“Should I call you Countess?”
At Seoha’s question, Cecilia burst into loud laughter.
“Call me Cecilia. This is America, and I haven’t come here as Lady Ashley today.”
Seoha still couldn’t take his eyes off her.
A direct descendant of Ada Lovelace, the pioneer of the Analytical Engine that became the foundation of computers. He could hardly believe he was face-to-face with someone who could be called the history of mathematics itself.
“What brings you here?”
“Nothing in particular. If one receives an invitation, isn’t it a virtue of the nobility to accept it? Think of it as my response to that provocation of yours.”
“Ah... I did clearly write that I welcomed anyone up to fourth place. There were circumstances, but I have no intention of making excuses. Please feel free to look around the lab as much as you like. And if there’s anything you need, just let me know.”
“I won’t hesitate.”
Cecilia took off her luxurious coat and draped it over a chair.
She rose from her seat and walked lightly, slowly taking in the interior of the lab. Seoha and his team members gathered as usual and began exchanging opinions. As though this was far from their first time, the blackboard was covered in formulas written in several different hands.
‘He recognized me at once.’
She glanced at Seoha.
Her great-great-grandmother, Ada Lovelace, had an unhappy childhood.
She had no memory of ever meeting her father, Lord Byron. With his handsome looks, rebellious temperament, and overwhelming literary talent, he had been a rock star who enjoyed explosive popularity all across Europe.
Barely a month after his daughter was born, he separated from his wife and left England. And when Ada was eight years old, he died in the Greek War of Independence.
Ada’s mother, Isabella, was terrified that her daughter would inherit her father’s mad poetic temperament. And so she guided her daughter to devote herself solely to mathematics and science instead of literature or art.
‘It was no use, though.’
Ada became an outstanding mathematician as her mother had intended, but she could not erase the literary sensibility that flowed in her blood. She grew into an adult with cold logic and a blazing artistic soul.
Poetic mathematics.
That was the ideal she had pursued. And Cecilia, who had inherited Ada’s physical and mental legacy in abundance, wished to realize that ideal herself.
‘Not everything meaningful is beautiful.’
Looking at the blackboard, she nodded as though evaluating a poem.
Mathematics was the most advanced language, and proof ought to be art created through it. Cecilia’s gaze stopped on a formula written in the center of the blackboard.
“An ugly formula.”
Efficient, but crude.
It gave the impression of a cargo truck recklessly modified to load freight and reach its destination quickly.
‘That one must have been written by him.’
Everything seeped out from a person’s actions, speech, and attitude. To her, people were beings who each possessed their own unique mathematical signature.
‘This part is that woman’s.’
Reckless and bold.
If it were a painting, it would be like looking at a rough abstract piece. The still-unrefined desire seemed to cling directly to the formula, making her smile.
Theodore’s formulas were the complete opposite of hers.
Meticulous and logical, but somehow mechanical and cold. Rather than poetry or a novel, it felt like reading a well-written manual. It was a method that did not suit her aesthetics at all.
Quickly losing interest, Cecilia shifted her gaze elsewhere.
“Ah!”
An exclamation escaped her before she realized it.
The concise yet elegant development, the perfect reduction without a single unnecessary term, and even the stubborn tendency to pursue flawless symmetry—the theorem on the blackboard shook her heart violently, like the emotion she had felt when first reading one of Shakespeare’s sonnets.
There was no need to ask who the owner of the formula was.
After composing her expression, Cecilia slowly turned and looked at Seoha. A faint smile spread across her lips. This kind of aesthetic could not be obtained through training. Anyone could learn logic, but the elegance that emanated from it belonged to the realm of the chosen.
Seoha picked up a piece of chalk.
“Here, let’s assume that the zeros of the zeta function can exist outside the critical line. If that happens, the symmetry of the statistical distribution will collapse.
From there, we begin a reactive approach. The premise that the Riemann Hypothesis is false may instead guide us to the truth.”
After a brief rest, the team had agreed to charge toward the Riemann Hypothesis once more.
“That’s an incredibly sensational approach.”
Theo clicked his tongue in amazement.
Scholars who seriously dug into the Riemann Hypothesis always ended up fixating on symmetry. If one could prove that Noether’s Theorem also held within the Riemann Hypothesis, that alone would become a groundbreaking breakthrough.
“Let’s assume one heretical zero that has strayed beyond the critical line. This is going to get ridiculously complicated.”
Sujeong said, frowning her delicate brow.
Sri suddenly sprang up from his seat as though he had realized something.
“Huh? Is Seoha perhaps thinking that zero will move?”
Seoha nodded and placed a point in the empty space far away from the critical line.
“That’s right. The moment this point exists, the balance of the primes we’ve believed in collapses. But I don’t think this collapse ends in disorder. I believe it generates an immense mathematical tension throughout the entire system.
Like how a rubber band, when forcibly stretched, tries to return to its original position.”
The three of them swallowed hard.
If they proved this, they could perfectly clarify even the Hilbert-Pólya conjecture, which had been proposed a century ago.
“Mm?”
Seoha turned his head.
Cecilia was wandering around with a strangely buoyant step. As though she had no interest in the conversation at all, she peered at a framed picture hanging on the wall, then deliberately clicked her heels as she slowly passed behind them.
