Translator: Dreamscribe
Ding dong deng-
Class was over.
Yu Seo-ha packed his textbook and writing tools into his bag. His head was throbbing and he was running a fever, not feeling well.
‘I need to solve it quickly....’
The problem he had been stuck on since last night kept circling in his head. It was a variation of the Goldbach conjecture. A new approach had come to mind, but he had not completed it yet.
Yu Seo-ha calculated the time in his head.
A day has 1,440 minutes, and he had used 521 minutes so far.
Subtracting sleep time (the family's lights-out time is fixed), which is 480 minutes, left him with 289 minutes of pure usable time.
‘That should be enough. It's almost 5 hours.’
Yu Seo-ha quickly walked out of the classroom.
What mattered was not wasting time.
Yu Seo-ha exited the school gate precisely at 3:19:58 PM. It took 1 minute and 12 seconds to get to the crosswalk. He arrived at 3:21:08 PM.
The signal was scheduled to change at 3:21:10 PM.
Yu Seo-ha had known this pattern for three years. He naturally figured it out by going to and from school at the same time every day.
The traffic light cycle was 120 seconds. Green light for 40 seconds, red light for 80 seconds.
During lunch hours, there was a special signal adjustment that prioritized pedestrians.
To identify these conditions, there had even been a day during a break when he spent the entire day timing the signals. Thanks to that, he had come to know the perfect timing, so the hard work had paid off.
If he stepped forward now, the signal would change immediately.
It should have been that way....
But the signal did not change.
‘What’s going on? Has a new rule been added? Could the traffic light be broken?’
However, everyone else waiting for the signal looked calm except for him.
‘Where did I go wrong?’
His mind went blank. The perfect pattern of the past two years was broken.
Yu Seo-ha’s breathing became rough. He began to sweat. He started checking the time by looking at his watch.
The signal changed after 11 seconds.
How many cycles had passed since 8 AM?
From 8:00 to 15:21:21, that’s 7 hours, 21 minutes, and 21 seconds.
Converted to seconds, that's 26,481 seconds.
Divide that by the signal cycle?
Yu Seo-ha’s steps slowed.
220.675
A decimal.
‘0.675.’
27/40. Coprime. Cannot be simplified further.
‘That's strange? There’s no way such a complex fraction would come out, right?’
Something felt off. This should not be happening.
As he was feeling confused, his body staggered.
“Huh?”
Yu Seo-ha’s body was forcibly stopped.
Someone had grabbed his bag from behind and pulled him.
“Bwaaang-”
At that moment, a truck blared its horn loudly and passed right in front of his eyes.
It was dangerous. He had almost died.
He turned around to thank the person who helped him....
“Seo-ha, are you okay?”
His mother’s worried face. Her forehead was beaded with sweat, as if she had run. Seo-eun also looked like she was about to cry, her expression uneasy.
“Mom?”
His burning head cooled down.
‘What on earth was I doing?’
“Why are you here, Mom....”
Yu Seo-ha blankly looked around.
The place where he stood was the crosswalk in front of the school. But what he saw in front of him was the main road near their home. He had no memory of how he had gotten there.
“We were on our way home after shopping! I saw you, but you didn’t answer when I called....”
But that was not all.
Even from afar, Mi-young had clearly seen her son's face turn pale. Worried he might be sick, she had picked him up and run with all her strength.
“Oppa, hug me!”
At some point, Seo-eun had come down from their mother’s arms and stretched both arms out toward Yu Seo-ha. Yu Seo-ha lightly hugged his sister.
A familiar weight and warm scent.
Seo-eun wrapped both arms around her oppa’s neck.
Yu Seo-ha’s mind slowly began to calm down. The numbers that had been circling in his head disappeared, and the nonstop calculations that would not cease no longer tormented him.
“Oppa, are you okay? Your face is pale.”
Seo-eun touched Yu Seo-ha’s cheek with her small hand.
“Of course I’m okay. I’m just a little tired today.”
Yu Seo-ha, not wanting to worry his family, forced a smile as he replied.
“Let’s hurry home and get some rest. I’ll cook something delicious for you.”
