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It isn't really every picture that Akira misses these days. The day-to-day grind of Tokyo and its gleaming skyscrapers, the gray concrete, and black-suited salarymen- who would miss those? The bright colors of the koi are a greater loss, gold and black and white reduced to rippled wetness in a pond. And the flash of green eyes surfacing, that hint of temper... Somehow, he still imagines he sees those eyes from time to time, even if they are phantoms now that only flicker during games or stone-flecked memories. No, the thing that Akira truly misses is the sight of a grid-lined board, his universe, and that loss is a wound that never closes.
He has held stones since the accident; but without sight, he cannot tell black from white. Shell from slate is an easier distinction, and so at home he can play by their texture. At the Institute, though, the stones are glass or plastic. Both white and black slide smoothly between his fingertips. At least, they did until it was decided that he can only continue to play there, but only with the assistance of a surrogate placing the stones for him.
Blind go is now the way of his professional life. Sometimes he wonders if the boys from Kaio ever read any of those stupid magazine articles that came out before he put his foot down - the ones with titles like “Blind Meijin” or the one that made him stop interviews for over a year: “Darkness for the Prince.”
The texture of Hikaru's hair is coarser than he thought it would be. Akira slowly smooths his rival's hair back from his face, lets his fingertips glide across the side of Hikaru's ear as he withdraws partially with lock of hair still delicately balanced on his nail.
“What color is this?”
“What?”
“What color is this?” Akira questions again with a gentle tug on the hair.
”Uh, black?”
“What, no yellow?”
"Touya, I'm too old for yellow anymore." His rival's response is too gentle and Akira moves to a chair on the other side of the board to consider it.
Akira remembers the first time he saw bleached streaks of yellow and the sturdy little boy that burst into his life so long ago. “Do you miss them?”
“Them?”
“Your bangs.”
“No, not really.” A silence descends on them for a time. “Do you miss seeing?”
There is an amazed gasp.
“Oh man, Touya, that was stupid.. I'm sorry. There is no comparison.” Stutters Hikaru in a panic.
“Yes, I miss my sight.” Dignity is a lost art when you can not just get up and storm out.
“Touya.”
Akira decides to turn away; not many people even mention his blindness anymore. A soft whisper of sound catches his attention as a weight settles onto the chair arm next to him.
“You don't talk about it,” the warm presence at his side murmurs quietly.
“What is there to say?”
“I don't know, what is there to say?”
It's the absence of recrimination that hits him. After over eighteen months of no one daring to say anything to Akira about his lack of sight. Hikaru just says it, like it's normal.
“God! I want to be back to how it was.”
“Touya, you can't go back.” But the admonishment is gentle, spoken in the weary tone of someone that knows. “Forward is it.”
“I want to see the board again.”
“Don't you see the board as we play?”
“Yes...?”
“Do you see the pattern?”
“Yes.” Actually, if he was honest with himself, he sees the flow better, now that the game board is only in his mind. Before the loss of his sight, he never really had to think about playing go without a board.
“Can you see the universe?”
Only Hikaru would ask what I see here in the darkness.