Title: Code Me In
Series: Hikaru no Go! Fusion with Wreck-it Ralph
Rating: K+
Length: 5, 821
Characters/Pairing: Hikaru, Sai, Akira, Waya, Hikaru/Akira

--


Hikaru may not have been the smartest character in the arcade, but he also wasn’t stupid, okay, which is why he totally didn’t believe Akari and her claims that a ghost had appeared in the game and was creeping around in the miniature forest that lined the west side of the soccer field, because come on, I mean really. He even had proof of his disbelief: he did, after all agree to her I-triple-dog-dare-you, and now he was tip-toeing through the woods—tip-toeing because he didn’t want to disturb the local wildlife, not because he was scared. Because he wasn’t. At all. And he was totally justified in his not-fear, because—I TOLD YOU SO, AKARI—there was no ghost.

Until there was.

Hikaru squinted up at the white figure. “Uh. Hi, there. You don’t like, eat people, do you?”

“No,” the ghost replied, nonplussed. “Is that a common problem here? I had understood this to be a game focusing on some sort of high school athletic competition.”

“Yup, that’s us! At least, it is if you meant that this is a soccer game. So, are you part of the new reboot? I didn’t know we were getting new characters!”

“No, I… came from another game.”

“A ghost game?”

The ghost looked surprised. “No?” he replied. “A go game set in the Heian era.”

The ghost seemed a little tense at this admission, so Hikaru decided he needed some encouragement. “Cool!” he said, and the ghost relaxed with a bright enough smile to rivial any of Hikaru’s. “So, uh… what’s go?”

The ghost’s jaw dropped in astonishment before he recovered himself. “It’s a wonderful game. It’s a board game involving the capture of stones and the building of territory. It’s—”

“Is it anything like soccer?”

“Ah… no. Not as such.”

“Yeah, not interested. So, where does the ghost part come in?”

“I must admit, I’m curious as to that as well.”

Hikaru rolled his eyes. “I mean, you’re a ghost, right?”

“What? No, I… Well, I suppose in a manner of speaking—”

“And what’s a go-playing ghost doing in a soccer game, anyway?”

“I—well, I’ve been banned from ever playing go again.”

“Wait, what? They can do that? Why?”

“I was… a very popular character, and… there was another character who seemed to feel that my popularity was… undeserved, and… Well, he claimed that I ignored the commands given me by the player and, not only that, but cheated to win the game by adjusting the point levels. The council of go players, including the emperor, believed him, and I was banned from both the game and playing go at all. But, go is my… purpose. It is what I was made to do. I don’t know what to do with my life now. How to exist.”

Hikaru imagined a life without soccer and felt a wrench in his gut, sharp and painful, but nothing like the heartrending agony reflected in the ghost’s eyes. He was vaguely ashamed of himself. “Have you tried, liked, talking to the council or something? Explaining yourself?”

“I did, but tempers were so heated, and… I suspect he was not the only one who was jealous of my popularity. I thought I’d wait, give everyone a chance to cool off, but… I may have been a more popular character than anyone expected. The game was unplugged just a few days after I left. None of the other players survived. There are other go games, now, but I am banned from them, as well, and I’m afraid that I seem to have received much of the blame for the fate which befell my game.”

“What? It totally wasn’t your fault! It had like nothing to do with you!”

“Yes, well… I just wish I could play go again. I feel as though a part of me is missing…”

Hikaru shifted awkwardly, feeling the shame rising once more. “Not a lot of go players, here,” he admitted. “I don’t suppose you’d like to try soccer?”

The ghost smiled sadly, heartbreakingly. “I’m not sure I’d be very good at soccer.”

“Yeah, I doubt I’d be any good at go, either.”

“What a strange situation. I have all the inclination and motivation to play, but no power to do so. You, on the other hand, have all the physical ability, but—”

“Ha, yeah, too bad you’re not me, hey?”

The ghost smiled at him politely. “I beg your pardon?”

“I mean, you’d be able to play then, right?”

“I suppose, but then I, too, would have no inclination to do so, and thus—”

“Too bad you don’t just look like me, then. Imagine, we could, like, recode you so that you’d look like me, and then you could play go! Wouldn’t that be crazy?”

