flonnebonne | [Hikaru no Go] Fic: The Silent Path

My vanilla yoghurt tells me that it contains "the active and unique BL(tm) culture." Hm.

Anyone who is anyone is kicking it oldskool at

dancedance_fan (a com for reccing animanga titles & fandoms) where it is now officially Slam Dunk week! Today is canonland, so you can download the first volumes of the manga in today's postings. SD is pure shounen awesomeness, the sports series that defined sports series, and also one of the funniest damn things ever.

Speaking of kicking it oldskool, I've recently started reading some of the works of Tezuka Osamu, the "God of Manga" and "God of Anime" who wrote Astro Boy. His second volume in his Phoenix series, entitled Future, is absolutely magnificent. The scope of the story-telling is amazing--it goes from microcosmic to macrocosmic in the blink of an eye. The first half of the story seems fairly "normal," but the second half heads into superbly imaginative territory. I actually cried near the end of it, not because I felt pity for the characters (which I did), but because I was so flabbergasted by the plot and Tezuka's concerns about humanity's future. It's easy to make me cry for the characters, but to make me cry for the storytelling? That's something else.

Oh yeah, and fic of the day:

Title: The Silent Path (previously known as "Untitled")
Fandom: Hikaru no Go
Characters: Sai
Genre: AU
Spoilers: None
Summary: What if Sai had not been allowed to play Go?

The Silent Path

Sai had wondered, when the boy and girl had found his goban, what kind of host the God of Go would give to him this time. He should not have expected another Torajiro.

Sai learned that the modern age was filled with many things, too many things, ice cream parlours and video games and cell phones and internet, school and homework and clubs and entrance exams and I'm sorry, Sai, I can't play Go anymore.

It was sad, so sad, these children who had forgotten how to love Go.

There were birthdays and first dates and first kisses, first days of spring and rainfall and umbrellas (some things did not change, he thought nostalgically), and there was that first car accident when Sai was so scared and helpless, a ghost who was useless for anything but Go.

I'm okay, it's okay, I'm okay, weak smile that was like Torajiro's smile before death had claimed him, the smile of a child who loved and loved well.

Sai was so sad in the days following the accident that the doctor had had to prescribe a double dose of nausea pills, because there was one thing that Sai could do aside from play Go, he could make his host sick with his sadness, and Sai wondered if he'd long ago killed Torajiro with his sadness, tears and blood mingling on a goban, which only made him sadder still until the dose of nausea pills tripled.

Sai asked his child: Do you wish you had never met me?

No, of course not, you're my best friend, Akari answered sweetly, and as soon as she got out of the hospital Sai was allowed to play NetGo until his sadness went away.

-End-

[Hikaru no Go] Fic: The Silent Path

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