Five minutes before the exam,
the two proctors looked up at the clock at the same time.
“Entry is now closed. If any electronic devices are found, you will receive a zero, so turn them all off and put them in your bags.”
The students sat in their chairs and lightly loosened up.
The sound of chairs scraping, coughs—and then silence soon fell.
The exam papers were handed out.
When the second hand of the wall clock passed twelve, the proctor opened his mouth.
“Begin.”
Rustle.
The papers were flipped over all at once.
Seoha was confident in mathematics and science, but he was worried about the other subjects. Since he had skipped the middle school curriculum, Korean and social studies were especially difficult. At a gifted high school, even humanities subjects could not be solved entirely through simple memorization.
The conclusion Seoha reached regarding this was simple.
Memorize and understand everything.
For his method, he decided to make use of mind maps.
Seoha memorized every textbook.
Since he had always paid close attention in class, the main framework was already set in his head. Onto that, he added branches by memorizing reference materials and his notes.
The reason mind maps were not widely used despite their efficiency was that drawing a physical map required a great deal of time and effort.
But Seoha did not need to draw the map himself. Simply by associating concepts in his mind, the map extended outward with its own structure.
This was not solely because Seoha’s mind was exceptionally brilliant.
The experience of creating maps of knowledge while reading encyclopedias as a child had made such performance possible.
First period, Korean.
The moment he opened the exam paper, Seoha immediately immersed himself in the passage.
A long text, difficult vocabulary, tangled sentences.
The other students frowned, but Seoha’s eyes remained calm.
In his mind, a colossal tree like the World Tree spread out its branches.
At the phrase “philosophical discourse” in the first sentence, the trunk split once, and beneath it, countless branches derived from that point divided further. Seoha’s consciousness moved rapidly along the trunk, beginning to search for the information he needed.
This was the efficient study method Seoha envisioned—structuring thought.
‘Number 2.’
He chose the answer without trouble.
The moment he read the question, the location of the information had already been specified in his mind.
‘Question 3 is the speaker’s internal conflict, connected to ontology on the second branch to the right.’
His pencil sliced cleanly across the paper.
Seoha did not need to read the passage twice. Information that had once settled into the structure was not easily forgotten. Parts that other students had to go back and forth to check again were already “recorded information” for Seoha.
Even literature, which demanded metaphor and symbolism, emotion and nuance, shed its mask before Seoha’s logic.
The thick trunk was the background of the work, and the branches extending from it were the speaker’s emotions and recurring symbols. No matter how heavily the sentences were cloaked in metaphor, the mind map inside Seoha’s head classified and interpreted them as structured language.
‘Good! I might get them all right.’
Mind maps were a combination that suited Seoha, who liked systematic classification.
But perhaps he had been too confident.
Seoha’s hand, which had been solving problems without hesitation, suddenly stopped.
‘Huh? This is a novel I’ve never seen before.’
A passage outside the exam scope had appeared.
Seoha broke into a cold sweat as he read through it. He tried to match the new passage with existing data, but it was not an easy task.
That was because dismantling the ambiguity of a literary work he had never seen before required a much larger amount of data.
Seoha decided to remember this kind of problem well.
Second period, Mathematics I and II.
As the exam papers were handed out, the atmosphere in the classroom turned icy.
It was the notoriously difficult mathematics exam of a gifted high school.
Groans of “ugh” could be heard here and there.
Of course, that did not apply to Seoha.
When he first entered the school, he had struggled with high school–style problem solving, but the current Seoha was different.
By answering countless questions on the anonymous message board, he had come to understand what kinds of solutions the teachers wanted.
Question 1.
[Given any 2n+1 integers, prove that among them, there exists a nonempty subset whose sum is divisible by n.]
It was an Olympiad-level problem, but Seoha could solve it mentally.
All that was needed to solve this problem was a two-step thought process.
But Seoha did not do that.
He lifted his pen and calmly began writing out his answer.
A kind proof that went through a total of five steps.
「···Therefore, among any 2n + 1 integers, there always exists a subset whose sum is divisible by n.」
In truth, it was an extremely concise proof, but for Seoha, this was the best he could do. Fortunately, the answer was within the range where there was no room for dispute or deduction.
