Pair Go
I raise my head and look at Choi Geonha.
A promising young Go player, brimming with swagger.
If he keeps walking the road he's on today, tomorrow, and ever after, he's an opponent I'll cross paths with at the intersections of my career again and again.
His Go is original and fiercely self-assertive. 'Original' means strong enough not to be bound by the forms that convention accepts.
Stiffening your neck and ignoring received wisdom is an attitude permitted only to the strong. When a weakling who can't even seize victories insists on his own way, all that awaits him is weeding-out after an unbroken string of defeats.
Deep in my chest, suppressed hostility and fear churn together into a single knot.
I hold a mouthful of green tea, putting distance between myself and the surging emotions.
The obsession and longing for victory that emotion kindles do sharpen concentration — but in exchange, they narrow your field of vision. In a phase like this one, which demands tricks and improvisation, that is poison, plain and simple.
I need to step back from emotion and observe myself the way a spectator would.
I close my eyes briefly and meditate. Ten, maybe twenty seconds — a short meditation. Thinking longer is not always the answer. Hacking away at firewood with a dull axe can accomplish less than a single stroke of a keenly honed one.
I sharpen the blade. I steady my breathing so that my thinking can be sharper, more lethal.
Yu Jeonhun 9-dan and Choi Geonha place their stones, and then it's my turn.
I don't obsess over squeezing out the single best move; I simply search through moves the way I'd breathe. I sort out firmly what must be gained and what must be discarded, hunting for variations that maximize the strength of each shape.
Nothing in this world is complete. Every living creature, humans included, has survived by maximizing one or two strengths and nothing more. The stones on the board are the same — considered alive until they're stripped of life and become dead stone. Anything in-between simply starves or gets eaten.
— clack.
With the wooden ring of the board tickling my ear, I withdraw my hand from the stone.
Then it's Choi Geonha's turn.
They say he has exceptional talent, but at his current strength he's clearly outclassed by Yu 9-dan. And yet what Choi Geonha aims for isn't fair competition — it's victory. He deploys without hesitation even the crude, shameless tricks that would earn an ordinary professional condemnation as lowbrow.
Perhaps because of his tireless effort to minimize how much pure skill difference factors into the outcome, the balance of the game refuses to tilt heavily despite the disadvantage.
Yu Jeonhun 9-dan's turn. He is the strongest partner imaginable, but I don't believe he'll magically solve everything, and I refuse to lean on him blindly. I keep my guard up and diligently track the shifts across the board.
Lee Jiah's turn. I feel nothing but apology for not being able to give her more time, but she has grown strong enough to manage on her own. Someday she may grow so far that I'd be ashamed to dare call myself her teacher.
My turn comes around again. I drive my stones deep into the enemy's territory.
Guerilla warfare. If it succeeds, I can reap enormous profit by reducing the enemy's framework; if it fails, the whole invading force risks being captured as prisoners of war. Ordinarily I'd infiltrate a little more conservatively, but playing alongside Yu 9-dan has changed my perspective. If my instinct is right, I can break through.
I sketch the coming development in broad strokes — reading out the most threatening sequences Lee Jiah and Choi Geonha could play, and preparing answers to each.
As long as I'm focused purely on solving the problem, the fear and hostility born of my past life's memories gradually subside. My head grows calm, and more and more moves come into view.
——————————————-
— clack.
Having finished placing his stone, Yu Jeonhun 9-dan closes his eyes, bitterness and exaltation welling up in him at once.
The Pair Go tournament. There's nothing bad about winning, but he never entered chasing a championship, prize money, or glory.
It was this warmth he feels now. This brilliant, destructive 'light' washing over his mind — that is what he wanted to feel.
Ryu Seoa 2-dan's Go. Even now it instinctively repels him, leaves a bad taste. The pros on his own team have been known to look at her game records and snap in irritation at how unpleasant it is. A natural reaction — of course anyone flinches at an overwhelming stimulus they've never grown used to.
The Go world — and Yu 9-dan himself — had been trapped in an illusion. Bound in a cave, staring at a dim, murky smudge of 'light' reflected off the stone wall, they had fancied themselves students of the world.
Faced with an opponent so young yet so strong that no one could afford to dismiss her, Ryu Seoa 2-dan finally led Yu Jeonhun 9-dan out of the cave and into the world beyond.
The dazzling radiance pierces his pupils, dilated from the darkness; he squints reflexively and shields the sun with his hand — but even so, it is brighter than inside the cave. Rather than flee back into the dark, Yu 9-dan forces himself to absorb the flood of stimulation.
After a little endurance, what enters his vision is a spectacle of beauty incomparable to any shadow on a stone wall.
But a body weakened by a lifetime spent in darkness can barely take a few steps into the light without a guide. Even so — rather than drown in regret that he hadn't awakened to this world sooner, he wants to take in even one more glimpse of the view.
As if proving the paradox that the complex is easy and the simple is hard, Ryu Seoa 2-dan crushes her opponents' moves with something far too plain — and far too powerful.
A pure joy that no world championship or prize money could ever buy. The exaltation of a widened horizon of understanding runs far deeper than anything money or fame can confer.
Lee Jiah 1-dan, a professional this very year, carries Ryu Seoa 2-dan's fragrance in waves; and Choi Geonha, the amateur who trained with her and now faces Ryu Seoa 2-dan across the board, is skillfully absorbing and digesting it as well.
Impressive — but they don't shine as brilliantly as Ryu Seoa 2-dan. Resistance, whatever form it takes, is simply swallowed whole by the greater light.
Choi Geonha, amateur 5-dan, seems to burn with competitive hunger, hurling every countermeasure at his disposal — and being defeated far too easily, time after time.
The game is decided, but his fighting spirit remains unbroken; he glares ferociously at Ryu Seoa 2-dan, stoking the flames of his will to win.
Ryu Seoa 2-dan doesn't spare him so much as a glance as she brings the game to its close.