Chapter 2
Chapter 2
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Translator: Ace
Chapter: 2
Chapter Title: I Obtained the Omnipotent Brain
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From the day the encyclopedia set took its place in one corner of the room, Yoo Seo-ha's daily life changed completely.
As if overjoyed by the vast knowledge waiting to be explored, Seo-ha always had a book open, eagerly reading.
He started with the insect and animal sections, packed with colorful illustrations.
He was amazed to learn that every tiger had unique stripes, and he tilted his head in puzzlement at the fact that birds migrated across entire continents.
'How do they know the way? Do they use pheromones too?'
He immediately turned to the next section and pored over the principles of the Earth's magnetic field, trying to understand it fully.
He posed questions to himself as he read, delighting in hunting down the answers within the pages.
Most young children would skip over unfamiliar words or concepts, losing interest in the process, but that never happened with Seo-ha. He would scour other chapters of the encyclopedia until he found what he needed, refusing to move on until every doubt was resolved.
The day he encountered the word "photosynthesis," he flipped open the plant section and meticulously traced the processes of light absorption, chlorophyll function, and energy conversion. Some chapters he devoured in a single day, while others took him a full month. More importantly, he wove every piece of information together, committing it all to memory.
To his parents, it looked like he was reading slowly because the material was too difficult, but in reality, Seo-ha was constructing a vast mental map of knowledge inside his head.
It took him two years to finish the entire 29-volume set.
"Yoo Seo-ha! Was school fun?"
Now seven years old, Seo-ha had started elementary school.
His parents had worried he might lack social skills since they'd never sent him to daycare or kindergarten, but he always came home with a bright smile.
"Yeah! I played soccer with the other kids."
He gave a half-hearted reply, flung his chick-shaped backpack off his shoulders, and dashed to his room.
Seo-ha's attention was now fixed on his newborn baby sister.
After washing his hands, he stood by the bedside, gazing at Seo-eun as she wriggled about, her eyes barely open.
"She's that cute, huh?"
His mother asked, and Seo-ha nodded vigorously.
"Yeah! She's so pretty. I'm gonna be really good to Seo-eun."
Startled awake by the noise, Seo-eun scrunched up her face—then spotted her big brother and burst into giggles.
It was a heartwarming sight. Mi-young felt she'd made the right choice having a second child. Seo-ha had always been low-maintenance, but this little girl was different. Being a baby girl, she wailed as if the world were ending whenever she was out of her mother's arms, leaving both parents perpetually sleep-deprived.
Yet as the days passed, her daughter rewarded her brother with beaming smiles every time she saw him. As a mother, nothing could be more gratifying.
"Seo-eun, big bro's gonna show you something fun."
Seo-ha crouched down beside the bed. He took his tiny sister's hands and covered her eyes.
"Where'd he go? Big bro disappeared!"
Suddenly, he whipped his hands away, revealing his beaming face.
"Peek-a-boo!"
Seo-eun erupted in peals of laughter. She flailed her arms and legs, giggling so hard her gums showed. Seo-ha's face lit up with pride.
As if begging "Do it again!", Seo-eun stretched her arms toward her brother.
"Okay, this time I'll really disappear."
Seo-ha slipped under the bed. Seo-eun looked around in confusion, left and right.
"Peek-a-boo!"
She popped her eyes wide in surprise as her brother sprang up from the side of the bed, then dissolved into laughter once more.
'He plays with her so perfectly. No wonder she adores her big bro.'
Mi-young shook her head fondly as she watched the two children.
She and her husband, exhausted as they were, could never keep up with that level of energy all day.
After an exhausting play session, the baby gulped down her formula and drifted off to sleep. Only then did Seo-ha gently stroke his sister's hair before quietly heading to his room.
His room had changed completely.
The single bookshelf in the corner had expanded to cover an entire wall. While devouring the encyclopedia, the subject that captivated Seo-ha most was mathematics. With nothing left to read, he'd asked his parents for more books. As they accumulated one or two at a time, they'd had no choice but to expand the shelves.
Standing before the bookshelf, Seo-ha ran his fingertips slowly along the spines. These marvelous companions had all gifted him the joy of new knowledge. His fingers drifted toward the heavier, thicker hardcovers. They came to a stop on a black hardcover with the title embossed in silver lettering.
Linear Algebra and Its Applications
Linear algebra and its applications. It was the original English edition, not a translation.
Seo-ha deftly flipped through the pages to the spot where he'd left off, then immersed himself in his own world.
"Ha... Even here, there are parents like this."
Kim Yoon-mi, the newly assigned homeroom teacher for Class 1-2 at Dodam Elementary School in Chungbuk Province, wearily removed her glasses and rubbed her eyes with her thumb and forefinger.
"I came all the way out here to avoid seeing this kind of thing..."
Yoon-mi swallowed a sigh.
It had only been three months since she'd left her years of teaching at a prestigious elementary school in Gangnam to return to her hometown.
Four-year-olds taking entrance exams for English kindergartens—the infamous "4-year-old college entrance exam." Seven-year-olds cramming for math academy admissions aimed at medical schools or science high schools—the "7-year-old college entrance exam."
That place had been a hell on earth.
Those years had been utterly devoid of fulfillment.
The children subjected to that education were always emotionally unstable and exhausted. In the end, they grew into teenagers incapable of solving anything without their parents. After all, their folks handled everything as long as they studied.