“Well, the recoding wouldn’t be too terribly difficult with your physical parameters as an example, but it would still be me playing, and so it would still be illegal.”

“What, seriously? These guys were assholes to you, who cares? If you can do it, do it.” Hikaru paused, considering. “Actually, do you think you could alter my appearance, too? I kinda like the idea of a new haircut and a different outfit. Something suave, you know?”

“I—I’m not sure I know how to do those kinds of alterations, and they would revert back when the game rebooted, anyway…”

“Oh. Wait, won’t that happen to you, too?”

“If I’m in the game during a reboot, yes.”

“Right. So all we need to do is figure out the reboot schedules of the go games, mess with your code so that you look like me, sneak you inside, and play some go! Easy!”

The ghost was smiling at him a little wonderingly. “I suppose when you put it that way—”

“I do. Let’s GO!”

Ha. Hikaru was a pun master. He bet no one had thought of that one before.

--

The experience of entering the code and rewriting it was so nauseating that by the time they’d left, Hikaru wasn’t certain if he really was that close to vomiting or if they’d somehow altered his character colour to green while they were in there.

Not that it mattered, because standing right before Hikaru was—Hikaru!

“Did it work?” Hikaru2 asked nervously, shifting in discomfort.

“It’s perfect! You look just like me! Only—don’t fidget, no, see, stand like this, have confidence.”

“Oh dear. This may be more complex than we thought. I have no idea how to act like you.”

“Huh? Oh, you don’t need to worry about that. I don’t know any go players, so they won’t realize there’s a problem. Just—relax, okay?”

“Yes, of course. We should hurry—we only have three hours before the next reboot.”

“Isn’t that loads of time?”

The ghost shot him a strange look. “No, of course not.”

“Uh… right then. So we’re headed for the kid one, right?”

“It’s the only one I expect a newcomer would be welcome to play, even in informal matches. You said you know where it is?”

“Yeah, I think it’s not far from here, right across from my friend’s friend’s shougi game.”

“Oh, have you played shougi there before?”

“No, but I know where it is. I think.”

The ghost’s smile turned weak, but he didn’t protest as Hikaru dragged him on.

They made it to the game safely enough, with only one wrong turn—“It’s harder to find when you’re sneaking around trying to hide that there’re two of you, okay?”—and Hikaru promised to wait by the port for the ghost to return. Which, seriously, the guy really wasn’t joking about how long these things took; he’d been waiting for forever. He had devolved to playing tic-tac-toe against himself on his leg when the ghost came barreling out of the game, latching onto Hikaru and pulling him to his feet and on his way back toward Hikaru’s soccer game.

Hikaru opened his mouth, ready to rage, but his shout of protest died in his throat when he turned to see the ghost’s borrowed appearance flickering back and forth between his original form. “What happened? We still have almost an hour until the auto-reboot!”

“I know, but I think I made the mistake of choosing the wrong opponent. When the match ended, the system tried to do a partial reboot.”

“Wait, were you playing against a boss? What the hell?”

“Well, this particular go game was designed for child and young adult players, so the overall level of play was rather lower, but yes, I do believe that my opponent was intended to be the most difficult computer-generated character opponent. He was certainly very skilled for such a young child, and everyone looked so surprised when I defeated him…”

“You beat a boss? Wh—Just—Who are you?!”

The ghost flashed an exhilarated smile, like he’d just scored the winning goal in a game against his rival school, only better, better, better. “My name is Fujiwara no Sai. It’s very nice to meet you!”

--

After their rather disastrous attempt, Hikaru declared that there would be no more go matches until they’d done more research on the games, namely on which characters it would be safe for Sai to play. Sai was devastated and whined so pathetically and with such frequency that Hikaru was rapidly losing all sympathy for him and had almost decided to leave him to his go-less fate on three separate occasions.

Between all of this, of course, was soccer, which really should have made everything better, but lately Hikaru was feeling guilty during every game, because Sai didn’t have this, this feeling of belonging and purpose, of doing what he was made to do.

“There’s someone here to see you, Hikaru,” Akari whispered once he’d finished congratulating the player on a job well-done. He’d thrown in a cheery wink for good measure. He usually did.

