I Got an Omnipotent Brain Chapter 100

Translator: Dreamscribe

A studio in Gangnam, Seoul.

Woo-hyun brewed his coffee as usual, then turned on the TV.

"Next up, a story that has drawn significant attention from the international mathematics community.

Student Yu Seo-ha, a genius produced by Korea, has recently published three important studies in rapid succession, catapulting him to the forefront as a leading candidate for the Fields dal.

Should this beco reality, it would mark the first-ever teenage Fields dal laureate in history. The Fields dal is an honor often called the Nobel Prize of mathematics, awarded once every four years exclusively to researchers under the age of forty."

Woo-hyun set down the remote and fixed his eyes on the screen.

Experts appeared on screen, evaluating the achievents Seo-ha had accomplished thus far. His solving of Smale's Problems was a feat that even Woo-hyun had never anticipated.

"...The fact that a fifteen-year-old researcher produced all of these results within two years is nothing short of astonishing. The international mathematics community is watching closely to see what he will accomplish next.

Within the International Mathematical Union (IMU), internal assessnts rank Student Yu Seo-ha as the clear frontrunner when evaluated on the basis of research impact and originality. Personally, I believe his chances of winning are more than sufficient...."

On the TV screen, footage of Seo-ha delivering a lecture at a colloquium appeared.

"More than sufficient. Overflowing, I'd say."

The only thing that nagged at him was that the mathematics community was more conservative than one might imagine.

There was a possibility they would withhold the prize simply because he was a teenager. Since Seo-ha would have plenty of opportunities in the future, they might think it was fine to skip him once.

After all, there would be no shortage of researchers for whom this was their last chance to receive it.

On the screen, Seo-ha stood before the world's foremost scholars, explaining his theory.

It was the exact image of the ideal Woo-hyun himself had once dread of.

The corners of his mouth turned upward. Perhaps he, too, might earn a ntion, even just a single line, in the unofficial annals of mathematical history.

"You've grown up well. Keep growing just like that, and go ahead and crack the Millennium Prize Problems too."

Beep.

It was ti to get to work.

Click.

He had cleared it out just a few days ago, but sohow his inbox was already full again.

[Teacher Shin Woo-hyun, my child scored an IQ of 150....]

[My child is six years old, and I'd like to start preparing them for the IMO, just like Student Yu Seo-ha.]

[Excuse , but would you be available for private tutoring? Cost is no issue.]

[Would it be possible to get the list of books you recomnded to Student Yu Seo-ha?]

[My child is in elentary school but understands college-level calculus. Could you take a look at them?]

[I believe my son is every bit as talented as Yu Seo-ha. I've heard you have an eye for nurturing talent....]

.

.

A sigh escaped him.

Ever since Seo-ha had ntioned him in an interview, these inquiries had been pouring in without end. Emails would have been manageable enough, but people had sohow obtained his contact information and were calling or even showing up in person with alarming frequency.

"I get where they're coming from, but this is a nuisance."

Seo-ha was currently treated among Korean parents as the "ultimate model of private tutoring" or "the definitive success story". Parents from the very top tier, the kind who weren't satisfied with dical school or law school, had co to see Seo-ha as the ideal model.

And yet, publicly available information about him was extrely scarce.

People knew he had placed first in various math competitions during elentary school, that he was the youngest-ever first-place winner at the IMO, and that he had attended a gifted high school. What happened in between all of that remained shrouded in mystery.

"I can't just keep leaving things like this...."

'It'll die down after a few months,' he had thought, letting it go for a year. At this rate, even his image as a CSAT instructor was going to be diluted beyond recognition.

"Seo-ha, I appreciate it, but this is a bit much."

In the interview following his solution of Smale's Problems, Seo-ha had ntioned him again. He had even said that he signed his paper with the fountain pen Woo-hyun had given him.

Ring ring ring.

A call ca in from his teaching assistant.

"Yeah, what's up?"

-Teacher-nim, soone ca to the academy and insists on eting you.

"This isn't the first ti. Just talk them down nicely and send them on their way."

-The thing is.... it seems like they've got connections to so important people. The director is practically begging.

Woo-hyun clutched his head.

In cases like this, a normal consultation almost never happened. Parents only heard what they wanted to hear.

"That's it."

As it happened, he had been thinking of a solution.

He made up his mind to tackle this situation head-on.

* * *

A small community college on the outskirts of Cambridge.

