Chapter 57

Chapter 57

It is a distant memory.

"Grandpa!"

My younger self, perhaps barely five years old, pounced on my grandfather's back while he was so absorbed in playing Go that he hadn't noticed me approaching.

"Oh, my grandson! Did you have a good day at school?"

"Yes!"

"Sit here. I'll be finished soon. All right?"

Grandpa pulled an old, creaking chair over beside me.

The Go parlor, which had no signboard and consisted of nothing more than three or four Go boards set out on a wooden platform, was both my grandfather's workplace and his playground, as I understood it at that young age.

And because there wasn't a single child my age there, it became my playground too.

There was only one thing to watch: Grandpa playing Go.

As the saying goes, even a dog at a village school learns to recite poetry after three years. After watching for so long and occasionally playing myself, I'd become fairly good at judging which side was winning.

"Aw, Grandpa, you've lost. Let's hurry home."

"The game isn't even finished yet! What are you talking about?"

"Pfft! How does the grandson know more about Go than his grandfather? What a clever little fellow!"

"But Grandpa, why do you all do nothing but attack?"

"So we can finish quickly."

"What's good about finishing quickly?"

"That way, I can play at least one more game with the people here."

"Hmph. You can just play again tomorrow."

"If I lose to that gentleman today and don't get to play him tomorrow, there might not be another day."

"Why wouldn't there be?"

"My little puppy will understand when he's older."

Even by the standards of old men's jokes about having little time left, that one was particularly harsh, so I hadn't understood it as a child.

Could there be a crueler tactic when it came to winning and showing off?

The victor simply departed for a place where the defeated challenger could never demand a rematch.

A perfect victory completed by eternal rest.

To achieve that victory, or to prevent it, one had to play Go as quickly as possible.

Otherwise, one might experience a peculiar kind of grief when the opponent who had won the previous day disappeared after saying it was getting late and he would go home first.

And so, paradoxically, the flames burning away the last remnants of their lives developed the sharpest possible style of play.

That was the world of Go I'd learned by watching over their shoulders.

A world in which sacrificing one's own legs was perfectly acceptable as long as one could carve out the opponent's heart.

______

"I've lost. Thank you for teaching me a valuable lesson."

-Tap.

I picked up two stones and placed them on the Go board.

A resignation.

I hadn't expected to win in the first place.

There was no way my brief experience playing as a child could compete with an immortal who had spent countless ages playing Go.

I'd merely kept them company for a while because it was difficult to refuse.

And, with perfect timing, I spotted Yongman flying toward us from far away.

"I should be going now."

"Hm? What? You're leaving already? Why not stay a little longer?"

"Indeed! You haven't even played against the rest of us!"

"I'm afraid I'll have to come back and play another time. This isn't a place where an outsider should linger too long, is it?"

"Ah, well, that's true, but..."

Even if Yongman hadn't appeared, I would have had to leave.

No matter how time stood still in the mortal world, I couldn't keep playing games with no end in sight.

After all, the saying about immortals becoming so absorbed in their games that they failed to notice their axe handles rotting away might well have originated with these fellows.

[Heeeeey! Jinseooooong! What brings you heeeeere!]

-Rumble!

Yongman, who had finally spotted Jinseong, let out a tremendous roar and flew toward him at a terrifying speed.

"It's been a while. I brought some news for you. Phones don't work here, after all."

[News?]

"This."

When I took out the envelope, Yongman shrank his body and transformed into human form.

"Worker Choi asked me to deliver it."

"Worker Choi? That's unusual."

His tone was curt, but Yongman's face was full of anticipation as he examined the letter inside the envelope.

"Well, I've delivered it, so I'll be going now."

It hadn't been that long since I'd last seen Yongman, so there was no need to ask how he'd been.

Besides, if I wasn't careful, Yongman might try to keep me here too, so I quickly said goodbye and got into my car.

The Celestial Realm really wasn't a place to linger.

____________

The pavilion after Jinseong's departure.

The four immortals sat around the Go board in silence for a long time.

The stones from their game with Jinseong remained exactly where they had been.

"Good heavens, how could such a completely unorthodox position possibly arise?"

"His stone movements were a mess, and he played with practically no opening strategy. I wonder whether that could even be called Go."

"How much calculation did he put into capturing a mere two points here?"

"Ahem! What is the world coming to?"

Each of them offered a few remarks about the board, feigning disappointment.

Yet not one of them made any move to clear away the stones.

'It was a strangely entertaining game. Those hopelessly tangled stones attacked and defended from places I never expected. It was enough to leave my head spinning.'

'Is this the Go that the mortal world has refined over thousands of years?'

No.

It was merely the style of Go that Jinseong had learned as a child from people who were closer to the next world than the mortal one.

But to the immortals of the Celestial Realm, the record Jinseong had left behind was their only example of mortal Go.

After sitting there gazing at the board for quite some time,

-Clatter.

One of the immortals finally lost patience and began clearing away the stones.

'Tsk, it's a shame, but there's nothing to be done. We can't stop playing forever.'

Smacking their lips regretfully, the other three immortals helped put the stones away.

Once the board had been cleared, the immortals scheduled to play the next game prepared to sit across from each other.

But a hand placing a stone moved faster.

-Tap.

"Hm? What are you doing?"