“Not another ghost, is it?” Hikaru asked, laughing. He hadn’t told her about Sai, even though he knew she was better at keeping secrets than she was. He still wasn’t sure why he was keeping silent.

Akari was looking at him strangely. “No,” she said, “It’s Touya Akira, the final boss in the Insei Extreme Go game across from Kaga’s shougi game.” Akari was staring at him expectantly.

“Okay? I still don’t really know who he is, why he’s here, and what he thinks I can help him with.”

“Urgh, Hikaru, seriously?” She grabbed his arm and started to pull him off somewhere. “This guy’s been the talk of the arcade for weeks. He’s way too high-level for his game—none of the players can beat him! There’ve been rumours that the game’s writers want to move him into the adult game in the new version.”

“Yeesh, that sucks.”

Akari stopped to stare at him. “What are you talking about? It’s amazing!”

“Amazing?” Hikaru rubbed his arm. Ow, much? “I mean, now he’ll be stuck playing a bunch of old geezers, right?”

“Those ‘old geezers’ are some of the strongest computer-generated characters in any go games.”

“So? What’s the point of playing if you’re not having fun?”

Akari was looking at him like he was the stupidest character ever written, which, not fair, because seriously, she was the one who wasn’t making sense here. Games weren’t fun unless you shared them with people you liked, and Hikaru couldn’t see how the little kid Sai had described would enjoy playing games with scary old men.

From behind them came the sound of a delicate clearing of the throat, and the two turned to see--someone, someone who was definitely not a young child, Sai, he must be around Hikaru’s age, Sai, what the hell, Sai. Hikaru didn’t even know how to describe him—he was all argyle and page-cut and polite, bemused smile, with his jacket folded neatly and held in gently-clasped hands, and Hikaru couldn’t decide whether to burst into laughter at the sight of him or hurry to call dibs.

“Excuse me,” the enigma said, voice soft. “I’m not sure whether you remember me—I’m Touya Akira. You played a match against me the other night. I was wondering if you would consider a rematch? You disappeared before I was able to ask before.”

“Nngmg?” was all Hikaru was able to say on his first try; at Akari’s helpful elbow-in-the-gut, he managed, “Sure? But, like, later? Because we’re still running right now, so… soccer? Which, how are you even here?” Was he staring? Considering the way Akari had her fist stuffed into her mouth to keep herself from laughing, and the way Touya had his eyes downcast, with red cheeks and a small smile playing on his lips, he probably was. Really, really, obviously. Damn.

“None of the saved games are anywhere near my level, and it’ll be a while before any of the players earn enough wins to play a match against me. I’m certainly free for most of the morning. Perhaps I’ll observe a soccer match?”

“I—if you want?” Hikaru managed to stutter, before stumbling back toward the field as the announcer declared the start of a new match.

“So, you’re studying go?” Akari asked, once they’d moved out of earshot; she managed to maintain a straight face for all of two seconds before bursting out laughing at him.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up, argh,” Hikaru mumbled into his hands, bright red.

“He’s so cute. No wonder you’ve been acting all secretive lately.”

“SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP—”

“Oh, calm down,” Akari said, rolling her eyes. “He totally likes you, too. Why else would he come all this way to visit you?”

It’s a good thing Hikaru was chosen as the first-person avatar for the next match, because if he’d had to do anything other than respond to the player’s input, he would have lost the match in a haze of face plants, especially during the second half of the match, when it occurred to him to wonder whether Touya Akira, with his gentle eyes and pretty smile, was interested in Hikaru or Sai.

--

Touya Akira disappeared from the soccer game sometime during the lunchtime rush, flashing an apologetic smile that Hikaru felt down to the tips of his toes, but Hikaru didn’t have time to hunt Sai down until after the arcade had closed down for the night.

“First of all,” Hikaru said, collapsing near the tree Sai was leaning against, eyes closed, “What the hell. You totally did not warn me about Touya Akira, Sai.”

“I didn’t realize I needed to. He seemed like a very well-mannered young boy. Did something happen?”

“Argh, that’s the problem! He’s not a young boy, he’s my age, and he’s gorgeous, and he came here looking for you!”

Sai’s eyes opened, and he smiled brightly. “Oh? Would you like me to introduce the two of you? I’m sure you’d make a charming couple.”

