Chapter 64

Chapter 64

Chapter 64 A Divine Move (9)

"I won."

"As did I."

Everything was proceeding smoothly according to plan, with one easy victory after another.

The worst possible outcome would be for us to face one another in the preliminaries and be forced into a bloody battle among ourselves.

Only eighteen players would survive to reach the main tournament.

Since the competition followed a tournament format, the chances of us being evenly distributed without ever meeting were actually quite low.

Fortunately, however, the tragedy of fighting among our own ranks hadn't occurred by the middle stages, and the preliminary rounds were already approaching their midpoint.

We had to defeat seven opponents today.

To finish in the top nine, we needed seven consecutive victories.

Frankly, that was a difficult task for me.

I'd never even considered the possibility of placing among the winners in the first place.

Although it was only an online Go tournament, the twenty-million-won first prize meant that every opponent I encountered possessed extraordinary skill.

And I had an additional handicap.

-Tap.

"Ooooooh! A stone appeared over there!"

"I know."

"I'm telling you just in case you didn't notice!"

It was Sani.

The reason I couldn't tell him to stop bothering me and go play somewhere else wasn't because I was afraid of hurting his feelings with harsh words.

If I let Sani roam freely around the coffeehouse right now, he might disrupt the immortals' concentration.

If someone had to suffer Sani's interference, it was best that it be me, since I had nothing to lose.

Sani had a habit of becoming curious whenever most people were doing something and insisting on joining them.

Once that curiosity was aroused, not even Lia's attempts to coax him away would work.

Apparently, he wouldn't be satisfied unless he sat on my lap and watched the game.

But having Sani on my lap wasn't entirely uncomfortable.

'This isn't a game I have to win.'

Although I kept telling myself that, whenever it came time to place a stone, I hesitated repeatedly.

It was because of my desire to win and the pressure of participating in a tournament, even if it was only the preliminary round.

With Sani distracting me, I actually found it easier to place my stones without overthinking.

Wasn't it just like any other ordinary weekend?

My usual seat by the window, the air conditioner that had been switched on a little early to counter June's mild heat, and the moderate noise from the regular customers.

The familiar surroundings divided my attention, but that only helped ease my nerves.

And so I was steadily approaching my fourth consecutive victory.

【Match Result: Black (Dangsan-ri) Wins by 2.5 Points】

It was a victory I'd barely secured after a closely contested match.

"Is it going to start getting difficult now?"

"Why would it be difficult when you won?"

"Because the next opponent will be even better."

"Then Jinseong just has to be better!"

"If it were that easy, I'd have become a professional."

They said that a player's condition on the day and the opponent's style could often outweigh differences in skill, but my lucky victories had probably reached their limit.

Having played four games, the field of over two thousand participants had already been reduced to just over a hundred survivors.

With a survival rate of five percent, most of the players who had advanced through luck, like me, would already have been eliminated.

[Would you like to begin your next match? (Waiting time after acceptance: 300 seconds)]

The break ended, and another match began.

But as soon as I pressed the Accept button, my laptop suddenly started behaving strangely.

The game window stuttered, and the laptop's cooling fan began spinning furiously with a loud hum, even though the only program running was a Go game.

I wondered whether I'd left the laptop on for too long and was about to restart it when I saw my opponent and realized the problem wasn't the laptop.

The number of spectators had risen from around fifty in the previous match to over two thousand.

『Opponent: Han Seun, 9-dan (Professional)』

We'd met before.

Although he didn't know it.

Just when I'd thought only the real contenders were left, it was as though the final boss had appeared.

But I had no intention of simply surrendering.

I didn't know exactly what had drawn him to our coffeehouse. I only knew that his desperation had been strong enough to overcome the Divine Tree's energy and the shamans' talismans.

If what he was searching for was my clumsy Go, then our meeting here was practically inevitable.

What is destined to happen will happen, one way or another.

And I poured my own desperate wish into this match as well: that once he'd found his answer, he would never come to our coffeehouse again.

My experience with Dohyeok discovering the existence of supernatural beings had been more than enough.

I quietly closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and prepared to open my Divine Eyes.

I had to be careful.

Because this time, what I intended to see wasn't the future.

____________

-Tap.

'Have I studied his game records too much? Now that all he does is attack, I can see his moves coming.'

National Champion Han Seun had begun the match filled with excitement, but Jinseong's predictable stone movements soon calmed him again.

He could confidently say that no one had watched and analyzed more of Jinseong's games than he had.

The points of attack against Jinseong's inevitably weak opening formations grew increasingly predictable the more he focused on offense.

-Tap. Tap.

Because he could read the moves, Han Seun placed white stones in rapid succession as soon as Jinseong's black stones appeared.

It was as though a sturdy shield was already waiting wherever a spear thrust forward.

Before long, his fortified castle occupied more than half the Go board.

'It's over.'

National Champion Han Seun thought Jinseong's expression would have been quite a sight if they had been sitting face-to-face rather than playing online.

He had simply encountered the wrong opponent.

If he hadn't met Han Seun, his skills would have been sufficient to reach the main tournament.

After all, the tournament had been avoided by nearly every outstanding professional player.

Famous AIs were concealed throughout the field like landmines, but if one was lucky enough to avoid them, the remaining opponents were generally of comparable ability.

However, in the world of competition, luck was also part of one's skill.

After all, there was no excuse more pathetic than claiming bad luck after losing.

'Is he about to resign?'

His opponent had stopped placing stones.

He couldn't find anywhere to play.

Having launched an offensive that all but abandoned opening strategy, the territory black had secured was pitifully small and weak.

It was the price of playing chaotic moves that would never even reach the endgame.

