Yokai Come to the Countryside Café

Chapter 57: A Divine Move (2)

It was a distant memory.

“Halabeoji!”

I, no older than five at the time, threw myself onto Halabeoji’s back, who hadn’t noticed me approaching as he was absorbed in a game of baduk.

“Oh my, my grandson! Did you come back from school safely?”

“Yes!”

“Sit here. I’ll finish this quickly. Got it?”

Halabeoji pulled over an old, creaky chair and placed it beside me.

The baduk parlor, with no signage and only a few boards on the wooden platform, was both the workplace and playground of Halabeoji, as I knew him in my childhood.

Since there were no kids my age, it became my playground too.

There was only one thing to see—Halabeoji playing baduk.

As the saying goes, even a dog at a seodang would learn poetry in three years; watching long enough, I occasionally tried playing myself, and soon I could roughly sense how the game would end.

“Hey, Halabeoji lost. Let’s go home now.”

“I haven’t even finished the game, what are you talking about!”

“Puhat! The grandson seems better at baduk than the grandfather. What a smart kid you are!”

“But why do Halabeojis only attack?”

“That way it ends faster.”

“What’s good about ending fast?”

“Then I can play more games with the others here.”

“Tch, you can do that tomorrow.”

“If I lose to that man today and can’t play tomorrow, there might not be another day.”

“Why wouldn’t there be?”

“You’ll understand one day, my little poop pup.”

Even for a joke among elders, it was unusually sharp, and as a child, I couldn’t understand what he meant.

Is there anything crueler than this method of winning and bluffing?

The winner leaves for a place where the loser can never challenge again.

A perfect victory, completed in eternal rest.

To gain that victory—or to prevent it—one must play the fastest baduk possible.

If you don’t want to feel a strange sort of sorrow when the opponent you beat yesterday disappears the next day, saying he’s late and must leave first.

Thus, the flame dwindling with the last bit of dawn paradoxically gave birth to the sharpest of styles.

That was the world of baduk I learned over Halabeoji’s shoulder.

A world where even if you lose a leg, the standard move is to carve out your opponent’s heart.

“I’ve lost. I’ve learned a good move.”

-Tak.

I placed two stones onto the baduk board.

A loss by resignation.

I never thought I’d win in the first place.

There was no way a few childhood games could compare to a match with an Immortal who’s played for countless eons.

I only indulged him because it was hard to refuse.

And just in time, I spotted Yongman flying in from afar.

“I should be going now.”

“Huh? Already? Why not stay a bit longer?”

“Yeah, you haven’t even played with us yet!”

“I’ll return for a game next time. Isn’t this a place where an outsider shouldn’t linger too long?”

“Well, that’s true, but still…”

Even if it wasn’t for Yongman, I had to leave.

No matter how time was frozen in the present world, one couldn’t continue an open-ended game.

The saying about not noticing the axe handle rotting during an Immortal’s game might have come from these very people.

[Yaaaaah! Jinseooong! What brings you hereeee!]

-Rumble,

Having spotted me late, Yongman let out a massive roar and flew in at terrifying speed.

“Long time no see. I brought some news to deliver. Since phones don’t work here.”

[News?]

“This.”

When I pulled out the envelope, Yongman shrank into human form.

“Someone named Choi-Pro asked me to deliver it.”

“Choi-Pro? That’s unusual.”

His tone was brusque, but his face lit up with anticipation as he checked the letter inside.

“Then I’ve done my part, so I’ll be off.”

It hadn’t been that long since I last met Yongman, so there was no need to ask how he’d been.

Besides, if I wasn’t careful, he might try to detain me too, so I quickly said my goodbyes and got in the car.

As expected, the Heavenly Realm was no place to stay long.

After Jinseong left the pavilion.

The four Immortals sat around the baduk board in the center, silent for a while.

The board remained exactly as it had been at the end of the match with Jinseong.

“Huh, how could such a baseless formation even appear in the world?”

“The play was a mess, and there was practically no opening strategy. Can this even be called baduk?”

“How much calculation did he do here just to capture two houses?”

“Khm! It’s the end times, truly.”

Each gave their ostensibly disappointed impressions as they looked at the board.

But none of them tried to clear away the stones.

‘It was an oddly entertaining match. Stones twisted in complete chaos suddenly launched attacks and defenses from unexpected angles—it almost made me dizzy.’

‘Is this what baduk refined over thousands of years in the present world looks like?’

No.

Rather than the present world, it was more like the kind of baduk played by those closer to the afterlife.

It was merely something young Jinseong had picked up.

But to the Immortals of the Heavenly Realm, the record Jinseong left behind was their only example of baduk from the present world.

After staring at the board in silence for a while,

-Jalgeurak.

One Immortal, unable to resist, began clearing the stones.

‘Tch, it’s a shame, but there’s no helping it. We can’t pause matches forever.’

Clicking his tongue, the other three Immortals joined him in cleaning up the board.

Once the board was cleared, the next Immortal preparing to play sat down across from it.

But another hand placed a stone even faster.

-Tak.

“Hm? What are you doing?”

