Translator: Dreamscribe
"Hello, viewers.
This week on Science and the City, we have a story that's been making waves across the entire nation."
The camera slowly zoomed in on the anchor.
His voice was pitched slightly higher than usual, and there was a palpable sense of barely contained excitement in his demeanor.
"A few days ago, Science, the world's most prestigious academic journal, featured a single paper on the cover of its latest issue. And from the moment it was published, this paper triggered a chain reaction across not just academia, but industry and politics as well."
The screen transitioned to show the cover of Science.
An image visualizing the flow of energy, streams converging into a vast lake.
And the title printed at the bottom center:
[Mathematics Always Knows the Answer.]
-Minimum Energy Theory
"The authors of the paper are Team Apex from MIT's Department of Mathematics. And remarkably, the team includes two Korean students. We've invited Professor Kim Ji-yoon of KAIST, who has personal connections to both of them, to join us today."
"Welcome, Professor."
The camera zoomed out to reveal the full studio.
A woman in a neat suit bowed her head in greeting.
"Thank you for having me."
The anchor smiled and continued.
"First, let me ask a simple question for our viewers.
If you had to summarize this paper in a single sentence, what kind of research would you say it is?"
Professor Kim Ji-yoon thought for a moment before she began to speak carefully.
"There was a mathematician named Claude Shannon.
He was the person who transformed information from an abstract sensation into measurable numbers. Every application of information theory since has followed his definitions.
I believe this paper holds a similar position, in that it has shifted the paradigm of energy. If I were to summarize this paper in one sentence, it would be this."
She took a sip of water and steadied her breath.
"Minimum energy is a consequence that emerges only when a viable structural pathway exists."
The anchor nodded.
"That's very clear. Thank you for the easy-to-understand explanation.
You know both students well, don't you? Would it be fair to call this a triumph for Korean science, Professor?"
"Hmm.... It's complicated.
I've had my eye on Seo-ha since he was in elementary school. Even at that young age, he was a genius with a firm sense of mathematical aesthetics.
Su-jeong tends to be overshadowed by Seo-ha, but she's an incredibly driven talent in her own right. I wanted to mentor her myself and develop her into a world-class cryptographer, but...."
Ji-yoon's expression turned somber.
The number theory Su-jeong had been interested in was her area of expertise.
Su-jeong's departure, someone she had considered a sure catch, left her with deep regret.
"Haha! Su-jeong was a KAIST student, wasn't she? I can see how that might sting from your perspective, Professor."
When the anchor responded with a laugh, light laughter rippled through the studio.
"It does sting. Very much so."
She spoke candidly.
"Su-jeong had the potential to become someone truly remarkable in cryptography. Above all, that tenacious personality of hers was the perfect quality for a cryptographer.
I just didn't realize her obsession was directed elsewhere. The two of them were senior and junior at the same high school. They competed together at the IMO and were constantly compared to each other."
"Well, that's a new angle."
"You asked whether this paper is a national triumph. The Korean mathematics community failed to hold onto these two geniuses. Scholars inevitably seek better research environments.
I hope this serves as an opportunity for increased national support for mathematics...."
└I was gonna skip this since it's about math, but how did I end up watching the whole thing?
└Same, I started paying attention from the word 'obsession.'
└She followed him all the way to MIT? Chills, man
└She was the one always being compared to him, and she followed him all the way there and got her name on the same paper. How hard must she have worked? Her life's literally a movie.
└FYI) Lim Su-jeong is Korea's only back-to-back IMO gold medalist. People frame her as just hardworking, but she's been a monster since day one.
└FYI 2) Lim Su-jeong's high school nickname was 'Demon King'. She never came down from the top of the class at her science high school.
└She was the undisputed number one in college too. She just went and found a place that matched her level.
└Shut up! From now on, you are the math-genius obsessive girl.
└Our proud seniors. Seo-ha sunbae especially is a legend even the freshmen all know about. The principal might build a memorial hall for him soon.
└Seo-ha's gotta do his military service soon, right?
└The division commander's gonna make him tutor his kids ㅋㅋㅋ
└Duck Lord, glad to see you're doing well. We're doing great too. Every time you show up on the news, we brag about you to our friends!
* * *
"One copy of Science, please."
Gyeo-ul said, adjusting her scarf.
The newsstand owner glanced at her and nodded.
"A lot of people have been asking for this one lately. Did something happen?"
"I guess so."
Gyeo-ul played along nonchalantly, pretending she knew nothing about it.
Her shoulders puffed up with quiet pride.
Back at the dormitory, Gyeo-ul opened a box she kept tucked away in the corner of her closet.
Inside, packed tightly together, were various scientific journals including Nature and Science, the New York Times Magazine issue where Seo-ha had graced the cover, and assorted newspapers.
Gyeo-ul had been buying and collecting every piece of material that mentioned Seo-ha, without exception.
Short interviews in newspapers, special conference issues, even supplementary publications from obscure journals; she collected them all indiscriminately.
"Still, I should at least read it."
She carefully pulled the magazine out, making sure not to crease it.
After flipping through a few pages, she found the feature article.
"Did he get taller again?"
There was Seo-ha, standing in front of a chalkboard.
His face, tilted to one side and lost in thought, looked so exactly like the way he used to look in the music room that she couldn't help but laugh.
'Mental fortification complete.'
Every time she opened the box, she found herself wanting to hurry up and land on the cover of BBC Music Magazine or Piano Today herself.
"Ugh, it's cold."
Gyeo-ul blew warm air onto her gloved hands as she headed to the practice room.
The practice rooms at Curtis were always quiet. So silent that even the sound of breathing felt like it might be a disturbance.
