The Harmony of Dissonance
The Seongdong-gu branch of the Korea Baduk Association.
Tense children were trying to calm their nerves in their own unique ways.
These were the kids who had made it to the finals of the Under-15 Young Genius Professional Draft and survived up to the fourth round.
The format was double elimination.
Two losses, and you were out.
In other words, the survivors here had either not lost a single match or had tasted defeat only once.
A total of four players would face off in the fourth round.
According to the bracket, they would play in a round-robin format; the first two to accumulate two losses would be eliminated, while the remaining two would earn their professional draft certificates.
There were still about thirty minutes left before the matches began.
The hallways were bustling with parents, friends cheering on the competitors, and spectators who had come to watch the tournament.
"Hey. That's Park Si-woo over there."
"He actually clawed his way up here? Didn't he lose his very first match in the first round?"
"Yeah. He's at one loss right now. One more defeat, and he's out."
"Well, we can pretty much assume Si-woo is done for."
"Most likely. Last year, he made it to the winner's bracket and still choked. Besides, his form has really dropped lately."
"Really?"
"Yeah, my instructor and I went over Si-woo's game records. His matches in the research student league were a total mess. Just baseless, chaotic brawls."
"Didn't he use to play really safely?"
"No, he's completely fallen apart. When we ran his games through the AI, some of his moves had a win rate of less than ten percent. I mean, he won that particular game, but only because his opponent slipped up. Anyway, there were way too many moves like that."
"Wow, but he still somehow survived to the fourth round."
"I know, right? Everyone who looked at his game records for this tournament is baffled."
The two middle schoolers talking tilted their heads in confusion.
Si-woo was laughing brightly, chatting with someone.
They looked like friends, but the boy whose hand Si-woo was holding tightly was much smaller than him.
"What the... He was never that type of guy, was he?"
"Right? Just last year, he had this cold, aloof vibe."
"He doesn't even get along with the other research students like that."
The two looked utterly dumbfounded.
He was a boy of extremely few words, someone who always sat alone in silence before a match.
"But wait, does he actually have school friends?"
"Beats me."
In truth, very few kids dedicated to Baduk ever had a normal school life.
They frequently left school after the first period, leaving them with absolutely no common ground to bond with regular classmates.
On top of that, Park Si-woo was someone who didn't get along particularly well with his fellow research students either.
That was why the two boys were so puzzled.
"Alright! Please prepare for the matches. We will begin in twenty minutes."
At the coordinator's announcement, the noisy hallway fell quiet.
Leaving behind the whispered words of encouragement, the four children entered the match room.
The Baduk boards appeared on the screens set up in the hallway.
A heavy silence settled over the entire space.
— Ah, Park Si-woo wedges in again! His opponent must be quite flustered.
— Yes, indeed. If you look here, even the AI recommends blocking. As you can see from the AI's prediction, that move just now dropped his win rate by fifteen percent. Players rarely make that kind of move these days...
— Wait a moment. Yoon Dae-hyun's response is... Oh? Suddenly, the AI's win rate has flipped! Park Si-woo's win rate has actually gone up!
— This is a mistake by Yoon Dae-hyun. He shouldn't have accepted that trade.
— No, he's already in an advantageous position, yet he wedges in there again? Just holding his ground would have been...
— Wow. Yoon Dae-hyun is completely shaken by that move! It's like watching 8-dan Park Jin-gyeom in his prime. That kind of style completely vanished after the advent of AI... Look at that. Yoon Dae-hyun is extremely flustered. He's never faced an opponent like this before... Ah, he finally resigns!
— What is Park Si-woo muttering to himself? "Boo... Booyah"?
— Haha. He must have been so thrilled that a slang word kids his age use slipped out without him realizing.
"First of all, congratulations on winning the Young Genius Professional Draft!"
"Thank you!"
"Wow, it was truly an incredible match. Even the commentators were practically shouting today. I had a blast watching it myself. We saw quite a few moves that are rarely seen these days. It was a real nail-biter. Park Si-woo... actually, you're a professional player now. Professional Park Si-woo, how did you feel about today's match? From an outsider's perspective, there seemed to be a lot of risky moves."
"I think my shaking moves worked well. If my opponent had responded calmly without panicking, it would have been hard to win. But I believed that as long as my opponent wasn't an AI, I could shake them somehow."
"Ah, so you're saying you calculated all of those moves beforehand?"
"No. To be honest, they were just moves that came to me in the moment. I wasn't sure how things would play out either. But I was certain that my opponent would be even less capable of calculating them than I was."
"Ah..."
"They're moves that an AI would never suggest, since the win rate is so low."
"Haha. You're very well-spoken. Ah, I heard you underwent some unique training recently."
