Chapter 18
That evening.
As soon as Dad got home from work and opened the front door, he rushed straight at Arin.
Arin was stacking blocks in the living room.
“Our girl—!”
Dad's huge hand snatched Arin up.
“Kyaaah—!”
Vroom-vroom-.
Arin was repeatedly lifted up and down through the air by Dad's hand.
“What kind of IQ is 145, 145! You're smarter than your own dad! There are two geniuses in our house, two!”
“Heeheehee-! Put me down-!”
Arin laughed herself silly.
Vroom-vroom-.
I sat on the sofa and watched Arin bobbing up and down in the air.
'...I'm jealous.'
No, I'm not jealous.
No, maybe a little.
No, I'm not that jealous!
“Ayeon, why are you looking at me like that?”
Dad looked at me while Arin was tucked under his arm.
“I wasn't looking.”
“You were.”
“I wasn't.”
“Sis! You made eye contact with me!”
“Grr-! I said I wasn't looking!”
Dad grinned, then put Arin down.
Tap, tap, tap-.
Then he walked over to me.
“Come to think of it, I haven't given our Ayeon any airplane rides lately. Ayeon, come here too.”
“N-no... I'm already five years old.”
“What are you talking about? Five-year-olds are still kids.”
“It looks like it'd be heavy... and I've gotten bigger since last time.”
“Dad's got some strength, you know?”
Dad rolled up his sleeves and showed off his forearms.
Gulp-.
I hesitated for a moment.
Just one second.
“...Nope. Arin can—”
“I refuse your refusal!”
“Huh—!”
Dad's hand grabbed my side.
And then.
Vroom-vroom-.
“Hehehe-!”
Right in front of my eyes was the ceiling. It came closer and farther away in waves.
My semicircular canals were stimulated, and my brain released adrenaline as a survival signal.
The explosive rush of adrenaline made me giggle uncontrollably.
Arin, beside me, was clapping her hands.
“Sis is laughing too-!”
“N-no, I'm not-!”
✒️✒️✒️
After that day.
Whenever I got the chance, I borrowed Mom's laptop and researched how to develop Arin's brain.
'Arin's at the golden time right now too. For this stage, I need to make the things she's good at grow explosively.'
According to neuroscience, synapse density in the brain reaches its peak around age three.
It's no exaggeration to say that what kind of stimulation you give at this stage determines the brain's later structure.
Since I knew that fact too, I'd spent that period acquiring knowledge in various fields and learning multiple languages.
I can proudly say I can speak seven languages at a conversational level without any problem.
...Though my pronunciation is another matter.
Arin's brain had maxed out both fluid reasoning and processing speed.
According to Teacher Park Jisoo, she showed overwhelming skill in areas with clear rules, like board games or puzzles.
“Board games, huh... hmm...”
Of course, simple board games alone wouldn't be enough to stimulate Arin's brain sufficiently.
A light party game meant just for fun? That's a big no.
It'd have to be a high-difficulty tactical strategy game that torments the brain until your head gets nice and toasty.
No way am I letting you take it easy!
“Not something like Jenga... is there anything that really makes you use your brain?”
Click, click-.
I browsed websites looking for board game information.
Then an interesting site caught my eye.
“BGG(BoardGameGeek)...?”
This was a database site that collected board games from around the world.
...Oh-ho.
The interesting thing was that this site assigned a difficulty rating to each board game.
A 1.0 is an easy, light party game.
A 5.0 means a game with lots of choices to consider, deep strategy, and incredibly complex move reading.
The Othello we all know is 2.0, chess is 3.6, and Go is 3.9.
'Yeah. This is the stuff. I found something good.'
Of course, this site lists every board game in the world, so if you narrow it down to games officially released in Korea, the number drops a lot.
Still, it was a perfectly good resource.
'But that doesn't mean I can just hand Arin a five-point game.'
Arin still doesn't have great language comprehension yet.
The games that got a 5 on this site had too many rules to learn right from the start.
With the complex and enormous amount of text, the odds of Arin not understanding it and flipping the board were very high.
In other words, it was way too niche.
'For now, we should start with something simple...'
Easy To Learn, Hard To Master.
It's an adage in game development.
As the saying goes, it has to be easy to get into so Arin will take an interest, and hard to master so Arin will end up wracking her brain over it.
'Good. Decided. We'll start at 1 and slowly work our way up through board games.'
Intuitive rules.
Pattern recognition.
Quick judgment.
Using Arin's strengths as they were, while gradually adding strategic thinking.
In the evening.
I went to Dad after he got home from work and said,
“Dad.”
“Yeah? Our daughter.”
I handed him the note.
Dad took the note and read it.
“Ayeon, what is all this?”
