On a drizzly Sunday afternoon, Miyeong prepared snacks in the kitchen.
Sssizzle—
The kimchi pancake was browning nicely in the pan.
A spicy yet savory aroma spread throughout the house. Crisp on the outside as if fried, soft on the inside. Carefully adjusting the heat, Miyeong pressed down on the center of the pancake with her spatula.
‘Oh my! Look at those two.’
A smile spread across Miyeong’s lips as she came out carrying the food.
The two of them were lying side by side on the floor, writing something down. Seoeun hummed happily to herself. Normally, they would have been spending the time playing this or that, so what on earth had happened?
“Kids! Have some of this before you keep going!”
No sooner had Miyeong spoken than the siblings came pattering over and sat at the table.
“Wow! Kimchi pancake!”
“I was just getting hungry. Thank you.”
Looking at the steaming pancake, Seoha and Seoeun smacked their lips.
“It’s hot, so eat slowly.”
““Okay!””
The children took a bite of the kimchi pancake and immediately burst into exclamations of delight.
Seoeun’s cheeks puffed up like a squirrel storing food for winter. Since Seoeun liked the crispy edges of the kimchi pancake, Seoha picked out the tasty parts and placed them on her plate. Resting her chin in her hand, Miyeong watched them with a pleased expression.
‘I’m glad they get along so well.’
She had heard that daughters became more petulant once they passed the age of ten.
She had also heard plenty of stories about them putting up walls against their parents and becoming practically sworn enemies with their older brothers, so Miyeong had secretly been worried.
But her daughter still liked staying by Seoha’s side, just as she had back when she was a baby who adored her older brother.
‘Though I never imagined she’d say she wanted to become a mathematician.’
As soon as her daughter returned from the research lab, she opened her sketchbook and drew what had happened that day. It showed people elegantly enjoying a tea party at a splendid table.
Women in gorgeous dresses and men in stylish tuxedos. In the background were sparkling stars and strange-shaped figures. Looking at the fine teacups on the table and the mountain of stacked scones, Miyeong tilted her head.
‘Didn’t she go to a mathematics research lab? What on earth happened there?’
Seoeun did not usually keep a picture diary.
But perhaps because she wanted to remember this day, she was describing everything she had experienced at length alongside her drawings.
“They said I’m a special research assistant!”
To make a tour of a dreary research lab into such a happy memory... Miyeong guessed that the people there must have been kind enough to play with Seoeun far too well.
“Mom, I’m going to become a mathematician when I grow up!”
Seoeun said with a solemn face, cookie crumbs still on the corner of her mouth.
“Huh? Isn’t one mathematician in our house enough?”
Mathematicians who devoted their entire lives to difficult problems did not even make up one percent of the whole. Ordinary mathematicians usually lived much like office workers in an office.
But the only mathematician Miyeong knew was Seoha. And since that was the kind of mathematician Seoeun wanted to become, it was only natural that she wore a rather uneasy expression.
“Mom, being a mathematician is an incredibly cool job. They drink fragrant tea while uncovering the secrets of the universe, you know?”
Seoeun put down her cookie, spread both arms wide, and spoke in an exaggerated tone.
“All right. If you want to do it, then you should.”
“Really?”
Seoeun sprang up from her seat and dashed over to Seoha.
“Oppa! Mom says I can!”
Miyeong burst out laughing as if she found it absurd. She shook her head. It would be fine. Dreams made at ten years old almost never lasted a lifetime.
But Seoha’s reaction was far more serious.
“Since we’ve gotten Mom’s permission too, shall we start properly now?”
Nod.
Seoha took a thin book out of his bag.
[Mathematics a Special Assistant Should Know]
Seoeun’s eyes widened.
It was not a book sold on the market. It was a custom-made textbook meant for only one person in the world: Seoeun.
When she turned the cover, she saw familiar handwriting.
“Oppa...”
Seoeun hugged the notebook tightly to her chest as though she had discovered a treasure.
Seoha smiled.
