[HnG] The Best Years of Our Lives, PG, Gen, AkiHika

[meiface.livejournal.com]

For blind_go Round 4: AUs & Crossovers. I wrote high school AU because I love HSAU done well; it was my first introduction to fic-reading at large, after all. :) I'm not in love with this fic but it turned out better than the alternative (trust me on this). I do want to write more accompanying stories for it, though, so keep an eye out for those eventually.

Originally posted here.

The Best Years of Our Lives
Hikaru no Go, Shindou/Touya, PG, 1376 words
These were their golden years, in brief.


The Best Years of Our Lives
a Hikaru no Go high school AU
by meitachi

• Sai no Fujiwara
  Sai no Fujiwara was a history teacher and the go club advisor. His story was a long one, with many secrets that his students were eager to pursue, but left alone out of their respect for him. For three years, his favorite student was a boy named Shindou Hikaru, whom he mentored devotedly. Then, one day, Sai disappeared. That was his final story. But this is another story.

1. Shindou Hikaru
   Shindou Hikaru was the average, friendly, easygoing boy-next-door. He was a typical high school boy who liked playing soccer, watching movies, and making his mom sigh loudly at the messy state of his room. He worked part-time at a convenience store, which was where his first story began. (It was where he met his best friend, but that was six years ago, and it had involved a sticky summer day and a stickier red popsicle.) This story, however, began two blocks down, at the small neighborhood park where, one afternoon, Shindou kicked his soccer ball into someone's go game. It was a bright and sunny day when his whole world changed.
   
   
2. Touya Akira
   Touya Akira was a sensitive artist; so sensitive, in fact, that he'd pitch a fit if anyone ever called him that to his face. He was not an artist in the traditional sense, because he insisted his art was on the go board, and no, it wasn't making smiley faces with the go stones. His art was in his strategy, the pulse and flow of his white stones against the opponent's black. He was fully immersed in his world of creation the Saturday some idiot's soccer ball landed in the middle of a game he was playing (with himself, if it must be known). Akira had never known such hate until that day.
   
   
3. Waya Yoshitaka
   Waya Yoshitaka was somewhat of a sidekick type. He was as easygoing and average as the guy-next-door, but he was always just a little too weird to be the main character. (In Waya's case, it was because he was gay, but that was another story.) He'd been friends with Hikaru since they were in sixth grade and, as sidekick, had seen quite a lot (but those were all other stories). This was the first time he'd seen this level of antagonism from Hikaru , however. He hadn't even known the school had a chess club whose flyers Hikaru could graffiti with scandalous things about Touya Akira's virtue.
   
   
4. Isumi Shinichirou
   Isumi Shinichirou would have been the older and wiser mentor if he hadn't been Waya's boyfriend. He did his best to give advice, regardless, but neither Hikaru nor Waya seemed to hear him when he explained that Touya Akira was in the go club, not the chess club. They also ignored him when he pointed out that pulling on Touya's hair every time they passed him in the hall was somewhat infantile (say, third-grade). He was pretty sure he saw signs of attraction on Hikaru's part (and not Waya's, thankfully), but he knew it was another observation which would fall on deaf ears.
   
   
5. Nase Asumi
   Nase Asumi was the girl in the boys' crowd. She was the type who was more comfortable laughing at the boys' immature jokes than trying on dresses with her girlfriends. After school, she would play the French horn in the band, and on the weekends she would play informal games of soccer with the boys. (She tried joining the school team, early in her first year, but she didn't like running around solely with girls who considered a sharp elbow in the ribs offensive.) Still, she was a girl, and she occasionally daydreamed about going to prom with the school's popular bad boy. After being Waya and Isumi's friend for three years, she began to wonder if any of her friends (boys) daydreamed of the same thing.
   
