A new semester had begun.
Sujeong arrived at the lecture hall first again today.
In the wide lecture hall where no one else had come yet, the sound of her footsteps rang out unusually loud.
The front row, center.
It was the seat Sujeong always took. Now, even if she was a little late to class, everyone left that desk empty.
Sujeong opened her notebook and sharpened her pencil. She still liked the feeling of pressing the lead against the paper as she wrote down equations.
“It’s Im Sujeong!”
“I heard she was top of the department all through freshman year?”
“They say she does nothing but study every day. She’s a math ghost.”
“What a waste of that face. I heard everyone who confessed to her got rejected.”
“They say she left without even properly listening. So they weren’t even really rejected.”
The whispers coming from the back rows were generally a mix of curiosity, awe, and, a little tiresomely, something like admiration.
‘Hm? Tiresome?’
If it had been her past self, she would certainly have enjoyed the reactions around her. But to the Sujeong of now, they stirred no emotion at all.
Come to think of it, her final year at the gifted high school had not been much different from now. She had simply wanted to follow him... And because she had poured all her focus into that alone, she had had no room to look anywhere else.
‘I’m not happy like I used to be, either.’
Sujeong shuddered slightly at the realization of how much she had changed.
Ever since returning from the colloquium, her mind had been a mess. What should she do to be able to stand beside him? What could she, nothing more than an undergraduate, do to have her achievements acknowledged?
Two years remained until graduation.
If she graduated early and went abroad to study where Seoha was, would the distance between them shrink?
She shook her head.
Probably not.
The qualification to be with him was not something like a degree, but something more fundamental.
Her mind was in chaos. She needed to do something, but there was no one to show her the way.
Tick, tick.
The second hand of the clock moved.
With that sound, Sujeong returned to reality.
“Now, let’s review what we covered last time. Everyone remembers the part we left blank here, don’t you?”
The professor began his explanation.
“Does anyone have a good idea?”
Before the professor could even finish speaking, the students’ gazes turned toward Sujeong.
“Student Im Sujeong?”
“Yes!”
Like someone else, Sujeong rolled her pencil in one hand, then slowly rose from her seat.
She had been lost in other thoughts, but there was no problem.
By the time she walked to the blackboard, she had already finished organizing it in her head.
“Here, if we rearrange the terms and then apply condition two, we can create an upper bound.”
The chalk moved without hesitation.
A few students let out sounds of admiration.
The professor smiled in satisfaction and nodded.
“Correct. As expected of the top student.”
Sujeong gave a brief bow and returned to her seat.
Even when she was praised, even when others looked up to her, her heart was not the slightest bit fulfilled.
Because she knew that no matter how hard she struggled in this narrow world, the distance between her and him would only grow wider.
She felt as if she were suffocating.
It was as though something heavy and hard was pressing down on her heart.
‘If I’d known this would happen, I should have at least talked to Seoha.’
She had left just like that, pointlessly trying to look cool.
If she met him, would this maddening frustration be relieved?
She did not know.
But it seemed nothing would be resolved if she only kept avoiding it.
In the end, for the first time in her life, she skipped class and boarded a plane bound for Boston.
* * *
“I came here again.”
The cold air unique to airports, the people bustling about, the murmur of many languages mixing together.
Amid it all, Sujeong quietly swallowed a breath alone.
‘What am I supposed to do now? Should I just go find him?’
She had asked herself the question dozens of times on the way here, but in the end, she had found no answer.
Clap, clap!
As if encouraging herself, she patted her own cheeks.
“Let’s just go for now!”
Sujeong gripped the handle of the suitcase in her hand tightly.
“Is this the place?”
She unpacked her luggage at a four-star hotel near MIT.
The room was neither spacious nor cramped, with beige-toned wallpaper and dark wooden furniture creating the tidy atmosphere unique to New England.
After eating the hotel breakfast, she felt as if she had regained a little energy.
She put on her coat and placed her passport and phone into a small shoulder bag.
Standing in front of the mirror, her skin looked especially rough today. Sujeong pulled a hat low over her head and stepped out of the room.
