A Stroke of Victory [Yeongyu]

Chapter 8

"What's this?" Beomgyu said out loud, even though he was alone in his room. He had just returned from a shower to find a small folded card sitting on his desk. Soobin must have left it before heading to class. The front of the card was blank, but inside, there was a message: GF YFODSF ONTDS RXQ JHZ KXCDZ ZH JF YFODZ ONTDS RXQ GN BDSADJJFS.

No signature. Odd. He looked over his shoulder and glanced around the room to see if anything was out of the ordinary. No, nothing unusual except for the card. But who could have left it? And why? Soobin knew nothing about cryptology. It couldn't be from him. Was it part of the cryptology competition? Would they randomly deliver notes to the participants? It didn't seem likely, not unless it was hand-delivered; how else could they ensure who would receive it?

He checked his watch. Damn. He had only a few minutes before he had to go to class. The message would have to wait. No, he would take it with him. If the class was quiet, he could play around with the code. He probably wouldn't be able to decipher it by hand, but who knows? He might get lucky. He couldn't wait to find out. Once he knew what it said, he could determine who had sent it. He sat in class, half-listening to the lecture while jotting down notes on character frequency. First, he tried changing H to A, Q to E, Z to L, N to I, and X to U, which yielded: GA YAODSA OITDS VUE JAL KUEDZ LA JA YHODL OITDS VUE GI BDSADJJAS. He sighed, knowing the message was too short to expect the frequencies to behave predictably. What he would give for ten minutes with his laptop! One of the three-letter words was something like 'que' or 'con.' And he also noticed there were repeated words.

The physics professor droned on while Beomgyu continued to work on deciphering the message, hoping the cryptographer had employed a simple substitution. However, without knowing the key and the cipher scheme, his attempts were in vain. As soon as the class ended, he rushed to the library, where he found an empty table and fired up his laptop. He started Python and ran the encrypted text through his decryption programs. Bingo! The cryptographer had used an affine cipher with a multiplicative key of seven and an additive key of three. The decrypted message read: "I'll let you play with my balls if you let me play with your Warhammer."

Beomgyu laughed out loud and then covered his mouth with his hands, realizing he was in the library. For heaven's sake, it was from Yeonjun! But how had he learned to encrypt a message? And why? Well, the why was obvious. Beomgyu sighed and thought back to the conversation they had in the bathroom last week. He had told Yeonjun that things between them wouldn't work out. He remembered his exact words: "You play baseball, and I play Warhammer. You like going out, I like staying in. I have the next five years of my life planned out in detail, and you're still trying to figure things out." A smile slid onto his face as he reread Yeonjun's message. It didn't reflect the most romantic of sentiments, but it was clever and amusing. Either way, he didn't need this kind of distraction. He had barely paid attention to classes that morning. He sighed, retrieved his physics book to read the material he missed in class.

****

He found a new message waiting for him on his desk that night. Again, Soobin was nowhere to be seen. Yeonjun and he must be conspiring to deliver them. Beomgyu's pulse quickened as he opened the card to read the message on it: AL KLQHYL JNLKTYAL LU JTZJ AVKA LS APLTWV JNL JNPLYTZ. Although the idea of sitting down and deciphering the code was very tempting, he folded the card and put it in his desk drawer. He had more important things to do than decipher secret love notes!

Beomgyu kicked off his shoes and settled onto his bed with the philosophy book. He briefly glanced at the drawer where the secret message was perfectly hidden. No. Focus. Homework was more important.

He flipped through the text until he found what he needed to read for the assignment. Libertarianism and Determinism. The title mocked him as it stood prominently on the page. Beomgyu uncapped his yellow highlighter, ready to mark the main ideas as he read. Occasionally, his thoughts would drift back to the message in his drawer. Was it also a joke? Maybe, if he finished his assignment early, he would allow himself to decipher the note. Focus!