flonnebonne | [Hikaru no Go] Fic: Obsession for Men

Title: Obsession for Men

Fandom: Hikaru no Go

Characters: Ochi, Waya. Some Shindou, Touya, Isumi, Kuwabara.

Genre: Humour

Wordcount: 781

Summary: Ochi wants a rival. Or he thinks he does. Written for

juin during the Hikago Day 2013 Drabble Exchange.

Obsession for Men

"You wanna be my what?" Waya squawked.

"Your rival," Ochi enunciated, reminding himself that Waya, even if he could play a decent game of go, was still something of an idiot. "I hate to say this, but we're pretty evenly matched, we're not too far in age, and we seem to get get annoyed at each other a lot. It fits the pattern."

"Pattern?"

Ochi gestured at Touya and Shindou, who were off in their own little corner of Waya's apartment, radiating their usual absurd levels of obsession with each other, or something.

As they watched, Touya slowly, slowly moved his arm, grasped a stone between his outstretched fingers and, with a piercing look in Shindou's direction, laid the stone on the goban with a kind of vicious intensity.

Then there was the way Shindou stared back, not breaking eye contact at all as he played his own move - he must have very good peripheral vision, Ochi noted - as if was auditioning to be a poster boy for Obsession for Men and not playing, well, a board game.

"Ugh, you want to be like that?" Waya made a face.

"It's creepy," Ochi admitted, "but one can't argue with the results."

"Yeah, I guess it does help them focus."

Ochi nodded and rolled his eyes. Trust Waya to take this long to figure it out.

"What are you two talking about?" Isumi asked, coming over from his game with Honda, which seemed to be over. Honda was looking at the board in a depressed manner. "You seem to be talking pretty intensely."

Ochi nodded. "We're just discussing how to become rivals."

"It's Ochi's idea" Waya added quickly. "He says we should copy Shindou and Touya, since it seems to work so well for them."

"Oh?" Isumi gave them an odd look. "But what exactly does that mean, being rivals? In practical terms."

"Well," Ochi began, "Touya and Shindou meet twice a week on set days in a set place, discuss go, play games - "

"Yell at each other," Waya broke in.

"We can skip that. Let's see...watch games together, study kifu...and I notice they spend a lot of time with each other outside of go as well. I know they eat out together, watch movies sometimes, and I ran into them when they were shopping together once. They said they were buying a present for Shindou's mother. And they sometimes sleep over at each others' homes."

"They used to kind of stalk each other too," Waya noted, "before they hung out regularly."

"Yes, that too."

Isumi's eyes widened.

"Uh, guys, you know that Touya and Shindou are a couple, right?"

Ochi had not known that.

"What?" Ochi said, intelligently, at the same moment that Waya said, "Huh?" equally intelligently.

Isumi's tone was apologetic. "All that rival stuff you talked about, it's actually...boyfriend stuff."

Before Ochi (or Waya) could formulate...any kind of response at all to that world-shaking revelation, Fuku called out, "Hey, everyone, Kuwabara-sensei is doing an interview!" and every head in the room, thankfully, swivelled toward the TV.

"...You want to know my opinion on Ogata Juudan?" Kuwabara cackled, showing off his copious lack of teeth. "Why, he's my rival! My one and only, ever since Kouyo retired. Not that I'm the type to have more than one at a time, mind you. I'm a traditional sort of man, and I believe it's important to stay loyal to the one you've chosen."

"He and my dad were never like that," Touya swore.

Kuwabara was still talking; Ochi wished he would stop. "Yes, Ogata-kun is quite the spitfire, isn't he? Thinks he's quite something. The boy's been stalking me lately, I'll have you know, showing up at all my games and proclaiming - passionately - that he has no interest in me. Ha! As for our actual games together - dynamite, pure dynamite. Sometimes we share a smoke afterward if it was a particularly good one. Yes, we do have a wonderful rivalry, the two of us. But it'll be a long, long time before that young turk can
catch this old codger, if ever. That's what keeps the flame going."

"I...see," said the hapless interviewer.

Kuwabara laughed his horrible old man laugh, and that seemed to be the cue for the end of the interview.

In the wake of that...thing, Ochi turned to Waya and said one word.

"Nevermind."