He knew it was a dream.
Even so, Seoha did not try to force himself awake.
A house made of stone and earth. He remembered seeing one like it in a book when he was young. It was the agraharam style of southern India. The warmth of the space wrapped around his body. Seoha liked the atmosphere of this shabby house.
And one person stood with his back turned.
Clink.
The man wore a white shirt that looked far too large for his slight frame. Dark skin, curly hair neatly swept back from his forehead.
He came closer, holding a teacup.
“Would you like some?”
“Yes.”
What mathematician would refuse tea brewed by Ramanujan? Seoha nodded without hesitation.
When he accepted the cup, it held warm milk tea.
Sip.
A rich, sweet yet bitter taste.
Was this what Earl Grey tea had tasted like when he was alive?
“…”
For a while, the two drank their tea without speaking.
Seoha wondered why he was having this dream.
‘What was I doing before I came here?’
He thought hard, but as though a thick fog had settled over his mind, he could remember nothing. But dreams were manifestations of the subconscious. Perhaps there had always been something he wanted to ask Ramanujan. Since an opportunity had presented itself, Seoha decided to ask.
“Ramanujan, did the goddess Namagiri really give you formulas?”
“Hmm. That is a question I was often asked before.”
Ramanujan set down his teacup with an air of calm and continued.
“There was no lie in what I said. I truly did hear a voice.”
Seoha shook his head.
That much he had already guessed. It was not what he wanted to know. He lowered his voice, as though confiding a secret.
“No. I’m asking whether the owner of that voice was truly a being from outside you.”
If it had truly been a goddess who told him, then he would not have been able to understand the formulas. The equations he wrote down were things that had already existed within Ramanujan.
The hand holding the teacup stopped. He stared at Seoha, then nodded as though he understood.
“No one ever asked me that before… I had forgotten for a moment. You, too, were a human of a similar kind to me.”
“Most people probably reacted in one of two ways, didn’t they? They either believed you, or laughed.”
“That’s right.”
Ramanujan laughed with a cheerful expression. Then, in an instant, his face grew serious.
“I could not stop thinking.
Even when I was eating, even when I was walking down the road, even when I fell asleep, I saw equations. It grew worse at Cambridge. When I began hearing voices as well, I could no longer endure it. From then on, my body fell apart.”
It was as he had suspected.
“It must have been frightening.”
“Terrifying. Every day I wondered whether I had gone mad. I had to find a solution.”
“And that was the goddess Namagiri.”
He stopped speaking and fell silent for a moment. Then, in a calm voice, as though making a confession, he said,
“At some point, I could no longer withstand that current. I could not tell what was truly my own voice anymore. Only when I stood on the verge of madness did I finally find a solution.”
“To separate it.”
“Yes. I decided to regard it as a being other than myself. The goddess spoke, and I wrote it down. If it was she who gave me the equations, then there was nothing wrong with me.”
His voice grew lower.
“Once I thought that way, the voice no longer frightened me. After all, I was not mad. I was merely a chosen man. Even so—”
Ramanujan spoke in a gloomy voice.
“Even the goddess could not protect me completely.”
“What happened?”
As though in agony, he clutched his head with both hands.
“I wrote letters to my wife every day, but no reply ever came. My mother must have hidden them, saying they would interfere with my studies. Ah! My beloved Janaki! She alone was the pillar of my life.”
“That must have been painful.”
Just hearing it made him suffer.
Turing, too. Why was it that brilliant mathematicians were never granted ordinary lives?
“Was it near the end of my years at Cambridge? I heard voices all day long. So many I could not possibly write them all down. My mind must have been weakened beyond doubt.”
“And your body was ill, too.”
Ramanujan had died of tuberculosis at the young age of thirty-two. But he shook his head, as though disagreeing.
“The mind must have come first. Tuberculosis was only the result that appeared afterward. That was when I realized it. The goddess was not a merciful mother, but a vast wave I could not endure. The countless formulas I wrote down until the moment before my death—they were flames that burned using the life of the man called myself as fuel.”
Seoha, who had been listening in silence, answered him.
“…But they were truly beautiful flames.”
“Yes. I knew it. I knew this method could not last long. It was an ability difficult for a human body to bear. Sir Isaac Newton must also have realized that fact long ago. That must be why he fled into alchemy, into theology.”
Severe paranoia, obsession, insomnia, and nervous exhaustion.
Based on the letters he wrote and the records left by those around him, modern doctors believed Newton likely suffered from serious bipolar disorder.
He looked quietly at Seoha and asked,
“So what do you intend to do now?”
Seoha looked down at his teacup.
How long would his harmonious companionship with Ducky remain possible? No, the relationship they had first established was undoubtedly already beginning to creak.
The time when he had created Ducky was in the sixth grade of elementary school.
If psychologists knew of it, they would be amazed by such an extraordinary prescription. At the same time, it was a fate far too harsh for a child to bear alone.
“Thank you, sir. Thanks to you, I think I’ll be able to manage somehow.”
“Not at all. I only hope you do not follow the same path I did.”
With the deepest respect, Seoha bowed his head.
Creak—
When he opened the door, a hot wind rushed in and struck his face.
The rural scenery of India spread out before his eyes. The painfully vivid sunlight poured down over a road where red dust rose.
“Wow! It’s this vivid?”
At the entrance to the village, scrawny cows walked while swishing their tails. From far away came the chirping of nameless birds, and the street mingled with the lively cries of people and the smell of spices, making the sense of reality even stronger.