Every student here was someone who had grown up hearing the word "genius" on a daily basis.
People who had been performing on international stages since childhood, carrying within them both unwavering standards and scars in equal measure. Gyeo-ul found the atmosphere here suffocating.
Her roommate went entire days without saying a word, and the student next door reacted irritably to even the slightest wrong note.
In the midst of it all, Gyeo-ul often, no, frequently found herself alone.
"I miss the older girls."
Back in Korea, everyone in her class had doted on Gyeo-ul, who was much younger than the rest.
But here, everyone was a competitor.
'Get it together.'
Gyeo-ul clenched her fists, her expression hardening.
If she was going to whine, she wouldn't have come to Curtis in the first place. But no matter how firmly she steeled her resolve, what was hard was hard.
Of all her struggles, the hardest for Gyeo-ul was dealing with Lawrence, her professor and conductor.
Once the principal conductor of the New York Philharmonic, considered the pinnacle of the classical music world, he was widely known by his nickname: "the embodiment of perfectionism."
The New York Philharmonic under his baton had been famous for its flawless precision, and at the same time, it carried the notorious reputation among musicians as the most grueling orchestra to perform with.
"Again."
The voice that rang out coldly. Gyeo-ul's shoulders flinched mid-performance.
His keen ears never missed even the smallest mistake that others would have overlooked.
"Whew."
Gyeo-ul took a deep breath and sat down at the piano.
Out of habit, she pulled the chair forward and checked the position of the pedals. Then she closed her eyes and began to play.
'Ducky's Theme.'
A piece composed by Seo-ha.
Since coming to Curtis, Gyeo-ul always played this piece before starting her practice.
Ding...
A low, solid chord settled at the base, and a thin melody was layered on top.
The first time she heard him play it, she had thought it was too heavy a piece.
But now she understood.
That Seo-ha carried unspoken troubles deep inside him.
'What were you thinking when you wrote this?'
Gyeo-ul's fingers danced gracefully across the keys.
A piece with no clear narrative arc, yet strangely persuasive. Like Seo-ha's heartbeat she had heard that day, it simply flowed on in quiet persistence.
Thump, thump.
In this piece, Gyeo-ul could feel Seo-ha's breathing. And with that, her heart began to settle.
Before she knew it, the piece had ended.
'Good. Now let's practice.'
Both her body and mind had reached their peak state.
Just as Gyeo-ul was about to begin her assigned piece, a familiar voice came from behind her.
"Could you play that piece once more?"
Gyeo-ul spun around, startled nearly out of her seat.
"P-Professor Lawrence?"
"If you would."
His expression looked serious.
Gyeo-ul nodded and began playing the piano again.
He leaned loosely against the doorframe and closed his eyes.
Lawrence had been on his way back after finishing a rehearsal for next month's performance.
He had been organizing the next program in his head when he heard an unfamiliar piece drifting from somewhere down the hall.
'Hm?'
He was a conductor who could be counted on one hand, even on a global scale.
He had listened to tens of thousands of pieces over the course of several decades. And in most cases, he could gauge the entire character of a piece from just the first few measures.
'That's strange.'
A piece where a single theme persisted relentlessly, yet not a single familiar musical language appeared.
Typically, when a subject is introduced, a response (answer) follows in the next voice. But this piece had none of that.
Lawrence's brow furrowed slightly.
A theme emerged and variations followed, but nowhere did traditional contrast or resolution appear. And yet the piece never collapsed.
'Why?'
He began nodding along, focusing intently on the music.
'Not a single repetition.'
The same melody, the same harmony, never appeared twice.
To ears hearing it for the first time, it would sound close to improvisation. But Lawrence could sense from experience that this was anything but random.
'Ah! It's symmetry!'
'Who composed this?'
This piece concealed a level of mathematical structure so sophisticated that even a conductor of Lawrence's caliber had to listen at length before catching on.
'Permutation, to be precise.'
When the melody changed, the rhythm was preserved. When the rhythm changed, the intervallic spacing was maintained. When the harmony shifted, the relative spacing between voices remained fixed, and when the spacing changed, the directionality of the harmony was preserved.
Inversion, transposition, retrograde, augmentation, diminution.
The theme was endlessly transformed, yet it never replicated itself.
No overlap, no repetition; the flow was sustained through permutation alone.
It took Bach's counterpoint as its starting point but had evolved in an entirely different direction atop the structures he had built.
Before he knew it, the performance had ended.
Gyeo-ul stared up at Lawrence, her face full of questions.
He realized he had been lost in thought for far too long.
"A fine piece. Who is the composer?"
The distinction between the main melody and the accompaniment shifted constantly.
Nearly every note carried a function, with almost no ornamentation.
Above all, the ability to maintain tension without ever letting the piece erupt; this was a level of control possessed by only a rare few among even the most gifted composers.
It was refreshing.
In all his years, he had never heard music built on such a meticulously calculated structure.
Several names flickered through his mind.
The masters of contemporary classical music.
But the piece he had heard today felt incongruous when matched against any one of them.
Then came the voice from Gyeo-ul's lips.
"It's a piece my friend wrote?"
Lawrence's eyes widened.
"A friend? Not a professor?"
Gyeo-ul answered with an uneasy expression.
"He's not a musician friend. He just wrote it as a hobby, kind of...."
His patience snapped.
In a manner completely unlike his usual self, Lawrence raised his voice in an outburst.
"That's absurd! Is your friend's name Johann Sebastian Bach? Who on earth writes something like this as a hobby!"
At Gyeo-ul blank face,
She couldn't hide her surprise at seeing him worked up like this for the first time.