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Ennui!
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Anthony Wang 2023-03-10 03:12:19 +00:00
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---
title: "Ennui"
date: 2023-03-10T03:09:25Z
description: "The deep, dark secret of IOI winners"
type: "post"
tags: ["fiction", "story", "short-story", "competitive-programming", "ioi", "shaggy-dog-story", "monk-joke"]
---
Oh, great. Another doe-eyed rebellious anime girl to add to the endless parade of generics that litter the media landscape. Ennui, huh? Well, isn't that just perfect.
Ennui had a seething hatred for modern society, because honestly, who doesn't? She despised the endless monotonicity, er, I meant monotony, of her life and the only emotion she could feel nowadays was boredom. Endless, dull, tedious boredom.
One day, Ennui had the brilliant idea of running away from home and going for a joyride on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Because, you know, nothing screams excitement quite like sitting in a cramped, musty train for days on end.
After breaking multiple countries' multiple laws, the first five seconds aboard the train were a flurry of excitement, but boredom returned as quickly as it had departed. Suddenly, out of the corner of her eye, Ennui noticed a visibly troubled young man with an exceptionally bad haircut. Since she had nothing better to do, Ennui roasted his hairstyle, but the man took it as a compliment, and they struck up a slightly less boring conversation.
He introduced himself as Ben Qi, a three-time International Olympiad in Informatics winner. Oh yeah, I'm sure Ennui was just thrilled to have met such an exciting and charming individual.
But wait, it gets even better! Ennui asked Ben Qi what was bothering him, because that's totally a question you ask a stranger you met 30 seconds ago. Ben just replied cryptically, "I have a secret. A deep, dark, beleaguering secret gnawing away at my soul. And I'll tell you what it is, if and only if, you become an IOI winner like me."
So, Ennui immersed herself into IOI training because she was so utterly bored with everything else in her life, living and breathing Dijkstra's algorithm, AVX2-accelerated segment trees, and the Knuth-Yao DP speedup. Robert Tarjan soon started haunting her dreams.
And then, surprise surprise, she actually won the IOI! Because, you know, that's totally realistic and not at all ridiculous.
And then, at long last, the moment came. Ben Qi smiled proudly and said, "Congrats Ennui! You're now an IOI winner! And now I must fulfill my side of the biconditional. I'm going to reveal to you my secret."
Ennui leaned forward eagerly, her heart pounding with anticipation. Finally! She had waited so long, sacrificed so much, suffered through so many Robert Tarjan nightmares! Finally!
But at that moment, I must interrupt. You see, dear reader, I cannot reveal what Ben's secret is. Why, you ask? Well, simply put, unlike Ennui, you are not an IOI winner.
*To give credit where credit's due, this is a variant of the infamous monk joke.*