'Your defeat is inevitable. I'm only curious about what you'll do afterward.'

Until his loss to AlphaGo, Han Seun had built an undefeated legend in the professional world.

Dangsan-ri, on the other hand, had improved at a frightening rate in just fifteen games, but he was still nothing more than an unpolished gemstone.

And just as the countdown clock was approaching its end,

-Tap.

A black stone appeared.

In a place Han Seun had never even considered.

And for some reason, he had the illusion that a faint blue light was emanating from the black stone.

Was it because he'd been concentrating too intensely?

He rubbed his eyes and looked again, but it was unmistakably light. The faint glow grew steadily stronger until it blazed so brightly that he could no longer keep his eyes open.

-Whoooosh.

____________

When the blue light faded, his surroundings had changed.

'Where am I?'

He was no longer in the memorial hall where his master was enshrined.

The shelves packed tightly with funeral urns had vanished, and he found himself standing in the middle of an ordinary home's living room.

The floor was covered with yellowed vinyl flooring, and a tiny cathode-ray television, small enough to conceal with both hands, sat deep inside a television cabinet as though it were a sacred treasure.

And those weren't the only strange things.

There was a bulky rotary telephone and even an ashtray beside a matchbox.

This was a place that National Champion Han Seun knew all too well.

It was his master's house.

The house where he himself had lived while receiving instruction for five years.

As National Champion Han Seun wandered through the long-missed rooms, recalling old memories, his steps came to a halt on the wooden veranda.

An elderly gentleman wearing a loose-fitting suit sat there before a Go board.

"Ah, where did my Go player go? You said you were just going to the bathroom. Have you only just come back?"

"Master?"

"Hoho, you rascal. You're a grown man now, yet you're crying."

It was unmistakably his master.

The way he held a cigarette between his lips and chuckled was exactly as Han Seun remembered him when he'd still been healthy, before his death.

He had known from the beginning that this wasn't reality.

Perhaps he'd dozed off briefly because he hadn't been drinking lately.

It didn't matter.

Not if he could sit across from the master he was seeing for the first time in twenty years.

"Master, after you passed away, I became the youngest National Champion in history. I've also gotten quite good at those late-game battles you always scolded me for being weak at."

His voice, roughened by alcohol and cigarettes, gradually grew clearer.

Soon, it became the voice he'd had when he was learning Go in his master's home.

"And also... Oh, right! Sometimes I even turn games around in the endgame now. And all those disciples of Master Choi who were such a thorn in my side? I sent every one of them home without a single title! I did well, didn't I?"

His manner of speaking had also changed into that of an ordinary seven-year-old excitedly boasting about his accomplishments.

"Good grief, you're hurting my ears, you rascal. Hurry up and finish your game. Isn't it your turn?"

"Huh?"

Only then did National Champion Han Seun notice the Go board in front of his master.

Anyone could see that he held the advantage.

For some reason, his master's territory had been reduced to tatters, and after only a few more exchanges, even his master's large group would be in danger.

"Oh, come on. I've already won this game."

-Tap.

The white stone held in his tiny, fern-like hand met black's attack without hesitation.

As the disciple raised his head proudly with a crescent-shaped smile, convinced of his victory, the master showed him the next move.

"What if I play here?"

"Huh?"

It was a move that pierced deeply beyond the sturdy fortress wall.

"Hoho, haven't I told you time and again? When a weakness appears in a position that looks solid, that very solidity becomes a fatal weakness. Goodness, it looks like five of these stones will become casualties."

Once the wall was breached, the magnificent palace-like territory was instantly reduced to an empty wilderness.

"Would you like to stop? If we end here, you can go for a walk with this old master of yours. We can buy some of those chewy snacks you like at the stationery shop up the road. How about it?"

"Chewy snacks?"

It was a lost game anyway.

With his territory collapsed and five stones captured, it was a position where he should have resigned long ago.

If he quickly cleared away the stones, he could enjoy those delicious, savory chewy snacks.

National Champion Han Seun picked up two stones to signal his resignation.

But the stones in his hand refused to settle onto the old Go board.

"Come now, what are you doing? Hurry up and resign so we can get ready to leave."

His master, who had already risen and was putting on his coat, urged his hesitant disciple.

"It's not over yet."

"Hm?"

-Tap.

The disciple placed another stone on the barren territory.

His master smiled gently, removed his coat, and sat down across from his disciple again.

-Tap. Tap. Tap.

The game grew faster as the two fell silent.

Whenever black entered through the collapsed wall, white blocked it.

Sometimes white cut through the middle of black's stones that had advanced too deeply, increasing the number of captured stones. At other times, a false eye believed to be dead became two true eyes, allowing a group to survive.

And at the end of the closely fought game, which eventually reached the endgame, white emerged victorious by half a point.

"I won!"

"Hoho, so you did. I've lost."

"I was so nervous because I thought you were really going to put me in atari right here! And when I extended over there, you didn't follow, so I was able to counterattack almost immediately! And also..."

"What do you think? When you held on and kept playing, an opportunity came, didn't it?"

"Yes!"

"Life is the same. If you go off to eat snacks simply because you've suffered a defeat, you'll never even have the chance to regain the advantage. Even if your largest group dies and your captured stones pile up, if you continue placing stones, you may leave behind a wonderful game record like this one."

"That's true! Master, let's hurry up and review the game! We mustn't forget it!"

"Yes. Don't forget."

-Whoooosh.

Blue light poured out once again from the Go board crowded with stones.

And when the light faded, the game he had just played with his master remained on his tablet.

Along with a small pop-up window.

【Match Result: White (Han Seun) Wins by Half a Point】