Chapter 245

Translator: Dreamscribe

Daejeon, Team Apex Korea Research Institute.

The team members, who would normally have been buried in their own research, were gathered around a single table.

A letter lay on the table.

[Regarding the Offer of a Tenured Professorship in MIT's Department of Mathematics]

“....”

“....”

Theo was the first to break the silence.

“I can't believe it. To think something this terrible could actually happen.”

Ben looked puzzled.

“If I were an undergraduate, I'd definitely want to take his class.”

Cecilia sighed as she spoke.

“That's exactly the problem. A class taught by Seo-ha himself.... Anyone with even a little intellectual curiosity would have to be interested. I completely understand MIT's decision. But if you think about it from the students' perspective....”

“It would be a disaster.”

“I can't even imagine how notorious that class would become.”

Sri and Su-jeong nodded in agreement. Ben could understand what they were worried about.

“The students there might be brilliant, but they're still within the bounds of normal human ability. I can already picture it. ‘Now, this proposition is self-evident, so there's no need to explain it. Let's move on!’ Then he'd erase the whole board....”

“Ah, I can see it too. And when they look it up afterward, that ‘self-evident’ part will turn out to be enough material for two whole papers.”

Theo was worried about Seo-ha's reputation.

“How do you think the students who have to sit through that would feel? Their minds would be ground to dust. They're probably kids who've spent their whole lives coming in first.”

The scene was far too easy to imagine.

Su-jeong added,

“And from Seo-ha's perspective, he'd be confused because they couldn't understand something that seemed obvious to him. Wouldn't the campus counseling center get flooded with appointments? I genuinely feel sorry for those students.”

They would surely be students who had grown up believing they were at the center of the world.

Gifted students who had swept competitions while representing their countries, or at the very least had never experienced frustration when it came to mathematics. Those were the students who would seek out Seo-ha's lectures. Then, ten minutes into the first class, they would realize the truth. What they had believed was mathematics all this time had actually been nothing more than basic arithmetic.

Of course, Seo-ha would have absolutely no intention of tormenting his students. If anything, his uniquely clear eyes would shine as he did his very best to explain his theories. And in front of him, the students would sit frozen, barely able to breathe.

After class ended, they would remain alone in the empty lecture hall, wondering whether they were truly qualified to continue pursuing this field.

For some reason, Su-jeong felt as though she could understand that despair.

“Still, it might not be entirely bad.”

Theo rubbed his chin as he spoke.

“There'll definitely be some tenacious freaks who survive that hell all the way to the end. And those are exactly the people we need.”

Sri nodded.

“In a way, it might be the best possible environment for separating the truly exceptional from the rest.”

The best they could do was hope the process would not be too painful.

***

“The structure is far more solid than I expected.”

Professor Wright, an authority on Complex Systems Theory, took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

The blackboard was covered in equations. Wright had reconstructed Seo-ha's paper in his own way.

The core of Complex Systems Theory was Nonlinearity. Countless variables became entangled with one another, forming feedback loops, and Emergent Phenomena arose within them. The problem was that existing mathematical tools could not fully capture that complexity.

And that had been a fundamental limitation of Complex Systems Theory for decades.

“Can this really explain it?”

The attempt to view the human body's metabolic pathways as one enormous network was not particularly different from existing Systems Biology. But Seo-ha had gone one step further. Instead of expressing the interactions between individual nodes as a linear matrix, he had introduced the concept of Curvature from Yu-Riemann Geometry and described them as a topological structure.

“Incredible....”

When Wright had looked at it purely as mathematics, he had thought the theory was somewhat rough around the edges. But after studying living systems and working through it himself, an entirely different landscape unfolded before him.

Those rough edges were actually geometric devices deliberately designed to perfectly control the Nonlinearity of a Complex System.

He closed his eyes and pictured the enormous architecture of life in his mind.

A web of life in which billions of nodes constantly flickered, exchanging signals with one another. A vast nonlinear sea that should have been uncontrollable chaos and noise found order according to the equations Seo-ha had designed. Goosebumps rose along his spine.

“Professor?”

Sensing that something was wrong, his assistant approached and called out to him. But Wright did not hear. From microscopic signals within the cell nucleus to physiological phenomena such as the beating of the heart and the circulation of blood, every layer of complexity was given order within a single topological structure.

Trying to fathom the dizzying depth of it, Wright slowly opened his eyes.

“This isn't all there is to it....”

“Pardon?”

Wright walked back to the blackboard. Then he slowly began writing equations in chalk.

Life and the Metabolic Network.

The paper had clearly been written to explain them. But something about it was far too strange. It was like preparing foundations large enough for an entire city just to build a single house.

Wright was a Complex Systems Theory researcher.

That was why this was also a question he had carried with him his entire life. Complex Systems Theory had only one ultimate goal.

‘Does a universal language capable of explaining complexity exist?’

To answer that question.

But...

Wright stopped writing.

“Professor, what do you mean by ‘this isn't all there is to it’?”

Without answering, he began writing an equation in one corner of the blackboard.

Critical Transition, one of the notoriously difficult phenomena in Complex Systems Theory that he had studied for years.

Just before an ecosystem collapses, just before a financial market crashes.

Complex Systems always collapsed without warning. The problem was that right up until the moment before collapse, the system appeared perfectly normal.

Scratch scratch.

Wright began writing down the variables he had been researching one after another.

Resilience, autocorrelation coefficient, variance growth rate, nonlinear response function.... Then he took one Curvature term defined in Seo-ha's paper and wrote it beside them.

A long while later, Wright's eyes trembled.

“...Impossible.”

The structure of the equation held.

The hand gripping the chalk trembled like a leaf. He could not tell whether it was from excitement or fear.