He was the one who had been educating Seoeun since she was little. He had thought long and hard about how to begin, but he had not been able to find a satisfactory answer in any book on the market.
In the end, he decided to pick up a pen and create the textbook himself.
‘If we’re going to start, we should do it properly.’
Seoha wanted to instill in Seoeun a mathematician’s sense of self first.
This book was a necessary step for that purpose. He had interpreted Seoeun’s everyday life in mathematical language.
The geometric symmetry hidden in the frills and ribbons of dresses, the basics of sequences contained in piano performances—he had even left blank spaces in the margins of the textbook labeled “Assistant Seoeun’s Opinion,” so she could freely write down the new things she discovered.
“How can children be like this...”
Miyeong stopped clearing the plates and gazed at the siblings’ backs.
Her daughter was a rather easily distracted child. When playing with cards or cubes, she displayed astonishing concentration, but only then. Yet now, she had been studying mathematics for hours without a single complaint.
“Seoeun, if you’re tired, take a little break. Mom will cut some fruit for you.”
“No, Mom! Just up to this raindrop sequence. I’ve almost found the rule now.”
Seoha gently stroked Seoeun’s hair.
Outside the window, the autumn rain was still falling in a drizzle. Miyeong brought a blanket for the children lying on the floor and glanced at the book.
In the section labeled “Assistant Seoeun’s Opinion,” she saw something written in crooked handwriting.
[All the pretty things in the world are made of numbers.]
She could not understand what it meant, but it was something she had often experienced while raising Seoha. She spread out the large blanket and covered the two siblings’ backs.
***
“It’s gloomy here every time I come.”
On the outskirts of the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, near a forest rarely visited by ordinary students, stood a research building.
Dean Whitman murmured quietly and pulled up the collar of his coat.
The forest of Princeton, with autumn coming to an end, was losing its color. The footpath leading to the research building seemed even more desolate because so few people passed through it.
“There must be a reason he deliberately holed himself up here.”
Kronen had moved his office, saying that distractions interfered with his concentration.
This was the oldest and most neglected place even within the IAS, and also the quietest.
The old radiator clanked with a dull, heavy sound. The heating was on, but the hallway was strangely chilly.
The wooden floor was peeling in places, and bookshelves lined the walls. Traces of those who had once used this building still remained vividly.
“It looks like the sort of place Kurt Gödel would have used.”
MIT was an outstanding university beyond question, but the history Princeton’s IAS had built could be called 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 not on the splendid main building, but on an out-of-the-way research building like this. His paranoid tendencies were famous, but no one could deny the achievements he left behind.
Whitman walked down the hallway, checking the nameplates. Most were empty, or still bore the faint names of people who had used them long ago.
And at the end of the hallway was the only room with its light on.
Knock, knock.
Knock, knock!
There was no answer even when he knocked. Whitman shook his head and opened the door.
Creeeak—
Elijah Kronen.
The man praised as one of the greatest minds of humanity was there, looking like a nineteenth-century mathematician.
The room was a mess. Equations were scattered not only across the desk but also over the floor and sofa, making it hard to find a place to sit. The dry heat from the old radiator, the smell of paper, and the aroma of strong black coffee mingled together, making the air stuffy.
‘It smells like mathematics.’
It was a sight he had often seen in his younger days.
Elijah Kronen was still in his forties; he clearly was not of a generation that had experienced such an environment. And yet, Whitman oddly felt that this place suited him.
“Elijah, what on earth happened to you?”
At Whitman’s words, he slowly turned his head.
A rumpled shirt, disheveled hair, and rough skin. But his eyes emitted an extraordinarily intense gleam.
“Dean. What brings you here?”
Whitman looked around the office and sighed.
This was why mathematicians, too, needed families. At the very least, a spouse would make sure they ate and had clothes to wear. Seeing the pizza boxes piled on the desk, he clicked his tongue.
“Come with me.”
Whitman practically dragged him out and found a dining hall.
