Fan Club (Hikaru no Go)
It starts with a photograph that gets printed in the arts and entertainment section of a major newspaper in Tokyo. It runs in full color, on the back page of the section, flanked on either side with fluff pieces about the latest debuts in pop music and a new anime. The headline reads, "ANNUAL YOUNG LIONS TOURNAMENT TELEVISED FOR THE FIRST TIME." The article is clearly written by somebody who has no idea what Go is, and would rather never know. They embellish wildly.
The photo is a candid of Touya Akira and Shindou Hikaru, leaning on opposite sides of a doorframe, smiling at one another in a lazy, familiar way that speaks of their long acquaintance. The way that their bodies stretch outward toward one another, tips of their shoes touching, creating right triangles against a backlit room filled with the hazy outlines of other people makes the lines of their faces like a Da Vinci painting, soft and foggy. It is apparent, however, that both Touya Akira and Shindou Hikaru are spectacular male specimens, examples of two ends of a surprisingly large spectrum when taking into consideration Touya's soft, charcoal-colored suit and Shindou's black t-shirt and jeans.
It takes twelve minutes for a fan club to be started.
*
The Institute is somewhat torn between total elation that a younger generation--girls, no less!--are suddenly ardent supporters of Japan's Go and a vague guilt over essentially prostituting its newest wave of players. The struggle is brief, bloody, and well-lit.
Shindou is neither amused nor emotionally prepared to be faced with the fact that seventeen year old girls find him attractive; privately, his mother spends two nights realizing sadly that her suspicions all these years about her son are probably founded. Being right does not comfort her. Touya is horrified, manages to turn six shades of red not otherwise found in nature, and duck his head in a way that would make the very girls who are his newest source of terror shriek with glee. Waya only grins hugely and winks, because he's always been the cute one, the rambunctious one, and the only one who ever bothered to go on a date. Isumi, who's been plagued by women since they realized if they appeared at a Go event they could converse or possibly even touch him, is neither surprised or happy about this turn of events.
When Shindou grudgingly appears at the photo shoot that the Go Institute arranges, he takes one look at the dark pants and lavender shirt Touya has been dressed in and says, "You look like a gigolo."
Touya lets Shindou know he can go straight to hell, and take his trendy jeans with him.
Every single copy of Weekly Go sells out that week. It is possibly the first time in history this has happened.
*
Touya is, unsurprisingly, horrified by this realization.
Shindou is, as usual, oblivious, and carries on dividing all his waking hours between Go, Shounen Jump, and ramen. He assumes cheerfully that with the photo shoot done and behind them, that he and Touya will once again concentrate on reaching the Hand of God and possibly lowering their voices when they fight in the Go salon.
Touya occasionally envies Shindou's ability to see only the sheerest suggestion of reality.
*
The girls in Touya's neighborhood are thrilled to have in their midst an idol. While none of them know anything about Go, they know that Touya Akira has beautiful, shiny hair which he pushes behind his ears when he is rifling through the mail and that when they ask about Shindou Hikaru, they receive icier than usual but still polite answers.
This is reason enough for Touya to be hounded day after day, and for love letters to be mixed in with the bills.
It's beginning to affect his Go, Touya realizes darkly, when later that week at the Go salon Shindou gives him a strange look over the board and asks, "Are you sick or something?"
*
The Go Institute requests--begs, really--Touya and Shindou to host a special Go Invitational, and it sells out in three days, with an attendance of just over two hundred. The tickets are apparently a hot item. Ochi, Waya, Isumi, Nase, and Yashirou are roped into helping as well. Ogata and Kuwabara are rumored to be making an appearance, though really, Touya suspects it's more out of sheer perverse curiosity than any desire to foster a youth interest in Go.
"This is all your fault," Shindou complains, lugging his overnight bag into the elevator at the hotel, wearing a pair of ridiculous orange sunglasses and a hat he swiped from Akari.
"I don't see how it's my fault," Touya says, tugging his baseball cap a little further down the front, jabbing the "close doors" button neurotically.
The hat and the hair tie that's keeping his pageboy in a demented ponytail is on loan from Akari as well, who met them at the station with disguises. "You two are such boys," she scolded. "You're about to get on a train, your faces have been everywhere. Here, wear these."
Later, Shindou said, "I think she just wanted to dress us up."
Actually, Touya thinks that she wanted the excuse to touch Hikaru, who is as grounded and real as the earth but just as beyond possession. It is a sensation he has an uncomfortable familiarity with, and he watches Hikaru's pretty friend sometimes and thinks that she should know better by now, should cut her losses before Hikaru's seemingly harmless strategy and misplaced hands result in careless capture. Hikaru does not mean to do the things that he does, Touya knows, thinking about the way that Akari's smooth fingers stroked too long over the soft, dark hair at the back of Shindou's head when she helped him with the hat at the station.
The doors snick shut and they both breathe a sigh of relief, slumping against the walls of the elevator as it moves silently to the thirty-sixth floor, where they are have rooms next door to one another.
It's been a terrible few weeks for them both; even Shindou's seemingly inexhaustible well of oblivious happiness has dried up. They have spent their meetings at the Go salon slumped over the board listlessly. Last week it took Touya fifteen minutes to realize that they were playing tic-tac-toe and not Go at all, and even then he didn't have the energy to be angry about it. Touya's mother, in a blatant act of betrayal and cruelty, seems to think all of this is very funny.
"You and your gigolo pants," Shindou muttered, but the doors to the elevator opened to their floor before Touya could bash him to death with his bags, and they dashed to their respective rooms.
"A game before dinner?" Shindou asked, struggling with the keycard.
Touya rolled his eyes, reached over, and opened Shindou's door, saying, "Fine. My room. I'll see you in twenty minutes."
Shindou jerked the keycard back and scowled, saying, "Fine. Idiot."
"Id--!" Touya started, but Shindou only whooped laughing and disappeared behind his rapidly shutting door.