Bring It On, Champion
"The winner of the 2025 Korean Junior Chess Championship is An Seoyeon! Congratulations!"
As the winner and loser were decided, applause poured down from the spectator stands.
It was a level of play unbelievable for a junior match.
There was Kwon Miha, who, despite being utterly crushed in the final score, had shown her outstanding skills without regret.
And there was Seoyeon, who at just six years old had defeated the strongest female junior in the country with unbelievable technique. Praises erupted for both of them.
"Haa..."
Miha stood up and offered a handshake.
Her right hand.
The defeat was bitter and sad, but she had played to the absolute limit of her abilities.
She had no regrets.
"Congratulations on the win!"
"Sis, you're getting so much stronger by the day! I'm totally looking forward to next time!"
Seoyeon smiled brightly and threw her arms around Miha.
"Really?"
Miha's face flushed at Seoyeon's simple words, I'm looking forward to it.
She was overjoyed that the child—who usually dismissed everyone as boring noobs no matter what strategy or dirty tricks they pulled—had finally acknowledged her.
"Alright, time for the winner's interview."
Their families and the event staff walked up to the stage to prepare for the interview.
"Our Seoyeon is the best!"
"Whoaaa!"
Seomi and Sujin grabbed Seoyeon from both sides and jumped up and down.
"This is my daughter!"
"M-Mom, stop it, it's embarrassing."
Jihou offered congratulations to the victorious Seoyeon and encouragement to his defeated daughter.
"You did wonderful, sweetie!"
"Thanks, Dad. But over there..."
And then, there was one more person.
"Congratulations on the win, Seoyeon."
The first person Natalya approached was Seoyeon.
Seoyeon looked back and forth between Natalya and Miha, then gave a half-hearted reply.
"Yep."
"You worked hard too, my daughter."
Miha did not reply.
In truth, Miha no longer even looked at her mother.
Rather than looking at the biological mother who approached her so coldly, she would spend that time preparing for her next match.
She was a knight with a competitive fire burning in her chest.
She had fought, and she had lost.
Her only thought now was to face her opponent again on a higher stage, in a game of even greater quality.
Seeing this, Natalya stroked her daughter's cheek.
"The look in your eyes is much better than before, Miha. I hope to see an even better game next time. I'll visit you again soon."
With those final words, Natalya turned and walked away.
Afterward, individual interviews were held in front of the cameras.
"At least twenty different moves were possible here, you see—"
"There was a bit of an error in the middlegame of match three in the finals—"
"I should've won right then! Missing even a single move is so annoying."
As Seoyeon rambled on and on about chess, explaining which moves were good and where, the reporters' faces began to sour.
Geez, this is an interview with a chess champion. What else do they want?
"My favorite thing is chocolate milk!"
"I'm starting elementary school soon, so I'm super excited!"
Did they want her to say childish things like that?
Or maybe... strike a cute pose?
She stretched out her arms. "Peace!"
Click!
Only then did the reporters' faces brighten up.
How's that for the cute Seoyeon! Now everyone knows, right? A super-genius, beautiful girl chess player has arrived in Korea!
Apparently unsatisfied with just a few cute photos, the reporters kept throwing boring questions at her.
"An Seoyeon, I'm from World Wide Church Korea, and I'd like to ask a question!"
"I don't take questions from religious groups. I go to Catholic church with my mom and sis."
"If you participate in the upcoming Asian Games, are you absolutely confident you can beat the Japanese players?"
"Do I only need to be confident about beating Japan?"
"If you're good at chess, you must be good at math too, right? What were your math grades in kindergarten?"
"I don't know."
Was it because a six-year-old winning was such a massive story? Reporters who had nothing to do with chess were crowding around, making the interview incredibly boring.
The academy director had warned her that things would get chaotic before the finals, but she hadn't expected it to be this bad!
"An Seoyeon is only six years old. A relentless barrage of questions is too much for her. We will take one last question now."
Nice one, Director.
"Wrapping it up!"
Since she was giving half-hearted answers anyway, the interview was finally winding down.
"An Seoyeon, congratulations on your victory. Could you give us a brief winning statement?"
"From the very start of this tournament, I lacked confidence. Confidence that I could lose, that is. Except for my final opponent, Kwon Miha, everyone else is a total noob. Is there even anyone in Korea who can challenge me?"
"...It's wonderful to see you so full of confidence. This isn't a question, but just one more thing. Magnus Jansen was spotted at the venue. Did you happen to see him?"
"Jansen is here? Where? Where is he?"
She whipped her head around, but he was nowhere to be seen. Ugh, let's play a match right now, you modern-day GOAT!
"He's doing an interview with others outside, but he'll be here soon. You have to wait patiently, okay, Seoyeon?"
"Okay!"
She went over to a corner, sat on a colorful children's chair, and waited patiently for about ten minutes.
Jeans and curly hair. It was him!
The guy was tramping over toward her.
The current World Champion, Magnus Jansen, was bored of chess.
To the strongest man in the world, the world had nothing left to show.
As his interest in chess gradually waned, his friction with FIDE began.
The suits who dragged him out of the venue under the pretext of a dress code violation, and the tournament brackets that anyone could see were rigged to favor a specific country.