Hikaru definitely did not go bright red at that. “We’ve already met, Sai, on account of him thinking I was you.”

Sai blinked in surprise, then deflated. “Ah. That, I suspect, is the real problem.”

Hikaru sighed. “So,” he said. “How has your day gone?”

Sai, thankfully, said nothing about the abrupt change of subject. “I spent some time examining the layout of the arcade, as well as some of the details of the various go games, such as the hierarchy of the characters. I thought that if I limit myself to only playing the second-strongest characters in the games, perhaps—”

“He wants to play you again. Touya Akira does, I mean.”

“I don’t believe I’d mind playing another match against him, as well. But that’s not possible, since the game will reset and strip the extra coding from my character, just as it did the previous time.”

“Yeah, but… will that still happen when you’re not in his game? What if you played the go match here, or in another go game?”

“I…I’m not certain. Probably not. But surely even the possibility of a reset would be too great of a risk?”

“Yeah… I guess.”

--

An enraged Touya, as it happened to be, was just as beautiful as a calm and polite one. “What do you mean, you can’t play any more matches against me?”

“Uh, I didn’t realize that could have multiple meanings?”

“You said you’d play against me.”

“And now I’m saying I can’t. I’m sorry, but—”

“Follow me.”

Hikaru was getting really tired of all this grabbing-his-arm-and-dragging-him-places business. Couldn’t people just ask?

Their destination was, apparently, a goban, already cleared for a new game. Akira set them down on either end and looked at Hikaru expectantly.

Um.

“I’m not sure what you think this will accomplish, exactly...”

Touya continued to glare at him, hands clenched.

“I’m sorry, Touya. I really can’t do this.”

Hikaru shifted awkwardly, staring down at the smooth board in front of him and the shining stones tucked away in their containers, and he wondered what it would feel like to run his fingers across the wooden surface, to pick up a stone and place it firmly and decisively on the goban and hear the satisfying pachi of the two materials colliding.

“Fine.” Touya’s voice sounded thick, and Hikaru glanced up, startled to see that Touya was now slumped over, tears gathering in his tightly-closed eyes.

“Touya—”

“Go away.”

“I didn’t mean to—”

“LEAVE!”

So Hikaru left.

Sai disappeared later that night, off to try his luck in one of the other go games, and so Hikaru was left to himself to contemplate the glob of misery that was his life.

Touya had been right to be angry, he knew, but it would be too dangerous to Sai—and to himself, maybe, he wasn’t even sure if what they were doing was legal—for Sai to continue to play against Touya. But really, where did Touya get off, being so stupidly pretty and perfect and then being so completely unattainable. Because Hikaru knew that Touya wouldn’t even have glanced in his direction if not for Sai’s go abilities, which Hikaru obviously didn’t have.

So Hikaru was still lounging around near his port, waiting for Sai to return, when someone who was neither Sai nor a soccer player entered the game.

The new character and Hikaru stared at one another blankly for a long moment before the character said uncertainly, “You’re that guy, right? The one who beat Touya? I wasn’t there at the time, but Isumi told me all about it, and you seem like you might be him? But maybe all soccer players have that weird hair.”

Hikaru scowled. “You really shouldn’t be insulting other characters’ fashion senses, Mr. Camo.”

The character shot him a mock frown before breaking out into a smile. “But you are him, right? I’ve been wanting to meet you. Any chance of a match?”

--

The character—“Waya, my name is Waya, this is not that difficult, okay?”—did not rage or glare or cry when Hikaru refused him a match, though he did look briefly resigned.

“We all thought Touya was unbeatable, you know? And then you show up, and wow! See how that smug jerk likes a taste of the defeat he’s always doling out to everyone else, eh?”

Hikaru smacked Waya on the head. “He’s not smug, he’s—I dunno, maybe he’s lonely?”

Waya gave him an unimpressed look. “Anyway. It kinda got me thinking of Sai again, you know?”

“Sai?” That had probably been too enthusiastic, huh? Good thing Waya seemed to be just about as observant as Hikaru was—which was to say, not at all. “Uh. Who’s he?”

“He’s famous in the go games. I guess he was the top player in the most advanced game of the times, or maybe one of the top players? I dunno. It’s just that Isumi replayed your game for me, and it reminded me of Sai’s old games, which, wow.”