“Quack, quack quack!”
At the noisy cry, Seoha turned around.
A flock of ducks marched in a line with waddling steps. On the head of the leader duck at the very front was a conspicuous lump.
“Hahaha!”
He burst out laughing.
“Ducky.”
“Quack!”
Seoha stopped in front of it and lowered himself.
“Were you anxious, by any chance?”
“…”
On the path toward Stage Eight, Seoha had felt fear.
The terror he had experienced for the first time amid heat that felt as though it would burn his brain. There was no way Ducky had not known it. He had been afraid Seoha would run away.
“Don’t worry. I won’t run. Of course, I won’t deny your existence, either. But how about you stop appearing before I call you?”
Srrrk.
Ducky changed into a human form.
“Then what do you intend to do? You know it too. That thing is a monster beyond comparison with any difficult problem you have solved so far. If you cannot see the essence through my eyes, you probably won’t be able to solve it. So it would be better to hand the initiative over to me…”
Seoha’s expression turned angry.
“Ducky!”
He felt the need to redefine his relationship with Ducky.
Clinically speaking, Ducky’s current state was a quasi-autonomous ego state. The method of using him as a cognitive tool as he had until now had reached its limit.
The voice of compulsion had, over a long period of time, developed into a being with a consistent personality and will. And now, at last, it was demanding an ego switch.
“Am I wrong?”
Seoha shook his head.
“You are. Very much so. It’s true your existence will help me solve problems, but intuition is not the only path to the answer. I intend to take up the cold blade of logic and cut through that problem one step at a time.”
Behind the mask, Ducky narrowed his eyes.
“Are you saying you no longer need me?”
“I told you. I won’t deny your existence. You are my mathematical ego. I need your power too. But there is a serious problem between us right now.”
“There’s no problem! I exist within you in a definite form. That is all that matters!”
Seoha let out a sigh.
“When I first met you, I was too young. Our agreement was made in language like a child’s game. Now that we are both adults, let’s make a proper contract.”
The reason Ducky was demanding autonomy was because the structure of constraints had changed. Their slapdash agreement was far too flimsy to contain Ducky, who was growing into a more advanced ego.
While acknowledging his existence and establishing a new contract, Seoha decided to redefine the power structure.
“Hmph! I can already tell you’ll just rattle off a list of things I’m not allowed to do.”
For an instant, Seoha’s face turned cold.
“Ducky. Listen carefully. If you don’t accept this, I will bury you in that pit right now. And after I return to reality, I will never seek you out again.”
“Do you think that’s possible?”
“This isn’t a question of possibility. If I give you the initiative, I will lose everything precious to me. If that’s the case, I’d rather go mad like Gödel. If it’s too hard, I’ll run away to another field like Newton. Becoming a psychologist using my experience wouldn’t be so bad either.”
As if trying to discern his true intent, Ducky stared straight into Seoha’s eyes.
Seoha did not avert his gaze. This was not a bluff. Ducky knew better than anyone that once Seoha made up his mind, he never bent.
“…Let’s hear your conditions.”
The two talked for a long time, adjusting the terms of their contract.
Do not appear unless called, the initiative will not be handed over under any circumstances, do not attempt to contact others, and so on. Ducky demanded a certain amount of free time and equal rights when solving the Millennium Problems or difficult problems such as Stage Eight of Seoha’s conjecture, and Seoha accepted.
“Am I not allowed to talk to Seoeun either?”
The duck mask had a lonely look in its eyes. Seoha understood his feelings.
“No, let’s make that an exception. You are that child’s older brother too.”
Seoha held out his hand, offering a handshake.
Ducky looked down at his hand. The meaning contained in it was respect and coexistence. But it also included unspoken pressure that the promise must be kept.
Swoosh.
Ducky slowly extended his arm and took Seoha’s hand.
The moment their two hands touched, Seoha felt a sensation as though something within him had changed. Like a tightly drawn string finding the correct tension for the first time.
‘So this is balance.’
The contract was complete.
Red dust swirled around the two of them, then scattered. Seoha let go of his hand and looked up at the sky. The hot Indian sunlight and the blue sky.
And in an instant, the scenery before his eyes changed.
“Hmm?”
What he saw was a familiar ceiling. He was inside his own room.
“Was it a dream?”
He shook his head.
The stale taste of milk tea still lingered in his mouth.
The doll was nowhere to be seen on the desk.
When he looked around the room, he saw Ducky flung into a corner.
“Ah!”
He remembered.
He had been so furious at that absurd suggestion that he had thrown the doll.
He picked it up and placed it back on the desk.
It was the moment Seoha let go.
Whoosh—
A sensation of suffocating pressure crushed down on his head.
Seoha tried to brace himself with a hand on the desk. But soon he lost his balance and collapsed to the floor.
Crash!
For more than ten years, Seoha’s brain had spent a vast amount of energy suppressing Ducky. The prefrontal lobe had been pressing down on the compulsive circuits without rest.
That structure of repression had been reorganized in a single night. To find a new equilibrium, his brain temporarily entered a state of overload.
“Seoha!”
“Oppa!”
He heard his startled family rushing toward him.
“I shouldn’t make them worry…”
The energy once used for suppression was released.
For the first time, he would be able to mobilize the resources of his prefrontal lobe for thought. But for the moment, he could not control his body at all.
That was why he ended up being taken to the hospital.