I Have Too Many Money-Making Talents - Chapter 36

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

A Talent Too Lucrative 036
Jang Yuna, 2-dan, visited the Korean Baduk Association for the first time in ages.
A place she used to frequent like her own home.
The number of matches she’d played here was beyond counting.
But.
For the past few years, she’d stopped coming altogether.
She still carried the title of Professional, yet never entered tournaments.
‘At first, I minded it.’
A professional player not competing in tournaments.
Once, that fact had shamed her.
Calling herself a professional had felt embarrassing.
Self-doubt gnawed at her—did she even deserve the title?
But as time passed, her thinking shifted.
‘Being a professional doesn’t mean you have to enter tournaments.’
Today was no different.
She hadn’t come to the Korean Baduk Association to enter the Ciel Bank Cup.
She was here in her capacity as a referee.
Not as a competitor, true.
But this too was work she could do as a professional.
And it was a crucial role someone had to fill.
“I’m on top of the world these days.”
A confident smile played at Jang Yuna’s lips.
Baduk specialist streamer Jang Yuna.
Right now, she was skyrocketing in popularity.
Clean commentary.
Skillful banter with her audience.
And that endearing touch of foolishness breaking through her composure.
She shone on air so naturally that streaming might as well be her calling.
And there was the hottest content of the moment.
The “Nameless” series.
It was nothing short of a sensation.
The response was explosive—barely contained by the word “syndrome.”
Particularly the reaction from China was beyond imagination.
A mysterious master shrouded in secrecy.
Overwhelming strength that defeated Chinese players one after another.
For wuxia lovers, it was a story tailor-made to their tastes.
Perhaps that was why.
Views from Chinese platforms shot straight up, and comments and fandom exploded.
And
‘sponsorships related to baduk started rolling in.’
Before anything else, she was a baduk player herself.
The popularity of baduk.
The spread of baduk.
The commercial success of baduk.
Being able to contribute to these things brought her more joy than anything else.
‘None of this would be possible without the kindness of that Nameless gentleman.’
Now people remembered her not as
‘a half-baked professional,’
but as Jang Yuna, the baduk world’s popular streamer.
She headed to the administrative office on the third floor.
She received instructions from Heo Gyu, the 9-dan chief arbiter, and the staff.
Five minutes before the matches began, she moved down to the match rooms on the second floor.
Women’s division.
Senior division.
World division.
Three separate tournaments would be held here.
‘Huh?’
A familiar face entered her line of sight.
Saeki Yuzuha.
When their eyes met, Yuzuha smiled and greeted her with a nod.
‘Still so pretty.’
Jang Yuna smiled faintly and exchanged a nod of greeting.
Back when Saeki Yuzuha was a research student.
She’d faced Jang Yuna in a domestic tournament.
The result had been a decisive loss.
What was curious was how that defeat became the seed of a friendship.
Saeki Yuzuha had followed Jang Yuna closely, and Jang Yuna had come to adore the girl with her halting Korean and endearing manner.
‘I heard she was in a slump…….’
Word had reached her that recent results hadn’t been strong.
But she hadn’t made a point of reaching out.
She’d learned firsthand that encouragement could become a burden for some.
“Please take your seats. We will now begin Round One of the Ciel Bank Cup Unified Preliminaries.”
With Heo Gyu’s opening announcement, the match hall fell silent except for the soft sound of stones being placed.
Jang Yuna moved with practiced efficiency, observing the match.
Not long ago, a cheating scandal had erupted at a Chinese tournament, causing quite a stir.
In the aftermath, they’d even brought in electronic device detectors.
The referees couldn’t help but be on edge.
She paused mid-step and swept her gaze slowly around the room.
Then she moved quietly toward Saeki Yuzuha’s board.
‘She’s playing well.’
A clean opening formation.
The joseki choices that followed were flawless.
Saeki Yuzuha’s characteristic sensibility came through in every move.
‘But the opponent is strong.’
Kim Sujeong, 6 dan.
A player recently riding high momentum, having reached the semifinals of several women’s tournaments.
Jang Yuna stepped away for a moment, then returned to watch Saeki Yuzuha’s game.
In that interval.
Quite a few moves had accumulated.
And yet.
‘That stone placement…….’
A sense of recognition.
It felt familiar.
A sequence of stones whose next move was unpredictable.
Neither rough nor soft, but delicate and creative all at once.
