The Winning Streak
Humans are lazy from birth.
The brain is designed to conserve energy at every turn, and that applies not only to physical activity but to mental effort as well.
The brain's purpose is 'survival,' never 'Go.' To deny comfortable, ingrained habits and deliberately wring out something revolutionary runs entirely contrary to what the brain considers 'efficient.'
When I played the way I'd always played, the brain never felt any need to stray from the straight line that 'Shin Chang-mo' had drawn.
Even at the very moment of consciously forcing myself to squeeze out new ideas, the brain pursues efficiency.
And the product of that pursuit is, once again, the alternatives 'Shin Chang-mo' would have chosen. At every instant, the brain tempts me down the path of least resistance.
All the more so because, deep down, I already know I could win without playing any differently.
The match against Megumi Yuzu 8-dan ended in a crushing victory. A win by thirteen and a half points.
Thanks to surrendering to inertia and the weakness in my own heart — playing it exactly the way I'd mindlessly play under the handle tlscksah1021 on internet Go.
"Damn it…."
I fling the stones down in irritation.
The match against Megumi Yuzu 8-dan, which I'd been replaying over and over since getting home.
No matter how many times I go through it, the result never satisfies me.
The weakness of a heart chasing only comfort, and the compulsion that I must play differently. It's a vicious cycle repeating itself.
The more I play, the worse my Go becomes.
Somewhere along the way, the clock hands point to three in the morning.
I really ought to sleep before this afternoon's match, but sleep won't come.
Why on earth am I like this?
Playing exactly as I had in my past life would be more than enough to bask in glory and honor, and in the financial comfort that would follow as a matter of course.
The yardstick measuring me isn't 'Shin Chang-mo,' world-title holder and veteran professional, but a first-year rookie, a female Go player who is still in elementary school.
The standards are endlessly forgiving. I've already achieved more than any outside yardstick would demand. Even if I stumbled a little, no one would rake me over the coals for it.
If I merely performed at the level of an average male professional in ordinary tournaments, who on earth would criticize me?
"…To hell with that."
I shake my head to cut off the flow of thought before it drifts somewhere I don't want it to go.
I set the board aside for a moment and go to the bathroom to splash my face with cold water.
Dull eyes glazed with exhaustion. Hair tangled into a bird's nest from all the head-wringing. Lips chapped raw from anxious chewing. Add a scowl on top, and the girl in the mirror looks thoroughly dissolute.
"Tch."
I smack the mirror in irritation.
Would it have been different if I'd been reborn as a man?
There's nothing more foolish than blaming the circumstances you've been handed, and yet here I am, facing my own limits like this, and the laments only pile up.
Lugging my foul mood along, I wash up. With my face still buried in the towel, I sit back down at the board.
I clear the stones away and return to square one.
To prepare for the scheduled rematch against Hui Yun 5-dan, I need at least a bare minimum of sleep.
Which means, just one more time — the very last one.
I pick up the stones and focus again, with no time left to feel fatigue or drowsiness.
Yu Jeon-hun 9-dan. Last year's top prize-winner on the Go circuit and ranked number two — a player widely called the strongest active force in the game.
Invited to provide commentary on the day's match for a public broadcast, he glances across the screen at the girl sitting there with bleary eyes.
Ryu Seoa, 2-dan.
The girl who has recently drawn more attention in the Go world than anyone else.
Prodigies who blazed bright and then vanished are practically tripping over each other's footsteps, but this girl has been demolishing top-ranked female professionals, flaunting the fact that she is not one of them.
Her opponent today is Hui Yun 5-dan.
He'd faced Ryu Seoa 2-dan in the final of the Huihe Cup, I'd heard, and lost.
Taking that into account, one could predict a Ryu Seoa 2-dan victory — but games never flow the way the predictions say they will.
"Hmm…."
Yu Jeon-hun 9-dan pulls out the bundle of game records he'd printed off that morning, stealing time before coming in.
He'd had a moment to skim through them on the way, and the most intriguing of the lot had been, of course, yesterday's game.
Ryu Seoa 2-dan had crushed her opponent with an overwhelming gap in strength. It was nothing short of astonishing that she had achieved such a dominating win simply by responding calmly, without a single violent skirmish.
What kind of game would she show today?
