I Have Too Many Money-Making Talents - Chapter 6

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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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Talents That Paid 006
“Will the finals for the 55-and-under adult division begin, please?”
Four divisions competed in total, and among them, Shin Byeong-ha and In-ha drew for stones.
In-ha held nine stones in his hand.
Shin Byeong-ha, who called the odd number, took the black stones.
Bow.
Before the match, In-ha observed proper etiquette.
Shin Byeong-ha glanced at him but didn’t even nod in acknowledgment.
‘Crush this kid and the money’s mine.’
The tournament’s championship prize was five hundred thousand won.
For a small regional tournament, it wasn’t a bad sum.
Besides, the few remaining Go houses were closing their doors one by one.
With no place or people left to play wager Go, he couldn’t afford to pass up easy money like this.
‘Heh, finally I’ll have some fun with Madam Kim.’
But first, he had to beat this young punk in front of him.
Shin Byeong-ha picked up a stone and made the opening move.
Go-mok.
A position that induced fighting for influence rather than territory.
It was a place rarely played in modern Go.
‘That wet-behind-the-ears kid couldn’t possibly know the Go-mok joseki.’
The tricks that stemmed from Go-mok.
Known as irregular moves.
Deliberately twisting the order of stone placement to shake the opponent, deviating from conventional sequences.
Snap.
Yet, contrary to expectations, In-ha remained composed.
He seemed familiar not only with responsive play but also with Go-mok joseki and opening frameworks.
‘So the brat can actually play.’
Shin Byeong-ha spread his stones across the board, creating chaos in multiple places.
As if he were playing Go haphazardly.
Probing here and there, leaving only possibilities, never settling the shape.
Melee.
Groups of unsettled black and white stones tangled together in confusion.
This was Shin Byeong-ha’s intention.
The more complex the stone positions became, the more his reading—honed through years of wager Go—would shine.
But then.
‘What… what is this bastard?’
The board didn’t develop as Shin Byeong-ha had anticipated.
Past the hundredth move, white, which had been lying dormant, bared its teeth and clawed at black’s weaknesses.
Two black groups.
Three white groups.
He needed to match momentum and reading, but no escape route appeared.
He couldn’t even attack white; rescuing his own unsettled stones proved overwhelming.
‘Damn it. I need to make a move before it’s too late.’
Shin Byeong-ha glanced at the referee’s position.
The referee had briefly stepped away to observe another final match.
Shin Byeong-ha deployed barefoot leg jiggling, nose blowing, rubbing two Go stones together with grinding sounds—every irritating gesture in his arsenal to redirect attention away from himself.
Drawing the spectators’ eyes elsewhere.
Slide.
In the moment he placed a stone, his pinky finger covertly nudged a black stone.
From the fourth line to the fifth.
A subtle shift, but this single move reversed the board.
Black’s critical group came to life, and white fell unwittingly into the trap.
‘Done.’
Only then did Shin Byeong-ha allow himself a breath.
Now he could enjoy attacking white’s groups and gaining an advantage.
Some inexplicable dissonance made Shin Byeong-ha instinctively lift his head.
Then his eyes met In-ha’s directly.
……
A dry gaze, calmly observing.
As if he knew everything all along, yet it meant nothing to him.
‘This arrogant bastard?’
In-ha’s blank expression twisted something inside Shin Byeong-ha.
It felt like being looked down upon from a height—a sickening sensation.
Clenching his teeth, Shin Byeong-ha seized White’s critical group and launched a counterattack.
Having created an escape route for the critical group that had been unsettled through stone placement, he had nothing to fear.
By the time move 115 came, he’d succeeded in cornering White’s groups into desperation.
Just as he thought he had only to deliver the final stroke and savor In-ha’s contorted face—
Click.
A white stone arrived with a tactical placement, threatening Black’s position.
A subtle, vital point.
A move that pierced through Black’s encirclement while simultaneously threatening Black’s own unsettled critical group.
‘Not a chance, you little punk.’
Click!
No need to go all the way to scoring.
I’ll annihilate White’s critical group here and put an end to this.
Shin Byeong-ha unleashed a merciless onslaught, strangling White’s throat.
About twenty moves passed that way.
Hesitation.
Shin Byeong-ha’s hand froze as he reached to place a stone.
More precisely: he couldn’t make the next move.
Black’s sequence of moves—desperate flailings, or so he’d thought.
Those white stones he’d dismissed as meaningless were, in fact, squeezing the life from Black’s critical group at every crucial juncture.
‘Wait… could he have been aiming for this from the start?’
Black’s critical group was a keystone.
If Black’s critical group died, White’s three critical groups would live.
A stone that absolutely could not die.
