I Got an Omnipotent Brain

News about a young genius always becomes a hot topic.

The news of Seo-ha being selected for the IMO national team spread rapidly and adorned the main pages of major daily newspapers and portals.

[12-Year-Old Genius Boy Selected as Korean Representative for the International Mathematical Olympiad]

-A historic record in the history of Korean education has been made at a small rural elementary school in Okcheon County, Chungcheongbuk-do.

Yu Seo-ha (12 years old), a sixth-grade student at Dodam Elementary School, has been selected as the youngest member of the Korean national team for the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) in 20xx.

This is the first time in Korea that an elementary school student has been chosen as an IMO representative, and globally, it is only the second time after the mathematician Elijah Cronen, who won both the Fields Medal and the Abel Prize.

What’s even more surprising is that Yu Seo-ha achieved this result through after-school programs and self-study, without any help from private tutoring.

(omitted)

After this news broke, Dodam Elementary School suddenly received nationwide attention overnight.

Principal Kim Jae-hyung is struggling with the overwhelming number of media interview requests and is voicing his difficulties.

(omitted)

└Without private tutoring? Is that even possible?

└They’re probably just saying that. Do you really believe that?

└Guys, that’s Okcheon in Chungbuk. It’s a rural town with a population of 40,000ㅋㅋㅋ. There aren’t even any academies in the town center.

└What do you mean rural? I’m a resident of Okcheon and I find that offensive. If you keep saying things like that, we’ll confiscate your deliveries.

└The terrifying Okcheon logistics hub ㄷㄷㄷ

└He’s in 6th grade, right? That’s insane. He beat out all the Science High School and Gifted School kids to get selected.

└Isn’t he the one who was in the news before? The one who won the Grand Prize at the National Math Contest.

└Yeah, that’s him. At this level, he probably has a free pass to Seoul National University, right?

└Just being selected is amazing, but we’ll have to see the results too.

└The student who placed 3rd overall last year is also competing. Let’s do well this time.

***

Drip.

Hot barley tea filled the cup.

Woo-hyun tried to recall the last time he had barley tea, but he couldn’t remember.

Slurp.

The savory aroma of barley put his mind at ease.

“Thank you for taking care of Seo-ha, teacher.”

To Mi-young, Woo-hyun was a savior.

“No, it’s something I did because I wanted to.”

Woo-hyun shook his head as he set down the cup of barley tea. Having visited Okcheon many times over the years, he had grown close to Seo-ha’s parents. Woo-hyun liked the couple’s sincerity.

‘There are so many parents who try to profit off their children.’

After the article was published, Woo-hyun felt uneasy. Of course, he trusted the couple, but there were just too many bad people in the world.

“Still, Seo-ha could come this far thanks to you, teacher. You told him what to study and even sent us books... Come to think of it, it happened just as you said a few years ago.”

She hadn’t completely believed him when he said Seo-ha could get a master’s degree from KAIST at sixteen.

They just thought he would be better than them since he was a famous instructor. But as the years passed, his words were becoming reality.

“Thank you for saying that, but to be honest, I came today because I was worried.”

Woo-hyun’s expression turned serious.

“Worried?”

“There must have already been several people reaching out after the article was published.”

“How did you know? Really, we’ve been getting nonstop calls since yesterday....”

Her expression darkened.

Mi-young felt burdened by the overwhelming attention, which couldn’t even be compared to the past.

“I thought so.”

Woo-hyun nodded calmly.

”We don’t know anything about what’s going on....”

From the looks of it, they hadn’t signed any contracts or had any serious meetings yet. Woo-hyun let out a sigh of relief.

“Where did they come from?”

“Several were from educational companies, and even some major corporations offered to sponsor him.”

“Educational companies?”

“Yes. They said they make textbooks and also offer lectures. They offered to provide Seo-ha with free books and lectures. And if he shows results, they said they’d give him a scholarship too....”

Woo-hyun’s brow twitched, and his eyes turned fierce.

