Chapter 175
Translator: Dreamscribe
Applause and cheers loud enough to leave the ears ringing.
A fervor so intense it was hard to believe it came from people who had spent their whole lives in the world of reason and logic filled the auditorium.
Seo-ha slowly turned to look at them.
Elderly scholars giving a standing ovation, their faces drenched in tears; young mathematicians embracing one another and cheering.
'It's over.'
Ducky was in ecstasy.
The self that had always been starving, the ego that had gnawed away at Seo-ha's nerves because it couldn't endure imperfection, was feeling complete satisfaction for the first time in its life.
Seo-ha was intoxicated by that languid sensation. The satiation of a beast of prey that had devoured whole the truth of an enormous universe. Ducky swam across the flawless web of logic it had woven, trembling. As if the ultimate order, which permitted not a speck of contradiction nor a single exception, was satisfying beyond measure.
'Are you at peace now?'
When Seo-ha had proved the Four Color Theorem, Ducky had stayed quiet for a while too.
Since the Riemann Hypothesis was a problem of such enormous scale, all he could do was hope it would take a long time to digest, like an anaconda that had swallowed an elephant whole.
As Ducky sank into the darkness, the sensations of reality rushed in all at once like a tsunami. His brain, which he had driven to the breaking point over the past several days, and his body, deprived of proper water and nutrition, finally reached their limit.
Wobble.
Seo-ha's body lost its balance and tilted.
The instant the chalk in his hand fell to the floor and his vision went dark, someone firmly caught his shoulder.
"I've got him!"
Theo, who had run up at some point, was breathing hard as he held Seo-ha up. Su-jeong came closer with a face on the verge of tears and gently swept back his tousled hair.
"Seo-ha! Are you okay? Open your eyes."
"He pushed himself too hard. We have to lay him down first."
Ben, Sri, and even Cecilia came running up. As the members of Team Apex surrounded Seo-ha, the applause in the hall cut off abruptly and a tense air settled over everything.
"A doctor! I've got an ambulance standing by outside! Clear the way at once!"
President Brenner shouted urgently as he approached.
If anything were to happen to this boy at Göttingen, it would leave an indelible stain on the university.
"I'm... fine."
Seo-ha barely managed to push the words out in a cracked voice. His eyelids were heavy, but he didn't want to make anyone worry.
"I just want to sleep a little."
With those words, Seo-ha lost consciousness.
His face was peaceful. Like someone who had reached a place of rest after a very long and grueling journey.
The doctor came running over and checked Seo-ha's condition. After confirming the sound of his soft, even breathing, he let out a sigh of relief.
"It's simple exhaustion. But he needs absolute rest. We'll take him by ambulance first..."
"I'll carry him."
Sliiide.
Theo carefully hoisted Seo-ha onto his back.
As they stepped down from the podium and began walking up the aisle, a miraculous sight unfolded. Just like the Red Sea parting, the mathematicians who had been packed in so tightly there was no room to set foot drew back and opened a path.
As they passed through, the scholars, without anyone taking the lead, all bowed their heads or laid a hand over their hearts. It was a tribute to the young maestro who had flung open the door to a new era.
The moment Theo opened the oak door of the auditorium-
Click!
Click!
The flashes of the countless reporters waiting outside went off all at once.
"He's coming out!"
"Looks like he collapsed! Is he sick?"
"Move aside for a sec. Wait your turn!"
The outside crowd and the press corps that had set up camp on the lawn surged forward all at once.
"Is it finally over? Has the Riemann Hypothesis really been proven?"
"Just a word, please!"
Theo opened his eyes coldly and spoke.
"Step aside."
He walked forward without batting an eye. The heat coming through Seo-ha's back was abnormally high. Seo-ha was so thin he weighed almost nothing, as if Theo were carrying a child. It was surely the result of going several days without eating properly and driving his body into the ground.
'You must have wanted it that badly too.'
