After the exams ended,
The Kingston University dormitory had an atmosphere completely different from usual.
The tension and ruthlessness that had dominated the examination hall over the past few days vanished like a lie, and instead, a sense of liberation and a festive mood enveloped the entire building.
Laughter burst out from everywhere in the hallways. The doors that had been firmly shut were all wide open as well.
When Seoha came out of the washroom after brushing his teeth, the hallway was already bustling.
The students, who would normally be quietly studying or resting in their own rooms, were all outside mingling with one another.
It was time to go home soon.
They might never have another chance to meet each other again.
These thoughts gave the students the courage to approach one another.
“Kiddie! Come over here?”
Hans called out, gesturing to Seoha.
Once they had grown a bit closer and started greeting each other, everyone began calling Seoha “Kiddie.” To Seoha’s ears, the word translated to “Elementary schooler!”
“What is it?”
He gave a light knock on the open door and entered the room to find over ten students already inside.
“Let’s do a Memory Challenge. Helen is on a seven-game winning streak right now.”
It was just as Woohyun had warned.
Everyone was desperate to show off their outstanding brains.
He approached and saw a deck of playing cards on the table. A blonde girl from Denmark was sitting in a chair.
Perhaps because she was on a winning streak, she looked brimming with confidence.
She abruptly spoke to Seoha in a friendly manner.
“Kiddie! I heard you were the only one who solved Question 6? Our teacher told me.”
“I’m not sure if I was the only one, but I did solve it. It was difficult.”
“You were the only one. Shall we test that amazing brain of yours?”
Helen grinned and tapped her temple with her index finger.
At this point, it was hard to back out.
Seoha sighed and sat down in a chair. At Helen’s signal, Hans began shuffling the cards. Perhaps because he played with cards often, he showed off an elaborate shuffle.
Shhhhlck.
Hans laid out thirty cards in a 6 by 5 grid on the table.
“Alright! You have thirty seconds to look. Both of you ready?”
“Of course.”
“I’m ready too.”
Both nodded.
“Start!”
Hans and his friends flipped all the cards over at once.
‘Seven of Spades, King of Hearts, Three of Diamonds, Jack of Clubs…’
Seoha’s eyes rapidly scanned the cards. The other students gathered around, watching with interest to see how Seoha would memorize them.
Seoha and Helen focused on the cards simultaneously. But their approaches were completely different.
Helen seemed to be using the Memory Palace, a typical Western memorization technique. Her eyes moved in a zigzag pattern as she tried hard to connect the cards to specific locations she had set up in her mind.
Meanwhile, Seoha chose a completely different method.
In Seoha’s mind, the thirty cards began transforming into a 6 by 5 mathematical matrix.
He memorized each card along with coordinates (row, column). Seven of Spades was (1, 1), King of Hearts was (1, 2)… In this way, he bundled the positional information and card information into a single data set and stored it.
He converted the suits into numbers. Spades = 1, Hearts = 2, Diamonds = 3, Clubs = 4.
By doing this, each card became a four-dimensional vector of (x-coordinate, y-coordinate, suit value, number value).
And numbers were the language most familiar to Seoha.
“Time’s up!”
Hans shouted that time was over and flipped all the cards.
“Helen first!”
Hans’s finger pointed at the first card in the first row.
“Seven of Spades.”
It was correct.
“Now, Kiddie. What about this?”
The second card in the third row.
“Three of Clubs.”
Seoha answered without hesitation.
Hans flipped the card, confirmed it was correct, and nodded.
“Helen!”
The third card in the fourth row.
Helen hesitated for a moment.
“Hmm… Queen of Diamonds?”
Hans flipped the card.
“You got it.”
The game continued. Both showed amazing memory, but a difference began to emerge after they passed twenty cards.
“Helen?”
Hans pointed at a card, but Helen couldn’t answer easily.
“Clubs… Nine?”
When Hans flipped the card, sighs burst out from the surroundings.
“Ah…”
“Helen lost on this?”
“Is she nervous? I heard she won at a memory competition too.”
“Wrong, it’s the Six of Clubs.”
Helen made a disappointed expression.
“Kiddie’s turn. If you get it right, you win.”
Hans pointed to the fifth card in the fourth row.
But in Seoha’s mind, the data sets for all the cards were already complete.
“Ace of Spades.”
The card was flipped. And of course, it was correct.
“Wow!”
“Amazing!”
“We have a new Memory King.”
Everyone clapped and laughed.
“Then as a joke, want to try getting the rest too?”
At Hans’s suggestion, Seoha nodded.
“King of Diamonds, Four of Hearts, Two of Clubs…”
Seoha called out the names and flipped the cards one by one. Helen looked at Seoha with an expression of exasperation.
When all thirty cards were matched correctly, the room filled with the students’ frenzy.
“Kiddie! Kiddie! Kiddie!”
The students chanted Seoha’s name.
“Now I know why you were the only one who solved Question 6.”
Helen smiled and offered a handshake.
When Seoha shyly grasped Helen’s fingertips, everyone burst out laughing, holding their stomachs.
“Helen! Seoha’s a kid. He still needs to wait a bit more before his body starts producing testosterone.”
Helen raised her right middle finger at the snickering boys.
“What did you say? You guys who lost to me.”
It was a pleasant afternoon.
* * *
“Phew!”
Seoha returned to his room and jumped onto the bed.
After the Memory Challenge, perhaps because word had spread, many students came to find Seoha with games they were confident in.
Sudoku, mental arithmetic battles, the 24 Game, and even a student who wanted to compete over how many digits of pi they could memorize.
Elsewhere, a chess tournament was in progress.
It was called a tournament, but the winner kept playing. Literally “Last man standing”—the last person remaining was the winner. Anyone was free to challenge.
