Kaito pushed his glasses up. “Vibes are not a mathematical principle.”
“Watch and learn.” She grabbed a hot pink gel pen—because of course she carried one—and flipped to a fresh page. “You see this equation? It’s shy. It wants to grow, but it’s afraid of its own denominator. So you don’t attack it head-on. You flirt with it.” Mana Izumi Gal Tutor
Kaito took a breath. And for the next fifteen minutes, in front of his disapproving father, he solved it. Step by step. Not as a robot. But as a person who had finally learned to dance with numbers. Kaito pushed his glasses up
Kaito stared. “You’re personifying mathematics.” It’s shy
Mana didn’t flinch. She’d heard worse. Instead, she slowly pulled a folded paper from her bag—her own university entrance exam results. She placed it on the marble table. Perfect score. Mathematics. Top 0.1% in the nation.
Kaito stood up, trembling. “She’s my… tutor.”
Kaito’s father looked at the paper, then at his son—who, for the first time in years, was not cowering.