Hikaru No Go Fan Fiction ❯ The Pros and Cons of Daydreaming ❯ The Tokyo tee-shirt massacre ( Chapter 2 )

“Oh I never had any dreams of that sort,” Touya replied, and a door seemed to snap shut between them.

“I see." Hikaru couldn't help feeling defensive. "You were above that.”

Hikaru felt Touya give a shrug. “I mean I never repressed my desires. I always knew what I wanted.” But then his hands stilled, his fingers resting softly in the small Hikaru's back. Hikaru knew that he was thinking over something, “Life was simple," Touya said finally, his voice soft, the words even, flat.

Hikaru rolled over so he could see Touya, afraid he'd said the wrong thing and somehow upset him. But Touya was smiling, sitting over him, long legs drawn up beside him, curves of his muscles highlighted by the light and shadows of the new day. Hikaru looked deeply into Touya's eyes, admiring the tiny black flecks in his irises, aware of the persuasive effect he could have on Touya with his own eyes. It was something he'd learned quickly since he'd had the right to look as long as he wanted.

"I'm curious," he asked quietly. "Did you ever have dreams about me then? You know, when we were teens?" and Hikaru read the answer, with some satisfaction, before Touya even said a word aloud.

“Yes.”

Hikaru couldn't stop himself from betraying a flash of excitement. Perhaps Touya wasn't so different from him after all, whatever he might claim.

Touya was quick to sense Hikaru's mood and frowned. “They weren't at all erotic dreams you understand,” he added quickly. Touya shifted self-consciously, pulling away so that they were no longer touching.

“Tell me,” Hikaru prompted, sitting up but keeping his gaze fixed on Touya.

“Okay. Well you must have been an insei by then and in my dream, instead of avoiding me all the time, we were actually sitting at a goban...playing and…”

“Excuse me! When I was an insei, you were avoiding me.”

“That's not true.”

“It is too.”

There Touya stopped and said nothing to disagree or pursue the argument. With the fingertips of his hand, he traced down Hikaru's cheek to his chin, then from his shoulder and along his arm to reach to for his hand. Touya's hand squeezed tight around his own. “Its not important now, is it? And anyway, if the games in our dreams were better than ones we really would have played, isn't it perhaps better that we only played together in our dreams?”

Though Hikaru thought he detected a slight hint of condescension, he couldn't help being happy to learn that he'd somehow got under Touya's skin enough when they were teens, enough to become part of Touya's dreams as well.

“So.” Touya squeezed his hand playfully. “In my dream, we were playing go together and you were wearing this bright yellow shirt.” As he said this, Touya put his other hand up as if to shade his eyes. “Really, a very bright yellow. Annoyingly, painfully yellow. Totally obnox…”

Hikaru interrupted him by pulling his own hand out of Touya's loose grip to capture the hand that Touya was now waving around as if he was trying to beat off a swarm of insects. “And so?”

“I reached over and grabbed and ripped that shirt right off of you,” Touya said smirking defiantly.

“What!!” Hikaru dropped Touya's hand and clapped his own to his forehead. “You said that your dreams weren't erotic, and now you say that your preadolescent subconcious is resorting to violence to get me naked!!!”

“No, not at all.” Touya took a serious air, but there was still a tinge of humour under the surface of his words.

Hikaru almost laughed. “Is there an innocent reason for ripping my clothes off? Didn't I retaliate? What did you do then?”

Touya tipped his head forward and looked down at him through the dark curtain of his hair. "I tore the shirt up into little pieces. It was very satisfying."

“And me? What was I doing all this time, sitting there, half naked, with you more interested in destroying my clothes than playing me…Or even ravishing me?” he added, sarcastically. “What happened when you'd finished ripping up my shirt?”

“That's the funny thing. When I looked back at you, you were fully dressed again, except this time you had a green shirt, violent florescent green with a huge number 5.” He traced the figure a hair's breadth from Hikaru's chest, shaking his head. “A true insult to the senses.”

“Huh?”

“It had to go.”

“So you did what? You attacked me again? ”

Touya nodded. “The second shirt I simply stuffed in with the refuse as quick as I could.”

“And by the time you were done I was dressed again, is that it?”

“An abominable hooded cardigan…sacrifice by the waste disposal. But the shirts they kept coming every time I looked around. And every time the dream recurred you had even more new ghastly outfits.”

Hikaru had never credited Touya for having the slightest fashion sense before he turned eighteen, but it hadn't occurred to him that his own taste in clothing might have appalled his rival to this extent. “How long did this go on? How many thousands of Yen of my clothes did you throw away, tear up, or otherwise annihilate. Hey, you didn't touch my orange Puffa jacket, did you?”

“Three separate black sacks, in the river, and that horrid tank top, the one you wore at your Shin-Shoden match, I buried it.”

“No. Wait a minute. The Shin-Shoden series? Do you mean these dreams continued even once I'd turned pro?” Touya looked slightly uncomfortable. “It is over now, isn't it? I mean, I don't have to lock my closet in case you...?”

“Shindou, it was only a dream. And, anyway, its over. Really, in the end I just made a big gaudy heap, doused it with kerosene and set light to it.” Hikaru winced. “It could be seen for miles,” Touya said contentedly. Then his face fell slightly and he looked away a second as if wondering whether he should continue. “That was sort of good actually because by then it had stopped being a dream and started being just something I made up to please myself: imagining we were stranded on a deserted island together and signaling for help.”

“To please yourself? And what about me? I liked those clothes you know, I would have been so mad if you'd done that for real. What did I do then?” What did your imagination have me do? Hikaru wondered pensively.

“By then you really had run out of shirts, and you were sitting there with the light of the fire showing off your golden tanned skin in the deepening subtropical evening.” Touya affirmed, in a matter-of-fact tone.

What sort of fantasy was this? thought Hikaru.

Touya touched a patch of Hikaru's shoulder where the early sun had already warmed the skin, and then went on, like someone narrating a true experience. “It didn't matter anymore that your shirts were gone because I imagined we were on a deserted South Pacific island and it wasn't cold, even when the fire died down. Besides…you had me to keep you warm.” Hikaru didn't know whether to feel disturbed or intrigued. Here was Touya, confessing to have cast him as some sort of star in his teenage fantasies. “And we didn't need to be rescued at all in the end because the island had everything we might need. Touya he kissed the shoulder he'd been touching, putting his arm around the other. “We had shells to use as go stones, sand to draw out goban, one three times normal size, because we had all the time in the world to play games that lasted weeks. There was food and fresh water; there was even a hot spring and a waterfall, and shady palm trees, cool caves, endless sandy beaches…”

This was starting to sound like a holiday destination and Hikaru was about to say so but then Touya voice changed and he said in a tone that was soft but serious, “Very importantly several things were not on our island. Your girlfriend wasn't there for a start, or any other inconvenient realities.”

“What?” Hikaru cried. “You mean you went on with this even after the Hokuto cup?”

“Yes, for a few more years. It was a true paradise - palm trees, sunshine, a coral reef and lagoon - there were no prying eyes, no tiring expeditions to the other end of the country for conferences and demonstrations. No one else was there but us. I didn't have to hear Waya's cynicism, suffer those knowing looks from Ochi. I didn't even miss friends like Ashiwara and Ich-chan. There on the island everything was possible: you and I could make love in the open air or play go all day long.”

“So, err…in your fantasy I liked you too then?” Hikaru didn't quite manage to keep his voice even.

 

 

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