The organizers who turned a blind eye to the opponent's suspected cheating and instead criticized Jansen when he protested.
So, in the previous World Championship, he had tipped over his king after just two moves and walked away.
Since that day, Jansen had boycotted all official FIDE tournaments.
On top of that, he declared he wouldn't play a single move at any table where Grandmasters acting as FIDE's lapdogs sat.
Once he did that, nothing was left.
Filtering out matches to suit his picky tastes left him, ironically, with virtually no games to play.
Thus, he chose to participate as a guest in exhibition events.
He especially frequented youth tournaments as a guest, driven by a desire to reignite his passion by watching the world's rising prospects.
Even though it was his own choice, the sight of him hanging around youth exhibition matches drew ridicule from some.
The only reason he had flown all the way to Korea a few days ago was one person: An Seoyeon.
A six-year-old who had only started playing chess a few months ago. To think such a brat had played on equal footing with him.
It was just a single online chess game, but Jansen knew. This kid was the real deal.
His interest piqued, Jansen had looked up all of her game records and couldn't help but laugh.
Most prodigies Jansen had seen stuck to a single, narrow repertoire, drilling it to death.
That was the standard way, the only way to mimic any depth at such a young age.
Seoyeon was the exact opposite.
This kid changed her opening every single game. And each time, she demonstrated an absurdly deep level of understanding.
In one game, she used the Orangutan; in the next, she played d4; and in the one after that, some bizarre variation he had never even heard of.
The result? The few players in Korea with ratings over 2000 fell one after another before her.
This is practically public humiliation.
The Korean players couldn't even put up a fight against a child who clearly wasn't even trying.
And he felt a sense of kinship with her.
Are you bored too?
Jansen understood that feeling better than anyone. Having sat on the throne for ten years, he had felt the exact same way.
But today, that assumption was shattered.
The finals. The four games against Miha. For the first time, the kid had taken off her mask and started playing in earnest.
Thank goodness. She's thoroughly enjoying chess. She's better off than I am.
Jansen, who would normally be dozing off at an event he was invited to, watched all four games with rapt attention.
Her opponent, Kwon Miha. That girl was no ordinary player either.
A romantic attacker who threw pieces without hesitation to create chaotic games.
Her rating is around IM level... That Miha girl plays well above her rating too. If she steps up, she'll go much higher. But...
Seoyeon was on a completely different level.
She suppressed the chaos with sheer force, and in the final game, she even showcased an upgraded version of her opponent's own style.
A shiver ran down Jansen's spine.
The boldness to accept doubled pawns, the personality to return an opponent's specialty right back to them, and Fischer's chess—which blended modern positional chess with the distinct aggression of the old era.
Her Lichess username was a giveaway, but this kid is the real deal.
It was the machine-like style of the purest, loneliest man in chess history.
Fischer wasn't a machine, yet he played with machine-like precision. That's exactly what you're doing, An Seoyeon. What on earth are you?
Jansen was not the type of person to believe in unscientific things like reincarnation.
Fischer was dead, and this kid was a six-year-old Korean girl. Was it just an imitation?
Imitations are obvious. They're awkward and stiff, like borrowed clothes.
Chess speaks for itself. And Seoyeon's pieces were screaming, I am James Fischer.
For the first time, the strongest man in the world was witnessing something he couldn't explain.
Jansen brushed off the annoying reporters' questions and walked away with an excited heart.
An Seoyeon, let me see you for myself.
He approached Seoyeon, who was sitting politely on a colorful children's chair in the corner of the interview room.
She was swinging her legs and sipping chocolate milk, looking every bit like a normal six-year-old.
"Nnngh!"
Grunting as she struggled to open a jar of strawberry jam, looking utterly ordinary...
"Hey."
Jansen walked over and popped the lid open for her. Seoyeon looked up.
"Oh...!"
The moment their eyes met, Jansen froze.
Her projected rating after this tournament will rise to 2026. She got her WCM title fast.
But behind those big, cute eyes was the gaze of a predator sizing up its prey.
But that rating is an illusion. Add at least 600 points to match her true strength.
"Magnus Jansen."
Seoyeon smirked mischievously.
"We're playing a match in two days, right?"
"That's how the official schedule is set. You speak English very well, just like I heard."
"It's basic. Don't go easy on me. I want to test just how strong the world's best really is."
Jansen looked down at Seoyeon for a moment.
A six-year-old testing the strongest player in the world.
Amusing. A child who perfectly executes Fischer's style—the 'characterless character,' the 'objective and precise best move'—is more than qualified to test me.
For the first time in a long while, Jansen's heart raced.
Sick of FIDE and ready to throw it all away, he suddenly wanted to play with everything he had again.
"Once I get fired up, I play to win. Even against a kid."
Jansen bent his knees, bringing himself down to Seoyeon's eye level.
"I challenge the Korean Junior Champion. Give it everything you've got. I'm not an opponent you can afford to go easy on. Little Fischer."
"Just what I wanted, noob uncle. ♥"
"Noob? That's not a very fitting provocation for me, is it?"
Jansen looked straight into Seoyeon's eyes and said,
"I am the greatest of all time."
"And I'm not 'Little Fischer' either. I am Fischer himself. Little boy."