Translator: Dreamscribe
“Thank you.”
Seo-ha bowed his head to Professor Park, who had driven him all the way to Okcheon.
There had been a minor incident at the airport, but the national team had safely completed the disbanding ceremony and headed to their respective homes.
“You did well. Congratulations again on the first place. You know you don’t have to worry about what the Chinese side said, right?”
Upon investigation, it turned out to be not an official objection but a personal interview by the Chinese coaching staff.
-No matter how we look at it, the grading of Yu Seo-ha’s problems 4 and 5 was too generous. We find it hard to understand how he received 6 points with such answers.
-Considering precedents, that level of answer usually got 3 points. If that had been the case, the first place result might have changed. Of course, it would have gone to someone from our Chinese team.
Even the problem setters took quite some time to understand Seo-ha’s logic. It was not unreasonable for those who hadn’t analyzed the answers in depth to feel dissatisfied.
“Yes, I don’t mind.”
Seo-ha shook his head as if he truly didn’t care. Professor Park found that admirable, yet strange. Seo-ha didn’t crave adults’ recognition like most kids did.
“Alright, get home safely now.”
Vroom-
Professor Park’s sedan drove off into the distance.
“Ah! Home really is the best.”
Ssss-
Seo-ha took a deep breath.
The scent of ripening rice, the earthy smell drifting from afar. It was the familiar air of Okcheon.
Creak.
Dragging his bag, Seo-ha quickened his pace toward the house.
Standing in front of the home he had lived in all his life, Seo-ha paused to catch his breath. It had only been a few days since he left, but it felt like a long time had passed.
He took out the case containing the gold medal from his bag, checked the contents once more, then opened the gate.
“Mom, Dad! I’m back.”
Seo-eun, who had been playing with soil in the flower bed, jumped up when she saw her oppa.
“Oppa!”
Seo-eun came running from the yard. In just a few days, it seemed she had grown a little more as she sprinted toward Seo-ha with all her might.
Seo-ha set down his bag, knelt, and caught Seo-eun in his arms.
A familiar warmth and scent.
Only now did it truly feel like he was home.
"Did you do well?"
Seo-eun nodded firmly.
“Yup! I listened to Mom, and I didn’t fight with the kids at kindergarten. I got along really well!”
Seo-eun’s eyes sparkled as she looked up at Seo-ha with a face full of anticipation.
“Here’s Seo-eun’s gold medal.”
When Seo-ha opened the case and showed her the medal, Seo-eun’s face lit up like a blooming flower. After he put it around her neck, she ran joyfully around the yard. Then, looking at herself in the mirror, she giggled while striking various poses.
"I don't know if she even knows what that is, but she likes it."
Mi-young came out from the kitchen, laughing. She was wiping her hands while wearing an apron, clearly having been cooking in anticipation of her son’s return.
“Mom!”
“My son, you worked so hard. It must’ve been exhausting, right?”
Mi-young hugged Seo-ha and patted his back.
When the news broke that Seo-ha had won first place, the whole village was in uproar. Over the past two days, everyone Mi-young met had envied her for having such an accomplished son.
Wearing the gold medal, Seo-eun twirled proudly in front of the family.
“Oppa! You won first place because you tried hard for me, right?”
Seo-ha thought for a moment, then replied.
“I really think that’s true.”
Seo-eun beamed with a big smile, clearly delighted.
“What a joke... She thinks you’re serious. I’ll get dinner ready in a second. I made kimchi stew.”
It was the most welcome news of all.
***
At the International Mathematical Olympiad, the Korean national team has achieved an overall second place. Particularly noteworthy is Yu Seo-ha, a 6th grader in elementary school, who drew attention by becoming the youngest ever to win individual first place at the age of 12.
The screen showed the IMO award ceremony. Seo-ha going up the stage and receiving the gold medal.
“This year’s Olympiad is being evaluated as the most difficult since 1988. We’ve invited an expert to the studio. Professor Nam Tae-jin? Have you reviewed the exam questions?”
The screen switched.
A middle-aged mathematics professor wearing glasses sat holding some documents.
“Yes, I’ve reviewed them. To be honest, it was shocking. Especially problem 6, which was the kind of high-level problem you’d normally only see in a PhD course. It’s not so much that it requires a lot of knowledge, but the thought process required to reach the conclusion is extremely complex.”
“Was it really that difficult?”
“In fact, the only student who solved problem 6 in this competition was Yu Seo-ha. Over 600 gifted students participated from around the world.”
“Then how would you evaluate Yu Seo-ha’s abilities?”
“Ha ha! I’m sure viewers want an intuitive answer, but mathematics isn’t a subject you can rank like a video game. However, I can say that he is an exceptionally outstanding student.
Since Elijah Cronen, there hasn’t been a student at this age who’s achieved such mathematical accomplishments.”
As the news ended, the internet began to stir.
└A new great master has been born.
└What? Is that a big deal?
└You have to know math to even know how to praise this.
└I'm in a number theory PhD program. Got the PDF of problem 6, and it’s seriously shocking. You could write a research paper on this. This kid really is a genius.
└Is there any way I can see the problem too?
└Would you even understand it if you saw it? ㅋㅋㅋ
└Hello, I’m a resident of Okcheon County. Saw today that the kid on TV is from our town. He’s always been polite and smiles a lot. He’s been known as a prodigy since he was little.