“It's a list of board games. They're needed for Arin's brain development.”
“Brain development?”
“Yeah. Arin's three now, right? We need to give her the right stimulation at this age. These are the ones I handpicked based on Arin's IQ profile.”
“...Do we have to buy all of these?”
“Not yet. We have to buy them step by step from the top. I arranged them in the order that's easiest for Arin to get into.”
Swish, swish-.
Dad ran a rough hand through my hair.
“Our Ayeon, preparing all this because you're thinking of your little sister... that's admirable.”
“Heehee.”
I'm a big sister who cares about her little sister this much.
✒️✒️✒️
One day, Mom was checking her email on the laptop when she casually said to me:
“Ayeon.”
“What is it, Mom?”
“The reporters keep emailing, saying they want to interview me about my Riemann Hypothesis paper. What should I do?”
“Hmm... just ignore them for now!”
Mom opened her eyes in surprise.
“Is that okay? Ayeon, you said you wanted to become famous.”
It was because I'd kept saying I wanted to become famous and get applause.
But I have my own plans!
“Heh. I need to keep them guessing here so the whole world will get even more interested! I'm the mysterious Yu Ayeon who keeps my secret tightly hidden until the decisive moment!”
Peace-peace-.
I said, making V signs with both hands.
“Really? Okay. Still, if we just ignore them, Ayeon might get dragged into gossip later, so I'll politely decline. That's okay, right?”
“Yep!”
Click-clack-.
Mom wrote a polite refusal email to the reporters.
✒️✒️✒️
Thanks to my persistent urging, various board games started showing up in our house one by one.
Arin's eyes sparkled every time Dad came home with a new box.
“Wow—! Dad, you're the best!”
“Arin, you should say 'thank you.'”
“Thank youuu-!”
Whenever a new box arrived, Arin would come scampering over and beg me, who was reading in the living room, to play with her.
“Sis, sis!”
“What? A new game came? Then shall we try it together?”
“Yeah!”
Usually, when it was just me and Arin, we'd play two-player games.
After Dad got off work, we'd all enjoy four-player games together as a family.
There were no games like Jenga where everyone went, “Uhh, uhh, what do we do, what do we do, whoaaah!!!”
Every game was customized for Arin.
We gathered around the living room table.
The first game we took out was one for training intuitive pattern recognition.
A game where you race to spot the pattern and grab the card.
“Now, watch closely. We're going to choose three cards here—either all with the same trait, or all different. Got it?”
“Yeah!”
The first few rounds unfolded similarly.
Sometimes Dad would win, and Mom sometimes won too.
But most of the time I won, building an overwhelming score gap by the end of each round.
Arin would win at most once a round.
'Ahh, I don't really like steamrolling people like this, but what can you do~ The world is just too easy, heh-heh.'
Heh-heh-.
The corners of my mouth rose.
But at the time, I didn't notice.
'Mm... this one goes like this... that one goes like that...'
That Arin, even while losing, wasn't getting upset and was constantly replaying the rules and patterns in her head, looking for a way to win.
After two rounds, three rounds, Arin's movements changed.
As if she'd caught on, her hands started moving quickly.
The fourth round.
'Got it...!'
The moment I found the pattern and reached for the card,
Arin shot out her hand like lightning and snatched the card I was aiming for.
“Huh... wait...!”
“Huh? Why, sis?”
“No... it's nothing.”
The fifth round too.
The sixth round too.
At some point, I could feel my hand getting slower.
'No... it's not that I've gotten slower... Arin is getting faster and faster...!'
Arin took some time to figure out the rules.
But once she understood them, turned them into patterns, and started getting the hang of them.
Arin's overwhelming fluid reasoning and processing speed began to shine.
Before long, Arin's score began to overtake mine.
Seeing the result, I could only quietly admit it.
'I can feel it clearly now... Arin's processing speed is much faster than mine. No doubt about it.'
In the Wechsler test, both of us scored 160 out of 160 in processing speed, which means a standard test can't tell us apart.
But comparing us face-to-face like this, I realized it.
Arin was overwhelming me when it came to processing speed.
“Arin... you're incredibly fast.”
“Hehe, I told you last time! I'd win someday!”
“Heh, this is the first time I've seen Ayeon lose.”
“Heh-heh, you were always bragging about how smart you are, but now that you've lost to your little sister, how does it feel? Frustrated? Hm?”
Mom and Dad seemed to think this was just a game between two close young sisters, and watched us with quiet chuckles.
A perfectly ordinary family enjoying board games.
They're definitely not thinking about genius this, gifted that...
But I know it, having gone up against Arin.
Arin's strength was an incredible talent that could reach the world stage if properly polished.