“Three P-sets by next week, a differential geometry quiz, an algebraic number theory report... I also need to organize the research meeting notes.”
As he had heard, MIT’s workload was beyond imagination.
Each P-set was so demanding that calling it three short papers would not be an exaggeration.
For an ordinary student, completing a single proof usually took fifteen hours. So it was only natural that the moment anyone sat down anywhere, they began studying.
MIT students often described their school life like this.
“Taking a drink from a fire hose.”
An indigestible amount of knowledge poured in, all in the blink of an eye.
You learned new concepts without even a moment to catch your breath, and if you failed to absorb them, you were swept away as you were.
Struggling to swallow even one more mouthful amid that oppressive current of learning—that was what it meant to endure at MIT.
Seoha skimmed through the schedule on his calendar and stuck on a Post-it.
[Wednesday afternoon - Pick up Seoeun and help her with homework]
[Saturday morning - Gardening with family]
There were still many papers related to the Riemann hypothesis left to read, and now that he had received shares, he could not neglect his work at Spectra Works either.
Seoha was using a day as though it were a week, drinking down every drop of water gushing from the fire hose.
* * *
Building 2, Room 203.
Ellie came rushing into the lecture hall in a fluster and barely managed to take her seat right before the bell signaling the start of class rang.
Where had the beautiful girl from the beginning of the semester gone?
A neat blouse, manicured nails, and hair that always shone.
Until now, she had never once given up on grooming herself in front of the mirror.
But MIT had forced Ellie to choose between dressing up and one hour of sleep.
In order to survive, she had to sleep even a little.
“Welcome.”
Jason, hugging his backpack as though it were precious, greeted her.
Looking at his bloodshot eyes and greasy hair, Ellie praised herself for having somehow managed to shower despite having no time.
“Hello.”
Seoha looked at Ellie and Jason with eyes full of questions.
No matter if they were in the same department, too many of their classes overlapped. Statistically, it was impossible.
“Hi.”
“We meet again.”
Of course, this was not a coincidence.
Ellie, who felt competitive toward Seoha, had deliberately signed up for the same classes as him, and Jason had followed Ellie around.
Pretending she knew nothing, she looked into a mirror and tidied her disheveled hair.
Class began.
Professor Whitman slowly walked to the center of the lecture hall.
The only thing he carried was a single piece of chalk.
“Today, let us talk about what a vector field is.
People often describe a vector field as ‘the direction in which force acts’ or ‘the flow of energy,’ but I would like to explain it a little differently.”
Whitman placed a small dot on the board and drew an arrow beside it.
“I think of a vector field as a visualization of ‘where space is trying to move.’ Just as we draw arrows to show the direction air moves when the wind blows.”
He continued drawing one figure after another on the board.
“When these arrows gather, they form a single field. We mathematicians are people who read the patterns of that field and discover the laws of change.”
As the lecture combined calculus, analysis, and linear algebra, the students clutched at their heads.
“Now, let us apply divergence and curl to this vector field.
Each of these tells us ‘how much space spreads out’ or ‘how much it twists.’”
He moved his hand without mercy, writing down symbols.
The students were half out of their minds.
Jason grumbled in a small voice.
“I don’t know what space twisting is supposed to mean mathematically.”
Ellie sympathized intensely.
No matter how smart they were, for students who had just graduated high school, today’s class was practically torture.
‘Just write it down first.’
She could write it down and figure out what it meant later.
After studying for a few hours, she would probably be able to roughly understand what the professor had been talking about in class.
Everyone except Seoha was thinking the same thing.
Seoha only occasionally wrote down necessary information in his notebook and mostly stared at the board.
The arrows were moving as if alive.
To Seoha’s eyes, the vectors drawn on the board flowed like wind.
When one arrow cut through space and passed by, another arrow nearby reacted.
Various energies intertwined and flowed with one another. The flow of these waves was so fascinating that Seoha did not even realize the professor had spoken to him.
“Mr. Seoha!”
“...Yes?”
Only then did Seoha come to his senses and stand up.
“What did you see on the board?”
Seoha hesitated for a moment before answering honestly.
“Life.”
“Oh? Please explain in detail.”
“At first, I thought it was simply the flow of energy. But as each vector influenced the others, I saw the energy moving like a single living organism.”
The classroom fell silent.
‘Life?’
‘Organism?’
What was he talking about?
The students did not understand Seoha’s words.
Whitman put down the chalk.
Then, after looking at Seoha for a moment, he smiled kindly.
“Mathematics is often misunderstood as an isolated language, but in truth, every formula and symbol in mathematics presupposes interaction.
One vector causes another vector to move, and that movement gives rise to another change. This could be called the life of this world, or perhaps will itself.”
‘Of course, not just anyone can see that.’
Not wanting to discourage the students, he swallowed the latter sentence inwardly.
Whitman paused for a moment before continuing.
“I will think about what MIT can do for you, Mr. Seoha.
So do not stop learning. For you to refuse to grow would be akin to a sin. Special talent comes with responsibility befitting it.”
Seoha quietly lowered his head.
“I will keep that in mind.”
This university forced its students to grow.
Water rose from the floor every day.
So if they did not grow by the same amount, before long, they would no longer be able to breathe.
But for Seoha, this was the optimal environment.
Everything he learned here was neither heavy nor difficult for him.
