“Seoha! Didn’t I tell you? Once you learn the rabona kick and stepovers, you’ll never be outclassed anywhere!”
Gibeom’s shout rang across the field.
At sunset, three men were kicking a ball around on the soccer field.
Seoha had received a message from Taejin telling him there was something important, so he had to come to school. He just hadn’t known it would be soccer.
“What’s the life and soul of a stepover?”
At Gibeom’s question, Seoha gave the answer that had been drilled into him.
“L-looking cool?”
“Exactly! It’s got to have style. Even if your opponent doesn’t fall for it, if the people watching are moved, then it’s a success.”
Taejin cut in, looking dumbfounded.
“Hey! That’s not quite right, is it?”
“No, I’m telling you I’m right. Seoha’s got long arms and legs, so if he does a few tricks, he’ll become a star right away. You make a strong impact from the start.”
Seoha asked uneasily.
“What if I lose the match doing that?”
Gibeom walked over to Seoha and placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Listen carefully, Seoha. You may like soccer, but you’re not going to play in a pro league, right?”
“Right.”
“Then this is the way. Who remembers wins and losses in neighborhood soccer?
But if you properly show them something like a stepover, the kids will talk about it for a week.
Especially the girls. They’ll go crazy for it. If you look cool, then you’ve won regardless of the score.”
There was a strange persuasiveness to Gibeom’s words. Seoha nodded with a serious expression.
“With the rabona, arm movement is important. At the moment of impact, you naturally spread your arms and keep your balance.”
Under the guidance of the two, Seoha tried the rabona kick again and again.
The ball mostly flew in strange directions, and Seoha often lost his balance and rolled across the grass.
After practicing for quite a while, his form gradually began to take shape.
“That’s it! That was perfect.”
“Your form’s definitely there.”
The two of them had been worried that Seoha, who had been terribly shy at the beginning of the semester, might not be able to adjust in America.
So what they had come up with was a soccer skill that would make Seoha an insider in one fell swoop.
Thwack—
After dozens of attempts, a properly struck rabona kick was sucked into the goal.
“I did it!”
“Good job!”
“Yes!”
The three of them hugged one another in delight.
No one knew whether it would actually be effective, but one thing was certain: it had been fun.
* * *
“Was there an accident or something?”
Uhyeon muttered under his breath as he picked up his phone and checked the time.
The road, which would normally have been quiet, was strangely congested today.
He glanced at the gift box he had placed on the passenger seat, then stepped on the accelerator as soon as the traffic light changed.
Vrooom—
A few days earlier, Uhyeon had received a call from Seoha.
—Teacher, you’ll come to my graduation ceremony, right?
After hanging up, Uhyeon checked his face in the mirror.
“Is it because I slept well? My skin looks nice and smooth.”
The fluorescent lights of the laboratory that rose in his mind every night,
Elijah Cronen’s cold gaze as he reviewed his paper, and himself, so tense he could barely breathe—he was there.
“This place isn’t normal. You should run away as soon as you can too.”
The sight of his colleagues shaking their heads as they packed their things.
“I thought I would be different.”
But half a year later, in exactly the same state as them, Uhyeon left the laboratory.
He had thought that if he succeeded and made a lot of money, he would be able to forget.
His lectures went well.
Uhyeon was a born actor, and the students responded passionately to his performance.
“Teacher! After taking your class, my math level went up by three grades.”
“I got accepted into university. I’ll serve you as my benefactor, sir!”
“My child says they were able to get a first-grade score thanks to you. Thank you so much.”
There was fulfillment too.
He could explain school-level math with his eyes closed, but from beginning to end, Uhyeon structured his lectures like writing a script, thinking of himself as an actor standing on a stage.
Not only the board work, but even the timing of his nagging and the moment he threw in a joke—everything in the class was calculated.
At some point, he began to be called a “top-ranked instructor.”
Students and parents revered him like a god, and even broadcasters often contacted him.
Every time he saw his own face on a huge outdoor billboard, Uhyeon felt embarrassed.