“Damn, these shameless, unethical bastards!”

“Huh?”

Mi-young was startled by Woo-hyun’s harsh words, something she’d never heard from him before.

“I’m sorry. I got emotional.”

Woo-hyun took a breath and organized his thoughts.

“This is something that happens all the time in the industry. What they want is to package Seo-ha’s future success as if it was thanks to them. They’ll promote it like, ‘A student who took our lectures and studied with our textbooks won a gold medal at the IMO.’”

They were truly low-quality operators, not even willing to pay properly.

“Aigoo, I didn’t even know that. Thank you for telling me.”

“Large corporations aren’t much different. The bigger the company, the less likely they are to do business that results in a loss. Later on, when Seo-ha grows up, it will become a shackle in some form.”

At Woo-hyun’s words, Mi-young nodded.

“You’re saying we should just keep doing things the way we are, right?”

“That’s right. For a genius like Seo-ha, the most important thing is a free environment where no one interferes.”

While they were talking, Seo-eun peeked her head out from behind her mom and shouted when she saw Woo-hyun.

“Ah! It’s the scary teacher!”

Woo-hyun gave a wry smile.

Since she was Seo-ha’s younger sister, he was curious and thought he’d try a simple test.

But what a surprise!

An incredible memory and mental arithmetic ability.

When she said she wanted to do number linking, he asked what she meant, and it turned out to be prime factorization.

He got a bit greedy and tried to teach her a little, but somehow she sensed it and ran off in fright.

Since then, whenever Seo-eun sees Woo-hyun, she never comes close and keeps a distance like a cat.

‘Did Seo-ha teach her?’

What on earth was Seo-ha planning to raise his sister into?

Woo-hyun suddenly felt curious.

***

Winter passed, and spring brushed by.

Seo-ha had now become a sixth grader.

And already, it was May, the season where the early summer heat could be felt.

In the meantime, Seo-ha had gone through quite a few changes.

First of all, he had grown taller.

The clothes he used to wear no longer fit him.

But the biggest change happened inside his mind.

Seo-ha was sitting at his desk, writing something in a notebook. But unlike usual, it wasn’t filled with equations, but with words.

“What are you writing?”

At Mi-young’s question, Seo-ha closed the notebook.

“A journal.”

But it wasn’t a journal.

As he completely immersed himself in mathematics, Seo-ha realized he could not fully eliminate his compulsions. So, he had no choice but to find a way to live with them.

Seo-ha didn’t fall into despair. Instead, he chose a scientific approach.

It was a narrative therapy technique he found in a psychology book.

He thought he might be able to solve the problem by using externalization, which is viewing the issue as separate from oneself.

‘Let’s think of the compulsion not as an enemy, but as a roommate.’

First, he gave it a name.

‘Ducky.’

Assuming it had a nasty personality, he gave it the name of the grumpiest duck.

Ducky loved perfect patterns and beautiful symmetry, and wanted to organize and record everything in the world as numbers.

Seo-ha allocated a specific amount of time each day entirely for Ducky.

So that Ducky could immerse himself completely in whatever he wanted to do.

Outside of that time, Seo-ha would say, “This isn’t your time!” and negotiate with him.

After treating it this way, Ducky was no longer just an annoying and harmful presence.

When he let Ducky check math answers, Ducky enjoyed it.

Even when writing down answers, Ducky had a meticulous and thorough personality. He liked to write out details that Seo-ha tended to skip out of habit.

Tap tap.

Seo-ha opened his wardrobe and quietly stared at the duck on the end of his pencil.

“You’ll understand too, right?”

The duck didn’t answer, but Seo-ha felt as if he had heard a response.

Instead of his checkered shirt, Seo-ha picked a black windbreaker.

For a moment, a sense of resistance welled up.

“Ducky, we take turns compromising.”

Gritting his teeth, Seo-ha pulled out the windbreaker and put it on.

It was bearable. The feeling wasn’t as bad as he thought.

Ducky was fickle.