‘Was this intentional?’

That was the wrong question.

The probability of something like this happening by chance was effectively zero.

Then the correct question had to be this.

‘What is he ultimately trying to understand?’

There was no mention of this anywhere in the paper. Not a single line about a universal language for Complex Systems. It spoke only about life and metabolism.

If Seo-ha knew this and deliberately left it unwritten, then what exactly had he just placed before the academic world?

“I need to rest for a bit.”

“Yes. I'll get you some water.”

His thoughts were a complete mess.

“Heh heh heh.”

Wright stared at the blackboard and laughed hollowly.

A sense of helplessness beyond mere awe, followed by a shuddering thrill, made his heart feel as though it might stop. His assistant brought him a bottle of water, but Wright could not even bring himself to reach for it. All he could do was draw one deep breath after another.

***

A quiet country house in Okcheon, North Chungcheong Province.

Sunlight stretched long across the yard. Whenever the cool late-autumn wind blew through, the persimmons hanging from the tree swayed plump and bright like orange lanterns.

“Seo-ha, that one at the very top. Yes, that one. Be careful when you pick it. Leave the ugly ones for the birds to peck at.”

“Oppa, be careful!”

Seo-eun gripped the ladder with all her strength to keep it from shaking.

In the past, Mi-young had knocked the persimmons down with a long pole, but now that she had a son who had grown so tall, they had brought out a ladder instead. Mi-young found herself overcome with emotion.

‘When did he grow this big....’

Seo-ha's fingers closed around a perfectly ripe persimmon. Seo-eun raised the basket high and called loudly to her oppa.

“Oppa, over here!”

“Okay.”

Plop.

“Look, Mom! The one Oppa picked is huge and so pretty!”

Seo-eun lifted the persimmon and smiled brightly.

The persimmons they had already picked were neatly arranged on the wooden platform on one side of the yard. Mi-young sat down on the platform and began peeling them. The smooth orange flesh beneath the skin glittered like gemstones in the late-autumn sunlight. Once they tied them with string and hung them beneath the eaves, the winter wind would slowly turn them into delicious dried persimmons.

Seo-ha sat down and began tying strings around the persimmons. Mi-young could not understand how her son could be so relaxed.

“Hey, didn't you say you have some thesis defense thing to do? Is it really okay for you to be sitting here doing this?”

A few evenings earlier, Seo-ha had brought out the letter over dinner as though he had completely forgotten about it. Seo-eun had snatched it away, read it, and exclaimed excitedly.

“Mom, Dad! Oppa's going to be a professor at MIT!”

“What?”

“Cough! Cough!”

Chul-ho, who had been swallowing a mouthful of stew, burst into a violent coughing fit at Seo-eun's words.

“Is that really true, Seo-ha? A professor? Why are they already making someone who hasn't even finished his military service a professor....”

Seo-eun's eyes raced across the rest of the letter.

Tenured Professorship, PhD Dissertation Review.

“It says the appointment's already been decided? The board already approved it, and all he has to do is pass the dissertation review!”

“Aigoo, Seo-ha!”

Mi-young grabbed Seo-ha's hand.

Chul-ho carefully folded the letter, placed it back inside the envelope, and quietly walked outside. He stepped into the yard, sat on the wooden platform beneath the persimmon tree, and gazed up at the dark sky.

“Maybe I can finally stop worrying so much....”

He had always worried.

Would his son fail to reach his full potential because of parents who could not give him enough? What if someone took advantage of him or hurt him?

He had blamed himself countless times for being unable to give his son the kind of family backing he could rely on.

Rustle.

Before he knew it, Seo-ha had quietly come over and sat down beside him. Father and son remained silent for a while.

“Aren't you cold?”

“I'm fine.”

It did not show on his face, but Seo-ha was extremely surprised.

Being offered Tenure was certainly remarkable. But to Seo-ha, it was a destination he had always expected to reach eventually.

Apparently, his parents did not see it the same way.

“...All we ever did for you was buy you one set of encyclopedias, but somehow you made it this far. How did parents who couldn't give you much ever end up with a son like you?”

Seo-ha smiled faintly and shook his head.

“You gave me everything I needed. You were never lacking as parents.”

The set of encyclopedias the struggling couple had done everything they could to afford became the strongest cornerstone upon which Seo-ha's world was built and expanded. To the young Seo-ha, those books had been his parents' love, as well as a gateway through which he could glimpse the secrets of the world.

Chul-ho's shoulders trembled slightly at his son's calm but heartfelt words. The guilt and regret that had weighed on his heart for so many years seemed to melt away like snow.

“Okay. Go back inside now.”

Chul-ho turned away and looked in the opposite direction. He did not want his son to see his reddened eyes.

Even after several days had passed, the couple's excitement showed no sign of fading.

It was a little puzzling, since they had not reacted this strongly even when he received the Fields Prize. Seo-ha figured there must be something special about it that only parents could understand.

“Why is your oppa so relaxed about all this?”

After they finished tying up the persimmons, Mi-young asked her daughter while watching Seo-ha stretch.

Seo-eun leaned close to Mi-young's ear and whispered as though sharing a secret.

“Mom, Oppa's actually in a really good mood right now. I think he's even excited. Look at him. He's exercising again even though he hasn't been doing that lately.”

“Hm? Is this really something to get that excited about?”

Seo-eun grinned and shrugged.

It was an expression on her oppa's face that only she could recognize. He was clearly excited right now.

‘Ah! I wish that day would hurry up and come.’

Seo-ha twisted at the waist as he thought.

There were far too many ideas he had been unable to include in the paper. Just the thought that someone might notice them and be able to discuss them with him made his heart race, and he could hardly calm down.

*****

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