From the day the encyclopedias took their place in one corner of his room, Seoha's daily life changed completely.
As if overjoyed by the sheer abundance of knowledge to explore, he always had a book open in his hands.
At first, he started with sections filled with pictures— insects and animals.
He was surprised to learn that each tiger's stripes were unique, and he tilted his head in confusion when he read that birds migrated across entire continents.
"How do they know which way to go? Do they use pheromones too?"
Turning the page, he soon came across the principle of the Earth's magnetic field and tried to make sense of it.
As he read, he constantly posed questions to himself, and he enjoyed the process of finding the answers within the books.
Normally, when young children encounter unfamiliar words or concepts, they skip over them or quickly lose interest—but that was not the case for Seoha. He would immediately search through other chapters of the encyclopedia until he found what he was looking for, and only after fully resolving his doubts would he move on to the next page.
The day he encountered the word "photosynthesis," he opened the plant section and traced the sequence step by step—light, chloroplasts, and energy conversion. Sometimes he would finish an entire chapter in a single day; other times, one chapter would take him a whole month. More important than the speed was the fact that he connected and remembered everything he learned.
To his parents' eyes, it looked as though the material was simply difficult and that he was reading slowly. In reality, Seoha was weaving all that information together in his mind, constructing a vast map of knowledge.
It took him two years to finish reading the entire encyclopedia set—all twenty-nine volumes.
"Yoo Seoha! Did you have fun at school?"
At seven years old, Seoha entered elementary school.
Since he had never attended daycare or kindergarten, his parents had worried that he might lack social skills, but Seoha always returned home with a bright smile on his face.
"Yeah! I played soccer with the other kids."
Barely finishing his reply, he flung off the little chick-shaped backpack slung over his shoulders and dashed into his room.
Seoha's attention was now completely focused on his newborn baby sister.
After washing his hands, Seoha stood by the bed and quietly watched his sister, Seoeun, who was still wriggling around, unable to even open her eyes properly.
"Is she that cute?"
At his mother's question, Seoha nodded vigorously.
"Yeah! She's so pretty. I'm really going to take good care of Seoeun."
Perhaps awakened by the noise, Seoeun scrunched up her face, then caught sight of her brother and burst into giggles.
It was a heartwarming sight. Miyoung felt she had truly done the right thing by having a second child. Seoha had always been an easy child to raise, but the second was different. Maybe because she was a girl, Seoeun would cry as though the world were ending the moment she left her mother's arms, leaving both parents constantly short on sleep.
So when that daughter smiled brightly every time she saw her older brother, Miyoung couldn't have been more grateful.
"Seoeun, your big brother's going to show you something fun."
Seoha crouched down beside the bed. He gently took Seoeun's tiny hands and covered her eyes.
"Where did I go? Big brother disappeared!"
In the next instant, his hands flew open, revealing his bright, cheerful smile.
"Peek-a-boo!"
Seoeun burst into delighted laughter. As she flailed her arms and legs, laughing so hard her gums showed, Seoha wore a proud expression.
Seoeun stretched her arms straight toward her brother, as if saying, Do it again!
"Alright, this time I'll really disappear."
When Seoha slipped under the bed to hide, Seoeun looked around left and right, puzzled.
"Peek-a-boo!"
Seeing her brother suddenly pop out from beside the bed, Seoeun's eyes widen in surprise—then she bursts into laughter again.
With a brother who plays with her this well, she'll be completely smitten.
Watching the two children, Miyoung shook her head.
Both she and her husband were utterly drained of energy—they doubted they could ever play like that all day long, even if their lives depended on it.
After playing for a long while, the exhausted baby gulped down her formula and soon fell asleep. Only then did Seoha gently stroke his sister's head, as if it were something precious, before quietly getting up and heading to his room.
Seoha's room had changed from before.
The single bookshelf that had once stood alone in a corner now occupied an entire wall. As Seoha devoured the encyclopedias, the subject that had captivated him the most was mathematics. With nothing left to read, he had asked his parents for more books. As they added volumes one by one, the shelves had grown to accommodate them.
Standing before the bookshelf, Seoha slowly traced the spines with his fingertips. Every book was a wonderful friend that had given him the joy of gaining knowledge. His fingers gradually moved toward the heavier, thicker hardcover volumes, then stopped at a black hardback with a silver title stamped on it.
Linear Algebra and Its Applications.
It wasn't even a translated edition—it was the original.
Seoha skillfully flipped through the pages, found the section he had been reading, and soon sank into a world of his own.
"Haa… so there are parents like this here too."
Kim Yunmi, the homeroom teacher of Class 1–2, first grade, newly appointed to Dodam Elementary School in Chungbuk, took off her glasses with a weary look and rubbed her eyes with her thumb and middle finger.
"I came all this way thinking I'd escaped that place…"
Yunmi let out a sigh—then swallowed it back down.
It had been only three months since she returned to her hometown after teaching children for years at a famous elementary school in Gangnam.
The entrance exams for English kindergartens—the so-called four-year-old exam—and the seven-year-old exam for math academies aimed at future medical school or science high school admission.
That place had been hell on earth.
Time utterly devoid of fulfillment.
Children who received such an education were always emotionally anxious and exhausted. And in the end, they grew into adolescents who could not solve anything without their parents. As long as they studied, their parents took care of everything else for them.
If that were all, it would be fortunate. Some of them would grow into destructive adults who looked down on others, fueled by a sense of intellectual superiority formed through accelerated learning.
Elementary school teachers who graduated from science high schools were rare.
