Professional Debut
An exhibition match: Ju Hyunju, 7-dan, versus Ryu Seoa, fresh 1-dan.
For a match meant to welcome a new member of the professional ranks, it was far too brutal. Everyone had expected a one-sided affair, but Ju Hyunju 7-dan showed no mercy, pressing the attack without pause.
"Ah! A exquisite move from Ju Hyunju 7-dan, holding White. However Black responds, it's going to feel awful."
Jiah lay sprawled on the sofa, staring blankly at the television. Just as the commentator said, White's last move forced a dilemma on Black — caught between two evils, with no way forward and no way back.
But her tiny teacher was never one to be taken lightly. Jiah knew that in her bones. She had felt it with her whole body, and when Seoa had crushed Director Kim Yoonseul 3-dan — her own former master — even after giving up two points, she had felt something close to despair. A presence so distant it was terrifying. And that little girl was still hiding a frightening secret.
That was why Jiah had slammed her academy door shut without hesitation and followed the girl out. It might sound ridiculous to the rest of the world, but Jiah vaguely believed that Ryu Seoa would never lose to a female professional — whether that pro was an insei, a titleholder, anyone at all.
"Ah... this is—!"
After a full ten minutes of thought, the move Ryu Seoa finally played was completely off the wall — diverging entirely from the sequences the commentator had been chattering about for those same ten minutes. A move that, by conventional wisdom, simply could not be played there.
Had she misplaced a stone by accident? Or had she overcome the dilemma through an understanding of Go that surpassed even the famous commentator and Ju Hyunju 7-dan herself?
Personally, Jiah believed the latter.
The match descended into further chaos under that inscrutable move. The battlefield widened, and the local skirmish soon swelled into all-out war.
The initiative still belonged to Ju Hyunju 7-dan. But instead of pushing straight in, she carefully shaped conditions so the battlefield would favor her — a pressure so violent it conjured the image of heavy artillery hammering the front line. Before the thick smoke of the barrage could even settle, an infiltration force punched through the front at a ferocious pace. Brisk, dazzling mobility.
Ryu Seoa's depth was suddenly in danger of being encircled and annihilated outright.
"This won't be easy to stop. I don't see any way out."
The struggle in the center clearly favored Ju Hyunju 7-dan to anyone watching. The commentator tried several standard sequences, and every one of them ended in Black's destruction.
Yet Ryu Seoa did not crumble. She kept her supply lines alive by a hair's breadth while feeding in reserves held at just the right distance — and the choke point at the heart of it all was that very same odd spot she had played when facing the dilemma earlier.
Intention, or coincidence?
"What luck for Ryu Seoa 1-dan! That spot is practically her only lifeline!"
The commentator had judged it luck, but Jiah disagreed. The front lines locked in place, and Ju Hyunju 7-dan's rapidly advancing forces were stripped of their freedom to maneuver. Having failed to achieve her objective, it was now Ju Hyunju who found herself driven onto the defensive.
Even so, Ryu Seoa did not press aggressively. She simply nibbled away, bit by bit, at Ju Hyunju's isolated forces. Even when the 7-dan threw out a desperate gambit to turn the situation around, Seoa parried it lightly and went on silently tightening the noose around her stones.
Just watching made Jiah's breath catch in her throat.
Ju Hyunju 7-dan's resistance was desperate. But her stones grew more and more isolated, losing strength by the move. A belated retreat. She had preserved her forces, yes — but she had poured in enormous assets and achieved nothing.
She had taken a loss, certainly, but the game was not yet beyond Ju Hyunju's ability to recover. After her ambitious offensive collapsed, she took a moment to catch her breath. Likewise, Ryu Seoa closed her eyes briefly and sank into thought.
A lull settled over the board. Jiah pulled out her parents' laptop and began replaying the game so far. A precious chance to learn. The gap between her and her young teacher was so vast she had no confidence of ever closing it — but standing still would only let it widen forever.
She worked to grasp the meaning behind each and every move Ryu Seoa made holding Black. Perfectly mimicking Seoa's thinking was, of course, impossible for the Jiah of today. So instead she tried only to find the consistency running through the sequence of moves.
"Oh...!"
Something was there. A sensation like a thin thread fluttering in the wind. Goosebumps rose across her whole body as Jiah barely managed to catch the thread that kept drifting this way and that, threatening to slip out of sight. Carefully, carefully, so it wouldn't snap, she held on and drew it in little by little, until it pulled taut.
Following the unbroken thread, she laid out the sequence — and Ryu Seoa picked up a stone.
-Click.
-Tak.
A crisp sound rang out in time with the mouse click. The point where Ryu Seoa placed her stone on the TV screen and the point Jiah's cursor had landed on were one and the same.
-Click.
Before the commentator could even try his predicted sequence, Jiah's mouse released another stone.
-Click, click, click.
A brisk exchange of moves. If Ryu Seoa had assumed her opponent would also play the best response, the game would have ended exactly as Jiah played it out. The profit-and-loss statement that emerged from the tangled calculation: Black ahead by two and a half points.
"If 213, 214, and 215 are exchanged like this, there's no room left for variation. Black looks better by about two points. Ryu Seoa 1-dan has played a brilliant move!"
Only after Seoa and Ju Hyunju finished exchanging moves exactly as Jiah had played them, and went a few moves further, did the commentator finally catch on and complete his assessment of the position.
Ju Hyunju 7-dan seemed to sense her defeat, letting out a small sigh. But apparently she couldn't bring herself to throw in the towel, and she played out the endgame to the last.
The number of variations had shrunk far below the middle game. Ryu Seoa, who had wandered so lightly through the chaos without ever losing her way, was hardly going to collapse now. With an endgame that was clean, mistake-free, and stripped of every excess, she held the gap exactly as it was.
Nothing remained but neutral territory. Only then did Ju Hyunju 7-dan resign.
She hadn't dared believe it — but Seoa had really won.
"Haah."
A little girl who had entered a stage most players only dream of, far too easily — and on her debut day, no less, a victory over a female titleholder. It would be a lie to say Jiah felt no envy.
But whenever she pictured that innocent, guileless face, she couldn't bring herself to hold anything ugly against her.
Jiah closed the laptop and picked up her phone. Naturally, a flood of reactions poured in from the insei who had been watching the match. Some were genuinely awed by Ryu Seoa's talent, but most were busy tearing down Ju Hyunju 7-dan's skill instead.
Well. Maybe thinking that way was only natural. The result defied common sense by exactly that much, after all.
But Ryu Seoa would keep producing upsets like this one. Would their reactions stay the same then, too?
Jiah smiled faintly and set the phone down. It didn't matter what anyone else thought. What mattered more was—
"I saw it..."
She had looked at the board through Ryu Seoa's eyes. All she'd added was a single line of calculation to a problem whose solution was mostly written out already — and yet her heart was soaring. Had all those games they'd played together actually been working?
"Okay."
Not wanting to lose the feeling, Jiah logged onto an online Go server. Someday — maybe never, maybe not in this lifetime — she would still reach for the hem of that girl's stride.