I Have Too Many Money-Making Talents - Chapter 48

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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 Too Profitable 048
‘Damn. Damn. Damn.’
Park Jun-soo bit down hard on his lip.
Where exactly had things gone wrong?
He’d only placed a single stone, yet the position was already tilted against him.
He couldn’t even grasp the shape of it.
What was wrong with this move, at what point had the flow turned against him?
He’d simply responded normally, and yet somehow the gap had already widened to five points or more.
‘Settle down.’
He drew in a long breath.
Objectively speaking, this game was lost.
Even if he played to the end, the chances of a comeback were slim.
‘……I lost. That’s all there is to it.’
Yes, he’d lost. Accept it.
But it was just one game lost.
There was no point in playing on.
Dragging out a defeat would only let emotion bleed into his skill.
Mental management.
Erasing the shadow of the previous game.
He’d learned this routine after losing to Kim In-ha in the Presidential Cup 64-strong round.
‘Mood can’t become strength.’
What was wavering was his emotions, not his ability.
Click.
Park Jun-soo placed a white stone in front of the Go Pot.
Forfeit.
Lee Gwang-seop, watching him, gestured.
The light on the suspended camera went dark.
“Game one is complete. You’ve both worked hard. The second game will begin in five minutes—feel free to use the restroom if you need to.”
Park Jun-soo stood immediately and turned away.
He headed straight for the restroom.
He stood before the mirror and turned on the cold water.
Splash.
He splashed his face with the cascading water like a waterfall.
Less a washing, more like a shower.
He pulled out his handkerchief and dried his face.
Then he looked at his reflection in the mirror.
Slap! Slap!
He struck both cheeks hard enough to jolt his mind awake.
His face flushed crimson and swelled slightly.
‘Forget it. Just forget.’
What crumbled was the position, not him.
What mattered was believing in himself.
……
He lifted his head, repeating this to himself.
As he shook the water from his face, all traces of defeat had vanished.
When he returned to the Studio, Kim In-ha was still seated.
Beside him, the middle-aged man who’d come with him opened a bottle of tonic supplement and offered it over.
Kim In-ha accepted it casually and drank.
Park Jun-soo’s expression tightened slightly at the sight.
‘Don’t think about it.’
Park Jun-soo took a deep breath and sat down.
The Go Board had been cleaned and reset in the time he was gone.
Lee Gwang-seop checked the time and gestured.
“Both of you, take your seats. We’ll begin game two in one minute.”
Game two.
Same board, same chair.
But the quality of the air had changed.
Lee Gwang-seop’s signal fell, and both players covered the stones.
This time Kim In-ha had black.
In tense silence, Kim In-ha’s opening move touched down on the board.
Tap.
Lower-right Hoshi.
Park Jun-soo responded with the Hoshi as well.
Komoku again, Diagonal One-Point Jump.
The early game flow wasn’t much different from the first match.
But then.
Tap.
Black began introducing variations.
From the opening itself, he was steering toward deviations from established Joseki.
A twisted sequence of moves, twisted Joseki.
Lower-left corner, upper-right corner, sides—questioning responses across the entire board.
Yet shapes never quite completed.
The flow moved forward, but the contact points twisted.
Following Joseki, but not trapped by it.
Continuously manufacturing uncertainty. Leaving room for variation.
‘What kind of Go is this…….’
The arrangement of stones was chaotic.
Not a single shape was clean and stable.
Material profit?
In a position like this, it meant nothing.
The entire board was confusion—impossible to tell where the game might flip.
Tap.
Another move.
Park Jun-soo’s hand froze.
Accept it or refuse it.
Accept and he’d be dragged along; refuse and he’d need to find something to gain.
Park Jun-soo set the stone down from his hand.
Think a moment more before playing.
Tick, tick.
From the opening, the clock was ticking down fast.
Chaos born from twisted Joseki.
After a long deliberation, Park Jun-soo played his response.
Tap.
Black immediately continued with the next move.
‘Twisted again.’
Park Jun-soo’s brow furrowed.
Black was only following Joseki halfway through.
And that other half—he was leaving for White to deal with.
He stops again.
Thinks again.
Accept or refuse.
Whichever he chose, or however else he shaped an incomplete form, Black would test him again.
Meanwhile.
Tick, tick.
Time flows on.
Just past move forty in the opening, and already less than ten minutes remained on the clock.
At this pace, it was only a matter of time before he’d be in Byoyomi.
Park Jun-soo clenched his teeth.
‘I can’t keep being pulled along.’
No more of this.
He wouldn’t counter the chaos—he’d cut through it entirely.
Tap.
Park Jun-soo pushed back.
He shattered the incomplete Joseki shape.
Rather than White finding a path through Black’s chaos, White seized the initiative first—a move that set the direction.
But.
Tap.
Kim In-ha, as if anticipating the pushback, immediately followed with his next move.
An attachment at the lower-left corner.
Another question.
whether he could even refuse it.
Park Jun-soo’s eyebrow twitched.
A move offered as if testing him.
His pride stung.
But he couldn’t respond carelessly.
In Go, the most crucial skill is assessing value.
Gain or loss.
He couldn’t judge yet.
Tick, tick.
The clock tightened around his throat.
Yield the lower-left corner and take the left side instead?
Less than three minutes remained on his clock.
Too brief to think deeply, too precarious to play blind.
‘Damn it.’
Hunted.
Cornered.
Time squeezed his heart.
Park Jun-soo picked up a stone.
He couldn’t afford any more delay.
And he wouldn’t let himself be dragged further.
Tap.
His choice was resistance.
In that instant.
Black responded as if waiting for exactly this, striking the moment his hand left the board.
Swift, precise, cutting.
As though Black had anticipated nothing else.
Park Jun-soo froze, stone still in hand.
How many points had he lost?
Had the response itself been wrong?
And where could he recover?
Questions chained upon questions.
But time to verify was cruelly short.
Then.
Tap.
Rushed by the clock, Park Jun-soo played the next stone without conviction.
Merely trying to minimize loss.
Tap.
Black’s move probed again.
Another question.
Where would he respond this time?
‘I, I…….’
Demonic Go.
Lacking both technique and position judgment, it now pierced straight through emotion, shaking him violently.
‘Ah.’
An emotion beyond logic weighed down Park Jun-soo’s fingertips.
In that moment, heat surged up from deep within.
A word he couldn’t suppress.
On the verge of bursting out, it caught in his throat.
……You play Go like shit.

