Chapter 8
After Arin’s milestone success in saying her first words.
I decided to work even harder, inspired by my little sister.
My original goal was proving the Riemann Hypothesis.
I had put that priority on hold for a while, but it was time to focus again.
Besides, I had a slight change of heart about writing papers.
Back when I had Professor Shin I-jun's personality in my previous life,
the only reason to write papers was intellectual exploration and the sense of accomplishment.
I may be saying this about myself, but I was basically a boring person who only thought about research and results.
By contrast, now that I was Yoo A-yeon,
honor and glory were the main reasons I wanted to write papers, more than intellectual exploration or accomplishment.
‘If I become the first in the world to prove the Riemann Hypothesis, I’ll get tons of praise and tons of applause…!’
I ran a brain simulation of what would happen after proving the Riemann Hypothesis.
✒️✒️✒️
The venue was Seoul National University’s main auditorium. (I’m still scared of flying, so I chose a domestic venue.)
All 1,500 seats were packed.
In the front rows sat professors who could boast a little about knowing math, and in the middle rows were graduate students in the field with notebooks open on their laps.
In the aisles, media reporters with cameras were snapping away, click-click-, and drone cameras were buzzing overhead, buzz-buzz-.
Major broadcasters at home and abroad were live-streaming this moment with massive cameras.
There was still no one on stage.
And then.
Pitter-patter-.
A tiny, cute, and brilliant presenter begins walking onto the stage.
Yoo A-yeon.
Age: five years old.
Height: 105 cm.
IQ: 160.
Applause and cheers began erupting from the audience.
“Waaaaaa—!”
Yoo A-yeon, standing in front of the microphone, quietly raises a hand and waits for the applause to stop.
Everyone falls silent.
Bow-.
Yoo A-yeon gives a light greeting.
Then she climbs onto a child-sized step stool.
Clack-clack-.
She writes the definition of the Riemann Hypothesis on the blackboard in cute handwriting.
[The nontrivial solutions to ζ(s)=0 all have real part 1/2.]
Ah, since there are probably a lot of people from overseas, I’d better write the English version underneath too.
[Every nontrivial zero s of ζ(s) satisfies Re(s)=1/2.]
Then Yoo A-yeon speaks in a confident voice.
—I’m going to prove this now!
Fifty minutes later.
—And that concludes the proof!
Bow-.
One second of silence.
And then.
Once again, a huge round of applause and cheers began pouring out from the audience.
“Waaaaaaa—!”
Clap-clap-clap-clap-clap-clap-clap-clap-clap-clap—!
A professor in his seventies, seated in the very front row, took off his glasses, wiped away his tears, and stood up to start a standing ovation.
“Oh, Jesus…!”
And the professor next to him also stood up and started sobbing.
“Holy moly…!”
The one next to him, too.
The one next to him, too.
That momentum spread like a wave, and it took less than ten seconds for all 1,500 people in the auditorium to stand up.
A CCN news anchor said in a trembling voice, looking at the live broadcast camera.
—Oh my God! This is a historic moment! A problem that had remained unsolved for the past 160 years has been proved by Korea’s five-year-old kid, Yoo A-yeon—!!!
After that incident, Yoo A-yeon began soaring from one success to the next.
She got showered with praise by everyone.
She appeared in the media and was called a genius.
A Yoo A-yeon fan club sprang up on the internet.
She appeared on TV and shot commercials and documentaries.
People begged her to come lecture at our school.
Super-famous influencers lined up, saying they wanted to collaborate with her.
She even snagged No. 1 for Person of the Year in the American Times…!
✒️✒️✒️
“Hee-heh-heh.”
It was fun just imagining it.
“Ah, slurp-. I’m drooling.”
How good would it feel if I actually made this fantasy come true?
‘Yeah, if it’s me, I can do it…!’
I clenched my tiny hand, steeling my resolve.
I immediately went into the study and opened my previous life’s research notebook.
Now that my body could move freely, and my parents mostly let me go into the study whenever I wanted,
I figured I should keep coming to the study and actively work on deciphering it.
[Professor Shin I-jun’s research materials — Research on the Riemann Hypothesis? I don’t know the order]
A clear file tucked into the study's lower shelf.
A research notebook that ran to a whopping 200 pages.
ζ(s) = Π(p: prime) 1/(1 - p^(-s))
ζ(s) = 1/Γ(s) ∫₀^∞ t^(s-1)/(e^t - 1) dt
θ(t) = Σ(n=-∞ to ∞) e^(-πn²t)
In the notebook, I could find various formulas for working with the Riemann zeta function in my previous life's handwriting.
I had holed up in the lab for three months, researching in a trance, so I had scribbled things down by feel without thinking about whether I’d be able to read them later.
Seeing it like this, my handwriting was truly atrocious.
On top of that, even the order was a complete mess, so just figuring out what logic and approach I had used back then was a challenge in itself.