Knock, knock!
While lying on the bed resting, he heard a knocking sound.
“Who is it?”
“…It’s me.”
Sujeong’s weak voice, unlike her usual self.
Seoha hurriedly opened the door.
“What happened?”
Sujeong looked at Seoha with a face about to cry.
“I’m sorry.”
Looking ashamed, Sujeong hung her head low.
“What on earth is going on?”
Sujeong was in despair.
“I got all our ramen and snacks taken away.”
“What?”
Hearing the story was infuriating.
Dokyeong, who was usually confident in chess, had challenged Alexei, the Russian representative. The result was a crushing defeat.
When Dokyeong tried to challenge him again, Alexei set a condition.
“If I accept all rematches, it’ll never end. If you really want to play, then wager something.”
Dokyeong, who had been in charge of storing the Korean team’s food supplies, accepted.
Dokyeong lost snacks one by one. Unable to watch anymore, Sujeong joined in to protect her own snacks. The result was a crushing defeat.
Like a gambler unable to leave the table because of the sunk cost, the game continued until all of the Korean team’s snacks had disappeared.
“Looking back, I think it was a setup. It felt like I was about to win.”
They had planned to take out the remaining snacks today and tomorrow and have a party at night.
But like this…
“Let’s tell the teacher and go to New Malden tomorrow. I’ll pay. My parents gave me money, so it should be fine.”
Feeling sorry, Sujeong poured out words urgently.
“These days it’s easy to find Korean food abroad, right? Tesco and Sainsbury’s sell Korean ramen too! You know that, right? They say the cup ramen sold overseas has real chunks in it, so it’s actually tastier than the domestic ones!”
Seoha squeezed his eyes shut.
Ramen and snacks were precious to Seoha too.
Every morning he filled his stomach with an English breakfast, and lunch and dinner were potatoes and meat.
Jacket potatoes, chips, boiled potatoes, mashed potatoes, roast potatoes, potato cakes, potato salad, hash browns, and even snacks came as potato chips.
Seoha had only learned after coming to England that potato dishes could be so diverse.
It was a terrifying country. The only source of carbohydrates was potatoes.
Seoha was already missing Korean food so much he couldn’t stand it.
‘I was going to eat ramen tonight…’
He hadn’t known that Woohyun’s advice to learn chess would be so helpful.
“Let’s go! I’ll figure something out!”
With a determined expression, Seoha opened the door and went out into the hallway. Sujeong tilted her head and followed him.
When he went down to the lobby, over fifty students had gathered.
In the center was a table with a chessboard, and Alexei was sitting in one seat.
When Seoha appeared, the students noticed one by one.
“Kiddie!”
“Kiddie’s here!”
“Kiddie! Kiddie!”
Cheers burst out.
Thanks to him crushing the students in every game.
“Ah, Kiddie! You came? Are you good at chess too?”
Alexei shrugged with a relaxed expression.
The American representative sitting across from him looked like he couldn’t care less.
“That American kid, he’s a master.”
Sujeong whispered into Seoha’s ear.
“Really?”
“Yeah. They say he’s the Kentucky state champion? He said he’d go out last and clean everything up…”
Sujeong clicked her tongue, perhaps because they knew each other.
Seoha turned his gaze to the table behind Alexei. Countless snacks were piled up like spoils of war.
Not long after, Brian, the American representative, had to surrender his carefully saved large-sized beef jerky to Alexei.
“We’ve been playing chess since the 15th century. Some American master means nothing.”
The Americans bristled at Alexei’s provocation. But no one could step forward.
“Come on, Kiddie! Let’s play a match.”
Alexei bared his teeth and showed his confidence.
Seoha nodded and sat down.
Alexei arranged the pieces on the chessboard and said,
“In Russia, elementary school kids sometimes beat professionals. Chess prioritizes talent over experience. You could say it’s all about calculations.
Kiddie, I heard you solved Question 6, which no one else could touch. I’m looking forward to this.”
“Don’t expect too much. I’ve only played against one person.”
“Then this should end quickly? Just think of today as a learning experience. I was the Russian junior champion.”
“Well, it would be a problem if you got too comfortable.”
Alexei laughed pleasantly.
“Haha! Alright. What rules shall we use? Blitz or Rapid?”
Blitz was a speed game where each side had five minutes, meaning one game couldn’t exceed ten minutes. Because there was almost no time to think, many mistakes occurred.
Rapid was a bit more relaxed than that.
“Blitz.”
“I like it.”
The arrangement of pieces was complete.
Hans brought a competition clock from somewhere and placed it on the table.
And looking at everyone, he declared:
“Game start!”
Alexei confidently made the first move.
e4, King’s Pawn Opening.
Click.
Seoha hesitated briefly and responded with e5.
Alexei’s pieces moved quickly. He was certainly experienced. He was leading the game with familiar patterns.
Seoha responded passively at first, as if adjusting. But as the game progressed, the situation changed.
Speed battles based on intuition were completely Seoha’s domain.
Ten minutes later,
Alexei was staring at the chessboard with a blank expression.
Not a single one of his pieces remained on the chessboard.
Literally, a complete annihilation.
The lobby exploded with the students’ cheers.
“Waaaah!”
“Kiddie won!”
“He beat the Russian champion?”
“Kiddie got revenge!”
“Ha… one more time! Let’s have a rematch! It’s because it was Blitz. If it had been Rapid, it would have been different!”
Because Seoha’s moves were so fast, Alexei had made many mistakes trying to match the speed. In retrospect, they were obvious moves. He was confident he would definitely win if they played again.
Alexei requested a rematch with a flushed face.
Seoha tilted his head and looked at Alexei.
“There’s no end to it if I accept every rematch, is there?”
Laughter burst out here and there in the lobby.