Translator: Dreamscribe
On a drizzly Sunday afternoon, Mi-young was preparing snacks in the kitchen.
Sizzle.
The kimchi pancake browned beautifully in the pan.
A spicy yet savory aroma spread throughout the entire house. Crisp on the outside as if fried, soft on the inside. Mi-young carefully adjusted the heat and pressed down on the center of the pancake with her spatula.
'Oh my! Look at those two.'
A smile spread across Mi-young's lips as she carried out the food.
The two of them were lying on the floor, side by side, scribbling something together. Seo-eun was humming cheerfully under her breath. At a time when she would normally be running around playing all sorts of games, what on earth could be going on?
"Kids! Come eat some of this before you keep going!"
The moment Mi-young's words left her mouth, the brother and sister came scampering over and sat at the table.
"Whoa! Kimchi pancake!"
"I was just getting hungry. Thanks, Mom."
Seo-ha and Seo-eun smacked their lips at the steaming pancake.
"It's hot, so eat slowly."
""Okay!""
The kids took a bite of the kimchi pancake and started letting out little gasps of delight one after another.
Seo-eun's cheeks puffed up like a squirrel storing food for winter. Knowing that Seo-eun loved the crispy edges, Seo-ha picked out the best pieces and placed them on her plate. Mi-young rested her chin on her hand and watched them with a content expression.
'Thank goodness they get along.'
She'd heard that daughters get more difficult once they pass age ten.
Many people had told her that girls start putting up walls with their parents and end up practically at war with their older brothers, so Mi-young had been quietly worried.
But just like when she was a baby and adored her brother, her daughter still loved being right by Seo-ha's side.
'Although I never imagined she'd announce she wants to become a mathematician.'
The moment her daughter had returned from the research lab, she'd opened her sketchbook and drawn the events of the day. It was a picture of people elegantly enjoying a tea party at a magnificent table.
Women in lavish dresses and men in handsome tuxedos. In the background were sparkling stars and curiously shaped figures. Looking at the elegant teacups on the table and the mountain of scones piled high, Mi-young tilted her head.
'Didn't they go to a math research lab? What in the world happened over there?'
Seo-eun didn't normally keep a picture diary.
"They said I'm a Special Research Assistant!"
To make her remember a dreary research lab visit so fondly... Mi-young guessed it was probably because the people there had been kind enough to play with Seo-eun a bit too well.
"Mom, when I grow up, I'm going to be a mathematician!"
Seo-eun declared with a determined face, cookie crumbs still on her lips.
"Hm? Don't you think one mathematician in the family, your oppa, is enough?"
Mathematicians who devote their entire lives to unsolved problems make up less than one percent of the field. Most ordinary mathematicians live the same kind of office life as any salaried worker.
But the only mathematician Mi-young knew was Seo-ha. And the kind of mathematician Seo-eun wanted to be was that kind, so it was only natural for her face to take on a reluctant expression.
"Mom, mathematicians have an amazingly cool job. They're the people who drink fragrant tea while uncovering the secrets of the universe!"
Seo-eun set down her cookie and spread her hands wide, speaking in an exaggerated tone.
"Alright, if that's what you want to do, then go for it."
"Really?"
Seo-eun jumped up from her seat and dashed straight over to Seo-ha.
"Oppa! Mom said it's okay!"
Mi-young burst out laughing, exasperated. She shook her head from side to side. It would be fine. A dream at age ten almost never lasts a lifetime.
But Seo-ha's reaction was much more serious.
"Now that you have Mom's permission, shall we get started for real?"
A nod.
Seo-ha pulled a thin book out of his bag.
[Mathematics Every Special Assistant Should Know]
Seo-eun's eyes went wide.
It wasn't a book sold in stores. It was a custom textbook made for one person and one person only in the entire world: Seo-eun.
When she turned the cover, she saw familiar handwriting.
"Oppa..."
Seo-eun clutched the notebook tightly to her chest as if she'd discovered a treasure.
Seo-ha smiled.
He was the one who had been educating Seo-eun ever since she was little. He'd agonized over how to begin, but he hadn't been able to find a satisfying answer in any of the books on the market.