Then she would subtly stop and steal a glance at the formulas on the blackboard.
“Is there a problem?”
At Seoha’s question, her shoulders twitched.
When she turned around, it was obvious from her face that her mouth was itching so badly she could hardly bear it.
“Are you really all right treating me like an invisible person? I might steal your precious research, you know.”
Seoha smiled and said,
“There’s no way someone as aristocratic as Lady Ashley would do such a thing. Though to be honest, I think it would be fine even if you did.”
She narrowed her eyes.
“You think no one but you can solve it?”
“That’s not it, but if someone can solve the Riemann Hypothesis with only this much of a hint, wouldn’t they be fully qualified to receive praise? And....”
“And?”
“You were looking at the formulas so enjoyably, like a gallery visitor in an art museum.”
At Seoha’s sharp eye, Cecilia’s cheeks reddened slightly. She cleared her throat with a “ahem, ahem,” then strode forward and picked up a piece of chalk.
“Would it be all right if I added a little?”
“As much as you like.”
When Seoha nodded, Cecilia began annotating the blackboard without hesitation. Her handwriting had a splendid, unrestrained vigor that was different from Seoha’s neatness.
“I think mathematics is a language that expresses the invisible order of the real world.”
Scratch, scratch.
Cecilia continued speaking as she wrote formulas.
“Just as a poet describes emotion with human language, a mathematician handles the providence of the universe through formulas.”
“That overlaps with Countess Lovelace’s thoughts.”
She nodded.
“She was a mathematician, but also an artistically delicate person. At the same time, she was a genius without equal in her era in terms of intuition and creativity.
After all, it was Grandmother who saw Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine and completed the concepts of algorithms and computers.”
She stopped speaking and drew a gentle curve over the formulas on the blackboard. It was the path of a complex line integral flowing around the heretical zero Seoha had assumed.
The curve embraced the range of tension Seoha had established, creating a geometric form so harmonious it was almost strange.
“Ah... Is that less mathematics and more something like aesthetic intuition?”
“No, it’s valid mathematically too. It looks like she applied the symmetry of L-functions.”
Theo added an explanation to Sujeong’s question.
“Amazing. There are people who approach mathematics like this.”
She viewed the universe within the great framework of harmony. Her unique interpretation, “poetic mathematics,” was resonating with Seoha’s hypothesis.
“This is an extremely personal opinion, but a theorem that cannot stand geometrically, and harmonically, must surely have something wrong with it. The universe never permits dissonance.”
Cecilia set down the chalk and turned around.
Seoha was able to grasp the meaning of the curve she had drawn at once. She was taking the tension he had spoken of as the tuning necessary for the instrument called the universe to produce harmony.
Like a lightbulb switching on, a new path appeared in Seoha’s mind.
“That’s an excellent idea. We could expand the meaning a little further from there.”
Seoha took the chalk from her and began drawing a figure.
The line that began at his fingertips flowed along the curve Cecilia had drawn, then soon created the illusion that it was being drawn beyond the boundaries of the blackboard and into empty space.
A curve that traced a complex symmetry, endlessly repeating geometric expansion.
“How beautiful....”
An exclamation burst from Cecilia’s red lips.
The figure Seoha had drawn was like a flower of geometry blooming in the universe. A slender stem began at the central critical line, wrapped around the zero, and brought forth petals. And from the tips of those petals, smaller lines emerged again, repeating a new order.
Each leaf was the trajectory of function values determining the distribution of primes. And at every point where they overlapped and interlocked, mathematical inevitability was embedded and shining like jewels.
Seoha set down the chalk and smiled sheepishly.
“The actual proof won’t look like this. I was only expressing the inspiration I got from your approach.”
As Seoha picked up the eraser in embarrassment, Theo was startled and stopped him.
“W-wait!”
Click.
Click.
Sujeong and Sri, too, were unable to speak for a while in front of the blackboard. To them, who had always seen the world only through numbers, the flower of geometry created by Seoha and Cecilia together came as that great a shock.
“I knew we would be able to understand each other.”
Cecilia lightly brushed away a tear with her finger, then picked up the coat she had left on the chair.
“I’ll come again tomorrow.”
Seoha looked dazed.
“Pardon? You’re not going back to England?”
Without even listening to his answer, she moved with elegant steps. Gripping the doorknob, she paused briefly, then looked back at Seoha.
“I’d like my seat to be by that window. My butler will take care of the formalities, so keep that in mind.”
Cecilia left the building.
In front of the main gate stood a teal Rolls-Royce, gleaming without a speck of dust. Students passed by while staring at it as though sightseeing. The butler, who had been waiting beside the car at rigid attention, spotted her and bowed politely.
“You have come out, my lady.”
The butler carefully took the coat Cecilia had been wearing and the bag in her hand.
As she sank into the soft seat in the back, the butler looked at the rearview mirror and spoke cautiously.
“You look bright. It seems you liked the atmosphere of the laboratory.”
She gazed at the building receding beyond the window. It felt as if the flower Seoha had drawn was spreading out from that place in all directions, filling the sky.
“Not particularly.”
She replied indifferently, resting her chin on the window frame.
But he knew very well that the young countess was, at this moment, in an unusually good mood.