Chapter 252

Translator: Dreamscribe

“Hey! The server crashed!”

The lounge in MIT’s engineering building.

A student clutching his laptop screamed as he tore at his hair. As if that were the starting signal, curses and groans erupted from all around.

“Are you kidding me?! The page won’t load! What the hell? I’m the top student in computer science! I even built a macro that accounts for network latency, so why?! Did they build the academic database server out of potatoes?”

“Shut up, man! I heard the physics students are camping out right under the network repeaters.”

At 9 a.m., MIT’s vaunted academic system went down. The computer center staff were practically screaming as they added more memory in the server room, but even that wasn’t enough to withstand the onslaught of geniuses attempting simultaneous connections through alternate IPs.

“There’s an announcement!”

At someone’s shout, the students all turned to their monitors.

[Notice from the Computer Center.]

-Due to an abnormal concentration of traffic on a specific course, server resources have been exhausted. Students, please immediately cease the following activities.

Using VPNs to generate dozens of alternate IP addresses or renting virtual servers in bulk to bombard the Course Registration API.

These actions constitute an outright attack on and challenge to the university.

Any student who successfully registers for a course through such methods will be tracked down by the Computer Center, and their registration will be canceled.

Turn off your macros and hacking tools and compete fairly with your own fingers.

“Wow, they must be seriously pissed.”

“They’re even going to cancel registrations? Maybe I should turn off my macro for now....”

The lounge buzzed with agitation.

A few students intimidated by the warning quietly shut down their hacking tools. But not everyone did. Mike, the top student in computer science, snorted.

The student sitting beside him glanced at his laptop screen.

“You wrote that yourself?”

“Obviously.”

“Let me see the code.”

“Keep dreaming.”

Clack!

Mike abruptly shut his laptop.

***

An hour had passed since the announcement went out, but the server was still down. Collins, an engineer at the computer center, had gone pale. The traffic monitoring screen was completely covered in red.

The director sighed and asked,

“How many simultaneous connections are there right now?”

“A little over ten thousand.”

“How many students does MIT have?”

“11,500.”

“...You’re telling me basically every student at MIT is trying to register for this class? There are plenty of departments that have nothing to do with math.”

Collins clicked something on the screen and showed him.

“I checked the IPs. This range belongs to Harvard.”

“Why Harvard?”

“We have a cross-registration agreement with them. Normally, there are only a handful, but....”

Ugh.

The director groaned and pressed his fingers against his temples.

“Force a shutdown! Take the server offline for now, then manually rewrite the traffic filters and the code....”

The unprecedented server shutdown threw the campus into utter chaos. The community boards quickly filled with posts complaining about the situation.

[Let’s share our Course Registration status for Professor Yu Seo-ha’s lectures.]

-I clicked the second registration opened, and it was already full. Anyone know what happened?

└DB error the instant it opened.

└I’m a math major, so why the hell is the entire university crawling into our courses?! There aren’t any seats left for us because of you guys.

└I heard Harvard’s just as bad. Apparently they’re protesting outside the President’s Office demanding a bigger cross-registration quota.

└Waitlist position 2,000 ㅋㅋㅋ This is ridiculous. Never thought I’d see something like this in my life.

└You guys are just mindlessly smashing register because it says Yu Seo-ha’s lecture. You’re gonna regret it. You seriously think you’ll even be able to get a decent grade?

└Yu-Riemann Geometry has 50 seats, and Life Matrix has 20. Has MIT lost its mind? Those class sizes are way too small.

[Anyone who failed to register for Professor Yu Seo-ha’s class, gather here. Preparing a group petition.]

-Current signatures: 247.

-We intend to formally request that the university increase enrollment capacity or open additional sections. If you’d like to participate, leave your name and student ID in the comments.

└I’m in.

└Me too.

└I’m in physics. Can I still join?

└Any major is fine. The more, the better.

└Can Harvard math students join too?

