Chapter 54
Translator: Dreamscribe
Various ideas for making money came to Yu Seo-ha’s mind.
But soon he shook his head.
‘Ah... This won’t work.’
None of them could escape the restrictions of his age.
Soon to be 14 years old,
He felt frustrated by the fact that without the name of a guardian or legal representative, he couldn’t even open a bank account, let alone register as a business owner.
Seo-ha looked at the dinner table set before him.
Pumpkin leaves, which he had liked since he was little, tasted heavenly even without any side dishes when wrapped with soybean paste and eaten with rice.
Pumpkin leaves were a troublesome ingredient that had to be carefully peeled one by one after being steamed to a moist texture. Next to them were various seasoned vegetable side dishes that also required a lot of effort.
Bracken had to be soaked overnight, boiled, and then lightly stir-fried with perilla oil. Bellflower roots must have been rinsed and prepared multiple times to remove their bitterness, so they retained a crisp texture.
Seo-ha looked at the two people, pausing his chopsticks.
Rough hands and shabby clothes.
It was a household that couldn’t be described as well-off, even out of politeness. But strangely enough, Seo-ha had never once thought of his family as poor.
Books he wanted to read eventually came into his hands through his father, even if it took time. When he mentioned food he wanted to eat, it would always show up on the table a few days later.
Even with their limited means, his parents always made sure he never felt the burden of poverty.
Maybe that’s why.
Seo-ha couldn’t bring himself to say the words swirling in his head.
‘If I say I need to make money, would they smile proudly and say I’m admirable?’
No, they wouldn’t.
They would think it was their fault for not providing enough, and feel heartbroken for placing an unnecessary burden on a son who should be focusing on studying.
'It's okay. Let me try on my own.'
Because it would be at least ten more years before Seo-eun went to college.
“Mom, this is really delicious.”
Mi-young’s face lit up with a smile the moment her son, who usually just ate quietly, gave her a rare compliment.
“Right? It’s way better than dorm food, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it doesn’t even compare.”
Seo-ha scooped up a big spoonful of rice and put it in his mouth.
The nutty aroma of the soybean paste spread in his mouth, and the finely chopped chili pepper popped with a kick. It was a familiar taste, but for some reason, the meal at home felt unusually warm after such a long time.
***
Seo-ha was at a large bookstore in Daejeon for the first time in a while.
“Wow, it’s really big.”
When he entered the computer section, there were far more books tightly packed on the shelves than in the psychology section.
Seo-ha had thought deeply the night before about what he should do to make money.
Stock or cryptocurrency trading was the first thing he eliminated from his options.
He might be able to succeed in short-term predictions using mathematical models, but fundamentally, it was an area with too much risk.
The next idea that came to mind was app development.
But this didn’t appeal to Seo-ha either. Applications were merely tools to meet existing demand.
Given that he had enough time, Seo-ha wanted to make money doing something he genuinely wanted to do.
‘Something that helps society!’
While making the laundry room app, he had come to realize one thing.
Humans were not entirely rational beings.
Humans were selfish yet social, and sometimes inexplicably altruistic.
This complex contradiction of human nature ignited a fire in Seo-ha’s heart.
Human behavior was full of exceptions and irregularities, like quantum particles.
But what if it were possible to mathematically predict the choices of these imperfect humans? And what if it were possible to calculate the waves those choices would create?
In its pattern within uncertainty, it resembled the Riemann Hypothesis.
‘Individuals are uncertain, but groups have patterns.’
Seo-ha wanted to build an engine based on human decision-making itself.
Various books found their way into his hands.
[Reinforcement Learning and Decision-Making]
[Practical Applications of Game Theory]
[Uncertainty and Information Theory]
[Stochastic Optimization and Markov Processes]
[Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence]
[Behavioral Economics]
The empty suitcase filled up with books.
Seo-ha’s first goal was to model the school he was currently attending.
Hundreds of students competing or cooperating over laundry room resources, the patterns of choices revealed within that were already fascinating data to him.
Now, expanding the scope to include dormitories, cafeterias, club activities, seat assignments in the library and self-study rooms, even test preparation strategies and leisure activities.
Every large and small decision students made on a daily basis could become excellent research material.
If all this data could be mathematically modeled, he would be able to build the framework of the decision-making engine he envisioned within the school environment.
And eventually, he might be able to expand the scope to predict the movements of a city or even a country.
When people moved, what they consumed, what leisure they enjoyed.
Transportation systems, commercial districts, education and culture, even individuals' political choices could fall within the scope of modeling.
Because society, in the end, is the result of countless individual choices coming together.
If such patterns could be read through mathematics, then chaos in cities could be reduced, waste of resources prevented, and a fairer, more efficient society could be designed.
And the people living there might even become a little happier.
Thirteen-year-old Seo-ha truly believed that.
***
“Are you ready?”
At Seo-ha’s question, Seo-eun crossed her arms and put on a serious face.
Her lips stuck out like a duck’s, and it looked adorable.
“Hmm... Okay!”
Seo-ha spread out the cards he had made himself. Each card had numbers, animals, fruits, and similar things drawn on it. It was the ‘Memory Challenge’ he had created.
He had first tried the Memory Challenge during the IMO, and it had been a lot of fun.
Feeling sorry for only playing with numbers and shapes with his little sister, he recreated it as illustrated cards with drawings he thought Seo-eun would like.
When they first played the game, Seo-eun memorized only the pictures she liked.
“Strawberry, plum, banana, kiwi...”