Ironically, the one placing the stone without waiting his turn was the very Immortal who had just cleaned up the board.

-Tak. Tak.

Despite the question, he continued placing stones, alternating black and white on his own.

“Don’t tell me you’re trying to review the game!”

The stones, placed precisely without hesitation, resembled the previous game but somehow were not quite the same.

And then.

-Tup.

A hand blocked the one placing the stone.

“What if it were placed like this here? Rather than diving in directly, you leave open the possibility of building territory behind. Since every side is a battlefield anyway, it’ll be harder for the opponent to read the moves.”

“Oh ho.”

“But what happens if you go in like this instead?”

-Tak. Tak.

The stones, placed rapidly, returned to their original positions and were then set down again elsewhere in repetition.

“I told you, this is a style that shouldn’t obsess over territory! You have to split here!”

“Now, now, maintaining offense while also securing efficiency is the correct move!”

Before long, each Immortal grabbed a handful of stones and began a passionate debate.

As the sun set, night passed, the oil in the lantern burned out, and the sun rose again.

-Tak.

“Interesting. My head is pounding from all this skirmishing.”

“With a style where fighting spirit runs rampant, I fear even one’s temperament might turn violent, hoho.”

“Pfft, what a joke.”

“With this kind of momentum in the opening, wouldn’t it be better to at least build a small house in the midgame…?”

“No, no, one must strike harder! A gap in strength must be overcome through aggression! If I teach him, he’ll become an even sharper sword.”

“But if you only look forward without any backup, won’t you be left with just one house that started at the star point? It’d be far better if I teach him and shift his style toward stability.”

After the review ended, the discussion turned to: “Whose disciple shall he become?”

A rough jade placed before excellent blacksmiths.

Only the pounding with hammer and chisel remained.

But regrettably, the jade had long since fled back to the present world.

Leaving behind a wait without promise of return to the Heavenly Realm.

“Was his name Jinseong? I suppose I’ll have to pick out a few games to teach him.”

“Well, then I shall too.”

“You fellows really think that suffocating game record will catch his eye? You need to show him something with a bold style!”

Thus, the four Immortals returned to their dwellings, lost in happy fantasies of mentoring a beloved disciple.

But they hadn’t walked far before they all stopped at once.

‘Wait a moment. Didn’t he just play a game of even terms? Against us?’

A truth they’d missed, dazed by the bizarre game they’d just witnessed.

He had played a game of even terms, not a handicap game, against those who had played baduk for thousands of years.

‘I… I must go to Mago Granny! I have to descend to the present world somehow! Before the others!’

Back at the Dabang, Elder and Sanyi had arrived in that short span.

“Where were you off wandering, leaving Ria behind like that?”

“I made a quick trip to the Heavenly Realm. I had something to deliver to Yongman.”

“Click click, didn’t that brat pester you to take him along again?”

“Afraid of that, I just said hello and quickly ran away. Ah, I also met with some Immortals.”

“Who?”

“I didn’t get their names. They were sitting at the pavilion playing baduk.”

“Don’t tell me there were four of them?”

“How did you know?”

“Of course I’d know. They’re the ones from that saying, ‘Not knowing the axe handle rots during an Immortal’s game.’”

A chill ran down my spine.

It was the first time the proverb, which warned that watching an Immortal’s baduk game could result in centuries passing before one realizes, ever felt so frightening.

No wonder I felt uneasy—I'd just played baduk with the very living legends of that saying. Fortunately, I fled midgame and avoided becoming its protagonist.

“That incident tangled the records of the underworld so badly that they were nearly driven out of the mountains and into the Heavenly Realm. They’re a bunch nothing good comes from crossing paths with.”

“I know exactly who they are! They were nicknamed the Four Baduk Fiends.”

“Not the Four Heavenly Kings?”

“People called them that, but we called them fiends!”

When you get down to it, their core nature wasn’t all that different from fiends. Enchanting people and disturbing the world wasn’t far off.

The only reason they likely got their ticket to the Heavenly Realm was that they didn’t act out with intent.

“Next time, I’ll just say hello and run like I did today.”

“Click click, wise choice. Those guys, when it comes to baduk, wield such strange and mystical powers that even Heavenly Deities avoid speaking to them lightly. Tsk, when you look at it, the Heavenly Realm is just a place where all the odd screws go to…”

Elder’s vivid testimony eventually drifted off into critique of the Heavenly Realm as his words faded.

It was because of the blue light filling the window.

When we went outside to identify the source, we saw a massive pillar of light descending from the sky to the Divine Tree in the backyard.

Then, riding the beam of light, a dragon descended from the sky.

“Mister! That’s Yongman Ajusshi!”

“There’s someone riding on his back!”

“Huh? Who is it?”

I could tell immediately who the riders were.

Unlike the farming attire of typical sages, their garments were quite distinctive, even in the Heavenly Realm.

They were the very Immortals I met earlier today.

The sight of four Immortals riding in a row on the back of the Azure Dragon was bizarre beyond words.

Fortunately, since they were wrapped in the glow of Divine Power, it seemed they wouldn’t be visible to ordinary eyes.