└Why are you guys even here ㅋㅋㅋㅋ

└I seem to remember MIT students flooding into Professor Michael J. Sandel’s (Michael J. Sandel, author of ‘Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?’) class too.

└True ㅋㅋㅋ Come on, let’s do this together.

└Harvard Medical School student here. Add me to the petition!

The next morning, a teaching assistant arrived at the office and opened her email.

1,400 messages had arrived overnight.

“My God.... What is all this?”

The senders came from all kinds of departments.

There were students from mathematics, physics, and biological engineering, of course, but even students from architecture and the business school were among them.

“There are Harvard students too.”

The subject lines varied, but the contents were all the same.

‘I want to take Professor Yu Seo-ha’s class!’

She stared blankly at the screen for a moment before quietly getting up and heading toward the Dean’s office.

Knock, knock!

“Professor.”

“Come in.”

The teaching assistant opened the door, then stopped short.

The Dean’s office was a complete mess.

Mountains of printed documents covered the desk, and the lights on the phone blinked nonstop. Dean Whitman had the receiver wedged between his shoulder and ear while frantically writing something down. He raised a hand, signaling for the teaching assistant to wait.

“I understand your situation, but we’ve got our hands full right now. Let’s discuss it again next semester.”

Click.

He set down the receiver with an exhausted expression and rubbed his eyelids. The teaching assistant couldn’t contain her curiosity.

“What happened?”

“Princeton. Their students apparently want to attend Seo-ha’s lectures. They’re asking us to let them audit the courses remotely, if nothing else.”

“Huh? I was just about to talk to you about the same thing.”

The teaching assistant took out her tablet.

Whitman looked at it and let out an incredulous laugh.

“I was already summoned by the President over this. Apparently, a petition came in.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to adjust the enrollment limit?”

“Hmm....”

He had expected students to flock to the courses, but not to this extent.

He spoke with a displeased expression.

“You want to put a brand-new professor with absolutely no teaching experience in charge of a huge lecture from his very first semester? I’m sure Seo-ha would love that. Thousands of reports pouring in every semester, plus research assignments to grade.

“And what about the endless questions coming in day and night? Do you really think Seo-ha can handle all of that by himself?”

More than anything, Whitman was concerned that Seo-ha’s research time would be reduced. But the situation had grown too large for them to keep protecting him from that burden.

But how?

“It’s not like these are concert tickets.”

“They’re probably fans. Seo-ha isn’t someone students can easily meet.”

“We don’t need students like that. They’ll only ruin the atmosphere.”

The Dean thought for a moment, then began writing on the board.

“We’ll drastically tighten the eligibility requirements.”

“How strict are you thinking?”

“For Yu-Riemann Geometry, students must have completed Calculus, Linear Algebra, Topology, and Complex Analysis, all with grades of B+ or higher.”

The teaching assistant pulled out a pen and quickly wrote it down.

“What about Life Matrix?”

“That needs to be even stricter. In addition to those courses, they’ll need to have completed Molecular Biology and Biochemistry. No freshmen allowed.”

“I don’t think many students will qualify under those requirements.”

“That’s the point. These were meant to be in-depth seminar-style courses with only a small number of students from the beginning. Screening at this level is only natural.”

That afternoon, a revised Course Registration notice was posted on the MIT mathematics department website.

Naturally, the student community erupted in screams.

└Isn’t this basically an eviction notice? ㅋㅋㅋ I’m a sophomore and got forcibly dropped.

└Math students have to take Molecular Biology and Biochemistry?

└Yep. You probably need them to keep up anyway. See you in a year. Lucky me, I’m a med student with a math background ㅋㅋㅋ

└Damn, it finally feels comfortable in here. Watching everyone get kicked out at once is so damn satisfying.

└That’s too much. Why can’t I just study the material myself and take the class?

└I get why you’re disappointed, but honestly, it makes sense. Anyone who doesn’t meet those requirements would spend the entire semester getting tortured before giving up. The Dean just saved your lives.

