Translator: Dreamscribe
Seo-ha walked following Su-jeong.
After exiting the cafeteria and walking halfway around the building, a beverage vending machine appears.
Su-jeong stopped walking there.
“What do you want to drink?”
“Cola.”
Clunk.
Su-jeong got a cola and pressed the coffee button for herself.
Click.
Seo-ha, unaware of the situation, felt uncomfortable. Though he was slightly pleased, thinking Su-jeong had gotten angry on his behalf.
Perhaps misunderstanding Seo-ha’s stiff expression, Su-jeong smiles gently.
“Don’t hate them too much. Honestly, they’re not such bad kids.”
Feeling awkward about making excuses, she drank her coffee uneasily.
“Huh?”
“Min-ho, ah! That tall kid. He used to be really nice. I’ve seen him since 5th grade. There were a lot of kids who couldn’t adjust well to the Gifted Education Institute at first. Min-ho helped a lot of them back then.”
"He looked kind of scary though...."
Su-jeong shook her head and quietly spoke.
“He’s anxious.”
“About what?”
“Kids who’ve been at the Gifted Education Institute have heard they’re special since they were little. I’m the same. But then you realize you’re not really anything special? It’s not easy to accept that. Min-ho probably feels pressure to achieve something before he gets any older. Same goes for Sung-chan who was with him.”
What if Min-ho had never come to the Gifted Education Institute?
Su-jeong had seen too many kids fall apart from pressure and the burden of expectations.
“Were you like that too, noona?”
At Seo-ha's question, Su-jeong widened her eyes and pointed to herself with her index finger.
“Me? No? I never doubted myself. Not until I met you.”
"What did I do...."
"It's just something that happens. I understand those kids a little.
You didn’t even come from the Gifted Education Institute, and yet someone way younger than them is getting a ton of attention right now.
Seo-ha, you’re quite famous. In this field, there’s probably hardly anyone who doesn’t know you now. Even I was shaken after meeting you. I realized I couldn’t get complacent.”
Seo-ha silently listened to Su-jeong, but in the end, there was something he still couldn’t understand.
“Where does the belief that you’re special come from?”
“Huh?”
What exactly are these people obsessed with?
“If someone tells you you’re special, do you really become special? I was asking because none of the people I know who were truly special in the past ever acted like that.”
Su-jeong looked at Seo-ha with blank eyes.
She had never thought about it before.
‘Specialness is not completed by someone’s recognition?’
Su-jeong realized that the premise she had believed in was not a necessary condition for being special. Praise should be given only as a result. If you pursue only fame, ruin might be inevitable.
But humans are not that strong. That’s why they crave recognition in advance. And they try to use that as fuel to move forward.
‘Like a debtor.’
Sooner or later, people around them will demand the return for all the recognition they’ve given. Now it’s your turn, show us your specialness.
Seo-ha walked away with his back turned.
Su-jeong wanted to follow him, but her feet felt as if they were stuck, and she couldn’t move easily.
***
Second session began.
The problems were about algebra, calculus, and geometry.
‘This geometry problem is kind of fun.’
Having quickly solved the first two problems, Seo-ha smiled as he looked at the final question, number 6.
It was a fun problem with room for thought.
Scratch scratch.
Seo-ha rolled the pencil with his fingertips and filled out the answer sheet.
In his mind, the coordinate plane was already unfolding.
‘A problem using the angle of reflection.’
Three points evenly placed on a circumcircle. And an orthocenter H located slightly off the center.
Seo-ha saw things others could not.
‘The position vector of the orthocenter equals the sum of the position vectors of the three vertices.’
A circle with diameter OH was drawn in his mind.
Seo-ha's eyes flashed. The corner of his lips slightly lifted.
‘If I set the coordinate system centered at the circumcenter…’
The symmetry of the triangle formed by the three intersection points.
The fact that the distances from the circumcenter to each intersection point are all equal, and that these points have a beautiful relationship with the triangle’s pedal triangle (pedal triangle * a triangle formed by the feet of the perpendiculars dropped from a given point to the sides of a triangle).
In what looks like a simple figure, a rich geometric structure lies hidden.
The problem setter must have been captivated by the beauty of this reflective transformation symmetry.
‘Hmm?’
While writing his answers, Seo-ha sensed a strange presence.
Rustle.
Suddenly, goosebumps rose on his arm, and he slowly turned only his eyes to the side.
