Marino continued reading, and sure enough, Tatsuhiko Kadowaki waited by the entrance of the Dojo for a while until someone who looked almost fragile wandered into view.
"Hey, kid," Tatsuhiko called out gently. "You're an insei too, right? The pro exam's coming up. Are you taking it?"
Hikaru blinked, confused.
"Ehh? Who are you, uncle?"
The word uncle pierced Tatsuhiko like a dagger. He was barely twenty.
"Do you want to play a game?" Tatsuhiko asked, trying to recover his dignity.
"Now?"
"It's still early. Just help me warm up a bit."
Hikaru thought for a moment, and his eyes suddenly lit up.
"Okay! Let's play!"
But the next second, he was already calling out in his heart:
Sai! You take this one! He doesn't know me, so go wild!
Marino couldn't help grinning. This was what she'd been waiting for.
The dojo training arc had been so intense, watching Sai return to the board felt like a breath of fresh air.
The manga panel shifted.
Sai lowered his gaze toward the board, eyes calm, serene, and deadly serious.
This was the first opponent he'd faced in person, other than Hikaru, since that legendary online match against Akira.
Meanwhile, the chapter briefly cut to a side scene:
Ogata was in the middle of the Meijin title match against the reigning champion, Kuwabara. Their psychological battle, light teasing, subtle pressure, feints hidden beneath casual remarks, was portrayed beautifully.
Then the manga cut back.
Tatsuhiko was utterly shattered.
He stared at the destroyed board, stunned, then forced out two broken syllables:
"I resign."
His hands trembled.
"You… you're really an insei?"
Hikaru immediately sensed danger and tried to slip away.
But Tatsuhiko snapped back to life.
"Wait—! How long have you been playing Go?!"
Marino's fingers froze mid-page.
The panel zoomed in on Tatsuhiko's eyes, confusion, disbelief, and a quiet desperation.
He wasn't just asking Hikaru. He wasn't just asking Sai. It felt as though he was asking the reader too:
"How can someone this young… be this strong?"
Then came the panel Marino knew she would never forget.
Hikaru turned back slightly, a mischievous smile tugging at his lips.
He lifted a single finger.
"A thousand years."
A joke. A truth.
An answer only Hikaru, and Sai, could give.
Tatsuhiko was left frozen in place.
Outside the pages, Marino felt her heart twist. It was cool, and funny.
After Hikaru left, Tatsuhiko quietly tore up his pro exam application.
He called a friend:
"I'm not ready. I need another year. I'll try again when I deserve it."
On the other side of the story, the Meijin match ended.
Ogata lost, and Kuwabara retained the title.
And so the chapter reached its quiet conclusion.
At the dojo entrance, Ochi, Isumi, and Hikaru stood beneath the slanting sunlight.
Their training period was over.
Their next reunion would be on the battlefield of the professional examination.
"See you."
"Next time, we're rivals."
"Good luck!"
The final page showed their silhouettes parting ways, framed by soft summer light, a page overflowing with youth, rivalry, and everything Marino wished she'd experienced herself.
Marino finally understood why Shirogane-sensei chose to place the side stories of Tatsuhiko and the Meijin title match in the same chapter.
Even someone like Tatsuhiko, once a top insei whose name had echoed through the Tokyo Go scene, lost all confidence after a single match with Sai, deciding he wasn't worthy yet and postponing his pro exam to next year.
Even Ogata 9-dan, brilliant but prideful, had his mental state shaken by a few offhand remarks from the cunning Meijin Kuwabara, and ultimately failed to take the title.
Even Hikaru, Ochi, and Isumi…
Boys who laughed together, ate together, played Go together every day inside the dojo, would now turn and face one another as rivalsin the brutal arena of the professional qualification tournament.
Hundreds, no, thousands, of the strongest young Go players from every prefecture, city, and dojo across Japan…
All fighting for the mere 30 slots to become official professionals.
And unlike the college entrance exam, which a person could take ten or twenty times; In Go, if you fail to turn pro by eighteen, your window closes forever.
