The Master
Even with a thick cardigan draped over my shoulders, the chill by the window seeped straight through the fabric.
When you're juggling school life and a professional player's life side by side, time slips by before you know it — and winter break had already arrived.
With the Yangchang Cup main tournament still more than three months away after clearing the qualifiers, and only the New Pro Tournament on the calendar in the meantime, I was due for a stretch of leisure for once.
A year that had begun with my father falling ill, and unfolded through being caught playing online Go by my grandfather and stumbling my way into a tournament and a professional debut — this was how it all drew to a close.
Ban Gu of the Later Han once said that Go's nineteen lines and 361 intersections symbolize a full year, and that the four corners of the board represent the four seasons — spring, summer, autumn, and winter.
It hadn't even been enough time to fill a single board, yet since I'd begun living as Ryu Seoa, no stretch of days that short had ever held so much.
When all four corners had been turned and the seasons completed a full rotation, would I truly be able to look back on it all with satisfaction?
"Seoa, this is really delicious. Try some."
Whenever I sank into my own thoughts, my mother would spear something with her fork and pop it straight into my mouth.
"Mmph...! Thank you, Mother."
"I didn't even know they had things like this inside the airport. Thanks to you, our Seoa, we live in luxury all the time."
Where we sat was an airline lounge open to business-class passengers, complete with a buffet, rest areas, and shower rooms.
A hot-spring trip to Japan, with my maternal grandfather, my mother, and my father all together. Father's condition had improved considerably, but pushing himself could still be dangerous, so after weighing every option for a trip that would let him rest as comfortably as possible, this was what we settled on.
"Not at all, Mother. It's thanks to you raising me so well all this time."
"Raise you? You raised yourself, Seoa. You grew up all on your own."
My mother smiled as she stroked my hair.
"Our Seoa should live with Dad forever. I'm never handing a daughter like you over to any of those punks."
My father pulled me into his arms as he spoke.
Given the visceral revulsion I felt at the very idea of a person with a man's mind dating a man, marriage might be out of the question — but that didn't mean I wanted to live off my family for the rest of my life, either.
I sometimes wondered what it would feel like to build an ordinary home the way other people do, but the thought of ending up with a man was horrifying even in imagination. Though I'll admit I was just as reluctant about romance with a woman.
Was I simply fated to live alone, no matter how many times I was reborn?
"Honey, that's going too far. You mean to make Seoa an old maid? When the boys lining up to ask for her someday stretch from Seoul all the way to Busan, surely one of them will be decent."
"Oh, honestly — you and Father both. She's still in elementary school and you're already worrying about marrying her off."
Listening quietly to the giddy banter between my parents and my grandfather on our first family trip in ages, I found a smile creeping across my face without my noticing.
Well, what if I never have a sweetheart? I have a family that cherishes me this much.
"Looks like we should be heading over soon. What a shame."
Between the light buffet and the coffee in my hand, boarding time was nearly upon us. My mother rose to tidy our seats, and I gathered my belongings and my coat.
I had forced my parents to abandon their plan of handing everything over to a travel agency and booked the transportation and lodging myself — which meant that if anything went wrong, it was on my head.
Running through the itinerary one final time, I walked with my parents to our assigned gate and boarded the airliner.
Once I'd settled into a business-class seat far too spacious for my tiny frame and worked through a light drink and a snack, the plane — airborne only a short while — soon began its descent.
After getting off, clearing immigration without a hitch, and collecting our luggage, we stepped out before the arrivals gate, where the driver of our pre-booked pickup was waiting.
Once our bodies and bags were loaded into the roomy vehicle, I — the one who had planned this trip — finally felt a measure of relief. Now, so long as the inn was good, the trip would be perfect.
Since I was bringing my parents along, I had splurged on an expensive place, but you never really knew until you arrived.
Fortunately, the inn's exterior looked far better than it had in the photos, and the lobby gave off a fine impression as well.
"W...Welcome. Passport, please."
