A Week Away From the Board
The WY Insurance Cup Amateur Tournament had led us, at Grandfather's suggestion, to a pizza place — it happened to be mealtime.
A high school girl whose eyes had reddened from crying so bitterly gnawed on a slice of pizza, sneaking glances at me.
Grandfather had stepped away for the restroom.
Lee Jiah, was it?
Personally, I didn't think she had any urgent reason to panic, but she was certainly at an age where restlessness came easily. It was a little late to be looking for another path, yet committing herself to Go alone left her without confidence. Doubts about her own talent and potential would be starting to surface by now.
And those doubts would be hard to dismiss as groundless. If you split professional players by whether they turned pro around age sixteen or later, those who made it before sixteen generally reached a higher peak of strength. There were two main reasons for this. First, players with superior natural talent tend to stand out at a younger age. Second, in those fast-absorbing early years, they're naturally exposed to environments where they play far more games against masters.
Of course, nothing is absolute. Some bloom early and wither just as quickly, while plenty of players ignite their passion late and assert their presence for years afterward.
In my case, I received my professional diploma — the one bearing my three-syllable name — at twenty-six. I'd had no money for the registration seal, so I'd worked for years and served in the military besides, and time had slipped by faster than I noticed.
Perhaps because of that, I poured out even more passion and effort to catch up with the younger players. Maybe I would have burned out and fallen behind even without being swept away by the raging current of the AI era.
In the end, exceptions aside, if circumstances allow, the earlier you turn professional, the better.
The girl in front of me had begged me, desperately, for help.
And of course I wanted to take that hand gladly and guide her toward the higher world a little faster.
But I was still wandering, unable to find my own way — and I worried that instead of helping her, I'd simply set us both adrift together. And yet this girl had set aside her pride and her feelings alike and found the courage to ask me.
Refusing to even try was no way to honor that.
"You said you needed help, right?"
I broke the silence and asked Lee Jiah.
"Yeah, mhm. When I played with you, I felt something different from usual. I was just going to ask if we could play one more time and get your number, that's all. But — I don't know — it felt like if all we did was swap numbers, we might never actually meet, and I got so anxious I couldn't do anything, and then I went and ugly-cried. I'm really sorry."
Having calmed down somewhat, the girl apologized in a voice grown composed again.
"If that's all it is, I'll play with you as many times as you like, until you're satisfied. As long as it helps you improve."
"...Really? Thank you so much!"
At my words, Lee Jiah managed a relieved smile.
"In exchange, erase Go from your mind for about a week."
"What?"
At what followed, she stared at me in visible confusion.
"Is there an insei league next week? Or a tournament you're entered in?"
"No, there isn't, but..."
She shook her head at my question.
"Then it shouldn't be difficult."
"Okay, but why?"
"You asked for my help, didn't you? So I'm going to help you. Trust me, and do as I say."
Explaining would only drag things out. Instead of an explanation, I asked for her trust.
Rigid, passive Go — the kind born of anxiety and obsession. However desperate you may be, sometimes the right answer is to step away.
"B-but the pro qualification exam is coming up soon..."
Unable to shake her unease, Lee Jiah whispered.
"How many years have you been playing?"
"Since I was six, so... about eleven years?"
"You've played for eleven years, and you think a little rest is going to erase all of that? Think of it as recovery and recharging, and rest properly!"
"B-but... when I played with you, something changed, and I want to keep going, just a little more, right now..."
Chase something too desperately, and it drifts further away. However badly you need it, if desperation and impatience rule your approach, you'll only lose your grip on it.
"If you don't like it, quit."
"O-okay! I'll do whatever you say!"
When I cut off her fidgeting, half-anxious stammering with a flat refusal, she had no choice but to nod.
"Then it's a deal, right? If I really rest from Go for a week, you'll play with me as many times as I want?"
"Of course."
"Then give me your number."
She handed me her phone, brimming with determination.
"Here you go."
"You won't ignore me, right? If I text, you'll definitely pick up?"
"Don't worry. Now let's eat before it gets cold."
Still unable to dispel her worry, she kept checking on me with those pleading eyes, and I reached for a slice of pizza that still held its warmth to put her fears to rest.
