[Elijah Cronen’s post is up!]
[What on earth is going on that even the final boss of the mathematical world has shown up?]
[Who’s that?]
└The current number one in mathematics.
└Even if you summoned figures from the past, he could go toe-to-toe with the big names.
└The Chinese guys are completely speechless. Every time they try to troll, they get blocked.
└Why is he being so petty if he’s supposedly a grandmaster? LOL
└There were quite a few mathematicians saying that Yoo Seoh’s six points was excessive, but they’re all deleting their posts now LOL
└I’m a math major, but what kind of world does that kid live in? You guys might not know, but Elijah Cronen is truly an amazing person. To us, he’s practically a god.
└Which university will Yoo Seoh attend?
└At this point, doesn’t he have a free pass to every university in the world?
└I want to live with that brain for just one day. I wonder how the world looks to him LOL
At that moment, there were people shedding tears of joy. They were none other than mathematics YouTubers.
“Is this for real? Math videos are actually getting views?”
Their average view counts had only been in the four-digit range, so they all began rowing at once, sensing their chance.
[Who Is Elijah Cronen?]
Views: 320,000.
[Why Did Elijah Cronen Lavish Praise on Yoo Seoh?]
Views: 800,000.
[An In-Depth Analysis of IMO Problem No. 6.]
Views: 150,000.
[Why Did China Challenge Yoo Seoh’s Score?]
[Second Place in the Olympiad—Has Korea Truly Become a Mathematical Powerhouse?]
As the public took an interest, countless videos poured out. Of course, there were two names that appeared in every one of them: Elijah Cronen and Yoo Seoh.
And at last, Professor Edward Han’s paper, presented on Seoh’s behalf, put an end to everything.
The paper, titled “Curvature Corrections to Viviani’s Theorem,” began as follows:
-This paper was inspired by a problem solved by the first author, Yoo Seoh, at a mathematics competition.
This study is based on the geometric investigations conducted independently by Yoo Seoh. I, Edward Han, would like to clarify that my role was to organize his ideas into mathematical language appropriate for a paper and supplement the proofs.
When news broke that Viviani’s theorem—named after Viviani, a disciple of Galileo and a famous Italian mathematician—had been extended, Italian media outlets were the first to report on it.
The article was then imported back into Korea.
└Does anyone know what this means?
└It feels like there have been a lot of things like this lately. Is it just me?
└Math nerds, report in.
└A twelve-year-old supposedly published a paper coauthored with a Stanford professor.
└It’s not coauthored. The kid is the first author. It says so in the preface.
└Is this a lie? What do you call it, padding out an admissions résumé?
└You think a Stanford professor would stake his tenure and fabricate a paper for some unrelated kid?
└I’m a math teacher. He extended a theorem known for 300 years to make it applicable to curved surfaces as well as planes. It’s a concept that also exists in Riemannian geometry, so it’s not an overwhelmingly great achievement, but it’s still unbelievable at his age.
└He’s that Elijah Cronen, right?
└Yep. First place at the IMO. Even before that, he swept every high school mathematics competition in the country.
The controversy passed, but the fame remained.
Seoh had become the most famous twelve-year-old in Korea.
And now, he was in the middle of an admissions interview.
“Student Yoo Seoh, please come in.”
A Korean science gifted-education school, a place every gifted student in the country dreamed of attending.
Seoh, dressed neatly in slacks and a shirt, cautiously entered the interview room and bowed his head.
“Hello. My name is Yoo Seoh.”
The interview had not even begun, but the corners of the interviewers’ mouths were already twitching.
The principal and the faculty were already in a festive mood.
First place at the IMO—and the youngest ever!
An extraordinary prodigy who had already caught the eye of a grandmaster of mathematics!
For someone like that to apply to his school—the principal was already grinning from ear to ear.
If Seoh went on to win a Nobel Prize or a Fields Medal someday, this school would remain renowned for generations to come.
“Please, have a seat. Ah, is the chair too high?”
The physics teacher hurriedly stood up and moved to bring a cushion for the chair himself.
“No, it’s fine.”
Seoh waved his hands in embarrassment.
“No, why should you do that, Teacher? Of course, our math department should take care of it.”