On the way home, a cool breeze blew.
Trickle, trickle.
The sound of stream water flowing through the brook.
Nearby, various wildflowers shyly peeked out their heads.
“Oppa, what are those flowers called?”
“Daisy and hydrangea.”
Five years old, an age when everything in the world is fascinating.
Seo-eun fired off endless questions, but for Yu Seo-ha, who had memorized the entire Encyclopedia Collection, there were no gaps in his answers.
‘Ah! This is peaceful. Just like how our family always is.’
At last, he felt like his heart was becoming free.
***
Saturday morning at 10 o'clock,
Yu Seo-ha boarded the No. 705 bus and headed into downtown Daejeon.
As he looked out the window at the passing scenery, he recalled the events of a few days ago.
A blank in his memory, the moment he nearly ran out in front of a truck at the crosswalk.
And the collapse of the traffic light pattern that triggered it all.
‘I really could have died.’
Yu Seo-ha had no intention of downplaying what had happened. He was anxious about the possibility that something might be seriously wrong with him. More precisely, he did not want to see his family saddened because of it.
‘Let’s identify the cause.’
Analyze the phenomenon under given conditions, form a hypothesis, and prove it.
Yu Seo-ha decided to approach his problem with logical thinking, like a mathematician.
The bus arrived at the downtown center and released a flood of passengers.
As he had researched in advance, Yu Seo-ha headed straight to the largest bookstore in the country.
Once inside, countless people were freely seated, reading books.
Passing the essays, novels, and workbook sections, Yu Seo-ha’s steps paused.
Countless medical books were neatly displayed.
Modern Psychiatry, Introduction to Clinical Psychology, Neuropsychiatry, Adolescent Mental Health....
As he slowly scanned the titles, he finally found a book containing the information he was looking for.
"Understanding and Treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder"
Rustle, rustle.
Obsession, Compulsion, various symptoms were listed, but none of them precisely matched his case.
Rustle, rustle.
His quickly flipping hand came to a stop.
Yu Seo-ha’s hand trembled.
Arithmomania and Mathematical Thinking Disorder.
-Arithmomania is characterized by obsessive preoccupation with numbers and calculations. The patient continuously performs calculations in their head or assigns meaning to specific numbers, excessively fixating on mathematical patterns.
Primary symptoms:
-Obsessive calculation of time, distance, quantities, etc.
-Excessive fixation on specific numbers or patterns.
-Uncontrollable urge to solve mathematical problems.
-Extreme anxiety when calculations are incorrect.
-Marked decline in ability to function in daily life.
He considered each item, applying it to himself as he read.
The Goldbach conjecture that had occupied his mind all night.
Is it normal to study traffic light patterns for years? To fall into a state of panic when that pattern breaks?
Is dividing the day into minutes and seconds truly a normal habit?
‘Since when did these symptoms start?’
Yu Seo-ha sat down in a quiet corner chair and continued searching for more information.
“This guy... he was serious.”
Kurt Gödel.
The greatest logician of the 20th century.
He revolutionized the field of mathematics with his incompleteness theorems, but in his later years suffered from severe obsessive-compulsive disorder and paranoia. Believing that his food was poisoned, he only ate meals prepared by his wife. When she was hospitalized for six months, he refused to eat anything and eventually starved to death.
“Tsk, tsk.”
‘That’s way worse than me. No matter what, how could a person...’
But as he read the next paragraph, Yu Seo-ha’s sense of relief vanished.
‘Gödel’s initial symptoms were minor. In his twenties, his behavior was dismissed as merely an obsession with mathematical accuracy. But the untreated and neglected obsessive-compulsive disorder....’
‘Ah.... Fuck.’
‘No, I’m different. I’ve already recognized the problem.’
Yu Seo-ha began looking into the cases of other mathematicians.
Georg Cantor.
Founder of set theory. In 1904, when his theory was refuted at an academic conference, his obsessive-compulsive disorder developed into bipolar disorder. He was eventually confined to a mental hospital and ended his life there.
Isaac Newton.
Suffered from bipolar disorder throughout his life.
He washed his hands dozens of times a day and also experienced hallucinations.