“Hmm… I wrote this in my previous life, but my handwriting was really bad…”
But I couldn't just complain.
If I wanted to get showered with praise and applause, I had no choice but to grit my teeth and keep going.
One page, two pages, three pages.
As I barely deciphered the messy writing and followed the equations, I could feel something starting to come back little by little.
Too faint to call it a memory,
yet not completely new.
It was like reading sheet music and singing the melody, then suddenly, at some point, your fingers remembering a forgotten way of playing.
‘…Still, it feels like I vaguely remember it.’
The outline of the idea was slowly coming into view.
How I had approached it in Hilbert space.
How I had constructed the self-adjoint operator.
It still wasn't everything, but I was moving forward step by step.
✒️✒️✒️
As I kept reading the paper notes, I soon came to one conclusion.
‘I want to access the cloud storage…!’
Just before my previous self collapsed from a heart attack,
I had briefly summarized in my personal cloud the key proof ideas for the Riemann Hypothesis and the logical flow of how I had approached it.
Although it was thin and lacking in information compared to the paper notes I had scribbled over three months,
it was neatly organized enough to serve as a guidepost for following the logic.
‘Isn't there any way to get on the internet?’
I didn’t know other families’ educational policies, but
in this house, at least, a two-year-old child was not allowed on the internet.
Apparently, being exposed to the internet this early wasn't good for education.
So even if I asked my parents to lend me a smartphone, they firmly refused.
Just as I was at a loss,
in the midst of all that,
an opportunity suddenly came my way.
‘Mom left her laptop lying there and started taking a nap…’
Recently, Mom had been bringing her laptop out into the living room a lot.
She was probably researching how to handle my education.
Now that Mom and Arin were both sleeping soundly, this was my only chance to sneak onto the internet.
Thinking that if I missed this chance there would be no next one, I slipped out of Mom’s arms and tiptoed toward the living room.
The living room was quiet.
Swoosh-.
I quietly opened the laptop lid.
‘Wait….’
My hand stopped.
Opening the laptop behind Mom’s back was definitely a bad thing.
It was clearly wrong, and if I got caught, I wouldn't even have an excuse.
The little triangle of conscience inside me was poking at my chest.
“Still…”
Even so, I wanted to do it.
I wanted to write a paper.
I wanted everyone to know the fact that only I knew in this world.
Because, apart from honor and glory, that was a scholar’s duty.
‘Steel your resolve, Yoo A-yeon…!’
I slapped my cheeks lightly and pulled myself together.
When I opened the laptop lid, the lock screen prompted me for a password.
I already knew the password.
20180907.
Mom and Dad's wedding anniversary.
My previous life’s self had helped out at their wedding, so I remembered it.
Tap-tap-tap-.
I quickly entered the password and unlocked it.
I opened the browser and entered the cloud address.
Since my finger muscles still hadn’t fully developed, typing on the keyboard was more than a little awkward.
I kept making typos every time I pressed a key with my fingers.
“Ugh…”
Delete, type again, delete, type again.
After repeating it several times, the cloud storage login screen appeared.
I slowly typed in my previous life’s ID and password one character at a time.
[Shin I-jun - Cloud Storage (Last accessed 3 years ago)]
A space that had been sleeping untouched in cyberspace ever since the night my previous self collapsed.
Fortunately, it was an account that didn't use phone-based two-factor authentication, so even though the account owner had died three years ago, I could still access it.
That flimsy security awareness ended up helping instead.
I scanned through the folder list.
[Riemann Hypothesis — Idea Summary Memo]
I opened the last file I had saved.
The memo wasn't long.
A short summary, just one A4 page.
But the moment I read it, it felt like the fog clouding my mind was clearing one by one.
‘Ah, right… that’s how it was.’
The logic that had stayed blurry no matter how many times I looked at the paper notes began to sharpen as it clicked into place with this one-page memo.
‘So that's why I had approached it in that direction…’
I worked through the equations in my head.
Swish-swish-swish-.
Sitting on the high chair, my feet, unable to reach the floor, kicked through the air quickly.
‘Then the part that had been stuck would naturally be solved. To think I only realized this now…’
I became completely absorbed in the memo.
That's why I didn't notice the footsteps approaching.
“A-yeon? What are you doing there?”
Mom's sleepy voice.
“Eek!”
I flinched and froze.
There wasn't even time to close the laptop.
Mom was standing right behind me, watching the screen I had been looking at.
Her pupils trembled.
[Shin I-jun - Cloud Storage (Last accessed 3 years ago)]
Mom knows this account.
Of course she does.
The account we had exchanged hundreds of emails through back in graduate school.
The account we had worked on together when we coauthored a paper.
There was no way she could be mistaken.
All sorts of thoughts flashed through my mind, and it showed on my face.
“A-yeon… what on earth is this? How do you have Professor Shin I-jun’s account?”