[Looks like Cecilia has joined Apex Lab.]
—I heard it from a reliable source. The Logia ranking match really was an audition.
└What happened to Sri?
└Survived in 4th place. Looking back, everyone made it into the rankings. Seoha’s eye for talent is incredible, huh?
└Wasn’t Cecilia attending Oxford?
└She’s a countess, so what can’t she do? Even aside from that, no university would turn down someone as talented as Cecilia.
└Earth’s master’s and PhD all-stars?
└Reality is, a lot of them don’t even have bachelor’s degrees. But when you look at the papers they’ve published, you start wondering what degrees even mean.
└A gathering of multinational brainy hotties. They’re all good-looking too, so it feels like there’d be a lot of office romances?
└I work at a university lab, and the really smart ones are always underdeveloped in that area. Feels like God at least kept the balance there.
└Romance, my ass lol. If they had that kind of energy, they’d do more research.
└Her Ladyship has descended. Guess the lab needs to get a tea set now.
Clink.
The sound of a teacup broke the silence.
Sujeong felt a strange sensation as she looked back and forth between the Starbucks cup in her own hand and the finest bone china teacup in Cecilia’s.
The rich aroma of Earl Grey milk tea spread around her.
“…Um, Cecilia? What is all this?”
Sujeong asked in a trembling voice.
“A young lady’s research efficiency is born from an optimal environment, after all.”
A middle-aged man in a neat suit, who had appeared without anyone noticing, bowed his head with restrained movements. It was Morris, the butler of the Ashley family.
At his gesture, the scenery of the lab began to change in a bizarre way. The fabric sofa Seoha often used had somehow become a top-quality natural leather sofa, and the plastic table and boxes of instant coffee mix that had been in the kitchenette had vanished without a trace.
In their place stood a mahogany table and an elegant teapot, the sort one might expect eighteenth-century aristocrats to use.
Cecilia nodded, then said with a solemn face.
“Morris, don’t make it too extravagant.”
All four people in the lab thought the same thing.
‘It’s already plenty extravagant!’
“My apologies. I exercised the utmost restraint and touched only the parts on which compromise was impossible. Then, if you will excuse me.”
Morris bowed politely and left.
It was a moment that made them truly feel that aristocrats still existed in the modern age. Sri, as though facing a predator, couldn’t bring herself to meet Cecilia’s eyes. With practiced hands, Theo used the tea things Morris had left behind to brew black tea.
“Let’s all have a cup. Tea time in the lab isn’t bad either.”
Theo made the joke with a sly air as he set out the teacups. For Seoha, he prepared a sweet, smooth milk tea with plenty of milk and sugar.
Only then did the tense team members awkwardly pick up their teacups.
“It’s delicious!”
Seoha took a sip and his eyes sparkled.
“You handle tea rather well.”
At Cecilia’s praise, Theo shrugged.
“Unintentionally, since I’m from Ireland. My parents’ influence. Please understand that I don’t have especially favorable feelings toward the English nobility.”
“M-Me too!”
As if she had been waiting for the chance, Sri joined in.
Only then could Seoha grasp the source of the awkward atmosphere. Even someone who didn’t know much history could not fail to sense the subtle tension in this combination. Coincidentally, both of their homelands shared a history of having been deeply wounded by England in the past.
“But since it wasn’t something you decided, taking it out on the wrong target would be rather immature.”
“Wow!”
Seoha was impressed by Theo’s smooth about-face, worthy of a seasoned member of society.
Sri whipped her head toward Theo. Her eyes looked as though she were staring at a traitor.
“M-Me too.”
Her voice was barely audible. It wasn’t as though she had no grievances, but continuing to resist to the bitter end in front of Her Ladyship the Countess was impossible.
“Pfft!”
Sujeong couldn’t hold back and burst out laughing.
At the same time, Seoha also failed to hide the smile on his lips and raised his teacup to cover his face.
Clink.
It was something one experienced not infrequently when living as a British aristocrat. Cecilia set down her teacup with a stiff expression. She did not easily let words of apology leave her mouth.
The sins of her ancestors were far too deep to be replaced by something so simple. All she could do was her utmost for a better future.
“Welcome, Cecilia.”
When Seoha held out his hand, the atmosphere softened considerably. It had somehow turned into a welcome party for her. Cecilia hesitated for a moment, then removed her glove and took Seoha’s hand.
Everyone greeted her with bright smiles.
“Welcome, Cecilia!”
“It’s reassuring to have you on the same team.”
“Welcome!”
The previous day, after she had left, Apex Lab had held an emergency meeting.
Many things had been said, but no one disagreed that she possessed an extraordinary mathematical intuition and was a rare talent with the ability to join the team.
“Thank you. I heard that Apex Lab is challenging the Riemann hypothesis. To be honest, I’ve also been thinking about this problem by myself for a long time.”
The fragrant Earl Grey flavor filled the lab.
As though one good cup of tea had cast a spell, the taut tension had somehow turned into pleasant excitement. Theo walked over to the blackboard and began writing down new formulas.
It was the result of his own analysis of what had happened yesterday. From there, another discussion branched out, and a heated debate began.
“Mm, good.”
Dean Whitman stood outside the lab, watching them.
Like a star of enormous mass drawing in the celestial bodies around it, geniuses were gathering around Seoha.
The place to which that gravity led would surely be a treasury of knowledge humanity had never once reached. He smiled in satisfaction at the fervor of the young geniuses reflected beyond his glasses.
***
Two months passed.
Contrary to their concerns, Cecilia blended smoothly into the team and continued her research.
It was a time when everyone passionately threw themselves toward proving the Riemann hypothesis, but the results they had hoped for did not come.
“I thought there would at least be some tiny breakthrough.”
Seoha muttered as he looked in the mirror.