"Please, clear the way!"
Ben stepped forward and pushed the crowd back.
Reporters thrust microphones in from every direction, but Cecilia, Su-jeong, and Sri held them off. Still, it wasn't enough. The rumor must have spread, because more and more reporters kept flooding in. Unable to bear it any longer, Dean Whitman let out a loud roar.
"Stand back! Unless you want a lawsuit from MIT!"
While the reporters faltered at the elderly scholar's tremendous force, the paramedics who had been standing by safely took Seo-ha into their care.
Wee-woo wee-woo-
As the siren faded into the distance, complaints from the reporters could be heard here and there. One of them spoke up loudly, as if wanting to be overheard.
"Tch, what a ridiculous fuss. Do they think we don't know it's all a show?"
"A show? What do you mean by that?"
Another reporter approached, intrigued.
"No, let's think about it sensibly for a second. Does it make any sense to gather a bunch of mathematicians in an open venue like this and prove the Riemann Hypothesis?
It's all scripted, isn't it? The proof must have been finished in a lab ages ago, and they're just acting it out according to a script, no? It's clearly a production designed to turn that young genius into a global star."
A voice of agreement rose among the journalists.
"Surely they wouldn't go that far?"
"No, it's pretty convincing, isn't it? I've covered the math world for a long time, and I've never seen or heard of a case like this."
"And since math is so far removed from public interest anyway, the academic world would have a motive to cooperate at an institutional level too."
As his remarks gained traction, he piled on more.
"The method of proof is strange too. Who uses chalk on a blackboard in this day and age? Whoever wrote the script must have a taste for the classics.
These days, math theory comes out of supercomputers. If you need to write something by hand, there are digital boards, and even paper and pen would be more efficient than that."
It was around the time that arrogant certainty crept into the reporter's voice.
"Shut that shallow mouth of yours!"
A voice cold enough to freeze the spine.
When the reporter flinched and turned his head in surprise, dozens of mathematicians who had poured out of the auditorium following the ambulance were standing as if to surround him.
Their eyes had settled into a cold stare.
The look of awe and joyful tears from moments before was nowhere to be seen; the ferocious fury and contempt of scholars whose purity had been insulted pierced toward him like a blade.
Step.
Andrew Wiles, at the head of the group, took a step forward in his rumpled shirt. From the eyes of the master who had devoted his entire life to mathematics, a fierce gleam shot out.
"A supercomputer? Efficiency?"
He let out a hollow laugh and shot the reporter a glare.
"You seem to think a mathematician is a calculator. I can state with certainty that the geometric space Seo-ha created today cannot be simulated by any supercomputer in existence."
"N-no, what I mean is, with technology this advanced, there's no real reason to cling to chalk..."
"Nonsense!"
The old professor's lion's roar rang resoundingly across the campus.
"The blackboard and chalk are not stage props! They are the most intuitive and perfect canvas for bringing the inspiration that flashes inside the human mind into reality.
It has been so for centuries. The feel of chalk in the hand, the sound it makes scraping against the board. When we hold it, we feel as though we are spiritually connected to past masters like Newton. People like you might think there's nothing more than romanticism to this. But to us mathematicians, it is a sensation more important than anything else."
Whitman, standing beside him, spoke with an enraged expression.
"Seo-ha surely dragged himself to that lecture hall every day in an agony that felt like coughing up blood. Would you people even understand that anguish and pain? To follow his logic, the world's finest minds stayed up night after night inside a tent. And you dare treat us like third-rate actors?"
The reporter turned ashen and stepped backward.
He wanted to say something in rebuttal, but the names of those gathered carried too much weight. He didn't have the nerve to keep making baseless claims in front of winners of the Three Major Math Prizes and professors from the most prestigious universities.
'There's no need for me to step in.'
Woo-hyun smirked and stepped back.