“So, uh, where’s this Sai now?”

“No one knows. The game went down a few years ago, and all the coding was compressed and saved in the arcade’s main database, of course, so maybe he’s trapped there, but I heard he was kicked out of the game before that, because he cheated in this major match and—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know that part.”

“But you said—”

“So, wait—all the game data is still there? No one deleted it?”

“It should be. Why?”

“Does that mean all the memory banks are still there? Like, details on all the matches played?”

“Most of the memory data is probably irretrievable, but at least the data from the official matches, the ones where a player was interfaced with the system, all of that should have been saved. But, again, why?”

“Well, how many of those super-high-level matches does anyone actually remember?”

Waya hesitated. “I dunno, maybe… a hundred? Two hundred?”

“That’s nothing, right, out of all the matches that were played?”

“Yeah, that game had been running for years. There must have been thousands of matches played.”

“So, if we could access the memory bank and download all the match data…”

“We could have access to a huge number of high-level games that could change the entire way we view go!”

“Yeah!” cheered Hikaru, relieved, because he hadn’t been able to come up with a way to end that sentence.

“And maybe we’ll finally be able to crush those damn Korean and Chinese games who’ve been stealing all our steam lately! Isumi keeps on talking about transfe—”

“Great! So, what do we do?”

Waya glanced at his watch. “We don’t have enough time before the arcade opens. I’ll meet you back here tomorrow night, okay? I should have a plan by then. Extracting the data should be easy enough, but uploading it into the Insei database might be tricky…”

“That’s fine, I have faith in you,” Hikaru said, shuffling Waya back toward the port. “So, tomorrow, right after the arcade closes?”

Waya grinned back at him as he stepped through the port. “Sounds great.” And he disappeared.

Right. So, now all Hikaru had to do was cross his fingers and hope the data would contain enough information to absolve Sai of his supposed crime.

--

Sai returned not long after Waya left, and Hikaru hurriedly explained his plan. Sai, already in a good mood from a night spent playing go, was optimistic about their chances of success, and Hikaru found enough courage to ask something else that he’d been curious about.

“So, uh, Sai,” Hikaru began, inexplicably nervous. “How do you play go, anyway?”

Sai, as expected, was thrilled at the new topic, and drew a small grid in the earth with a twig in order to demonstrate a simple game. It wasn’t as boring as Hikaru had expected, and for a moment he understood how people like Sai and Touya could be so passionate about it.

--

Waya was, somehow, waiting when Hikaru stumbled out of the field after the arcade had closed down the next day.

“How did you get here so quickly? We’ve only just cleared the fields.”

“And showered, thankfully. You guys take forever to clean up, wow. Anyway, I slipped out of Insei early. Check out what I picked up on my way back home last night?” Waya waved a small item in Hikaru’s face so quickly that Hikaru’s eyes had difficulty focusing on it.

“A flash drive? Is that for—”

“Yup; in fact, this is my drive, and what I was actually meaning you to see is the invisible data held within it, but—”

“Wait, seriously? You’ve already got the data?”

“Yes indeed,” Waya grinned. “I went to take a look last night, and the data hadn’t deteriorated at all; it just looked like it would be so easy to extract it, so I gave it a try, and it really was as easy as it looked.”

“Wow! Have you tried loading it into the Insei banks yet?”

“No, I need your help for that. The access port for data input is technically outside the game, but it’ll be really obvious to everyone inside the game that someone’s messing with the code, so I need you to distract everyone.”

“Okay. How long?”

“An hour or so, tops.”

“What? How am I supposed to keep everyone distracted for that long?”

Waya shot him a strange look. “Play go. Duh.”

“…Right. Okay, you leave now, I need to grab some stuff and let my teammates know I’m leaving, and then I’ll head straight to the Insei game and do—something. Lemme know when you’re finished?”

Waya laughed. “You’ll know, I promise you. But, sure.”

As soon as Waya had departed, Sai materialized in front of him, and, really, it’s no wonder he’d thought Sai was a ghost. He still wasn’t entirely sure Sai wasn’t one, actually. “Okay, so, you got all that?”

“I did. I can disguise myself as you and start a tournament as a distraction.”

