Prologue: An Unfinished Game
The most terrifying thing on a Go board isn't losing a stone. It's not knowing you were a stone to begin with.
— From the journal of Leo Li's father
Summer, 1997. Hong Kong.
The first thing ten-year-old Leo Li noticed was the silence.
First, the incessant drip-drip-drip of the Bloomberg Terminal in his father's study vanished. Then, the late-night phone calls—his father's confident laughter mingling with English as he spoke to colleagues in London and New York—disappeared. Finally, even the sound of his mother humming Faye Wong ballads faded away.
The apartment became a vacuum-sealed jar, its silence so profound it was terrifying.
His father stopped going to his office in Central, the one that overlooked the entire Victoria Harbour. He was home all day, yet somehow, he wasn't there at all. He would spend entire afternoons sitting alone at the rosewood Go board in the living room.
It was a set he treasured, crafted, he'd once told Leo, from the legendary Yunzi stones of Yunnan. The black stones were as deep as night; the white, as warm and smooth as jade.
His father played against himself, one hand holding black, the other white.
Young Leo didn't understand the game. He only understood his father's face.
When his father picked up a black stone, his eyes would turn sharp as a hawk's. He'd place the stone with decisive force, filled with an aggression that seemed to want to consume his opponent. But when he picked up a white stone, his brow would furrow, his gaze turning to a struggle of hesitation, even a flicker of fear.
It was as if he were battling an invisible enemy. An enemy stronger and colder than he was.
One night, a sliver of light from the living room drew Leo from his bed. He crept out quietly and saw his father, still at the board. On it, a massive white dragon was trapped, surrounded by black stones, with no escape.
His father's hand, trembling slightly, reached for a white stone and hovered it over the board. But his gaze wasn't on the board. It was fixed on the empty chair opposite him, his eyes burning with a bone-deep hatred.
Suddenly, his hand clenched into a fist.
A sharp crack echoed in the dead silence of the room.
The white Yunzi stone, smooth and perfect as jade, had shattered in his palm. Sharp fragments cut into his skin. A single drop of blood fell onto the board, staining the hopeless white territory crimson.
The next day, his father was gone.
His mother told him he'd gone on a long business trip.
But in his father's study, Leo found the Go board overturned. The black and white stones were scattered across the floor like the broken bodies after a war.
And in the very center of the board, lay a few shattered, blood-stained fragments of a white stone.
For many years after, Leo had the same recurring dream. In it, he was back in that late night, watching his father play under the lamp. He would try to see the face of the opponent across the board, but there was only a swirling, bottomless darkness.
All he knew was that the darkness made his father choose to crush what he loved most, rather than place a single stone in surrender.