Chapter 42
The email defense had begun.
Questions flew in about even the tiniest things—from a single auxiliary lemma and a single inequality to the definition of a function space.
Tap-tap-tap.
I carefully answered them one by one in the order the emails were sent, using my tiny fingers.
A tedious cycle of reading the question, checking the paper to see exactly what part was being asked about, writing the formulas in LaTeX, and typing up the answer.
(*LaTeX: a useful syntax for entering equations)
I got so focused that I lost track of time.
Then—
“Unniii~!”
Arin’s voice, waking from her nap, rang out.
“Oh, Arin.”
I lifted my eyes from the laptop and was just about to get up from my seat.
“U-heeaaat—.”
Thud!
I flopped face-first onto the desk.
“Unni? Why are you acting weird all of a sudden?”
“M-my body suddenly stopped listening to me...”
My fingers were stiff.
My wrists were sore.
My shoulders had gone rigid.
When I rolled my neck, it went crack—.
“Huh... how long was I sitting there?”
Looking at the clock, more than three hours had already passed.
✒️✒️✒️
Evening came.
Dad got home from work, and Mom woke up from her nap.
Mom passed through the living room and saw me flopped over my desk.
The open inbox and the countless replies I had written.
“Ayeon.”
Mom said in a worried voice.
“Yeah.”
“How many hours have you been replying to emails?”
“Probably around three hours...”
“Three hours?”
Mom crouched down in front of the laptop and looked at my posture.
Then she let out a sigh.
“Ayeon, you can’t do that. When Ayeon uses an adult-sized laptop, her posture gets really bad. Look at you right now. At five years old, your head is heavy compared to the support strength of your neck bones, so keeping your head down for too long is even more dangerous.”
Mom placed her big hands on my shoulders and started kneading them vigorously.
“Eeek—!”
At Mom’s kneading, I let out a short scream.
“But... there’s this much mail piled up...”
“Still no.”
Mom said firmly.
“You’re still at an age when your bones haven’t even fully hardened yet. If you keep bad posture from a young age, you’ll end up with a forward head posture and disc problems later.”
I imagined what I’d look like with forward head posture in the future.
A turtle Ayeon, bowing her head most of the time and poking her neck out when concentrating.
“That... might be kind of... gross...”
But what do turtles even say? Turtle-turtle?
“First, let’s get you up.”
Mom slipped her hands under my armpits and lifted me off the chair.
Held up by Mom’s hands, I dangled like a cat.
Dad took in the situation and came over.
He lightly touched my neck, then frowned.
“You’re really knotted up.”
Then he brought a yoga mat rolled up in the storage room and unfurled it with a swish in the living room.
“Come here, my daughter.”
“Why?”
“Might as well loosen up your body now. Lately, you’ve been writing papers and preparing presentations, so you haven’t been exercising much, right?”
“Mmm. I’m too lazyyyy...”
“Let’s do some exercises to make your body a little more flexible? You’re Ayeon; if you’re not flexible, what are you going to do? Then you’d just be ‘A’.”
“Living as ‘A’ might not be so bad...”
Hello.
I’m ‘A,’ the author of the paper [On the Proof of the Riemann Hypothesis].
In English, it’s written ‘A.’
Hearing Dad’s suggestion, Arin raised her hand high beside me.
“I want to do it too! Sis! Let’s do gymnastics together!”
Arin looked at me with sparkling, expectant eyes.
If Arin wants to do it too, I can’t refuse as her big sister.
“... O-okay. Let’s work out together.”
✒️✒️✒️
Arin and I changed into comfortable clothes and stood on the yoga mat.
When we turned on the TV, a follow-along exercise segment was just starting on a children’s program.
The host sister showed the moves with a bright smile.
— Now, kids! Let’s follow along with Stretch-Stretch Exercise, the routine that helps you grow taller and taller!
Arin and I stood side by side on the yoga mat.
Then Mom and Dad also spread out new mats beside us.
“Huh, you’re doing it too, Mom and Dad?”
“It’s rare for our daughters to be exercising, so of course we’ll join in.”
Mom and Dad also changed into tracksuits and came out.
“We’ll do our own thing separately. Ayeon and Arin, you follow that big sister over there, okay?”
“Okay!”
The children’s show host started the moves.
The child MCs beside her followed along too.
— One-two, one-two!
Stretch your arms up.
Stretch them out to the side.
Bend at the waist and reach your hands to your toes.
Dad did squats beside us, going “hup-cha, hup-cha.”
Mom was doing push-ups too, going “hup—” as she did.
For the first five minutes, I could more or less keep up with the gymnastics on TV.
But then.
“Wait, isn’t this too hard? Who designed this level?”
The difficulty of the moves on TV was climbing steeply.
— Come on, kids, shall we do more? One-two, one-two!
The host sister still smiled brightly as she pulled off the acrobatic moves.
The child MCs also smiled as they handled the difficult moves.
What the heck kind of stamina is that?
Is this the average for kids these days?
“Haa... haa... save me...”
I was already starting to get out of breath.
For a children’s gymnastics segment, the routine was pretty brutal.
I glanced sideways.
Arin was already flopped down on the mat.
“Arin, why are you sitting down?”
“It’s hard.”
“You retire after just five minutes...! You traitor!”