"Yes. My homeroom teacher at school helped me a lot. He had me focus on schoolwork for about a week, hanging out with friends and playing mobile games instead of studying Baduk. During that time, I also played Baduk with a friend. It was during that period that I truly understood my own style of play, and my skills improved dramatically. Thank you so much, Mr. Go Chang-ho. And Chul-jun, thank you!"
"Whoa, Si-woo is so eloquent!"
"So cool."
"But wait, why did he only mention Chul-jun's name? What about us?"
"Wow, that's actually kind of annoying."
"Makes me want to give him a good noogie."
While Min-jun and Ha-rang chatted, Chul-jun stared intently at the screen installed in the hallway.
The screen was showing the commentators reviewing the match.
Wow...
Chul-jun's eyes sparkled.
Si-woo's moves were dissonance.
When he had played Baduk with Si-woo, he had intentionally drawn them out through mathematical calculations. But now that he understood music, he realized those moves were the equivalent of dissonance.
Consonance has clean frequency ratios.
3:2, 5:4.
The overtones overlap, sounding stable.
In Baduk terms, these were the moves typically recommended by AI, boasting high win rates.
Dissonance, on the other hand, has mismatched ratios.
The overtones clash, creating beats.
Most of them felt like a grating scratch.
In Baduk, these were the moves discarded by AI, carrying low win rates.
What Si-woo had done was confidently throw dissonance onto the board.
By introducing beats into the opponent's stable harmony, he threw them off balance.
Even in music, dissonance wasn't inherently bad.
Because it created tension.
And when that tension resolved, it created a sense of pleasure.
Without dissonance, there could be no pleasure of resolution.
Baduk was the same.
Si-woo's dissonant moves created tension, and the opponent made mistakes while trying to resolve that tension.
I won't be able to beat him with just calculations anymore.
Chul-jun had generated those moves through mathematical calculations, but Si-woo had found them without knowing a single thing about math, and had even developed them further.
Chul-jun knew all too well that such intuitive brilliance could never be replicated by mathematical calculations alone.
Chul-jun found it incredibly fascinating that he could see music in Si-woo's Baduk.
The Baduk board was a coordinate system, and the musical staff was also a coordinate system.
Tonnetz?
In a Tonnetz, chords are points on a grid.
Nearby points connect naturally.
A sudden jump to a distant point results in dissonance.
The Baduk board was also a coordinate system, and joseki was the connection of adjacent moves.
Si-woo's moves were sudden thrusts into distant territory.
The two structures were identical.
Moving to an unexpected point in space.
And that wasn't all.
Group theory...
A move in Baduk was a transformation.
The act of placing a single stone transformed the state of the board, and Si-woo's sharp thrusts were transformations beyond the opponent's expectations.
Chord progressions in music were also transformations.
Going from C major to G major was a T₇ transformation, and dissonance was an unexpected transformation that deviated from the path the listener anticipated.
It was mind-blowing that both were transformations over Z₁₂.
Because the symmetry group of the Baduk board and the cyclic group of the musical scale shared the exact same mathematical structure.
f_beat = |f₁ - f₂| is the beat frequency. The opponent's expected move = f₁, Si-woo's actual move = f₂. The confusion created when they clash = |f₁ - f₂|. The larger the value, the more flustered the opponent became. But if it's too large, the opponent responds in an entirely different way. A moderate |f₁ - f₂| created the maximum amount of confusion.
Si-woo's Baduk, which he had only vaguely understood before, finally fell perfectly into place today.
Past Si-woo: Instinct (Dissonance) ≠ Actual Move (Consonance)
Present Si-woo: Instinct (Dissonance) = Actual Move (Dissonance)
With this, the question mark that had popped up when he first looked at Si-woo's game records was completely resolved.
Back then, he had just chased after the answers blindly and somehow stumbled upon them. Now, he could mathematically prove the entire process.
Wow, to think it connects to music like this.
Chul-jun blinked his wide eyes.
"Chul-jun! Down for malatang? Mr. Go is buying!"
Chul-jun furrowed his brow slightly.
Ah, that's really not my thing...
Chul-jun's deep, profound contemplation ended there for now.
「In the AI Era, Going Against the Grain: The Return of 'Shaking Baduk'」
「11-Year-Old Park Si-woo Crushes Opponent with a 10% Win-Rate Move, Wins Young Genius Professional Draft」
「The Move Discarded by AI Becomes a Weapon: 1-Dan Park Si-woo's Unconventional Baduk」
「Quitting Baduk for a Week to Go to School Actually Improved His Skills」
「A Casual Match with a Friend Boosted His Skills: A Unique Draft Story」
「A Private Elementary School Teacher's Unconventional Prescription Leads to Victory in the Young Genius Draft. Turns out He is Korea's Only Harvard PhD Elementary School Teacher」
「'Take a Break from Baduk and Go to School': 1-Dan Park Si-woo Drafted Thanks to His Homeroom Teacher」
"Mr. Go! You're a star now!"
