“Hikaru, maybe we should leave - this place is creepy,” Akari said, looking worriedly at the shelf that sat in the far end. It was full of bottles and lot of them looked a little volatile. “What if we break something and something happens, or -”
Hikaru snorted and turned to a near by chest to try and get it open. “Stop whining - it’s fine. No one’s been in this place in years, and there’s nothing here that could - ooph!’ Hikaru gasped as the chest suddenly sprung open, covering the whole area in dust. ”…be dangerous. And besides, gramps isn’t even a real alchemist - he just collects this stuff. Aw man its just more worthless crap.“
"What’s that? It looks pretty,” Akari pointed and Hikaru picked up the polished block of wood. “Is that some sort of… alchemy altar?”
“Don’t be stupid - alchemy doesn’t have altars, it’s not a cult …” Hikaru frowned at the weird block if wood. It was huge with sculpted legs and had a grid on top of it. “I think it’s a game board or something. Huh, what’s it doing here?”
“Maybe it’s an alchemy game?” Akari asked and straightened up with a stretch. “Maybe we should ask your grandpa how it’s played.”
“And tell him we were on his shed without permission? He’d kill me!” Hikaru snorted and peered at the game board. It had that handcrafted, antique look to it and looked like it could be worth a lot of money. “I think I’ll take this,” he decided and stood up. “Oh it’s lighter than I thought…”
“Are you sure? ” Akari asked worriedly and peered at the ladder. “Um how are you going to get it down from here?”
Hijaru paused. “Hm. I’ll go down and you’ll hand it over to me,” he decided and set the game board down on the edge of the ladder before jumping down.
“Hikaru, I don’t know about this…” Akari said warily. “It looks really heavy.”
“Its really not - just looks like it is. Just push it over the edge and l catch it - come on, it’ll be fine!”
After a moment of hesitating, Akari crouched down and pushed the board over the edge. Expecting it to be much heavier than it was, though, the shove she gave the game board was much stronger than necessary - and so the board went flying over the edge much faster than either of them expected. Below, Hikaru let out a surprised cry and hurriedly ducked out of the way as the block of wood came flying at him.
With a resounding crack, it crashed on the stone floor and broke into dozens of pieces and splinters.
“Akari!” Hikaru shouted, horrified
“Sorry, sorry! It was lighter than I thought it was!”
“I just told you it wasn’t!”
Dismayed, Hikaru crouched down to examine the damage. The board was a goner, no doubt about that - though there weren’t as much splinters as he thought. The board had been hollow, and the sides hadn’t been even nearly as thick as Hikaru had assumed.
“Ow, damnit - what the -” Hikaru yanked his hand back and stated at his fingers. He’d cut them on something - his middle finger was bleeding. “What the - is there glass in here?”
“I thought I heard glass shatter, ” Akari commented from above. “Was there something inside it?”
“A bottle or something, yeah…”
Hikaru poked around the remains of the game board, poking at the glass shards. Why would someone build a game board with glass bottle inside it? Then the thought of all the dangerous stuff that was involved in alchemy popped in his head and Hikaru shivered. Because the better question was - what was inside the bottle?
“I’m coming down, ” Akari said just as Hikaru saw it - a glimmer of red amidst the shards. Brushing the shards aside, he reached out to grab it and -
“It was really scary,” Akari told him next day on school. “You just shrieked and passed out - I almost fell off the ladder! I’m sorry if you got trouble for it, but I couldn’t just do anything - so I ran to get your drandpa who called the doctor and -”
“Its fine,” Hikaru grumbled sullenly. “Mom shouted a bit and I’m grounded but it’s fine. I just wish my head would stop pounding…”
His head had felt fuzzy since the whole thing - the doctor suspected it had been some entrapped toxin that had been released or something. The game board had apparently been part of a collection grandpa had bought from some action way back when - they’d been selling some alchemist’s old stuff and the game board had been part of it. No one had ever thought it was anything special until now - and with whatever was inside the thing evaporated into thin air, no one would ever know what the alchemist had hidden in the game.
Alchemists did stuff like that apparently - coding and hiding their research so that it couldn’t be stolen by other alchemists.
(Torajiro hadn’t been good with written codes. He’d preferred a more manual approach - and he’s liked the steam lined simplicity of Go. The black and white stones and the predetermined size of the Goban to him was the perfect platform for alchemical calculations - everything could be translated into simple pattern of yes and no, present and absent, positive, negative. Black and white. He’d encoded entire alchemical arrays in a single kifu - and hidden his thought process in the exganged of hands. Sai had always found it incredibly clever - for a human.)
Hikaru blinked, lifting his head. What the hell was that?
“Is there something wrong?” Akari asked worriedly.
“No, I just… no, I must’ve imagined it,” Hijaru muttered and rubbed at his forehead. “Never mind.”
“Alright,” Akari answered dubiously. “So, um. That’s cool. What is it?” she asked, nodding g at his hand.
On the back of Hikaru’s right hand, there was a pattern of seven small circles - four black ones in a diamond shape, interlocked with three white ones.
(Atari. It was Torajiro’s symbol for Truth and Equivalent Exhange. Nothing else embodied the brutal reality of it better - how to gain something, something must be lost.)
“I have no idea,” Hikaru answered, rubbing a hand over the Atari symbol. “I think the doctor put it there - I had it when I woke up. Some kind if anti toxin thing maybe.”
“Oh, okay,” Akari said and shrugged. “Okay then.”
As she went to get her books for class, Hikaru rubbed at his forehead again. What the hell was happening to him?
(Sai had never been meant for a body. he’d been what he was and he’d been satisfied with that - to watch Torajiro had been interesting enough. The long years in silence and darkness had been preferable to the constant, never ending Noise of Truth. He’d been happy in his flask, in that quiet and unobtrusive existence far from his origins. He’d learned to love Go and it’s complicated simplicity and alchemy… alchemy…)
(Hello, Shindo Hikaru. I am Sai, I am what people call an Homonculus. What do you know about alchemy?)
