Once Seoha finished designing the basic algorithm, development proceeded without a hitch.
Two more whiteboards were brought into the Bit Forge clubroom.
Yeonu volunteered to be the PM(Project Manager), and Jungi and Dohyeon also attended the meetings as stakeholders.
Bit Forge began shifting into wartime mode.
On each whiteboard, arrows, circles, and bolded keywords steadily piled up.
[Algorithm design, simulation → Seoha]
[Concurrency handling → Jonguk’s team]
[UI/UX → Nari’s team]
[Testing → Dohyeon, Jungi feedback]
As if announcing the start of the project, Yeonu filled the board with roles.
“This week, let’s focus on building the framework. Our goal is to make sure each function works properly.”
Development ran with astonishing smoothness.
In an ordinary project, large and small conflicts never ceased between planning and implementation. This time, however, was different.
Because Seoha had already paved every road. As a result, Bit Forge was able to begin development with a clear image of the app and a roadmap in mind.
“No conflicts when three people press at the same time. Confirmed.”
“Notification scheduling successful. It crashed once in battery-saving mode.”
Seoha changed the complicated UI of the existing app into exactly two buttons.
‘The fastest reservation, the fairest reservation.’
On the third day of development,
check marks began appearing one by one on the role chart on the whiteboard.
“First concurrency scenario passed. What about notification stabilization?”
Just then, Jonguk took the earphone out of his ear and raised his hand.
“When twenty people pressed it, ‘Reservation Confirmed’ popped up for two people at the same time.”
The room froze.
How much time would they have to invest to catch this bug?
But Seoha was here.
Without a word, he walked up to the monitor and skimmed through the logs. The screen flashed by. After reading the logs at an absurd speed, Seoha found the cause.
“The server only confirmed one person. But two phones displayed the success toast at the same time. The client-side logic performed an optimistic update without waiting for the server response.”
Yeonu was speechless, blinking.
“W-wait! Did you just read the logs? That’s something we’d have to catch after a long while with a debugging tool…”
When a bug occurred, a developer instinctively tried to reproduce the issue.
After that, common sense dictated attaching a debugging tool and inspecting it. Of course, this process took no small amount of time.
‘Just by looking at the logs?’
Theoretically, it was possible. But it was hard to believe.
Seoha looked at Yeonu with a questioning expression, as if asking what was so strange.
Logically inferring the cause of a problem was nothing special to him. Especially when, unlike mathematics where one had to charge headfirst into bare ground, there was evidence left behind in the form of logs.
When Seoha fixed the code, the bug disappeared at once.
“Maybe I shouldn’t go into computer science.”
Jonguk muttered blankly to himself.
He had fallen behind a kid with one week of development experience. It was so absurd that he couldn’t even feel humiliated.
“It’s fine. There’s no one else like that.”
Jonguk admitted that Nari’s insolent remark, unlike usual, was actually rather comforting.
The night had grown deep, but the lights in the clubroom were still on.
“Hey, log correction is done!”
“UI modifications reflected.”
“Running test cases.”
The sound of keyboards, the whirring of fans, and the occasional burst of laughter.
‘Laughter?’
Yeonu thought as he leaned back in his chair.
Development was not supposed to go like this. Normally, after catching one bug, everyone would be exhausted, or sharp words would fly as people tried to pass the blame.
But now?
Everything was proceeding as smoothly as could be, every schedule rolling along precisely according to the timeline.
Before his eyes, Seoha was once again writing formulas on the whiteboard.
No one doubted anymore that those simple curves and a few formulas could resolve even fatal problems in an instant.
A trace of self-loathing briefly crossed Yeonu’s face. But he soon burst into laughter.
‘What was I even doubting? There’s no way a genius who proved the four color theorem wouldn’t be able to handle code logic.’
The sound of keyboards echoing through the clubroom grew lively once more.
* * *
“Nari, do we really have to use this UI?”
Yeonu spoke cautiously.
But Nari did not even look back, only moving her mouse.
On the screen floated a yellow duck icon.
It was a simple yet eye-catching design, drawn in rounded vector lines. Its eyes were expressed with just two dots, but when the cursor hovered over it, an animation played where it “blinked” awake.
Click.
When Yeonu pressed the reservation button, the duck flapped its wings.
Then came the sound effect.
Quaaack.
“Uh… Nari. I get that it’s cute, but this is a student council app.”
“This is good. Brand identity.”
Yeonu clutched his head.
“Then can’t we at least make the sound normal? This might look too frivolous.”
“No. Dedicated sound for celebrating reservations.”
Jungi stepped in to mediate between the two.
“I think it’s fine. What matters is that students like the app, right? If it’s cute, more kids will use it.”
Vice president Min Dohyeon also nodded.
“I think it’s good too. Just because it’s a student council app doesn’t mean it has to look like a government office.”
Excited by the positive reaction, Nari added one more animation.
Click.
When the ‘Laundry Complete’ notification was pressed, the yellow duck appeared beside a large laundry basket. Soon after, it picked up the laundry in its beak, moved its little legs in quick steps, and carried it over to the dryer.
