Fallen leaves drifted down onto the bench.
Seoha looked up at the sky. Perhaps it was because he had made up his mind, or perhaps because of the clear late-autumn night air—the tightness in his chest seemed to loosen all at once.
“Ugyagyat!”
He stretched.
“That’s for later. For now, I should faithfully complete my service.”
Daisy smiled gently.
[Indeed, Master. I will make my preparations and await the right time.]
Seoha rose from his seat and walked along the path.
The fallen leaves beneath his feet crackled as he stepped on them. With his hands buried in his pockets, Seoha walked down the deserted path.
Daisy thought:
Throughout human history, the freedom of the powerless had always been violated.
‘The reason a lion can be free on the savanna is that every living thing there fears it. Of course, Master, you understand this well.’
But Daisy said nothing.
Her master was so kind and gentle that he would want to deny the fact that he, too, could become an object of fear.
* * *
Apex Lab Korea.
The lights in the laboratory did not go out even at night.
Theo stole a glance at his coffee cup. The coffee had already gone cold. Still, he picked it up and gulped it down in one go. Taste was irrelevant. Once the caffeine entered his system, his mind seemed to start working normally again.
Equations covered the board.
Sitting with his chair pulled close, he folded his arms and glared at them. The sensation that something was out of alignment had been tormenting him all day.
“Where on earth is it?”
Screech.
He picked up the eraser, then set it back down.
It was the instinct of a mathematician with years of experience. Sometimes, a breakthrough was hidden inside an equation that appeared to be wrong.
Step. Step.
Footsteps came from the direction of the hallway.
These days, the team members rarely left work on time. The concepts Seoha had presented were vast and abstruse. They could tell there was something extraordinary within them. But the deeper they dug, the more difficult it became. It felt as though the farther they walked, the deeper their feet sank into the mud.
Smack, smack!
He slapped both cheeks with his hands.
“Get a grip!”
The team members’ rate of growth had recently become steep enough to see with the naked eye.
At every meeting, he had been impressed more times than he could count by their sharp insights. He had always prided himself on having no rivals besides Seoha, but the team members were already digesting the concepts Seoha had thrown at them in their own individual ways.
Knock, knock!
“You’re still here?”
Ben carefully opened the door and entered.
When Theo saw the Sudoku puzzle in his hand, he let out a dry chuckle.
‘He really holds a grudge.’
More than a hundred Korean and American researchers belonged to Apex Lab Korea.
Quite a few of them wanted to follow Seoha to the United States after completing their military service. Whenever that happened, Ben stepped in to put things in order.
“Take your time. It’s just an ordinary Sudoku puzzle.”
Ben’s face was beaming as he handed out the papers.
He urged the researchers on, as if telling them to hurry up and try this amusing thing too.
“You do know that if you can’t solve this, you won’t even be able to touch a difficult problem, right?”
The person assigned to it changed every quarter.
Seoha’s Sudoku puzzles were updated every time. Ben had yet to escape last place, but he was only a few minutes behind the other team members.
“All right, all right! Come on, give it a try!”
Ben gazed at those who began filling in the answers the moment they sat down, his eyes full of pity.
Ten minutes.
Twenty minutes.
If they realized even then that something was wrong, they could consider themselves fortunate.
Seoha’s puzzles were vicious beyond belief, and it was possible they would not notice the problem until the very last moment.
Then they would have to return to the beginning, and those who had never experienced the resulting despair could never understand it.
Groan.
Moans arose from here and there.
The researchers’ expressions changed from moment to moment. Ben encouraged them with a broad grin.
“It’s already been an hour? I didn’t expect it to take this long… The Apex team members, myself included, can all solve it within fifteen minutes at most. Has no one finished yet?”
Theo shook his head.
“You really are a sadist.”
Ben shrugged.
“I’m merciful. At least I didn’t hurt anyone with direct words.”
“That makes it worse. What about you? Don’t you miss home?”
It had been nearly three years since Ben had left Germany.
Yet he showed no sign of loneliness at all.
“I do miss the food sometimes, but it’s nothing serious. Here, every day feels like opening a Christmas present. I don’t think I could live a life like this anywhere else. Wherever Seoha is, that’s home to me.”
“Haha! That’s certainly true. But what brought you here?”
Ben suddenly seemed to remember something and pulled out a document.
“Another official letter came.”
Theo frowned as he took it.
It was a polite request to discuss the laboratory’s next project. But that was merely an excuse; this was already the third such letter in just the past two months. The sender changed each time, and each new one held a higher rank.
His expression grew serious.
“They’re interfering more and more.”
“Maybe it’s because we produced results so early? They must be getting greedy. Are you going to report this?”
Rip.
Theo tore the official letter in half from where he sat.
“We’ve already exceeded our targets. There’s no reason for us to be dragged around any longer. Apex Lab Korea’s role is fulfilled simply by maintaining Utopia.”
It had been much the same when they were in the United States.
Official letters targeting Seoha had poured in from all sorts of institutions. Once they cooperated with one, another request would come as a matter of course, and eventually the official letters would be no different from orders.
“Do you think Seoha knows?”
“Who knows?”
He was indifferent to most things, but every now and then his instincts were startlingly sharp. Unless one was Seoha himself, even Theo could not tell which was the case.
One thing, however, was certain.
“For now, let’s block it at our level. We can’t let Seoha waste his mind on pointless matters.”
Seoha had been born to the noblest of destinies. Theo did not want to see someone like him rolling around in the mud.
Ben nodded with a stiff expression.
* * *
The seasons changed, and before anyone knew it, winter had arrived.
