always told him he had a wild imagination. But since Shindou really was there, Yoshitaka kept becoming muddled as to whether or not he really could see his friend's ghost. Usually he gave up the pondering when he reached the point of frustration. Unlike Go, whether or not he could actually see Shindou wasn't important.
That changed the day Isumi brought an Ouiji board to their get-together.
Yoshitaka's first response was an outraged "We are NOT channeling Shindou's ghost!"
"We don't need to," Ochi rebutted. "He's already here."
Isumi smiled. "Call it an experiment. If you don't mind, that is, Shindou?"
According to Touya, Shindou did indeed not mind.
~*~
Hikaru considered the Ouiji board. As a ghost he was somehow (theoretically, at least) supposed to be able to move the reader piece. How he was supposed to do that when he couldn't touch anything, he didn't know. Maybe it was like that American movie, where he had to concentrate in order to touch it? He tried that, but he and the plastic still just ghosted through one another. Of course, he thought, annoyed, that movie also had ghosts taking over other people's bodies, and he was pretty sure he couldn't do that.
Touya, of course, was sitting on his heels smirking at him.
"Wait until you're dead and get put through this," Hikaru growled at him.
Ochi looked up from where he was reading the instructions. "One or more of us are supposed to have our hands on the reader too," he reported.
With varying levels of resignation (going from Waya's rolled eyes to Touya's skepticism to Isumi's intrigued smile to Ochi's calm disdain) Hikaru's four living friends placed their fingertips on the edges of the plastic piece. Hikaru shrugged and reached in as well, touching it.
What, he wondered, should he say?
~*~
"Stop pushing it, Isumi-san," Yoshitaka growled.
"I'm not," Isumi replied.
Beneath their fingertips the reader glided across the board, letters flowing beneath its clear inset until it finally came to rest over the number five.
"Go?" Ochi asked.
Waya snorted. "Of course. What else does Shindou think about?"
Then the piece started moving again, picking up speed as it danced from letter to letter. Yoshitaka strung the letters together in his mind to form words, and strung the words to form sentences.
"'Sai was my ghost'?" Ochi asked when the reader finally finished moving.
Isumi blinked. "Shindou, is that true?"
Touya looked at the empty space next to himself. Yoshitaka swore that he could see Shindou shrug--no, no, that was just memory of mannerisms.
"Yes," Touya said quietly, looking back at the three of them. "He told me so the night he died."
"Huh." Ochi contemplated the board. "That explains more than it doesn't."
"Isumi-san?" Yoshitaka didn't quite trust his friend's smile. It hid things all too often.
Isumi looked up at him. "Well, we know now that Ouiji boards do work."
Akira heard the rain start hitting the roof over the chatter of the voices. Automatically he looked up and towards the front door. As expected, a figure was starting to fade in from the shadows. It was only a few seconds until Hikaru's form was complete, his gray eyes meeting Akira's questioningly. Akira tilted his head slightly, an unspoken invitation of "Come in," and turned his attention back to the game board as the ghost stepped up and into the house.
This gathering was a small one, and Akira hadn't expected it to drag on so long. He'd checked the weather report that morning, as always, and had thought the others would be gone by now so that he would be alone to play a game with Shindou. The ghost of his rival had never before appeared when Akira was with someone else.
Shindou sat between Akira and Ochi, looking curiously at the board all of them were clustered around. "Whose game?" he asked.
No one answered.
The others didn't seem to see or hear Hikaru. Akira couldn't answer without sounding like he was talking to himself.
"Wait, so when Ogata-san moved here, he was anticipating Kurata's move three steps ahead?" Waya asked, pointing to a particular black stone.
"Ah," Hikaru said, enlightened. He leaned closer to the board, brow slightly furrowed. "But... that's not right, Waya! Just look here!" He pointed at a white stone. "Kurata saw it coming!"
No one, of course, heard him.
"I think Kurata saw it coming," Akira said with a small smile. "Look here." He pointed where Shindou had.
"Eh? No way." Waya peered at the stone, then scratched his head. "Damn, you're right."
"Oh, fine, take all my credit!" Hikaru admonished Akira.
Hikaru looked at his hands. They seemed solid to him. He could feel himself and he could touch Touya. But anything else was like so much fog. He just passed through it. Or it passed through him. Either way, he couldn't feel a thing. Not a person. Not a Go stone.
Touya had said that he felt as cold as ice. Sai had felt much the same to Hikaru when he'd been alive. The memory of that grave chill kept Hikaru from touching Touya too often. Even though Touya's body heat felt like spilled fire.