Yet Black’s critical group was already caught in a life-and-death battle, and there seemed to be no way out.
‘Dammit!’
I’d been careless.
I’d had the game won.
Getting too cocky, looking down on my opponent—that was the fatal mistake.
‘Damn it all.’
The runner-up prize wasn’t even half the championship prize.
That money wouldn’t be enough to celebrate properly.
‘…Maybe I should just flip the whole board over?’
The thought came unbidden, but it seemed like the only way out.
‘Yeah, that’d be better. At some small local tournament like this, I can just call it a mistake and be done with it, right?’
At small regional tournaments, cheating detection is lax.
Without clear evidence, discipline is hard to impose, and if I push back hard enough, I can easily force a rematch.
“Uh, I need to use the restroom for a moment.”
Shin Byeong-ha, rubbing his stomach as if it hurt, pulled his chair back and stood.
Thud!
He rose as if straightening out the leg he’d had crossed.
In one motion, he drove his knee up hard against the folding table. At the same time, he struck underneath with the heel of his palm.
“…!”
Crash-scatter.
The Go board tilted, and the stones scattered everywhere.
The stones that fell spilled beneath the board, while those that remained were unrecognizable in form.
“Oh no. What do I do…?”
Shin Byeong-ha clutched his head as if bewildered.
But his mouth was twisted in a smile.
* * *
‘I knew it.’
A hollow laugh escaped my lips unbidden.
I’d crushed Shin Byeong-ha with pure skill, making it so he couldn’t breathe.
That’s also why I turned a blind eye when he moved stones—I noticed, but let it slide.
With nothing but Go strength.
Because I had the confidence to neutralize three critical groups simultaneously while suppressing Black’s critical group.
I thought that—punishment befitting someone like Shin Byeong-ha, who resorted to petty cheating.
“What in the world—!”
The commotion drew the tournament supervisor and officials, who came rushing over.
“What happened? My legs gave out and I accidentally knocked over the board…….”
Shin Byeong-ha’s face crumpled with wrinkles as he launched into his hackneyed excuse.
‘Did anyone see it?’
There were a few spectators nearby, but they remained silent.
Shin Byeong-ha’s movements had been subtle enough that no one suspected he’d deliberately overturned the board.
“The Go stones are scattered everywhere. What should we do?”
“Well, I suppose we should discuss it first…….”
The supervisor wore a troubled expression, then struggled to open his mouth.
“Do you think a replay would be possible?”
“Impossible. I might manage the early and middle game somehow, but my memory’s fuzzy with age.”
Shin Byeong-ha shook his head as though at a loss.
“Would it be difficult for you as well, In-ha?”
The supervisor’s gaze, directed at me, showed no great expectations.
It was more of a hopeful inquiry than anything else.
“It’s possible.”
My voice was low but clear.
In that moment, I saw Shin Byeong-ha’s brow furrow and then smooth out.
‘I remember it all.’
A replay meant reconstructing every move from the beginning to the end of the game.
Every move was etched vividly in my mind.
“Really? The game had progressed quite far, as I understand it. We’d be grateful for your help.”
The supervisor encouraged me with a half-convinced expression.
I moved to the empty Go board beside us and sat down.
Then I picked up the black stone Shin Byeong-ha held and played the opening move.
‘Go-mok.’
Black and white stones alternated onto the board, following the opening I’d laid out.
Tap.
Tap.
Ten moves, twenty, thirty…….
With each stone placed on the board, the surrounding noise seemed to fade away.
‘Wait—what about this move?’
My hand stopped.
“Is something wrong?”
The supervisor looked at me with concern.
“Heh, looks like the young fellow’s starting to forget.”
I caught Shin Byeong-ha’s smug sneer from the side.
“For your next move—do you remember where it went, Shin Byeong-ha?”
Move seventy-three.
The stone he’d moved from the fourth line to the fifth line.
The very move that had kept alive his critical group in the endgame and tilted the board in his favor.
“I remember it going here, so I wanted to confirm—just to be sure.”
Shin Byeong-ha’s face went rigid.
“Which of the two did you place it on?”
* * *
“It should have been…next to that spot, I think.”
Caught off guard, Shin Byeong-ha pointed to a different position.
“Here?”
“Yes, probably.”
In-ha nodded and placed the black stone at that location.
The supervisor, the association officials, and several spectators all reacted with confusion.
“Why would he play there?”
“Was it a mistake?”
A move that made no sense in the flow of the game.
A move that gave absolute disadvantage and lost material besides.
It was senseless to play there at this stage—even in the endgame it would be questionable.
Only then did Shin Byeong-ha realize his blunder.
‘Damn it.’
