On the subway, Sai stood quietly beside Hikaru, while Akira Tōya stood with his back to them, staring out the window.
Hikaru could clearly sense how serious Akira was,, and only then did he realize that he may have said something wrong.
But twelve-year-old pride makes apologies difficult.
Even when Sai openly pointed out his mistake, Hikaru puffed up his cheeks and refused to admit it.
"Don't forget, last time you only beat him by 2 points!
And with your strength, only winning by two points against ordinary grade-schoolers. I don't believe you can 'easily win championships.'"
So Hikaru started shifting blame,, saying Sai "wasn't strong enough" or that he was "just joking."
Saori sighed.
This, truly was how children behaved. Infuriating, but painfully realistic.
Sai, ever patient, explained:
"That was just a teaching game. The purpose was to guide your opponent toward proper moves.
I wasn't trying to crush him."
"And Hikaru, Akira is not an ordinary elementary schooler. Though immature, his Go already shines with brilliance, he radiates an extraordinary aura."
Inside the subway, Sai and Hikaru argued internally, while Akira stared at his reflection in the window, his expression sharp, focused, determined.
That oppressive, stormlike presence burst off the page.
This… was Go.
Even though it was just two kids playing, Saori felt her chest tighten.
When they reached the Go club, the same middle-aged uncles were there.
And the moment Akira walked in with Hikaru, the whole club erupted.
"It's him! That kid who beat Akira!"
People put down their stones immediately, crowding around the two boys sitting at the board.
Akira spoke first: "Please sit."
Then, as if asking, but actually declaring:
"Shall we play even?"
"I'll take the stones."
Saori finally understood the procedure:
Akira picked stones. Hikaru guessed odd or even. If correct, Hikaru played black. If wrong, white.
"Even number! I got it right!
I'm black!"
Akira immediately shot back: "You'll give me seven and a half points."
This was nothing like last time, when he offered Hikaru a handicap of three stones.
Today, Akira's eyes were razor-sharp. And Hikaru, was intimidated into silence.
"Please teach me."
"P–please, teach me." Hikaru echoed awkwardly.
Then the match began.
"Seventeen–four…"
On the very first move, Akira fell into deep thought.
Sai considered going easy, but Saori shouted internally:
"YES. Be gentle! He's a kid! Save your brutality for Hikaru, the one who keeps running his mouth!"
But Akira's opening moves were like blades, so sharp Sai couldn't take it lightly.
Stone after stone fell.
Saori had no idea what the moves meant, but the atmosphere made it perfectly clear who controlled the game.
Akira's aura grew sharper. Sai's expression grew heavier.
Eventually, "Good, come at me."
Sai smiled faintly.
Akira's counterattack exploded across the board.
Black and white clashed, cutting, connecting, fighting for life.
Saori couldn't explain what she was seeing, but she couldn't look away either.
Then she flipped the page, and the entire mood crashed down.
Rain streaked the windows.
The cheering uncles' faces darkened.
Akira's shoulders trembled as tears dripped onto the board.
Still, he upheld the final dignity of a Go player:
"I… I resign."
Saori blinked, stunned.
'Did Shirogane-sensei really have to do this? Would it have killed him to let Akira win just once?'
Hikaru, guilty and uncomfortable, tried to comfort him.
Which, to a defeated player, felt less like kindness, and more like mockery.
If Hikaru had just left quietly, Akira would suffer less.
Akira fell into deep self-doubt.
Raised by a Meijin father, trained every day of his life, yet powerless in front of this peer possessed by Sai.
(Meijin= Prestigious Professional Go title)
The manga's lighting dimmed.
Unable to bear the tension, Hikaru ran out into the rain.
He confronted Sai: "Why did you have to win like that?! Why not win by a little, like last time?!"
Sai's response was simple, sad, and honest:
"He did not give me the chance, nor the space to hold back."
Saori's emotions merged with the manga completely.
She didn't understand Go. She didn't understand the depth of passion behind it.
But Akira's portrayal, it made her wonder:
'Do real Go players also rise through such pain, practice, and persistence? Is becoming a professional really this intense?'