Whoooosh—
As soon as she went outside, Boston’s cold wind struck her face.
Thanks to that, her mind became clear.
Following the road that led to the MIT campus, passing familiar scenery, Sujeong finally arrived at the building where Seoha was.
She received a visitor pass at reception and went inside.
It was an overwhelming sight.
The Infinite Corridor stretched endlessly ahead, with blackboards lining both walls.
Click, clack.
Sujeong walked down the hallway.
Students passing by glanced at the visitor pass hanging around her neck. Their faces were full of pride in their school. But Sujeong felt nothing in particular.
Two consecutive IMO gold medals.
If she set her mind to it, there was no university she could not attend.
Instead, a sense of relief washed over her that places where people lived were similar wherever one went.
‘This is...’
A familiar handwriting.
Traces of equations that had not been erased remained on the hallway blackboard.
Sujeong stopped walking and slowly read through the formulas written on one side of the board.
Was it because she was seeing them without context?
The content of the equations did not easily enter her eyes.
A complicated differential equation, and a conjecture added beneath it. What was he trying to do?
And a note written in Seoha’s handwriting.
‘Check again.’
It was his habit.
The moment she saw the writing, longing flooded over her.
As she walked along the corridor, she saw Seoha.
‘Boys really grow this quickly.’
Compared to only a few months ago, he had grown yet again.
He wore a black knit over a white shirt. His pants were slacks without a single wrinkle. His outfit was neat without standing out.
Sujeong could no longer find in him the image of the country boy from Okcheon.
Seoha held chalk in one hand and was deep in thought over something.
His lips were slightly parted, the way they were when he concentrated, and a smile spread across Sujeong’s face.
For no reason, her heart began to pound.
Just as she was about to call out to him, someone raised a hand to block her path.
“Huh?”
Startled, Sujeong looked to the side.
A handsome man with red hair.
As if telling her not to, he quietly shook his head. Then he gestured for her to come this way.
Only after they had walked for quite a while did he look back.
“I’m sorry. Seoha seems to be immersed in something.”
Sujeong bowed her head.
“I... I’m Im Sujeong. Seoha’s friend from high school.”
At her greeting, Theo smiled.
“I’m Theodore Ranford, a doctoral student here.”
‘Theodore Ranford?’
It was a name she had heard before.
The person who had coauthored a paper with Seoha when they solved the Smale problem.
Sujeong’s eyes widened.
“A friend from Korea... Seoha will be happy. It probably won’t take very long. Then, I’ll be going.”
He smiled brightly and was about to step away.
“Wait!”
Sujeong instinctively stopped him.
Theo looked at her with puzzled eyes.
“Could you spare me a moment? I have something I want to ask you.”
Theo lowered his gaze as if thinking it over for a moment, then soon nodded.
“All right. There’s a cafeteria nearby. Seoha won’t move for at least an hour.”
He pointed toward the end of the corridor and started walking first.
Sujeong drew in a small breath and followed after him.
* * *
The place Theo led her to was a small café hidden between the laboratory building and the lecture hall.
As they stepped inside, the faint aroma of roasted coffee beans drifted through the air.
It was a space with a low ceiling and abundant light, a place that seemed well suited for studying.
At every window seat, graduate students holding cups of coffee quietly read books or papers.
A corner space, a seat almost untouched by other people’s gazes. Theo chose a table there as if he was used to it and sat down.
A few minutes later, two cups of coffee, warm steam rising from them, were placed on the table.
Slide.
Theo pushed one of the cups toward her.
Nervous, Sujeong could not bring herself to touch the cup and only fidgeted with her fingers under the table.
“Now, let’s hear it. What is it you want to ask?”
Her lips went dry.
Now that she was actually about to speak, she did not know where to begin.
But she decided to muster her courage.
“I’m studying mathematics in Korea.
When we were in high school, I made a promise with Seoha. I told him that I wanted to help him prove the Riemann hypothesis.
But if things stay the way they are now...”
It was a disjointed explanation.
But it was enough to convey what she meant.
Theo’s eyes cooled.
