Derek, a sophomore in MIT’s Department of Mathematics, was walking down the corridor.
His original destination had been the library. The deadline for his midterm report was two days away, and there were far too many mathematical theories he still did not understand.
“Hm?”
He was hurrying along while checking the wall-mounted blackboards for any interesting notes when he saw students gathered in front of a seminar room. As he drew closer, he could hear whispers from all around.
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. They say it’s Team Apex.”
“What’s going on? Aren’t they ghosts haunting their lab? I’d only ever heard rumors. I’ve never actually seen them before....”
“I heard they can’t use their lab today because of the expansion work.”
“Ah! So that’s why!”
Derek’s ears perked up.
Same department, one year ahead.
Yu Seoha was famous enough that there was no one at the school who did not know his name, but not many had seen him in person. He almost never attended class. Derek had heard he only came in briefly for exams, wrote down the answers in an instant, and left.
“Excuse me.”
Derek quietly squeezed his way into the crowd and secured a view.
Beyond the half-open blinds, he could see the seminar room.
‘Ah!’
At first, the blackboard caught his eye.
There were only fourteen lines of equations written on it. But he could not make sense of a single line. It was like knowing every letter of the alphabet, yet being unable to understand the meaning of a sentence.
“No filming. Please only look with your eyes.”
A security team staff member stepped out and stopped the students who were taking out their phones.
Suddenly, Derek remembered something a professor had said in a recent class.
“The geometry you are learning now may, perhaps, change greatly in the future. Of course, we won’t go into that too deeply at the undergraduate level.”
Seeing the students’ eyes fill with questions, the professor had spoken with a proud expression.
“Because your seniors may solve the Riemann Hypothesis. I don’t know the details myself. I’ve only heard that it’s a geometric approach. However....”
Gulp.
The students swallowed.
“According to the dean, they are very close. To be honest, it doesn’t feel real to me either. I never once thought I would live to see that problem solved.”
“What happens if the Riemann Hypothesis is solved?”
At one student’s question, the professor made a playful expression.
“An enormous upheaval will come.
Over the past two centuries, thousands of papers have been published under the premise of ‘assuming the Riemann Hypothesis is true.’ A considerable number of them will be recognized overnight as complete theorems.
Perhaps the scholars conducting related research are praying in this direction every night. Begging them to prove it, that is.”
The students murmured among themselves.
In truth, the Riemann Hypothesis was not the top priority of the mathematical world. Its ripple effect was not especially large compared to the other Millennium Problems. But in terms of symbolism and status, it could certainly be called the very pinnacle.
“So if you ever happen to meet Team Apex on campus, make sure you remember their faces well. Seoha, in particular, would not be an exaggeration to call a future Newton or Euler.”
They were here.
‘So that’s Team Apex.’
The people who could keep pace with the genius praised as Newton reborn.
Derek had heard that they no longer recruited new team members these days. A super-elite team surrounded by nothing but rumors. Seeing the figures who had been veiled in mystery made his curiosity surge.
“Their average looks are insanely high.”
A sigh-like remark escaped him without his realizing it.
There was a beauty in a dark navy dress trimmed with lace, sitting gracefully by the window and sipping tea with an air of elegance.
Beside her stood a tall man who looked Irish.
His features were handsome and well-proportioned. The sight of him standing with his arms crossed, staring at the blackboard, looked like a scene from a movie. As if something was not going well, he was frowning deeply in front of the equations.
‘He’s my senior too.’
An Asian woman with long hair, somehow ethereal.
Her facial lines were delicate and unruffled. Exuding a refined and mysterious atmosphere, she was writing equations on the blackboard.
Other than them, there was an Indian man who brought to mind someone from the movie Three Idiots, and a German man sweeping the floor with the most serious face in the world. He was unfolding and reading a piece of paper that had fallen to the floor.
“Is that guy a janitor?”
A student beside Derek let out a small laugh.
Perhaps sensing the mood, Ben’s face turned red. Only for a moment, though. He neatly flattened the papers he had gathered and ran them through the scanner.
And Yu Seoha.
Derek’s gaze shifted.
A boy wearing a checkered shirt.
He was taller than Derek had expected, but his impression still had not quite lost its youthful look. Plainly dressed, with an unassuming air. And yet there was something about him that drew the eye.
Every time he opened his mouth, the air inside the room changed. Cecilia, with her graceful dignity, the handsome Irish man, even the Asian girl with her mysterious aura—everyone looked toward a single person as if by agreement.
Ben’s ears were pricked up. His gaze swept past the students outside the window, and he gave a faint smirk.
‘You think anyone can do the cleaning?’
In the lab, ten times more papers than this were always rolling around.
If you could not understand the equations written on them, Apex Lab was a place where you could not even do odd jobs.
““Huh?””
The students all crowded toward the window at once.
It was because Yu Seoha had picked up a piece of chalk. In a silence so deep that not even breathing could be heard, he began writing equations in an empty space on the blackboard.
Scratch, scratch.
The sound of chalk could be heard all the way out in the corridor. Though no one had given a signal, the students in the corridor all moved half a step closer to the window at once. Before long, their numbers had grown and the corridor was packed full.
The person closest in the world to proving the Riemann Hypothesis. Even apart from that, a young mathematician who had already engraved his name in large letters upon the history of mathematics. The scene of him confronting a great unsolved problem was likely a historic sight they would never witness again in their lives.
“I’m glad I came to MIT.”