This was the cruelty of the professional Go world.
You didn't "gain strength" with age. Your peak often came early.
Miss it, and the moment was gone.
In Rei's previous world, legends like Jie achieved pro rank at eleven, won a world title at eighteen, and became Meijin in their twenties.
Yet ask any fan when he was strongest, and they'd say: when he was younger, before he tangled with AI and changed forever.
Marino knew all this from her childhood Go days.
And so… this chapter made her eyes sting.
These three boys in the manga…
How many of them would truly make it?
Especially Isumi, given his age in the story, how many chances did he even have left?
Would their years of work finally bloom? Or, would it all end in silence?
It was only a manga, and yet it made Marino think of so much.
In the story, a month passed in an instant.
On the morning of the preliminaries, Hikaru arrived at the exam hall. Above the entrance hung a huge banner:
"National Professional Go Qualification Tournament- Preliminaries"
Just a single line of text, yet it filled Marino's heart with a strange, overwhelming longing.
She flipped the page.
Chapter Twenty-Eight- End.
After half a year of following this series, she finally saw Hikaru take his first step into the world of professional Go.
GoNewbie_43: "Is this… what the pro world looks like? The pressure is insane!"
StoneCollector: "I never realized Go could be this hard."
LostInFu**: "Even if I studied Go for ten years, I still wouldn't reach insei level. Pros are absolute monsters."
Hunter: "Meijin, Judan, Tengen, the names alone sound legendary. Who actually holds those titles in Japan right now?"
TigerDad_88: "I'm signing my son up for Go lessons immediately. Ten years from now, meet the next Meijin!"
EmotionalOtaku: "This chapter sticks to the main storyline…so why am I crying??"
BoardSensei: "I get it. It's like watching your own kid grow up.Hikaru has spent over two years chasing Akira, and now he's finally qualified to stand in the same ring as him."
EyesOn: "Hey, doesn't Tatsuhiko being crushed by Sai feel like foreshadowing?"
RinReads: "What do you mean?"
MetaReader_01: "Think about it. If Hikaru ends up becoming the last admitted pro this year, won't it only be because Tatsuhiko quit?
If Tatsuhiko had taken the exam, the outcome might've changed.
Shirogane-sensei doesn't waste characters. That match could've reshuffled the entire ranking board."
CloudyKomi: "Huh? There's actually a theory like that?"
FusekiOtaku: "Well, let's just see how Shirogane-sensei writes it!"
VoteSamurai: "Support! Next week the Pro Qualification arc finally begins. Everyone remember to vote for Hikaru no Go, let's power up Hikaru Shindo!!"
SaiIsMyGod: "Of course!! Voting the moment it opens!"
WeepingKaya: "Please, Shirogane-sensei, don't break my heart.Let Hikaru pass the pro test. I'm begging you…"
All day long, the Hikaru no Go fandom was in full celebration mode, hyped, anxious, emotional, as the story finally stepped into the world of professional Go.
Across Japanese search engines, the phrase:
"Japanese Professional Go Qualification rules" exploded in popularity.
On the official website of Dream Comics, the comment flood from manga fans was relentless:
GhostInTheGoban: "When Hikaru becomes a pro, make two certificates, one for Hikaru, one for Sai! Don't you dare forget Sai!"
The next morning, the ranking results were released.
For the first time, Hikaru no Go rose from #6 to #5.
Without the anime and drama even airing yet, it had pushed its way to the fifth rank purely through the support of hikaru no go fans.
Among all Top 8 titles in the magazine, it was now the only one without an adaptation, a freakish achievement by industry standards.
Even the harshest critics who previously nitpicked everything fell completely silent.
And then, across the Dream Comic forum, one question began spreading:
StoneDemon: "If it can reach #5 before the anime and drama air,what happens after they air?"
TengenTiger: "#4 is definitely possible."
DivineMoveSeeker: "Could it even break into the Top 3? Those rankings haven't changed in two years."
...
Read 50 chapters ahead @[email protected]/Ashnoir
Bonus@ 1600 PS