Redesigning the Questions
The proctor for the KMC High School 2nd Grade division narrowed his eyes.
It was because of the tiny child sitting right at the very front.
He had been impossible to miss from the moment he first entered the testing room.
After all, he was an elementary schooler squeezed in among high schoolers.
While a few middle schoolers were scattered around—a common enough sight—an elementary schooler in the High School 2nd Grade division, especially one so young, was a first in all his years of proctoring.
Fourth grade? Third grade?
Judging by his appearance, he seemed to be around that age, which kept drawing the proctor's gaze from the start.
And once the exam began, he became even more of a distraction.
The speed at which the boy solved the problems was simply too fast.
No, it wasn't just fast.
Even for problems that clearly required scratch work, the boy would stare intensely at them, think deeply for a moment, and then immediately bubble in his answer on the OMR sheet.
Is he just guessing?
It was a subjective OMR exam.
A fill-in-the-blank format where students had to solve the problems to find a numerical answer and then bubble that number into the OMR card.
They had to input a three-digit number ranging from 000 to 999.
For example, if the answer was 123, they had to bubble in 1, 2, and 3 in their respective columns.
Well, if someone wanted to guess, they technically could.
Did some prep academy register an elementary schooler in the high school division just for marketing purposes?
The thought made him feel a bit indignant.
The child wasn't to blame.
It was the trashy commercial tactics of the academy district, exploiting such a young child, that were disgusting.
While the proctor was lost in these thoughts, the boy finished bubbling in all his answers.
Then, holding his pencil between his thumb and index finger, he began to spin it with dazzling dexterity.
His pencil-spinning skills were truly top-tier.
It looked exactly like a scene from a movie where someone expertly flips a butterfly knife.
Watching blankly, the proctor let out a soft chuckle.
He could at least pretend to write something down and try to find the right answers.
Only about forty minutes of the two-hour exam had passed. How was he going to endure the remaining time without dying of boredom?
Shaking his head inwardly, the proctor stole a glance at the boy's test paper.
Though there were a few tiny scribbles, it was remarkably clean.
Tsk... Let's see...
As the proctor glanced over the exam questions, one of his eyebrows twitched.
Ha...
This question was an exact copy of one from two years ago, with only the numbers slightly altered.
Who on earth just copy-pasted this for the exam?
Every now and then, there were test-makers who clearly lacked any sense of duty.
For someone seeing this type of problem for the first time, they would have to break it down into different cases and write everything out step-by-step to avoid making a mistake.
However, for anyone who had encountered this type before, it was simple enough to solve with mental math.
Since f(1), f(2), and f(3) are a combination of 3 out of 5, that's C(5,3) = 10. f(4) and f(5) have 5 possibilities each, so...
The answer is 250.
Complimenting his own mind for not having rusted yet, the proctor was about to move along.
But then, he froze.
Just in case, he glanced down at the corresponding bubble on the OMR sheet...
...Huh?
It was correct.
To be honest, the other questions weren't things he could easily solve in his head.
So there was no way for him to verify on the spot whether the other answers were correct.
Besides, he couldn't just stand hovering over this one child the entire time.
...Ah!
He could just compare the boy's answers with those of the high schoolers who seemed to be writing down solid solutions.
With that idea, the proctor slowly walked around, scanning the test papers of the other students.
Most of them had solved about half of the total questions.
After memorizing a few answers that appeared to be correct from the other students' papers, he turned his gaze back to the elementary schooler—only to see the boy suddenly stop spinning his pencil.
The proctor narrowed his eyes slightly and stepped closer.
...What?
The boy was writing something in the margin of one of the questions.
First, the proctor read the question.
A geometry problem related to the tangent of a circle.
The proctor carefully read what the boy had written.
The radius of the circular map is 10. Standing 6 spaces away from the center. What is the range of a skill that just barely touches the edge of the map?
x² = 10² - 6² = 64
x = 8
8 × 2 = 16
The proctor's brow furrowed.
He rewrote the problem? Wait, is this about a video game?
The boy began to draw a diagram in the margin.
A circle, the center, the current position, the tangent point, and a right triangle.
After pondering deeply, he labeled each geometric element with symbols and wrote down an equation next to them.
x² = 10² - 6² = 64
x = 8
8 × 2 = 16
...
The proctor's eyes widened.
Is it actually possible to formulate a solution process like that?
The boy grinned as he looked at the problem he had just converted, and then turned his intense gaze toward another question.
Then, he rewrote that one in a similar fashion and began writing out the solution.
It was another game scenario, but looking at the solution, it was written in a way that was incredibly easy to understand.
The proctor's gaze drifted down to the OMR sheet.
No way...
Did he really solve all of these in his head?
He hadn't been guessing.
He understood the problems perfectly.
For some unknown reason, the boy had already found all the answers and was now simply playing around by redesigning the questions.
...Ah, shoot.
He had been so shocked that he completely forgot the answers he had just memorized from the other students.