Mi-young walked briskly into the classroom. When she opened the door, several students were already seated.

"Hi!"

Mi-young raised her hand, and they greeted her back with bright smiles.

"Good morning, Mi-young."

"Good morning!"

Students of every nationality, race, and age. Each of them had co to Arica carrying their own story as immigrants.

ESL Advanced Level. The ti it took to climb from Beginner to this level varied wildly from person to person, but Mi-young had made it in six months.

'What Seo-ha taught was a huge help.'

The grammar her son had organized for her and the sentences he insisted she morize had beco the foundation of her English skills.

She had now reached a level where everyday conversation was no longer difficult.

'I never thought I'd be going to school at this age....'

The reason Mi-young had enrolled in a community college was purely for work.

Her husband Chul-ho had a background as a civil servant, and MIT had helped arrange a position for him, so obtaining a work visa had been straightforward. But she herself was rely a dependent spouse.

The only way she could work was to obtain a student visa.

'Only twenty hours a week, though.'

Still, the community college life she had started turned out to be busier than she'd imagined and far more enjoyable than she'd expected.

When the instructor walked in, the classroom buzzed with chatter.

Before she knew it, Mi-young was participating enthusiastically in class.

A mother of three from Brazil, a chef from China, an exchange student from Africa, a truck driver from Russia.

She found joy in connecting with people she never would have t back in Korea.

She laughed with them, made mistakes alongside them, and learned together.

It felt as though she had been transported back to her youth.

In the past, her lack of confidence in English had kept her from finding work, but not anymore.

The job she found was as a waitress at the campus cafe.

Wearing an apron, Mi-young rushed about carrying plates. She could feel her English improving in real ti as she navigated all sorts of situations.

The only downside was the hourly wage.

"It's so low...."

In Arica, service workers weren't paid a proper wage.

Tips were supposed to make up the difference, and that was a challenge for Mi-young.

'Is there any way to earn a little more?'

A large sum of money ca into Seo-ha's account every month.

Enough for a family of four to live comfortably here. But the couple had agreed not to touch that money unless it was an ergency.

"I'm still young. I'm not old enough to depend on my kid. And besides...."

"And besides?"

"I should be the one feeding my family. That's what a provider is supposed to do."

A kind and responsible husband. If he hadn't been that kind of person, she never would have even considered coming to Arica.

Mi-young gently wrapped her arms around Chul-ho.

"I'll look for sothing I can do too. Once the kids are off to school, I get bored."

She had started with high spirits, but reality was harsh.

'Should I look for a different job?'

Her worries deepened.

Ring ring ring ring.

"Hm?"

A familiar number appeared on her phone.

A call from Korea.

"Yes, Teacher-nim!"

What could it be?

Mi-young answered nervously.

-Seo-ha's mother! How would you like to make so serious money?

It was the kind of line you'd expect from a scamr.

If the caller had been anyone other than Woo-hyun, she would have hung up imdiately.

"What?"

She blinked, bewildered.

-You write a book. An essay, if you will, about what kind of child Seo-ha was growing up, how he developed. That sort of thing.

"This is so sudden. Is there a reason?"

Woo-hyun explained the situation he was dealing with.

Mi-young bowed her head deeply toward him, though he was across the ocean.

"I'm sorry, teacher-nim. Because of our son...."

-Not at all. I brought so of this on myself, too. I've been thinking about how to solve this problem, and the thing is, Seo-ha is like a mythical figure to Korean parents right now. He clearly exists, but there's far too little information about him. People only know fragnts of his story.

-Seo-ha is getting a lot of attention whether he likes it or not. Because of that, all sorts of baseless rumors are floating around, and sothing like this could help put those to rest.

"I've never written a book before, though."

-You don't need to worry about that. You can write a rough draft, and then a professional writer can be brought in to polish it. Of course, that's only if you want to go that route.

"Would anyone actually read a book I wrote?"

-It'll sell a staggering number of copies. Publishers will be tripping over each other to sign a contract.

She was tempted.

The hourly wage was one problem, but since she had started working, it was also becoming increasingly difficult to get ho in ti for Seo-eun's return from school.

Still, sothing weighed on her mind.

"It won't cause any trouble for Seo-ha, will it? It might co across as making too big a fuss...."

-Ha ha ha! What are you saying?

-These days, even people who scored a perfect score on the CSAT publish a book. If anything, Seo-ha has been far too modest given everything he's accomplished.

