“What does Yu Seoha’s side say?”
“The guard around him is so tight there’s no getting an answer. MIT has already sent staff over, you know? They said they’d only accept written interviews after everything is over, never mind letting us approach him...”
News vehicles were lined up in front of the Göttingen campus.
Germany’s public broadcaster ARD, the BBC, CNN, even small outlets whose names were unfamiliar. What had been a disturbance within the mathematical community had spread through social media, producing cultlike memes in just a few days.
The broadcasting station hurriedly dispatched its Germany correspondent, Nam Gisun, to Göttingen. On the train, he made calls and tried to get a grasp of the situation on the ground.
‘They’re proving the Riemann Hypothesis in real time?’
‘World-class scholars have been staying in Göttingen for days without even going home?’
‘Could this be a scoop?’
Major foreign media outlets were showing tremendous interest.
Whatever it turned out to be, he had a feeling he could get a good story out of it. Since they were both Korean, it would be easier to request an interview too. But that was a miscalculation.
“Ah, damn it! What am I supposed to do?”
Not only Yu Seoha but the members of Team Apex were impossible to approach, and even the big-name professors all refused interviews, saying they were busy.
He felt like he would go mad from frustration. But he couldn’t go back empty-handed. He had to do something.
“Let’s at least meet the people outside.”
He led the cameraman and trudged across the campus.
On one side of the lawn, in front of a bright red tent, a group of professors who appeared to be Korean had gathered. Perhaps they hadn’t washed properly, because they looked somewhat shabby.
They sat in folding chairs, wrestling with notebooks and pens. A few had laptops open on their knees while they sipped coffee.
ICM participant badges hung around their necks, but the light was too dim to make out their names.
“Excuse me. Would it be all right if I asked you a few questions?”
One of the group lifted her head. A sharp-featured woman. Her face showed irritation at being interrupted. But he ignored it and pressed on firmly.
“I’m a reporter from a Korean broadcaster. Could you explain to our viewers what’s happening inside right now?”
She adjusted her glasses with a tired air and said,
“They say the Riemann Hypothesis may soon be proved. For mathematicians, it’s like a dream.”
Gisun glanced over her name tag.
‘KAIST professors? Perfect.’
“I’ve heard of it myself. It’s one of the greatest unsolved problems in mathematics, isn’t it? Professor Kim Jiyun, what is your outlook on this? Will it really be solved?”
Jiyun lowered her head and let out a deep sigh.
“...I don’t know.”
“Pardon?”
“I haven’t completely understood it either.”
Her face was filled with self-reproach.
In the past, she had clearly been in a position to teach them. But in just a few years, how had so much changed?
Not only the formulas Seoha was writing down, but even the auxiliary lemma Sujeong had supposedly produced was difficult to understand. She had hastily joined the second group and was trying to catch up, but it was by no means an ordinary theory in terms of complexity.
He handed the microphone to a middle-aged man who appeared to be with them.
“May I ask you to introduce yourself?”
“I’m Park Cheolmin, a professor at KAIST. I had a brief connection with Seoha as the leader of the IMO delegation.”
Gisun’s face brightened.
“Really? This must feel especially meaningful to you.”
“It does. That little country child...”
His eyes grew distant, as though he were recalling the past.
“I think everyone thought Seoha was an extraordinary child. But none of us expected it would be to this extent. And what’s truly terrifying is...”
He paused for a moment and looked at the camera.
“His growth is not over yet. Seoha is clearly evolving. When he proved the Four Color Theorem a few years ago, I exclaimed, ‘Ah! Korea has truly produced an incredible talent.’
It was an achievement worthy of adorning a page in the history of mathematics. But that was a proof accomplished within the framework of existing theory. Now, however...”
“Now?”
“......Today, for the first time, my own field of study felt unfamiliar to me.
‘The beauty of mathematics lies in its freedom.’ It’s something professors often tell their students. But I think only now have I come to understand the true meaning of those words.”
