Chapter 2
It didn’t take me long to figure out my situation.
‘I’ve been reincarnated as the daughter of my friend and my student...’
Pat, pat—.
As Han Seol-ae gently stroked my head with her soft hand, that was the conclusion I reached.
“Uu...”
It was hard to explain properly, but it was a complicated feeling.
If I had to call it something, maybe depression?
It was good that I hadn’t simply died and ended there, and instead gotten a second chance at life...
But why did I have to reincarnate under someone I knew so well? And as a girl, of all things.
At this rate, I’d be raised by my student and my friend, with no way out.
I might be bathed naked, breastfed, have my diapers changed, get cheek kisses, and be made to co-sleep.
Just imagining it made me so embarrassed I wanted to die.
I was such a genius professor that even weekly magazines came to interview me...
I was the only person on Earth to solve the Riemann Hypothesis...
Was it really right for someone like me to be treated like a baby?
The cruel reality felt so unfair.
On top of that, maybe because I’d become a baby, my head felt a little foggy too.
I feel like I was forgetting something... what was it again...
‘Ah, right! The Riemann Hypothesis!’
I recalled the night I had been on the verge of dying from heart disease.
That day, I definitely solved the Riemann Hypothesis, an unsolved problem that had stood for 160 years.
A self-adjoint operator proving the hypothesis true.
After finding that, I organized the ideas that led me there and uploaded them to my personal cloud.
Thanks to the accident, I couldn’t remember at all what that idea had been, but if I accessed the cloud and read through it again step by step, I was sure it would come back to me.
‘I need to organize the ideas and write the paper first...’
The definition of Hilbert space.
A proof of the trace formula.
A proof of self-adjointness.
A proof of spectral correspondence.
As expected of a million-dollar problem, there was a truckload of things to work through.
I had no idea how many years it would take to organize all of this without missing a single thing or making any logical leaps.
It was already hard enough with an adult body; now that I had the body of a baby, it was even worse.
I’d have to prepare for the long haul.
“Hon, are you okay? How’s your body?”
At that moment, Jin-hu approached us with a face full of concern.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Ah-yeon is healthy too.”
“That’s a relief...”
Jin-hu let out a sigh of relief and rubbed his chest.
After checking on Seol-ae, Jin-hu brought his face close to mine.
“So this is Ah-yeon? She’s so pretty. Her eyes look like yours, hon.”
I-it’s overwhelming...
Even in my previous life, no one had ever brought their face this close to mine.
Even if he was my friend, I wished he’d respect something called personal space. No, now he was my dad...
“Want to hold out your finger?”
“Like this?”
At Seol-ae’s suggestion, Jin-hu held out his thumb toward my tiny palm.
He probably wanted one of those reactions where a baby’s tiny hand grips a finger, right?
But I had my pride too. I couldn’t let him have it that easily...
Grip-.
But because of the instinct hardwired into human genes, I had no choice but to grip Jin-hu’s finger tightly.
“Uu...”
I felt only sad about this body that refused to let me resist, no matter how much I hated it.
✒️✒️✒️
One month after birth.
I was already old enough to delicately distinguish the gentle sweetness of breast milk.
At first, I stubbornly refused to drink Han Seol-ae’s breast milk...
Rumble...
Before hunger, pride and everything else were useless.
“Ah-yeon, let’s eat.”
When I signaled that I was hungry, Han Seol-ae opened her top and got ready to nurse me.
Suck, suck.
To think I was clinging to the student I used to teach and sucking milk from her.
How had Shin I-jun, the genius professor the whole world had its eyes on, fallen into such a state!
My pitiful state was so embarrassing, sad, humiliating, and miserable... or so I thought, but strangely enough, that didn’t come to mind at all.
‘It’s delicious...!’
Because the nutrients entering my hungry body were firing dopamine, endorphins, and oxytocin straight into my brain.
Rather, I found myself looking forward to feeding time.
Wasn’t it said that humans are creatures of adaptation?
Drinking Seol-ae’s milk, too.
Receiving cheek kisses from Jin-hu, too.
Bathing together as the three of us, too.
Not being able to hold my pee, too.
I’d adapted to all of it in just one month.
‘There’s no point in being pessimistic. There’s nothing I can do with this body anyway. I have to accept the reality that I’ve been reborn.’
If I wanted to write the paper later, the top priority was to grow up healthy and build my stamina as soon as possible.
And to do that, I’ll gladly drink Seol-ae’s milk and get plenty of blissful sleep...!
✒️✒️✒️
Three months after birth.
Before I knew it, I'd reached the age where I could appreciate the profound intricacy of a mobile’s chaotic motion.
Flap, flap~
Truthfully, I was just watching because the mobile spinning from the ceiling was fun.
“Nihihit.”
Suddenly, I heard Seol-ae and Jin-hu’s voices from the living room.
“Hon, I got a call from the school today.”
“From the school?”
“Yeah. They said the sorting of Professor Shin I-jun’s research materials is all finished, so we should come get them.”
At those words, Jin-hu let out a long sigh.
“Ah... so that’s what this is about. It’s already been a year since I-jun died...”
