Shwaaaaa—
Water poured from the showerhead.
Theodore tipped his head back and closed his eyes. Jets of water at just the right pressure massaged his face in a steady rhythm.
“Hoo, hoo.”
He breathed in, then out.
With his fingertips, he rubbed his temples, as though washing away unnecessary thoughts.
It was a ritual he repeated whenever he needed extreme concentration.
“Hoo—, haa—.”
The fatigue faded, and his mind cleared. A moment later, he felt a sense of omnipotence, as if he could solve any problem.
“Good.”
After finishing his shower, he prepared breakfast.
Toasted whole wheat bread, yogurt with frozen blueberries, and a cup of strong coffee.
There was only one reason he was so on edge.
The person who had climbed all the way to second place in just a single day.
Theodore had watched his name rise through the ranking tab as if it were teleporting.
Every time he refreshed, the rank jumped several places. And at last, Yu Seoha had caught up right beneath his chin, a blade aimed at him.
“Looks like you’re pushing yourself pretty hard, huh? Good. That’s the least you should be able to do.”
After emptying his coffee cup, he opened his laptop.
When the screen lit up, a blue logo appeared.
“Fine. I’ll show you who’s on top. Today, I’m breaking through 999 points no matter what.”
The corners of Theodore’s mouth lifted.
* * *
Saturday, with no classes.
Seoha was in a quiet cafeteria tucked away in a corner of campus.
Sitting by the window, he read a book with one hand and picked up a cookie with the other.
What he was reading was a philosophy text, a book he had borrowed from the library to write a report for a liberal arts class.
Crunch.
He took a bite of a chocolate chip cookie and drank strawberry milk before it disappeared from his mouth.
The cookies his mother had apparently made as a trial batch were packed with an unbelievable amount of chocolate, making every bite taste like happiness.
‘Hm?’
Just as he was about to rest, his laptop screen blinked.
[Logia Ultra-Advanced Session]
-Difficulty: S+
-Success Rate: 0.1%
‘Ah… I had it searching for problems.’
Click.
When he pressed the accept button, the problem appeared.
Seoha blinked for a moment.
‘This one will take a bit of time.’
A problem mixing probability, topology, and complex integration.
Even at a glance, the amount of calculation required was no joke. Seoha stared at the screen for a moment, then took out a pen and paper.
‘The space is curved.’
Scratch, scratch.
Seoha’s method of solving was far removed from common sense. He skipped at once the steps necessary for the development and went straight to the core of the problem.
The complex structure simplified in an instant.
When he reversed the direction at the edge of the complex plane, the chaotic terms interlocked as though they had originally been one.
Spin.
Seoha rolled the pen over his hand.
The shape the problem wanted became vividly drawn in his mind.
Tap, tap, tap.
When he entered the answer, a familiar fanfare rang out.
[Correct.]
‘Is it analyzing me? The problems are getting more complicated.’
Seoha deliberately took a little more time on certain types of problems.
Then the next problem dug into that exact area with astonishing focus.
‘You want to find my weakness?’
He felt like he understood how Logia’s algorithm operated.
Seoha experimented no further.
[Correct.]
[Correct.]
[Correct.]
[1st: Yu Seoha / S+ / MIT / KR / 998.9]
He could see the bottom of the algorithm.
If this was the end of it, there was no longer any reason to cling to Logia.
Just as he was about to stop, the pattern of the problem changed subtly.
‘This feels a bit dirty.’
The definition of the function was not specified in the problem. In addition, some of the assumptions contained deliberate contradictions.
At first glance, it looked like an error, but Seoha immediately realized Logia’s intent.
‘It’s trying to disrupt the pattern. It wants me to get confused.’
Negation, contradiction, and incomplete propositions.
If he took the bait and floundered around in them, even if he later realized it was a trap, he would run out of time. But it did not work on Seoha.
Tap, tap, tap.
[Correct.]
[1st: Yu Seoha / S+ / MIT / KR / 999.9]
Logia’s algorithm was clear.
First, it presented a variety of problems to grasp the opponent. After that, it dug into the types of problems the user got wrong, or the areas the user had spent the longest thinking about.
If that still did not shake them, it distorted the conditions to induce confusion.
Logia had been created to evaluate human mathematical ability numerically.
But if a user’s accuracy rate was 100%, it could not determine his limits. Therefore, Logia had desperately tried to draw a wrong answer out of Seoha.
‘There’s nothing more to see.’
There was nothing particularly special about problems made by AI. Slightly more complex calculations, sophisticated problem design based on computational power.
But that was all.
Seoha decided that once he solved this problem, he would delete his account.
“Huh?”
[LOGIA, Impossible Session initiated.]
-Difficulty: SSS
-Success Rate: 0%
[Time Limit: None]
As if it had read Seoha’s mind, a type of problem he had never seen before appeared.
Not a short-answer question, but a proof.
Seoha’s eyes moved slowly along the problem.
One line, then another.
At first, they were familiar formulas.
Polynomials, the complex plane, differentiation, critical points.
And yet, unlike usual, the answer did not come easily.
Seoha frowned.
“What is this?”
The formula was simple, but within it was a blank that had not been explained.
But strangely, that did not feel unpleasant.
Rather, he even felt as though the problem were pulling him in intensely.
Rustle.
Seoha pulled over a sheet of paper and, looking at the formula, marked several points.
Then he connected those points with lines.
