"This just proves one thing—not even Sai can carry a noob teammate!"
"I don't really get what's happening, but it looks fun. Was that move really that deadly? Even Sai couldn't recover from it."
"Deadly is putting it mildly. He lost a whole group of stones, and the entire lower half of the board was taken by white. Total noob move."
"It's all Akari's fault! She spoke up suddenly and distracted Hikaru. How could he not make a mistake?"
"Yeah, blame Akari."
"Sai even called out that move—it was at eleven fifteen on the board. They're in middle school already and still miscounting intersections. Sigh. Sai once said that when he plays black and goes first, he's never lost. He could even accept losing to Koyo Toya. But to lose because of that noob teammate Hikaru and that chess(Shogi) club guy Tetsuo… I'm so mad."
"That said, Tetsuo really is strong. He's the captain of the Chinese chess(Shogi) club and completely crushed Tsutsui, the Go club captain. Even Sai admitted he's really good for his age."
"What's the use? He used to play Go in elementary school and lost over a dozen times to Akira. He got so discouraged, he gave up and switched to Chinese chess(Shogi)."
"Honestly, Akira is too gentle—so gentle it hurts. After beating Tetsuo over ten times, he felt bad and let him win once on purpose. But Tetsuo saw through it. That kind of sympathy just hurts more."
"So just how strong is Akira now? Tetsuo's Go skills are from his elementary school days, and even then, he was this strong—yet Akira crushed him back then. Now that Akira's older… he must be on a professional level, right?"
"Not sure, but at the very least, probably pro-level."
The story quickly moves forward as the **Go club trio—Tsutsui, Tetsuo, and Hikaru—**enter the city-wide high school Go tournament.
Why did Hikaru join? Because he lost to Tetsuo. He had no choice. If he didn't want to do winter swimming as punishment, he had to submit to Tetsuo's "tyranny."
This was also the first time Hikaru showed a natural talent for Go. He watched a match between two students from other schools where their board and pieces had gotten mixed up—and miraculously, he helped them reconstruct over a hundred moves in their original sequence.
"Are all Go players this good at memorization?"
"Not all of them. I sure can't do it."
"Some pros are just that amazing at calculating, but I've only heard of them—not met one myself."
"It's just a hundred or two hundred moves, and the sequences have logical patterns, right? It's no big deal. I don't even know Go, but if I did, I could probably do it too."
"Here we go, the armchair expert from the fan group!"
"I don't know Go, but replaying a 200-move game is totally easy!!!"
"The entire Da Zhou Go community owes its life to fan group geniuses like this one."
When the tournament began, their team was... chaotic. Hikaru was playing; however, he felt like. He connected stones into stars, into lines, into doodles… he even started playing Gomoku on the Go board.
Completely messing around.
Thankfully, Tetsuo and Tsutsui were solid and won their matches, allowing the team to advance.
But in the next round, Tsutsui was eliminated first. To move on, Hikaru had to win.
"If we lose this match, the school won't recognize the Go club," Tetsuo told him. "Tsutsui didn't want to pressure you, so he didn't tell you."
It turned out the Go club was something Tsutsui had founded unofficially, without official recognition from the school.
This snapped Hikaru out of his playful mood.
"Take the game seriously. Show them what you're really capable of," Tetsuo said.
But it was too late. The first half of the match had been wrecked by Hikaru's nonsense, and there was no way to recover with just his own skills.
During the break, looking despondent, he said:
"Sai… can you play the rest of this match?"
"Didn't you say you didn't need me?" Fujiwara no Sai replied with tsundere pride.
But all he saw were tears of frustration in Hikaru's eyes.
There was no way Hikaru could salvage the mess alone.
But if they lost, Tsutsui's dream of establishing a Go club would be shattered.
"You hate this, don't you? That you can't win on your own," Fujiwara no Sai said gently. "It's okay. If we work together, we can still win. Wipe your tears. Just don't make another bad move."
The atmosphere got so emotional that many in the audience felt their noses sting.
They didn't know why they were so moved—but they were.
Maybe it was the purity of their friendship.
Maybe it was because Sai was too gentle.
Or maybe it was their shared devotion to the game of Go.
The acting was top-notch. Hikaru's emotions practically spilled out of the screen.
"It feels like… Hikaru didn't really want Sai to take over."
"It's not that he didn't want him to—he just wanted to finish it himself. But if he did, Tsutsui's dream of making the club official would've died with it. He had no choice."
"This is kind of heartbreaking…"
"Same here. I started falling in love with Go just like Hikaru did. I used to think televised Go matches were boring, but yesterday I caught one by accident and ended up listening to commentary for 30 minutes. Still don't understand it—but now it feels interesting."
"They won. Sai's basically a cheat code. Even that game got turned around."
"For real! I've been playing Go for twenty years, and the second half of that game left me completely stunned."
"Final match—up against Kaio Middle School."
"Whoa, this episode was way better than I expected. I never thought watching a bunch of middle schoolers play Go could be so intense—it had me sweating."
"The writer is incredible."
"Sai is so cool. The way this character was written is genius!"
"Didn't the writer act in the show, too? Shameless!"
"Why do you say that?"
"Have you seen his last show? 'White Album 2'? He played the scumbag male lead. I hated him. But now he's playing Sai and… I don't know. I look at Jing Yu's face and I see Haruki Kitahara… but even more, I see Sai."
"That's because he is Jing Yu. Stop overthinking it."
As it turns out, Akira had transferred to Kaio Middle School and just happened to visit during the finals.
During the final match, Sai wasn't actually playing—he was just giving instructional commentary.
He was letting Hikaru feel out his train of thought, to understand the meaning behind each move.
Winning was expected.
But what mattered most was how Hikaru came to appreciate the beauty of Go through the match.
The TV show "Hikaru no Go" broke a 4% viewership rating, and it's still climbing:
4.02%
4.06%
4.15%