Seeing her happily flipping the cards one by one, Seo-ha felt it was worth making them. But since the Memory Challenge was meant to improve Seo-eun’s memorization skills, Seo-ha decided to become a slightly stricter oppa.
“This time, you can’t just memorize the fruits, okay? You have to remember all of them.”
“Okay! Got it!”
Seo-eun’s eyes sparkled as she looked down at the cards, excited by the new game.
Ten cards were laid out on the floor.
“Start!”
As the cards were revealed, Seo-eun’s eyes darted quickly, scanning the pictures.
After thirty seconds passed, Seo-ha flipped the cards back over.
“Alright! Let’s see if you remember them.”
As if she had been waiting, Seo-eun began pointing at the cards one by one with her finger.
“Apple, rabbit, star, duck, banana, number 5, sun, strawberry, moon, teddy bear!”
As Seo-ha flipped over the cards in sync with her words, each picture she recited appeared precisely as she had said.
“Kyaaah!”
Seo-eun jumped up and danced with joy.
Waving her short arms in the air looked like a chick flapping its wings.
“I got them all right~ I got them all right~”
Seo-eun had always had a stronger competitive streak than she looked.
“Alright, next is fifteen cards!”
“Okay!”
At Seo-ha’s announcement, Seo-eun nodded with a determined look on her face.
And then, without fail, she got all fifteen correct.
Even Seo-ha was a little surprised at that.
Illustrated cards are harder to memorize than playing cards.
With number cards, it’s easy to make rules, odd and even numbers, colors, patterns, all can be used to sort them in your head.
But with illustrated images that don’t have much relation to each other, making patterns is incredibly difficult.
“Kya-hahaha-”
Seo-eun spread her arms and ran around the floor playing airplane.
Seo-ha watched her for a moment and then burst into laughter.
‘I was just trying to play with her, but this might actually turn into serious training.’
Good memorization skills are incredibly helpful for doctors, who have to memorize a lot.
Seo-ha decided to increase the number of cards each time he came home.
***
Whirrrrrr-
The printer in the library whirred nonstop.
Beside it, a thick stack of papers had already piled up.
[A New Approach to the Zero Distribution of the Riemann Zeta Function]
[The Riemann Hypothesis and Quantum Chaos Theory]
As each page came out of the printer, Seo-ha checked the title and neatly organized the papers into his bag.
Twenty papers just today.
Roughly ten thousand more to read.
Seo-ha had decided to review every meaningful study ever published on the Riemann Hypothesis. Even if he read ten papers a day, it would take three years, an enormous task.
But Seo-ha didn’t find this painful at all.
It was more of an emotion close to excitement.
Tracing the marks left behind by thousands of mathematicians over hundreds of years was something he found enjoyable.
Of course, what made this possible was his reading speed, incomparable to that of ordinary people.
No matter how complex the formulas and proofs were, Seo-ha could understand them instantly.
“Ahem!”
At the sound of someone clearing their throat, Seo-ha turned around.
“Books weren’t enough, now you’re printing too?”
A young female librarian who looked to be around thirty shook her head.
“Sigh! I used to get tired bringing books over, but now I’ll have to change the ink frequently too.”
Seo-ha smiled awkwardly as he carefully organized the printed papers. She was always the one who had to go through trouble because of him.
“Sorry. I really need these.”
For a moment, he thought she was angry, but her expression quickly changed as if she were joking.
“Don’t worry! The principal gave us special instructions.”
“Huh?”
“You didn’t know? He told us to get you absolutely anything you need, no questions asked.”
“Ah! That explains it...”
Seo-ha nodded.
Come to think of it, the books he had requested from the library were never ordinary.
Some of them were rare original editions, with only a few copies even in the country.
Books he had requested while thinking, ‘There’s no way they’ll have this’, had never once been turned down, so in a way, this explanation made perfect sense.
“Thank you so much.”
He bowed his head politely with sincere gratitude.
“Don’t mention it! You’re the genius who brought honor to our school, it’s my pleasure. Keep working hard, okay?”
Seo-ha left the library in a good mood.
Thud.
As soon as he shut the dorm room door, he placed the heavy backpack on the desk.
Click.
Crash.
When he opened the bag, the stack of printed papers tumbled noisily onto the floor. The floor was soon covered with formulas and graphs densely packed on white pages.
Seo-ha turned on the desk lamp and picked up the top paper.
[The Riemann Zeta Function and the Zero Distribution Near the Critical Line]
To the average person, the contents would be dizzyingly difficult, but to Seo-ha, it looked like an intriguing storybook.
‘They interpreted the zeros statistically here. This part could be connected to the Gaussian distribution.’
Before he knew it, the page was finished. Seo-ha immediately picked up the next paper.
And whenever a thought came to mind, he opened his notebook and wrote it down in neat handwriting.
Only after finishing the tenth paper did he finally set his pen down.
Beads of sweat had formed on his forehead, but his eyes looked even sharper. It felt as if the footsteps of mathematicians with different ideas were beckoning him to follow.
“Not yet.”
The Riemann Hypothesis was a marathon. He couldn’t recklessly decide to sprint. But Seo-ha was confident he wouldn’t tire, no matter how long the journey.
He looked at the portrait of Isaac Newton on the bookshelf.
“Sir, the world still studies the formulas you created. Will my name someday be remembered in textbooks too?”
It seemed as if Newton was smiling, as if encouraging him to give it his all.
But for today, this was enough.
Ducky was already making a fuss, urging him to hurry and enter the digital world.
Now, it was time to take the first step in the project he had named the “Synapse Engine”.