Chapter 36
As soon as the coverage started.
I dashed to the study, dodo-do-do-.
Uncle Michael, who had followed me into the study, filmed the room from every angle.
Journals, academic journals, newspapers, and art books filled one entire bookshelf.
A whole pile of what you'd call difficult books.
Uncle Michael picked up one of them.
He looked at the cover and raised his eyebrows.
“This is… a research journal.”
“Yeah. Whenever a new issue comes out each month, I read it first.”
“You read this? Regularly?”
“Nihihi, of course!”
I struck a peace sign toward the camera.
I naturally picked up the latest issue.
It was brand-new, not even unwrapped!
“Riiip-rip-rip-!”
Feeling the thrill of ripping off the plastic wrap, I plopped down on the sofa.
“Rustle-rustle-.”
I turned the pages.
“Bung-bung-.”
As I concentrated on the book, my feet kicked in the air.
As I focused on the journal, Uncle Lee Dong-hyun asked from beside me.
“What are you reading right now?”
I pointed at the table of contents so it would show clearly on camera.
“This issue has a lot of papers on algebraic geometry. It looks like they're asking whether rational points on algebraic curves can be bounded using Galois groups and p-adic geometry. This looks fun. Hehe.”
Lee Dong-hyun brought the camera over to the paper.
The page was packed with English and equations.
“Can you understand this?”
“Well... I can't understand absolutely everything. Papers in a top-tier math journal like this are summaries of research the author spent years working on, so the content is unbelievably, unbelievably, unbelievably, unbelievably deep. So unfamiliar terms pop up often too. But if you carefully follow the logic, you can understand at least some of it!”
I repeated that same explanation in English too, so Michael wouldn't be left out.
Then Uncle Michael muttered to himself.
“Are you really five years old...?”
“Yep!”
I kept reading the math journal, turning the pages.
“Bung-bung-.”
And then Uncle Lee Dong-hyun suddenly asked.
“Does Aryeon happen to have a habit of kicking her feet when she gets absorbed in something?”
“Gaaah...! H-how did you know?”
Since he noticed my secret right away, I could only gasp, close the book, and stare at him in shock.
“You've been kicking them the whole time. Sorry if I interrupted you.”
“Ah!”
I stopped kicking my feet.
I drew my legs together neatly on the sofa and corrected my posture.
I'm embarrassed... I wanted to be the demure little lady Yu Aryeon in front of the camera!
“Ahem, ahem. It's an unconscious habit.”
I focused on the journal again.
But even though I knew the camera was right there, my legs still kept trying to kick out.
Those insolent legs! Stay still!
I smacked my thigh with my fist to put those cheeky legs in line.
“Ow...”
“Rub-rub-.”
Because it hurt, I kept rubbing the spot I had hit with my palm.
“Pffft.”
“huh-huh-.”
The men behind the camera hid their faces and started trying to hold back their laughter.
“Hmph...”
With no choice, I had to ignore the kicking reflex and keep reading the journal.
“Bung-bung-.”
One of the papers looked especially interesting and caught my eye.
I want to read this with Mom...!
“Dodo-do-do-.”
I ran over to Mom, who was folding clothes in the room.
“Mom, Mom.”
“What is it, Aryeon?”
“I want to read this together!”
I held out this issue of the journal with both hands.
The reporter filmed the scene with his camera.
“Whisper-whisper-.”
Lee Dong-hyun whispered to Michael from behind the camera.
“At last, she's showing a childlike side. Though books like this aren't really something a child should be reading.”
Mom finished folding the clothes and sat down on the living room sofa.
I sat lightly on Mom's lap.
“Which part do you want to read together, Aryeon?”
I pointed with my finger.
“Galois sections and p-adic geometry of curves.”
“Yeah! That part!”
Mom skimmed the abstract and the table of contents.
“They proved part of Grothendieck's section conjecture? That's an amazing achievement.”
“Yes, yes! That's why I want to read it with Mom...!”
“All right, all right. It looks like it'll be really hard again, but let's read it together.”
As always, Mom began carefully reading the paper aloud one sentence at a time.
“We consider a smooth projective curve Y of genus g ≥ 2 defined over a number field K.”
“Ooh.”