Park Yeongho, the mathematics teacher, snapped as he snatched away the cushion.
A talent who would soon become the greatest product of the school after enrolling. The interviewers had long since forgotten their original duty of evaluating him.
Still, an interview had to be conducted.
The interviewers asked Seoh a variety of questions.
“What do you hope to do in the future?”
“I want to become a mathematician.”
At Seoh’s answer, the math teachers quietly clenched their fists and struck victorious poses.
“Have you applied to any other schools?”
“A teacher I know told me to submit applications to the gifted schools in Busan and Incheon, just in case.”
The interviewers were flustered by his answer.
“Ahem! Why would anyone tell you to do something so pointless…”
The interviewers exchanged glances.
“Then, why did you apply to our school?”
“Uh… um… because it’s the closest?”
The interviewers’ brains briefly came to a halt at Seoh’s honest answer. Then Jeong Mikyeong, the chemistry teacher, hurriedly began listing things off.
“Student Yoo Seoh! Our school cafeteria is among the best in the country. We also provide every student with a private study room.
And our uniforms are so beautiful that students from all the surrounding schools are envious, you know? Every one of our teachers holds at least a master’s degree.”
The interviewers seemed more nervous than Seoh himself.
After finishing what was difficult to tell apart from an admissions briefing rather than an interview, Seoh returned home.
“Oh my! You’re back already? Did the interview go well?”
“Yes. Dad drove me there.”
Miyeong was washing Seoeun, who was covered in mud from head to toe, apparently after playing around in it.
Seoh went to his mother, massaged her shoulders, tugged on Seoeun’s steamed-bun-like cheeks, and then headed to his room.
“Phew…”
He still couldn’t get used to it.
The whole world was kind to him. Yet he was gradually sinking into a profound depression.
Clatter.
Seoh opened the bottom drawer.
Inside were neatly stacked records of failure—more than a hundred notebooks.
Seoh took out the most recent one.
“Attempt number 154.”
Today, it was time to try applying the modular theory he had been studying recently.
Seoh sat at his desk and picked up a pencil.
‘If we define each vertex as v₁, v₂, v₃… and use the eigenvalues of the adjacency matrix A…’
Several hours passed. To Seoh, however, it felt like no more than an instant.
The sound of Seoeun running across the floor, the sound of Miyeong preparing dinner, the sound of Cheolho shaking off his shoes after returning from work—Seoh heard none of it.
His consciousness remained solely in the world of mathematics.
‘If d(f) denotes the number of edges surrounding each face, then Euler’s formula imposes an average constraint.’
His wrist began to ache, but Seoh even forgot the pain.
Still, no breakthrough appeared by nightfall.
Modular theory could not fully capture the topological constraints of planar graphs.
The essence of the coloring problem was both combinatorial and topological. Had a purely number-theoretic approach been arrogant from the start?
Snap.
The pencil lead broke.
Bang.
Seoh threw the pencil he had been gripping against the wall.
Ducky seemed to be telling him not to do that and to calm down.
“What? You think you could solve it? If you can, I’ll gladly give you my body. Go ahead and try!”
Ducky did not answer.
“I knew it. You’re nothing more than my calculation switch. Don’t interfere with me again.”
Seoh picked up the pencil that had bounced off the wall and sat back down at his desk. Then he stared at the duck on the end of the pencil.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
Getting angry would not change anything. The problem was still there, and the answer remained far away.
Knock, knock.
“Seoh, come eat.”
Miyeong’s voice came from outside the door.
“Yes, Mom. I’m coming.”
Seoh closed the notebook, put it back in the drawer, and stood up.
His 154th attempt had ended in failure, but that was enough for today.
Even while eating dinner with his family, Seoh’s mind remained filled with mathematics.
“Oppa, what are you thinking about?”
Seoeun stopped eating and stared intently at Seoh.
“Hm? Oh, sorry.”
“Oppa, you didn’t even play with me today!”
Seoeun puffed out her lips, clearly sulking.
“I’m sorry. I won’t do that again.”
When Seoh gently stroked her hair, the corners of Seoeun’s mouth lifted.
Cheolho saw this and said with a smile,
“Your brother’s been studying something difficult lately. You’ll understand when you’re older, Seoeun.”
