Due to a job-change I moved to another city, whose go-club I would soon be a regular at. The mood there was sometimes a bit downcast, something suppressing was hanging in the air, yet noone confided in me and everytime I would steer the conversation towards these lingering clouds that seemed to be weighing down on everyone, I would just reap silent stares and gloomy faces avoiding my eyes.
Eventually I got around to befriending a guy, Johan, in the club, in fact, more than befriend him: I fell in love.

At first oblivious to it, I caught myself daydreaming about him at work, and my girlfriend at that time grew suspicious of me, though I kept reassuring her that, and I was feeling entirely truthful, I wasn't seeing anybody.
But I also knew she was right, I did stop loving her, yet I was in love.

With my relationship going rapidly downhill, I took even more comfort in going to the go-club at Wednesdays, and sometimes would even arrange to meet Johan privately to play on his floor-goban at his place. At this point I was already conscious of my desires towards him, but couldn't fathom ever openly talking about them to anyone, certainly not to him.

One Saturday I convinced him to stay home and play go with me instead of going to the movies, and, completely alone, we played a few games and joked around light-heartedly about trivial matters, as we would often do.
But then there was a change in atmosphere; a lump in the throat, a knot in my stomach, I was suddenly struck mute and helplessly cast embarressed glances around his dorm, while he was clearing the goban.
After he finished putting the stones away, he didn't say anything for quite a while and we just sat in silence, avoiding each other's eyes.
My heart pounding and feeling a panic surge up in me, desperate to break the silence somehow, I blurted out a comment about that depressing atmosphere in the go-club that I had noticed when I first moved to the city.
Without raising his head, almost inaudible, he said it was his sister; she used to come to the club and died at the age of 10, two and a half years ago.
Dumbstruck by this unexpected confession, the silence felt even more repressing, but a moment later he resumed:

Luisa, that was her name, was being bullied at school by a gang of vicious little boys on whose ringleader, to top it off, she had a terrible crush.
She was beautiful and had friends at school that sympathized with her situation, but she would often just fall silent and stare vacantly into the air at home, where the world wasn't perfect either: her mother had frequent visits to the hospital because of psychotic episodes. Luisa was left in the dark about what was happening with her mother, but she had some ideas, and it was obvious that she wasn't coping too well.
When Johan left home and went to university, he suggested Luisa should come to the go-club with him sometimes. (Him and Luisa used to be inseperable. From what I can tell, she was quite infatuated with him.)
At the go-club she received a warm welcome: beaming with happiness when playing and being together with her brother, she became a regular, visiting even when Johan couldn't because he was too busy studying.
She had assumed a precocious air around the club and was treated by everyone as their own child. Everyone liked to play her and she loved playing everyone. She improved very quickly and was obviously happy.
But sometimes she would get really upset when she lost. At times she would just brush it off and start a new game, but at other times it seemed to strike an odd note with her and her gleaming smile would be gone for the rest of the day, despite everone's efforts to cheer her up.

At a loss for what to say I asked how strong she was. Johan told me her IGS account, “bunny215”, was at 12kyu at the end.

At this I felt the floor beneath me dropping away, my head spinning, like I'd just been struck with a sledgehammer. My heart began pounding even harder and I got a ringing in my ears.

Johan, still looking down, didn't notice any of that, breathed a deep sigh, and continued in a mechanical manner:
In the summer two years ago, on the morning of May 21st, Luisa went into the attic and found her mother dangling from a wooden beam, electrical chord around her neck.

Having said that, Johan fell silent again. After a pause:

She stopped coming to the club after that and was silent most of the time. She hardly left her room when she was home and her teachers were very worried about her. It was during that time of isolation that she started playing go online.

Johan sighed heavily with blank eyes, finishing his account:
during a lecture on 18th century Russian law, he got a call from his father, hysterical, that Luisa had hung herself the night before.

I felt like I was going to faint, my heart still racing, I mumbled something about having to go to the toilet, struggled to my feet and, not even sure Johan had heard what I said, went towards the bathroom as if drunken.

I locked myself inside, got on all fours and felt like vomiting, but couldn't. My head was swimming, and I tried getting up to look into the mirror: the room was shaking and the pallid grimmace madly peering back at me from the mirror did little to ease my condition.

I stormed out of the toilet and went straight for the door of the flat without saying anything to Johan, who was still sitting in front of the goban with a downcast look, obviously consumed by his own demons and not able to recognize my behaviour as odd.


With things not working out very well in my new job anyways, and feeling a strong urge to get away from the affair with Johan and also from my girlfriend, I left town shortly afterwards.

I have never told anyone about this until today, and if you're reading this, Johan: I am sorry.
And Luisa, I'm sorry, too. I hope you found your mother in heaven.