Various ideas for making money floated through Seoha’s mind.
But he soon shook his head.
‘Ah… This won’t work.’
None of them could avoid the constraints of his age.
Turning fourteen soon,
and unable to open a bank account—let alone register a business—without a guardian or representative’s name, he felt nothing but frustration.
Seoha looked at the dinner table set before him.
Pumpkin leaves, which he had loved since he was young—wrapping rice in them with a bit of doenjang was a heavenly taste even without any other side dishes.
Pumpkin leaves were a troublesome ingredient, steamed until moist and peeled one by one. Beside them, various labor-intensive namul side dishes were neatly arranged.
The bracken had been soaked overnight, boiled, then gently stir-fried in perilla oil. The bellflower roots must have been handled several times, changing the water repeatedly to draw out the bitterness so they could be crunchily chewed.
Seoha stopped using his chopsticks and looked at the two of them.
Calloused hands and worn clothes—
it was a home that could not be called well-off even as empty flattery. But strangely, Seoha had never once thought of himself as poor.
Books he wanted to read eventually reached his hands through his father, albeit after some time, and whenever he mentioned food he wanted, it would surely appear on the table a few days later.
Even in their straitened circumstances, his parents had always ensured he never felt poor.
Perhaps that was why.
Seoha could not bring himself to voice the words swirling in his mind right now.
‘If I say I need to earn money, would they smile and call me commendable?’
No.
They would certainly be heartbroken, thinking they had placed an unnecessary burden on their son, who should be studying hard, because of their own inadequacy.
‘It’s fine. I’ll try on my own.’
After all, it would be at least ten years before Seoeun went to university.
“Mom, this is really delicious.”
Her son, who usually ate in silence, had offered rare praise, and a smile quickly spread across Miyeong’s face.
“Right? It’s much tastier than dorm food, isn’t it?”
“Yes, there’s no comparison.”
Seoha took a large spoonful of rice and put it in his mouth.
The savory fragrance of doenjang spreading throughout his mouth, the sharp burst of finely chopped chili peppers. It was a familiar taste, but the home-cooked meal he was having after so long felt strangely warm.
* * *
Seoha had come to a large bookstore in Daejeon for the first time in a while.
“Wow, it’s really big.”
When he entered the computer section, books were packed tightly on the shelves—far more than in the psychology section.
Seoha had thought deeply the night before about what he should do to earn money.
Stock or crypto trading were the first options eliminated.
While he might succeed at short-term predictions using mathematical models, it was an area with fundamentally too much risk.
Next, he thought of app development.
But this didn’t move Seoha’s heart either. Applications were merely tools that filled existing demand.
Given sufficient time, Seoha wanted to earn money doing what he wanted to do.
‘Something that helps society!’
While making the laundry room app, he had realized one thing.
That humans were by no means purely rational beings.
Humans are selfish yet simultaneously social, and at times altruistic beyond explanation.
This complex contradictoriness of humans ignited a fire in Seoha’s heart.
Human movement is filled with exceptions and anomalies, like quanta.
But what if he could mathematically predict the choices of these imperfect humans? And if he could calculate even the ripples those choices would create?
In that it was a rule within uncertainty, it resembled the Riemann Hypothesis.
‘Individuals are uncertain, but groups possess patterns.’
Seoha wanted to turn human decision-making itself into an engine.
Various books were picked up in his hands.
[Reinforcement Learning and Decision-Making]
[The Practice of Game Theory]
[Uncertainty and Information Theory]
[Stochastic Optimization and Markov Processes]
[Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence]
[Behavioral Economics]
The empty suitcase was filled to the brim with books.
Seoha’s first goal was to model the school he currently attended.
The situations where hundreds of students competed or cooperated over laundry room resources, and the patterns of choice revealed within them, were already fascinating data to him.
Now he would expand the scope to dormitories, cafeterias, club activities, seat assignments in the library and self-study rooms, and even test preparation strategies and leisure activities.
Every large and small decision the students made daily could become excellent research material.
If he could mathematically model all this data, he could complete the skeleton of the decision-making engine he envisioned within the school.
And ultimately, expanding the scope, he might be able to predict the movements of a city or even a nation.
When people moved, what they consumed, what leisure they enjoyed.
Transportation systems and commercial districts, education and culture, even individual political choices could fall within the scope of modeling.
After all, society is the result of countless individual choices coming together.
If he could read those patterns with mathematics, he could reduce urban chaos, prevent resource waste, and design a fairer and more efficient society.
And the people living there might become a little happier too.
The thirteen-year-old Seoha truly believed so.
* * *
“Ready?”
At Seoha’s words, Seoeun crossed her arms and put on a serious expression.
Her lips stuck out like a duck’s bill, which was cute.
“Hmm… Okay!”
Seoha spread out the cards he had made himself. Each card had numbers, animals, fruits, and such drawn on them. It was the ‘Memory Challenge’ he had created.
The Memory Challenge he had first tried during the IMO had been incredibly fun.
Feeling sorry about only playing with his younger sister using numbers and shapes, Seoha had newly decorated this with picture cards that Seoeun would like.
When they first played this game, Seoeun had only selected and memorized the pictures she liked.
“Strawberry, plum, banana, kiwi…”
Watching her joyfully flip over the cards one by one, Seoha felt rewarded for making them. But the Memory Challenge was meant to develop Seoeun’s memorization skills, so Seoha decided to be a slightly stricter older brother.
