In Good Company

Akira was polite to everyone, all the time, but it was an effort to be polite to the reporters. Their questions were fine as long as they had to do with Go, (All things in the world are fine as long as they have to do with Go), but usually half of the interviews were made up of questions about things that were boring, useless and stupid. (All things having nothing to do with Go have these characteristics.)

After over an hour of being asked about his schoolwork, friends, shoes, hair, girls, and other inanities, Akira excused himself and went outside. Although he left the interview room properly and casually, he found himself walking faster and faster as he wandered the institute where the pro matches were being held that week. When he finally reached an exit that would not lead him to the crowded front or back of the building, he was just short of running, and he burst out into the alley breathing fairly heavily. He only noticed how tense he was when the slam of the heavy exit door startled him, and the cool air calmed him. He leaned against the cold steel door, bowed his head, and enjoyed the freedom of finally being by himself. (Always best, to be by oneself, where one can think of black and white stones as much as you wish, without being impolite to company.)

Laughter cut across the clean and narrow alley, and Akira froze. No way, he thought to himself. But the laughter was familiar, definitely male, sounded young, about his own age. And unfortunately, Akira wasn't familiar with very many boys his own age. Just one, really. Oh, please no, he thought to himself. Peering cautiously around the large, white and strangely clean trash can, he saw five boys. Four looked vaguely familiar, and the fifth was Shindo Hikaru.

* * * * *

"I wanted to see the end of the match!! Gah."

Waya kicked the corner of the building and glared at Kaga. Kaga looked down at Waya disdainfully as he lit up a cigarette. Kaga, Mitani and Tsutsui had met Waya and Shindo that day to watch the matches.

"Was this an important match?" Hikaru asked quickly, eager to get Waya's mind off of Kaga's smoking. Kaga was starting to look pissed. Waya stopped waving his hands in front of his face ("I hadn't even exhaled yet!" Kaga muttered through a mouthful of smoke.) in order to whirl around on Hikaru.

"Important? Yes, it was important! This week's issue of Weekly Go did a whole spread on it! Named it as one of the season's top five most important matches!! It got the cover and everything! How did you miss that?"

"Oh, I didn't get Weekly Go this week." Hikaru said offhandedly.

"Say what?" Waya looked incredulously at the boy who, in his mind, was, without a doubt, the Worst Insei Ever.

"You made a huge deal of stopping at the newsstand yesterday during lunch break, you said you were going to buy Weekly Go, I lent you money for it!!"

"Oh right, well, I was gonna buy it, but then it turned out that the new Weekly Jump was out, and I only had enough money for one..so..." Hikaru trailed off, realizing that maybe he'd done something wrong.

"So you bought manga instead of Weekly Go the day before you were going to keep score at a pro match?!!!"

"Well, yeah. Wouldn't you?"

"NO!! I would've bought the Weekly Go!!!!!"

" ...." Hikaru considered this, and came to the following conclusion. "You know, Waya, in a lot of ways...you and I are two very different people."

"So, do you think I could be suspended for killing a fellow In Sei?" Waya asked Tsutsui conversationally. Tsutsui nodded gravely.

"Hey. Can I have a smoke?" Piped up Mitani.

"No." Kaga replied. Tsutsui looked relieved.

"Can I?" Hikaru asked.

"Sure." Kaga replied. Tsutsui sighed.

"Oh my God. Shindo, don't you have any friends who aren't juvenile delinquents?" This comment earned Waya withering looks from both Kaga and Mitani.. "Um...Tsutsui isn't..." Hikaru thought hard.

"Oh, good." Waya rolled his eyes.

"And uh, Touya isn't."

"Dude. You are not friends with Touya Akira." Waya said with the weary tone of someone having to repeat something for the fortieth time.

"Well, just because he's always ignoring me and stuff..."

"You're delusional. And besides that guy has no friends."

"What do you mean? I bet Touya's got tons of friends!"

"Nah. I heard that at Kaio he's a complete loner. Even the Go club guys hate him." Waya looked smug.

"That's not true!!" Hikaru wondered why he was getting so angry. He also wondered what had happened to that cigarette Kaga had just promised him.

"Shindo, take it easy." Kaga spoke up, eyes closed, arms crossed, leaning against the wall. "Here, lemme put this in terms your tiny little brain can understand." He thought for a moment. "Okay. Like, you know how in Jump, the series about all the ninja kids, Naruto--"

"This'll be good." Muttered Waya.

"Shut up, Brat. In Naruto, there's that character Gaara, from the Sand country, who's totally badass and unbeatable, so unbeatable that even suave, cool, sexy Sasuke can't beat him...Thus beginning the great 'Sasuke takes up Shougi' arc..."

"Uh, yeah. Except for that part about Shougi, sure. I don't think Sasuke played Shougi."

"Yeah, I may have made that up. Anyway, where was I?" Kaga took a drag, exhaled thoughtfully, continued. "Oh, right. So, does Gaara have any friends? No. Does Naruto sympathize with him? Yes. Does that mean that Gaara isn't going to crush Naruto into a bloody pulp the first chance he gets? No. You see what I'm saying?"

"No."

"You, my friend, are Naruto. To Akira's Gaara. He will crush you. And then he will fill his gourd with sand soaked in your blood."

"I see." Hikaru paused, dissatisfied. "Are you sure I'm not Sasuke?"

"I'm damn sure you aren't Sasuke. I'm clearly Sasuke! I'm handsome, mysterious, the ladies love me--"

"And also, I don't think all that stuff happened in the manga the way you're saying it did." Hikaru was really dubious now.

"Whatever. I'm too old for that shit. I have no idea what happened to all those characters, there were like eighty genin alone, and--You're completely missing the point!"

"Which is?"

"Unbeatable winning machines don't have any friends."

"Ah." Everyone took that in for a moment. "That's what you were trying to tell me?" Hikaru asked Waya in confusion.

"I...I don't know. Maybe?" Waya shrugged helplessly. Silence. The only sound in the alley was Kaga exhaling smoke.

"Um. I think we should leave. Now even." Tsutsui offered.

The four boys left, bickering and throwing insults at each other, Hikaru trailing behind. He appeared to be listening to something. Something that was dead and really good at Go. Then Tsutsui yelled out that if he didn't hurry up they wouldn't stop for any ramen. Then Kaga pointed out the ramen addiction as another factor in Hikaru's being Naruto, as opposed to Sasuke. Hikaru called back that it was weird that Kaga would remember something like Naruto's favorite food, being too old for Weekly Jump and all. Kaga said shut the hell up, and just for that he wasn't going to teach Hikaru to smoke.

* * *

Left behind in the alley, Akira finally found himself alone, just like he'd been fervently wishing to be. But, instead of feeling relieved, Akira found himself feeling confused, as if he'd just missed something important. He knew for a fact that he couldn't care less what those kids thought of him. He didn't. He didn't feel the angry heat one felt when overhearing others speak badly of them. He was used to that, the other pros often said all sorts of uncharitable things, when they thought he couldn't hear. There was something else about their conversation that bothered him. At first he'd assumed it was all of the Naruto stuff, which was all gibberish to him. But no, it was something else he wasn't understanding. It was something so large that he felt like he was inside of it, even as he didn't know what it was. It was something uncomfortable. And it seemed to hurt. Akira tried and tried to think of what it was, but it wouldn't reveal itself. Even more baffling when he found himself crying, for no reason at all.

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