The Go Club

Hiya readers, I've always had an interest in a board game called go. This game is a game created in China and has been played for ages. Its a very enjoyable strategic game, anyways enjoy my story. :D

They made it just in time.  Jhin looked down at his watch placed around his left hand. It read 7:15 am. “We made it just in time Yu, we still have around 10 minutes to relax”

“Thank God, I’ll never get used to that walk,” says Yu, “let's head on over to the bench by the entrance.” Both Yu and Jhin walked over to the bench and sat down. 

Jhin begins to say “You know what, I was thinking about the GO club all night, we just need one more person til we can participate in school t-” 

“I know, I know you’ve told me this like a hundred times already, but we can’t just drag someone in the club and force them to play, we gotta think of another way,” she interrupts Jhin, with an annoyed tone. She takes a second to catch her breath and jokingly continues, “why not just add a poster to our bulletin board over there in front of the main entrance, where everyone can see.” 

As the morning bell rings Jhin stands up and says, “that’s not actually a bad idea, let’s think it over at lunch. But for now let’s get going before our teach gets mad ”

“K lets go,” Yu replies.

This class was boring, like always. I never had an interest in Mandarin, and I don’t think I ever will. After class I proceed to the Go club and Yu’s already there, she’s always early but still glued to that phone of hers. Jhin grabs the phone right out of her hand and states, “Yu lets run one.”

“Only if you give me my PHONE back.” Jhin gives up the phone. “I thought you were going to make a poster?” 

“Yeah! Right here, look at this poster.” Jhin grabs his bag and pulls out a medium-sized yellow poster, “I haven’t written much other than the title”. Jhin hands the poster paper over to Yu. Yu holds it out in front of her. It shows THE GO CLUB written in thick black Tallman font. 

“How about we add a small 6 by 6 GO board on the poster, and then after we can show a problem on the board, and have people figure out the solution to it.”

“Here I got an idea,” Jhin says. He grabs a Black sharpie and begins to write, a few seconds later he holds up the poster showing Yu. 

She reads aloud, “capture the white stones before white can form two eyes in one move.” Yu continues to say, “that’s a smart idea, now just draw in the black and white stones, and the location of room we’ll be holding up the GO club in, and we got ourselves a poster”

“OK, I’m gonna go put this up on the bulletin board, I guess we can meet up at your locker after school then?” Jhin asks.

“Yeah for sure, cya in a bit,” Yu replies

“Cya,” Jhin grabs his backpack and his Go poster, he grabs a small roll of tape and heads on out.

After school students rushed out, Jhin was able to meet up with Yu again, they said bye to Mr. Han and headed out. Jhin hurried Yu so they could leave, he wanted to check up on the poster. When they got outside it took a moment for him to capture everything, the sun was still out and it was gleaming right at them, he noticed there a group of kids standing in front of the bulletin board. Jhin turned to Yu and said, “Let’s go check our poster, I wanna see if someone wrote anything.” Yu nodded and they made their way across the school grounds. As they were walking there, one kid stood out, he was leaning against the board with his left hand, pretty tall too, he was writing something on our poster. 

“Ayy look at that, there’s a kid writing on our poster,” Yu pointed out

“OOH I know him, his names Hung Bik, he’s in the upper grade,” as they hurriedly walked over to him he said to Yu “I talked to him a few times actually, he’s a pretty chill guy, I’ll get him to join our group.” Hung stood up straight after writing something down, he turned and made his way to the school gate. Jhin and Yu were able to intercept him at the entrance. Jhin waved and said, “Hi Hung its been a while, what’s up?”

“Hey, nothin much man just chilling,” Hung replied, but he continued walking though. 

“Hurry up and ask him,” Yu said to Jhin

“Right” He replied to Yu, he turned to Hung, caught up to his fast pace and asked him “Hey man I saw you wrote something on our poster”

“Oh that GO poster was yours, I just answered it for the fun of it,” Hung replied.

