Chapter 188
Translator: Dreamscribe
Oxford University Press, mathematics editorial department conference room.
"Editor-in-chief, this is too much. This is beyond the level of mere revisions!"
Bang!
Norman, the editor-in-chief, his face flushed crimson, slammed his hand against the blackboard. On the board was a list of dozens of books, and across it, drawn large in red chalk, was an enormous X.
"Do you see this list? These are the books scheduled for publication next quarter. Every single one of them!"
Silence settled over the conference room. The six members of the editorial department glanced at one another and avoided his gaze.
"But Norman, what are we supposed to do about 'Number Theory Seminar', which is set to come out next month? It's about to go to the printer, I tell you."
Edward, the senior editor, clutched his head and protested. But Norman did not budge an inch.
"Publish it? Have you all lost your minds? Everything from chapter three through chapter eight of that book has become worthless!"
Bang!
"Please, Seo-ha.... why did that boy have to go and solve the problem at this exact moment."
It was a joyous occasion for the world of mathematics, one that came along only rarely, but from the standpoint of those who had been planning to release new books, it was a catastrophe.
In one corner of the conference room, Margaret, the proofreader, sat with a set of proofs crammed full of red-pen marks resting on her knees, staring out the window with a dazed expression. Her assigned section was geometry.
"You mustn't blame Seo-ha! Resent us, the established mathematicians who couldn't crack this problem for two centuries!"
Norman cut him off firmly.
In truth, it was not a problem confined to the publishing house. Word was coming in that number theory and geometry lectures were being cancelled at several prestigious universities.
A professor had reportedly stared at his syllabus for a long while and then simply walked out. And not long after, notices announcing a complete review of the curriculum were going up.
"The paper hasn't even passed formal peer review yet. Isn't this a bit hasty?"
Norman shook his head at the editor's objection.
"I've looked into it, and heavyweight mathematicians are already writing follow-up papers. That means they're operating on the premise that Seo-ha's proof is correct. I hear Princeton has already made major changes to its publishing plans as well."
"Then what are we supposed to do?"
Norman broke into a broad smile.
"We stay one step ahead of them.
Seo-ha's paper has already surpassed a million downloads. For a mathematics paper, that's an unbelievable figure.
A million! Undergraduates, graduate students, amateur mathematicians, journalists, even traders in the stock market and ordinary people who have never studied mathematics in depth. Everyone is reading it. And why do you think that is?"
The editors nodded.
They too had all downloaded the paper out of curiosity and read it. Norman picked up a piece of chalk and began writing the titles of new books.
"They want to understand it! And so, this is what we must do now."
[Yu Seo-ha's Proof of the Riemann Hypothesis Explained for Non-Mathematicians]
[The World After the Riemann Hypothesis - What Changes?]
[The Revolution of Space, Yu-Riemann Geometry]
"Put together proposals and submit them within the week. And start lining up authors. Reach out to Yu Seo-ha himself and to MIT. Let's not forget. We are the very history of mathematics itself, Oxford."
The editorial department's course was set.
A grim stillness hung over the conference room that had been in an uproar. Overhauling a publishing plan entirely is an agonizing thing. But at the same time, a swelling sense of mission, of being the first to record a new age of mathematics, glinted in their eyes.
***
The red lamp on the camera lit up.
There stood Woo-hyun in front of the blackboard. The skin beneath his eyes had gone dark, the face of a man who had been through the wringer. The place he stood today was not the Gangnam studio where he usually worked.
It was the main studio of EBS, the broadcaster responsible for online education in the Republic of Korea. As a spearhead of capitalism and a star of the private tutoring world, he had no natural connection to a place like this.
[14,552]
[19,211]
This was not one of his usual paid lectures but a public broadcast.
Whatever advertising they had done, the concurrent viewer count was climbing rapidly even before it began. As befit a major broadcasting station, several enormous cameras were trained on him. The producer gave him the OK sign.
'How did it come to this.'
Woo-hyun wore a bitter expression.
It had all started with a single joke he'd tossed out during a class.
└Sir, how exactly did Yu Seo-ha prove the Riemann Hypothesis?
Woo-hyun had laughed as he looked at the chat window.
"You guys wouldn't get it. The background knowledge you'd need for the proof is no joke. Honestly, none of you are even interested, right?"