“The relationship between the rate of change and critical points.”
A waveform rose in his mind.
One was fast, and the other was slow.
Seoha moved his pencil along the waves created by the curves.
“It feels like there should be an equilibrium point somewhere.”
It was not logic or calculation, but intuition.
Somewhere within the complex, undulating curve of the function, there had to be a point where the flow stopped.
‘It can produce problems like this, too?’
It was unlike any pattern he had seen from Logia until now.
It was not needlessly verbose, nor were the conditions obscure. It merely asked whether a perfect equilibrium point existed in a particular situation.
A creative yet highly advanced problem.
Perhaps Logia was a far more capable AI than he had thought.
“See? You can do it when you try.”
Seoha muttered as if offering praise.
Clack.
He closed his laptop. He did not want his attention scattered by anything else.
Seoha forgot everything and sank into the problem.
* * *
Bang!
Theodore, enraged, slammed the desk.
“Damn it! He didn’t show up today either?”
A week had passed since Seoha took first place in the rankings.
As if it were a lie, he had vanished without a trace.
Theodore could not even sleep comfortably at night.
The name at the top of the ranking tab tormented him every night. But what truly infuriated him was the fact that no matter how hard he tried, he could not surpass Seoha’s score.
[1st: Yu Seoha / S+ / MIT / KR / 999.9]
[2nd: Theodore Lanford / S / Stanford / US / 999.3]
He had exceeded 999 points, which had been his limit until now, but his opponent was already much farther ahead.
“Don’t tell me that’s why?”
Theodore’s voice cracked low.
“After reaching the top, he got bored and left?”
As if that was what he himself had meant to do.
“So in the end, he never even cared about someone like me?”
He laughed coldly.
He felt ridiculous for having skipped meals while clinging to problems just to raise his score by a few points.
“Fine! If that’s how you’re going to be, I’ll drag you down by force.”
He canceled every plan he had for the day.
With a resolute expression, Theodore grabbed his mouse. He felt he would not be satisfied until he landed a blow on that infuriating bastard.
Ding—
At that moment, a notification sounded.
[1st: Theodore Lanford / S+ / Stanford / US / 999.3]
[2nd: Yu Seoha / S / MIT / KR / 998.9]
“Huh?”
With trembling hands, he clicked the log.
‘Right, you’re human too. It was about time you got one wrong. I’ve had my score unfairly docked when I was tired, too.’
But when he checked the log, his face was far from joyful.
[Automatic Penalty Applied – No login records in the past 7 days]
[-1.0 point deduction]
At long last, Theo had become the first place he had wanted so badly.
Though it was certainly not in the way he had wanted.
Theo exploded in frustration.
“Don’t screw with me! You damned tin can. I was going to climb up there myself. Why are you taking away my chance for revenge? Put it back! Put it back right now!”
His bloated ego could not accept a win by default.
‘What should I do? Should I rest for a week too? Or should I get one problem wrong?’
He racked his brain, trying to figure out what would make it a fair competition.
“Wait. What if Yu Seoha doesn’t know I got it wrong on purpose? He’ll think I’m an idiot.”
Tap, tap, tap—
He hurriedly sent a message to Seoha’s Logia account. His calculation was that a notification would pop up, so Seoha would read it.
But even after waiting for hours, he did not log in.
‘Is he really going to disappear like this? Is there really no way?’
He searched through social media but could not find a single trace.
He tried the MIT community board, the math department’s internal forum, and even posted a question on the department bulletin board, but there was no way for him to obtain Seoha’s contact information.
“Damn it.”
Nothing was going right.
He clutched his head.
His chest felt as though it would burst from frustration.
Only one clue remained.
“I have no choice but to go in person…”
Theo sprang up from his seat.
He opened a drawer and took out his wallet. He closed his laptop, put it in his bag, and packed his charger, pens, and notebooks. Then he placed printed copies of the ranking screen and log screenshots into a file holder.
He opened his wardrobe and threw on the light coat he usually wore.
As he left the dormitory, he mapped out his schedule in his head.
‘It’s night now, so I should arrive in the morning.’
Just in case, he also sent an email saying he would visit the MIT mathematics department.
‘I won’t end up unable to meet him, will I?’
An anxious thought crossed his mind, but Theo was so mentally cornered that he could not endure staying still.
After a full six-hour flight, he arrived at Boston Logan International Airport.
“Damn, it’s way colder than I thought.”
He tightened the collar of his coat and stepped out of the airport.
The cold was sharp enough to cut into his skin.
He hurriedly hailed a taxi.
“Please take me to MIT.”
As the car entered the city, unfamiliar scenery unfolded before him.
Boston’s air was completely different from the mild weather of the West. The sky was gloomy, as if rejecting an outsider.
“There really must be nothing to do here except study.”
Once his body warmed up, regret belatedly rushed in.
‘What the hell am I doing right now? Did I really fly six hours to get permission to deliberately get one problem wrong?’
No.
Logia was only the surface reason. His business was not that simple.
When he had read Seoha’s paper on the four-color theorem, he had been greatly shocked.
The content was excellent, but the process even more so.
How had he been able to continue research for seven years without giving up?
His master’s thesis was not going well.
The difficult problem he had thought he could solve had turned out to be impregnable once he delved deeper.
‘Did I want to ask for advice?’
He shook his head.
He was simply curious about what kind of person Yu Seoha was.