"I heard you even did an interview?"
"As expected of Harvard, you really are on another level."
Go Chang-ho scratched his head sheepishly and slipped out of the staff room.
Sigh...
He had no idea how his phone number had leaked, but he was getting bombarded with calls from various Baduk academies and parents of research students.
He had already turned off his phone to escape the deluge.
When Si-woo's father had burst into tears and bowed deeply to him at the award ceremony, he had wanted nothing more than to crawl into a hole.
Still, realizing how much the man had suffered all this time made Go Chang-ho feel quite choked up himself.
I didn't even do anything...
Suddenly, he remembered the time he had spoken on the phone with Chul-jun's former tutor.
That tutor must have felt exactly like this back then.
Chang-ho chuckled.
By the way...
He glanced up toward the third-floor music room.
Should I go check on that?
The after-school piano teacher had mentioned something with an utterly bewildered expression—Chul-jun's piano textbook.
She said it was packed with formulas?
Chang-ho raised an eyebrow and started walking.
He was dying to know what the boy was up to this time.
"Hey, how is Chul-jun doing?"
— Haha, he's doing great!
"Hey. If you bought him a piano, you should have contacted me first. Did you get him a tutor?"
— No, he said he doesn't need one. He says after-school classes are enough. He's not doing this professionally anyway, so I didn't see the need to call you.
"Come on, man. Even so, if he's going to do it, it's better to start properly when he's young. How much can he possibly learn from an after-school class?"
— Haha, look at you. You practically threw a fit when we talked about math before...
"Is math the same as music? Sensibility is crucial for kids. They should be able to play at least one instrument properly. And a piano, of all things? Let me hook him up with one of my talented students."
— Look at you changing your tune. You told me not to force anything on him, and now you're completely backtracking. You have absolutely no consistency, my friend.
"..."
— If the kid says he wants to learn more, then we can help him. For now, let's just let him do it on his own. If he wants to know more, he'll ask. Our Chul-jun is very good at taking care of those things himself.
"Hmm. Well, I'll have to see for myself anyway. To see if the kid actually has talent. Do you have any videos of him playing?"
— He hasn't let me listen to him play even once. He's playing hard to get.
"Ha, is he a perfectionist? That's already a passing grade for an artist. I'll drop by sometime soon."
— Alright. Take care of your back. I told you to get some exercise. Sigh. I'm hanging up.
Kim Sung-chul, a chair professor in the Department of Piano at Seohan University's College of Music, chuckled as he hung up.
He then stared blankly at the department chair, who had been waiting for him to finish his call.
The department chair swallowed hard with a troubled expression, while Kim Sung-chul tapped the documents on his desk with his index finger.
"I told you, I'm not doing this."
"But... the chair of the Mathematics Department specifically requested..."
"Tsk."
Kim Sung-chul furrowed his brow and adjusted his glasses.
Then, he reopened the documents.
"Is this their first time doing this? It's so obvious what they're up to. They drag in some moderately smart kid who's ahead of his grade, call him a genius, and try to get some media coverage. What? An elementary schooler? Ha, I guess math alone is too boring now, so they're dragging music into it. Is this kid from their gifted center too?"
"Well, I'm not entirely sure about that..."
"It's obvious. Obvious. I know you're attending the MCM with them this time. And honestly, what is wrong with those people? Do they absolutely have to analyze everything with numbers to be satisfied? They should learn to accept emotion as emotion. Even Pythagoras, whom they practically worship, did that. Didn't he give up because of irrational numbers or whatever? Sigh. Do I really have to dance to the tune of this circus? It's not even for a research paper. They just want me to clap along and agree that some kid is amazing, don't they?"
"Well, Pythagoras didn't give up; he actually discovered the concept of irrational numbers..."
"Anyway, I just find people who play with numbers incredibly uncomfortable."
The department chair squeezed his eyes shut.
Mathematics and music seemed like completely different fields, but they actually shared many subtle connections.
Because of these commonalities, they could easily find common ground if they tried.
However, the top minds of both fields were like oil and water.
It was a clash of extreme 'T' and extreme 'F'.
To be honest, the department chair found the science folks a bit uncomfortable too.
Sigh...
He didn't want things to get awkward since they were participating in the MCM together this year, but this sensitive chair professor absolutely detested the natural sciences...
"I believe my stance is clear enough?"
"...Yes."
"An elementary schooler, of all things. Unbelievable."
And at that very moment.
"Bring him to me right now!"
Gu Byung-ook, the Dean of the College of Natural Sciences at Seohan University, shouted in excitement.