He ordered fresh milk and a sandwich filled with ham, vegetables, and cheese inside freshly baked rye bread. Kronen reluctantly took a bite of the sandwich. Then, without realizing it, a second bite, a third. He had been hungry.
Whitman gave a bitter smile.
Those called geniuses often dug themselves into holes like this when things did not go well.
Gulp, gulp.
After even finishing the milk, he seemed to regain some of his senses.
“What happened to your team? Why are you doing this alone?”
At Whitman’s question, he wiped his mouth with a napkin and said,
“I sent them all on vacation. Ah, don’t misunderstand me. They produced the best possible results. They were a great help. It’s just that now only the work I must bear entirely on my own remains.”
Andrew Wiles had been the same.
While solving Fermat’s Last Theorem, he had secluded himself alone for seven years. He published no papers and attended no seminars.
Kronen, too, had chosen isolation. It was probably because he was extremely wary of his ideas being disturbed by external stimulation. But from experience, Whitman knew that isolation was not the only answer.
“The Riemann Hypothesis has been solved.”
Kronen looked up in surprise.
“Don’t tell me Seoha already did it?”
Whitman shook his head.
“Arthur Pendleton. Felix Morgenstern.”
As though his enthusiasm had been dampened, Kronen let out a small laugh.
“Hmph. I don’t expect much.”
“Still, read it once. Who knows? There may be a clue to solving the problem here.”
Rustle.
Kronen accepted the paper Whitman held out.
He leaned back in his chair, loosely crossed one leg, and opened the paper.
Flutter.
Ten minutes, twenty minutes.
The interest in his eyes cooled with every page he turned.
“It’s ugly. So ugly it makes me want to vomit.”
A look of disgust flashed across his face.
“They used Seoha’s paper as the foundation of the proof. Seoha built an algebraic framework as perfect and beautiful as Gaudí’s cathedral.
And then Felix and his lot poured concrete over it, so to speak. But it’s cunning. The mathematical world will waste years verifying this enormous piece of trash.”
“That is why I came to you.”
Whitman leaned forward as he spoke.
“Doesn’t it need a warning? From someone whose words carry weight, like yours.”
Kronen turned his head and stared out the window at the bare old tree.
Whitman was a mathematician worthy of respect. An Abel Prize winner and a master of topology. But after meeting Seoha, he had changed. Kronen disliked how he seemed to have retreated to the back room like an old man whose dreams had all come true.
“Don’t act like such a has-been.”
“Hmm?”
Whitman’s eyebrows twitched.
“You’re still active, old man. Did you win the Abel Prize by spinning a roulette wheel?”
“Y-you little...!”
Whitman’s face turned red.
At the sparks flying between their gazes, the waitress let out a hiccup.
Bang!
Whitman slammed his fist down on the table.
“Fine, I’ll do it. I’m not dead yet.”
A faint smile spread across Kronen’s lips.
He called the waitress and ordered another glass of milk. Then, as if it were nothing, he tossed out a single remark.
“Try digging into the geometry side. Something will definitely come up. Consider that payment for the meal.”
“Hmph!”
Whitman roughly snatched up his coat.
There was an air about him like an old general facing his final war.
Step, step.
After walking for quite a while, Whitman ran a hand down his face.
It had hit home.
Watching Kronen and Seoha, he had realized that a new era had arrived in mathematics. He had thought it a virtue for old-generation men like himself to quietly step aside and watch them grow.
“Roulette?”
Kronen’s venomous remark had poured oil onto the heart of a sleeping old soldier.
“I’m not quite washed up yet. My head still works just fine. And it wouldn’t be a bad final task before retirement.”
Earlier, he had been too agitated to pay it any mind, but both Seoha and Kronen had said that the answer lay in geometry.
The matching opinions of the greatest geniuses he knew.
“It can’t be coincidence. This should be enough of a clue.”
Whitman cut through the rain and headed for his office. Then he rolled up his sleeves and, for the first time in a very long while, stood before the blackboard.