In the end, he'd picked up his own pen and decided to make the textbook himself.
'If we're going to start, we may as well do it properly.'
Seo-ha wanted to first plant in Seo-eun a sense of identity as a mathematician.
This book was a necessary step toward that. He had translated the everyday life Seo-eun encountered each day into mathematical language.
The geometric symmetry hidden within the frills and ribbons of dresses, the foundations of sequences embedded in piano performance. In the margins of the textbook, he'd left blank spaces labeled "Assistant Seo-eun's Opinion," so that she could freely write down her new discoveries.
"How can these kids be so..."
Mi-young paused in clearing the dishes and gazed at the back of the siblings' heads.
Her daughter was a fairly scatter-brained child. She showed remarkable focus when playing with cards or cubes, but only then. Yet now she'd been studying math for hours without a single complaint.
"Seo-eun, take a break if you're tired. Mom will cut up some fruit for you."
"No, Mom! Just until I finish this raindrop sequence. I've almost figured out the pattern."
Seo-ha gently stroked Seo-eun's hair.
Outside the window, the autumn rain was still falling in a soft drizzle. Mi-young, who'd brought a blanket for the children lying on the floor, snuck a glance at the book.
In the "Assistant Seo-eun's Opinion" column, written in crooked handwriting, she could see:
[Every pretty thing in the world is made of numbers.]
She couldn't grasp the meaning, but it was the kind of thing she had often experienced while raising Seo-ha. She unfolded a large blanket and draped it over the backs of both children.
* * *
"This place feels gloomier every time I come."
On the outskirts of the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, in a research building tucked near the woods where ordinary students rarely set foot.
Dean Whitman muttered under his breath and pulled the collar of his coat tighter.
The Princeton woods, with autumn drawing to a close, were losing their colors. The path leading to the research building, sparse with foot traffic, only made it look bleaker.
"There must be a reason he buried himself out here."
Cronen had moved his lab, claiming it interfered with his concentration.
This was the oldest and most isolated spot in all of IAS, and also the quietest.
The old radiator gave off a dull clang. The heat was on, but the corridor was strangely cold.
Patches of peeling floorboards, bookshelves lining the walls. The traces left by the people who had once used this building were still vividly preserved.
"A place Kurt Gödel might have used."
MIT was a fine university beyond reproach, but the history accumulated by Princeton's IAS was, one could say, the very development of modern mathematics and science itself.
Gödel, von Neumann, Hermann Weyl, Oppenheimer, Niels Bohr, Alan Turing, and Albert Einstein.
Gödel had insisted on a remote research building like this rather than the ornate main hall. His paranoid tendencies were famous, but no one could deny the legacy he left behind.
Whitman walked along the corridor, checking the nameplates. Most were empty, or bore faint traces of the names of those who had used them long ago.
And at the end of the hall, the only room with the lights on.
Knock, knock.
Knock, knock!
Even after knocking, no answer came. Whitman shook his head and opened the door.
Creak.
Elijah Cronen.
The man who had been hailed as humanity's greatest mind sat there looking like a 19th-century mathematician.
The room was a mess. Equations were scattered not only across the desk but on the floor and the sofa as well, making it hard to find anywhere to sit. The dry heat radiating from the old radiator, the smell of paper, and the rich aroma of black coffee mingled together in stuffy air.
'The smell of mathematics.'
It was a sight he'd often seen back in his younger days.
Elijah Cronen was still in his forties, clearly not from a generation that would have experienced this kind of environment. And yet, oddly, Whitman thought this place suited him.
"Elijah, look at the state of you."
At Whitman's words, he slowly turned his head.
Wrinkled shirt, disheveled hair, and rough skin. But his eyes burned with the deepest, sharpest light.
"Dean. What brings you here?"
Whitman sighed as he glanced around the office.
This was exactly why mathematicians needed families, too. At least a spouse would make sure they ate and dressed properly. He clicked his tongue at the stack of pizza boxes piled on the desk.
"Let's go out."
Whitman dragged him out by force and found a restaurant.