It was something he had already steeled himself for, but reality was harsher than expected. He could feel the team growing exhausted. The cause of this lay with Seoha.
Because his exceptionally keen intuition recognized too early the places where no path existed.
He looked at the formulas covering the blackboard.
A theorem into which every technique of modern mathematics, called the pinnacle of analytic number theory, had been poured. Others might think it impressive, but to Seoha’s eyes, it was merely a ridiculous scene of going in circles within a gigantic maze.
“Is it really impossible?”
It seemed within reach, yet it would not be grasped.
Every point he had thought was a hint had been the entrance to another labyrinth. It felt as if someone hidden behind a veil was mocking and ridiculing the limits of human intuition.
Seoha could no longer bear this frustration.
Bang!
He roughly opened the lab door and came out.
He wanted to say something hopeful to his team members. Something like encouragement, that they were almost there and should keep going. But in front of a difficult problem where he couldn’t even predict whether it would take several years, he couldn’t bring himself to utter such irresponsible words.
Chirp, chirp—
Before he knew it, it was summer.
Seoha sat on a shaded bench and cooled his overheated head.
It had already been several years since he resolved to prove the Riemann hypothesis. Considering the number of papers he had read and the number of hypotheses he had established and discarded during that time, there were probably few scholars who had studied the Riemann hypothesis as deeply as he had.
The “era of the Great Riemann Hypothesis” that Seoha had opened was also slowly drawing to a close. They, too, must have belatedly realized that nothing could be proven with that alone.
“Was I too confident?”
There were more than a few mathematicians who had devoted their entire lives to this.
Seoha realized that, without being aware of it, he had thought his few years were worth more than their entire lives. Unfortunately, the monster Riemann had summoned was not an opponent that could be felled by something so little.
“It can’t be helped. I have no choice but to see it through to the end.”
He had begun keeping a notebook some time ago.
Just as when he had first started on the four color theorem, he was recording the history of his wrong answers without omission. To Seoha, this was a declaration that he accepted a long battle.
“What can’t be helped?”
Seoha’s eyes widened at the voice from behind him.
“Huh?”
Gyeoul was smiling bashfully from behind the bench.
Her pale sky-blue skirt fluttered whenever the wind blew. Having passed through the peak of her growth period, she looked much more mature. Seeing her slender collarbones and the smooth line of her neck revealed in the hot season, Seoha hurriedly turned his head.
Whoosh—
The occasional breeze emphasized her feminine silhouette all the more.
Gyeoul’s light-colored hair sparkled in the sunlight. Seoha found himself thinking all over again that Gyeoul was truly beautiful.
Her lips slowly opened.
“It feels like it’s been a very long time since I saw you.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry I couldn’t come see you.”
“No, I mean seeing you when you don’t look sick.”
Seoha nodded without thinking.
In truth, he had been feeling his limits lately. Since he didn’t want to show his family and team members how sensitive he had become, he had been bottling up his emotions, and his stress was on the verge of exploding. He was at least relieved that he hadn’t shown Gyeoul an ugly side of himself.
But whenever he met her, he ended up leaning on her without realizing it. As if by conditioned reflex, his true feelings slipped out of Seoha’s mouth.
“Why do you always appear whenever I desperately need you?”
Gyeoul flinched.
But soon, as though she had adjusted to it, she gave him a crooked smile.
“That’s because…”
She quietly drew closer and whispered into Seoha’s ear.
“Your premise is wrong, dummy. Haven’t you considered that it’s because you always need me?”
There was a fresh citrus scent.
Seoha’s face flushed bright red. Seeing his reddened face, Gyeoul smiled like a victor. She rested her chin on the back of the bench and leisurely enjoyed Seoha’s reaction.
“You should have contacted me beforehand. What brings you here today?”
“I wanted to give it to you in person.”
Gyeoul opened the clutch bag in her hand.
What she held out was an envelope with an intricately embossed gold border. Seoha slowly opened it.
[New York Philharmonic & Curtis Institute of Music Concerto]
—Piano Soloist: Gyeoul Han
“Already?”
A collaboration with the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center…
Seeing Seoha’s awestruck face, Gyeoul looked satisfied. It was the feeling she had always felt from Seoha.
“Keep reading.”
Seoha’s eyes scanned the program section.
Rachmaninoff, Beethoven… An ordinary concerto program usually ended with classical repertoire. But at the end, an unexpected line was written.
[World Premiere(101) - The theme of Duckie(Composed by Seoha Yu)]
“Huh? Seriously?”
Seoha was so startled that he shouted without realizing it.
He had written out the sheet music for Lawrence, but he had thought it was only out of personal interest.
The fact that one of the world’s greatest orchestras would perform that embarrassing piece was unbearably humiliating.
Gyeoul leaned her upper body over the bench and whispered. A handful of her hair fell onto Seoha’s shoulder.
“Do you know how desperately we practiced for the past few months? I thought I was going to go insane. It was to the point where it was almost impossible to find a member who hadn’t cried.”
“Hahaha.”
Seoha held his forehead with his hand and laughed hollowly.
“One of the musicians who’d been with the New York Phil for a long time said it felt like Lawrence had gone back to how he was twenty years ago. I’d only heard rumors that he was an incredibly terrifying and passionate conductor, but I never thought I’d end up confirming it with my own body.”
Lawrence drove the performers as if he were trying to kill them.
It was a piece composed with such precision that it gnawed away at the soul of the person performing it, but he felt that at the end of it lay a liberation and salvation they had never experienced before.
“You’re incredibly curious, aren’t you? But I’m not going to tell you. Come hear it yourself.”
Gyeoul did not wait for Seoha’s answer. She gave him a wink, then, with her pale sky-blue skirt swaying, disappeared like a shimmer of heat on a summer day.