Because of his lecture schedule, he had only watched the Fields Medal ceremony before having to head home. But when news of Seo-ha reached him afterward, he couldn't help returning to Germany.
Having arrived only on the final day, Woo-hyun had just gotten to watch the proof come to a close from out in the hallway.
'I guess this is the end of the babysitting too.'
He felt a bittersweet sense of relief.
But he had a hunch there was still something he could do for Seo-eun. Shaking his head, he made his way toward the hospital Seo-ha had been taken to.
* * *
Compared to Germany, where the semester began in early October, the United States started its term a full two months earlier.
MIT campus, 10 a.m. Mathematics Department, Lecture Hall 302.
"Therefore, if we express the convergence condition of the Dirichlet Series in terms of its real part..."
Professor Carter stopped mid-lecture and took out his phone to check it.
The students lifted their eyes from their books and watched him curiously. It was rare for him to halt a class. This was a man who, far from checking his phone during a lecture, wouldn't so much as take a sip of water...
"Professor?"
A student sitting in the front row called to him cautiously.
"One moment."
He was clearly unable to concentrate on the lecture.
In fact, the same had been true at the start of class. His hand would freeze in the middle of writing on the board, and more than once he repeated explanations he had already given.
Ding.
His phone rang.
Carter set down the chalk and hurriedly grabbed the phone.
It was just around the time a murmur was spreading among the students at his unusual behavior.
"Gahk!"
The moment he checked the message, his face filled with shock, and then he trembled all over as if suppressing his emotions.
"Professor?"
Carter squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them. And he checked the screen once more. The sender was Dean Whitman. The message was a single photo and a short sentence.
In the photo, one part of the blackboard was captured in close-up.
「Q.E.D.」
-Riemann Hypothesis, Solved.
Leaving the students' puzzled expressions behind, he shot his hand into the air and let out a sound close to a scream.
"Yeeees! Seo-ha did it! He finally proved that damned Riemann Hypothesis!"
The students, who had no idea what was going on, stared at him blankly. And a few seconds later, a thunderous cheer erupted.
"For real?"
"Professor! It's true, right?"
"Yes!!!"
"Oh my God! Oh my God!!"
A momentous event in the world of mathematics.
Anyone studying at MIT had surely dreamed the same dream at one point.
The students sprang up from their seats and cheered, then hugged one another and bounced around. MIT's idol and their own senior had solved none other than the Riemann Hypothesis.
The normally solemn professor was the most fervent of all.
He clenched both fists like a wrestler who had won a hard-fought match, then roared toward the ceiling of the lecture hall.
"Yes!!!!"
The lecture hall descended into chaos in an instant.
Someone pounded the desk with their palm. One student, unable to contain his excitement, hurled a book that had been on his desk high into the air.
Taking that as a signal, the students began rushing out of the lecture hall.
"Hey! Where are you going?"
"I don't know! Anywhere!"
"Just shut up and run!"
A few timid students glanced at Carter, gauging his reaction. He gave a broad grin and waved his hand.
"What are you all waiting for? Get out there!"
Their faces lit up brightly.
"Woo-hoo!"
The situation seemed much the same in Lecture Halls 301 and 303 on either side; their doors opened at the same time.
Crash-bang-
The sound of feet pounding down the stairs, the cheers of students, the ripple that began in the math department spread beyond the building to the entire campus. Students gathered without knowing what was going on. They came with bewildered faces, and after hearing the explanation, soon ran off shouting the same thing.
"Seo-ha, The Genius!"
"Yu Seo-ha!"
They called out the name of their proud fellow alumnus at the top of their lungs.
The commotion that began on campus spread all the way into downtown Cambridge. Harvard students passing by looked at them with expressions that said they must be crazy.
But before long, their eyes filled with envy.
[Breaking News: MIT's Yu Seo-ha Likely to Have Proven the Riemann Hypothesis. Over a Thousand Mathematicians Gathered at Göttingen Give Standing Ovation]
*****
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