Old Blood

Part Two


Prince Touya Akira peeked through the spy hole he’d found.

It was a neat spy hole. It was behind a wardrobe in one of the bedrooms on the third floor. The one they called The Blue Room, ‘cause it mostly was decorated in blue. There was a little cubby there, behind a solid oaken wardrobe, that was cozy and dark, and it had a small hole in the floor. When peeked through, one found oneself looking into the second-floor tearoom that Papa liked to go to when he wanted to be alone with his Shadows.

Right now, Kakashi-kage and Genma-kage were talking about some boy. Akira had sort of missed the first part, but he was a little jealous anyway. It sounded like the boy was going to get to live with the Shadows and train with them.

Akira wanted to be a Shadow. They were fast, and they could appear and disappear in a whoosh of air. They were better than just any old ninja by far, and his Papa had three of them.

Prince Akira heard a noise and peered around the edge of the wardrobe. Sitting on the bed was a boy his age, arms wrapped around his knees. He was very pale and had dark, dark hair that fell down around his eyes in the front and rose up in a messy crest at the back of his head, and he was wearing one of Kakashi’s black shirts over white shorts. His eyes looked lost and sad and empty.

Akira immediately felt bad for having been jealous of him. The boy looked desperately unhappy. Without thinking about it, the Prince came forward, holding out one of his stones.

“Here.”

The boy looked up, startled, and angrily swiped his face with his arm.

“I wasn’t crying.” He said defensively. “Why are you spying on me?”

Prince Akira shook his head. “Wasn’t. I was spying on my Papa.” He proffered the stone again. “Here.”

The boy looked suspicious. “What is it?”

Akira opened his hand. On the flat of his palm was a black go stone.

“What is it?”

The prince rolled his eyes. “It’s a go stone, of course.”

The boy now looked confused and wary.

“Why are you giving it to me?”

“Because you were sad. I thought you might want to play go.”

The boy blinked.

“Why would I want to play go?”

Now it was Akira’s turn to look confused.

“How could you not want to play go?”

They stared at each other for a long wordless minute. Then the strange boy’s eyes dipped down to the black stone the Prince still held out to him, and pink stained his cheekbones lightly.

“I...I don’t...” his voice was small and very shy.

“I don’t actually know how to play go.”

Akira sucked in a shocked breath. Not know how to play go? That was beyond his comprehension. He grabbed the boy’s hand and pressed the stone into it.

“Hold on to that. I’ll find a goban.”