└That kid looks clean-cut. If raised well, maybe...?
└But isn’t there some noise coming from China? They’re freaking out, saying their first place was stolen.
└They always act like everything belongs to them anyway.
└No joke, they're going around famous mathematicians' SNS accounts posting the problem and answer sheet, asking if it's correct.
***
Professor Cronen's research lab, located at the far end of the 13th floor of Princeton University's research building, was a place that produced all kinds of ghost stories.
Among undergraduates, it was called "the curse of the 13th floor".
In reality, more than half of the graduate students who had joined Professor Cronen’s lab over the past ten years had dropped out, and some had to receive psychiatric treatment for severe depression.
Every year during freshman orientation, seniors would secretly warn juniors about Professor Cronen.
“If Elijah Cronen shows interest in you, run. Don’t even look back.”
But public opinion about the professor himself was completely different.
In the global mathematics community, the name Elijah Cronen was one of awe and admiration.
He had single-handedly solved a major unsolved problem in combinatorics that had remained unsolved for fifty years, changing the landscape of academia.
The new methodology he developed had a profound impact on graph theory and probabilistic combinatorics, and it is now considered an essential technique throughout the field of mathematics.
There was a reason why so many graduate students knocked on his door despite knowing about the rumors.
Although half of his students had failed to complete their degrees, the other half had gone on to become tenured professors at prestigious universities or winners of highly respected awards such as the Fields Medal, Gödel Prize, or Abel Prize.
It was truly the forefront of modern mathematics. The 13th floor was a symbol of fear, but also a sacred ground that every aspiring mathematician dreamed of entering at least once.
Tap tap tap.
“Hmm?”
Professor Cronen narrowed his eyes as he tried to open his email in the lab.
“Professor, did you see Twitter?”
One of the teaching assistants came rushing in with a laptop.
"What's all this about?"
Usually, no one other than mathematicians paid any attention to his account, but now it had thousands of mentions.
“They’re probably Chinese. Apparently, there’s a Korean student who got first place at the IMO, and they’re claiming his score is abnormally high.”
The assistant, looking troubled, opened the laptop and showed him the screen. The professor’s account was flooded with angry comments in Chinese.
“Why are they coming at me? Do they think I’m one of the IMO problem setters or something?”
“It seems they’re swarming other mathematicians too. But since you’re the most well-known...”
Cronen’s lips twitched.
“Is that so? If it’s about a math problem, then I should solve it. Bring me the problem and the answer sheet.”
“Yes! Understood.”
After the assistant left, Cronen glanced around cautiously and accessed his personal homepage.
Usually, even when he posted on his blog, fewer than 1,000 people viewed it. And all of them were from the mathematics community.
No matter how famous one is, the general public has no interest in mathematicians.
[Today's visitors: 15,244]
His blog had blown up.
The assistant brought the printed problem and answer sheet.
Cronen received it with a solemn expression and began reading.
As he reviewed the problem, his eyes suddenly widened. He checked who the problem setter was.
“Ah! That old man.”
Now it made sense. That old geezer was more than capable of making a problem like this.
Problem 6, which cleverly intertwined number theory and algebra, was strikingly similar to a research topic Cronen had wrestled with during his master’s course.
“A twelve-year-old solved this?”
Cronen began reading Seo-ha’s answer.
“Oh ho…”
His expression grew serious from the first page.
Seo-ha had linked prime number theory, harmonic series, and quadratic residues without any logical leaps.
“Hmm?”
As he turned to the second page, Elijah’s eyes widened.
"He found this right away?"
Seo-ha progressed straight to the core of the problem, as if he already knew the answer. While most students got bogged down in dummy calculations, this boy had grasped the essence of the problem at once. Then, he ran toward the solution through the clearest path.
"This is just like..."
Like me?
Cronen felt a strange sense of kinship with the boy.
He immediately spotted hidden connections between seemingly unrelated conditions. And he completed the proof in the most beautiful way possible.
Elijah Cronen, who had conquered the IMO at the age of 13.
And now, a master who had devoted over thirty years to mathematics could clearly see the boy’s powerful mathematical intuition.
‘He was born with it.’
Some say mathematicians are made through training, but that’s the talk of people who don’t understand reality.
Every mathematician hits a wall. What’s needed to break through is talent.
That was why Cronen never treated mathematicians without innate talent with proper respect.
All the rumors about the 13th floor had originated from that.
He read the answer sheets for problems 4 and 5, which were supposedly problematic.
Then he burst out laughing.
“Ha ha ha ha!”
This cheeky kid had completely ignored the existing curriculum and wrote his answers in a language only mathematicians could understand.
Highly compressed expressions that one would expect to find in personal research papers.
It was like a brilliant architect had erected only the framework of a building, leaving out all the finishes.
Tap tap tap.
Cronen began typing a post on his blog.
[To those who think this boy doesn't deserve first place.]
-If you are a mathematician, I suggest you look for another profession. Even if you’re just an ordinary person unrelated to math, it would be wise to remember the name Yu Seo-ha.
There’s a problem because IMO gave him 6 points?
If it were up to me, I would have given him full marks.
-Elijah Cronen.
With the bold statement from a mathematical giant, the relevant communities exploded.