Among the over a billion people in Japan, how many love and are passionate about Go like Akira?
At the end of the third chapter, Hikaru, despite winning against Akira, was plagued by self-reproach for several days.
But because of that game, Hikaru gradually developed an interest in Go.
Until one day, driven by his newfound interest in Go, he returned to the entrance of that Go club.
There, he bumped into Ogat Seiji, a 9-dan professional player he had met at the Go tournament, and was pulled into the club by him, where he also met Akira's father, Koyo Toya.
Through a series of coincidences, Koyo also realized that the child who had blurted out a crucial move that only professional players could see at the Go tournament, and the player who had been rumored to have beaten his son in recent days, were one and the same person.
And the other party, in turn, directly challenged him to a game.
Hikaru instinctively refused, but Sai pleaded with him to let him play against Koyo, a top contemporary player.
Saori's heart tightened again.
Then, the most touching scene in the third chapter of the manga appeared.
Koyo's moves were clean and decisive, carrying a sharp intensity.
In contrast, Hikaru's method of holding the stone between his thumb and index finger seemed clumsy and awkward.
Sai whispered the next move's location in his ear.
But deep inside Hikaru, there was an urge.
"Actually… I want to play too."
He instinctively reached for the stone box.
Then he instinctively began to learn the posture of a professional player's move, 'I want to, like him, like him, play Go!'
Saori held her breath, her eyes scanning the last page of the third chapter of the manga.
It showed Hikaru not following Sai's suggested move, but instead holding a Go stone between his index and middle fingers, and spontaneously placing it wherever he wanted, Hikaru's face showed a startled expression as he looked at his fingers after making the move.
Behind him, Sai's expression was equally surprised.
In front of Hikaru, Koyo intently watched Hikaru's move.
Just a simple manga panel, yet it completely ignited Saori's suppressed emotions.
Although she didn't understand it, she was incredibly excited.
"This is Hikaru, the protagonist of this manga, making his first move in the game."
The plot was a bit sudden, and Hikaru was a bit willful, but it sparked a longing in her.
Is Go such a cool sport?
Turning the page again, Saori found it was a scene from another manga in the journal.
"Chapter Three, finished already!"
A sense of loss welled up in her heart.
"Teacher Shirogane, what do you mean by ending it here?"
"This is a game between Sai and Koyo, who can almost be called the number one Go player in contemporary manga!"
"You let Hikaru make a random move, and then you cut the story here."
"Who taught you to end chapters like this?"
"What will happen to this game?"
"Can Sai turn this game around?"
"Ah, I really want to know what happens next!"
"So annoying!"
Unable to bear it any longer, Saori opened her computer and searched for the Dream Comic official website.
As soon as she opened the forum, she found that there were quite a few fans like her.
"Can anyone tell me what's so special about the game between Sai and Koyo? I don't understand it at all."
"What can you tell from only a dozen moves! It's all in the opening layout. It's just that Hikaru's last move was too terrible, utterly unplayable, I don't even want to talk about it."
"This protagonist makes me furious, can't you change the protagonist to Sai!"
"Haven't you understood yet? In this manga, Sai can only be the male secondary character. He should be possessing Hikaru, guiding him to grow and enter the world of Go, which is the main storyline."
"Exactly, if Sai were the protagonist and Hikaru was just a robotic assistant for playing Go, this manga wouldn't last more than half a year. Most likely, it would be a story of Sai rampaging through the Go world and eventually becoming a world champion, which would feel quite boring."
"It got me excited. What a cool manga, Hikaru's last move, really, I felt such a strong sense of immersion."
"Me too, my scalp tingled when I saw that scene. Although I felt Hikaru was willful, I was also moved by his actions. It seems he really fell in love with Go under Sai's influence!"
"I never thought I would one day get so excited about a manga I don't understand at all."
"The story is too excellent! It doesn't matter if you don't understand Go, as long as you understand the plot."
"But I want to understand both the plot and Go!"
"Then go find a beginner's Go tutorial book and read it. But let me tell you, it's completely different from reading manga. Beginner Go tutorials are extremely dry, the rules are complicated enough, and there are a bunch of joseki to memorize…"
"It doesn't matter, I'll buy it this afternoon. It's rare to be interested in something, so I'll learn it first. I'm not planning to be a professional player or anything, I just want to understand the games in this manga."