“Then I’m not going to study! I have to play with Oppa!”
The whole family burst out laughing at Seoeun’s words.
After dinner, Seoh took a short walk to clear his head.
When he went to his sister’s room, she was already asleep.
The Union Jack duck he had given her and his gold medal had been placed proudly on her desk. Seoh reflected on how excessively impatient he had been.
In truth, Seoh knew it too. Lately, his family had been watching him more carefully than before.
“I’m really pathetic.”
He entered his room and ran his fingers along the familiar bookshelf. Then he took out a book.
[Blaise Pascal]
A handsome man with curly hair looked back at Seoh.
“Pascal, I guess I’m not as brilliant as you.”
At the age of twelve, Pascal independently proved that the sum of the three angles of a triangle was 180 degrees. He used the parallel postulate of Euclidean geometry, but the important point was that no one had taught it to him.
He discovered it while drawing figures on the ground with a branch.
And at just sixteen, he proved Pascal’s theorem, which would be regarded as a highly important discovery in geometry.
That was why twelve was such an important age for Seoh, who wished to be recorded on the same pages of history as the geniuses of mathematics.
He knew better than anyone that this was a pointless stubbornness.
After all, there had certainly been great mathematicians who failed to achieve anything in their youth.
But that was over now.
His family was sad because of it.
“I’m not going to obsess over being twelve anymore. In the end, all I have to do is accomplish something even greater, right? Honestly, all you had to do was use Euclid’s proof. Was that really so difficult?
Just you wait. In the end, I’ll be on a page ahead of you.”
He was now at the age when he would soon become a middle school student.
No matter how brilliant a person was, no one could escape the rule of adolescent hormones.
* * *
Warm spring sunlight filled the schoolyard.
The area in front of the school gate was bustling with students holding their parents’ hands and families carrying bouquets of flowers.
“Dodam, our precious Dodam. Beneath Okcheon’s clear skies…”
The school song rang out through the auditorium. When the song ended, the emcee proceeded with the ceremony.
“Valedictorian, Yoo Seoh.”
The auditorium grew noisy.
“That’s the kid who skipped middle school and went to a gifted school, right?”
“Honey, honey! I told you we have to send our child there too.”
“My goodness, his parents must be so happy.”
Seoh climbed onto the stage with his speech in hand.
The countless gazes filling the auditorium turned toward him.
Seoh gave a small cough, cleared his throat, and began reading the farewell address he had prepared.
“Today, as all of us come together to celebrate our graduation…”
It was a farewell address cobbled together from phrases in a composition textbook, but sobs could be heard here and there.
“Sniff.”
“Waaah…”
“…The scoldings and praise from our teachers will remain in our hearts for a long time.”
As he looked at his dear friends, Seoh’s heart grew emotional as well. Perhaps that was why he blurted out words he had not prepared.
“I’ll be going to another school a little earlier than you, but I’m still the Seoh you all know. Let’s all meet again!”
Laughter erupted here and there at the unexpected remark. Soon, applause filled the auditorium.
With his ears turning red, Seoh hurriedly came down from the stage.
Shutters flashed from every direction.
Children holding bouquets and parents dressed in suits were all busy taking commemorative photographs. And Seoh was the school’s biggest star.
“Let’s take a picture together!”
“Can I brag that I’m friends with you?”
Several girls came running over, waving their hands. Their eyes were already red, as though they had been crying.
“Our son sure is popular.”
Cheolho whispered admiringly to his wife.
“Fortunately, he doesn’t take after you, right?”
While they were talking, someone Miyeong recognized approached them as well.
“Hey! Yoo Seoh!”
“Hm?”
It was Minsu, who had once come to Seoh’s house carrying a workbook.
“You go on ahead. I’ll definitely catch up to you. Got it?”
He shouted while looking at Seoh with a solemn expression, as though he were facing his lifelong rival.
“Oh! It’s the nice big brother!”
When someone she knew approached, Seoeun poked her head out from behind her mother.
“Eek!”
Minsu, startled, screamed as though he had seen something he was never meant to see.
“One, two, three!”
Click.
Seoh also took a commemorative photograph with his family, holding a bouquet of flowers.
Yoo Seoh, thirteen years old.
In the spring, he would finally become a high school student.