VIP Early Access
Eksklusif untuk member VIP
Password Protected
Chapter ini dikunci dengan kode khusus
Chapter 106
Translator: Enuma ID
Rumors always have a way of getting blown out of proportion.
Within just a few days, most of the students had learned of Team Apex's existence.
"Hey, did you hear? Apparently Yu Seo-ha put together a team. They say he's starting some insanely ambitious project. I heard equipment's been pouring into the lab nonstop."
"Yeah, I heard. Get in there and you'd never have to worry about a postdoc position, right?"
Ĕ n̄ ū m̊ а̄..і̀d
"I heard Dean Thomas is backing the lab big time?"
Rumors and truth mixed together, snowballing out of control.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
'A team created to solve an unsolvable problem.'
'A team of the best from the math and mechanical engineering departments.'
'Just getting on the roster is enough to change the course of a person's entire life.'
These were the kinds of rumors circulating among the students.
Ё ǹù ma
"Shouldn't we apply now if we want to get in? You have to join before there are any results to be a real team member. Once papers drop and patents get filed, it'll already be too late."
Students began to make their moves.
"Theo, got a minute?"
Theo was heading back to the lab with his coffee when someone stepped in front of him.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
A neatly pressed shirt, a smile just a touch too eager.
It was James, a classmate from his Stanford days.
Ёńu mа.. і d
"Oh, what's up?"
Theo glanced at his watch and nodded.
"About Team Apex, you're on the team, right?"
"Yeah, though we're barely in the starting phase."
So the rumors were true after all.
James looked around and lowered his voice.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
"Then could you put in a good word for me?
I had a feeling from the moment I first heard about it. You know what I can do, right? I'm pretty confident when it comes to nonlinear PDEs. If you guys need people...."
He let his words trail off suggestively.
Theo listened to the request with an unfazed expression.
"Sure, I don't mind."
"Really?"
We b̃ ǹо̄ v él̂ Еn̊u m̈ а̄
James's face lit up instantly.
"Man, thanks so much. They say the only people you can count on are your old classmates, right?"
Baca cerita ini hanya di situs resmi Enuma.id!
"Don't mention it."
Sip.
Theo took a sip of his coffee, then pulled a thin stack of printouts from his bag.
A bundle of equations, roughly ten pages of A4 paper. Red pen annotations were scrawled here and there.
Е̂n u m̌ӑ
"These are excerpts of the key points from the papers Sri and I have been referencing lately.
See the ones marked with an X? Those are cases we discarded. I want you to figure out why they were thrown out, based on your own reasoning, and write it up.
Uh... let's see, three days?"
"Huh?"
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
James blinked.
"Take longer if you need to. I can wait up to a week.
Ẇ еb̃n ӧ ṽ ē l Е n.u̇mа
If you find this interesting, come back. If it doesn't make any sense to you, then you don't need to bother."
Theo gave him a pleasant smile.
"No, I don't mean that kind of thing. If you could just talk to the team leader for me...."
"Talk to him and what? Get you in to sweep the floors?"
James flinched at the chill in Theo's gaze.
"Good seeing you. I gotta go!"
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
Theo patted him on the shoulder as if to say hang in there.
"Yeah, thanks. I'll give this a read."
But James never came back to find Theo again.
Similar situations repeated themselves several times.
One student waved around competition awards; another brought a letter of recommendation from a professor.
And Theo's response to all of them was always the same.
Е̊ nŭ m ӑ . і̊ď
"This paper presents three different models of energy. Is there a function that commonly minimizes all of them? Summarize it in your own words and bring it to me."
"If you read through this paper, around the midpoint there's a spot where the regularity of the PDE solution breaks down. What signs would you look for to catch that?"
Baca cerita ini hanya di situs resmi Enuma.id!
Problems on an entirely different level from ordinary assignments.
The students' faces went rigid.
Naturally, Theo never saw any of them again.
"Theo, still haven't found anyone suitable?"
Еǹu̇ṁ a.id̆
Seo-ha was eating a donut while reading a paper.
He had agreed to bringing on new team members to lighten the load on Sri and Theo. Theo had taken on the task of running the first round of filtering on applicants.
"Unfortunately, no.
It's not that there aren't talented people out there. The problem is that all the good ones are already committed to something."
Baca cerita ini hanya di situs resmi Enuma.id!