“Now it’s perfect.”
Nari spun her chair around and declared confidently to everyone.
* * *
All the bugs had been caught, and the UI had settled into place.
Even all the test cases showed green lights.
Only a single item remained on the whiteboard’s checklist.
[Open Beta Service]
“Good. Let’s run it as a beta now.”
There were no problems with the internal alpha version.
By the book, they should have recruited volunteers and run a closed beta, but everyone in the room was filled with confidence.
All critical bugs had been fixed, and every test case had passed. The simulation data was also showing stable numbers.
Jungi said with a smile,
“The rumor’s already spread everywhere. Everyone’s probably looking forward to it. Let’s just run it right away.”
Yeonu nodded.
“I’ve prepared a backup plan too.”
Seoha still could not quite feel that the app he had designed was about to be released into the world.
Yeonu moved the mouse and uploaded the final build to the server.
Before he pressed the deploy button, not even the sound of breathing could be heard in the room.
“Seoha should do it. You’re the architect of this app.”
Yeonu withdrew his hand from above the button.
“Oh! Yielding to the designer? President, you’re a romantic!”
“I agree too!”
“Then I’ll do it.”
Seoha caught his breath for a moment, then took hold of the mouse.
Click.
The moment the deploy button was pressed, the status bar at the top of the screen slowly began to fill.
[Deploying build…]
Yeonu murmured quietly,
“To use an app of this level for school washing machine reservations… It’s excessive. Far too much.”
Everyone except Seoha felt the same way.
Perhaps because the student council had put out a notice in advance, the number of downloads shot up in an instant.
“Passed twenty.”
“Seventy.”
“Oh, over a hundred.”
Seoha calmly stared at the screen and checked the logs.
As expected, the traffic was being distributed stably. Only after confirming that every structure he had designed was functioning normally did Seoha let out a sigh of relief.
* * *
Anonymous Board,
[Did the student council really make this laundry app?]
-The quality is way too high. Did they outsource it to a professional company or something?
└The student council announced it. The credits also say Bit Forge & Yu Seoha.
└They say Lord Duck did all the algorithm design.
└So slow lol. The moment I saw the animation, I knew.
└True. Before I knew it, I’d accepted it like the school mascot lolol.
└I do laundry every day, and it’s so much more comfortable than before. You only have to choose one of two recommendations too, so there’s no need to agonize over it.
└That quack sound when the reservation succeeds lololol
└I wish failure went like “Quack?”
└The wing flapping is cute too lol
The students began calling the laundry app “Quacky.”
“Ah! I need to do laundry. Let me check Quacky for a sec.”
“How many credits do you have?”
As “quack, quack” sounds began to be heard all around the dormitory, laughter broke out among passing students.
One week after the app was deployed,
everything seemed to be going smoothly, but an unexpected problem erupted.
At some point, the operating rate of the washing machines began to drop.
The reason was simple.
Even though the washing machines were empty, a certain group was monopolizing the popular evening time slots.
When Seoha first saw the numbers, he could not understand the situation. If everyone acted rationally, it was something that could not happen.
Seoha immediately opened the server logs.
[19 : 00 - 21 : 00 Reservation successful → Building A, 3rd floor group]
[Multiple cancellation logs occurred → Same users repeatedly]
[Credit +1 earned]
A clear pattern emerged from the continuous records.
Someone would make a reservation, cancel it, and then another person from the same group would take that empty slot, over and over. After all, yielding a peak-time slot earned credits.
“…”
Seoha stopped his fingers.
The algorithm was perfect.
A reward for yielding, a penalty for being late. They were rules for fairness.
But to some students, those rules were being consumed like a game. To them, yielding was not consideration, but labor for mining points.
Yeonu came over and looked at the screen.
“They’re cycling it as a group. They cancel for each other and stack credits, then monopolize the golden time slots.”
“I defined cancellation as yielding in order to simplify the system. Mathematically, I thought there would be no difference.”
“In reality, that becomes farming.”
Seoha felt an inexplicable sadness.
His mathematical model had been built on the premise that all humans would act rationally for the sake of the common good.
But humans in reality deceived systems for private gain.
Tap, tap.
Watching Seoha revise the code with a crestfallen expression, Yeonu roughly scratched his own head.
“Don’t be too disappointed. There are far more people who follow the system.”
Seoha nodded while looking at the screen.
“Yes. But I learned that I must not leave any room for human desire to intervene in a system.”
Yeonu thought it would have been better if Seoha had realized such things a little later.
* * *
Inside the dark room,
the monitor light dimly illuminated Seoha’s face.
Seoha was watching an endless cascade of binary numbers.
An infinite procession of bits transformed into numbers and symbols inside Seoha’s mind.
The 0s and 1s falling across the black screen gathered and scattered again and again, then at some point became coordinates, graphs, and functions.
Numbers that would have seemed meaningless to others gained structure within Seoha’s consciousness. And they regained their original form.
Seoha looked at the screen and smiled faintly.
“You’re back, Ducky.”
The surging wave of bits shook the sleeping Ducky awake.