The proctor blinked blankly.
The headquarters of the Korea Mathematics Evaluation Institute in Yeoksam-dong, Gangnam-gu, was bustling with activity.
KMC answer sheets from third-grade elementary students to second-year high school students across the country were piled up like mountains.
Although the number of applicants had decreased slightly this year, the total still reached tens of thousands.
The institute's staff were busy sorting the OMR answer sheets and running them through the scanners, with the middle and high school divisions nearly finished.
"What do you think the high school average will be this time?"
"Hmm, maybe 50?"
"I heard the difficulty went up compared to last year. Wouldn't it be around 40?"
While perfect scores weren't uncommon in the elementary and middle school divisions, the high school division was a different story.
In particular, the questions for the High School 2nd Grade division—the highest tier—were notoriously difficult, with the annual average hovering between 40 and 50 points.
"What do you think the highest score will be this year?"
"Who knows... 90?"
"Was the highest score in last year's preliminaries 90?"
"Yeah. That kid ended up winning the Grand Prize in the finals and went on to represent us in the Olympiad."
"I wonder who will take the top spot this time..."
Although the official announcement would take about two weeks due to error reviews, objection periods, grade calculations, and report card preparations, the raw results were generated on the very same day.
Because of this, the people in this room were the very first to know the students' scores.
"Middle school is all done, right? Should we start the elementary school batch?"
"Okay!"
The staff moved quickly, feeding the OMR sheets into the scanners.
The monitors rapidly filled with graded scores and registration numbers.
"I'm running the grade distributions for middle and high school, okay?"
The KMC preliminaries were graded on a curve.
Scores were divided into tiers: 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B, 3A, 3B, 4A, and 4B. Students in the top 15%, corresponding to tier 1A, would advance to the finals.
One of the employees checking the tier distributions suddenly knit his brows.
The highest score and its corresponding registration number flashed at the very top of the screen.
"Whoa..."
The staff sorting the elementary school OMR sheets turned their heads in curiosity.
"What is it?"
"We have a perfect score."
"Middle school?"
"No. High School 2nd Grade division."
"Just one person?"
"Yeah!"
"Wow, that's incredible. There wasn't a single one last year."
"I know, right? Where are they from? Did you check the registration number?"
"Seoul."
"Figures. What school?"
"...Hanyoung?"
"Hanyoung High School? Ah, that private school?"
The employee staring at the monitor tilted his head in confusion.
"Is there a glitch in the system?"
"Why?"
"It doesn't say Hanyoung High School. It says Hanyoung Elementary School."
"What?"
The staff swarmed around the monitor all at once.
One month later.
The KMC Finals, Gangnam-gu testing center.
Spotting Cheol-jun among the high schoolers pouring out of the exam hall, Hyeong-man waved his hand vigorously.
The high schoolers who caught Hyeong-man's eye flinched, while Cheol-jun beamed and ran toward him at full speed.
The high schoolers stared at the back of Cheol-jun's head with bewildered expressions.
"How did it go?"
"Yes! I wrote down the solutions in detail, just like the teacher told me to."
"Haha, good job. What's that?"
"Some older girls gave them to me to eat earlier!"
Cheol-jun grinned, holding out the milk and MyChew candies cradled in his arms to Hyeong-man.
"Well, look at you. Quite popular, aren't we, kiddo?"
"Hehe."
"But still, how does it take two hours to solve just six problems?"
"Ah, writing out the explanations took quite a bit of time."
"Haha..."
Hyeong-man chuckled and affectionately ruffled Cheol-jun's hair.
Cheol-jun giggled.
"What do you want to eat?"
"Pork cutlet!"
"Ah, that place from last time?"
"Yes!"
"Haha. Alright, let's go."
Hyeong-man led Cheol-jun toward the parked car.
Ever since the boy started studying and taking exams, although he still occasionally whimpered in his sleep, he hadn't suffered any panic attacks.
Hyeong-man felt deeply relieved about this.
"By the way, if you win an award in this exam, you're going to learn astronomy?"
"That's the plan. I heard there's also the KMO and international competitions. I want to ask them first if I need to go that far."
"Haha. Want your uncle to just look into it for you?"
Cheol-jun shook his head with a bright, innocent smile.
"No, thank you. I'll do it myself!"
"Haha..."
If his uncle helped, he could certainly take an easier path.
But for this, he wanted to try on his own.
It was the first time he had found something he truly wanted to do.
He didn't want to rely on anyone else right from the start.
Cheol-jun suddenly bowed his head deeply.
"Thank you, Uncle!"
"Huh?"
"Because of you, I feel safe."
"Safe?"
When his uncle told him, "If any annoying trouble comes up, I'll take care of it all," it had made him feel incredibly secure.
Cheol-jun knew very well that because he had his dependable Uncle Hyeong-man, he didn't need to be afraid and could show off his special talents to his heart's content.
He was deeply grateful that his uncle kept telling him he could do whatever he wanted, and stop whenever he pleased.