Still unaccustomed to English, the innkeeper murmured the words with no confidence at all, barely above a whisper. I rose up on my tiptoes, leaned my head over the counter, and opened my mouth.
"Ah, I can speak Japanese."
Not as polished as the Chinese I'd studied so earnestly, but I could manage enough conversational Japanese for travel. Granted, I'd never had much occasion to use it, having rarely competed in tournaments held in Japan.... I handed over our passports and spoke in somewhat awkward Japanese.
"Oh! What a relief! The reservation is under Ryu Seoa... a party of four, a room with an open-air bath... and payment has already been made in full! Breakfast is served in the dining room to the left of reception, and dinner will be brought to your room at the time you specified."
Relieved, she checked over the reservation details and gave us a brief rundown of the meals.
"Yes! We've brought my father along on this trip after a long battle with illness, so a nice room would mean a great deal to us."
"Oh! Is that so? Such filial devotion, at so young an age. I've assigned you our finest room, and we'll prepare a small gift to celebrate his recovery as well."
Beaming, the clerk handed me the passports and the key card.
"Thank you so much!"
"Hehe, we hope you enjoy your stay. If you leave your luggage here, we'll have it brought up to your room."
"Yes. Thank you so much."
Taking the key card, I turned back toward my parents and grandfather — and found them all regarding me with oddly strange looks.
"You learned Japanese too?"
My mother asked with wide, astonished eyes.
"Yes, a little at school. And I prepared a bit before the trip."
"A bit? That didn't sound like a bit...."
"Daughter, this is Seoa we're talking about — a genius that comes along once in a century. A language like Japanese? One book and she's done. This is the girl who glances at a game record once and memorizes the whole thing in minutes."
My grandfather chided my mother for questioning my word. It was far from the truth, but in moments like these, that "genius" label really was convenient.
"Still, no matter how smart you are—"
"Daughter, do you think she's like you, memorizing the multiplication table with a switch raised over her head?"
"That's not — that's because you forced me to memorize things I had no interest in!"
"Well, you were at least cute back then, sniffling your way through the times tables. Now you're all grown up and all you've got left is a vicious temper. Tsk, tsk."
And so my mother and grandfather went red in the face and launched into a proper squabble.
"Let's you and I get along nicely, Seoa."
Watching them, my father took my hand.
"How are you feeling, health-wise?"
"Thanks to you, hardly walked a step. Just thinking about lying back in the hot spring already has me smiling."
"Same here."
Well ahead of my mother and grandfather, still bickering behind us, we opened the door to our room first.
It was more spacious than I'd imagined, furnished in traditional Japanese style with a quiet, dignified air. On the terrace, opened up by a full wall of glass, sat an open-air bath large enough to hold the entire family with room to spare.
Father and I, in perfect harmony, kicked off our shoes and stepped inside, then threw ourselves onto the enormous bed.
The peak season for hot-spring travel.
A reporter from a famous Japanese daily, in the resort town on assignment for a travel feature, was crossing the lobby when his eyes were stolen by a striking blonde girl.
Part of it was her doll-like, radiant features — but her face also looked familiar.
A girl up on her tiptoes at the reception desk, straining to receive a South Korean passport and key card.
A Western-looking girl, South Korean nationality. As he turned the unusual pairing over in his mind, one name flashed across his memory at once.
Ryu Seoa.
The prodigy who had demolished Hozumi Asana, Japan's youngest-ever female professional, with a gap in strength so vast it defied description — then, not long after, seized Korea's Women's Kuksu title and claimed the World Women's Championship, one of the handful of greatest geniuses in the game's history.
Ironically, thanks to those distinctive looks and a talent that seemed to come once in a century, she had built a fandom in Japan even deeper than that of their own Hozumi Asana.
A boring, by-the-numbers resort travelogue wouldn't pull in a thousandth of the page views a single photograph would.
Savoring the sweetness of "luck" — the kind that compresses two weeks of grinding effort into a few short seconds — he pressed the shutter from angle after angle.