Snuggled against Mom, I listened to her read aloud with sparkling eyes.
“The Grothendieck Section Conjecture predicts that rational points of Y correspond bijectively to sections of the étale fundamental group sequence.”
Mom took out a notebook beside her as she read.
“Scratch-scratch-.”
She started taking notes at the parts with equations.
The reporters brought the camera over to Mom's notebook.
1 → π₁ᵉᵗ(Ȳ) → π₁ᵉᵗ(Y) → G_K → 1
locᵥ : SecSel(Y/K) → Y(Kᵥ)
As soon as they saw the densely written algebraic equations, even the reporters shook their heads.
The equations of algebraic geometry really do look like alien language to anyone who doesn't know them.
Mom began mumbling to herself as she wrote something in the notebook.
“Hmm... I don't really get it...”
I looked at the part where Mom had stopped.
“Aha.”
She seemed to be wondering why the principal trichotomy suddenly came up.
“Mom.”
“Yes.”
“The reason principal trichotomy suddenly comes up is...”
I said, pointing at Mom's notebook with my finger.
“The Lawrence–Venkatesh method originally works well when the Galois representation is semisimple, but in the non-semisimple case, it becomes hard to control sections using the old method alone.”
Mom nodded as she listened to my explanation.
“So you divide the representations into three cases and handle each one separately?”
“Yep. Then we can deal with even the non-semisimple cases too.”
“Aha. As expected of our Aryeon. You're smart.”
“Heheh.”
“Pat-pat-.”
Mom wrote down what she'd understood in the notebook and gently stroked my head.
And the reporters filming that scene looked flustered.
“Uh... Ms. Han Seol-ae?”
“Yes? What is it?”
“Didn't you say you had a master's degree in mathematics?”
“That's right.”
“But my mom is amazing at math! Her title says master's, but her level is PhD-level!”
I gave Mom a thumbs-up and praised her.
“W-well, even setting aside how Aryeon knows the difference between master's level and PhD level...”
“How are you able to teach your mom?”
It seemed the reporters were amazed that I was the one making Mom understand the paper.
In our house, genius Yu Aryeon teaching the family is just normal everyday life...
I explained the very simple reason to the reporters.
“Hehe. It's simple, right? I'm a genius, so I understand everything at a glance! That's why I understand math better than Mom does!”
I puffed out my chest with a smug look and thumped my chest twice.
“But more importantly, hadn't you already realized it from my lecture? That I don't lose out in math even when compared with professors.”
“Hmm... It was unbelievable even then, but seeing it again now...”
“That's awesome.”
✒️✒️✒️
After our time reading the math journal with Mom came to an end.
I suddenly stood up as if I had just remembered something.
“Oh, right!”
“Tot-tot-tot-.”
I trotted into the master bedroom.
“...?”
Question marks popped up on the reporters' faces.
“Flap-.”
I came back out holding a sheet of paper.
“I thought I should show this to the reporters!”
I thrust the paper in front of Lee Dong-hyun.
He lowered the camera and took a picture of the paper.
It was the result sheet from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children.
……………………
Name: Yu Aryeon
Verbal Comprehension: 160
Visual Spatial: 160
Fluid Reasoning: 160
Working Memory: 160
Processing Speed: 160
Full-Scale IQ: 160
……………………
A document proving that my IQ was 160!
Lee Dong-hyun asked.
“What is this?”
“It's my IQ test results sheet! A perfect score in every category according to Wechsler's theory! IQ 160! 4 sigma! Top 0.006%! Isn't that amazing!”
I bragged while pointing sharply at the numbers on the paper.
Michael also took a picture of the paper with his camera.
“One sixty.”
“Yep! One-sixty! For reference, Wechsler can't properly measure intelligence above 160, so even though I'm actually above 4 sigma, I'm just satisfied with 4 sigma!”
“...When was this taken?”
Michael asked.
“At 26 months old!”
I spread my fingers to emphasize the number 26.
Two on my left hand and six on my right.
“...I'm kidding. Just kidding.”
Michael said, taking another picture of the paper.
“I've interviewed a lot of people, but never anything like this.”
I grinned.
“Of course! Because I'm the smartest person on Earth!”