“Yeah, it’s sad. He was such a wonderful person. Looking at the research materials, there were so many files related to the Riemann Hypothesis.”
“It was a problem that guy I-jun had been obsessing over since his doctorate, so naturally he would have amassed a huge amount over the years.”
“But the paper materials are too disorganized for anyone to interpret. Usually the professor’s organized ideas are stored in the cloud, but no one can access it right now... so I decided to take over the paper materials, since I was his only student. I’m going to keep them in the study.”
The moment I heard that conversation, I snapped to my senses.
‘The study...! My research notes are in the study...!’
As soon as I came to my senses, I was able to see my situation objectively.
‘Gasp...! What have I been doing all this time...!’
After reincarnating through an unfortunate accident, I had set myself the serious goal of writing up the solution to the Riemann Hypothesis as a paper.
But what on earth had I been doing until now?
I’d been happily drinking milk and saying how delicious it was, lying there on my back and just laughing at the mobile fluttering overhead...!
Just when had I fallen this far... Shin I-jun!
‘This is no time for this. I need to be able to move my body freely as soon as possible. My goal is to get to the study and check the research materials.’
Rolling over, crawling, walking, talking, weaning, potty training, and so on.
The timing of these important infant milestones varies greatly from baby to baby.
A wide variation meant that, depending on how hard the baby herself worked, she could bring those milestones about much earlier.
And so, from that day on, I started moving my body every day.
Wiggle, wiggle.
From the fine muscles of my fingers to the large muscles that covered my whole body.
I worked to activate the nerve cells in my muscles.
Since my body had changed and the link between mind and body had been reset, it was only natural that resetting the neural circuits would take time.
‘Visualization is important.’
So I kept doing mental imagery training over and over.
Receptors in my muscles and joints sent signals to my brain, helping me realize how my body was put together.
The frontal lobe drew the image, the motor cortex designed the movement signals, and the basal ganglia filtered out unnecessary motion.
The cerebellum compared the motor cortex’s commands with the sensory signals coming into my body and issued real-time correction orders to my muscles.
I practiced this entire process in my cradle thousands upon thousands of times.
Ten thousand grateful wiggles and visualization drills a day.
I believed this time would one day come back to me as a great asset.
Thrash, thrash-.
Even if, to everyone else, it just looked like I was flailing around.
✒️✒️✒️
Six months after birth.
Before I knew it, I’d escaped the cradle and could crawl around the room.
It was about two months earlier than the average baby.
Scuttle, scuttle, scuttle-.
It was quite fun to quickly crawl around the room whenever Seol-ae wasn’t looking.
Scuttle, scuttle, scuttle...!
At last, I arrived in front of the study door.
But the door was firmly shut, and the doorknob was far too high.
“Ah-yeon, this is dangerous. Let’s play with Mommy.”
“Hwet!”
After all that trouble getting to the study, I had no ability to open the door.
Helplessness made tears well up in my eyes.
‘Just a little more...!’
✒️✒️✒️
Nine months after birth.
I was able to balance myself and stand and walk on two feet.
At the same time, I was able to open my mouth and speak words for the first time.
Both milestones came about three months earlier than the average baby.
Step, step-.
“Wow! You did it—you walked! Our Ah-yeon is the best!”
Seol-ae clapped enthusiastically as she kept taking photos of me standing tall on two feet.
And when I started moving my mouth as if to say something...
“Ma... ma...”
‘The Riemann Hypothesis... research materials...’
“Gasp... and she’s already talking! You just called me Mom, right? Our daughter really is a genius!”
Seol-ae showered me with embarrassingly excessive praise and eventually called Jin-hu to brag.
“Hon! Ah-yeon just spoke! She called me Mom!”
-What, really? Already?
“They say most babies start walking and talking at 12 months, but ours did it in just 9. Could Ah-yeon really be a genius?”
-Maybe. Anyway, I’ll buy her a present on my way home tonight!
I hadn’t actually meant to call her Mom, but Seol-ae and Jin-hu were so happy that it didn’t really matter.
“Hmph.”
Heh-heh.
That aside, Han Seol-ae’s praise made the corners of my mouth rise before I knew it.
‘Huh...?’
I’d always been pretty indifferent to praise.
Why does it feel this good...!
Was it because I was born with Seol-ae’s genes?
Just hearing a little praise made my brain feel like it was melting, while my chest warmed and my mood improved.
‘No, snap out of it, Shin I-jun...! I have an important goal of writing a paper...! Don’t forget your purpose!’
I shook my head back and forth and tried hard to deny my feelings.
At that moment.
Wobble-.
“Oh no, watch out!”
Seol-ae caught me just as I lost my balance and was about to fall.
Startled by how close I’d come to falling, my heart pounded and tears spilled out.
“Hic... sob...”
“It’s okay, it’s okay. There, there.”
But when Seol-ae wrapped me in her wide embrace and carefully patted my back, I felt a strange sense of reassurance and my fear gradually subsided.
Ahh...
No matter how much I denied it in my head, it seemed my body had already accepted Han Seol-ae as my mother...
✒️✒️✒️
Twenty months after birth.
My younger sister, Yoo Ah-rin, was born two years later.