Leonhard Euler.
The teacher of all mathematicians. In 1771, he went blind after cataract surgery.
However, he could not stop calculating obsessively. Right up until his death, he was immersed in calculating the orbit of Uranus.
At his funeral, the eulogy given by his closest friend, the Marquis de Condorcet, was, “Death has finally stopped Euler’s calculations.”
Here too, and there as well, nothing but patients.
Many mathematicians, to varying degrees, suffered from disorders.
Yu Seo-ha moved to another section and thoroughly studied the diagnoses and treatments related to this.
***
“Haha!”
Coming to the bookstore had been the right choice.
The treatment wasn’t as difficult as he had thought.
Over 90% of patients are completely cured, and the earlier the diagnosis, the better the outcome.
‘In Gödel or Cantor’s time, they didn’t even have the concept that such symptoms were an illness.’
He was different from them.
The hopeful numbers lightened his heart.
‘Long live modern medicine!’
On the walk home, Yu Seo-ha deliberately did not time himself. Normally, he would have known the exact time of arrival, but just for today, that no longer mattered.
‘I can just wait. It’s not such a big deal.’
He felt like a sage.
When the light changed, Yu Seo-ha naturally crossed the street. It was neither hard nor painful.
‘I can definitely control it.’
Many great mathematicians had been imprisoned by numbers for life, never able to escape, but Yu Seo-ha vowed that he would never become one of them.
He arrived in front of his house but did not check the time. He simply opened the front door.
“Mom!”
What did it matter how long it took?
Normally, he would have habitually checked the time he got off the bus and the time he arrived home to calculate his walking speed, but things like that no longer mattered to him.
“I’m home!”
“Welcome back, come eat!”
It was dinner time.
Yu Seo-ha quickly washed his hands and feet and helped set the table.
"Our Seo-ha always places the utensils so straight, doesn't he?"
“That’s right, that’s right! He’s done that since he was little.”
He felt good hearing his parents' praise.
Yu Seo-ha stared quietly at the spoon he had placed. The edge of the spoon was exactly aligned with the edge of the square table.
A perfect right angle.
A sense of unease crept in.
“Take some sausage.”
As he received the plate, Yu Seo-ha unconsciously picked up exactly one sausage with the tongs.
“You don’t like sausage?” Chul-ho asked.
Yu Seo-ha was at a loss for words.
“Ah, honey! Seo-ha always puts exactly seven on his plate. I guess it’s because Seo-eun doesn’t eat much.”
No. That wasn’t it.
He simply disliked the number 8.
Was that all?
Why was he so fixated on seven?
Seven is a Mersenne prime that can be expressed as 2^p - 1. At the same time, (7 - 1) / 2 = 3 is also a prime, making it a safe prime. A regular heptagon is the first regular polygon that cannot be constructed using only a ruler and compass.
Yu Seo-ha disliked easily expressed numbers like the perfect number 6 (1 + 2 + 3 = 6) or the cube number 8 (2³ = 8).
Seven is simply seven, it cannot be cleanly expressed by any other combination.
“Aaaah!”
Yu Seo-ha despaired.
“What’s wrong?”
Mi-young asked as she watched her son clutching his head.
“N-no, it’s nothing. I just remembered I forgot some homework.”
Yu Seo-ha hurriedly finished eating and went into his room.
He closed the door, leaned against it, and let out a deep sigh.
‘I’m completely screwed. So much for being different....’
Then, a strange thought suddenly crossed his mind.
Yu Seo-ha unconsciously opened his closet door.
The closet was filled with plaid-patterned clothes.
“N-no way....”
He quickly pulled a ruler from the drawer and placed it against the plaid pattern.
1 : 1.618
The golden ratio.
All the clothes he had liked until now.
Yu Seo-ha’s obsession with numbers, formed from a very young age, had far deeper roots than he had ever imagined.
“Aaaaargh!! It said 90% recovery rate! It said it was easy!"
Yu Seo-ha pulled the blanket over himself and screamed.
‘What if I’m in the other 10%?’
Feeling good, he had only focused on the positives, but that was a percentage that could never be dismissed mathematically.