The Qualification Tournament
Deep in replaying game records, Lee Jiah paused to check the message that had just arrived on her phone. It was from Seoa — the same as ever, relentlessly consistent.
There was plenty she wanted to point out, but for fear of wounding the young girl's feelings, she couldn't bring herself to say a word.
A soup dish, huh... Wasn't something like seolleongtang or kimchi stew what elementary schoolers usually liked?
But when she pressed for details, the answer that came back was ox-head soup with blood curd, or loach soup.
"Ugh..."
Both were menus that made her grimace. Still, when her tiny teacher said she wanted them, Jiah could hardly refuse.
The lesser evil was the loach soup place — the kind of restaurant at least where a children's cutlet menu might exist.
Having settled on a meeting, Jiah went back to her game replays until it was time to head to the appointed spot.
The girl was already there, waving cheerfully the moment she spotted her.
Ryu Seoa, 1-dan... no, under the current promotion rules — the female professional who had won a women's world championship to be promoted to 1-dan, and thus now stood at 2-dan.
For Lee Jiah, who hadn't even come close to the main draw of a domestic title, let alone winning a world championship, Seoa seemed like someone drifting further and further beyond her reach.
"Sorry I'm late! Did you wait long?"
"Not at all! I just got here myself."
The girl's smile looked utterly guileless. It was hard to believe this was the same person who had radiated such a menacing aura in Game 1 of the Hwaihe Cup final.
Jiah led the girl to a restaurant she'd looked up in advance and, behind her back, ordered one cutlet set along with the loach soup. Because if the girl found out Jiah had ordered the cutlet for her, her consideration overflowing to the point of tears, she'd insist they go somewhere else.
"Mmm... starting today, let's go over your opening play."
Settled into their seats at the restaurant, the blonde girl stretched out a hand with some effort to grab the water bottle as she spoke.
Ryu Seoa's opening play. The single greatest factor that had let her dominate female professionals around the world. She was widely credited with having completely dismantled the modified mini-Chinese openings that even Korean pros had been playing frequently of late.
For Seoa — possibly the strongest opening player among female pros — to personally instruct her was an extraordinary privilege.
"Please instruct me however you see fit, teacher."
"I'd rather call it researching together than instructing. Let's play just the first fifty moves, over and over, and compare notes."
"Understood, teacher."
"'Teacher' is too much for me."
When Jiah bowed her head politely, Ryu Seoa waved her hands in protest.
"If the strongest female player in the world isn't qualified to take on a student, who is?"
"...All right. Then at least speak casually with me."
"Then let's drop formalities together. Deal?"
They'd met fairly often, but the honorifics still put distance between them. Thinking it a good opportunity, Jiah offered the suggestion.
"Mm... I'll try..."
But Ryu Seoa was stubborn.
She was extremely averse to being called 'unnie' — could that be the reason?
"Careful, it's hot."
The cutlet and loach soup they'd ordered arrived, and the soup was set down in front of Jiah.
"Here you go, little miss — eat up nicely. You're so cute I fried one extra, so don't leave any behind."
"Ah... um, I..."
The restaurant lady vanished before Seoa could say a word. The blonde girl, cutlet set before her, looked visibly crestfallen.
She must have thought the order had gotten mixed up.
"The cutlet's mine. Here, take it."
"Oh... thank you."
The girl relaxed with relief.
"But if you don't actually like loach soup, and you're forcing yourself because of me..."
"No, really — I saw what the person next to us ordered, and it suddenly looked delicious. And we got a free extra cutlet out of it, so it's fine."
"Really? What a relief!"
The girl heaved a sigh of relief, then dumped in a heaping pile of perilla seed powder and chives.
The way she scooped up a big, generous spoonful with a face of pure bliss could only be described as that of a middle-aged man.
Her biological father supposedly hailed from Cardiff, England — so whose appetite had she inherited?
As she cut into her cutlet, Jiah sank into private thought.
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A hearty lunch followed by coffee — it didn't get better than this.
Ever since she'd returned to Go, Ryu Seoa had been endlessly indebted to the Neulpureun Baduk Center. She and Jiah settled into a secluded corner, seated across from each other.
"I want us to play with real tension, so let's set a time limit."
She set the clock and took Black.
The opening had been one of Shin Changmo's strengths, and here she was the only professional alive who had lived through the AlphaGo era. She wanted to expose Jiah to as wide a variety of openings as possible.
In the qualification tournament, where she'd be playing three or more short-format games a day, the importance of opening play needed no elaboration.
As if to prove how much study she'd put in, Jiah handled the latest opening theories with ease. Judged on openings alone, she could hold her own against some of the female pros.
But the professional world was full of variables. Opponents would refuse to walk into familiar formations, or stray from joseki for any number of reasons.
So Seoa deliberately trotted out an opening that had been fashionable in the seventies — the hyangsomok, somewhat unfamiliar to Jiah.
She mischievously twisted the joseki this way and that, dismantling conventional wisdom.
The first fifty moves: advantage, Seoa, playing Black.
A light review, then straight into a fresh game.
Taking Black and White in turns, they repeated only the early phase of the match, over and over.
By the twentieth game, her concentration had begun to slip noticeably, and they decided to take a short break. Of the twenty games, eighteen had gone to Seoa. Even the remaining two were somewhat disadvantageous, but playable — nothing worse than that. Converted to expected win rate, that had to be at least ninety percent.
"Let's keep going."
Rolling a candy around in her mouth to replenish her sugar, Seoa spoke.
"Yes!"
Jiah's fighting spirit remained unbroken.
Seoa pressed her relentlessly, now actively wielding even the openings of the AlphaGo era against her.
Jiah wouldn't improve in a single day. But if she could grow even a little more comfortable with a wider range of openings, it would surely become a powerful weapon in the qualification tournament.
In truth, Seoa could simply have made her memorize a handful of set formations to imitate. She herself had done the research until she was sick of it — the win rates alone were thoroughly verified.
But if you kept playing formulaic moves by rote, sooner or later it would backfire and trip you up. Because she knew the goal wasn't just turning pro now, but surviving after, Seoa chose to force the harder road.
If becoming a professional only meant one defeat after another, it would be kinder to never make it at all and find a different path. She had no desire to mold Lee Jiah into another Kim Yoonseul, the master who had once taught her. If there was no realistic chance of success, then breaking the dream early could be a mercy.
But Jiah had talent, beyond question.
With every repeated game her mistakes shrank, and she grew more flexible in handling unfamiliar moves.
"Again."
Even so, it was always Seoa who finished the opening at an advantage. One day alone could never be enough.
If she was going to teach at all, she'd do it properly. Rather than a teacher who offered only sweet words and comfortable comfort, she wanted to be someone a little stricter, but genuinely useful.
And so she drove Lee Jiah hard, over and over, without pause.