I Have Too Many Money-Making Talents - Chapter 27

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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A Talent with Many Uses — Episode 27
‘PePe?’
I remember him.
Swift yet solid Reading Moves.
An intuition for flow that never faltered.
Go so sturdy it couldn’t be compared to other Amateur 3-dan players.
And.
PePe : Hey, you’re using a smurf account, aren’t you?
PePe : Forget it. Bring your main account, drop the nickname, and let’s play for real this time.
A stifled laugh escaped me.
Laughter leaked out.
He’d pressed me about whether I was on a secondary account, and it turned out he was the one using one.
“You lost?”
“Yeah, I lost, but it was only by half a point.”
“Half a point?”
“Mm.”
The corners of his mouth lifted slightly.
‘That’s cute.’
He’d lost by forfeit.
If it had gone to counting, the difference would’ve been more than ten points.
And after that, how much he pestered me for a rematch.
That complaining tone of his was still vivid in my ears.
I climbed a few more steps.
At the end of the corridor, a noisy cluster of Research Students came into view.
‘So that’s PePe.’
A kid lounging with both arms interlaced behind his head.
Gestures full of swagger.
Ruthless competitive hunger.
“Oh? Hello there?”
I turned at a familiar voice.
Kim Tae-ho and Kim Tae-yul. Brothers.
The older one, Tae-ho, bowed with composure.
The younger, Tae-yul, regarded me with impish eyes.
“Hey.”
“Are you here for the Preliminaries?”
Tae-ho greeted me politely.
“Yeah. Looking forward to it.”
I gave a light nod in return.
The brothers passed by me and approached the Research Student cluster.
“That guy really plays well.”
……I heard it all.
What’s the point of such brazen intimidation?
Just then, Tae-yul turned his head as if remembering something.
“Right. Tae-hyun, you’re in the same bracket as him, yeah?”
“Me?”
The kid called Tae-hyun glanced over here briefly.
Our eyes met.
He wore an uncomfortable expression, then turned back sharply.
“I’m going to win.”
The words dropped bluntly.
Whether it was bravado or determination.
Or confidence, perhaps.
That wary gaze flickered precariously.
‘This should be interesting.’
A rematch, then.
I smiled thinly and made my way toward the Preliminaries venue.
Low ceiling, spacious interior.
Cold, heavy air.
Go boards arranged in neat rows and columns.
This was the venue where I would play today.
‘The pairing chart.’
Seventy-two amateurs competing in the preliminary selection.
Eight players per group, tournament format.
Three consecutive wins advance to the Integrated Preliminaries.
I’d been seeded as the second-ranked amateur, receiving the top players’ dispersed placement.
That’s why I’d avoided being grouped with Kim Tae-ho or Kim Tae-yul.
I checked the pairing chart and turned to leave.
Then.
‘Park Jun-su.’
At the far end of the playing hall.
Our eyes met as he sat there with an expressionless face.
I gave a slight bow.
He answered with only the faintest glimmer in his eyes.
‘……Not close, though.’
I turned my gaze away and took my assigned seat.
As the selection match time drew near, the participants filed into the playing hall.
Every single one wore the same grim expression.
Their shoulders were tense with the weight of it all.
Then.
Two more people entered the playing hall.
One of them was a familiar face.
“The referee today will be Lim Dong-won, and our observer will be Master Kang Hyuk.”
A brief introduction.
The playing hall fell silent.
“Please take your seats. We will now begin the CIL Bank World Masters Amateur Selection Match.”
A heavy tension rippled through the air.
I breathed slowly and steadily, my gaze fixed beyond the Go board.
My first opponent was a girl, perhaps thirteen years old.
A research student with glasses that suited her well.
Her name was Ama—Kim Su-jin, if I recalled correctly.
Whoosh.
I drew a stone to determine color.
‘White.’
We both set down our Go stone containers and bowed.
“Thank you for the match.”
The first game.
Su-jin, playing black, opened with the small corner.
I placed my stone in the small corner opposite her.
Su-jin played at the star point, choosing the safest setup.
Without rushing.
A style that protected her own rhythm.
I matched that tempo and developed the opening moves.
The joseki unfolded naturally enough.
The pattern of gradually seizing the larger territories.
As we approached the end of the opening formation—
‘Time to test her a bit.’
An attachment.
And a push.
My move gave her pause—just for an instant.
But she soon responded with measured, formal technique.
‘Caught it.’
I seized the moment and opened my flow toward the center.
A gentle nudge—a gradual shift to seize the initiative.
“…….”
Su-jin leaned forward, entering a long consideration.
Whether to counter boldly or retreat.
Her deliberation was brief.
Click.
Black cut through my stone.
A direct cut.
‘She’s chosen momentum.’
Exactly what I wanted.
I don’t pull back.
Instead, I push the advantage even further, beyond her grasp.
Snap!
One step backward, toward the center.
Su-jin’s head tilted at the unexpected move.
She only stared at the stone, turning it over in her mind.
She didn’t place her next stone right away.
Black had nowhere to extend—my stones were already blocking every path.
‘This is my tempo.’
The thought of losing never crossed my mind.
Only how to win filled my head.
Then.
‘Hm…?’
I felt someone beside me.
The sensation of being watched.
‘Is that Kang Hyuk?’
The instructor who’d observed my matches with interest during the Amateur Championship and the President’s Cup.
I ignored the presence and returned my focus to the match.
Until I had a decisive victory in my hands.
I had no room for carelessness.