A style that seemed to see the entire board at once.
‘But I didn’t think her style was like this?’
Click.
Saeki Yuzuha played her next stone.
Not defending, but leaning against her opponent’s piece to probe their response.
‘Wait, this sense…….’
Precarious, yet.
An exquisitely balanced move, testing the opponent on a knife’s edge.
She knew well the style of players who favored such moves.
‘Name…… less?’
At that name, suddenly surfacing in her mind.
Her heart trembled.
Even though she knew it made no sense.
She found herself unable to look away from Saeki Yuzuha’s board, as if frozen in place.
After twenty more moves had played out.
‘No, it’s not.’
The more she watched, the more her certainty wavered.
It was similar.
So very similar.
And yet.
‘It’s not sharp enough.’
Saeki Yuzuha’s play was somehow unrefined.
In an advantageous position, she’d been swayed by Kim Sujeong’s experience.
Forced into a counter-attack sequence, she’d been driven toward a disadvantageous middle game.
On the verge of collapse.
Click.
Yuzuha had pulled off a dramatic escape from the brink of defeat.
The sensuous connection between her earlier stones.
A feel akin to Nameless’s touch.
Yet that sensation wasn’t quite Nameless’s distinctive signature.
It seemed rather like the work of someone who had been influenced by that person in some fundamental way.
“……I’ve lost.”
Kim Sujeong lowered her head.
“Thank you for the match.”
Yuzuha gathered her Baduk stones and left the tournament hall.
Her face was alight with a subtle excitement.
It was more than a simple victory.
It was Baduk born from overcoming her slump—desperate, yearning Baduk.
‘Thank goodness.’
And yet.
Something nagged at her chest, a sensation she couldn’t quite shake.
Jang Yuna stood by the window, frustrated, and suddenly looked down beyond the glass at the street below.
In that instant.
‘……What?’
On the pavement outside the Association.
Yuzuha was walking alongside someone.
White shirt, neat trousers.
A silhouette oddly familiar.
‘Kim Inha?’
The winner of the amateur tournament “Gyeonggi’s Strongest.”
Kang Hyeok had taken notice.
And she too had harbored suspicions about him.
A sensibility too refined to be amateur.
And more than that—
The man who played Baduk with the same resolve as Nameless.
The very person who, despite knowing it was rude, had forced her to wonder if he was Nameless.
It was him.
And there with Inha—
Yuzuha was smiling.
‘The two of them…… knew each other?’
One was a strikingly beautiful professional player at the peak of popularity across Korea, China, and Japan.
The other was—
An amateur.
Baduk might be their common ground.
But honestly, they were an unlikely pair.
Yet.
The way Yuzuha looked at Inha—
It held the tender gaze of someone who admired, cared for, and relied upon another.
And now a question bloomed.
Yuzuha’s shifted playing style.
The unpredictable moves Kim Inha had shown in the amateur finals.
Nameless’s sensibility—that defiant, counter-intuitive approach that shattered the paradigm AI had prescribed.
Somehow—
An impression she couldn’t dispel: these three people resembled one another.
Whoosh.
Jang Yuna moved toward the referee’s station as if in a trance.
She unlocked the Tablet and pulled it up.
She scanned through the participant roster.
‘Kim Inha, Kim Inha……’
There.
Amateur selection player Kim Inha.
She flipped through the bracket.
The first-round results of the General Division, updated in real time.
‘He won.’
His opponent was Kim Donggyu.
A player especially strong in long-time-control matches.
Amateurs had occasionally beaten professionals in official tournaments before.
But he was no easy opponent.
Yet against him.
‘Three and a half points.’
A crushing victory that made the counting almost irrelevant.
Jang Yuna, 2 dan, drew a slow breath.
Not only she, but many people had speculated about the Nameless One’s true identity.
The consensus was.
That he must be one of the world’s elite players.
The names mentioned were all illustrious.
But.
-I’m just an ordinary office worker.
The traces left by the Nameless One.
That lingering impression kept overlapping with the name Kim Inha.
‘I need to confirm it with my own eyes.’
Starting tomorrow, I’m scheduled to referee the general division matches on rotation.
I can see it directly then.
Kim Inha’s Baduk.
Then all my doubts will be resolved.

* * *
Tick, tick.
The chess clock’s hand chimes near my ear.
Time flows even in the midst of this.
“…….”
I checked the remaining time.
Thirty-one minutes.
