Chapter 52: One Day, Math Spoke To Me

I came outside after finishing my meal. 

I wanted to buy a hot dog.

“Jiwooping, are you still mad-ping?”

“……”

I didn’t answer Bong Soohee’s words.

I didn’t even look at her.

There was a small impulse in Jiwooping to respond, but I suppressed it.

This is a punishment for deceiving Jiwooping…!

“Here’s the hot dog.”

“Hatdogg?”

“If I buy you one, will you forgive me?”

“Yes…!”

Of course, that didn’t last long.

Jiwooping forgave her enemy for a mere hot dog!

Let’s all live as generously as Jiwooping!

“Here you go, potato hot dog.”

“Thank you…!”

“Hoho. I’m the one who should be thankful. Thanks to Candidate Kang Jiwoo, my hot dogs are selling like crazy, you know?”

The food cart owner thankfully recognized me.

After my hot dog video became a hit, their sales had doubled, and they were delighted.

Hearing that my presence helped their business made me feel pretty good.

It wasn’t a policy effect, but still, if it helped the citizens, it was worth it.

I took the potato hot dog with both hands.

I wanted to take a big bite, but this tiny mouth wouldn’t allow it.

So, I nibbled it bit by bit.

“Is it good?”

“Yes!”

“So, you’re forgiving the director-ping now?”

“Hmm….”

I was already completely fine, but I puffed my cheeks as if I was still sulking.

“Forgive me now~ I bought you a hot dog~”

Bong Soohee tickled my side.

A burst of laughter escaped.

“Stop it! I might drop my hot dog again.”

The evening was cool and breezy.

We took a short stroll along a nearby street.

I was busy eating my hot dog, Han Seoyoung was grumbling about the party members, and Bong Soohee just nodded absentmindedly.

That’s when we noticed a crowd gathering.

At first, I thought it was some busking performance, but the atmosphere felt a little different.

“Math Alley Challenge! Anyone else want to give it a try?!”

A large whiteboard displayed a math problem.

It seemed to be a challenge happening on the street.

“A math challenge? People do all sorts of things these days.”

“Right?”

“Hmm? Candidate?”

“……”

I deliberately stopped in my tracks.

The problem seemed to be around the level of college entrance exam math.

For someone in the humanities, I liked math.

Of course, solving it in this body would be tough, but I was still intrigued.

However, I ended up locking eyes with the MC.

“Oh? Aren’t you Candidate Kang Jiwoo?”

“Wow, it’s really her!”

“She’s so cute!”

“Could you come forward for a moment?”

Clap, clap, clap, clap.

Before I knew it, I was being pushed forward.

I had no choice but to walk out step by step…

“Gasp…”

Jiwooping, completely intimidated by the dizzying math problem in front of her.

“Everyone, this is not staged at all! It’s a total coincidence! 100% real situation!”

More people gathered because of my appearance.

Spectators were busy pulling out their phones to record me.

“You’re very well-known, but could you introduce yourself for those who might not know you?”

“……”

Gulp.

My dry throat swallowed hard.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

My heart was pounding.

Holding a mic outdoors made me a bit nervous…

But who am I?

This is the body that dominated presidential debates!

‘Calm down, Jiwooping. Just do what you always do.’

I calmed my body, firmly grasped the mic with both hands,

and began my introduction.

“Ah, hello! I’m Kang Jiwoo! Candidate number 5 for president! Thank you~”

I spoke politely, accurately, and energetically. 

I was sure I did.

“Hahahaha.”

“Pfft.”

“Oh, this is too funny. I’m crying.”

People were laughing…?

Why?

The host gave me the answer.

“Excuse me… candidate? It’s hard to hear when you’re speaking into the hotdog, so could you please speak into the microphone?”

“O.”

In her nervousness, she mistook the hotdog for the microphone!

So embarrassing…!

“Ah, hello… I’m Kang Jiwoo…”

“Applause!”

Clap clap clap clap.

The host continued with the event.

“If you solve a math problem, you can earn a donation, and you will also receive a small prize. Would you like to try?”

“But… I’m not very good at math…”

“Even if you get it wrong, it’s okay! Why don’t you give it a try? I’ll give you an especially easy question.”

