One afternoon, a man came round to play go. They played five matches and, quite unexpectedly, Father failed to win a single game. This had never happened before. At first, we mistakenly believed that this man had played extraordinarily well, so we didn’t give it much thought. In fact, we thought it was incredibly fortunate; we thought that Father would now be able to satisfy his addiction to the game. But over the next few weeks, Father continued to lose every game he played, no matter who came to see him. He lost again and again, match after match. It seemed the lustre of previous times had gone. Of course, these people then went out and told everyone they could find that they had beaten Father. At first no one believed them, so there was one telephone call after another asking if it were true. We told them that, yes, Father had lost, and they all felt it was most peculiar, especially since those who had now beaten him were terribly undistinguished players. As expected, the numbers of people showing up to play Father grew and grew, and nearly every one of them had once been bested by him. Now, however, Father continued to lose. He even lost to me and Ah-bing. It seemed as though he simply couldn’t play the game any more; that all of his inordinate ability had deserted him overnight. He soon took on the look of a inveterate loser.

How could this have happened?

Gradually, we discovered that his game had become ‘sick’. It was as though he didn’t or couldn’t believe his own eyes. Even when an obviously good move was in front of him, he’d make some inexplicable move instead. It almost made you want to cry – so much so that we even tried to let him win a few games. It never worked: he’d still lose. What was even stranger, however, was that now Father didn’t even seem to care whether he won or lost – not like before when he would get angry at losing. Now losing seemed to make him happy, as if he had won. We couldn’t help but feel that this wasn’t normal, but he seemed so happy, so much more at ease than ever before – he was so much more candid and open with everyone – perhaps selfishly, we didn’t want it to go back to the way it was before.