* * *
Korean Baduk Association.
Outside the preliminary match hall.
On an LED display panel next to the corridor, the words “Silence Please” blinked slowly.
There.
Faint footsteps echoed intermittently.
Ascending the stairwell, the sound growing gradually closer.
A woman turned at the landing and climbed slowly to the third floor.
“…….”
White shirt, hair neatly tied back.
Jeans and sneakers.
Clean, understated—far from any hint of adornment.
And yet.
Anyone who saw her couldn’t help but follow her with their eyes.
Luminous skin.
Features with an exotic air.
A bearing more model-like than any model’s.
A vitality and natural beauty that seemed torn from a broadcast studio—all wrong for baduk, and yet perfectly suited to her.
“Yuzuha? What brings you here? You don’t have a match today, do you?”
A staff member from the Korean Baduk Association recognized her.
They were restocking disposable coffee and tea for the participants, along with fresh beans.
“Hello. I came to watch a match today.”
“To watch?”
The staff member’s expression showed confusion.
Saeki Yuzuha, 3-dan.
She had learned baduk from her Japanese professional parents.
Shuttling between Korea and Japan, she worked as a Research Student at the Korean Baduk Association before turning professional.
A genius woman player of Japanese nationality.
Her skill at baduk was matched only by her beauty, which rivaled that of idols, earning her popularity in both Japan and Korea.
Especially in Japan, she was the figure who had breathed new life into a stagnating baduk world.
Recently, she had taken on modeling work as well, becoming more than a simple baduk player—a symbol.
Yuzuha spoke in fluent Korean.
“There’s a match I really wanted to see.”
“An Amateur Preliminaries match?”
“Yes.”
She smiled lightly and walked past.
The staff member blinked and tilted their head in bewilderment.
“……An amateur? Is there even someone capable of that?”
Her expression betrayed her bewilderment.
And yet.
Saeki Yuzuha’s eyes burned with fierce intensity as she made her way toward the preliminaries match hall.
Days ago.
Kang Hyuk, a 9-dan professional, had summoned her to his dojo and replayed a single game with her.
No word of who had played it.
No word of who had won.
No mention of which tournament it was from.
He simply placed the stones in silence, offering no explanation whatsoever.
At first, she’d watched without much interest.
But as the game deepened toward the middle phase, she couldn’t help but gasp.
‘This… what is this?’
Moves that seized the flow and twisted it.
Rhythm and breathing you’d never see from an engine.
Go played by trusting your own instinct.
She couldn’t bear it.
“Master Kang, who…… is this person?”
Her Reading Moves had been trained by the engine.
Her Go confined within its algorithmic walls.
Her instinct dulled, chasing nothing but accuracy rates.
The gap between the Go she played and the Go that was truly hers.
For more than half a year now, this question had weighed on even the genius Saeki Yuzuha.
“Kim In-ha. An amateur.”
Yuzuha couldn’t believe it.
Not even a Research Student on the brink of Professional Entry.
Not a professional at all.
The polish of the position was something she couldn’t accept from amateur Go.
“Will you go and see for yourself?”
She’d nodded, entranced.
The sense she’d lost.
The hope that she might recover it by witnessing his play.
Kim In-ha.
His Go.
She had to see it with her own eyes.
Which was why she’d come to the Korean Baduk Association.
Beyond the door of the preliminaries match hall where Yuzuha stood, the sound of stones being placed came in steady rhythm.
Tap. Tap.
She steadied her breathing at the calm cadence and gently pushed the door open.
The Amateur Preliminaries were an open match.
As a professional, Yuzuha was free to observe or watch from the sidelines.
Still.
She worried her presence might somehow disturb the game.
So she’d waited until the match was well underway before slipping in quietly.
‘There he is.’
Her gaze naturally fixed on one figure.
Eyes that were calm.
No hurry, no greed in the hands that held the stones.
Simply reading the flow.
A man maintaining his own pace.
Far more striking in person than the photograph from that Presidential Cup championship interview.
‘Kim In-ha.’
How extraordinary he truly was.
She’d come here to verify it with her own eyes.
Soft rustling of movement.
Yuzuha positioned herself quietly where his Go would be most visible.
Precisely behind him.
At the distance where the flow of the stones would reach her from his eye level.
Tap.
He placed his stone.
That move.
‘If it were me, I wouldn’t play it there…….’
A move that AI almost certainly wouldn’t recommend.
And yet.
There was a sense of seizing the momentum, methodically binding the opponent in place.
And her opponent was none other than Kim Su-jin, of Research Student Group Two.
The rising star expected to climb to Group One soon.
A worthy opponent.
‘This move…… why here?’
Saeki Yuzuha swallowed without thinking.
An incomprehensible ambiguity.
And yet.
Within it, a clarity that rang unmistakable.
A move that could never emerge from Reading Moves trained by AI.
Those moves.
Bound the opponent, unsettled her, drove her forward relentlessly.
Yuzuha couldn’t tear her eyes from the board for a single moment.
‘An eye for the flow.’
That sense.
The sense that Saeki Yuzuha had lost.
And.
The Go she should pursue from this moment forward.
‘Ah.’
Something warm filled one corner of her chest.
This game.
I want to keep watching it.
That’s what she felt.