Someone whispered.
Everyone felt the same.
The equations piled up, one line at a time. But Derek could not understand anything. That did not matter. The students etched each line he wrote deep into their minds.
Whitman and Leonard were watching them from afar.
“Was I not right?”
At Dean Leonard’s words, Whitman nodded.
They had deliberately assigned Team Apex an open seminar room as their temporary lab.
“It reminds me of Richard Feynman.”
“He enjoyed attention, after all. He often scribbled equations at noisy cafeteria tables. He was also a regular at strip bars and solved problems on napkins there.”
Whitman grimaced.
“I hope Seoha doesn’t take after him in that regard.”
“But he was an object of admiration for every physics student.
I’m certain that, in that corridor, there is a student who gained a new dream today. Don’t you think at least one of them will surely think, ‘I want to become a mathematician,’ or ‘I want to understand those equations someday’?”
Something textbooks could not provide, the aura of true mathematicians that could never be understood through lectures alone. They would surely remember this day for the rest of their lives.
***
After the construction was finished, Apex Lab had changed.
“Wow! It’s so spacious.”
Sujeong looked around the lab and clicked her tongue in amazement.
The area had doubled. It was the result of absorbing the space beside the existing lab wholesale. They had only knocked down a single wall, yet the sense of openness was on a completely different level from before.
“I think it looks even more that way because of the windows.”
Theo nodded as he spoke.
Concerned that their health might suffer from long hours of research, the dean had paid special attention to that point. A long window had been newly installed high on the wall so that natural light could enter. The morning sunlight slanted in and brightly illuminated the room.
“I like this blackboard best!”
Seoha beamed.
It was twice as long as the old one. Without any visible seams, it filled an entire wall. In accordance with Seoha’s taste, all three sides of the room were blackboards.
“Hahahaha!”
Sri wore a blissful expression as he stroked the upgraded workstation.
A new space had also been created for teatime. A butler came in and arranged the tea set there.
A work area for Ben had been created as well. Looking moved to tears, he sat there and inspected the equipment.
“All right! Then shall we begin again?”
Theo enthusiastically rolled up his sleeves.
The fourteen-line theorem was written on the blackboard. For each equation, there were several auxiliary lemmas that had to come first. The team members other than Seoha were clearing them one by one.
Thanks to his teammates’ consideration, Seoha had quiet time alone for contemplation.
Even if the auxiliary lemmas were solved, that did not mean the hypothesis would be proven. The most important thing was to find the absolute order, the operator that would force the zeros of the zeta function onto a single line.
He sat in a chair and blankly gazed at the sunlight entering through the newly made window. Beside him, he could hear the sounds of his teammates struggling.
“This inequality is done! Sujeong, I’ll send you the next coordinates.”
“Yes, Cecilia! I think I can finish before the weekend.”
“Sri! Who told you to put in three tea bags at a time! Those are expensive, you know. They were brought here for the Count to drink. If Morris finds out, he’ll strangle us!”
“I’m short on caffeine. I’m running the simulation on the data you gave me yesterday.”
“Stop ordering tteokbokki delivery! Wait! What’s that spread out on the floor over there?”
Whirl—
Seoha, who had been spinning a pen in his hand, fell into thought.
The noise inside his head disappeared.
Ducky was quiet as well. He had sensed it too. That Seoha was approaching, step by step, the handle of the door to truth.
Winter passed, and spring came.
And spring, too, was already nearing its end. Beside the auxiliary lemmas written on the blackboard were check marks like symbols of victory. Now, only two remained.
“Seoha! A letter came for you!”
Ben came over holding a white envelope.
[International Congress of Mathematicians]
The International Congress of Mathematicians, ICM.
The Olympics of the mathematical world, held once every four years. A festival where tens of thousands of mathematicians gathered in one place to share knowledge and confirm the foremost frontier of human intellect.
Above all else, the Fields Medal ceremony was held there.
“Seoha, this will be your first time attending, right?”
Theo approached and examined the envelope as he asked.
“Yes. I was too young during the last congress.”
“What does it say?”
Sujeong asked impatiently.
Rustle.
Everyone pressed close beside Seoha and read the letter together.
[We invite you as a Plenary Speaker for ICM 20■■.]
“My goodness....”
Ben’s eyes grew so wide they seemed about to pop out.
The plenary lecture was the flower of the congress. An opportunity to explain one’s theory alone in a vast hall filled with tens of thousands of geniuses. It was one of the highest honors a mathematician could enjoy.
Looking at the list of past plenary speakers, every one of them had exerted a profound influence on twentieth-century mathematical history.
“Have the old fogeys of the mathematical world finally changed their minds?”
“Surely this isn’t them telling you to be satisfied with this, is it? The Fields Medal is what really matters.”
“It’s not that I don’t understand. Discussions on the verification of ST Compression and Minimum Energy Theory are still active.”
“An invitation came in Team Apex’s name too. Somehow, it makes me proud. But where is it being held?”
Seoha’s eyes moved downward.
Then his body flinched.
[Hanover]
Riemann’s hometown.
The place where Leibniz was buried.
Bernhard Riemann, Gauss’s successor, wrote an eight-page paper in 1859. And his hypothesis remained the long-cherished desire of all mathematicians for the next two centuries.
Seoha slowly closed his eyes.
Perhaps, during all this long time, Riemann had been waiting for someone.
In front of the door he himself had never managed to open, for someone who would someday come.