Translator: Dreamscribe
Sri, who had been about to leave, stopped in his tracks.
A great mathematician?
Me?
At some point, Seo-ha had become able to see the size of the talent people possessed.
Just as a national-level Go master can instantly gauge a weaker opponent's skill after exchanging only a handful of stones, Seo-ha could sense Sri's extraordinary mathematical gift in every aspect of how he wrote code and arranged equations.
"No. I'm not that kind of person."
He was grateful for the generous assessment, but Sri couldn't agree with Seo-ha's words.
What kind of person is a born mathematician?
Wasn't a perfect example of the answer standing right before his eyes?
Mathematical intuition.
Outstanding computational ability.
The insight to draw principles out of phenomena.
All of these were qualities a great mathematician ought to possess. But the truly important virtue wasn't any of these.
'I'm tainted.'
Those who renounced the worldly and pursued only truth.
Seeing him up close, it was unmistakable. Fame and reward were secondary matters for Seo-ha.
Even if the world never recognized his achievements, he wouldn't care in the slightest.
The kind of person for whom getting one step closer to truth was enough.
Tears welled in his eyes.
Whenever Sri saw Seo-ha like this, he keenly felt the distance between them.
He worried about making a living, calculated his results, and had to constantly ask himself whether his time had been wasted.
For Sri, mathematics was the only weapon that could free him from a wretched reality.
"What is it you're so afraid of?"
Seo-ha asked, looking at Sri.
He took a step back, as if trying to put distance between himself and Seo-ha.
'Afraid?'
Sri turned his gaze inward and examined his own heart. And then he realized.
'So that was it.'
Inside, he was full of impurities: greed and anxiety. Seo-ha, on the other hand, was a purely mathematical soul, nothing less.
He was afraid he might contaminate Seo-ha.
Sri dropped his head.
"Your math is pure. But my head is full of nothing but greed. And my ability falls short too. I'm not someone who can help you or the team."
Sri clenched his fists.
Seo-ha stared at him in silence for a moment.
Then, slowly, he opened his mouth.
"Sri."
"Yes?"
"Why do you think I do math?"
At the sudden question, Sri raised his head.
"That's... to pursue truth, isn't it?"
A playful expression crossed Seo-ha's face.
"Nope. I just do it because math is fun."
"What?"
"I don't have any grand reasons like truth or enlightenment. I just feel bad when I see a problem I can't solve, and my heart races when I see a beautiful proof.
In that sense, doesn't that make me a thorough egotist who chases nothing but personal pleasure?"
Sri shook his head.
"That's not how you look to me. The decisions you make, Seo-ha, have always been far from personal gain. Unlike me..."
"What's wrong with pursuing self-interest?"
"What?"
"Are you seriously thinking you're too worldly? Sri, you're idealizing me too much. I'm not that noble a person, really."
"But..."
"The reason I seem that way is probably just because I don't need to pursue self-interest. If I were in your shoes and urgently needed money, I'd be agonizing over the same things.
Even the saints of mathematics were no different. Isn't that because we're all human?"
"Do you really think so?"
Seo-ha nodded.
"Newton was someone quite obsessed with money. His passion for alchemy doesn't look pure to me. He really loved shiny things, you know? You can tell just from the fact that he served as Master of the Royal Mint.
Gauss also worked only at stable positions his whole life. He was extremely wary of having his research cut off for financial reasons.
If my mother's book hadn't sold well, I wouldn't be able to take it so easy either."
"Th... then..."
"The purity you're talking about, isn't it sort of a privilege that only people with nothing to worry about can enjoy?
You're the one who's a hundred times purer than they are. Even in such a difficult situation, you decided to follow me. So stop thinking useless thoughts."
Seo-ha didn't view greed as something evil.
Could the priests of Pythagoras's era really have been without desire? The reason they were a secret society wasn't because of persecution. At the bottom of their thinking lay a desire to monopolize the secrets of the universe. Not a single page in the history of mathematics he had read was composed of purity alone.
"Still, it's a fact that I haven't been much help to the team. No matter how I look at it, I think I lack talent."
"Huh?"
Seo-ha looked at Sri with an incredulous expression.
He was convinced Sri was India's finest talent.
Sri kept saying he was just transcribing formulas into code, but for most mathematicians, simply understanding the expressions Seo-ha wrote down would take ages.
Sri read the structure of the equations and instinctively found where bottlenecks would form in the computation during transformation, and which terms could be eliminated.
"You're a very rare talent who can preserve the mathematical rigor I produce while also taking care of programming efficiency."
"Me?"
Seo-ha let out a sigh, as though exasperated.
This was because of Sri's limited experience as a mathematician. The only mathematicians he had seen in his entire life were the members of APEX. For someone who hadn't yet established his identity as a mathematician, he had no frame of reference by which to measure where he stood. On top of that, the very first problem he had dug into was a decades-old mathematical puzzle.
Having been thrown into an extreme situation from the start, he hadn't even had the chance to feel that he himself was special.
"This won't do. I think you need a complete overhaul of your mindset, Sri. Why exactly do you think you're worse than Theo or Su-jeong?"
"Huh? Of course I'm worse than them. Whether it's published papers or LOGIA rankings..."
Seo-ha narrowed his eyes and pulled his phone out of his pocket.
When he opened the app, LOGIA's main page, now with mobile service, appeared. Seo-ha tapped the ranking tab.
"Huh?"
Maybe because it had been a while since he'd logged in?
Seo-ha was gone from the revamped rankings. His eyes moved to the top of the screen.
