Chapter 17: Things We Only Say Without Words (IV)

Tomorrow would be the term exams that might decide if I'm going to pass my second year and make it to the third, and the third going to college.

It's basically the exam that determines my future.

So I buried myself in the stacks of review sheets whilst lying on the comfort of my futon.

It was decorated with stray highlighters and colored pens.

Then, there's a cheap can of iced coffee on the stool next to me that tasted more like stress than beans.

Sundays on a regular basis meant family gathering, then trips to parks and attractions.

Weekends meant extra free time for me to lock myself at home and sulk over the grievances of being a hardworking student.

It's punishment coated as freedom, really.

I hadn't stepped out since yesterday. Not even to breathe properly.

I was on my third failed attempt at solving a lengthy problem about geometric progressions when the universe decided I deserved more chaos.

Knock. Knock.

I glanced at the door, considered ignoring it.

The knock came again.

I sighed and stood up. “…If this is someone trying to sell subscriptions to the Shonan Times, I swear—”

The door swung open, revealing Kousaka Akari-san.

She stood there menacingly, arms crossed, wearing her oversized hoodie, a backpack slung over one shoulder, and eyes far too determined for a weekend.

Oh, and as usual, Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 played again.

At first, she waited for me to open it up for her and now, she's totally barging in recklessly. I bet she’d say, ‘At least I knocked’ like that counts as justification.

“Don’t give me that look,” she said, bumping past me like she owned the oxygen in my apartment. “You’re not that busy.”

“I literally am,” I replied, motioning to the battlefield of notes behind me.

“Well, not anymore,” she smirked. “Félicitations. You’ve been assigned a study partner.”

I stared at her.

“I never applied for one.”

“You didn’t have to. The position was vacant. I filled it.”

She kicked off her sneakers like this was routine.

Like it wasn’t the fourth time she’d bombarded my life without permission. I didn’t attempt telling her to stop, her ears are clogged when it comes to the topic of human etiquette.

“I brought my stuff,” she said, dropping her bag with a thud and unzipping it. Books, pens, and snacks spilled out like contraband.

“…You actually came here to study?”

“What, thought I came here to seduce you?”

She said it with that usual crooked grin. Like teasing was her native tongue.

I looked away. “Gross. You’re not the type to need help.”

“Wrong. I’m just the type who hides it better.”

I looked at her for a long second. There wasn’t sarcasm in her voice this time.

“…Seriously?”

She nodded.

"You saved me from Nakabeni-sensei's recitation weeks ago. That trinomial factoring crap? I was looking at the board like it was written in Hieroglyphs.”

That explained the odd response from her during class. I thought she just wasn’t in the mood.

“You’re weak at Algebra?”

“Congratulations again,” she said, placing her hand over her chest. “You’ve discovered my fatal flaw. Try to spell it out or I'll slice your guts out.”

“…You’re literally top of the class.”

“And you’re literally the guy who says ‘I just cook dango’ and then quotes Descartes before solving a function.”

Touché.

She took a deep breath and looked around.

“I’ll cook for meals in exchange while we cram. You won’t die of hunger, I won’t die of trinomial trauma. Sounds fair?”

I blinked.

“…This is the weirdest form of academic capitalism I’ve seen.”

“Then shut up and grab the worksheets. I'm on a mission to ace the exams.”

So we did, even though I didn't believe her latter declaration at first.

And for the next two hours, we tackled Algebra like it was war. I explained the pattern of ax² + bx + c, and she frowned so hard I thought her eyebrows would sue her for emotional distress.

But the worst part is, we're just like two people arguing about who had the more efficient way of solving problems. She had her own way of calculations, far from what real mathematics taught me, but we ended up having the same answers as well.

“This is the better way of doing it. My mathematical genius is being laid open!” as she jabbed her worksheet right in my face.

“What the hell is even that? It's like a computation from outer space! That's not what Nakabeni-sensei taught us!”

“But I still had the final answer correct, right?”

I held both of her wrists and pulled them away from my face.

“You'll still get low marks. The process of computing and factoring are graded individually. Meaning that having the right factors doesn't guarantee perfect marks.”

“That makes no sense!” she exclaimed, slamming her pencil down. “This is my only known formula!”

“Then let me teach you the conventional methods.”

“I don't even want to memorize it.”

She was right. When you are met with a complex concept and have the limited time to review it, memorizing the whole thing is more efficient.

But that's not the case if one's memory is short term.

“Then try to understand it. That way, you're absorbing the process, not just seeing it.”

“What's there to understand? It's numbers. They don’t feel anything.”

“They don't have to,” I said. “You do. You’re trying to force logic on something that only starts to make sense when you slow down.”

She stared at me, unblinking.

“…Okay, that was kinda hot.”

“Mathematics is cold.” I argued. “Anyway, how you sketch is more like understanding the patterns and rules of the artistic world. Think of mathematics as such."

"Makes sense."

After the fifth example problem, she finally accomplished the factoring using the instructed computation.

“I did it,” she said, holding up the paper like it was an Olympic medal. “I factored the hell out of this bâtarde.”

“I’m…both proud and mildly concerned by how aggressive you sound about it.”

Everything would think of it as a little success but seeing her face made me realize that it was personal for her.

Then came lunch. She made yakisoba in my cluttered kitchen, humming something vaguely French under her breath. For the record: her cooking is worth the Algebra tutoring.

It wasn't the usual Yakisoba, she called it “Yakisoba Lyonnaise” served on a bowl, and the caramelized modification on the recipe was just so perfect.

“...Thank you for the food.”

She just gave a curt nod as we both dug in.

It wasn't just a simple salty porridge or miso soup. It's something out of her recipe book, possibly from her heart if I were to word it figuratively.

And being able to eat food like that surely opened a window for me to see through her, even though translucently, but enough for me to feel empathy.

It's one of those moments that you can tangibly feel you're connected—and I had never seen my apartment feel less like a box of failure.