Late afternoon, Whitman’s office.
Alan gazed at the books lining the shelves, as if lost in memory. On the table, an old clock ticked away, marking the passage of time.
Clack.
“Drink.”
Whitman set down two teacups and sat on the sofa.
“Thank you.”
Alan smiled as he lifted his cup.
Sip.
“I missed this coffee, strong as poison. Back then, I drank it to survive.”
“It’s been like that since I was an undergraduate. There are many things here that remain the same no matter how much time passes.”
“I’ve changed a lot. I used to boast so loudly that I would change the world, but these days I don’t even know what I’m doing with my life.”
Whitman looked at Alan as if reproaching him.
“It is always humans who change. Truth remains where it has always been.”
Silence settled between them.
In the end, unable to bear it, Alan was the first to bring up another subject.
“He was an extraordinary student.”
In that instant, Whitman’s face, which had been stern from beginning to end, brightened.
“He is the reason I cannot retire.”
He took a sip of coffee and continued.
“When I was young, my teacher was Professor Noam Keller.”
“Professor Keller, who worked with Richard Feynman?”
He, too, had heard the name of that famous figure in the world of mathematics.
“Yes. He was the one who provided the mathematical foundation for Feynman’s theories when Feynman was organizing quantum electrodynamics.
When I was a graduate student, Professor Keller would always repeat the same words.”
“What were they?”
“Mathematics is the language of endless succession.”
Alan nodded.
“I see. From Pythagoras to Euclid, to Euler...
Perhaps mathematicians live in a world of their own, beyond nationality. Sharing a language all their own.”
Perhaps they were the true members of a secret society that transcended not only race and nationality, but even the era in which they lived.
Whitman laughed cheerfully.
“Exactly.
And yet, in the history of this kingdom, every once in a very long while—say, one person every few centuries—there are those born who advance mathematics explosively.”
Before he knew it, Alan was absorbed in Whitman’s story.
“Who would that be?”
“As Pythagoras explained the world through numbers, Newton interpreted the universe through calculus. Gauss created the language of curved surfaces, and Gödel proved the limits of human reason through formulas.
What do you think they all had in common?”
Mathematicians from entirely different eras.
There could only be one thing they had in common.
“That they were monstrous geniuses?”
At Alan’s answer, Whitman shook his head.
“They did not establish new axioms. They were the first to see the rules of the language the world had already been using.”
“Ah...”
He, too, had once wondered.
How on earth could geniuses be faster than the world? They always grasped the truth before others could reach it.
“I am privately guessing that Seoha may possess the same kind of sense as they did. A darling of mathematics, one might say. Or, in your words, it would be fair to call him the legitimate heir of our world.
That is why I cannot retire yet. I must pass on everything I have. Just as my teacher did for me.”
Alan lowered his head.
The fact that he, too, had once been within the same boundary as them, but was now an outsider, made him feel lonely.
“I envy them. I wanted to live like that, too.”
To Alan, the lives of those who left the secular world behind and freely pursued truth seemed dazzling beyond measure.
“What are you talking about?”
“Pardon?”
“Are you not also a respectable resident of this world?”
Alan gave a hearty laugh.
“Will you let a civil servant like me in as well? These days, I look at budget proposals more than equations. I think I’ve grown too old to chase ideals.”
“Are you saying that in front of me?”
“Ah... no. That was a slip of the tongue.”
Whitman looked at Alan with deep, steady eyes. They were the very same eyes with which he had guided him during graduate school.
“Listen. Mathematicians must always be beings who pursue ideals until the very end.”
“Why is that?”
At Alan’s question, Whitman answered in a firm tone.
“Because if they do not, no one in this world will pursue truth. Do you truly wish to live in such a world?”
In his youth, he had believed that truth would move the world. Even now, that belief had not changed, but...
“I think I did well to come here today. Thanks to you, I know the direction I must take.”
“I am glad I could help.”
“May I take a copy of that paper with me?”