Ironically, the hand that had placed a stone without waiting for its turn belonged to the immortal who had just cleared the board.

-Tap. Tap.

Ignoring the other immortal's question, he continued placing stones, alternating between black and white by himself.

"Don't tell me you're trying to replay that game!"

The stones were being placed without hesitation in precisely the correct positions. It was unmistakably the game that had barely resembled Go.

And then.

-Grab.

Another immortal stopped the hand that was placing the stones.

"What if he'd played here instead? Rather than attacking immediately, he could have left open the possibility of building territory behind him. Since the entire board is a battlefield anyway, his opponent would have difficulty reading the moves."

"Oh!"

"But what happens if he attacks here like this?"

-Tap. Tap.

The stones that had been placed so quickly were repeatedly returned to their original positions, then moved elsewhere.

"I'm telling you, this is a style that mustn't become obsessed with building territory! You should split the enemy here!"

"Come now, maintaining the offensive while securing practical gains is obviously the correct move!"

Before they knew it, the immortals were each clutching handfuls of stones and engaging in a passionate debate.

The sun set, dawn passed, and the oil in their lamp ran dry, extinguishing its flame before the sun rose once more.

-Tap.

"Fascinating. This chaotic fighting is making my head throb."

"With a style as savage as a rampaging murderous spirit, I worry that even one's temperament might become violent. Hoho."

"What a strange joke."

"If he could build even a small territory in the middle game while maintaining this early momentum, it would be much better..."

"No, he should attack even more fiercely! The way to overcome a difference in skill is through offense! If I teach him, he'll become an even sharper blade."

"No, but if he charges forward like that without securing anything behind him, won't the only territory he has be that single area where he began on the star point? It would be far better for me to teach him and transform his style into something with at least a measure of stability."

Once they'd finished reviewing the game, the question they began discussing was, "Whose disciple should he become?"

An unpolished gemstone placed before a master craftsman.

All that remained was to shape it with a chisel and hammer.

Unfortunately, the gemstone had already fled back to the mortal world long ago.

Leaving them to wait without knowing when it might return to the Celestial Realm.

"Was his name Jinseong? I should select a few game records to teach him."

"Then I'll do the same."

"How could those stifling game records of yours possibly interest him? We must show him records filled with bold, expansive play."

And so the four immortals headed toward their respective dwellings, happily imagining how they would teach their cherished disciple.

But they had taken only a few steps when all four stopped simultaneously.

'Wait. Didn't he just play an even game? Against us?'

It was a fact they'd overlooked while distracted by the bizarre game they'd never encountered before.

He had played an even game against men who had spent thousands of years doing nothing but playing Go, without taking a handicap.

'W-We must go to Old Woman Mago! We have to descend to the mortal world somehow! Before the others!'

_____________

By the time I finally returned to the coffeehouse, the Elder and Sani had arrived during that brief interval.

"Where have you been wandering off to, leaving Lia behind?"

"I made a quick trip to the Celestial Realm. I had something to deliver to Yongman."

"Heh heh. Didn't that fellow pester you to take him along again?"

"I was afraid he might, so I just said hello and hurried away. Oh, I also met some immortals."

"Who?"

"I didn't get a chance to ask their names. They were sitting in a pavilion playing Go."

"Don't tell me there were four of them."

"How did you know?"

"How could I not? They're the very fellows responsible for the saying about immortals playing until their axe handles rot away."

A chill ran down my spine.

Never before had the proverb about a man who watched immortals playing Go, only to return home and discover that hundreds of years had passed, sounded so frightening.

No wonder I'd felt uneasy. I'd just played Go with the living embodiments of that legend.

Fortunately, I'd escaped in the middle of the game and hadn't become the protagonist of the proverb myself.

"They caused such confusion in the records of the underworld that they hid away in the mountains, then were practically driven into the Celestial Realm. They're the sort of fellows you gain absolutely nothing from becoming involved with."

"I know them too! Their nickname was the Four Great Go Demons!"

"Not the Four Heavenly Kings?"

"That's what humans called them, but we called them demons!"

Come to think of it, their basic methods were rather similar to those of evil spirits.

Bewitching people and throwing the world into disorder wasn't much different from what evil spirits did.

Perhaps they'd only earned themselves admission to the Celestial Realm because they hadn't done it deliberately.

"If I meet them again, I'll just greet them and run away like I did today."

"Heh heh. A wise decision. When it comes to Go, those fellows wield such strangely extraordinary powers that even the heavenly gods seldom speak to them. Tsk. When you think about it, the Celestial Realm is a place where all sorts of people with a screw loose end up..."

The Elder's vivid testimony eventually turned into criticism of the Celestial Realm, but his words soon trailed off.

Because of the blue light filling the windows.

We went outside to investigate its source and saw an enormous pillar of light descending from the sky to the Divine Tree in the backyard.

Then, a dragon descended from the heavens along the pillar of light.

"Mister! It's Uncle Yongman!"

"Someone's riding on his back!"

"Hm? Who is it?"

I could easily identify the people riding on his back.

Unlike the immortals dressed as farmers, their clothing was quite distinctive even in the Celestial Realm.

They were the very immortals I'd met today.

The sight of four immortals seated side by side on the back of an Azure Dragon was utterly bizarre.

Fortunately, they had descended enveloped in divine light, so ordinary people probably couldn't see them.