At the very top of the page, a stone statue had been added. A man wearing a golden crown, seated on a throne with a solemn expression. But the statue's face was oddly familiar.
"Wait, is that me?"
When he clicked the statue, a text box appeared.
[Seo-ha Yu, eternal ruler of the LOGIA continent, stood at the summit of the continent with ability beyond human limits. He will watch over everyone from here.]
Pfft!
Unable to hold back a laugh, Sri covered his mouth with his hand.
"..."
Why was he the one feeling embarrassed?
Seo-ha's face turned red.
It was a measure the management had come up with, worried that his overwhelming score would crush users' motivation to climb the rankings.
"Theo's still number one."
No matter how busy Theo was, he logged in at least once a week and solved a problem.
Su-jeong and Sri, on the other hand, weren't that obsessed with their LOGIA rankings.
[Rank 19 : Sujeong Lim]
.
.
[Rank 27 : Srinivasa Krishnan]
The window had been simplified.
"I'm 27th."
Sri's expression darkened.
Seo-ha didn't like Sri's lack of confidence.
He scanned the screen once, then bit his lip as if resolving something. What Sri needed right now wasn't comfort. What he needed was an environment where he had no choice but to prove himself, and a powerful stimulus to awaken the competitive drive sleeping inside him. Seo-ha decided to scrap the growth plan he'd had in mind for Sri.
Without a word, he pulled out a sheet of A3 paper and began writing in large letters with a marker.
Scratch.
[Team APEX Lab: LOGIA rank 5 or below, no entry]
- Effective the 1st of next month.
- Top 4 are welcome anytime.
Seo-ha picked up the paper and strode out the door.
"Seo... Seo-ha? What are you doing right now?"
Flustered, Sri hurriedly followed him out. But instead of answering, Seo-ha stuck the notice on the lab door and secured it firmly with tape.
Click.
After taking a picture, he nodded with a satisfied expression and opened up his SNS.
"Mm! Nice."
His fingers moved busily.
Seo-ha rarely posted anything, but there were plenty of people who followed his account.
The moment the post went up, the math community exploded.
[Seo-ha Yu: Team APEX's new security policy.]
- If you're not good enough, don't even step over the threshold of the lab. Entry allowed from LOGIA rank 4 and above ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
└ Seo-ha Yu showing his true colors. Look at that character ㅋㅋㅋ
└ Isn't the cutoff way too high?
└ Ah! That man is allowed to do this. He's been promoted to ruler of LOGIA, after all.
└ So everyone except Theo is getting kicked out? Sounds like they might seriously need to pack up.
└ Writing it this publicly, if you end up outside the ranking, you can't just laugh it off, right?
└ But wait, isn't this basically a declaration that anyone in the top 4 gets accepted as a team member? Is this the El Dorado of the math world?
└ Huh? Is that what that means?
└ Why does this look like a targeted shot to me? You know, that one guy. They want him out but have no excuse... could it be?
As he read the comments, the corners of Seo-ha's mouth curled up. He held out his phone to Sri, who was standing there blankly.
"The reaction's red-hot. Plenty of people worrying about you too."
"Seo-ha! This is too..."
"Why? You're going to leave anyway, but you don't like doing it this way?"
The playfulness drained from Seo-ha's eyes.
Sri felt a pressure in his chest, as if his heart were being squeezed.
"At your current level, you wouldn't be able to come starting next month anyway."
He understood perfectly well too.
Why Seo-ha was doing this. But he couldn't help the feelings of hurt and sorrow welling up in his chest.
No matter how he thought about it, he couldn't accept an ending like this. When he lifted his head, Seo-ha spoke.
"Purity, impurity of motive, a mathematician's DNA, let's set all that aside for now. Let's just think purely in terms of ability. LOGIA, surprisingly, puts out proper problems. So the rankings are actually fairly trustworthy.
Your best was 5th, right, Sri?"
He nodded.
But Sri knew very well that it was an inflated ranking. Unless they were oddballs like Theo, real talents had no genuine reason to throw themselves into it.
But now it was different.
[Yu Seo-ha's post is effectively a public tryout announcement for Team APEX.]
- How much did he get in success bonus from New York City this time? I heard the team filed a ton of patents too?
└ This might end up in a lawsuit later.
└ Totally possible. You know that restaurant owner who promised an outstanding employee a car, then tried to play it off as an April Fool's joke? The ruling ended up being that he had to keep the promise.
Seo-ha had offered the rankers a substantial reward.
Something Sri had never shown before gathered in his eyes, a venomous intensity. Its source was neither anger nor hurt, but an emotion unfamiliar to him: competitive drive.
"I'll be going. I want to be somewhere quiet, alone."
Seo-ha gazed at Sri's retreating figure.
It had been an impulsive act, but he didn't regret it. From Sri's receding back, he could feel a fighting spirit.
If Sri set his mind on it and threw himself entirely into mathematics, how far could he go? Seo-ha wanted to see the limits of his talent.
* * *
The next day, Theo and Su-jeong, who had come into the lab, stopped in their tracks in front of the door. Both of their gazes shifted simultaneously to the crude notice stuck to it.
[Team APEX Lab: LOGIA rank 5 or below, no entry]
"I can just walk right in, then."
Theo shrugged and went inside without any concern.
Su-jeong's hands trembled with rage. And before she knew it, she let out a shout.
"Yu Seo-ha!"
For Su-jeong, who didn't put much effort into the community or into LOGIA, it was a situation that could easily be misunderstood.
*****
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