“Go has tournaments, too?”

Sai sighed, mouth twitching. “Of course.”

Sai had become pretty good at rewriting his code—it was just the work of a minute and they were off.

“So,” said Hikaru as they approached the game. “I’ll wait by the port to cover you. Be careful, okay?”

“Okay,” Sai agreed happily as he slid through the port and disappeared. Hikaru wondered if Sai was more anticipant over the prospect of freedom or the idea of a go tournament. Hikaru wouldn’t place any bets on the former.

Hikaru knew he was supposed to be watching for Waya’s imminent return, but as time wore on, he grew more and more curious, and he couldn’t help but take a peek inside; however, when he saw the scene within, he dropped all pretenses of guard duty and stared shamelessly.

There, of course, was Sai, disguised as Hikaru and happily playing three simultaneous matches which he appeared to be winning easily, but more to the point, there was Touya, glowing and alive as he dropped the stones onto his goban with elegant hands that were just wow, and—

A hand smacked down on his head. “Hey, weren’t you supposed to be the distraction?” Waya didn’t look angry, though; if anything, he still seemed caught in the thrill of his success.

“Uh, yes?” Hikaru rubbed at his head, scowling. “You didn’t have to hit me, you know.”

“As you say,” Waya laughed. “Anyway, I, being the extremely talented character that I am, managed to integrate the two memory banks despite any number of unforeseen obstacles, and—”

“Yeah, yeah, so it worked?”

“Should have. The new banks should come online in a few minutes, as soon as the game resets.”

Hikaru froze. “When the game… resets?”

“Yeah, of course the system needs to reboot for all the changes to finish installing. I moved the reboot schedule up a little bit, so it should be kicking in any second now.”

“Crapcrapcrapcrap—”

“Hey, where are you going? I—Wait, is that you playing over there? What?”

Hikaru ignored him and continued running, but others who had heard Waya’s shout were starting to take notice of the two Hikarus in the game. Sai was, naturally, the last one to see him or the growing commotion around them.

“Hikaru, what—” Sai asked as Hikaru finally reached him and tugged on the sleeve of his t-shirt trying to pull him back to the port.

“Not now, okay, we just really need to get out of h—”

Hikaru had, of course, experienced many system reboots in his time, some even in games other than his own, but the mundanity of this routine process was overshadowed by the sight of Sai, suddenly restored to his normal appearance, blinking at him in shock and trying to reach out toward him before disappearing, fading ghostlike into nothingness.

In the midst of the uproar that followed, Waya slid into place next to him, panting. “Who was that? That wasn’t you? There was someone pretending to be you? Why—”

“Where is he?” Hikaru felt a little dizzy. “Where’d he go?”

“I don’t know—I don’t even know what he was doing here. Maybe the reboot—”

“I’m still here, aren’t I, and I’m not from this game. I’m still here, so he should be, too. Where is he? He was right here, he disappeared, where—”

“Shindou, I think you need to calm down—”

“HOW CAN I CALM DOWN? HE’S GONE! HE SHOULD BE HERE!”

“Shindou—”

“No. All he wanted to do was play go, but you assholes wouldn’t let him, why wouldn’t you let him, he didn’t do anything wrong, you were supposed to see the last game in the new memory data and know, you were supposed to know he hadn’t done anything wrong and let him play go again—”

“That was Fujiwara no Sai?” And there was Touya, standing on his other side, eyes gentle.

“…Yeah, that was—he was—is—he’s—”

“You gave him the codes governing your physical appearance so that he could play go disguised as you, thereby circumventing the ban on his ever participating in another match,” Touya summarized calmly, stare focused on Hikaru.

“Yeah, I did.” Hikaru finally managed to look up. “And it was the right thing to do.”

“Shindou, I—”

“No, I—I really can’t talk right now. I—I’m going to go. If Sai—if he turns up—”

“We’ll let you know,” Touya promised solemnly.

The walk back to his own game was stilted and painful. Hikaru spent the whole trip expecting Sai to appear from around every corner, smiling and laughing. When Hikaru finally returned home, he made his way through every pixel of the forest, certain that Sai would be found in every shadow and behind every tree.

It wasn’t long before he’d driven himself to exhaustion, and he curled up in the forest, not bothering to head back to his house, and fell asleep alone.