“Okaaay…”

Jiwoo reluctantly agreed.

It seemed the word “donation” weighed on her mind.

Pop.

The projector switched, revealing the first question:

53 + 7 = ?

“……”

She stared at the problem for a long time.

Don’t panic.

You know this much, right?

Lately, she’d started studying math with Bong Soohee.

She was learning math at a 2nd-grade level, so this wasn’t too difficult.

After a moment, her unsure hand wrote the answer.

In very tiny letters:

53 + 7 = 60

“Correct!”

“Phew… thank goodness…”

“Would you like to try the next question?!”

“Is the next one addition, too…?”

If it were subtraction, she wouldn’t bother.

“Yes! It’s an addition!”

“Then I’ll do it!”

It was addition again.

For some reason, a strange confidence filled her.

Probably because she’d tasted success once already.

“Is addition easy for you?”

“Yes! Subtraction is still hard, but addition is easy…!”

Immediate overconfidence…!!!

The next question appeared:

247 + 175 = ?

Jiwoo hesitated for a moment.

Then, as if fleeing, she dropped the marker and ran to Han Seoyoung.

“Si, Siljangping… I don’t know this one…”

“Hahaha~”

“It seems that’s the end of her challenge! Please give a big round of applause for candidate Kang Jiwoo!”

Three-digit addition was still beyond her.

Still, she felt proud for solving the first problem. 

It was a good experience.

“Now, let’s move on to the next problem that was left unsolved earlier…”

The event continued.

I nestled into Han Seoyoung and finished nibbling on my hotdog.

“Bong Sunbae. Let’s go now, okay?”

“Just a moment.”

Bong Soohee didn’t take her eyes off the problem.

Her usual expression was like a Tibetan fox: unreadable and emotionless.

But her eyes were sparkling.

“Is there no one who wants to challenge this? There’s 1 million won in donations riding on this problem!”

Several people stepped forward, tried to solve it, and wrote down their answers.

But no one got it right.

It was certainly a difficult problem.

It looked like one that required drawing a graph…

Damn. 

My brain wasn’t working.

It had been over 10 years since I’d touched math, and Jiwoo’s brain had clear limitations.

Then, Bong Soohee quietly stepped forward.

“Ooh, we have a new challenger!”

She confidently picked up the marker, quickly drew a graph, and wrote a simple equation.

Then, she wrote down the answer.

“Uh? That… that’s correct!”

“Wow.”

“What?”

“She solved it just like that…”

The host hurriedly stopped Bong Soohee as she tried to return to her seat.

“Wait a moment! Could we have a brief interview?”

“I’m Kim Bongpal from Seoul.”

Bong Soohee calmly gave a fake name.

Honestly, what a weird person.

“Ah, yes, Kim Bongpal… Could you explain how you solved it?”

“If you interpret the conditions and just draw the graph, it’s simple. Since the tangent point aligns with mx+n, you subtract mx-n from f(x), and then the given expression comes out. Now, you just substitute, and it’s done.”

“The method is incredibly creative. How did you draw the graph without doing any calculations?”

“I did it in my head.”

The MC’s face turned to one of utter shock.

The audience also gasped, mouths hanging open.

“Y-you did all of this mentally? Pardon me, but may I ask what your occupation is?”

“Unemployed.”

She drew two V-signs on either side of her face, celebrating her victory.

Her perfectly expressionless face made it an infuriating celebration.

Bong Soohee declined the prize and left the stage with nonchalance.

We followed after her.

“I completely forgot, you majored in mathematics.”

“I forget sometimes, too.”

“Why mathematics, though?”

At Han Seoyoung’s question, Bong Soohee suddenly stopped.

With a distant, inexplicable look in her eyes, she replied:

“Because I… loved math.”

“Loved…?

“Ever since high school, I loved math. It was so fun that I used to read math papers and would suddenly visit professors out of nowhere. That professor is probably going to win the Wolf Prize this year…”

“A high schooler read papers and visited a professor?”

“Yeah.”

“You were a total oddball, huh…”

Bong Soohee’s math story.