The thousands of non-serious applicants who had flocked to the courses purely out of fandom or curiosity were cleanly filtered out.

The students were disappointed, but they had no choice but to acknowledge the standards laid down by one of academia’s giants.

However, Whitman had overlooked one fact.

This was MIT, where bizarre geniuses from all over the world gathered. It was full of monsters who obsessively dug into both mathematics and the life sciences, and students who thought nothing of completing two or even three majors. Add the Harvard students on top of that, and the number of eligible students was anything but small.

Three or four hours after the notice was posted, the teaching assistant monitoring the registration system entered the Dean’s office with a bloodless face.

“What is it? Are there still too many?”

“Th...that’s....”

The teaching assistant held out the tablet with trembling hands.

‘742 students.’

“...I suppose there’s no helping it.”

If the students were this eager, perhaps there was no harm in letting them get a taste of it.

By next semester, there probably wouldn’t be another fiasco like this.

“Assign a large lecture hall. Increase the enrollment limit to 300 as well.”

It was unprecedented.

Lectures on theories this difficult were normally conducted in discussion format with only a few dozen elite students.

“Now that it’s become a mega-class, we’ll need more teaching assistants too.”

Contrary to the original plan, Seo-ha’s first lecture only continued to snowball in size.

***

Team Apex Korea underwent a major personnel reshuffle.

It was only natural, since the team members, including Seo-ha, had to move to Boston. Joseph, who had been promoted to Deputy Director, would henceforth be solely responsible for maintaining Utopia.

With a disbelieving expression, he kept repeating, ‘I’m the Deputy Director....’

Three years was not a short amount of time.

During their week of vacation, the team members wrapped up their lives in Korea in their own ways.

Su-jeong and Cecilia dragged two enormous suitcases to a cosmetics store. Ben and Sri visited supermarkets and traditional markets, sweeping up Korean ingredients that were difficult to find in the United States.

Theo went around visiting his favorite restaurants by himself.

Sundae-gukbap, fried chicken, samgyeopsal, gopchang, jokbal. He had discovered all those foods after coming to Korea, and there were so many things he wanted to eat that even a week hardly seemed enough. He also didn’t forget to have several pairs of glasses made in different designs or raid convenience stores late at night.

Seo-ha, who had returned from Poland, had somewhat mixed feelings.

That was because he would have to go to the United States without his family.

“Because of Seo-eun’s college admissions, I think we’ll have to stay here.”

Chul-ho spoke with an apologetic expression.

Seo-ha had expected as much. If possible, he also would have liked to stay for another year before going to the United States, but....

“Seo-ha, make sure you eat properly, okay? Mom’s already worried. You live on instant food unless someone cooks for you.”

“N...no. I was actually thinking about learning how to cook too.”

Seo-ha waved his hands in embarrassment.

It wasn’t a lie. Even Gyeo-ul, who seemed to have no domestic skills whatsoever, had made a stew far more delicious than he could have imagined.

When he thought about it, cooking was science too. He saw no reason why he shouldn’t be able to do it.

Seo-eun narrowed her eyes at him as if she didn’t believe a word of it. Seo-ha cleared his throat and asked his younger sister,

“Have you decided which university you’re going to?”

“It's a secret! But my teacher said one year should be enough for me.”

Seo-eun stuck out her tongue as she answered.

Seo-ha felt a little lonely that she no longer clung to him the way she used to, but he knew Seo-eun’s feelings had never changed.

After all, she still treasured every gift he had given her in her dorm room.

Seo-ha went around the research institute and said goodbye to each staff member one by one. He also didn’t forget to treat Professor Kim Ji-yoon and Minister Lee Hyun-seok to a meal.

Finally, after meeting Woo-hyun and gifting him a fine suit, the day of departure arrived before he knew it.

“I’ll be back, Korea.”

Seo-ha looked back from the airport. The weather was already beginning to warm little by little.

The youngest professor in MIT history.

His first spring was about to begin.

*****

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