"That's true, but it also seems like nobody's taking the assignments you give them seriously. At a point in their lives where they have to decide their career path, they're probably reluctant to invest the time," Sri said, chewing on his donut.
Swish.
Eň ǔ ḿа̌
Seo-ha rose from his seat and stood before the board.
Then he began laying out the thoughts that had been swirling in his head.
Scratch scratch.
He wrote out equations at a blistering pace.
'Has he already solved it?'
The scattered fragments of ideas the team had been discussing were converging into one.
Baca cerita ini hanya di situs resmi Enuma.id!
Theo noticed that Seo-ha had entered a state of deep focus again. Taking care not to disturb him, Theo quietly slid open a drawer. It was packed full of chocolate bars. There was still a whole box of donuts left, too.
'We need a new team member.'
Grind.
Theo clenched his jaw.
He thought of Team Apex as something like an F1 racing car.
Seo-ha was the engine. A monster engine beyond imagination, with no limit on its output.
Е̌_n ü m̊ а
But an F1 machine doesn't run on the engine alone. The frame, the aero package, the tires... all of it has to support the engine's performance.
'I want to see Seo-ha running at full speed....'
Baca cerita ini hanya di situs resmi Enuma.id!
As it stood, Team Apex couldn't handle the surplus power of its engine.
'The faster the engine gets, the more the parts around it need to level up too.'
They didn't need just anyone filling a seat.
Low-quality parts wouldn't just fail to help the team; they'd only drag it down.
W̊е̃_b̊ ń ӧ v_ѐ l Е nu ṁ ӑ
Theo idly clicked open his inbox.
'Even so, it's still too soon for that.'
He had heard from Seo-ha about Su-jeong.
Seo-ha had said that if she grew, she would become an extraordinarily gifted mathematician.
Baca cerita ini hanya di situs resmi Enuma.id!
'Hurry up and get it figured out, will you? Before we die of overwork.'
It was a problem he himself had failed to solve back in his own undergrad days, but with Seo-ha's endorsement, maybe she could pull it off.
Wе̃ b n ö vе ĺ_ Ë nu ḿá
Theo chuckled, remembering the look in Su-jeong's eyes as she glared at him, as if to say just watch me.
* * *
Late afternoon. A red sunset settled over the MIT campus.
Seo-ha, who had been wrestling with equations, suddenly stopped.
'Stuck again.'
This had been happening a lot lately.
Baca cerita ini hanya di situs resmi Enuma.id!
It seemed this problem had no intention of yielding to him easily.
Seo-ha set down his pen and took a quiet breath.
A friend back in Korea came to mind.
'Han Gyeo-ul.'
At some point, new CDs had stopped arriving.
'Did something happen?'
Е̇ n̆ û m̊â
They had never made any formal promise, but Gyeo-ul had been sending him a newly recorded CD with each passing season.
However, a few months ago she had sent a text saying she would be busy for a while, and after that, silence.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
Seo-ha idly rolled his pen between his fingers, staring into space.
The desk was littered with the remnants of unfinished ideas. On the board, half-written clues toward a common function, tantalizingly close yet just out of reach.
Tangled thoughts failed to take shape and scattered into nothing.
"This is suffocating."
Ë ń um̊а.ï d̈
The words slipped out before he realized it.
He needed to steady himself.
Seo-ha changed into workout clothes and started running across campus.
"Huff, huff!"
Baca cerita ini hanya di situs resmi Enuma.id!
He ran for thirty minutes as usual, but his head felt no clearer.
Seo-ha circled the track, lap after lap.
Еṅû m̂а̇ .i ď
The evening wind cut sharply across his cheeks. He had already run more than enough.
But the tightness in his chest still wouldn't let up.
"Hah, hah-"
His breathing grew ragged and the feeling drained from his toes.
Somewhere in the distance, he thought he could see a vast mountain range of energy.
The equations clinging to it seemed to notice him, creeping toward him, latching onto his body.
Baca cerita ini hanya di situs resmi Enuma.id!
"Dammit!"
Seo-ha stood in the middle of the track and raked his fingers roughly through his hair.
"Don't do this, Ducky! We've been doing so well!"
Thump, thump, thump!
His heartbeat seemed even faster now than when he had been running.
Only then did Seo-ha realize he had been calling on Ducky recklessly these past weeks.
Ēnü mа̄. і̂d̆
Everything in sight grated on his nerves.