Thanks to that, she had become one of the most sought-after public school teachers among Gangnam mothers. Despite everyone trying to dissuade her, she had chosen the job because she liked children. She never imagined it would leave her feeling this disillusioned.
Intellectual abuse born of parental desire.
The sight of seven-year-olds, their tiny fern-like hands repeatedly writing and memorizing equations they didn't even understand, was unbearably repulsive. One day, after seeing a child burst into tears from exhaustion, she completely lost her temper and got into a fierce argument with a parent.
In the end, it was still that place…
Accepting the principal's recommendation to transfer—meant to prevent the situation from escalating—had marked the end of that chapter. She thought she would never have to see such things again, but she had been mistaken.
Yoo Seoha.
The child was cute, and his bright, cheerful smile had made her think his parents must be wonderful—was that a misconception?
The moment Yunmi saw The Standard Mathematics tucked inside Seoha's little chick-shaped backpack, she felt her PTSD flare up. She immediately requested a parent-teacher meeting, and today was the day Seoha's parent was coming.
Creak—
After school, in the empty classroom, the door opened carefully.
From the crack came the fussy crying of a newborn baby.
"I'm sorry—just a moment, please."
The woman entered while soothing the baby. Her face was completely free of makeup.
Her skin was slightly tanned from the sun, and her hair was roughly tied back, as if she hadn't even had time to brush it properly.
Still, Yunmi could sense an intellectual air in her black horn-rimmed glasses and her modest demeanor. Watching her gently pat the baby, an unbidden smile crept onto Yunmi's face.
"Hello, teacher. I've been so busy that I haven't been able to come see you until now."
The parent bowed deeply, almost too much so, prompting Yunmi to hurriedly return the greeting.
"Ah… yes! No, it's fine! The reason I called you was…"
As she spoke, Yunmi noticed the woman's clothes—there was a large, pale cream-colored stain spread across them.
It was hard to tell whether it was formula or something the baby had spit up, but the area around where it had been hastily wiped was still damp.
Her tired face, gentle eyes, and the worried expression that seemed to ask whether her child might have caused some trouble—it was a look Yunmi had seen many times on her own mother's face whenever she came to school, busy with her work.
Yunmi pressed her lips together without realizing it.
The image she had formed in her mind—parents who abuse their child out of greed for early education—didn't match the woman standing before her at all.
"Ma'am, yesterday I saw The Standard Mathematics in Seoha's bag. Are you perhaps sending him to an academy that teaches that kind of material?"
Her guard had lowered a little, but this was something she needed to confirm. Rather than probing cautiously, Yunmi decided to ask a direct question.
Flinch.
It was the reaction of someone who felt as though they'd done something wrong. Yunmi thought her suspicions had been correct—but what came out of the woman's mouth was completely unexpected.
"That… my husband probably bought the book for him. Seoha was curious about what kind of things high school students study."
"Pardon? So he's not learning it at an academy?"
"Sending such a little child to an academy? Seoha hasn't even gone to daycare or kindergarten, let alone an academy. We decided not to send him."
Were they even talking about the same thing?
The conversation wasn't lining up at all.
Yunmi decided to start over and reconsider the situation from the beginning.
"Ma'am. So you're saying Seoha just carries The Standard Mathematics around out of curiosity? Not to solve it."
Children often showed off. Yunmi had seen plenty of elementary students carrying around difficult classical literature, like Dante's Divine Comedy, for appearances.
"That's probably not it. I've been busy with our second child lately, so I haven't been able to pay much attention to Seoha's studies—but I've seen him take that book along and work through it when he's bored."
Work through it when he's bored?
A first grader solving high school-level science-track math?
"So, what you're saying is that Seoha is self-studying and solving high school math problems on his own?"
At Yunmi's question, Miyoung nodded.
"Seoha has always been a bit unusual since he was little. We never taught him, but before we knew it, he could read Hangul and was quick with calculations. So my husband and I talked it over and bought him encyclopedias. After that, he spent all day reading them… and lately he's been asking for more and more books, so I think my husband just gave in."
"Waaahhh!"
Perhaps sensing the sudden heaviness in the air, Seoeun suddenly began to cry.
Watching Miyoung soothe the baby, Yunmi snapped back to her senses.
There were still many things she wanted to ask, but Yunmi realized she knew almost nothing about Seoha yet.
Alright. First, I'll talk to Seoha himself.
When it came to their children, parents lied as easily as breathing.
After returning home from work, Yunmi pulled out books she hadn't opened since her science high school days.
"I miss these."
Introduction to Analysis, The Standard Mathematics, Algebra, The Beauty of Mathematics, Geometry and Vectors, Math Olympiad Past Problems…
Back then, just opening those books had made her feel like she was going to throw up. Now that she thought about it, they had all become precious memories.
Even when dorm lights-out time approached, if she hadn't finished solving a problem, she would hide under her blanket to keep the light from leaking out and continue working by the beam of a flashlight.
How far should I test him?
No matter how smart a child was, there were limits to what self-study could achieve.
"Let's start with the middle school curriculum."
Scratch, scratch.
She had no intention of blaming a precocious child for showing off. After all, everything was just part of growing up.
But there had been none of that kind of bravado in Seoha's mother's calm, almost bewildered demeanor.
"Just to confirm. Just to be sure."
She had planned to stop at trigonometric functions, but as she kept writing, she ended up including calculus, geometry, and vectors as well. These were high-difficulty problems that could never be solved by memorization alone—only by a perfect understanding of the underlying concepts.
It was unconscious, but she couldn't completely dismiss the tiny possibility that she might be about to encounter a genius beyond all norms.