A Betting Game
Director Seo Gilsoo watched the hustler bolt out of Ever-Green Baduk Parlor without so much as a backward glance, then turned his eyes to the blonde girl.
She was calmly clearing the board, her face composed, as if nothing at all had happened.
The man who had just fled was the very customer the director had been working up the nerve to scold for ages — a nasty piece of work who persistently demanded betting games from weaker players, cheating underhandedly whenever the game turned against him. There were even rumors that his claimed skill was a lie; he was a strong 2-kyu pretending to be 4-kyu to hustle parlor regulars out of lunch and drinking money.
Because he was a regular, Seo Gilsoo had worried that confronting him would only erupt into a quarrel. The girl had resolved that worry neatly for him. Thoroughly humiliated, the man surely wouldn't show his face for a while.
But right now, it wasn't the troublemaker on his mind — it was the Go he had just witnessed. He replayed the game calmly in his head, and still he couldn't make rational sense of it.
This was not the Go of a small child, not the Go of a beginner with only a handful of lessons behind her.
Of course, age is just a number and no true measure of strength. These days there are professionals who burst onto the scene in their teens and rack up win streaks after all.
But however strong a child may be, a child is still a child — emotional, impulsive, dependent on instinct. When attacked, they attack back. They favor immediate gains over future ones. And once they're ahead in a game, they never let go of it first. These were common traits he had observed over the years, running a children's Go class in his idle time.
The girl's Go was different.
Had he not been watching the players with his own eyes, he would have taken it for the work of a seasoned middle-aged amateur master.
Amateur games are nothing like professional ones. If a professional match is disciplined, elegant boxing inside the ring, then a game between amateurs is a brawl in a back alley — every dirty, spiteful trick on display, an endless supply of bizarre off-book moves far removed from any standard joseki. He'd heard that even Hankuk Kiwon research students — raw professional material — lose helplessly to such squalid tricks and traps, several times over, before they finally toughen up.
And the girl's opponent today wasn't merely skilled at dirty tricks. He read sequences deeply, too.
Yet she parried those traps — the deep, subtle deceptions that intuition alone could never unravel — with astonishing fluency. It was something impossible without a wealth of hard-won experience. When the hustler sprang his trump-card move, she had turned it inside out, planting her own trap to lure him into it, seized an overwhelming lead in an instant, and pried the game wide open. Her offensive was ruthlessly efficient and refined — taking profit without ever overextending, making her opponent's every move hurt.
It was hard to call it the Go of a child.
Still, one game proves little.
The men around the girl began scrambling to challenge her.
At a parlor, weak players are unpopular opponents. When the gap in skill is large, there's nothing to learn and no fun to be had — which is why, unless money is on the line, most people feel no particular urge to play a weaker player. But a strong opponent is another matter entirely. If they're a new strong player, all the more so. A game against someone you've never beaten offers a fresh experience and stokes the urge to test yourself. It's no exaggeration to say that a parlor's popularity rests on how many varied strong players come through its doors.
A man in a crisply pressed suit is chosen as the girl's opponent.
Jung Woon-il. Ranked at strong 1-kyu, the highest in the parlor. He is the president of a Go club with several dozen members, and a businessman who runs a thriving mid-sized enterprise. There was no question he was the strongest of the parlor's current visitors.
The girl and Jung Woon-il agree to play even, with the girl taking black and giving no komi compensation.
All eyes fix on the black stone in her hand.
"Huh?"
3-3 point, upper right corner. Not a move whose purpose is impossible to grasp, but unlike the star points, 3-4, and 3-5 points that players normally open with, almost no one opens on the 3-3. An extremely pragmatic move — a declaration that she intends to seize one corner outright with a single stone.
Jung Woon-il smiles as though entertained, and answers by taking the star point at the lower left.
Move three: the 3-4 point in the upper left, skewed toward the top side. Her intent reads clearly — she means to firmly claim two corners and the top edge.
Jung Woon-il answers symmetrically with the 3-4 point in the lower right for move four.
Move five.
Rather than extending against the corner, the girl plays two spaces out from her upper-left 3-4 stone, preparing to expand her influence. Because this is an even game with no komi, Jung Woon-il cannot afford to sit idle while Black pockets profit unchecked.
But Jung Woon-il leaps one space from his lower-side stone first, taking a breath.
Move seven.
The girl extends at a knight's move against the lower-left star point, textbook-perfect. When Jung Woon-il attaches and secures the corner, she connects her stones upward, moving to solidify her influence along the left side.
Jung Woon-il then answers with a one-space extension, spreading his reach along the bottom, and the girl counters by placing a stone on the star point of the left side — a lure. If he wants to invade, now is the only window, while the left side still has its weaknesses. Come in, she seems to say.
Jung Woon-il accepts the challenge and drives into the left side, and their stones begin to intertwine.
Strong.
From the way she holds the stones to the look in her eyes, not a single thing wavers. If he calls himself the parlor's best at strong 1-kyu, he could probably play an even game with a professional Go player giving only one or two stones. Nothing like the hustler, who had been hopelessly outclassed by me. I can't afford to relax for a single move.
"..."
Not that I doubt I can win.