Professor Kim Jiyun nodded.
“In mathematics, small trends come every twenty years. A shift in the center occurs every fifty. And roughly every hundred years, there is a change in the entire paradigm.
Riemannian geometry, Russell’s paradox, relativity, the incompleteness theorem. Modern mathematics still lies on the extension of these theories that emerged a century ago. But perhaps, right here and now, the mathematics of the next generation is being born...... That thought occurred to me.”
Gisun swallowed hard.
“Then perhaps this might be a historic moment.”
Professor Park Cheolmin laughed heartily.
“Hahaha! History is always named afterward. Don’t we call 1905, the year Einstein poured out four papers, the ‘miracle year’? I’m very much looking forward to what this commotion today will be called in the future.”
Jiyun looked toward the campus buildings.
The windows where the lights had not gone out, the place where the world’s greatest scholars had gathered and were unable to sleep.
“Still.”
Her voice cracked as though her throat had tightened.
“As a fellow Korean, and as a teacher who once taught that child, I’m so proud.”
The professors around her wore expressions of overwhelming emotion.
One of them complained in a sulky voice.
“What am I supposed to do? I’m embarrassed because I still haven’t understood it.”
“Oh, come now. Winners of the three major mathematics prizes are wrestling with it all night in there. When they nod, we can just nod along with them too, can’t we?”
“Hahaha!”
Reporter Nam looked around.
Perhaps they had heard the news somewhere, because he could see not only professors but students too. Near the main gate, even tourists were gathering.
A food truck had pulled up at the campus entrance. Middle-aged professors rose and lined up in front of it. English, German, Korean, French, Japanese, Spanish—various languages mingled in the air. Their faces seemed full of anticipation and excitement.
“It’s like a festival.”
A grand festival for mathematicians alone.
Perhaps because of his occupational instincts, an ominous thought suddenly came to him.
‘What happens if the proof fails?’
He shook his head to dispel the thought. Then he turned the camera and captured their figures on screen.
***
Creeeak—
The oak door opened again.
The murmuring lecture hall fell silent all at once.
Seoha entered.
His face looked more gaunt than yesterday. Instead of a white shirt, he was wearing a checked button-up.
Step, step.
When he stood before the blackboard, the scholars in the lecture hall all straightened their posture at once. There was now no empty space to be found in the room. The aisles and stairs were not enough; people even packed the corridor outside the door.
Even if they could not see inside the lecture hall, they watched Seoha from afar as though it did not matter.
“......”
“......”
An indescribable tension flowed through the hall.
Seoha saw nothing.
His eyes turned to the blackboard. The formulas that had filled two panels until now. After briefly scanning them, Seoha picked up a piece of chalk.
Scratch—
The third panel began to fill.
“Hhh!”
Everyone seated there drew in a breath at the same time.
Andrew sat at the same desk, staring hard at the blackboard. Because he had debated with the professors all night, the shadows beneath his eyes were hollow, but his mind was sharper than ever.
The open notebook before him was filled black. He had already mapped the structure of Seoha’s argument in his head. Now he was beginning to faintly see where the climax would arrive.
‘It’ll be today.’
It was the intuition of someone who had spent his entire life fighting unsolved problems.
Theo stood with his arms crossed, leaning against the wall of the lecture hall.
Seeing how distinctly different the atmosphere was from last time, he laughed inwardly. He could tell from their expressions.
‘Looks like they studied hard.’
Not all of them, but a considerable number were following the logic.
Formulas filled the blackboard. Now Seoha would run in a straight line toward the core.
“Theo.”
Sujeong sidled up beside him and spoke.
“Yeah.”
“Will it end today?”
“Who knows. Why do you look like that?”
Her face was flushed red.
“I don’t know. Why am I so on edge?”
Sujeong placed a hand over her chest. Whether it was anticipation or worry, no matter how much she tried to calm herself, the pounding would not stop.