A quarter of the two-hour time limit left.
By contrast, Lin Shui, 8 dan, across from me.
My opponent in the second round of the unified preliminaries.
He has barely three minutes of time remaining.
Tap.
After deliberation, he played a move.
But.
It was an ordinary move.
Just a shallow trap move with the sequence slightly altered.
‘Surely he didn’t think I’d fall for something like this?’
The variation in that move.
The flow of stones that would follow.
I’d traced it through more than ten times already.
I already knew this move was coming, and what came next.
Tap.
I responded without hesitation.
I gave him no time to think.
My plan was to drive him into byoyomi, to shatter his rhythm and flow.
“……!”
Lin Shui’s hand froze.
His eyes wavered.
‘He felt it.’
One hidden counter concealed in an ordinary move.
Over the trap move he had laid.
He had seen through the counter-trap I had layered on top.
While searching for a response.
Time slipped away.
-Beginning byoyomi.
A cold voice recorded in Mandarin from the chess clock.
Lin Shui, 8 dan, reluctantly picked up a stone again.
Tap.
A move played under duress.
Not an attempt to shift the current momentum.
Just a desperate move to prolong the collapsing position for as long as possible.
‘This is as far as it goes.’
I picked up a stone.
The final puzzle in the flow.
I placed it with precision, with silence.
That instant.
Lin Shui, an 8-dan player, ran his fingers roughly through his hair.
His head bowed as if in self-reproach.
He set a black stone down on the table, outside the board.
“I’ve lost.”
I didn’t know Chinese well.
But the meaning was clear enough.
“Thank you for the match.”
I bowed respectfully in acknowledgment.
The referee approached to confirm the result, then quietly turned away.
Clink.
I tidied the stones and slowly rose from my seat.
Lin Shui seemed shaken—he sat dazed, staring down at the board.
‘No need to pity him.’
In this world, those who don’t win cannot survive.
That’s the professional world.
I left the tournament hall.
Two wins.
Forty points earned toward professional promotion.
Just two more victories.
And advancement to the main tournament is assured.
The “point-based professional promotion” that Park Jinwoo had set as a short-term goal was becoming reality.
‘If I’m satisfied just making professional… I haven’t started yet.’
My gaze extends beyond that.
The main tournament.
And what lies beyond.
The rest I kept hidden behind a smile.
Words weren’t necessary.
I’d prove it through results alone.
I came down to the first-floor lobby.
The outdoor seating at the café inside the Korean Baduk Association building happened to be free.
‘We arranged to meet here.’
Saeki Yuzuha.
Kim Minho.
I’d promised to share a meal with these two members of the Gisung Research Group after the preliminaries ended.
I was approaching the glass door that connected to the interior café when it happened.
Ding-dong.
The elevator beside me opened with a clear chime.
That moment.
A familiar face slowly emerged.
Byeon Woobin.
Our eyes met.
He hesitated, then passed silently beside me without acknowledgment.
Ignored.
I did the same.
We weren’t close enough to pretend otherwise.
But then.
“Excuse me.”
I turned back.
Byeon Woobin was looking at me with a smile.
“You’re the person who was with Saeki Yuzuha back then, right?”
“Yes.”
“I thought I’d seen you in the preliminary tournament hall. But I’m curious—why are you already done….”
His words trailed off.
Then, a few more words added as an afterthought.
“Ah, well… there’ll be better opportunities next time. Don’t be too disappointed.”
A hollow comfort.
That tone of voice.
That expression.
It grated on my nerves.
‘What is this person doing?’
That attitude of accepting my elimination as foregone conclusion.
And worse.
That shallow glint in her eyes, as if it were only natural.
It was so childish I couldn’t even muster a laugh.
“You came out quickly too, Byeon Woobin?”
“Me…… ?”
Byeon Woobin echoed my words as a question.
As if uncertain whether I could possibly be addressing him.
I pressed on, repeating myself with the same deliberate clarity.
“Yes, you. There’s no one else here, is there?”
Only then did Byeon Woobin’s expression harden.
The fact that he had received the same dismissal.
It seemed to dawn on him only now, and unpleasantly so.
“But you know, Byeon Woobin.”
I schooled my face into stillness.
My mouth tightened, my voice turned cold.
“Why did you assume I’d lost? So casually, as though it were certain?”
For a moment, Byeon Woobin’s eyes flickered with confusion.

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