"I still find it hard to believe that this is a story drawn by a romance manga artist. Teacher Shirogane is truly amazing, It's just this plot cliffhanger, sigh, it's too frustrating."
The discussion threads about hikaru no go on the forum had clearly increased significantly compared to last week.
And most importantly, the number of negative reviews for the hikaru no go manga remained extremely low, as always.
Unlike other manga in the Deam Comic Journal.
The vast majority of serialized manga receive mixed reviews.
It can be said that there are a great number of people who like a particular manga and an equally great number who dislike it.
Often, the manga ranked first in the journal also has the most anti-fans among all serialized manga in the journal.
But hikaru no go was peculiar.
People who understood Go enjoyed it thoroughly, while those who didn't understand Go were swept up by the emotional tension between the characters, and, unexpectedly, began developing a strong interest in Go because of the theme.
As for anti-fans… they were almost impossible to find.
Even those who admitted, after reading three chapters, that this wasn't their usual type of manga rarely criticized it. At most, they complained about how annoying Hikaru could be.
The next day, the newest performance statistics for Dream Comic Weekly were released.
Chapter 3 of Hikaru no Go ranked 13th in popularity and maintained a 9.1 rating, which, due to tiny shifts in the decimal points, pushed its rating ranking up to 6th place among the 20 serialized titles.
Initially, most of the industry expected Hikaru no Go to hover around 14th–15th place for a while. Only after accumulating some momentum would it even attempt to break into the top ten.
But by now, Dream Comic insiders had started noticing something unusual.
Three consecutive weeks of upward movement was rare enough that many editors began paying very close attention.
Especially within the editorial department, people were now openly envious of Misaki.
"Misaki is unbelievably lucky. She just happened to discover Shirogane, and in less than a year she went from assistant editor at Sakura-iro Weekly to assistant editor for Dream Comic's serialized works."
"Luck… sigh…"
"This new manga Hikaru no Go is shaping up to be something special. This is probably the strongest-performing new series in its first three weeks over the past three years."
"Fifteenth in week one, fourteenth in week two, thirteenth in week three, steadily rising every single week. Some manga sit in the same position for half a year and never budge, but this one? This one really looks like a dark horse."
"And its reader rating keeps inching upward too. Its reputation is actually stronger than its raw popularity."
"That's the strange part, are Japanese readers suddenly okay with a Go manga? Didn't a small secondary magazine serialize a Go manga a few years ago? It got axed in under fourteen months. Should I tell my own artists to experiment with this theme too?"
"Feels like Go might be a new micro-trend. Even I'm getting curious."
Though most editors tried not to let Misaki hear these conversations, her hearing was excellent. When she calmed down and focused, all the murmured discussions slowly drifted into her ears.
'A Go-themed trend in the manga industry?'
Misaki almost burst out laughing internally.
It was clearly Rei's storytelling that was the real force behind this.
His Hikaru no Go, even if you replaced Go with chess or shōgi or any other mind sport, would still grip the audience.
After calming herself, Misaki stared for a long time at the latest ranking.
At this rate, how long until it breaks into the top ten?
If the climb continued and the reputation remained this strong, a new thought quietly formed in her mind.
Based on Hoshimori Group's history:
If a title keeps rising every week, and its rating stays high, upper management will absolutely begin preparing multi-media expansion early.
Japan's market was enormous. Animation investors weren't cautious the way foreign markets were. Very few adaptations ever truly lost money, the audience pool was simply too large.
Even weak adaptations usually found tens of thousands of niche fans.
Let alone titles from the Six Major Magazines, where even mediocre works could earn solid returns.
Misaki originally only hoped that Hikaru no Go would help Rei establish himself at Dream Comic Weekly. She hadn't even dared think about adaptations.
But now, her perspective was shifting.
Ambitions grow with the environment.
Manga artists dream of seeing their work animated.
Editors dream of seeing the titles they've nurtured air during prime-time hours on national TV stations.