And was appalled.
"That's right. That's exactly it!"
A female proctor was standing behind him, looking at his answers.
She was quietly muttering strange exclamations in a voice barely audible. She probably didn’t even realize that sounds were slipping out of her mouth.
When Seo-ha turned his body and made eye contact, she flinched in surprise.
“Ahem... ahem.”
Even after returning to the podium, the proctor’s suspicious behavior continued.
She would pretend to walk past but stare at Seo-ha’s answers, or even when far away, she would frequently glance toward him.
It looked like a puppy desperate to go to the bathroom, aimlessly wandering around.
The teaching assistant behind her mouthed words as if begging her to stop and tried to calm the professor down.
Beep-
While Seo-ha was watching them, the second session ended.
The professor hurried up to the podium and immediately changed her expression.
“Time’s up. Submit your answer sheets. The results will be announced within two weeks.”
Before the students left, Professor Kim Ji-yoon glanced at Seo-ha.
The news delivered by the teaching assistant a few days ago had been truly shocking.
“Professor, there’s a student who made the Latin square with the first-round test answers!”
“What?”
Professor Kim jumped up from her seat.
But upon checking the student’s identity, it turned out to be an elementary school student.
Ji-yoon was appalled.
No matter how talented a child is, time is needed to mature, and yet Yu Seo-ha seemed like the only one exempt from that law.
Then she pulled herself together.
“Elijah Cronen exists too.”
Exceptionally gifted individuals, like divine gifts to humanity, have always existed across time and cultures. If she had discovered such a stroke of fortune?
She checked with the Mathematical Society and found out he had swept the grand prizes in every competition he participated in. And in the high school division, no less.
Professor Kim Ji-yoon made up her mind. She would absolutely keep Yu Seo-ha in the field of mathematics.
And she hurriedly revised the problems.
They were very difficult, but if solved, they would allow the solver to become deeply immersed in the mystical beauty of geometric figures.
‘Not this time. Absolutely not.’
The reality of the Korean mathematics scene was bleak.
Every capable student ends up going to medical school or engineering. There were only a handful who chose mathematics, the root of the sciences, and even then, most of them eventually went to medical school or pursued double majors before heading into corporate careers.
There is a fundamental reason for this.
Korean society does not treat mathematicians with respect.
How could France, which had never performed well in Olympiads, become a mathematics powerhouse?
Because their society respects mathematicians.
They acknowledge the endless journey mathematicians take toward the unknown and the pain of their struggle to find truth.
‘It’s such a beautiful discipline.’
Professor Kim could not understand.
If she were a bright student, she could never give up this pure intellectual pleasure of exploring the laws of the universe and approaching absolute truth.
But this time, she had confidence.
Yu Seo-ha had intentionally written the wrong answers just to construct the Latin square she had intended.
That meant he instinctively understood the aesthetics of numbers.
If he showed this level of mathematical talent at such a young age, what would he become later?
For decades, the world of mathematics had been led by the United States and China.
Ji-yoon lamented the reality of Korean mathematics, which had become a subcontractor analyzing the research of those countries.
‘If only someone like Elijah Cronen had existed in Korea...’
She had thought this more than a few times.
Throughout the first session, Ji-yoon had successfully suppressed her desire to talk to that child.
But upon seeing the answer sheet he submitted before lunch, she finally lost her patience.
A truly perfect proof.
Every single written answer moved her deeply.
If she could just secure Yu Seo-ha, it would more than make up for all the talent the Korean mathematics community had lost over the years.
After all, in this field, a single true genius could lead the entire academic world.
But...
‘What should I do?’
Ji-yoon had never once tried to persuade a student before.
That was because there had never been a student worth persuading.
Seo-ha packed his bag and left the lecture room.
“Park-koon!”
Ji-yoon instinctively called her assistant’s name.
Wasn’t a teaching assistant supposed to help the professor in times of need?
“Yes, Professor!”
The assistant had already come running at some point.
“Follow him right now and stop that kid.”
“What? Stop him? And then what are you going to do?”
Ji-yoon panicked.
She needed to tell him to come to the mathematics department, but even she knew she didn’t have anything attractive enough to offer.
“No, go to my office right now and bring anything that could work as a gift. Got it?”
Professor Kim Ji-yoon hurriedly put on her coat, grabbed her car key, and headed out.
The assistant watched her and nearly teared up.