-Public recognition will also be an asset for Seo-ha's future academic career. And since he's not in Korea, there'll be less concern about his privacy.

Mi-young thought it over carefully, then nodded.

"I'll talk it over with my family."

-Of course.

After hanging up, Mi-young couldn't move for a while.

A swirl of emotions churned inside her.

The uncomfortable feeling that she was exploiting her son for money, yet the knowledge that Woo-hyun, the benefactor of their family, was suffering.

When she shared these thoughts, Chul-ho was unexpectedly delighted.

"I've always thought you'd be a good writer. Seo-ha would be on board too, I'm sure."

The next day, when she asked Seo-ha, he turned the question back on her instead.

"What about you, Mom? Do you want to do it?"

"...Yes. I think it would be good to. I want to try."

That was her honest feeling.

Seo-ha smiled brightly.

"Then I'm all for it too. If you wrote a book, Mom, I'd definitely want to read it. You've been keeping a journal about raising Seo-eun every day, after all."

"You knew about that?"

"Of course! I even snuck a peek once in a while."

She never knew she had a desire to write a book.

After dinner, when each family mber went off to their own ti, Mi-young sat alone at the dining table and scratched out words.

'What should I write?'

She agonized over it at length, but since it was an essay, she decided to fill it with her honest feelings.

Scratch, scratch.

As she began to write, various mories surfaced.

Seo-ha had been an easy baby from the mont he was born. She hadn't realized it at the ti since he was her first child, but after Seo-eun was born, the difference was starkly apparent.

There were, however, so unusual things about him.

Her son was sensitive to the sound of a clock's second hand.

Before he could even crawl, when she would lay him down in the room, his eyes would track the second hand of the clock.

"Mama!"

She rembered how startled she had been the first ti he started speaking....

A smile spread across Mi-young's face as she wrote.

When she would blend broccoli for his baby food, he would shed a small tear but still eat every bite.

"Mom, all the clocks at ho are different."

"Hm?"

Around the age of three, Seo-ha had demanded that she set every clock in the house to the exact sa ti.

It was a thought uncharacteristic of a child his age. He simply couldn't stand that all the tis were different.

At four, when she bought him an encyclopedia collection, he developed an interest in nature.

Gradually, his curiosity shifted toward numbers.

"Dad, why does this work out this way?"

Seo-ha would ask about equations he found in the encyclopedia.

Chul-ho broke into a cold sweat, unable to answer.

From that day on, Seo-ha stopped asking questions and instead asked for books.

When Seo-ha turned seven and played with origami paper, Mi-young never dread it had anything to do with mathematics.

Scratch, scratch.

Before she knew it, the story had reached the mont she first t Woo-hyun.

Looking back, it must have been a profoundly important day for her son. It was the first ti Seo-ha had t soone he could ask questions.

After Seo-eun was born, Seo-ha's attention had been entirely devoted to his little sister.

That his help had made parenting easier was an undeniable fact.

"Okay, repeat after ! Ga, gya, geo, gyeo...." [TL: The basic syllables of the Korean alphabet, similar to learning ABCs]

"Kyahaha. Abababa!"

He was teaching the Korean alphabet to a baby barely past her first birthday.

The sight was so endearing that Mi-young had laughed for a long ti. And perhaps his efforts hadn't been in vain, because Seo-eun also learned to read Hangul and numbers remarkably early.

As she traced back through her mories, emotions welled up inside her.

Every single mont she had spent with her children had been truly, genuinely happy.

A day had passed since she sent the file to Woo-hyun.

'Did I make a mistake insisting on doing it by myself?'

She felt embarrassed, as if she had laid bare her entire soul.

She was so nervous that she couldn't focus on work.

Bzzt.

A text ca from Woo-hyun.

Mi-young picked up her phone with trembling hands.

-Good work on this. I showed it to the head of a publishing company, and he read the entire thing in one sitting. He said the unpolished simplicity of the writing actually works in its favor, since it doesn't read like sothing a professional author produced.

-Above all, he said he was moved by its sincerity.

-It's sothing that only you could have written. He says he'd like to et you in person if possible. He's prepared very generous contract terms, so you can look forward to it.

-The only thing is, the man is insisting on a particular title for the book, and, well, it's a bit much.

Not long after, Mi-young's essay was published in Korea.

The title was:

「I Never Intended to Raise a Genius」