As soon as he stepped out of the building, a fierce wind blew in.
Seoha closed his eyes for a moment. Letting himself feel the river breeze, he cooled his heated head.
As he walked along the long path, he saw a wall built of stone. The traces of time remained there in full.
Since the school had been founded over 150 years ago, this building might have been around for about that long as well.
When he pushed open the door, a familiar air greeted him.
The smell of chalk, rubber erasers, old wooden floors, and the espresso the students must have drunk to wake themselves up permeated the entire space.
Suuup—
Seoha took a deep breath.
“Mmm—the smell of mathematics!”
An air that was somehow chilly and demanded concentration.
This was Building 2, the Mathematics Department, where Seoha would be spending a great deal of time from now on.
Unlike the corridors of other departments, the Mathematics Department building did not have exhibits on display.
Instead, the entire space was covered with problems left behind by professors and students.
“Wow! This place is on another level.”
Blackboards stretched endlessly down the corridor, on a completely different scale from what he had seen in the Physics Department.
‘Applied mathematics?’
Amid the entangled numbers and symbols, a familiar computational theory caught his eye.
There were also questions on abstract algebra and quantum information theory.
‘Three people... no, four?’
Many proofs were being completed after passing through several hands.
Sometimes there was even idle chatter written there.
[The guy who fixed my proof yesterday, you were wrong in the middle! Reflect on yourself.]
[Even the Harvard kids would all run away if they saw this, right?]
└Our math department is kind of insane lol
[Did you hear a super rookie is coming to our department soon?]
└You mean S.H. Yoo? I saw the paper on the four color theorem too. It was seriously amazing.
└As an upperclassman, I should show some dignity, but I’m not confident. Can someone do it for me?
└No need. Once they see the amount and difficulty of the assignments, even an amazing rookie will become humble.
└I want to talk to them already. I’m curious whether there’s been any further progress on the Riemann hypothesis.
Around the middle, he saw several geometric models displayed inside transparent glass cases.
A Klein bottle, a Möbius strip, a Riemann surface, a torus structure. Surfaces that continued endlessly, intersected, and came to completion. All of them were works of art created in the language of geometry.
When he reached the end of the corridor, a phrase engraved in metal type came into view.
‘That’s what Galileo said.’
[Mathematics is the language in which God created the universe.]
From Pythagoras to the present day, mathematics was the oldest language humanity had built up in order to understand the world.
This language, which began in ancient times with figures drawn in the sand, now recorded the motions of stars and explained even the structure of the universe and the flow of time.
‘I should hurry.’
Seoha shook his head and brushed away his thoughts.
All the way to the far corner, then around the bend and to the very end again. His destination was in the most secluded corner of the Mathematics Department building.
When he touched the monitor in front of the door, an animation played.
Along with eerie music, three masked hackers appeared.
—You’ve finally come, 001! The truth is, this soup needs a secret ingredient! Would you ask me what that is?
Seoha thought this hacker definitely had a talent for acting.
“What is it?”
—It’s you!
Ba-ba-ba-ba-bam—
[Final Stage]
—Will you rescue Team The Beaver?
[Yes / No]
Seoha burst into laughter and was about to press Yes, but stopped his hand.
“If I clear this place, what happens to the other students?”
—Unfortunately, the game ends. Still, they probably won’t complain. At the very least, it should’ve been more fun than an ordinary orientation.
At the suspicious man’s words, Seoha lowered his hand.
“Then could we wait a little? There are probably a lot of people coming here right now, and it feels like a waste for only me to see the ending of such a well-made game.”
Silence flowed for a while.
—Kkh! You understand. The truth is, we prepared for more than a month for today.
“I thought it was too elaborate for a simple prank. There must have been a good reason for it.”
The suspicious man nodded.
—But are you sure? That’s the same as giving up your right as first place.
“It doesn’t matter. If I’m qualified, I should be able to solve the last problem first anyway. You all worked this hard to make this game, so you’d want more people to enjoy it too.”
—You’re a good kid. Fine! Then let’s wait exactly one hour. Any more than that and we’ll decline.
“Sounds good!”
Once both sides agreed, the timer began to run.
[00 : 59 : 32]
* * *
Entropy took off her hood and collapsed into a chair.
Perhaps because it was hot, her forehead was drenched in sweat.
“I like that kid!”
She pointed at the screen on the monitor.
Seoha seemed to have sat down to rest for a moment, but before long he had gotten up and was solving the problems written in the corridor.
“He definitely doesn’t seem like he’ll have any issues with teamwork.”
“His calculation speed is no joke, though? Are all math department students like that?”
Entropy shook her head.
“As if. He really is impressive.”
Tick, tick.
Time passed.
[00 : 08 : 20]
“One person’s here now.”
Cyber Fox zoomed in on the monitor.
Someone appeared at the end of the corridor on the screen. Judging by the silhouette, it was a woman.
[00 : 03 : 12]
And when the time was almost up, a male student wearing a black backpack came running over, panting for breath.
* * *
“Thank goodness! I thought I was definitely late.”
Backpack caught his breath in relief as he looked at the roughly three minutes remaining.
Seoha smiled and held out his hand.
“Welcome. It would’ve been a shame to finish this wonderful game by myself.”
Backpack nodded vigorously and took Seoha’s hand. During the journey here, he had felt as if he had become a character in a game.
“You’re 001, right? Then you’re 002?”
He glanced subtly at Ellie as he spoke to her.