Hikaru raised a hand and touched Ochi's shoulder. It was weird seeing his solid-seeming hand sink into that solid-seeming flesh without feeling anything.
He didn't expect Ochi to shudder violently and twist away from him, clasping a hand to where Hikaru had touched, rubbing his skin.
"Ochi?" Waya asked.
"I thought I felt something touch me," Ochi replied, staring at where Hikaru was. "Something cold."
Touya was glaring at Hikaru. Covering up his surprise, Hikaru smirked at his rival. "They're going to think you're mad at Ochi." He could tell that Touya wanted to yell at him but couldn't. They didn't have the same kind of mind link that Hikaru had had with Sai--though to be fair, he'd ended up yelling at Sai aloud half the time anyway.
Hikaru flipped his fan open and contemplated the possibilities. Touya couldn't yell at him. No one else knew he was present. Slowly his grin widened.
He stood up and circled the group, aware of Touya trying to keep an eye on him without being obvious about it. Half of the fun, he admitted to himself, was harassing Touya when he couldn't strike back.
A quick touch had Waya rubbing at the hairs suddenly standing up on his arms.
Touya studiously ignored Hikaru, concentrating hard on the goban.
Hikaru's fingers on the back of Isumi's neck had the man shivering. "Someone must be walking over my grave," Isumi commented, trying to laugh the chill off.
Finally Hikaru knelt behind Touya, who tensed.
Hikaru ran soft fingers through Touya's hair. It was regretful that he'd died in such a stupid way. Touya's hair was thick and silky and he'd never touched it before. Now it was a marvel, his rival the only person he could touch. He could even smell the shampoo Touya had used. His fingers brushed Touya's molten skin.
"Knock it off, Shindou!" The movement was nearly instantaneous as Touya finally snapped and knocked Hikaru's hand away. "We're trying to study the game here!"
"You stopped talking about the game five minutes ago!" Hikaru snapped back.
"We're taking a break to get our thoughts together! Unlike some people who don't have any!"
"Oh, I don't have any thoughts, do I?" Hikaru demanded. "Who was it coming up with all those insights you were passing off as your own?"
"Somebody has to say them! They can't see or hear you!"
Realization froze them both at the same moment.
"Touya-san," Ochi said levelly, adjusting his glasses, "is there something you want to tell us?"
"Ghost?" Waya asked incredulously. "Shindou's ghost? Come on, Touya."
Shinichirou wasn't quite as dubious. It was hard to believe, of course, but.... "Shindou, if you're really here?" he asked, holding his left hand out. Almost instantly that chill returned, like his hand was encased in ice to the wrist, a deep cold sucking the heat out of his bones. He stood his ground for as long as he could, but it was only a moment or two before he drew his hand back to his chest, rubbing at it to try to return his circulation to normal. The skin was clammy and his hand felt numb.
"Isumi-san?" Waya asked.
Shinichirou nodded respectfully at Touya. "I believe you."
"Hmph," Waya said, then slumped backwards and offered his own hand up. "Hey, Shindou?" Shinichirou watched as his young friend's eyes widened as he stared at his hand. "Can't be," he whispered before drawing the appendage back, also rubbing at it. "Dead's dead."
"He says 'Not always'," Touya reported, his eyes tracking the motion of something no one saw.
Three pairs of eyes--or was it really four, the fourth pair eternally invisible except to Touya?--turned to look at Ochi.
"I don't need convincing," Ochi said shortly, with a nod. "Welcome back, Shindou."
"It was a dark and stormy night," Shindou began.
Akira glared at him.
"Well it was," Shindou pointed out. "So's tonight." So was every night he came to Akira. "7-8."
Akira placed the stone. "It was a dark and stormy night," he muttered.
"And I was cold and wet and dead."
"Do you have to have such a flair for the melodramatic?" Akira asked, considering his own move.
"I'm a ghost; I'm allowed," Shindou cheekily rebutted.
Akira sighed and repeated the words for their audience, placing his own move on the board.
"Hmm." Shindou tapped his fan against his knee, considering.
"Shindou, where do you go when you're not haunting Touya?" Isumi asked, addressing the space across the goban from Akira--a space that to him surely had to seem empty.
"It's like falling asleep," Hikaru replied absently. "I think I dream of Go, though. 10-5."
"Why only rainy nights?" Waya asked once Akira had relayed Shindou's answer.