A mistake.
In his panic at being caught in cheating, he’d unconsciously chosen to move the stone to the wrong location.
I should have just claimed I didn’t remember in the first place.
But it was already too late to take it back.
‘Hmm.’
The arbiter’s eyes—An Seong-hyeon, a professional 7-dan—gleamed with sudden clarity.
Though he’d been retired from the professional circuit for years, his instinct remained sharp.
‘……A stone was moved.’
As In-ha’s reconstruction passed the 170th move, the sense of wrongness hardened into certainty.
A critical group that should have been dead was alive instead—a distortion born from that single fact.
The game’s illogical progression suddenly made perfect sense.
‘Disciplinary action will be necessary.’
Why In-ha had singled out that specific move of Shin Byeong-ha’s became clear.
The reconstruction had laid it bare before him.
‘I could stop watching here—wait. A tactical placement move at this point?’
An Seong-hyeon pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose by habit.
On the surface, it looked reckless.
But examined closely, it was anything but.
A critical juncture that penetrated the entire flow of the game.
‘He found a move like this?’
An Seong-hyeon couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
This move wasn’t merely amateur-level play.
‘It’s perfect. An impeccable sequence.’
Even if he’d fallen far from his prime, he was still a professional—and one who’d spent decades honing his craft.
Even if one stumbled upon a critical point bordering on miraculous coincidence,
without solid reading, it would collapse into just another mediocre move.
‘I couldn’t play it that way myself.’
An Seong-hyeon felt genuine wonder.
And in a modest amateur regional tournament, no less.
He’d just witnessed the kind of intuitive reading that a top-tier professional might deploy in a professional championship game.
* * *
“That concludes the reconstruction.”
I withdrew my hand slowly from the Go board as I finished.
There had been doubt and anxiety—what if I failed after announcing I would do this?
But in the end, I’d reproduced over two hundred stones without a single misplacement.
‘I actually pulled it off.’
It was a feat of memory that even surprised me.
A thrill ran through my entire body, mingling with the satisfaction of accomplishment.
“Wow, you remembered all of that.”
“More than that, the fact that you turned it around from that position—that’s the real feat.”
“Really well played.”
My chest tingled.
Never in my life had I received this kind of attention or praise.
Everything felt strange and unfamiliar.
“Shin Byeong-ha.”
The arbiter, who had been standing silently, finally spoke.
“The reconstruction—is the game record accurate?”
“H-how did you remember all that!”
Shin Byeong-ha’s voice rose, flustered and defensive.
“I see. Then there’s just one thing I need to confirm.”
“W-what is it?”
“This move here—are you certain about this one?”
Shin Byeong-ha’s face darkened suddenly.
The stone the arbiter was pointing to……
was the one Shin Byeong-ha had surreptitiously moved.
“I, it might be right. Or it might not be.”
“Then is the reconstruction incorrect?”
“How should I know! I don’t remember!”
Under the continued questioning, Shin Byeong-ha stubbornly dug in, his voice rising.
“I understand. Then we’ll have to verify it directly.”
The arbiter turned to the event staff and Go Association officials.
“There were photos taken of the game for promotional purposes during the tournament, correct?”
“Yes, there is.”
“Please verify whether the Go boards of those two players were also recorded.”
At the supervisor’s continued words, Shin Byeong-ha’s complexion visibly darkened.
“And please request CCTV footage from the school, noting that we suspect a violation of participant regulations.”
Ah, so he really was an official after all.
Once suspicion had hardened into certainty, he’d moved without hesitation.
“Hey, hey! What are you doing right now! You’re suspecting me? You’re treating a participant like this?!”
“As I mentioned, it’s merely a verification.”
“That’s exactly the problem!”
Shin Byeong-ha protested, but the supervisor’s expression didn’t waver.
For the first time, I found the one absorbing the anger more terrifying than the one unleashing it.
“You think I’m going to take this lying down? You’ve got the wrong person!”
Shin Byeong-ha’s face flushed with rage as he erupted from his chair in a fury.
He snatched up the jumper he’d set aside, breathing heavily.
“I’m not letting any of you off easy. I’m reporting every last one of you to the Go Association! You bastards—do you know who I am?”
“Participant Shin Byeong-ha!”
“Get out of my way!”
Shin Byeong-ha stormed out of the Gymnasium with a bitter hiss.
I shouldn’t think this way.
But his retreating figure overlapped somehow with the countless difficult customers I’d dealt with at the bank.
‘… It’s oddly cathartic.’
After Shin Byeong-ha left, silence settled over the space.
The supervisor approached me through the subdued atmosphere.
“Would you be able to move to a quieter place and speak with me?”

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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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