A luxury apartment, an expensive sports car, the numbers piling up in his bank account.
But the nightmares still did not disappear.
“Damn you, Elijah Cronen!”
Cursing him changed nothing.
The reason was simple.
Because the person Uhyeon truly hated was himself.
Then he met one boy.
A child who was researching the four color theorem with crayons and colored paper.
That day, Uhyeon came to understand how Elijah Cronen must have felt.
Compared to Seoha, it became clear.
He probably could not find any value in people like them beyond being shuttles for copier paper.
Life was inherently unreasonable. Especially when it came to talent.
But what made him angriest was the fact that such talent might be wasted meaninglessly.
[Daejeon 100 km]
‘Most people called geniuses aren’t normal.’
Why had Newton discovered calculus and then hidden it away for thirty years?
He could roughly guess. The world inside their heads was so important that they probably had no interest in real-world problems.
“I know that I’ve proven this perfectly. So wouldn’t it be fine to let those people verify it on their own?”
Seoha had said something similar too.
What would have happened if, that day, Seoha had not been discovered by everyone?
After finishing his proof, Seoha would have tidied up his room neatly and returned to everyday life as if nothing had happened.
Terrifyingly arrogant, and beautifully pure.
In the late seventeenth century, the European scientific community had a great unsolved problem.
Kepler had discovered the laws of planetary motion, but no one could explain why they worked.
Edmond Halley struggled for years to solve this problem.
He discussed it with famous mathematicians such as Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke, but no one knew the principle behind it.
Then, in the summer of 1684, Halley went to see Isaac Newton, who was a professor at Cambridge.
“If the farther a planet is from the sun, the weaker the force becomes by the square of the distance, what kind of orbit would that planet follow?”
To the problem that had been his lifelong desire, Newton answered calmly.
“An ellipse.”
Halley was astonished by Newton, who spoke of an unsolved problem that no one had been able to prove as if it were only natural.
“No, how on earth do you know that?”
“I calculated it a long time ago.”
Newton rummaged through his bookshelf and found a paper he had written years earlier.
He had solved it and proved it, but had not published it. Halley was appalled by his eccentricity.
“Haa… What other papers have you not published?”
Holding Newton’s differential equations in his hand, Halley asked with an angry expression.
“Mm… A few theorems on optics and harmonic motion, I suppose?”
Newton’s expression was as if he were saying, “There are a few potatoes and onions left in the kitchen.”
At that moment, Halley must surely have arrived at the same realization as he had.
‘Ah! This man must not be left alone.’
From that day on, Halley stayed by Newton’s side.
When Newton sighed, Halley brewed tea beside him. When Newton threw manuscripts onto the floor, Halley gathered them, read through them, and organized them through the night.
It was even Halley who ran around with the proofs of the paper, fighting with the printing house.
And that was not even all.
“You say there’s no money for publication?”
Newton was indifferent, and the Royal Society, which was responsible for scientific papers, was suffering financial difficulties.
The next day, Halley went to the printing house and paid the deposit out of his own pocket.
Because Newton had let go of everything, Halley took charge of it all.
To save on the budget, he proofread the text himself, and he tracked down craftsmen to print calculus notation that had never existed before.
The book that emerged from that was the famous Principia, and in 1687, humanity was able to clearly understand the principles by which the universe operated for the first time.
Even the historic sentence that an apple falling from a tree and the moon floating in the sky moved according to the same law would not have come into the world without him.
“In the end, someone has to clean up after geniuses. Those worldly-ignorant little naked savages.”
Uhyeon muttered softly.
Nowhere in the Principia could Halley’s name be found.
But he probably did not regret it.
Screech—
The car came to a stop in the school parking lot.
[Class ■■ Yu Seoha Special Graduation Ceremony]
A placard was fluttering.
Uhyeon got out of the car and slowly made his way toward the auditorium where the ceremony was being held.
“Did you see Senior Yu Seoha?”
“I even made eye contact with him. He really was our school senior.”