The streetlights lined up all the way to the end of the road.
Baca cerita ini hanya di situs resmi Enuma.id!
The gap between the third and fourth was awkwardly wider than the rest.
'Who designed this? Why would they space them like that?'
7, 7, 9, 7, 7.3, 7, 8.1.
Numbers arranged themselves automatically in his head.
Е̇n ùm̄ ä. ї d
It wasn't a sequence. Just a meaningless string of digits.
Seo-ha bit his lip.
Was it really okay for the world to disregard mathematics this badly?
'Don't look. It's just noise in my head.'
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
Seo-ha closed his eyes and started running.
Crash!
W̄е̌ b̂ñ о́v е l Е̃n ü ḿa.
But he didn't get far before slamming into a bench.
His knee stung.
Seo-ha lay on the ground and closed his eyes, praying that some form of peace would find him.
Riiiiing-
He didn't want to do anything, yet somehow the ringing phone nagged at him.
Without even opening his eyes, he pulled out his phone and answered.
Baca cerita ini hanya di situs resmi Enuma.id!
"Hello."
-It's me. Han Gyeo-ul.
"...Hey, it's been a while. Are you done with whatever was keeping you busy?"
-Who knows? More importantly, where do you think I am right now?
"Korea, I'd guess?"
-Nope. I'm at the MIT Lewis Music Library right now.
Е̃n̈ um̄ӑ_
Click.
The call ended with that.
Baca cerita ini hanya di situs resmi Enuma.id!
Seo-ha got to his feet. His knee must have been badly scraped; blood was running down.
Hobble.
Hobble.
His unsteady gait grew faster and faster. Before long, he was running.
Еñ ú.ḿа̊
Evening. Light spilled out between the buildings.
Groups of students were walking toward him, chatting and laughing.
"Seo-ha?"
Someone recognized him and waved.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
But nothing reached Seo-ha's ears.
Building 14.
Ӗ n̂u̇m̌ ā
He went down the stairs and sprinted toward his destination at full speed.
Creak.
He pushed through the door and was met with the papery scent unique to libraries.
It was nearly closing time, so almost no one was around.
Step, step.
Past the corridor, a hall shaped like a circular dome opened up before him.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
At its center sat a beautiful grand piano.
Its surface was black and glossy, as though it had absorbed every bit of light in the library.
Gyeo-ul was sitting there.
Ding.
Her fingers pressed a key lightly.
Gyeo-ul's tone rang through the hall.
Еn̈ü.m̂ӓ
That clear, crystalline sound moved Seo-ha so deeply that he stopped in his tracks without realizing it.
Gyeo-ul straightened her back as if she were facing an audience of tens of thousands, then quietly closed her eyes.
Baca cerita ini hanya di situs resmi Enuma.id!
And, as though she had made up her mind, she began to play.
Erik Satie's Gymnopédie No. 1. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-Xm7s9eGxU)
Her hands moved with the fluid grace of flowing water.
Ding, da-ding-
Е n̂ umа .і̇ d
A performance that seemed to gently wrap around Seo-ha, embracing him.
His heartbeat began to follow the rhythm of her playing.
Thump, thump.
'It's warm.'
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
It was as if her body heat were being transmitted through the music.
Her playing was smoothing out, one by one, the creases that had been buried deep inside him.
Е̂ ǹ u̇ṁа̂
A sound that was hers alone, found nowhere else in the world.
Gently,
ever so quietly,
the delicate arpeggios reached into the depths of Seo-ha's innermost self.
As the performance reached its climax, Seo-ha unconsciously took a step closer.
When the final note spread long through the hall and faded away, Gyeo-ul slowly opened her eyes.
Baca cerita ini hanya di situs resmi Enuma.id!
Seo-ha could not contain the emotions welling up inside him.
He took one more step forward and stood before her.
"I think I really need you. Without you, I don't have the confidence to keep going."
Gyeo-ul flinched, a startled look crossing her face.
But she quickly realized that something was seriously wrong with Seo-ha.
"You mean that literally, don't you? You can't fool me anymore, you idiot!"
Wе b̈ nо̌ v̀е̄l̀ Ĕ nu mа́
It had been a full year since the two of them had last met.
Konten Bab Belum Tersedia
Bab ini belum memiliki konten teks atau sedang dalam proses penyuntingan.