In the following days, his ratings took a sharp dive as he failed to pull his weight on the team, or even respond efficiently to the players’ commands when he was chosen as the avatar. His teammates, excepting Akari, were growing increasingly frustrated with him. Akari just smiled sadly and said to him, “Touya’ll come around, eventually,” and left him to his moping.

Waya and Touya both stopped by a few days after Sai had disappeared.

“There’s still been no sign of Sai,” Touya told him, “but after we reviewed the data of his last game, we took the case and the evidence over to Phoenix Wright in the Ace Attorney games. He defended Sai in court, and Sai was pronounced not guilty. If he ever reappears, he’ll not only be allowed to play go again, but he’ll be free to take up residence in any go-related game that he chooses.”

Small comfort for all this to have happened only after Sai was gone. Hikaru said nothing, just slumped down further.

When it was clear Hikaru wasn’t going to respond, Waya picked up where Touya had left off. “There’ve been some minor issues with the latest system reboot, which is definitely not my fault, okay, but there’s going to be another total reboot tomorrow night, reintegrating the memory data and adding some other stuff to help it run more smoothly; it’ll be just after the arcade closes. You could come, check out the changes from the added memory data. There’ll be a small party. With cake.”

At Hikaru’s continued silence, Akari stepped in. “Thanks for visiting, guys, but I think Hikaru’s kind of tired. We’ll definitely go see the reboot tomorrow night, though.”

Waya smiled at her gratefully, but Touya’s eyes didn’t move from Hikaru, even as he nodded in acknowledgement of her words. “Thank you,” he said, and they left.

If Hikaru had thought that by acting pathetic enough, he could avoid anyone actually making him go to the reboot party, he was wrong. Akari had finally had learned the whole story from Waya, and now that she knew that he not only wasn’t suffering from the pangs of heartache but was, in fact, isolating himself from opportunities which could eventually lead to his conjugal happiness with Touya—Akari liked to think big—she decided that she was fed up with his “sulking,” and thus dragged him off—by his arm, ow, ow, ow—to see the reboot and sooth his wounds in Touya Akira’s love.

They made it to the party a little bit late, due to their long clean-up time and Hikaru’s deliberately slow pace, so the game flickered off and on just as they arrived, the momentary blackness that always accompanied a total reboot followed by a sharp change of scene as the game reloaded. The buildings were still in the same place and were approximately the same shape, but their design had been altered slightly to give their appearance a more classical feel, presumably to accommodate some of the errant memory data that had been merged with the system. The whole game now looked to be a complete fusion of ancient and modern Japan.

It was beautiful.

Still, Hikaru stared around balefully, not wanting to admit to anything positive existing in a world without Sai. He took in the waving branches laden with cherry blossoms stoically and even managed to not react to the sight of Touya staring at the scenes in wonder.

“Do you like it?”

Hikaru wheeled around on his heels, jaw dropping as he took in Sai, standing before him, still wearing his Heian-style robes.

“I—I—What?”

“I’m afraid some things, myself included, were a little scrambled in the initial reboot. Thankfully, certain characters were able to sort through all the data, and I’ve been restored. I’m now a permanent part of the Insei game, although, like our friend Touya Akira, I may find myself to be a little above the average level of play, here. But these are things which can be sorted out later. Have you heard, Hikaru? I can play go again!”

Hikaru laughed. “I’ve heard, yes. That’s awesome! Congratulations! But why didn’t anyone tell me you’d been found?”

“Perhaps they didn’t know, or perhaps they weren’t certain that I could be extracted and didn’t want to get your hopes up; I’m not certain.” Sai’s smile grew softer. “Thank you, Hikaru, for all your help. I spent the past few years purposeless, with no will or direction. I’d have never managed any of this by myself.”

“This isn’t the part where we all go back to our previous lives and never see each other again, is it?” Out of the corner of his eye, Hikaru thought he saw Touya blanch at those words. “Because that would totally suck.”

Hikaru was suddenly enveloped in what seemed like yards of white cloth. “Don’t be ridiculous, Hikaru,” Sai said. “Besides, I was hoping you’d be interested in learning to play go…?”

“As long as you’re here to teach me,” Hikaru promised.

END



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