He ordered fresh milk and a sandwich packed with ham, vegetables, and cheese inside freshly baked rye bread. Cronen reluctantly took a bite of the sandwich. Then, without realizing it, a second bite, a third. He'd been hungry.
Whitman gave a wry smile.
When things weren't going well, that breed of person called geniuses often dug themselves into holes like this.
Gulp, gulp.
Once he'd finished even the milk, he seemed to come back to his senses a bit.
"Where's your team? What are you doing holed up alone?"
At Whitman's question, he wiped his mouth with a napkin and answered.
"I sent them all on vacation. Ah, don't misunderstand. They produced the best results possible. They were tremendously helpful. It's just that what's left now is something I have to bear entirely on my own."
Andrew Wiles had been the same way.
While solving Fermat's Last Theorem, he'd secluded himself for seven years. He hadn't published papers or attended seminars.
Cronen, too, had chosen isolation. It was likely because he was extremely wary of his ideas being disturbed by outside stimuli. But Whitman knew from experience that isolation was not the only answer.
"The Riemann Hypothesis has been solved."
His head jerked up in surprise.
"Don't tell me Seo-ha already?"
Whitman shook his head.
"Arthur Pendleton. Felix Morgenstern."
Cronen let out a small, deflated chuckle.
"Hmph. I don't have particularly high expectations."
"Read it once anyway. Who knows? There might be a clue in there for solving the problem."
Slide.
Cronen took the paper Whitman held out.
He leaned back in his chair, loosely crossed one leg, and opened the paper.
Flip.
Ten minutes, twenty minutes.
The interest in his eyes cooled as he turned each page.
"Ugly. So ugly it's nauseating."
A look of disgust flashed across his face.
"They've used Seo-ha's paper as the foundation of their proof. Seo-ha built a perfectly beautiful algebraic skeleton, like Gaudí's cathedral.
And Felix and his crew poured concrete all over it, you might say. But they were clever about it. The mathematics community will waste years verifying this enormous pile of garbage."
"That's why I came to find you."
Whitman leaned forward as he spoke.
"Don't we need someone to sound the alarm? Someone whose words carry weight, like yours."
Cronen turned his head and gazed out the window at the bare, ancient tree.
Whitman was a mathematician worthy of respect. An Abel Prize laureate and a master of Topology. But after meeting Seo-ha, he had changed. The way he seemed to retreat into the back room like an old man whose dreams had all been fulfilled, that didn't sit well with him.
"Don't act like you're past your prime."
"Hm?"
Whitman's eyebrow twitched.
"Old man, you're still active too, aren't you? Did you win the Abel Prize by spinning a roulette wheel?"
"You... you little brat?"
Whitman's face turned red.
The waitress let out a startled hic! at the sparks flying between the two of them.
Bang!
Whitman slammed his fist on the table.
"Fine, I'll do it. I'm not dead yet."
A faint smile spread across Cronen's lips.
He called the waitress over and ordered another glass of milk. Then, as if it were nothing at all, he tossed out a single remark.
"Try digging into the geometric side. Something will definitely come of it. Consider it payment for the meal."
"Hmph!"
Whitman snatched up his coat roughly.
His departing figure carried the spirit of an old general about to face his final battle.
Step, step.
After walking for a while, Whitman ran a hand down his face.
It had hit home.
Watching Cronen and Seo-ha, he'd realized a new era had come to mathematics. He'd thought that for someone of the old generation like himself, the virtuous thing was to step back quietly and watch them grow.
"Roulette?"
The brat's biting words had poured oil on the heart of an old soldier that had been lying dormant.
"I'm not a relic just yet. My head still works fine. Wouldn't be a bad way to spend my last bit of work before retirement."
He'd brushed it off in his agitation earlier, but both Seo-ha and Cronen had said the answer lay in geometry.
A unanimous opinion from the greatest geniuses he knew.
"It can't be a coincidence. That's clue enough."
Whitman headed back to his own lab through the rain. Then he rolled up his sleeves and, for the first time in a very long while, stood before the blackboard.
*****
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