Shindou turned to cast a sardonic look at Waya. "Duh, it was raining when I died, Waya."
"Things have a cycle, a proper way of being," Ochi agreed.
"Why are you not being weirded out by this?" Waya asked Ochi.
Ochi looked flatly at Waya. "'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy'," he quoted. "I'm not as narrow-minded as some people." He looked back at the board. "My great-uncle was allegedly haunted by a ghost as well. I don't know. I never met the man."
Shindou sighed and was already starting to blur around the edges. "I lose," he said.
"Don't you... don't you want to stay and talk over the game?" Akira asked hesitantly, not wanting Hikaru to disappear too soon. It felt like cheating, somehow, when he could go over games at his leisure and Shindou couldn't.
The ghost shook his head with a smile. "Can't." He nodded toward the windows. "The rain's stopping. Before our next game, maybe?"
Akira nodded. "See you then. Tanke care, Shindou."
"Take care, Touya."
And like that, he was gone. Akira sighed in disappointment. Then he became aware of the other three leaning over the board from all angles, studying the game closely.
"Wow," said Waya.
"Hmm. Typical Shindou," Ochi said.
Only Isumi was watching Akira's face. He blinked and straightened at the realization. Isumi favored him with a soft, enigmatic smile, then turned his attention to the played game as well.
It quickly became traditional for the four of them to gather on rainy nights and spend their time in game analysis, waiting for their fifth. Whether it was just acute awareness of shifts in Touya Akira's behavior or some developing sensitivity of his own, Waya found that he was able to know when Shindou was in the room even before Touya moved aside to make room for him. Sometimes he even thought that he glimpsed a flash of bleached bangs out of the corner of his eye, but when he looked more carefully, there was never anything there.
His mother had always told him he had a wild imagination. But since Shindou really was there, Yoshitaka kept becoming muddled as to whether or not he really could see his friend's ghost. Usually he gave up the pondering when he reached the point of frustration. Unlike Go, whether or not he could actually see Shindou wasn't important.
That changed the day Isumi brought an Ouiji board to their get-together.
Yoshitaka's first response was an outraged "We are NOT channeling Shindou's ghost!"
"We don't need to," Ochi rebutted. "He's already here."
Isumi smiled. "Call it an experiment. If you don't mind, that is, Shindou?"
According to Touya, Shindou did indeed not mind.
Hikaru considered the Ouiji board. As a ghost he was somehow (theoretically, at least) supposed to be able to move the reader piece. How he was supposed to do that when he couldn't touch anything, he didn't know. Maybe it was like that American movie, where he had to concentrate in order to touch it? He tried that, but he and the plastic still just ghosted through one another. Of course, he thought, annoyed, that movie also had ghosts taking over other people's bodies, and he was pretty sure he couldn't do that.
Touya, of course, was sitting on his heels smirking at him.
"Wait until you're dead and get put through this," Hikaru growled at him.
Ochi looked up from where he was reading the instructions. "One or more of us are supposed to have our hands on the reader too," he reported.
With varying levels of resignation (going from Waya's rolled eyes to Touya's skepticism to Isumi's intrigued smile to Ochi's calm disdain) Hikaru's four living friends placed their fingertips on the edges of the plastic piece. Hikaru shrugged and reached in as well, touching it.
What, he wondered, should he say?
"Stop pushing it, Isumi-san," Yoshitaka growled.
"I'm not," Isumi replied.
Beneath their fingertips the reader glided across the board, letters flowing beneath its clear inset until it finally came to rest over the number five.
"Go?" Ochi asked.
Waya snorted. "Of course. What else does Shindou think about?"
Then the piece started moving again, picking up speed as it danced from letter to letter. Yoshitaka strung the letters together in his mind to form words, and strung the words to form sentences.
"'Sai was my ghost'?" Ochi asked when the reader finally finished moving.
Isumi blinked. "Shindou, is that true?"
Touya looked at the empty space next to himself. Yoshitaka swore that he could see Shindou shrug--no, no, that was just memory of mannerisms.
"Yes," Touya said quietly, looking back at the three of them. "He told me so the night he died."
"Huh." Ochi contemplated the board. "That explains more than it doesn't."
"Isumi-san?" Yoshitaka didn't quite trust his friend's smile. It hid things all too often.
Isumi looked up at him. "Well, we know now that Ouiji boards do work."
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no subject
Date: 2003-10-31 06:30 pm (UTC)So how did Hikaru die?
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Date: 2003-10-31 09:20 pm (UTC)