Love at First Sight and the Go Board
"Of course. My father has already given his permission, after all?"
It was a statement blurted out without order or forethought, purely on reflex. In other words, it was spoken with absolutely no thought behind it. Is this what falling in love at first sight feels like? Just as I was about to apologize to the startled woman, she spoke.
“Yes. I would be delighted.”
“...Yes?”
“Huh?”
“You’re agreeing that readily?”
“Of course. My father has already approved it, you know?”
That absurd encounter was my first meeting with her—Administrator Hu’s daughter and my wife-to-be, Jinjeong.
“I knew it would turn out like this, Baekgyu.”
Those were Administrator Hu’s first words as he stepped into the courtyard, right when she had accepted my sudden confession and an awkward silence filled the space between us.
“...”
“When will you hold the ceremony?”
“It was a slip of the tongue.”
I was a concubine’s son. In modern times it might not have mattered, but in this damned primitive ancient China, it was a real problem. Marriages between different social classes were forbidden in principle, and the legitimate daughter of an Administrator was simply not a match for the son of a concubine from an Administrator-level household.
“Is it because you are a concubine’s son?”
“...Yes.”
“Your abilities are outstanding. I say this not as your prospective father-in-law, but as an Administrator evaluating a man. Jin-ah.”
“Yes, Father.”
“What do you think?”
“I believe it is fine. If our stations do not match, we simply need to make them match.”
“Exactly. Zigan is searching for a disciple in his hometown, so go to him.”
“Sir?”
“Go.”
Administrator Hu’s eyes fixed on me. It was a gaze that would accept no refusal.
...It was the same look he gave me when he ordered me to draft the “tax-saving” plan. Tsk.
“...Understood.”
I had thought that once the civil operation was mostly wrapped up, I could coast along and focus on exercise, but now he was suddenly telling me to attend the academy. No—in this era, their version of education was closer to graduate school than undergraduate studies, wasn’t it? Oh… after I peeled off the low-level clerk sticker from the city hall secretary’s office, they were telling me to go to graduate school on city subsidies? A wave of immense frustration surged up from the depths of my heart… until I saw her sitting demurely beside Administrator Hu, and strength instinctively flooded my body.
It wasn’t even a major corporation, yet simply gaining admission to graduate school would let me marry a visual member of an idol group. And I was supposed to pass that up? I couldn’t.
Master Zigan. Or, if calling him by his given name, Teacher Lu Zhi.
“Indeed, you are precisely the capable subordinate Lady Hu has been boasting about.”
Among men my age I counted as tall, yet I still had to look up at him. His pupils, hair, eyebrows, and even the scholar’s robe he wore were all a vivid red, making him resemble a living flame. By appearance he seemed to be in his mid-forties—the same age as Administrator Hu, when a man’s belly usually begins to soften and his prime has passed. Yet aside from the faint wrinkles just beginning to show on his face, this man looked as if he had defied time itself; every inch of him was packed with muscle.
“It is an honor to meet you, Master Zigan.”
“Call me Teacher. Every letter she sent sang your praises, so I wished to see your excellence with my own eyes.”
“It is an honor.”
“So then, what do you wish to learn?”
“What… do you mean by learn?”
“There are many subjects, are there not? Military strategy, calligraphy, governance… things of that nature.”
“I wish to learn how to keep people alive.”
“Keep them alive, you say?”
“Once I complete your teachings, I am to hold my wedding ceremony. If it were only myself, I could somehow survive. But I do not know the way to keep my family alive.”
In my previous life I had been a soldier. No matter how loudly the horsemen of this barbaric age claimed to be the flowers of the battlefield, war itself never truly changed; I knew more than enough about surviving it. What I did not know was how to survive a chaotic age.
Once the turbulent times arrived and I regained freedom of movement, I could search for saltpeter mines. With saltpeter I could produce makeshift explosives, so keeping myself alive would not be difficult. Keeping my family alive, however, was another matter entirely.
If I did not know, I must ask. At the very least, the giant before me understood the common sense of this world far better than I.
“You believe a chaotic age will come?”
“Yes. After two rounds of the Partisan Proscriptions, the power of the eunuchs has grown far too great. Had the consort clans remained strong, the balance within the Dirty Stream faction might have held. Had the territory of these Central Plains been smaller, we might have endured somehow. But if restoring the people’s hearts is delayed even slightly…”
“A great calamity will arise… You believe the imperial house will be unable to suppress it?”
Blue Stream or Dirty Stream—merely hearing the names made the Blue Stream sound virtuous and the Dirty Stream wicked, yet in truth it was simply a struggle between local magnates and central aristocrats. In this primitive ancient Chinatown that had neither civil service examinations nor an imperial exam system, talent was selected solely through connections and the sale of offices. Thus it was a contest between local clans who proved their worth through reputation and networks versus central nobles who proved theirs through financial power.