“Yeah.”
Ellie’s response was cold.
But he didn’t give up and tried to break the ice.
“What schools did you guys turn down to come here? I got into Stanford and Duke too...”
The hottest topic among freshmen was still college admissions.
“I only applied to Harvard and MIT. Of course, I got into both... What about you?”
Ellie seemed curious as well and looked at Seoha as she asked.
Five admission letters flashed through Seoha’s mind.
“Uh... besides here, I got offers from Caltech, Harvard, Stanford, and Princeton.”
Both of them stared at Seoha in surprise.
“Wow! You got into basically every prestigious university in America.”
“Seriously. At this level, shouldn’t you be on the news?”
His choice of the word “offer” bothered them slightly, but the two figured it might be because Seoha was a foreigner.
[00 : 00 : 00]
When the timer hit zero, the monitor turned on.
—Time’s up! Heroes, are you ready to challenge us?
“Of course. I’ve been waiting forever.”
“Is today the day I replace my graphics card?”
Watching the two rejoice, Seoha smiled with a satisfied expression.
“Then I’ll press it.”
Seoha stepped forward and touched the screen.
[Final Stage]
—Will you rescue Team The Beaver?
When he pressed the “Yes” button, majestic opera music flowed out.
‘They changed the production again in the meantime.’
Ziiing—
The automatic door opened.
The three hesitated briefly before stepping inside.
* * *
“Is the solution boiling?”
Root asked as he pushed his lab goggles up onto his forehead.
“Ninety-three degrees. It’s ready. The heater’s heating performance is garbage.”
The stage had been set up with laboratory equipment, and the hackers had reinterpreted a witch’s cauldron in their own way.
“They’re coming!”
Ziiing—
The three entered at the same time and were horrified when they saw the prepared stage.
A large beaver doll hung from the ceiling, and below it, a suspicious solution was boiling in a giant beaker.
“What the hell is this!”
“Wow!”
“Th-the beaver!”
The hackers were satisfied with their reactions.
—The final problem is on the screen. Every time you receive a hint, one rope will fall. There are up to five hints total. Any more than that and it’s game over!
—We have high expectations. We really did prepare a graphics card too, so take it if you can!
Text appeared on the monitor.
[We created a certain “source function.” However, all that remains now is the output data produced by that function.
Your mission is to restore the function by looking only at the results.]
Soon after, three channel windows lit up side by side.
The raw output values, rate-of-change approximations, and cumulative quantities appeared in order.
—Start!
As expected, all three of them looked bewildered.
[00 : 59 : 59]
The timer began to run. If they wanted to solve it within the time limit, they would have to judge carefully when to use the hints.
Click—
Entropy turned off the microphone.
“We did it your way, but isn’t this problem a bit much?”
Cipher Fox stared at the monitor with his arms crossed.
“No. Kids who come to this school are generally all good at math. But that’s not the ability we need for our project.
We need someone who can extract data and structure it. Someone who can mathematically systematize things even if we throw random stuff at them.”
At Entropy’s words, Root flared up.
“Does such a convenient talent even exist?”
“If not, then they’re a dud anyway. I’ll just do it myself.”
“Ah! That grind?”
She was in the middle of manually modifying formulas one by one to find a function that matched the data conditions.
“Shut up!”
“Both of you, be quiet. Entropy, in your opinion, how far do they have to get to pass?”
Cipher Fox asked while watching the screen.
“At the very least, to the level where they can automate what I was doing by hand. If they use about three hints, they’ll be usable enough.”
“What about one or two?”
At Root’s question, Entropy shrugged.
“One hint means they’re genuinely gifted. They need good instincts.
Those kinds of people can classify by feel whether a function is exponential, logarithmic, or a wave whose amplitude is decaying. Our professor called it functional intuition.”
“Is that mathematically possible?”
“Of course. Kids who are good at instruments can play a song even if they don’t know it, as long as you give them the sheet music, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Then what if you tell them to listen to a song and write the sheet music? Not just the melody, but every component in that piece.”
“Obviously they couldn’t.”
“In mathematics, there are humans who can do that. Maybe there are some in music too, if you look hard enough.”
Entropy looked at the monitor.
Ten minutes had passed. This was about when she expected them to give up and ask for a hint.
001 suddenly stood up.
Then he began typing on the keyboard.
“Huh?”
“What’s he doing? We haven’t given them a single hint yet!”
“U-um? It should be impossible to know the answer in the current state.”
Tap, tap.
“He’s probably just trying something.”
“A random guess?”
But when he finished entering his answer, a message they had thought they would absolutely never hear flowed from the speaker.
—Congratulations!
The lights installed on the ceiling changed in an instant.
The entire gloomy laboratory was instantly dyed in gold.
The beaver doll hanging from the ceiling suddenly wagged its tail.
A grand fanfare burst from the speakers.
Bbam-bba-bam-bba-ra-bam!
[Thank you for saving me. The beaver will never forget this kindness.]
The clear message appeared.
“Uh...?”
“What on earth just happened?”
Root and Cipher Fox stared blankly at the monitor.
‘With only that little information? That makes no sense... Wait, could it be...’
Entropy, having come back to her senses, stared intently at Seoha’s face.
The two who had been solving the problem with him also looked shocked.
As far as she knew, there was only one freshman this year who could show this kind of performance.
Someone so famous that she had not expected him to participate in the orientation.
“Don’t tell me... Yu Seoha?”