└That's not true! We're super interested!
└For real!
└Can't you at least give us a summary?
"Not a chance. The moment I start explaining that, you'll all zone out or fall asleep. How many years do you think I've been at this? You think you can fool me?"
└I'd listen carefully though.
└Sir, please do it! I even downloaded the paper!
"Quiet down. It's not something I can explain in an hour or two, and it's even less something to lay out in front of high schoolers. Maybe if a request came from somewhere like EBS, but."
They say a spoken word can take root.
Not many days later, a contact from the educational broadcaster, who had heard the news, reached out.
"Sir, Korea has produced a mathematician for the ages, and to put it bluntly, nobody understands what Yu Seo-ha actually accomplished. Doesn't someone need to explain it properly for once?"
The producer, eyes gleaming, worked persistently to persuade him.
Woo-hyun had marketability.
The highest-earning lecturer in Korea right now, a man whose very jokes became talking points. Not long ago, when he'd mentioned during a class that a certain brand of frozen pizza was tasty, there was even a news story that the brand's sales had jumped fivefold.
"It has to be someone like you who steps forward. For the sake of the students, if nothing else, I'm asking you, please."
'He flatters so smoothly, when it's really about the ad revenue.'
Woo-hyun sneered inwardly. But it wasn't a false statement.
Korea right now was swept up in a Yu Seo-ha craze. News of his enlistment led the nine o'clock news, and YouTube was overflowing with videos about the Riemann Hypothesis. Yet not one person had actually explained his theory in any depth.
'It's only to be expected.'
Seo-ha's paper was a monstrous theory that fused together all the most abstruse fields of modern mathematics into one. Even Woo-hyun, who had done mathematics his whole life, could not fully grasp it.
"All right. Let's give it a shot."
It was a decision unlike Woo-hyun. Why had he taken on work that wouldn't even make him money?
The reason was simple.
At the end of his paper, Seo-ha had signed his name with the fountain pen given to him to use when he graced a page of history. What could he do for a Seo-ha like that?
He was no longer a country boy. Money and honor he had in abundance, and he no longer needed anyone's help.
But there was something. Something only he could do.
His competitive spirit played a part too.
However far he'd drifted from academia, he was once a man marked out as someone who would lead the world of mathematics.
Above all, he felt that if he could not read the whole of Seo-ha's great achievement, he would never again be able to look Seo-ha straight in the eye.
"I have a condition."
The producer's face brightened.
"You needn't worry about the appearance fee. We'll simply offer an extraordinary sum..."
"No."
Woo-hyun cut him off, his expression hard.
"I'm asking for a broadcast with no time limit."
"Wh-what do you mean?"
The producer blinked.
"I'll finish it properly in one go. Don't cut me off partway through. Even if viewers complain, even if the ratings hit rock bottom, the broadcast has to stay on until I finish the whole explanation."
Woo-hyun had waged a desperate battle over the past two months.
He had pulled out the specialist texts from his Princeton days that he'd long forgotten. Nor had he neglected to study the latest theoretical works and papers.
Days spent immersing himself in study like a madman, from Grothendieck's scheme theory to Alain Connes's noncommutative geometry.
'Grothendieck would have loved this, if he'd been alive.'
Some, no, a great many mathematicians ranked Grothendieck as a figure above even Riemann.
In his scheme theory, the numbers themselves were not what mattered. What relationships they formed, upon what space they rested, in what manner they transformed, that was the essence. And yet even he had not been able to see it through to the end.
"Just how many mathematicians' dreams have you fulfilled, I wonder?"
Yu-Riemann Geometry bordered on ontology.
It was a discipline of space, yet Seo-ha was newly defining the very way that numbers exist. Its difficulty crossed a line. Woo-hyun found himself thinking that the students who would one day study this might resent him greatly.
But Woo-hyun did it.
In the end, he read the paper all the way through without a single remaining doubt.
On the dawn he closed the final page, Woo-hyun could not steady his body for a while, drained of all strength. Yet at the same time he felt a burning exhilaration. Fireworks bursting in his head the instant the proof clicked perfectly into place. It was the very same rapture he had last felt in his university days.
And today.
Four hours had passed since the lecture began.
[203,417]
The concurrent viewers had exceeded two hundred thousand. Outside the studio, someone approached and whispered something into the producer's ear. The producer's eyes widened. He quietly jotted a note on a sheet of A4 paper and showed it to Woo-hyun.