“Yeah did you know our school has a GO club? Me and You are part of it, we were hoping you could drop by sometimes or even join the group.” Jhin said in a serious tone, he doesn’t kid around when it comes to GO.

“Yeah sorry about that, I ain’t really the type of guy who plays GO for no reason,” he continued down Taidong Road. Jhin looked at Yu, Yu just looked back and shrugged, she had no clue of what to do next. 

“Well is there anything we could do to change your mind?” he looked back attentive towards Hung.

“Well I do play Go, but i only play for money, I want something out of my games and don’t say skill cuz i already got all of it haha.” We stopped by an alley, but this alley was connected to the Las Vega Club. everyone knows not to come around this place, this isn’t a place for kids was the first thing that went through Yu’s and Jhin’s head. Jhin had an idea of why they were here but didn’t say anything, but after hearing what Hung had to say about his GO terms, he thinks things are about to make a bad turn.

“Hey we aren’t going in there right?” Yu asks them both.

Hung replies with, “don’t come in if you don’t want too, but I’m going in. There is a backdoor and my sister works here. She’s gonna let me in through, you guys can come if you want but just don’t make a scene.” He begins to walk down the alley.

“I don’t think this is a smart idea,” Yu says to Jhin.

“Its been months since we found someone in the school who actually LIKES GO, we have to convince him somehow,” Jhin begins to walk leaving Yu for a moment to decide whether she should follow along or not.

“Oh what the heck, if anything happens I’m gonna beat you up Jhin,” Yu says as she follows Jhin.

They all stop by a door, Hung takes out his phone and sends a quick text from his phone. A minute later the door swung open and revealed a girl who looked to be in her 20s, “Alright make it quick, don’t cause a scene, and you’re ONLY allowed in the GO salon, nowhere else. Understood?” 

“Yes ma’am says Hung, and I brought along 2 friends of mine, I hope you don’t mind, they’re just stopping by,” Hung replies to his sister. They both greeted her at the same time.

“Hi my name’s Meili Min, glad to see my brother even has friends, the same thing goes for you too.”

“Yes ma’am,” Jhin and Yu simultaneously say it together. This time Jhin says “We won’t do anything, don’t worry about us”

“Alright then hurry up I got work to do,” Meili said hurriedly. All three of them go in through a dark, long and narrow hallway. But at the end there is a door which will lead us into the Club, Jhin’s stomach began to drop but there was no turning back now. They could hear the music and the people chattering too. Once they made it in, Hung ignored the scenery and went straight for the Salon. He didn't want to stay around for trouble, Jhin and Yu did the same and Meili continued on serving people.

“Okay guys, you're probably not gonna have to pay to watch so just keep cool,” Hung says to them before turning towards the door.

“Ok, no problem,” Jhin replies, they opened the door. The first thing that hit me was the smell. The smell of liquor made me drawback immediately, felt like there was something assaulting my nostrils. The salon was clouded with a foggy smoke, elderly people smoking while focusing on their matches. My eyes were struggling to stay open with all this smoke flowing through the air. I could hear the tapping of stones as my eyes were exploring the room. Not just me but I could tell Yu was regretting her decision.

“Here’s the entrance fee miss,” Hung gave her 35 Yuan, “My friends are just here to watch though.”

“Alright enjoy,” she replied. The room wasn’t really crowded, in total it only contained like 6 or 7 people including us. Hung began to walk by an ongoing match, though it looked like it was about to finish. The match took a few minutes but came to an end with a bald man winning.

“Heck yeah baby, another 5000 yuan.” The other guy looked disappointed, he gave up the money and left. “Hey you knuckleheads up for a quick game, I’ll go easy on you kiddos” Hung sat down across from him.

“Hello my name is Hung, I’ll go for the same amount the old man did,” Hung said to him.