Many people had helped Seoha come this far.
That was why he felt a heavy sense of responsibility.
‘I don’t want to disappoint them by stubbornly insisting only on my own way.’
Most mathematicians of the past had been nobles or from wealthy merchant families.
Perhaps that was only natural in an era when one had to have food and livelihood secured before one could pursue scholarship. But not everyone was like that.
Gauss’s father was a bricklayer, a member of the lower class, and his mother was illiterate.
They were so poor that they could not even remember the exact day their son had been born. (Later, Gauss calculated his own birthday after hearing his mother’s story.)
Even in such an environment, he distinguished himself and became a great scholar who left his name in history.
Seoha could not allow himself, whose circumstances were far better than that, to ruin an exam simply because he was lazy.
* * *
Taejin stared hard at the problem.
‘It’s as hard as they said.’
Last year, the overall average for all first-years was 47 points.
Mathematics was even lower than that.
Taejin realized that at every ten-point interval, there was a killer question that served as a discriminator.
‘Still, it’s not something I’ve never seen before.’
Through “Orijwa’s problem solutions,” he had encountered countless types. This was a problem for which Seoha had written an especially long solution.
Taejin felt as though he knew how he had to find the answer.
A gifted high school where only the top 0.1 percent of geniuses in the country had gathered.
The standard deviation among the students was astonishingly narrow. Getting just one problem wrong could push one’s rank down by dozens of places.
He barely solved the problem and moved on to the next.
It was catastrophically difficult, but not to the point where he could not even touch it.
Suddenly, he remembered the sight of his parents smiling as they talked about him. Taejin truly wanted to be a son they could be proud of.
Taejin shook his head.
‘No useless thoughts.’
There was probably no one here without a goal. There were no students without talent in this place either.
A bitter smile came to him.
Wasn’t it just like an arena?
Those with greater talent climbed higher.
After all, everyone worked hard.
Taejin suddenly thought.
Wasn’t the bleak atmosphere at the beginning of the semester because everyone had been thinking like this?
Among them, there had been one heterogeneous existence.
The student who stayed up all night answering everyone’s questions—the existence of Orijwa had changed the students’ perception of one another from competitors to collaborators.
Taejin seriously wanted to ask Seoha, “Hey! Isn’t your very existence against the rules?”
* * *
“Stop!”
The proctor announced the end of the exam.
“It’s over.”
Gibeom let out a short cry, then slammed his head onto the desk and lay still as if dead.
Everyone was in a similar state. They wanted to cheer, but they had no energy left for it. For the past three days, they had allocated only the bare minimum amount of time necessary for concentration to sleep.
“Let’s go.”
Taejin, who had come over before anyone noticed, grabbed Gibeom by the arm and pulled him up.
Gibeom staggered to his feet.
“I seriously thought I was going to die.”
“Me too.”
Perhaps because they had gone through hardship together, a sense of comradeship had formed.
“Seoha, let’s go!”
“Yes, let’s hurry and eat.”
When they left the classroom, the hallway was already crowded with students from other classes.
Some raised both arms high in liberation, while others had collapsed onto the hallway floor.
Their bodies were exhausted, but the students’ faces looked brighter than ever.
After finishing his meal and going up to the dormitory, Seoha was able to sleep soundly for the first time in a while.
* * *
A week after the exams ended, after several days for corrections, report cards were handed out.
‘Thank goodness.’
Seoha let out a sigh of relief.
Unlike what he had seen in dramas, they did not post the overall rankings on the wall or anything like that.
“Yu Seoha, what score did you get?”
From time to time, members of the soccer team like Gibeom or Taejin came over and persistently tried to dig his score out of him, but Seoha managed to protect his grades without leaking them.
Because a rumor had spread on the anonymous message board that the first-place first-year was absolutely Orijwa, Seoha was desperate.
Before afternoon classes, a burst of static went “beep—” from the speaker installed in the classroom, and an announcement followed.
-All students, please gather in Seminar Room 1 immediately. I repeat. All students···.
The students looked at one another.
“Seminar room? Why all of a sudden?”
