vous êtes belles, mais vous êtes vides

All Grace of Youth

What you have had, from the beginning of everything, is a purpose.

You did not know it, of course, not until the day your father put a go stone (black, round, smooth, solid) in your tiny toddler's hand and you grasped it, held on tight, and then the universe had a definite shape, a sudden clear meaning.

You think your father had smiled, then; yet even so far back he was the same stolid, respectable man that he is now. You were barely old enough to remember, in any case, and the memory is hazed by a child's perception of light.

Perhaps he had smiled.

***

So you had learned to play go. It had been, from that moment, an inevitability—perhaps had always been an inevitability, that this was something that you would choose for yourself, or that it would be chosen for you.

And every game you play you search—somewhere beneath the black and white and the dance of tactics and strategy—for that vague memory, for that sense of rightness. Somewhere, you know, in all of this, the universe will become a closed form, a nineteen-by-nineteen grid, smooth stones scattered like stars or some ancient fortune-teller's casting.

Every game you play—but you cannot find it, never find it.

***

And then, out of nowhere or everywhere, comes Shindou Hikaru.

Brash and bratty and obnoxious, and—that day at your father's go salon—utterly humiliating, and you can feel the shame under your skin, hot enough to scald.

But in the game there had been something—something—

***

The middle school tournament. It had been one embarrassment after another, really, and after you had played Shindou (and he had played so horribly, so terribly badly) you had wanted to hit him, closed-fist and fast, had wanted to yell and scream and curse. Most of it was because there was something, something there, in that game, that seemed so close to making sense and yet was, at the same time, so very far away.

You were alone and tired and so very, very afraid, and you were full of something like rage, but he had said, "I'll catch you."

He had said, "Look at me."

So you did.

***

There is still that vague feeling, sitting across a goban from Shindou Hikaru, closer, more concrete, as if you are just inches away from everything making sense.

And you know, now, that it might take years to bring yourself full-circle, to get back to the beginning of everything and rediscover that sense of purpose, of completion. But you also know that you are young.

And, you think, smiling vaguely at Shindou (who draws back a little, apprehensive) it will certainly be worth the wait.