The skill from my professional days hasn't returned, but if I simply play the way I always used to, I can scrape out a win one way or another. This is the Go of someone who once stood at the summit.
I don't yet know how my reading, intuition, and positional judgment fare as 'Ryu Seoa' — but even if they're nothing special, if I play on autopilot, following the knowledge and habits I've built up, I could easily reach a level where I could make a modest living on the women's professional circuit.
But what do I truly want?
Is it really just for the money? For my family, nothing more? Or am I reaching for something beyond that?
If I play as I did in my past life, I'll never challenge a new frontier. With classical Go, rigid and shackled by convention, I'll crash into the same wall I always did. If I steady myself and take up the challenge anew, everything I've built must come crashing down — and I'll have to build it back from nothing. That effort will be agonizing. I'll face countless failures. Sometimes I'll break.
If it's only for my family, there's no reason to abandon the easy road for the hard one.
Didn't I resolve to devote this life to them?
"..."
If I'm agonizing over a question whose answer is obvious, the reason is plain.
I used my family as an excuse to dive back into Go. In the end, I'm a hypocrite. Selfish. Greedy, too.
Without knowing what would become of my father, I weaponized the reality of his illness — turned it into a defense mechanism to rationalize playing Go again. And even knowing that, I can't stop. Holding these Go stones, and only in this moment, I don't feel hollow. I've been reborn, but with my past-life memories intact, I'm already a resident bound to this world. Outside of Go, my mind cannot be filled.
This is the moment of choice.
Knowing I'll fail and falter, will I climb toward the top in solitude, just as before? Or will I settle, and keep my gaze on what's near?
I place my first move — one that breaks from my own habit, on my own accord.
3-3 point, upper right corner.
"..."
The first step of 'Ryu Seoa,' breaking free of 'Shin Changmo' — her first stride forward as a Go player.
"Hm. I lost."
A razor-thin fight that ran all the way to move 297. Jung Woon-il scatters his stones onto the board. Had he played it out to the end, it likely would have closed with Black winning by two or three points.
"Thank you for the game."
The girl who says this does not look particularly pleased. Perhaps because playing even without komi, losing by such a hair was, for all practical purposes, a defeat.
But the mere fact that a girl of ten had gone toe-to-toe with Jung Woon-il, one of the finest amateurs around, was already astounding enough. And seeing her grandfather, too, unable to hide his stunned expression, one thing was certain: discovering the little blonde girl, Ryu Seoa, at this parlor was a stroke of enormous luck.
The game had stretched on for nearly two hours, and the girl looks thoroughly worn out.
"Seoa, my dear. You must come back and see your grandfather again. I won't charge you a cent for board fees, so come whenever it suits you and play me a game now and then. Understood?"
Seo Gilsoo makes his proposal to the girl, determined not to let slip this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. A pretty little girl alone would be enough to draw customers; if that girl could play nearly even with a strong 1-kyu, the effect was beyond imagining. And judging by her current skill, turning professional as a woman player was a perfectly realistic goal. If that happened, her value as future publicity would be considerable.
"C-can we really? I wouldn't want it to inconvenience anyone else..."
A privilege granted to just one person. The girl voices her concern with a cautious face.
"Haha! Do you think so little of us grown men, that you figure we'd get jealous of a little girl? Don't you worry — you make sure to come see us."
"That's right, that's right. You look worn out today, so I'll let it slide — but next time you owe me a game."
The spectators from around the parlor chime in one after another, dispelling the girl's worries.
"...Thank you. I'll be sure to visit often."
When the girl bows her head in gratitude, the customers cheer with delighted faces.
"Director, shouldn't we do a proper renovation of that smoking room? I'll foot the bill — let's take this chance and fix it up right. Haha."
Nominally it's a no-smoking establishment, but with customers constantly slipping into the corner smoking room for a cigarette, the smell leaks out considerably. Jung Woon-il, flushed with good spirits after his game with the girl, makes the offer with a hearty laugh.
Seo Gilsoo nods, silently rejoicing. It seems Jung Woon-il has taken quite a liking to the worthy opponent he met for the first time in ages.
"If it's not too much trouble... could you review the game with me?"
The girl ventures her request to Jung Woon-il carefully.
"Of course. If anything, it was me hoping you'd ask. Little miss — no, may I just call you Seoa?"
"Yes, call me whatever's comfortable, President."
"There we go, Miss Seoa. Now, why did you play here..."
Jung Woon-il and the girl move to an empty board and begin retracing the game they just finished.
"I had no idea my granddaughter had this much passion and talent for Go. Her mother and father never said a word to me about it."
Watching the two of them, the girl's grandfather grumbles, sounding a little put out.
"Still, I'm truly glad you brought her here. The place feels alive again."
As the regular clientele had aged, the parlor had grown ever more barren and dreary — but with one young girl sitting among them, a brightness settles over the room.
"If Master Ryu has the ambition for it, I'll gladly push Seoa ahead with everything I have."
Having run the parlor for many long years, Seo Gilsoo has built a network within the Go world of considerable breadth.
Ambition burning quietly, he leans in close and whispers into the ear of the girl's grandfather — Ryu Sangho.