“There is no need. I just registered it in the archive, so it should be released on the system by tomorrow.”
“Thank you. Then I will see you again next time.”
When he left the building, the sunset was already staining the walls of the campus buildings red.
Alan’s footsteps came to a halt.
‘I should still thank him before I go.’
Alan went to the cafeteria where the students were said to have gathered after the presentation.
As he walked inside, he saw three students slumped over a table in the corner by the window.
Seoha, Eleanor, and Jason.
All of them had their heads down on the desk and were asleep without the slightest movement.
“Ha ha...”
A smile spread across Alan’s lips.
After looking at the sleeping students once more, he quietly turned around so as not to wake them and walked back toward the door.
* * *
The next day,
After work, Alan remained alone in the empty office.
On the monitor was a paper that had been made public at dawn.
He slowly scrolled with the mouse.
Alan keenly realized that he had been neglecting his studies lately.
The language he should have known as a matter of course was gradually becoming difficult to understand.
‘This is insane.’
The paper was not a simple study on signal optimization.
It was an attempt to interpret a city’s traffic system as a phase space of time.
Through mathematical structures, Seoha was analyzing the interaction between human movement patterns and signals.
Within the paper was an equation that reduced a city’s decision-making to a single function.
People’s commutes, taxi route choices, pedestrian rights, the priority of emergency vehicles—everything was connected.
He took out a notebook and pen and tried to follow the formulas. But midway, his pen stopped.
‘I can’t understand an undergraduate’s paper...’
A sense of self-reproach washed over him.
Alan stared at the monitor for a while, then rose from his seat.
Step, step.
His footsteps stopped in front of the bookshelf on one side of the office.
Books and papers thickly covered in dust. In the half-used notebooks, the handwriting of his youth still remained.
“To think I would take these out again.”
Alan himself found it absurd and laughed.
Each line of equations in the paper prodded at his pride.
He gripped his pen and began following the calculations again.
At first, his mind did not move smoothly.
‘Has mathematics already advanced this far?’
The formulas in the paper far exceeded the scope of analysis he had studied in his youth.
For the first time in a long while, he felt joy in studying.
‘If the phase shifts over time and interference between signals is modulated into waves...’
He brought a board from the next office and drew a large circle. Then he began drawing the city’s roads.
The feel of it returned to his hands.
It was as if a circuit that had been left idle in his head was turning back on.
‘That’s right. Phase alignment is ultimately an eigenvalue problem. What needs to be corrected is the nonlinear deviation over time...’
A sigh of admiration escaped him.
‘An undergraduate did this?’
Alan shook his head.
How many mathematicians had there been who produced monstrous proofs in their youth? He decided to regard Seoha as the same category of human being as them.
‘So let’s not be ashamed.’
As he worked through the formulas, his instincts gradually returned.
He became certain that this algorithm could be applied to Boston’s traffic conditions.
Papers began piling up on his desk one by one.
There were far too many prerequisites necessary to read Seoha’s theory.
After brewing coffee again several times,
by the time he had read about half the paper, it was already bright outside.
‘Not being married is nice at times like this.’
There was no one calling for him, and nowhere he had to go.
His parents had passed away, and it had been years since he had contacted the siblings with whom he had fallen out.
As he read the paper, his eyes stopped at one point.
‘Self-referential phase variable?’
It was too complicated.
He had intended to somehow work through it alone, but it had been too long since he had put down the books.
Looking at the paper, he saw a phone number written there.
He sent a text without hesitation.
—Mr. Yu Seoha? This is Alan from the Transportation Department. I have something to ask about your paper. Could you spare me a moment?
He had been thinking of closing his eyes for a bit, but a reply came immediately.
—Have you had lunch, by any chance?
“Hm? Why food all of a sudden?”
—I haven’t yet, because I was up all night looking at the paper. I was just thinking of buying a sandwich.
—My parents say if you haven’t had lunch yet, you should come to our house. They said we can just study at home...