* * *
‘It’s working.’
I gazed down at the Go board, the flow now in my grasp.
I began conceiving this approach after the Integrated Qualifying Round ended.
I’d pondered how to deploy my own strengths from the very opening moves onward.
That deliberation yielded a hypothesis.
I excel at Move Reading, intuition, and Psychological Warfare.
And my Go reaches its peak during the transition from early to middle game.
So why not leverage these strengths from the Fuseki stage itself?
The deliberation was long, but the conclusion was clear.
‘Base it on AI, but shake it with intuition and instinct.’
That was the approach I’d chosen.
Follow Joseki, but don’t complete it.
Create contact points, then let them slip away.
From the Fuseki stage onward, drag the board toward chaos and confusion.
Should he respond, or should he back away?
The moment I made my opponent hesitate, the momentum was already tilting in my favor.
‘This—this suits my style of Go.’
Go that seized momentum amid chaos and seized control of the game.
Now, with monotonous AI Fuseki dominating the board.
This approach could instead become a Fuseki with a color entirely my own.
But there was one condition.
‘My Position Judgment has to be precise.’
If I misjudged the value, the loss would fall entirely on me.
Dangerous as a double-edged blade, but equally formidable.
Fortunately, though I wasn’t at AI level, I had some confidence in Position Judgment.
-Byoyomi will now begin.
Park Jun-soo had already been caught in Byoyomi from the middle phase onward.
The board position, which had begun to crumble gradually from that point, had widened into an irreversible gap by the midgame.
He endured until the very end, but could no longer place a stone.
“I’ve… lost.”
A short phrase.
Yet it carried within it the weight of a match fought with every ounce of strength.
I bowed my head quietly.
Park Jun-soo slowly lifted his gaze to meet mine.
“Go quickly.”
I met his eyes at those words.
He didn’t look away.
He spoke as if wringing out the words, suppressing something deeper.
“If you’re going, go upstairs now.”
His voice trembled.
Even as he acknowledged defeat, his pride—something he refused to relinquish—bled through.
That was Park Jun-soo.
“And keep winning.”
It sounded like a pout, but it was unmistakably sincere.
“So I want to keep chasing you. So I want to beat you… understand?”
I looked at him for a moment, then nodded quietly.
“I’ll give it my best.”
Park Jun-soo rose from his seat as if that settled the matter.
When the light on the broadcast camera suspended overhead went dark, the Branch Manager was the first to rush over.
“Kim, congratulations on the championship!”

* * *
“Kim In-ha, come over here and stand, please.”
Lee Gwang-seop, the Go Association director, positioned me before a screen in the Studio with the Go Board between us.
In one hand he held the Trophy and Prize Money Board.
In the other, he carried a panel with a photograph of a small car printed on it.
Standing beside me was Lee Gwang-seop, his face creased with a smile.
Click.
A Go Association staff member and the reporter took a commemorative photograph.
The Branch Manager stood with his arms crossed, watching with satisfaction.
Jung Su-yeon and the filming crew shot quietly, almost like part of the backdrop.
Once the photograph was finished, Lee Gwang-seop extended his hand to me.
“You’ve worked hard, Kim In-ha. That was excellent Go.”
“I’m the one who should be grateful—thank you for this opportunity.”
Warm pleasantries were exchanged.
“I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but there’s a tradition that Bi-ryong Tournament champions undergo Professional Registration.”
“Ah, I have heard that.”
“I hope you’ll soon join that ranks, Kim In-ha.”
Lee Gwang-seop bowed and stepped back.
The tournament had concluded, but he mentioned there was still paperwork to handle.
That’s when the journalist approached quietly.
“Would you be available for an interview?”
“Of course.”
We moved to the 4th Floor Game Room, which we’d been using as a waiting area.
The journalist set up a tripod, switched on the recorder, and began.
“A word on becoming the strongest amateur player?”
“I’m delighted.”
“That’s all?”
“…… Yes? Oh, I’m very delighted.”
I caught the Branch Manager smiling from where he stood in the distance.
The journalist’s eyes gleamed with mischief.
“Both games were overwhelmingly decisive victories. The second game especially showed such ease. Did you think you were going to win it all?”
“No, I don’t believe there’s any such thing as an easy victory. I simply played my best.”
The journalist nodded slightly.
“You’ve reached the pinnacle of amateur ranks. What’s your next goal?”
“Since I came to Go later than most, I intend to climb just as quickly.”
In that moment, the journalist’s eyes shifted.
Like someone who’d caught onto something, she pressed further.
“This ‘quickly’ you mention—how far does that extend?”
I lifted my head slowly.
Across from me, the Branch Manager, the journalist, and the crew including Jung Su-yeon watched intently.
Their gazes carried both expectation and tension.
I steadied my breath and spoke quietly.
“Until I lose.”
There was no bravado in it, no exaggeration.
Only the plain truth.
“I haven’t lost a game yet, after all.”

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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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