In front of the examination hall where the second round of the Korean Mathematical Olympiad was being held, one child stood out among the countless students and parents.
Seoha looked down at his younger sister, who was shivering in the cold.
She wore a baby-pink padded coat and mittens. Her cheeks had flushed red in the biting winter wind. Feeling sorry for her, Seoha gently cupped Seoeun’s cheeks in both hands.
“Seoeun, you should go in now.”
Uhyeon, who had accompanied them to the examination hall, glanced at his watch and spoke.
“Yes, Teacher.”
“Just solve the problems however you like, so there’s no need to be nervous. Your brother even deliberately wrote down wrong answers and left.”
Remembering that, Seoha smiled awkwardly.
With Uhyeon’s letter of recommendation, Seoeun could have gone straight to the third-round preliminary examination, but she had politely declined.
“Oppa, I’m going!”
“Okay. I hope the problems are fun.”
A girl who looked especially young among the high school students. Yet her presence was greater than anyone else’s. The moment she passed the first round, the media had splashed her across the headlines.
[Middle School First-Year, but a Gold Medal Candidate? Seoeun Yoo, Younger Sister of the Brain of the Century, Seoha Yoo, Advances to KMO Round Two]
[God Was Unfair. Seoeun Yoo, Blessed with Superior Genes!]
[KMO Round One Examination Hall in Uproar—Seoha Yoo’s Younger Sister Submits a Perfect Answer Sheet in Just 25 Minutes]
└I’m jealous. What good deeds did those parents do in their past lives?
└They must feel full even after starving for days, just by looking at their kids. I heard they never even sent them to an academy.
└Don’t they live in Okcheon? There aren’t many academies even in Seoul that could teach kids at that level. Unless it’s Shin Uhyeon.
└They have Seoha Yoo at home. What do they need an academy for? LOL
└The picture is cute, LOL. She’s really pretty.
└He placed second at the IMO this year, right? China beat us again. Maybe next year will be worth looking forward to?
└He used to place fourth or fifth. He even came in seventh once. Things only improved because gifted students who would have gone to medical school started flocking to science and gifted high schools after Seoha Yoo.
└Haven’t the students from Seoha Yoo’s alma mater swept the KMO in recent years? This year should be interesting.
The media was focusing intensely on an olympiad that had once been far removed from the public’s attention. This, too, was a sight that had emerged after Seoha’s appearance.
Reporters were already outside preparing to cover the event. Seoha pulled his cap down deeply so his face would not be recognized.
“It wasn’t like this back in my day.”
“You sowed the seeds. If you win a gold medal at the IMO, every university lets you in through the front gate. You’re probably the main reason he went abroad.”
“Really?”
“That’s right. I attended meetings too, you know. Just a few years ago, there was barely any such thing as an IMO bonus in college admissions. That left gifted students no choice but to look overseas. You were a perfect example.”
“I had no idea.”
“Let’s get inside. It’ll be a pain if your face gets exposed.”
The two of them hurried into the car.
Seoeun glanced back once, then steeled herself. She could already hear the whispers around her.
“Hey! It’s Seoeun Yoo.”
“Oh, her? Didn’t she get some kind of special treatment?”
“They say that’s not true. Apparently, she’s genuinely good.”
“I’m jealous. Her brother is the number one math genius in the world. I have to ask my academy teacher every time I don’t understand something.”
“Tell me about it!”
As the benefits of placing at the IMO grew, so did the competition.
Talented students were now pouring into mathematics in numbers significant enough to threaten China. In such an environment, being the sibling of the genius who had appeared at its center could not help but make Seoeun the target of envy and jealousy.
When Seoeun turned around, the students who had been whispering flinched in surprise. But then they wore puzzled expressions upon seeing her grinning broadly.
‘My oppa really is pretty amazing!’
Seoeun’s shoulders rose proudly.
Clatter.
Leaving everyone’s attention behind, she sat at her desk in the examination hall.
She had never intended to participate in competitions. She had worried that she might make a mistake and damage her brother’s reputation. But as she grew older and learned more about what he had accomplished, those concerns vanished completely.
‘Even if I were the biggest fool in the world, it wouldn’t affect Oppa at all.’
People did not wonder about Newton’s or Gauss’s siblings.
They were already great simply by virtue of their existence.
Before long, her brother would rise to the same level as them.
Then she happened to read an anecdote about Ève Curie, the second daughter of Marie Curie.
The author of the worldwide bestseller Madame Curie and a recipient of France’s most prestigious order, the Legion of Honour, she had said the following in an interview with the press:
“I am the disgrace of the family.”
Her mother, father, sister, brother-in-law, and husband had earned a total of six Nobel Prizes between them.
Her witty joke only made her remarkable mother shine all the more. And the joke could only work because she herself had lived an extraordinary life by any standard.
‘I’ll do that too!’
To do so, she would need to receive at least one award or medal that everyone knew about. Perhaps simply imagining it made her happy, because Seoeun could not suppress the bashful smile escaping her lips.
She had an inherently optimistic personality. Once her worries disappeared, the jealous whispers around her no longer reached her ears at all.
She took off her mittens and gripped the neatly sharpened pencil. A beaver figurine made for her by her brother with a 3D printer was attached to the top.
“It’s a present. Justin can’t come into the examination hall.”
Electronic devices were prohibited.
Seoeun’s eyes trembled greatly. She had never once thought of Justin that way. She had always been together with him.
But once she took out the pencil, her uneasiness disappeared.
And by the time she received the test paper, Seoeun was more focused than she had ever been.