The first Partisan Proscription had allowed the central nobles to seize power. The second, bought with gold, let the eunuch faction among those central nobles take control. Naturally, the local nobles pushed out of the mainstream stopped recommending talent and began amusing themselves with an “us versus them” mentality, while the eunuchs who had gained power abandoned further reform and slowly stagnated, rotting from within.
And when stagnant water rots, history has shown countless times that people emerge shouting revolution and carrying guillotines.
“They will suppress it, of course. But should a calamity arise, it will undoubtedly be a popular rebellion. Hoping that the general who quells such a rebellion harbors no disloyal thoughts is far too optimistic. Even if the imperial house does not collapse…”
“Enough. I understand your intent.”
Lu Zhi—Master Zigan—stroked his beard and sank briefly into thought.
This was the period when the imperial family’s power was at its strongest throughout the history of the Later Han. The Ten Eunuchs had seized control, one might say? Originally the eunuchs and consort clans—what this era called the Dirty Stream faction—had to be checked by the authority of the imperial house itself. They could amass wealth and commit atrocities, but their power derived from the emperor’s recognition. A single hint to the old man Lu Zhi or our Administrator Hu—“Those fellows seem to be overstepping. Shall we sweep them away?”—and no matter how powerful the Ten Eunuchs or the consort clans became, they would be on the road to the gulag at once.
Moreover, the territorial Dirty Stream consort clans had already been purged by the Ten Eunuchs and sent to the gulag long ago. Had the current emperor been Joseph the Steel-Man or Corsica’s greatest prodigy, Buonaparte, the foundation would have existed to complete Han-Vensraum, the rightful territory of the Chinese people.
Of course, since that had not happened, the Yellow Turban Rebellion would erupt in a few years. If it had succeeded, neither Joseph the Steel-Man nor the Austrian painter-aspirant Schicklgruber would have left their names in the history books.
“I believe I now understand why Lady Hu chose you as her son-in-law. Do you know how to play Go?”
Go? So suddenly?
“Go… you mean, sir?”
“Are you unable to play?”
“No… I do know how, but…”
During my military days, one of the administrative supply officer’s hobbies had been Go, so I had played it until I was utterly sick of it. Only ten minutes after our meeting, Master Zigan produced a Go board in the reception room and handed me the bowl filled with black stones.
“Since I am your elder, I shall yield the black stones.”
“Thank you.”
My first move was the 3-3 point—a play that solidified one side with almost stubborn firmness. In modern times it had become standard thanks to AI, but in traditional Go it was a move to be avoided. That must have been why Master Zigan’s eyebrows rose slightly.
“The 3-3 point?”
“I played it correctly.”
“I see.”
Master Lu Zhi’s first move was the star point. Appropriately solid, appropriately loose—the very definition of a joseki refined over long centuries. Yet the reason modern players avoided it was simple: the 3-3 invasion. Rather than both sides fortifying their territories and then clashing, it was a dogfight in which you entered after securing only the minimum space for yourself.
“Hah. If you play this way, the loss will be yours alone, will it not?”
“Will it?”
“It will. Even if you continue attacking like this…?!”
Play moderately and then pass. The joseki of this era would continue the sequence here, eventually opening a path into the center and favoring the white stones. But passing at this point changed everything. The allied camp formed in one corner was moderately secure. Breaking it would require accepting a loss. If the game continued to the end it would be my defeat, yet even if it reached the lower limit, the loss was not yet fixed unless I cut my losses. I could not gain much, but I could embed a small thorn in the opponent’s sole—an annoyance that could not be ignored.
And because I had played first, I gained the temporal leeway to play another move “first.”
“Hah… haah…”
Now, placing a black stone in the last empty corner would complete a slanted playing field in which I began by claiming roughly two and a half of the four corners.
My skill was at best around amateur 1-dan, but that was measured against the “modern” amateur 1-dan built upon accumulated game records of the past. The joseki of this era had already been mostly dismantled long ago.
...I had lost a fair amount to unfamiliar sequences since I was no professional, yet the overall position still looked slightly more favorable for me.
“I see… If one builds a suitable camp, it can hold its own. If the game continues to the end I would win, but… hmm…”
The administrative officer and I had used similar tactics. Create a kind of company-sized tactical base that forces the enemy to suffer losses, then slowly nibble away advantages elsewhere in the meantime. In the end we would be pushed back, but by then gains would have accumulated on other fronts, making it the enemy who suffered by seeing the game through. Yet if he tried to follow my moves, it would be like a single small house stuck in the middle of the sole with a tiny wooden thorn—impossibly irritating and impossible to ignore.
“Where did the person who was playing Go go?”