“Haah, Professor... you’ve never done this for me before.”
But after seeing that kid’s answers, he felt suffocated. Even as a PhD student, he wasn’t confident he could write anything better than that.
Swallowing his tears, the assistant began searching for something an elementary school student might like as a gift.
***
Seo-ha was walking across the campus.
‘That was a beautiful problem.’
The lingering emotion he had felt after solving problem 6 still filled Seo-ha’s mind.
Honk-
A car horn sounded from behind.
Startled, Seo-ha stepped aside. But the car slowed down, came alongside him, and rolled down the window.
Whirrrr-
“Oh my? You’re the kid from the test earlier, right? I was just about to leave, want me to give you a ride home?”
Seo-ha’s eyes narrowed.
The person who had acted strange even during the exam.
“My mom told me not to get in a stranger’s car.”
At that unexpected answer, Professor Kim stammered.
“Huh? Ah... Ah! Right? I guess this was a bit much for a first meeting?”
“My dad will be here soon, so it’s okay.”
“W-Wait! I’ll be honest. Could you spare just five minutes for me?”
“Huh?”
“Just five minutes. I wrote the last question from the second period. Weren’t you curious about it?”
Seo-ha fell into thought.
If she was the one who had written that problem, he did want to talk.
"Yes! Okay."
“Just wait one second!”
Professor Kim’s face brightened.
She quickly parked nearby and came back, sitting with Seo-ha on a bench.
“Sorry for the late introduction. I’m Professor Kim Ji-yoon from the Department of Mathematical Sciences. The reason I stopped you is because your mathematical talent doesn’t seem ordinary to me.”
“Thank you.”
“You’ve heard that a lot, haven’t you?”
“Professor Shin Woo-hyun and Professor Edward Han said it before.”
“Han sunbae? Don’t tell me you’ve met him? What did he say? Don’t tell me he’s taking you to the U.S. again? He took a promising undergrad before, and now he’s pulling this again?”
Hearing Edward’s name, Professor Kim bombarded him with a storm of questions.
“N-No, not really. Of course, he did say going to the U.S. would be good, but I want to live with my family. He’s here now because we’re working on a paper together.”
"A paper? Ha! I almost had my nose stolen while my eyes were open."
“Sorry?”
“No, no, forget it! Seo-ha, you seem to have studied math quite deeply, why is that?”
She had thought she was the first to discover him, but she wasn’t.
“Uh... well...”
It was a simple question, yet he didn’t answer easily. Eventually, Seo-ha managed to open his mouth.
“Because the world is made of math?”
Ji-yoon’s eyes widened.
‘Oh. My. God!’
A response that hit her right in the heart.
In her head, fanfare blared.
“Do you know the etymology of ‘mathematics’ by any chance?”
She assumed he wouldn’t know, but he gave the correct answer.
“Mathematikoi.”
“Right. It was the name of the Pythagorean school.
Pythagoras was someone who worshipped the divine. You could almost say he was half a priest. Of course, since this was in ancient times, it wasn’t the same god we know now.”
Ji-yoon cautiously watched Seo-ha’s reaction as she continued speaking.
“Pythagoras, just like your answer, believed that the world was made of numbers. So he thought studying mathematics was a way of approaching divine providence.”
“I really loved reading about that part ever since I was little.”
At Seo-ha’s reply, Ji-yoon smiled brightly.
“Right? It’s like you were born to become a mathematician. That feeling, don’t ever let it change, okay?”
It had been a needless worry.
No one uninterested in mathematics could ever show such insight.
Relief washed over her as she became certain that she wouldn’t lose Seo-ha to medical school or engineering.
“Yes! I want to keep studying math too. There are still so many mysteries in the world that humans haven’t been able to interpret yet.”
“You really know! Why can’t everyone understand that only mathematics can give truth to humankind?”
Seo-ha looked toward the school gate.
In the distance, someone who appeared to be his father was waving.
“I think I have to go now.”
“All right, just one last thing.”
Ji-yoon had been wanting to ask Seo-ha this.
“Yes?”
“Why did you get question 25 wrong in the first round?”
Seo-ha turned to Ji-yoon with a surprised look.
Then he smiled brightly, as if he understood.
“I thought that’s what the problem setter desperately wanted.”
Perhaps feeling a sense of closeness now, Seo-ha waved cutely as he walked away.
Ji-yoon stood blankly, staring at his retreating figure.