The Qualifier
Fourteen players in total had thrown their hats into the ring for the Yang Chang-chi Cup qualifier.
Eligibility itself had been strictly limited to holders of a world title or players ranked within the top fifteen.
The only reason I was allowed to enter was that the Hwayihe Cup — a women's world tournament — counted as an official world title once I won it at the Kiseong.
The qualifier was split into Group A and Group B.
Only the winner of each group would clutch a ticket to the main bracket.
I was assigned to Group B. Fortune had smiled on me — the lottery gave me a bye through the first round — but that meant I'd have to cut down two of the very strongest in succession.
Every name on that list was outstanding enough that no one would blink if any of them walked away with the bracket.
Game time: eleven o'clock.
My opponent: Korea's No. 7, Park Seong-yoon, 8-dan. A genuine heavyweight, blazing through the domestic Baduk League at a seventy percent win rate and a familiar face on the world-tournament main stage.
After our formal bow, he took Black and rigged the opening sequence.
The qualifier ran under the same rules as the main tournament — komi of 8 points (7 and a half), three hours each.
And in place of byo-yomi, there was an unusual twist: exceed your two twenty-minute overtime periods and points would be docked from your territory as a penalty.
At minimum, six hours of play. Would the physical training I'd put in lately let me endure it a little better?
My recent slump.
I couldn't pretend I hadn't brought some of it on myself.
I had valued the content of my games over the results. Rather than prize money or victories, I had chased the growth of my skill.
I don't regret it.
Risking danger, playing experimental moves — through all of it, I became better than the man I used to be.
But now is the time to prove it — to myself, and to show the world once more that I will not be left behind as some middling female player.
And the only thing proof requires is victory.
Like Choi Geonha, I needed the resolve to bite and tear, by any means necessary, no matter how strong my opponent — never to shrink back.
Though of course, charging in blindly would only get me mauled.
Cleverly. Cunningly. And cheaply, if it came to that.
Let them point fingers and call it vulgar — in the end, glory belongs to whoever wins.
My opponent placed his stone.
I slipped my hand into the stone bowl, feeling the cool weight of the stones against my fingers, and set my policy in stone as well: pursue nothing but utility.
Ryu Seoa's Go had to have grown to the point where it could no longer simply be swallowed whole by Shin Changmo's.
There was no way to hold back my time limit indefinitely.
Terrifying as it was, the hour had come to unshackle tlsckdah1021 — the ghost who had only ever fought on the internet.
Not half of me. The whole of me.
Not the suppressed me. The best of me.
When I claimed the star point, Black moved to consolidate the corner early.
The Shorin-ryu Three-Star formation.
He intended to build a vast sphere of influence along the side and drag me into a decisive fight — I could read it plainly.
Reaching for an old opening, half-abandoned by the modern game, meant he was confident he'd studied it more deeply than I had.
No doubt he trusted himself to smother any orthodox approach I might attempt with some clever deviation.
I knew a dozen ways to dismantle it — but for now, I decided to dance to his tune.
To probe his true intentions, I obediently pushed my stones exactly where he wanted them.
Lee Dong-woo, a reporter for a daily paper covering the qualifier, trained his lens on the blonde girl a few times half-heartedly before moving on.
Ryu Seoa, 2-dan.
A promising young female pro, to be sure — but this stage was not for her.
This stage was far, far too big for a girl with no respectable results even in domestic open tournaments to come charging at with a challenge in hand.
Group A, Round 2. The matchup between Park Seong-yoon, 8-dan, and Ryu Seoa, 2-dan, carried none of the weight of the clash between Shim Ho-jun, 9-dan — this year's leader in wins — and Han Jaemin, 9-dan, last year's league MVP with a perfect record in regular-season play.
The outcome of the game needed no guessing. Black, played by Ryu Seoa, was falling behind from the opening. Given the gulf in skill, even a favorable position would have collapsed eventually — but her opening strategy itself had gone awry, and that was that.
Her appearance would make headlines, sure. The result, though, would be a bloodbath obvious enough that no one needed to look twice.
Knowing your place is a skill in itself. She'd learn that lesson the hard way this time.
The game between Shim Ho-jun, 9-dan, and Han Jaemin, 9-dan.
A mind-flaying psychological duel, and reading that followed so deep it was all a spectator could do just to keep up.
The tension of a game where every trivial move was bound to the result, and the ferocity of two players refusing to concede so much as a single point.
One could call it art without a shred of embarrassment.
After briefly boiling over, the game had settled into a mutual long think.
Hoping to grab a few more shots, Lee Dong-woo wandered back toward the table where Ryu Seoa, 2-dan, and Park Seong-yoon, 8-dan, sat.
He glanced over the board to see how it was going — and in that instant, the ground tilted beneath him.
Mulberry fields had become an ocean.
The white territory that had huddled small and cramping now sprawled vast across the board.
Park Seong-yoon, 8-dan, ranked seventh in the nation, could no longer bring himself to play a stone outright; he was scrounging for ko threats down a narrow corridor, clawing at the board for any variable he could manufacture.
And the girl was trampling his resistance — cruelly, thoroughly.
How on earth had she done it?
What had happened while his back was turned to turn the game inside out like this?
Was it truly possible for a girl of eleven to crush and subdue Park Seong-yoon, 8-dan, in such overwhelming fashion?
Question upon question, each biting the tail of the last.
He'd missed the scoop of a lifetime.
But it wasn't entirely too late. The game between Shim Ho-jun, 9-dan, and Han Jaemin, 9-dan, had already been wiped from his mind.
The girl's two blue eyes were murky as the deep sea.
The gap was wide enough that she could afford to relax — yet she still traced every current on the board with unbroken focus.
With the face of a man whose soul had left his body, Park Seong-yoon, 8-dan, laid White's dead stones on the board's edge and resigned.
"Thank you for the game."
Not a flicker of rapture or relief showed on the girl's composed face as she bowed.
As though her victory were nothing worth celebrating at all, she simply busied herself tidying her seat.
It shamed him to remember that, mere hours ago, he had thought Ryu Seoa, 2-dan, was overreaching — didn't even know her own place.
One world-tournament challenge after another.
Not recklessness. Not even courage, really.
Ryu Seoa, 2-dan, simply took it for granted that the stage that suited her was the world stage.
And with a single victory, she had proven that she had every right to.