Winning the amateur tournament had confirmed that my strength had returned — not perfectly, but to a respectable degree — and six million won was enough to put out the most urgent of fires. There was no reason left for me to enter amateur tournaments.
A ghost whose very existence was an absurdity had no business haunting a place like that any longer than necessary.
I had already chosen the next tournament I would enter.
The NJ Fire Cup World Championship — an international title tournament with a winner's purse of two hundred million won.
Thanks to my victory in the WY Cup, I'd earned the right to enter the open preliminary round directly. My goal was the main tournament.
Frankly, hoping for anything beyond that was unrealistic for who I was now. Reaching the main draw alone was more than I deserved to aim for.
The general division preliminaries would be held this weekend. Aside from seeded players, the main-tournament tickets allotted were sixteen for the open division and three each for the women's and senior divisions — twenty-two in all.
I could have applied for the women's division, but right now I wanted to test myself against stronger opponents, so I'd registered for the open division. Besides, even in the women's bracket, the strongest female players would be packed in ranks, so it wasn't as though my chances of reaching the main draw were dramatically better there.
Three hundred-some applicants competing for the open division's sixteen tickets — a ratio of roughly twenty to one.
And the overwhelming majority of those three hundred were professionals. The amateurs amounted to a handful of top insei and the ten or so who'd survived the amateur preliminaries — and they were nearly pros themselves, so they might as well have been.
Even reaching the main tournament was like plucking a star from the sky.
Which was precisely why merely advancing to the main draw of an international title tournament as an amateur earned Special Professional Induction points.
I couldn't enter the pro qualification exam — held just once a year — and steal the chance from other insei like Lee Jiah, so however grueling, this was the most correct path available. And yet...
"Haah, damn it all."
I lowered my gaze and studied my own body.
Everything about it was small and dainty. The symbolic changes hadn't arrived yet — apart from when I used the bathroom, I barely noticed that I'd become a girl. My chest hadn't filled out; the fine down on my arms remained unshaven.
Besides, my childhood held no memories of Shin Changmo, so I'd simply grown up naturally, with no occasion to feel anything amiss.
But now that I'd returned to Go, this small, fragile body grated on me beyond words. Even without any physical change having taken place, I found myself acutely aware that I was a woman.
In Go, women are weaker than men.
The primary reason is that the population of female Go players is absolutely tiny compared to that of men, relative to the general population.
But even if you assumed the numbers of male and female players were equal, a gap would still remain.
I don't for a moment believe women's mental abilities are inferior to men's. But men and women evolved along different paths over humanity's long history of performing different roles, and the result is that women became physically weaker than men — an undeniable fact.
Stamina. Physical conditioning. You might ask what any of that matters in a sport played with the mind, but sitting motionless and holding your focus demands considerable physical endurance.
That mistakes appear more frequently in women's Go is, I suspect, largely because the physical disadvantage causes concentration to erode sooner.
"Whew."
A half-finished chance. I had no standing to complain, fool that I was for throwing my life away — but if a chance was going to be granted to me anyway, I'd wanted it to be a whole one.
In a women's tournament — an amateur one at that, without a single professional — I hadn't felt any physical limit tied to sex or age.
But I already dreaded that in this NJ Fire Cup open preliminary, I would come face to face with limits I could not overcome.
No. No, that's wrong.
I hadn't even tried yet. Declaring it impossible before making the attempt was nothing but a filthy exercise in hunting for excuses in advance.
I forced my eyes away from my own small, small hands and forearms.
My phone rang — the one phone that had no business ringing while I was this lost in my own troubled thoughts.
It reflected my pathetically thin web of relationships, the kind where I hadn't managed a single decent friend at school; my contact list amounted to Father, Mother, and Grandfather, and nothing more. Thinking it might be a spam text, I checked the screen.
It was from Lee Jiah. Bored, presumably, from not playing Go.
Having kept a certain distance from electronic devices even in my past life, it still took me a embarrassingly long time to peck out even a short message.
School would be starting again soon. The pile of unfinished vacation homework weighed on me a little, but beyond that, there was nothing else I needed to do. And if I was going to coach Lee Jiah properly as promised, getting closer to her was a necessary step — so I decided to put the homework off.
Had I sent something strange?
I typed out my address and mulled it over, but even scrolling back up to reread the thread, I couldn't figure out for the life of me what had been strange about it.