“So we’re alumni too, right?”
“Of course. That’s why I came all the way to the provinces.”
The inside of the auditorium was already full of excitement.
Students gathered in twos and threes, eagerly sharing stories about the famous senior they had only heard rumors about.
The legendary seminar room that was still sealed tight,
the anecdote that when he didn’t like a laundry app, he learned Python in a single day and made one himself—by now, it had spread so widely that there was hardly anyone who didn’t know it.
The god of mathematics who had already conquered the IMO in elementary school,
the star of the global mathematical community who newly proved the four color theorem and had now even provided a decisive hint regarding the Riemann hypothesis.
The new students looked at Seoha with eyes full of admiration.
Tap, tap—
The principal tapped the microphone twice and looked around.
—Everyone, please take your seats.
The assembly hall settled down in an instant.
—Today, we are holding a special graduation ceremony for Yu Seoha, the pride of our school and the brightest young mathematician of this era produced by the Republic of Korea.
—Yu Seoha, already in his elementary school days… and thereafter, in the global mathematical community…
And the starting point of all those achievements was right here, our school, where all of you will continue to study together!
At the principal’s overly passionate oration, Seoha’s face turned red.
Waaaah!
Clap, clap, clap!
The atmosphere grew heated with cheers and applause erupting from all around.
—Today, we have gathered here to celebrate this moment as he goes out into the world. Please welcome Yu Seoha with a big round of applause.
Clap, clap, clap!
Seoha went up to the stage with an embarrassed expression.
Seoha’s family, seated in the front row, waved their hands and smiled brightly.
Miyeong wiped the corners of her eyes with her fingertips, and Cheolho cleared his throat for no reason and straightened his posture.
Seoeun, wearing a bright yellow duck hat, also squealed with joy.
Seeing their happy faces, the corners of Uhyeon’s mouth lifted.
The short ceremony ended, and all the events came to a close.
Uhyeon approached Seoha.
“It’s a gift.”
Uhyeon held out a small box to Seoha.
“You didn’t have to give me anything… Thank you.”
“I’m not just giving it to you for nothing.”
“Yes?”
“It’s a fountain pen. An expensive one, so only use it on special days. You’ll need to sign things when you publish papers of the century, won’t you?”
“I’ll be sure to do that.”
Seoha bowed politely.
Uhyeon no longer had nightmares.
Just as Halley had left no trace of himself in the Principia, he would be the same.
But perhaps someone might remember him as the person who had gifted the fountain pen that a great mathematician used all his life.
After the graduation ceremony, on the anonymous board,
[Duck Lord, thank you for being with us!]
—It was an honor to attend the same school as you. Can I brag later that we were friends?
You have to crush everyone at MIT too, okay? Otherwise, it’ll make us look way too weak.
Goodbye, Duck Lord! I’ll remember you for the rest of my life.
└So he’s really leaving in the end. Who’s going to be number one now?
└That’s pretty meaningless lol. With the tiger gone from the cave, what’s the point of ants fighting among themselves to be first?
└Who’s going to solve the killer problems now?ㅠㅠ
└Quack-Quack got updated. The duck got even cuter lol
└It’ll feel weird if he ends up in a textbook later.
└Did you all get his autograph in advance? My dad bound his paper for me, so I got it signed there lol
└I got mine signed on Nature lol
└You too? Me too lol Even if it gets expensive later, I’m never selling it.
└I hope attending the same school as Seoha doesn’t become my life’s greatest achievement.
└Goodbye, Duck Lord! We’ll work hard too, so we won’t be embarrassing when we introduce ourselves later. Thanks for everything.
[See you again, Senior Seoha!]
[Duck Lord, let’s definitely meet again someday]
[Yu Seoha! You’d better not forget us, okay?]
Countless posts covered the anonymous board.
“Seoha, let’s go.”
The whole family got into the car.
The trunk was filled with gifts from his friends.
Seoha opened the intranet.
And with wistful eyes, he looked back.