“This time, you can’t just memorize the fruits. You have to remember all of them, got it?”
“Yeah! Got it!”
Wondering if the new game was fun, Seoeun looked down at the cards with sparkling eyes.
Ten cards were laid out on the floor.
“Start!”
As the cards were flipped, Seoeun’s pupils moved quickly, scanning the pictures.
After thirty seconds, Seoha flipped the cards back over.
“Alright! Now let’s see you get them right.”
As if she had been waiting, Seoeun pointed to the cards in order with her finger.
“Apple, rabbit, star, duck, banana, number 5, sun, strawberry, moon, teddy bear!”
Seoha flipped the cards over one by one according to his sister’s words, and exactly the pictures Seoeun had recited appeared.
“Kyaaah!”
Seoeun sprang up and danced a dance of joy.
Her short arms slicing through the air seemed to mimic a chick flapping its wings.
“I got them all right, all right.”
He had known it for a while, but Seoeun was more competitive than he thought.
“Good, this time fifteen cards!”
“Okay!”
At Seoha’s declaration, Seoeun nodded with a determined expression.
And as expected, she got all fifteen right.
Even Seoha was a bit surprised at this.
Picture cards were harder to memorize than playing cards.
Because with number cards, you could easily make rules. Establishing criteria like odd, even, color, or suit made it easy to sort them in your head.
But even though there were categories, it was extremely difficult to make patterns out of images with little connection to each other.
“Kyahaha.”
Seoeun spread her arms wide, playing airplane as she ran across the floor.
Seoha looked at Seoeun for a moment and then burst out laughing.
‘I was just trying to play with her, but this could turn out to be quite serious training.’
Good memorization skills were an enormous help to doctors, who had much to memorize.
Seoha decided to increase the number of cards each time he came home.
* * *
Whiiiiir.
The library printer ran without rest.
Beside it, a thick stack of papers was already piled up.
[A New Approach to the Zero Distribution of the Riemann Zeta Function]
[The Riemann Hypothesis and Quantum Chaos Theory]
Checking the titles as they came out, Seoha neatly organized them and put them in his bag.
Just today, twenty papers,
with roughly ten thousand papers remaining to be read.
Seoha had decided to review all meaningful research on the Riemann Hypothesis published to date. A monumental task that would take three years even if he read ten papers a day.
But Seoha didn’t find this painful at all.
Rather, it was an emotion close to excitement.
Following the traces left by thousands of mathematicians over hundreds of years was a joyful task for him.
Of course, this was possible thanks to his reading comprehension speed, which was incomparable to ordinary people.
No matter how complex the formulas and proofs before him, Seoha could understand them instantly.
“Ahem!”
At someone’s cough, Seoha turned around.
“Not enough with books, now it’s printouts?”
A young female librarian who looked to be around thirty was shaking her head.
“Sigh! It was hard work bringing books before, and now I’ll have to change the ink often too.”
Seoha smiled awkwardly and neatly arranged the printed papers. She was a librarian who always suffered much because of him.
“I’m sorry. They’re things I need.”
She, whom he had thought was angry for a moment, quickly changed her expression as if joking.
“Don’t worry! The principal specially requested it.”
“What?”
“You didn’t know? He said to unconditionally get whatever you need.”
“Ah! No wonder…”
Seoha nodded.
Thinking about it, the books he had requested from the library were by no means common.
Among them were even rare foreign books of which only a few copies existed in the country.
Since even books he had requested thinking ‘Surely this won’t be possible?’ had never once been refused, perhaps it was only natural that such arrangements were in place.
“Thank you very much.”
He bowed politely with a heart full of gratitude.
“Not at all! You’re a genius who brought honor to our school’s name, so it’s my honor. Keep working hard from now on.”
Seoha left the library in a good mood.
Slam.
As soon as he closed the dormitory door, he placed his heavy bag on the desk.
Click.
Rustle.
When he opened the bag, the stack of printed papers spilled onto the floor with a loud noise. The white papers covered with dense formulas and graphs filled the room floor.
Seoha turned on the desk lamp and picked up the top paper.
[The Riemann Zeta Function and the Distribution of Zeros Near the Critical Line]
It would be content dizzyingly difficult for an ordinary person, but to Seoha’s eyes, it looked like an interesting storybook.
‘Here they interpreted the zeros statistically. This part might be connected to the Gaussian distribution.’
Before he knew it, the page was finished. Seoha immediately picked up the next paper.
And whenever a thought came to mind, he opened his notebook and wrote it down in neat handwriting.
Only after closing the tenth paper did he set down his pen.
Sweat beaded on his forehead, but his eyes had become even clearer. The footsteps of mathematicians with different thoughts seemed to beckon him to follow quickly.
“Not yet.”
The Riemann Hypothesis is a marathon. One must not rashly decide to sprint. But Seoha was confident that he would not tire no matter how long the journey.
He looked at the portrait of Isaac Newton placed on the bookshelf.
“Sir, the world is still learning the formulas you created. Will my name also remain in a textbook someday?”
Newton seemed to smile as if telling him to try his best.
But that was enough for today.
Durkee was clamoring to enter the digital world quickly.
Now it was time to take the first step of the project he had named the ‘Synapse Engine.’