「Estimated one million concurrent viewers, overseas viewers included」
Woo-hyun glanced at it and turned his gaze back to the blackboard. His expression did not falter in the slightest.
"All right, now for the heart of it."
He drew a single line down the center of the board. Long and distinct, running vertical.
"Let's take a look at how the zeta function transforms in Yu-Riemann space."
└Anyone actually following this right now?
└Master's student in math here. I'm keeping up. Korea's top-ranked tutor really is something. This is a seriously hard concept and he's explaining it in a way that's easy to understand.
└I take Woo-hyun's classes, and I feel so bad for having asked him that I'm forcing myself to listen ᄏᄏᄏ that teacher holds grudges like crazy, he's definitely gonna check on us later
└The people in the field must be listening with their jaws clenched, right? It's embarrassing not to know, and there's nobody who explains this as easily as Shin Woo-hyun.
└Gifted High School student here. Whole group of us watching together. That's our senior ᄏᄏᄏᄏᄏ
"Is he going to be okay?"
Seven hours had passed since the lecture began. The junior writer looked toward the studio with anxious eyes. A brutal marathon, run on only the barest sips of water.
The concurrent viewer count kept climbing. It was because word of Shin Woo-hyun's stunt had spread through the online communities.
[Shin Woo-hyun, seven hours into explaining the Riemann Hypothesis]
Some sent messages of encouragement, others fired off donations. Woo-hyun's lecture raced toward its climax.
"Now we can determine it. The zeros can exist only upon this line. There is no other possibility. With Yu-Riemann Geometry, Seo-ha created a world in which the Riemann Hypothesis cannot be anything but true.
A world in which all other possibilities are denied. It was a conception that none but a genius among geniuses could even dare to imitate."
Woo-hyun's throat tightened.
└Wow!
└Seriously, wow ᄏᄏᄏ no wonder this guy makes tens of billions of won a year as a tutor.
└I feel like I sort of understood something, in a vibes kind of way.
"That took a full eight hours. Thank you all for enduring the long haul. For those who found it hard to follow, a replay service will be available soon, so..."
Partway through his closing remarks, Woo-hyun stopped and looked closely at the screen.
└Sir, thank you. I watched the whole thing from start to finish. Even I, who created the theory, don't think I could explain it as easily as you did.
Beside the comment was a username.
[Yu Seoha]
└The man himself has entered the chat ᄏᄏᄏᄏᄏ
└Is that seriously real?? no way
└Prove it! Recite the enlisted men's creed, our oath of resolve!
└Damn! A broadcast where a Fields Prize winner drops into the chat ᄏᄏᄏ
The chat window blazed up to uncontrollable levels. Text scrolling by too fast to even read. Woo-hyun's throat tightened. But like a professional, he kept his expression in check.
"With this, I'll bring the lecture to a close. Since Seo-ha has personally verified it, I'll take it that there were no errors in my explanation."
Just as he was about to end the broadcast, Seo-ha sent a long message.
└The media often say that I have no academic mentor, but that is not true. Shin Woo-hyun is my teacher.
In my childhood, I was profoundly influenced by him. Had it not been for him, what kind of life would I be living now? Thank you, sir.
The pinnacle of Korea's private tutoring market, a star lecturer earning tens of billions a year. Yet in one corner of his heart, the labels 'runaway' and 'loser' had always been branded. Ever since the day he'd packed his bags and fled Princeton.
'Maybe this success is the price I paid for abandoning my identity as a mathematician?'
As if he had sold his soul to the devil.
Once that thought took hold, he could not fully enjoy his success either.
But not anymore.
In his estimation, Seo-ha was a figure who would one day be ranked on the level of Newton, Gauss, and Euler. And such a figure was calling him his teacher.
Woo-hyun felt the shards of the inferiority complex that had so relentlessly tormented him being washed away.
"No, I'm the one who's grateful. Seo-ha."
In the end, Woo-hyun wept in front of the camera.
*****
For 30 or more extra chapters, you can check out my Patreon here --> patreon.com/dreamscribe
If you enjoy this novel, please review and rate it at Novelupdates. Thanks! 😊
To receive the latest update notifications or report mistakes, join our Discord server linked below.