“Haha today’s my lucky day, I get to make 10,000 yuan, names Mr. Feng kiddo,” says Mr. Feng. They begin their match, they guess stones to see who gets white and black stone and who gets to go first. The match began, Hung’s stones were black so he got to go first. Hung began to place stones around the main star for control of the game, but Mr. Feng was close on his tail. He mimicked most of the collisions with some of his own with a twist. Jhin noticed something though throughout the game, some stones were moved. He couldn’t tell which ones exactly but he knew that some black stones were moved into an area with a less striking chance. Noticing these changes the same happened to white stones. That could only mean one thing, and that thing was that stones were moved, that’s the one rule everyone follows, breaking it means disqualification. Mr. Feng was so smooth in his stone placements Jhin couldn’t tell how exactly he was moving or possibly switching stones. The game came to a sudden close when Black stones ran out of places to play. “I guess that’s it for you kid, let’s count to see who’s the victor.” Hung was quiet, he sat there and watched Mr.Feng count up the territory of the stones adding in the captured ones as well. 

“Here’s your 5000 yuan,” Hung said suddenly, that was out of nowhere, Mr. Feng didn’t even finish counting. He got up and began to walk away. Jhin grabbed his arm and said, “Hey what’s the problem, we haven’t even finished counting up the score,” Jhin said to him, Hung didn’t look at him but replied,

“White won by 2.5.” Jhin held his grip around his arm though. 

“Hung Bik, if I get you back your 5000 yuan will you join the club?”  Hung looked surprised, he turned to him and said, “Jhin if you can win me back the 5000 yuan I promise to join the GO club, my sister is gonna kill me if she finds out I lost that 5000 yuan,” Jhin let go of his arm

“Alright you can count on me,” Jhin replied. He sat down across from Mr. Feng, “Hello my names Jhin and I’ll play for the same amount Hung did.” Mr. Feng began to laugh

“Kids are so cocky nowadays, go ahead kid you’re only gonna give me another 5000 yuan,” Mr. Feng said. There's one thing he didn’t know about Jhin though, Jhin’s been playing for years, he can create the battlefield and foresee his opponents move with a headstrong strategy.

Jhins said, “I’ll be black as well, you can be white, Let’s begin” The game was a risky one, Yu still sat there quietly watching us gamble all our money, she probably feels so ashamed of us high school kids in a club gambling away our money on a GO game, but it’s all for a good cause. Black advanced straight out through the game, he played directly on all the star points giving him easier vision throughout the game. Jhin’s play made it hard for Mr. Feng to cheat, because he didn't have as much vision on the board as Jhin did, and even if he did Jhin would take advantage of that and place his stones there. 

“I resign.”

Mr. Feng backed away from the table, grabbed a cigar and lit it up, he grabbed 5000 yuan out of his pocket and smacked it on the table, “here kid take it before I go tell the security about some school kids gambling in here.” Jhin got up, so did Yu he grabbed the money and bowed saying, 

“Thank you for the game.” He looked over by the entrance and saw Hung waiting for him, as they passed the entrance Jhin turnt to the entrance fee lady and said, “Here's 35 yuan, I ended up playing a game after all ha ha.” He turnt to Hung and they hurriedly left the Club.

“Hey man, how did the game go?” Hung spoke first, he was probably curious on how the game went.

“HE WON” Yu broke out, she was the happiest one for some reason.” That was such a sick match you just sat down and were like, imma bet 5000 yuan too, let's do this,” Hung was also happy.

“Whoa man I never knew you were that good, you gotta teach me how to play ha ha,” Hung said to Jhin, Jhin nodded and replied with “After you join the club as you promised of course and here’s your 5000 yuan by the way.” Hung graciously accepted it, 

“Hey how about we go eat ramen on the way back, my treat,” Hung said as he received the money, Jhin smiled and said “RAMEN TIME BABY”. All three of them then happily walked to the ramen shop, and we’re looking forward to discussing the future of the GO game club. 

Author's Note

I hope you enjoyed, there will be more coming soon.