And that was the lucky part. Some of them, buoyed by a false sense of intellectual superiority from accelerated learning, matured into destructive adults who looked down on everyone else.
Elementary school teachers from science high schools were a rarity.
That uniqueness had made her the top pick among Gangnam moms for public school teachers. Despite everyone's advice against it, she'd chosen the job because she loved kids. She never imagined she'd end up this disillusioned.
Intellectual abuse born of parental ambition.
The sight of a seven-year-old with delicate, reed-thin fingers mindlessly repeating and memorizing equations they didn't even understand was utterly repulsive. When one child finally broke down sobbing from the strain, Yoon-mi lost her temper and had a massive blowout with the parents.
'And yet, here we are again...'
At the principal's urging not to escalate the issue, she'd accepted a transfer. She'd thought she'd never have to witness that nightmare again—but she'd been wrong.
Yoo Seo-ha.
A cute kid who smiled so innocently; she'd thought his parents must be lucky. Or so she'd assumed.
The moment she spotted The Standard Math Textbook in his chick backpack, Yoon-mi felt PTSD kick in. She'd immediately requested a parent-teacher conference, and today was the day they were coming.
Creak.
In the empty classroom after school, the door opened cautiously.
A faint whimper from a baby drifted through the crack.
"Sorry, just a moment."
The woman who entered, soothing the infant, wore no makeup at all.
Her skin was slightly tanned from the sun, and her hair was tied back in a hasty, unkempt bun.
But Yoon-mi caught a glimpse of intellect in her black horn-rimmed glasses and demure demeanor. The gentle way she patted the child brought an involuntary smile to Yoon-mi's face.
"Hello, Teacher. I've been so busy, I haven't been able to visit until now."
The parent bowed too deeply, making Yoon-mi hurriedly wave it off.
"Ah... Yes! No, it's fine! The reason I called was..."
As she spoke, Yoon-mi noticed a large pale cream stain spread across the woman's clothes.
It was hard to tell if it was formula or spit-up, but the damp patches around where she'd wiped in a hurry stood out.
A tired face, kind eyes, an expression tinged with worry as if wondering if her child had caused trouble. It was just like the look her own mother always had when she came to school, busy with her business.
Yoon-mi unconsciously pressed her lips together.
The image in her head of a "parent abusing their child with pushy early education" didn't match the woman before her at all.
"Ma'am, yesterday I saw The Standard Math Textbook in Seo-ha's bag. Is he attending some academy that teaches that?"
Her heart softened a bit, but she still needed confirmation. Rather than probing gently, Yoon-mi went straight for the direct question.
The woman flinched.
Like someone caught red-handed.
Yoon-mi thought her instincts had been spot-on, but the words that came from the woman's mouth were completely unexpected.
"That... It's probably a book his dad bought him. Seo-ha was curious about what high schoolers study."
"Pardon? Not from an academy?"
"Send a little kid to an academy? We didn't even send him to daycare or kindergarten because he hated it."
Were they even talking about the same thing?
Their perspectives weren't aligning at all.
Yoon-mi decided to recap from the beginning.
"So, ma'am, you're saying Seo-ha's just carrying it around out of curiosity? Not actually solving problems?"
Kids often showed off.
Yoon-mi had seen plenty of elementary students lugging around dense classics like Dante's Inferno.
"I don't think so. I've been so focused on the new baby lately that I haven't kept up with Seo-ha's studies, but I did see him take that book when he was bored and work on it."
Work on it when bored?
A first-grader tackling high school advanced math?
"So what you're saying is, Seo-ha is self-studying and solving high school math problems?"
Mi-young nodded at Yoon-mi's question.
"Seo-ha's always been a little unusual. Even without teaching him, he suddenly knew how to read Hangul and do calculations super fast. So we talked it over with his dad and bought him an encyclopedia set. He's been glued to it ever since... And lately, he's been asking for this book and that, so I figure his dad got it for him."
"Waaah!"
Sensing the serious mood, Seo-eun suddenly burst into tears.
As Mi-young soothed the baby, Yoon-mi snapped back to reality.
She had so many more questions, but it hit her that she knew next to nothing about Seo-ha himself.
'Alright. I'll talk to Seo-ha directly.'
Parents lied like it was nothing when it came to their kids.
After work, back home, Yoon-mi pulled out the books from her science high school days for the first time in ages.
"Brings back memories."
Introduction to Analysis, The Standard Math Textbook, Algebra, The Beauty of Mathematics, Geometry and Vectors, Math Olympiad Past Problems...
Back then, just opening them made her want to puke. Now, they were cherished memories.
Even after lights-out in the dorms, if she hadn't solved a single problem, she'd huddle under the covers with a flashlight, scribbling solutions in secret so no light leaked out.
'How far should I test him?'
No matter how smart a kid was, self-study had its limits.
"Middle school curriculum first."
Scratch, scratch.
She had no intention of blaming a precocious child showing off. It was all just part of growing up anyway.
But her mother's calm, unflustered demeanor showed no trace of that.
"Just confirm. Just confirm."
She'd meant to stop at trigonometry, but before she knew it, she'd included calculus, geometry, and vectors. These were brutally tough problems that couldn't be brute-forced with memorization—you needed perfect conceptual understanding to solve them.
Unconsciously, she couldn't dismiss the faint possibility that she might be dealing with a bona fide genius.