Some days, he seemed to be in a good mood and would do anything, but the next day, he’d show signs of rejection.

But there was one thing both of them commonly liked, and that was mathematics.

[Algebraic Topology]

The complex structures of homotopy and homology theory.

[Hₙ₊₁(X,A) → Hₙ(A) → Hₙ(X) → Hₙ(X,A) → Hₙ₋₁(A)...]

“Ducky, let’s check this sequence together.”

Ducky’s obsessive precision shined brilliantly. He instantly verified all the arrow directions and conditions in the complex diagram.

Seo-ha was convinced that Ducky, like himself, must love precise sequences.

But not every day was smooth.

Some days, Ducky tried to check every single summation interval of an infinite series.

“That has no end. Let’s stop at a reasonable point.”

Ducky quieted down.

Seo-ha had been worried it wouldn’t work, but it was a huge success.

He closed the book he had been reading and gazed blankly at Ramanujan’s theta function.

An array of infinitely continuing, beautiful functions.

Perfect, beautiful, and above all, predictable.

A sense of peace washed over him.

‘There’s no such thing as an unsolvable problem.’

There was nothing wrong with what the mathematician François Viète had said.

***

Time flew like an arrow, and the departure day arrived.

Seo-ha, about to go abroad for the first time in his life, was so nervous the day before that he barely slept.

“Seo-ha, your passport’s in the bag, right?”

Mi-young, uneasy about sending her son overseas, checked his belongings several times.

“Yes, Mom! Don’t worry.”

The departure lobby was filled with a hum of voices.

Travelers, families seeing them off, and even reporters.

“Yu Seo-ha! Please look this way!”

Pop!

A camera flash went off.

It hadn’t been like this last year, but perhaps because of the buzz around an elementary school student participating in the IMO, several news outlets had sent reporters.

“Are you nervous?”

“What is your goal?”

“Is it true you’ve never received private tutoring?”

As questions poured in, Seo-ha looked flustered, and the chaperone stepped forward.

“Sorry, but Seo-ha is still young, so please keep it brief.”

“Yes, Professor.”

A reporter brought a microphone to Seo-ha.

“Yu Seo-ha! We heard you never received private tutoring. Is there a special secret to how you’re so good at math?”

At the reporter’s question, Seo-ha thought for a moment and then smiled innocently.

“I just really like math.

Ah! Actually, I have a teacher who’s been sending me various books and giving me advice since I was little.”

“Who is that person?”

“I want to tell you his name, but he told me never to do that. He said, if I achieve something big enough to be recorded in the history of world mathematics, then I can mention it....”

“Hahaha! What an amusing person. I hope that really happens.”

Thinking it was a joke, the reporter burst out laughing.

Professor Park glanced at his watch and cut in.

“Let’s go over there.”

After walking a bit, familiar faces came into view.

Su-jeong had come with her parents. Sung Ji-hoon, unusually dressed in a suit, and Ko Chang-seok, looking just as he always did, were chatting with their families.

A while later, Seo Ji-ye appeared, looking glamorous as if she had just come from a salon.

And finally, Do-hyun with a determined expression.

Once all six representatives had gathered, the atmosphere became noticeably more relaxed.

Seo-ha crouched down and met eyes with Seo-eun, who had grown so much.

“You won’t cry this time, right? Oppa will be back soon.”

Seo-eun had cried all day when she heard her oppa was leaving again.

But after he promised he’d definitely bring back a gold medal to hang around her neck, she was now trying hard to hold back tears.

“Yeah! I won’t cry. But you have to come back soon, okay? And don’t forget to bring my gold medal, promise?”

Seo-ha hugged his little sister’s small body and gently patted her back.

‘It’s been such a long journey.’

Six years to get here.

He understood in his head that it was a necessary process.

But more than boring competition problems, Seo-ha wanted to wrestle with the unsolved problems that piled up in the world.

‘Just a few more days now.’

110 countries,

The Olympiad where 660 mathematical geniuses compete will soon begin.

*****

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