He kept that gratitude engraved deep within his heart.
"It's just... something like that."
"Haha..."
Feeling a bit embarrassed, Hyeong-man slung an arm over Cheol-jun's shoulder.
Hmm?
The height of his arm felt slightly off.
Did he grow taller?
Come to think of it, they hadn't measured his height once since that very first time.
He decided he should measure him as soon as they got home today.
A few days after the KMC Finals.
The test-making professors and grading committee members gathered for evaluation stared at one another with dumbfounded expressions, a single exam paper sitting in the center of the table.
"Ha, this is that kid, right?"
"Yes, that's him. The one who got a perfect score in the preliminaries."
"Sigh..."
"The more I look at it, the more incredible it is. How on earth did he come up with a solution like this...?"
"I think we have to give the Grand Prize to this child. There isn't a single flaw in his logic."
"Haha... I suppose we must, right?"
"Well, if you say so, Professor..."
Everyone's eyes gravitated toward the exam paper in the middle of the table.
There were six questions in total for the finals.
All of them were subjective, descriptive questions that allowed for partial credit.
After the test-making professors established the grading criteria, graduate students and teaching assistants conducted the first round of grading. Any ambiguous cases were passed to the second round for the professors to review.
If they needed to break a tie, they would proceed to a third round of grading.
There were exactly two perfect scores in this KMC Finals.
They had to decide who would receive the Grand Prize.
A short, elegant solution demonstrated skill.
It meant the student had quickly grasped the core of the problem.
However, the answers written on this particular exam paper were far from that conventional standard.
"He clearly understood everything with absolute clarity. That's why he was able to write a solution like this."
"Exactly. It's not that he wrote it this way because he doesn't know advanced concepts. Look here. He wrote a short, clear answer first. Then, he broke it down and explained it again, making it incredibly easy to understand."
"Haha. I've truly never seen a student like this before. He even provided precise examples. How did he manage to write all of this within the exam time...? If you explain it this way using foundational concepts, even an elementary schooler would understand the concept itself."
The professors' eyes sparkled with excitement.
"Which gifted education center does this child belong to?"
"I wonder. None of the professors here recognize him, right?"
"Ah, if I get the chance, I'd love to teach him..."
Hanyoung Private Elementary School, Grade 5, Class 5: Lee Cheol-jun.
It was a name that had now become permanently etched into the minds of the professors on the KMC test committee.
"Ah, I really can't get used to this."
Pacing in circles in the middle of his spotless research lab, Cha Seon-hyeok shook his head.
While it wasn't quite on the level of a physics department lab, computers equipped with 64GB of RAM and high-performance GPUs were glowing brilliantly.
A massive electronic blackboard hung on the wall, and the conference table had been replaced with a rather expensive, solid wood slab table.
The chairs, which used to be rock-hard because the cushions had completely flattened, were all replaced with brand-new ones.
Yet, ironically, he found it even harder to concentrate.
Astronomy is supposed to be researched while rolling around in the gutter...
No, that wasn't actually it. It was because a corner of his chest felt persistently uneasy.
"But, Professor."
Do Seon-ju crept up to him, her brow furrowed.
"Don't you think we should at least pretend to do something?"
"Hmm..."
"I mean, does it make any sense to just throw college-level major textbooks at an elementary schooler and tell him to study on his own? And that talk about winning a competition is a bit..."
"...Was it a bit much?"
"Of course! What if he hasn't given up and is just banging his head against a wall trying to make sense of it all on his own...?"
"..."
Cha Seon-hyeok flinched, a guilty look crossing his face.
That was exactly what had been weighing on his conscience.
It had been over a month since that day, and although he had tried to forget about it since there had been no contact, his damn brain—which forgot everything else—refused to let him forget this.
Do Seon-ju slowly looked around the lab.
"Still, thanks to him, this lab actually looks like a place where humans live now..."
"Sigh..."
"Professor, I heard you got dumped on your blind date, too."
"Who said that? I was the one who rejected her, okay? She wasn't my style."
"Uh, I heard you muttering to yourself while drinking beer. You said you lost a goddess..."
"..."
"Anyway, since you achieved your goal of getting a blind date, why don't you just invite him to hang out even if he didn't win anything? We can find some books suited to his level. I heard he's incredibly smart, so if he tries learning it and doesn't like it, he'll quit on his own."
"I... I should do that, right?"
That seemed like the only way he could fully enjoy this shiny new lab life without a crushing sense of guilt.
Cha Seon-hyeok quickly tapped his phone screen.
"Oh, Seyeong! It's your oppa... Yeah, that's actually why I called... What? He won an award at the KMC? Oh! Grand Prize? A perfect score? Haha, I got a perfect score on the KMC too back in the day. Was that in 6th grade? Still, impressive... Huh? ...What? High school...? No way... Huh? Seriously?"
Cha Seon-hyeok's eyes widened to the size of saucers.