It’s obvious that explaining the phenomenon of Father’s go ability as random chance is dissatisfying, but then, what else can explain his incredible prowess? Naturally, I must consider that mysterious world behind the red walls. To me, that compound was the strangest place in the world. For all those years it monopolized my vision, day and night. It possessed my mind, but never once did it let me look on it. Its walls were built high, its security was terrifying, its secrets concealed: it was a place entirely unknowable. I don’t know, nor can I know what kind of secret work Father did behind those red walls, but I couldn’t help but feel that somehow his work was intimately related to the game of go, that there was some sublime connection between them. That is to say that go perhaps played some part in his secret work, and through karma it had found him after he had been expelled from those red walls. And just like the work behind those ramparts, go didn’t allow you to just dabble with it: once you became involved, you’d be in thrall to it, just as he was to his work. Because this was an addiction, his body was not his own …

Day Five

Father was an amazing go player. His skill had grown faster than anyone could have hoped for. By the following autumn, there were no opponents left for him, and yet he still seated himself in front of the go board, waiting for his dream challenger to arrive. He believed that within the tens of thousands of people who lived in this district there had to be some who possessed consummate skill in the game. Perhaps they were living in seclusion in some unknown corner of the city; perhaps one day they would get wind of the fact that in this corner there lived a go player of immeasurable skill, and they would race over to engage in combat. But month after month passed and the only people who came to seek him out could not be considered true equals, true challengers – in fact, they hadn’t come to fight him at all but rather to learn from him. Watching Father at these times, you could see he felt no cautious modesty.