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Sai cannot see himself in the mirror anymore, nor can he feel the heat from Hikaru's bathing, or smell the perfume of his shampoo. But when Sai leans forward with purpose and watches the mirror, he can see the rolling coils of clouded steam part and curl, if only just a split hair's worth. He is a sort of undefined shimmer in the haze.
Are you still there? Hikaru thinks.
"Yes," Sai says simply, and he pretends to blow the air he does not have into the fog. A tendril of it sneaks into where Sai's eyes might be.
Hikaru's silhouette behind the curtain draws closer in upon itself. Go away.
Sai doesn't want to be unkind, but he says, "You'll get used to it." Torajiro did.
Hikaru rubs himself furiously. Creepy.
He'll accept it eventually. It is inevitable.
***
It takes much longer than it had with Torajiro, that kind boy, but eventually Hikaru stops pretending he isn't terrified of the omnipresent fullness of consciousness and instead sets about making himself unafraid. He asks questions, most of them normal because he's a normal boy. Every now and then, though, he asks the important things, like,
"What do you want?"
--most petulantly, really, but he forgets himself and speaks aloud.
"For you to do your homework, as I said!" his mother says, hands full of stale clothes for laundering.
In his embarrassment, Hikaru ignores her. Sai gives him the slightest of smiles that is meant to be reassuring but is tinged with amusement. Hikaru huffs loudly and pours himself some juice. The Shindou family and Sai have dinner together later. Or, at least, Sai watches them have dinner while Hikaru darts his eyes every now and then, hand pausing with a spoonful of dripping broth.
"You're getting it all over the table, Hikaru!"
"Oops--"
"What are you eating?" Sai asks quietly.
Hikaru doesn't consider answering but instead begins to think about whether or not ghosts eat anything like souls or sanity and whether or not Sai misses the feeling of warm soup and from there it degenerates into a hunger that causes Hikaru to begin stuffing his face and from there images of things he'd better like to eat than this low-key blandness. Funny, how the mind works.
***
One day as he walks to school along the river, Hikaru, apparently alone, says, "Sai, what will you do if in the future nobody plays go?"
He runs to the side of the path and vomits into some bushes.
Sai sniffs and waves a tear-stained sleeve. "Preposterous!"
Hikaru is annoyed and does not react.
"Because there are many truths in this world that remain unchanged, and I have faith in the will of the universe," Sai says. "Man will always want to play the perfect game."
--and so-- they see as they slow and come upon a crowd circling police cars --so will there also be deep rivers with fast currents and miserable men to drown themselves in them. The police finish hauling the bloated thing onto the shore and the curious crowd retches as a whole. They knew him. He had trouble with his job. They'd thought he'd gone to visit his brother up north.
"Were you so miserable, Sai?"
As said, Hikaru sometimes asks the important questions.
Didn't you have any family? Would no one help you? Could you have done nothing more?
Why stay?
***
Sai likes to learn. Of course, it is only a pastime between two go matches, but it is always good to have hobbies. Sai learns many new things with Hikaru. In class, Sai feels Hikaru's mind begin to wander, and so doubles his own efforts at attention. He learns of many wonderful and dreadful things, so many things that no longer affect him. If only they'd had this sort of medicine sooner! Oh, his poor Torajiro...
And in the lonely nights when Hikaru sleeps and Sai's vision is tinted with dreamscape shadows, Sai goes as far as he dares and slips his face through the solid door of Hikaru's bedroom. He can hear down below the lonely Mitsuko, making small noises as she watches the little box Hikaru explained to be called television. She is waiting for her husband but also enjoying her time alone to watch the sort of programs that neither her husband nor her son would tolerate her watching. Mitsuko likes to learn about things that will never affect her, too. This is something only Sai knows.
Once and only once, the strangely hostile child that is Hikaru falls asleep on the couch. Sai and Mitsuko are equally surprised. Hikaru sleeps there in unrelaxed, fitted slumber, the sleep of the boy who has spent too many nights playing go with a ghost, the sleep of the boy too-ready for the pro exam. It's like finding an excitable little puppy-dog having not chewed the furniture while you were away.
Mitsuko slides down onto the floor next to the couch, worried that she might dip a cushion and break the peace. Nervously she watches Hikaru's anime for a while; he might wake up, after all. But ten minutes pass and she slips the remote from his relaxed hand to swing it to the channel with the dull voices and slow images. She keeps her thumb on the return.
"...it was not until 1908 that Ikeda Kikunae gave name to the honest, elusive sensation..."
Sai turns to the pitiable woman. "He won't wake. You don't have to be nervous."
But her brow remains knit, her fingers at her lips, knees curled to her chest like a little girl.
"Be bold, don't be afraid!"
She does not hear. Hikaru wakes some hours later and she hastily turns off the television and hustles into another room. Hikaru sleepily stumbles up the stairs. Sai hears Mitsuko, early in the morning, turn the television back on, change the channel, then turn it back off again.
Sai can appreciate the cage.
***
Sai can appreciate the cage. Mitani didn't hear him. Ogata didn't hear him. No one but Hikaru ever will. He is meant to see and not touch; he no longer belongs in this world.
But he doesn't want to leave. He's (so scared) unwilling to leave.
***
Hikaru looks so brave when he sits down at the go board and waits for his opponent. Feels braver. Sai knows because he is right here that Hikaru is scared. To be scared, and to march on anyway-- like Touya Akira before him--
--like many people, Sai supposes with a strange sort of heartache, like his dear Torajiro who knew without proper words that he would most likely die and yet stayed with the sick fellows--
'You're making me nauseous' flits quietly across Hikaru's mind before it trembles and drains like a whirlpool where the center is Touya Akira, who is not yet here.
Well, why wouldn’t he march forward? He has so little time left. Hikaru will die one day. And unlike Sai-- of this, Sai is sure --Hikaru will not linger.
Hikaru tilts his head up to swallow the bile.
***
On their way to the hospital after receiving the news that day, Sai asks many questions. One of them is this:
"Is Touya Kouyou going to die?"
And Hikaru stops walking very suddenly so he can look up into Sai's twist in the air, into his transparency.
"I don't know," is what Hikaru says. One day, is what he thinks.
Does it bother you?
"I don't want him to die."
Maybe he'll turn into a ghost, too.
Sai does not find this funny despite the little mischievous smirk on Hikaru's lips. Hikaru continues his jog then.
I don't want to wait anymore. Sai considers this, then says it again, where Hikaru will know: "I don't want to wait anymore!"
No one's forcing you to. Hikaru ducks his head, hiding his face-- as if such a physical move could hide his feelings to something that lives within him. Sai feels his regret and accepts the unapologetic apology. They need no words. Anything they said further would only exacerbate the unpleasant truth.
***
Then Hikaru lets him play Touya Kouyou, and it's as if someone found the key.
Then reality finally catches up and things become real. Sometimes he thinks he might still have a heart, because it certainly feels like it's thundering. This new knowing comes slowly, like his death-- chilling waters rising-- so terrifying, but there is no stopping it.
Sai finds the name to his mysterious desire, that ever-present coating on his existence. It's not about how a man can end things but how he can keep them going, and Sai at last finds both the question and the answer in a smile and a hand reaching with gentle confidence to point out where Sai falls short.
And really, it had been there all along, hadn't it? It just needed a name.