Cecilia seemed to be thinking the same thing, unable to hide her anxious expression.
She prayed desperately.
‘I don’t need any dramatic story. Please, just finish it already!’
The afternoon was passing.
The chalk wore down and grew short. Ben handed him a fresh piece from the side. He had already repeated this dozens of times.
Just as the professors’ concentration was reaching its limit, Andrew clenched his fist tightly.
“Here!”
It was the point he had imagined the previous night.
Seoha’s argument was preparing for its final leap. The zeros of the zeta function defined over a noncommutative space. Upon the geometric variety Seoha had created, they were about to converge into a single spectrum. If that happened, they would be able to uncover the identity of the operator.
Scratch, scratch.
Seoha’s hand grew faster.
The proof headed toward its climax. Formula drew formula, argument absorbed argument, and at the very moment when the final member was about to be fitted into an immense structure like the universe itself—
“...Huh?”
Seoha’s fingertips stopped.
The gears that had been turning perfectly in his mind slipped out of alignment.
The operator that had been arranging the primes over the noncommutative space diverged into the imaginary at a decisive critical point. The logic did not flow smoothly, but was swept into a vortex and began circling in place.
Scratch, scratch.
The sound of chalk grew harsh. A deep crease formed between Seoha’s brows.
Among the professors watching, bewildered murmurs began to spread.
“Is he stuck?”
“That part is still an area that hasn’t been properly defined in modern mathematics. Don’t tell me, here...”
“The domain won’t close.”
The logic had not collapsed. Rather, it was a theory so perfect it was almost excessive.
The scholars felt déjà vu. Because beautiful theories often deceived humans. They seduced you as though the answer lay there, only to drive you into a dead end in the end.
Hugo and Laura of the “512 Suicide Squad,” who had somehow become a couple, covered their mouths with their hands at the same time.
‘Riemann’s demon!’
It was the same pattern.
The demon that swallowed a theorem that seemed flawless and perfect at the very last moment. The terror from that time came back to life. She trembled in fear.
Andrew squeezed his eyes shut.
There was always a final door in a problem of the century. A door that revealed itself from a direction no one had anticipated at the very moment you believed you had almost arrived.
He had experienced the same thing. In 1993, a fatal error was discovered in the paper he had ambitiously announced. It took him two whole years at that point alone.
With the help of his student Richard, he had barely managed to resolve it in the form of a joint paper. The frustration and sense of loss he had felt then were beyond words. He hoped this young, endlessly promising mathematician would not have to suffer the same pain he had.
‘Is this truly a realm not permitted to mankind?’
His chest felt so tight he could barely breathe.
Sujeong looked ahead with worried eyes.
“Seoha...”
Theo pressed his lips tightly together with a hardened expression. Ben anxiously opened and closed the chalk box again and again. Sri clasped his hands and prayed, invoking the goddess Namagiri.
“My God.”
Cecilia’s eyes shook. The Great Demon King, staggered and on the ropes, was making its final move to swallow the hero.
Everyone’s gaze turned to Seoha.
Thump, thump.
The sound of his heartbeat grew faster and faster.
His heart was pumping the fuel needed for thought with all its strength. Even Seoha had not anticipated this. A realm God had hidden away so human intuition could not reach it, the wall of incompleteness.
‘Gödel, is this what you wanted to say?’
The formula on the blackboard coiled like a snake and writhed as though mocking Seoha. The logic would not close. At the point where the classical barrier of number theory meshed with noncommutative geometry, an inexplicable repulsive force arose and pushed everything away.
Snap.
When he put strength into it, the chalk he was holding broke.
Seoha’s vision turned red. In his mind, Ducky glared at an enormous snake whose end could not even be measured. He had endured for far too long.
Scratch, scratch, screech—
Seoha began writing formulas on the blackboard in one breath.
A spine-chilling sound of friction.
Seoha simply could not tolerate this monster called incompleteness standing in humanity’s way.