“Right? Doesn’t our school not have assemblies and stuff?”
“Did some professor come from somewhere? Maybe it’s a special lecture.”
Seminar Room 1 was a large lecture hall used for research presentations or special lectures.
The first-years moved with bewildered faces, glancing around. Soon, the second- and third-years joined them in the hallway.
“Im Sujeong again this time?”
“Probably not? Do you know how many kids are determined to take her down?”
“She’s crazy tenacious too. She never gives anything up.”
“Still, she’s a little weak in chemistry.”
As if this had happened many times before, the upperclassmen calmly went down the stairs.
When they arrived at the seminar room, the teachers were already lined up on the platform. Since the floor sloped downward toward the front, the entire interior was clearly visible.
“Hey, something must be going on.”
“Are we having an event?”
The students each gauged the situation as they moved to the sections assigned by grade and filled the seats.
Once everyone was seated, the ceremony began.
-Ahem. Microphone test. We will now begin the awards for outstanding academic achievement.
Seoha was instantly startled and looked for someone who could explain. Sujeong, who was sitting across from him, looked at Seoha with a playful expression as if asking, “You didn’t know?”
The vice principal, who was hosting, continued speaking.
-As you all know, our school does not disclose rankings. However, announcing the top performers by subject and overall is a rightful reward for their hard work, and I am certain it will serve as meaningful motivation for all of you.
The vice principal unfolded a sheet of paper.
-Third-year mathematics top performer, third-year Class 2, Im Sujeong!
Applause burst out.
Sujeong rose from her seat, bowed her head slightly, and walked onto the platform.
After that, Sujeong was called up three more times.
That was because she was the top performer in mathematics, physics, earth science, and overall grades. Before long, several certificates were in Sujeong’s hands.
When the second-years’ turn ended, tension settled over the area where the first-years were gathered.
The vice principal took out the list and looked it over, then wore a meaningful expression.
-We will announce the first-year results all at once.
“Why only us?”
“What happened?”
The students whispered among themselves.
-In Korean, English, mathematics, chemistry, biology, earth science, physics, social studies, and even the university advanced placement program, the top performer in every single subject is first-year Class 1, Yu Seoha.
The difference was so overwhelming that we even considered whether we should exclude this student’s scores when calculating standard deviation statistics.
-Yu Seoha? Please come up!
Seoha’s face turned red as he hurriedly rose from his seat. Then he walked onto the platform.
Clap, clap, clap!
Applause slowly spread, and soon filled the seminar room.
With a satisfied expression, as if he had known this would happen, the principal presented Seoha with his certificates.
Taejin heard the third-years beside him whispering.
“What are they supposed to do from now on? At least we got to try taking her down.”
“It was pretty fun gathering a hero party. The study groups got really active too.”
“Isn’t that place basically facing universal destruction?”
“He’s number one in the world, after all. He ought to do at least that much. I heard even Im Sujeong lost to him.”
-There will be a commemorative photo, so please gather together.
All the top performers stood on the platform.
Several students from the other grades went up, but from the first-year class, there was only one.
Click.
“Congratulations!”
As soon as the ceremony ended, Seoha hurried down from the platform and looked for the exit.
‘I need to get out quickly···.’
However, Gibeom grabbed Seoha firmly from behind.
“Where do you think you’re going!”
With both arms sealed, Seoha could not budge. Then his classmates surrounded him.
“Search him.”
At Taejin’s words, the soccer team members began searching Seoha’s uniform. Before long, they discovered the report card he had put in his back pocket.
“Found it.”
Gibeom quickly took it and unfolded it.
“Hey! Me too, me too!”
“Let’s look together.”
In an instant, people crowded around.
And everyone covered their mouths, swallowing their screams.
“My god.”
“What is this? I don’t know, I’m scared.”
“I guessed he’d be first, but I never imagined it would be by this much.”
All five mathematics subjects were 100 points, all four science subjects were also 100 points, Korean was 91, English 94, social studies 96, and even the university advanced placement program was an A+.
The overall average for this exam was 48 points.
On that day, Seoha was removed from the list of competitors of every student in the school.