I felt a little put out, but Arin was still only three, so I decided to let it slide.
I kept following the Stretch-Stretch Exercise on TV.
Ten minutes passed.
“Hek... hek... save me...!”
When fifteen minutes finally passed.
“Hwaaack...!”
The gymnastics finally ended.
Flop—.
I sprawled out on the yoga mat in a 大 shape.
No, I was such a tiny little child, should I say I lay there in a 小 shape instead?
Ah... a familiar ceiling.
Sweat soaked my whole body, and my heart thumped-thump-thumped.
Haa... this is too cruel an exercise for a homebody...
“Sis, you worked hard!”
Dad stood beside me, wiping sweat with a towel as he looked down at me.
“See? It’s a whole different level from running around the playground, right?”
“Yeah, it’s a totally different dimension... a fractal dimension.”
“That’s why you need to exercise regularly.”
“I know... later...”
(*Fractal dimension: a weird kind of dimension, characterized by decimal dimensions (1.26, 1.58, etc.) unlike ordinary dimensions (1D, 2D).)
“Not later—starting now.”
Mom brought me some cool water and said.
Gulp, gulp!
“Ahhh—!”
Life? What more is there to it?
This is life!
“Good work, Ayeon, Arin. You sweated a lot. Let’s all take a bath together for the first time in a while.”
✒️✒️✒️
The bathtub was filled with steaming-hot water.
Steam rose in wisps.
Our family got in one by one.
Splash, splash—.
The warm water melted away my tired body, like cake melting softly in your mouth.
So drowsy, so drowsy—.
Mom started washing Arin’s hair.
“Huaaa—.”
Dad squeezed shampoo onto my head too and carefully started washing my hair.
“Hehe, that tickles!”
“Hold still.”
His thick fingers pressed into my scalp over and over.
My shoulders and neck felt like they were slowly loosening up.
“How does it feel?”
“I think it’s getting better.”
“That’s how it is after exercise. Your body really loosens up.”
“Still, it’s really hard...”
“If you want to be healthy, it can’t be helped.”
The bath was over.
✒️✒️✒️
We came out of the bathroom.
We came out loosely wrapped in long towels.
Mom had Arin sitting on her lap while she dried her hair with a hair dryer.
“My daughter, you’re loosened up again now, huh? At this point, you’re not just ‘A’; you’re Yu Ayeon.”
“Hmph. Don’t underestimate the flexibility of a five-year-old girl!”
Dad sat me in front of him and turned on another hair dryer.
Whirr—.
Warm air dried my swishy hair.
Dad used his hands to separate my hair and carefully dried it.
Haa... feels nice...
With exercise, a bath, and warm air too.
My whole body grew drowsy, and my eyelids felt heavy.
Yaaawn...
“Sleepy?”
“A little.”
“Go to sleep after we finish drying you.”
Dad dried my hair slowly, brushing it back strand by strand.
Beside me, Arin was also having Mom dry her hair, slowly closing her eyes.
Soft, even breaths—.
The living room was quiet.
Only the sound of the dryers filled it.
Whirr—.
Whirr—.
✒️✒️✒️
The next morning.
I opened the inbox on Mom’s laptop.
There were still many emails I hadn’t answered, and overnight they had piled up even more.
“There are a lot today too...”
I loosened my hands and was about to start typing.
“Ayeon.”
At that moment, Mom came over.
“If you sit in front of the laptop for too long again, your posture will collapse. It’s bad for your health.”
“Hng... but I still have to answer them.”
“Wait a second.”
Mom sat down beside me and asked.
“Do you really have to answer all these questions? Didn’t you already put on a good performance at the lecture?”
I shook my head.
I answered Mom.
“I have to answer them. Even for the sake of academic credibility.”
“Credibility?”
“Yeah. Because of my lecture and the documentary, the paper I wrote has become quite a hot topic, and now mathematicians all over the world are unofficially verifying it, right? The fact that they sent question emails means they’re reading the paper seriously.
If I answer diligently here, the atmosphere in the community will improve, the paper will be evaluated more positively, and when I submit to a top journal, the reviewers will take it seriously too.”
I kept going.
“On the other hand, if I don’t answer properly here, it can give the impression that the author can’t properly answer questions. Even if the paper is correct, once the atmosphere turns bad, verification gets delayed. Mr. Perelman was like that too. He only uploaded the Poincaré conjecture paper to arXiv and disappeared, so verification took years. Because of that, he nearly had the credit stolen by some strange Chinese professor too.”
Mom thought about it for a moment after hearing that.
“Hmm... I see.”
“So I need to answer them diligently.”
“But... Ayeon sitting in front of the laptop all day is absolutely not okay. Should Mom help you?”
“But... at this pace, even if I work all day it won’t be finished... and Mom’s tired from doing housework too.”
When Mom helped type the paper, it wasn’t much of a problem because we’d written it slowly over two years, two hours a day.
But now I had to answer the flood of questions quickly. Which meant I had to sit in front of the laptop all day.
But that would be really bad for my health... and I’d become stiff little Ayeon again.
“Mm, what do I do......”
Mom thought for a moment, then a lightbulb popped up over her head.
“Ah! Ayeon, then how about this?”
“What is it, what is it?”