Pair Go
“Whew.”
The moment I opened my hotel room door, I threw myself onto the bed.
The semifinal match between me and 9-dan Yu had ended with our 11.5-point victory on the count.
Despite the win, I felt surprisingly little — almost nothing at all.
There was only the relief of not having betrayed 9-dan Yu's trust, and a faint pang of guilt for having knocked out my own disciple, Lee Jiah, through no intention of my own.
As for talk of revenge or overcoming the past — today's 'Choi Geonha' was simply not the Choi Geonha I had known.
I turned his face over in my mind, the one I had seen after the match.
He had lost, but far from heartbroken, he seemed to burn with even more passion than he had during the game itself.
Perhaps for him, that defeat was worth more than a victory.
Choi Geonha, after all, had likely never lost to anyone his own age.
An opponent worth stoking his pride against would become the fuel for his rapid growth.
Could he truly grow into someone equal to, or even greater than, the 'Choi Geonha' in my memory?
And if I faced him again someday, could I reproduce today's result?
“Hoo.”
Well, I wouldn't be running into him anytime soon. There was no need to drag the future into the present and agonize over it.
He was still just an amateur who hadn't even turned professional yet.
The match against Choi Geonha was over, but tomorrow's final still remained.
Lee Na-ye 9-dan, the strongest female player, and Lee Han-lim 6-dan, who had supposedly studied under the same master.
Their individual skill went without saying, and they breathed together as one — no wonder they had made it all the way to the final.
There wasn't much time left before tomorrow, but I would have to prepare thoroughly. And yet my body felt so heavy.
Perhaps it was because, unlike my usual matches, this one had drained not just my stamina but my emotions as well.
Seeking rest, I went into the bathroom, undressed, gave myself a quick rinse under the water, and began filling the tub.
A tiny body that couldn't even half-fill the bathtub.
I was nearing twelve, and it seemed I was finally due for a real growth spurt — I'd been having frequent growing pains lately. But I had always been small even compared to my peers, so I'd count myself lucky if I made it to average female height.
This body would keep reminding me that I had become a woman, whether I wanted to acknowledge it or not.
With puberty would come pronounced feminine features, and soon enough, my first period.
And along with the physical changes, mental ones might arrive as well.
My emotions, my mindset, my inner values — many things would change.
For better or for worse, they would affect my Go.
If I ever found myself facing a limit I couldn't overcome, the way I once had, could I truly avoid blaming my 'sex' for it?
“Wanting everything would just be greed, wouldn't it.”
With a small sigh, I lowered myself deep into the hot water. The warmth soaked into my body, melting away the fatigue.
An extra chance granted to no one else, memories of a past life, a rough sketch of the future.
Rather than fixating on what I didn't have, I ought to be grateful for what I'd been given.
Yielding to my languor, I simply let myself float, surrendering my body to the weightlessness that wrapped around it.
Pair Go: two players forming a single team.
If you tried to predict a team's strength with a simple formula, it would be the sum of their abilities divided by two — but in reality, it's never that simple.
Communication problems, differences in style, mismatched understanding, and when there's a skill gap between partners, the constant second-guessing of each other's moves means emotional factors intrude far more than usual. A tangle of compounding forces drags the result well below that simple average.
Even when two players achieve perfect harmony and generate genuine synergy, in most cases it only mitigates those frictions rather than eliminating them. But what about the two sitting across from her?
Lee Na-ye 9-dan let her gaze sweep lightly over the board.
The final match. Just past move seventy.
Yu Jeon-hun 9-dan and Ryu Seoa 2-dan held the advantage.
The two players ahead of her, separated by decades in age, had not grown weaker together — they had grown stronger.
If they hadn't, they never would have pulled ahead of her and Lee Han-lim 6-dan, who had trained under the same master for so long that they could read each other without a word.
Ryu Seoa 2-dan.
She had been striking from their very first meeting, but the girl's Go had grown only more formidable in that brief span of time.
It was a disadvantageous start. Yet Na-ye felt no sense that the game was beyond turning.
Perhaps it was an arrogant thought to harbor against Yu Jeon-hun 9-dan, who wore the title of Korea's strongest without embarrassment, and Ryu Seoa 2-dan, who had all but conquered the women's stage at the youngest age ever — but she and Lee Han-lim 6-dan possessed more than enough quality to challenge that fortress.
If Ryu Seoa 2-dan and Yu Jeon-hun 9-dan resolved to play passively and consolidate their gains, a comeback would be difficult. But the Ryu Seoa 2-dan that Na-ye knew would never do that.
The girl's obsession with process over result bordered on the fanatical.
She poured her whole heart into every single move, and to draw out a better variation, she did not shy away from threats that sat plainly before her eyes.
A professional with a mature philosophy — chasing improvement in every moment rather than being swallowed by the victory in front of her.
Trickery and shortcuts might luck her into a handful of wins, but even at that tender age, she clearly understood that pure, honest strength was what decided one's win rate in the long run.
The Go world was heaping praise on Ryu Seoa 2-dan — while simultaneously making the cold judgment that she would soon hit her ceiling.
The prevailing assumption was that she could not perform on the open circuit, crowded as it was with mainstream professionals, the way she did on the women's stage.
But Na-ye 9-dan never once believed that Ryu Seoa 2-dan would stop where she stood now.
-Click.
Ryu Seoa picked up a white stone with something almost reverent and placed it on the board.
Why was it that the girl's crisp, ringing stone placement looked like the hand of a veteran with decades of experience?
Regardless of Na-ye's respect for Ryu Seoa 2-dan, she had no intention of conceding the championship of this tournament.
Even if Ryu Seoa 2-dan and Yu Jeon-hun 9-dan were exceptional players, the time they'd spent playing together could not have been long.
Unlike the opening, which mostly flowed along established patterns, the deeper the game moved into the middle game, the more their understandings of Go would collide.
Thanks to their shared master, she and Lee Han-lim wielded a similar philosophy as their weapon — if they used it well, they could close the gap, and in the end, flip the board entirely.
The game passed move one hundred fifty.
The losing move, unexpectedly, came not from Ryu Seoa 2-dan but from Yu Jeon-hun 9-dan. The move itself wasn't bad — he had simply misread the intent behind the move Ryu Seoa 2-dan had played just before.
What Ryu Seoa 2-dan had placed now sank into a bad move, and Na-ye 9-dan and Lee Han-lim 6-dan did not let the golden opportunity slip.
It was Na-ye's turn. She drove straight into White's exposed weakness.
Ryu Seoa 2-dan, in stark contrast to her adorable appearance, cut away her own rotten flesh with astonishing coldness.
A forceful declaration: she refused to be dragged around.
But now it was Na-ye 9-dan and Lee Han-lim 6-dan who held the breathing room. All they had to do was protect the hard-won advantage.
Though it would never be as easy as it sounded.
Even after the critical blunder, neither Ryu Seoa 2-dan nor Yu Jeon-hun 9-dan betrayed a trace of discomfort.
An opponent flawless in both mind and skill — they truly were formidable.
Feeling, vividly, the texture of the thorned road still ahead of her, Na-ye 9-dan sighed quietly to herself.