“Help, you say...”
“Yes?”
“How amusing. Are you truly someone who can be of help to Seoha?”
“Ah...”
She was so flustered that the words would not come out properly.
“I saw it often at Stanford. People trying to ride on the backs of outstanding founders. Dressing it up nicely by saying, ‘I can be a great help to you!’
It happens often in academia, too. They approach under the name of collaboration and hide their own incompetence. Not that I can’t understand it. If one’s name is written on Seoha’s paper, it would make for an excellent career.”
Sujeong’s eyes opened wide.
“I... I didn’t mean it with that kind of intention. No matter how hard I try, everything just feels empty... It wasn’t like this when I was with Seoha.
And let me make this clear. I never even thought about free-riding. If I’m not capable enough, I’ll step back on my own.”
Sujeong pressed her lips shut and glared at Theo.
The look in her eyes reminded Theo of something. It was just like himself on the day he first came to Cambridge.
Zip.
He opened his bag and took out his laptop.
Tap, tap, tap.
His gaze turned toward the pass hanging around Sujeong’s neck.
‘Sujeong Lim, Math’
Theo quickly typed on the keyboard.
‘Papers, awards. If she’s the sort to rush in saying she’ll solve the Riemann hypothesis, something should come up.’
If nothing did, he intended to send her right back.
When he entered the search term, articles appeared one after another.
‘Korea’s genius girl wins IMO gold medal at age fifteen.’
‘Sixteen-year-old Im Sujeong wins IMO gold medal for two consecutive years, first Korean to do so.’
He saw a photo taken together with Seoha.
The two of them were smiling brightly while holding their gold medals.
“Hmm...”
‘She has the basics.’
Theo brought a hand to his chin out of habit.
“I apologize. At the very least, you weren’t someone who was all talk.”
At Theo’s apology, Sujeong’s mood eased a little as well.
“But the conclusion likely won’t change. Young lady, you need to listen carefully to what I say.”
At the inexplicable force in his presence, Sujeong shrank back.
“Yes.”
“Seoha is thinking of challenging the Riemann hypothesis within the next few years. But that isn’t something that can be done alone. It means Seoha will soon need a team, too.”
“Then...”
Theo cut off Sujeong’s words.
“That doesn’t mean just anyone will do.
Let me ask you one question. Did you understand the equations Seoha was writing in the hallway earlier?”
She could not say anything.
Drop, drop.
Because she was angry, and because she found herself pathetic for being unable to understand even that, tears fell.
She knew crying would solve nothing, but Sujeong had never experienced such humiliation in her life.
As if indifferent, Theo tossed out a single remark.
“Don’t cry. It would be strange for an undergraduate to recognize that.”
Sujeong looked at Theo with reddened eyes.
“Email address.”
“Yes?”
“Tell me your email. You came here because you were curious too, didn’t you? Because you wanted to confirm whether you really are someone worthy of being with Seoha.”
Sujeong wrote her email address in a notebook.
“I’m going to send you an email now. They’re problems I was thinking about as an undergraduate. If you can prove even one of them, then it means you’re a better mathematician than I was as an undergraduate.
Of course, the me now can’t even be compared to then.”
Theo laughed in a low voice.
“If I solve this, will I gain the qualification to be with Seoha?”
Sujeong wiped her tears and asked.
“Let me ask the opposite. If you can’t even prove that, what exactly do you plan to do on the team? We don’t need a coffee girl.”
Grit.
Sujeong clenched her teeth.
Her eyes blazed fiercely.
“I understand.”
Sujeong’s voice no longer trembled.
“The deadline is until you graduate. We aren’t in a position to wait forever.”
Sujeong picked up her bag and left the café.
Looking around the street, she saw that new buds had already begun sprouting on the trees.
The fresh vitality of early spring.
The fog that had been lying thickly over her mind began to lift.
Inhaaaale—
Sujeong drew in a deep breath.
Fresh air entered her lungs and supplied oxygen to her whole body.
“Ah! I feel alive!”
It felt as if the boulder that had been pressing down on her chest had finally disappeared.