Even I was hearing this for the first time.

“But if you loved math so much, why did you quit? Did university life not live up to your expectations?”

Reality often fails to meet ideals.

It’s a common story.

But Bong Soohee was, as always, Bong Soohee.

Her reason for quitting math was as strange as she was.

“Math spoke to me.”

“…What?”

Suddenly, the conversation had flown to Andromeda.

I started to wonder if she had secretly gone drinking.

“It was when I was about to start my sophomore year. For fun, I was writing a paper about fractals and Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, when suddenly math whispered to me. It said, ‘This world is made of numbers, but humans perceive the world through images. Therefore, to approach the truth, one must experience both numbers and the world.’”

“…So what does that even mean?”

Bong Soohee was very serious.

Her eyes were deeper and more emotional than usual.

Whatever it was, it seemed to be a touching story to her.

“It meant that I should go experience the world and come back. So, it wasn’t me giving up on math; it was math letting me go. But someday, we will meet again…”

“……?”

“???”

Han Seoyoung and I were at a loss for words.

“Director Ping is weird…”

“I’m not the weird one. I’m the only normal person here.”

“……”

Well, being a little crazy somewhere is a good thing.

“You communist bastards!”

Yoo Hangcheol suddenly yelled.

It was right after Young Quiz aired.

“What are these bastards doing?! Kang Jiwoo gets a one-hour slot, and I only get 10 minutes?! Does that even make sense?!”

“Your actual screen time was 3 minutes!”

“Shut up!”

“Yes, sir!”

Yoo Hangcheol’s camp had requested Young Quiz for editing.

While he was ranting as usual, things slipped out.

If the ratio had been something like 40 minutes to 20 minutes, he would have let it slide.

But 10 minutes? 

That crossed the line.

‘How do I deal with these bastards?’

What should he do about the broadcasting station?

Firing a producer after winning the election would be an easy task.

However—

‘Winning feels far away…’

Yoo Hangcheol was looking at a third-place finish.

He knew it too.

‘I’m losing to Kang Jiwoo? Yoo Hangcheol, losing to that rookie brat…?!’

It would be an unbearable humiliation.

Just then, the phone rang.

It was the call he had been waiting for.

Yoo Hangcheol stepped out of the office, pulling out a cigarette.

“Hey, CEO Geum.”

CEO Geum.

He was closely tied to Yoo Hangcheol.

His specialty was digging up information.

“Chairman Yoo. I’ve got something. About Bong Soohee.”

“Is it solid?”

Yoo Hangcheol had instructed CEO Geum to dig into Bong Soohee.

She was a key strategist in Kang Jiwoo’s camp.

If he could uncover something real, it could not only get her thrown out of the camp but also hurt Kang Jiwoo’s approval ratings.

“Yes. It’s headline-worthy.”

If CEO Geum’s lead was solid, it could bring Kang Jiwoo down and force him to align under Yoo Hangcheol.

“Tell me.”

Yoo Hangcheol’s eyes glinted like a predator’s.

“Bong Soohee’s name appeared as a co-author on Professor Wang Haksoo’s paper when she was a high school junior at Korean University.”

“A high school junior got her name on a paper? Was she originally close to that professor?”

“Her biological father and the professor were classmates. Same graduation year. It seems they used connections to list her as a co-author and leverage it for college admissions.”

A high school student’s name appearing on a research paper.

It had long been a controversial issue regarding admissions fraud.

Still, Yoo Hangcheol wanted more certainty.

“Are you sure about this?”

“Bong Soohee received academic probation four times at university. She attended for six years and never graduated. On top of that, she couldn’t adapt to the math department and even switched majors.”

“It definitely stinks.”

“At this point, it’s 99% certain that it was admissions fraud. Also, it’s worth investigating how she wasn’t expelled despite four probations.”

“Good work. Organize the documents and send them to me.”

The call ended.

A smirk crept onto Yoo Hangcheol’s lips.

Snap!

He flicked the cigarette to extinguish it.

His shoe pressed hard against the ember, crushing it.

‘Kang Jiwoo, in the end, you’ll come under me.’

Yoo Hangcheol still dreamed of unification.