Alan blinked.
In America, people rarely invited someone they had only just started contacting.
Safety, personal space...
There were many reasons, but perhaps it was simply because both sides found it uncomfortable.
Of course, Cheolho and Miyeong did not think too deeply about it.
They simply remembered that ever since Seoha was young, quite a few adults had come looking for him, and each time, they had served them a meal.
—Thank you for the invitation. I’ll leave soon.
After hesitating for a moment, Alan nodded.
In that seemingly casual invitation, he felt warm goodwill.
‘How long has it been since I was invited to a meal?’
Alan hurriedly changed clothes, stopped by a liquor store, and bought two decent bottles of wine.
The address Seoha sent him was not far from the school.
Ding-dong.
When he rang the bell, the door opened.
“Welcome.”
The boy he had seen at school greeted him brightly.
He had worried that perhaps he had tactlessly accepted an invitation extended merely out of courtesy, but it had been a needless thought.
Behind Seoha, a little girl was hiding.
“Hello there, princess.”
A beaver doll suddenly poked its face out from behind his back. Then a small girl shyly revealed herself.
She was a cute child who looked like she might appear in a drama.
“Hello.”
Alan tried his best to make a kind expression.
Perhaps because they were muscles he did not usually use, his expression did not look very natural.
“That’s a wonderful doll.”
When he complimented the doll, Seoeun’s face brightened at once.
“His name is Justin. My big brother gave him to me.”
“This way, Mr. Smith.”
When he went out to the backyard, lunch preparations were in full swing. Alan and the couple exchanged light bows.
Sizzle, sizzle.
A savory smell was already spreading over the table.
Glossy pork belly cooked on the grill with a wonderful sound.
Beside it, homegrown lettuce, perilla leaves, peppers, and various nameless seasoned greens were neatly arranged.
Gulp.
Only then did his hunger rise.
Alan remembered that he had eaten nothing since the night before.
How many people in America had experienced authentic Korean barbecue?
The awkwardness of a first meeting quickly vanished before food.
Cheolho flipped the meat with tongs and spoke in awkward English.
“Please eat it the way we do.”
“Thank you for inviting me. The smell is absolutely fantastic.”
Alan quickly sat down in a chair.
Then he began eating by following their example.
Miyeong gave a demonstration.
She placed a thick piece of pork belly on a large leaf of lettuce.
Then she spread ssamjang on it, added a little scallion salad, a bit of garlic, and rice, and wrapped it up to complete it.
Alan watched Miyeong, made an identical wrap, and put it into his mouth.
“Oh!”
An exclamation came out on its own.
The juices that burst out the moment he chewed, and the aroma of the spicy seasoning.
The combination of meat and vegetables filling his mouth was utterly satisfying.
“It’s good, right?”
Seoha asked with a smile.
“It’s the best meal I’ve had in the past few years.”
Alan raised his thumb toward the couple.
He was so captivated by the food that he could not even keep up appearances. He ate and ate again. When he saw the doenjang jjigae served in an earthenware bowl beside him, he scooped some without hesitation and mixed it with rice.
The generous amount of meat they had prepared disappeared in an instant.
“Wow! This guy can really eat.”
“I know. Since he eats so well, it feels worth preparing.”
Cheolho took liquor out of the refrigerator and poured it into a glass for him. Alan took a tiny taste, and seeming to like it, downed it all in one go.
Beside them, Miyeong was frying kimchi jeon.
The men, who exchanged sweet makgeolli over kimchi jeon, had become friends before they knew it.
Something hot welled up in Alan’s chest.
Because it had been so very long since someone had shown him pure goodwill.
“Oppa, why did that man come to our house?”
Seoeun asked, blowing on the hot jeon.
“I don’t know. I guess he was really hungry.”
Seoeun nodded.
“Hahaha!”
Amid the warm smells, the sound of laughter, and the kindness of people he had met for the first time, Alan laughed out loud for the first time in a long while.