Yu Jeon-hun 9-dan takes a sip of coffee and leafs casually through the game records.
The match begins while he's chatting with the female caster co-hosting the broadcast — about the tournament, the rules, the prize money, and what shape the game might take.
Star point against star point.
On move five, an invasion at the 3-3 point in the upper-right corner.
Hui Yun 5-dan, holding Black, turns her own favored weapon against her.
Ryu Seoa answers moves six and eight simply and cleanly, securing the top side firmly. She reads as intending to hand over the corner to Black without a second thought, avoid the complicated developments, and seize the initiative instead.
Having taken the initiative, Ryu Seoa 2-dan immediately drives a stone into the 3-3 point of the lower-left corner.
Once the corner exchange in the lower left settles, Black reaches for the lower-right corner on move nineteen.
Ryu Seoa doesn't respond.
Instead, she reaches into the upper-left corner.
Black takes both corners in the lower half. Ryu Seoa 2-dan remains unhurried even while being enclosed.
With an astonishing sense of balance, she secures exactly as much profit as she needs while at the same time shoring up her foundations solidly.
"With it flowing like this, Black's position in the lower right looks comfortable. What's your read, Yu Jeon-hun 9-dan?"
The female caster is Han Gyeol, amateur 5-dan, who still competes as an amateur player herself.
Her judgment isn't wrong. Black's momentum in the lower right really is strong.
"Yes — even so, played this way, White can put pressure on that Black position and come back more than enough, and…."
Yu Jeon-hun 9-dan lays out a few of the options available to White as he comments.
Then comes a move nobody saw coming.
White thirty.
"Oh…."
An exclamation escapes Yu Jeon-hun 9-dan before he can stop it.
A move that aims at Black's weak point, crushes Black's territory, and at the same time opens an escape route toward the center — brilliantly clear, refreshingly wide open.
If Black reinforces the weakness at move thirty-one, Ryu Seoa takes back the initiative.
This time it's Black who ends up sandwiched between two fronts.
Ryu Seoa is still as relaxed as a seasoned matador.
The girl builds her shape across the top side and the center, and Black, looking somewhat impatient, plays a forcing move.
"That's an unexpected move…."
"Black had to make a decision there. I'm looking forward to seeing how Ryu Seoa 2-dan handles it."
Even now, thinking back on that refreshingly sharp White thirty, I can't help anticipating what fresh move she'll show next.
A cool, commanding grasp of the whole board that you'd rarely see even in men's professional Go.
"Ah… she answered a little loosely, I think."
But the move Ryu Seoa 2-dan plays falls far short of expectations.
Because it came at the end of a long think, the disappointment cuts that much deeper.
She had looked somewhat tired — the fatigue of one match after another, or the sleepless night?
A single mistake. But a fatal one.
Black, having seized the momentum, comes surging in like an avalanche. White scrambles merely to hold the line.
"Even so, she's contained it at minimal cost. There's still plenty of room for variables."
Yu Jeon-hun 9-dan strains to say something kind, but the road stretched out before Ryu Seoa 2-dan is a thicket of thorns.
The girl, who hadn't so much as twitched while glaring at the board, takes a huge bite of chocolate and breaks into a contented smile.
They say that yesterday, when she'd won in a rout, she hadn't cracked a single smile afterward — so what could possibly be so delightful now?
Not stopping at the chocolate, she polishes off a banana milk and a candy as well, then places her next stone.
The heart of the capturing race.
Ryu Seoa 2-dan wriggles her stones on the top side out by the narrowest of margins and brings the position to a close.
The same player who, until now, had moved so simply and smoothly with barely a ripple of friction suddenly starts placing stones aggressively.
She drives stones into points even she would have doubted were playable.
Stone piles on stone across the board.
More than one ko — several, in fact, with groups on both sides down to their last liberties.
"…I'm getting a headache, and I'm not even the one playing."
An impenetrable ko war.
Ryu Seoa 2-dan, on the strength of her phenomenal reading, trades ko threats boldly, one after another.
Like filling in a puzzle, the empty spaces on the board vanish until the board is packed full.
Move three hundred ninety. The captured stones alone, from both sides combined, number well over a hundred.
With move four hundred in sight, there is nowhere left to play.