   
6. Kaga Tetsuo
   Kaga Tetsuo was the epitome of the high school bad boy: he smoked, he wore a black leather jacket, and he rode a motorcycle to school. He skipped classes whenever he felt like it and bullied geeky little boys like Ochi Kousuke or Touya Akira. There was one quiet mouse Kaga liked picking on best, a short boy with wide eyes and large glasses, who stammered about the work the student council needed to do to set up for prom. He was a tagalong in Shindou Hikaru's posse, and it was easy to get him to spill his secrets when Kaga demanded to know who was responsible for all the recent graffiti mayhem (since it wasn't his own handiwork). This current state of affairs was unacceptable and Kaga was out to change it.
   
   
7. Tsutsui Kimihiro
   Tsutsui Kimihiro was a born follower. It wasn't that he was spineless, but he was no good at leading and he knew that. It was easier just to do as he was told, and make sure the details were meticulously taken care of: he liked order. And so Tsutsui wasn't quite sure what to make of Kaga, loud-mouthed and aggressive and chaos personified, who shouldered his way into the preparations for prom and somehow convinced the entire student council that compulsory mix-and-match dates would be the perfect idea to foster understanding and cohesiveness within the student body. (Tsutsui might have developed something of a crush, but that was definitely another story, maybe even one with a sequel.)
   
   
8. Ochi Kousuke
   Ochi Kousuke was the math geek. He was obsessed with statistics and algorithms, viewing the world in the intricacies of complex formulas. He was generally respected for his intelligence in a distant sort of way; that is, his classmates would keep at least ten feet away from his mutterings, eyeing him uncertainly, unsure whether to mock him or fear him (or ask him for answers to their calculus homework). Ochi liked it better that way. The only person who ever talked to him regularly was Touya Akira, who was also shunned in a reverent kind of way. They often discussed the beauty of the mathematical properties of the go board, and Ochi was quite certain no one would ever connect with him the way Touya did. He didn't understand why Touya was always talking about Shindou Hikaru.
   
   
9. Mitani Yuki
   Mitani Yuki was the school yearbook photographer. He wasn't quite sure how he'd ended up with the position, but he had a suspicion it had to do with a girl he didn't want to admit to liking. They had been matched up in the student council's strange new lottery system for the prom, which made the unfortunate ordeal slightly more bearable, even if Mitani would end up spending more of the night with his camera than with her. She didn't seem to mind and kept him company as he darted through the crowds of mismatched couples, in ever good humor. She even looked delighted when the crowning moment of the night occurred, though Yuki knew it was more than just because she was proud of him for capturing Shindou Hikaru and Touya Akira's startling kiss with a snap of his camera.
   
   
10. Fujisaki Akari
    Fujisaki Akari was the childhood sweetheart of Shindou Hikaru. Neighbors since before they were born, their childhood years had been spent playing together, their futures subject to the romantic dreams of their mothers. Rather expectedly, they had drifted apart in middle school, though they grew friendly again in high school (when fear of the other gender at last abated). Akari had watched Hikaru's recent escapades with somewhat alarmed bemusement, not sure what to make of his rivalry with Touya Akira, whom she considered a sweet if slightly high-strung boy. When their animosity transformed into something else entirely, she beamed, because now the world was finally falling into place.

• Ogata Seiji
  Ogata Seiji was the school doctor. He watched the dramas of high school play out with cynical amusement, and was chided for both his sarcasm and his dirty smoking habit by the school nurse, one Ichikawa Harumi. (They fell in love later, then fell out of love, and then in love again, but with different people—but those were stories for another time.) This story, however, was now over. Soon, a new one would begin.

--

Started/Finished: 09.19.2007


Other stories that might crop up in the future: Sai as a teacher and disappearing, Hikaru meeting Waya at age 11, Waya being gay with Isumi, Kaga/Tsutsui doing student council work, Ogata/Ichikawa together, separated, then in love with others. Maybe also: Ochi, Nase, proper AkiHika, some Mitani/Akari? Who knows.

I'm trying to write SuJu movieverse KiHae fic now. :D It's so much fun. Somehow RPS and faux-RPS always comes easier to me. WTF, right?