Noah had assumed Andrew came from wealth. But that night Andrew told him the truth: factory worker father, office-cleaning mother, scholarship kid from Detroit, years of being the smartest person in the room but never the richest. He had built his company from almost nothing and still remembered exactly what it felt like to be underestimated.
That changed something for Noah.
The next morning, the competition began.
The opening ceremony took place at the Royal Institution, and Noah walked in feeling the full weight of what the moment represented. Teenagers from sixty countries filled the auditorium. Some arrived in blazers with school crests and entourages of teachers. Others, like Noah, came with simpler clothes and sharper hunger.
The first day was individual problem solving. Four hours. Proofs, structures, deep pattern recognition.
Noah opened the booklet and felt the familiar sensation he loved most: the click of a difficult problem revealing its shape. Number theory, one of his strongest areas, appeared immediately. Then combinatorics, then an elegant geometry problem hiding inside a more intimidating statement.
He worked steadily, ignoring the clock whenever possible.