* * *
“……I lost.”
Click.
Su-jin set down the black stone she’d been holding.
Her head bowed, her fingertips trembled slightly where they rested on the Go stone container.
“Well played.”
I bowed in acknowledgment.
When I lifted my head again.
Su-jin’s eyes were rimmed with red.
‘There she goes again.’
Lips pressed tight, she choked quietly as I gathered up the stones.
Whether from competitive spirit.
Or because she was still young and her emotional control wasn’t quite there yet.
The Research Students always seemed like they cried easily.
‘I’ll pretend not to notice.’
I was afraid that some awkward consolation might make her cry harder.
I quietly cleaned up the board.
‘……Huh?’
Just then, the presence I’d felt behind me retreated.
I turned my head.
‘Who was that?’
A white shirt, hair tied in a ponytail.
A woman with an unfamiliar face, her lines stretched as if modeled after a beauty, was quietly leaving the preliminaries hall, moving away from me.
She had such a distinct presence that a few other participants lifted their heads to glance at her as she passed.
It certainly.
Seemed like she’d been watching my match the whole time…….
But absorbed in the game as I’d been, I couldn’t quite place her clearly in memory.
‘Let me check the pairings.’
I stood up and brushed myself off.
Two games that had finished before mine.
One of them would be my next opponent.

I reported the result to the referee Lim Dong-won, then approached the pairing board mounted on the wall of the match hall.
I scanned it slowly.
My next opponent.
‘Kim Tae-hyun.’
PePe.
The first day I gained the talent.
The guy I’d faced with a secondary account.
‘A rematch, then.’

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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