Seoha was absorbing this vast wave of knowledge with his entire body. And those things were incorporated into the map of knowledge inside Seoha’s mind, recombining like immense genetic information.
Here, Seoha was growing with each passing day.
Whitman’s lecture continued.
Before long, class was nearing its end.
“This semester’s team project will be ‘dynamic system modeling’ based on real data.”
At the professor’s words, the students began to murmur.
“The topic is free, but you must use real data.”
Whitman began writing keywords on the board.
[Urban traffic flow prediction]
[Modeling human body temperature regulation]
[Population diffusion simulation]
After writing down around ten topics, Whitman put down the chalk.
“You must be able to explain the design, assumptions, and analysis process of your model. Teams should be three to five people, and you may choose your members freely.
That will be all for today.”
As soon as the professor left, everyone looked at Seoha.
The super rookie drawing attention not only from MIT but from the global mathematics community.
Everyone thought the same thing.
‘If I team up with him, is an A guaranteed?’
Someone sprang up from their seat.
“Seoha! Want to join our team?”
Following that, three or four people rushed in almost at the same time.
“No, team up with me! I’ll seriously work hard!”
“I’m good at organizing data! My programming is top-notch too.”
“Statistics and probability are my specialties. Before coming to MIT, I analyzed paper data in RStudio.”
The students raised their voices one after another.
As students he had never even spoken to crowded around him, Seoha was flustered and did not know what to do.
Step, step.
At that moment, Ellie grabbed her bag and strode straight toward the center. In an instant, she pushed her way through the crowd, went in, and snatched Seoha by the wrist.
“Go find someone else! He already has plans, okay?”
The students looked as though they were asking if Ellie’s words were true.
Before he knew it, Seoha nodded.
“We were one step late.”
“Not bad, Ellie.”
“Next time, make sure you do it with us.”
The students withdrew with faces full of regret.
A bench outside the building.
Click.
“Drink.”
Ellie bought orange juice from the vending machine and handed it to Seoha.
“Thank you.”
“You don’t have to misunderstand. It’s not like I did that because I wanted to work with you.”
“Pardon?”
“It’s annoying how everyone’s so calculating. Just thinking about freeloading. I hate that kind of thing.”
Free-riding was one of the things Ellie despised most.
‘I’ve been on the receiving end of it a lot, too.’
“I hate that kind of thing a ton too!”
Jason, who had come up at some point, inserted himself into their conversation.
“By the way, Eleanor...”
“Call me Ellie.”
“Yes. Ellie, what topic did you want to do? You too, Jason.”
“Me? Hmm... Traffic flow prediction is the most interesting.”
Ellie thought for a moment before answering.
“Really?”
Seoha’s eyes sparkled.
“Then would you like to work with me?”
Seoha owed a debt to traffic lights.
Back then, he had been too young to fully grasp the signal system, but he felt that now, he could.
“Yeah? Fine by me. I’ll definitely do my share, so don’t worry.”
Ellie shrugged.
“I-I like cars a lot too! Let’s do it together!”
In an instant, a three-person party was formed.
But before long, the two of them would come to regret the decision they made that day.
* * *
“Achoo!”
It was September, but the weather had already begun to grow chilly.
Jason, who had been at the intersection since dawn, recorded the time each time the signal changed.
“Don’t you think Boston is seriously insane?”
It might be a romantic city to travelers, but to locals, the traffic here was a nightmare itself.
“Why the hell are the roads so tangled?”
Jason groaned as he checked the map app.
“It’s because Boston is the only city in America that grew without a plan.”
Ellie, who had always gotten perfect scores in American history, explained as she turned up her coat collar.
“It expanded based on seventeenth-century carriage roads, so the signal system is patched together too... Well, it’s a total mess.”
Roads where roundabouts and one-way streets were mixed together, and on top of that, the traffic light rules differed from intersection to intersection.
In some places, left turns came first; in others, straight and left-turn signals came on at the same time.
Even on the same street, the patterns were completely different in the morning and afternoon.
The three of them had requested data from the Boston Transportation Department, but they were rejected for security reasons.
What they were able to receive came down to four things.
Traffic volume, average speed, congestion index, and documents related to the signal optimization project the city was still carrying out.
Seoha showed interest in the last of these documents.
It was a large-scale project with a budget of over two hundred million dollars allocated to it, but it had yet to produce visible results.
“A signal optimization project. Isn’t that so cool?”
The two of them shook their heads firmly.
“No.”
“Not at all!”
“If we use this as our topic, I think a great paper will come out of it. Optimizing one of the world’s worst traffic cities makes my heart race.”
“Not mine.”
“Mine either.”
But they had no choice but to be swept up by Seoha’s passion.
In the first place, the team had been formed around him.
“I don’t have the ability to fix this megacity’s signal system!”
Jason cried out in despair.
“No one expects that from you. Let’s just record things properly.”
Seoha tried to step forward himself, but Ellie refused.
“You should use your head. Leave the physical work to us.”
Seoha looked strangely sullen.
‘What am I doing right now?’
Ellie sank into thought.
Saying they would overhaul Boston’s traffic signals for a school assignment was, no matter how one looked at it, clearly insane.
It was something even the Boston Transportation Department, where the world’s top experts must be gathered, had failed to accomplish.
Even so, she had accepted this project.
‘Why?’
Thinking about it deeply, she seemed to know the reason.
Ellie realized that she was expecting something from Seoha.