“Now, in the following, which condition is p for q?”
“Umm… hint!”
“There are no hints. Answer quickly.”
“Then I don’t know!”
“Why are you so proud of that?”
That evening, the same day Amber had asked me to help her study math.
I closed the shop earlier than usual and was teaching her what I remembered about mathematics.
“Ugh… I still can’t solve it.”
“I told you, if you think about it a little, the answer will come. It’s not even that hard of a problem.”
The propositions and conditions she was tackling now were, if anything, on the easier side.
The truly difficult parts would probably be rational functions and irrational functions, which we hadn’t even started yet…
“Necessaryconditionsufficientconditionnecessaryandsufficientconditionsufficientnecessarycondition…”
She was clearly not in her right mind. Since she had kept math at arm’s length all this time, the backlash was probably hitting her now.
Still, if she calmly recalled the concepts one by one, it wasn’t a problem she couldn’t solve. I was only picking out the relatively easy examples to ask her.
“Don’t overthink it. Understand them one at a time. For reference, there are also things called the converse and the contrapositive, so when both conditions are negated, necessary and sufficient conditions swap—”
“Aaaagh!”
I had tried to cram even a little more knowledge into her, but it seemed her brain had reached its limit. Seeing her sweating buckets, she must have been at the end of her rope.
“Drink some water while you’re at it.”
When I handed her a glass of ice water, Amber immediately gulped it down and cooled her head.
“Gulp, gulp… Phaa!”
“If you’re like this from the start, we’ve got a long way to go.”
We hadn’t even covered a third of it yet, but it already looked as if her head had exploded. There were about four days left until the retest, so I supposed we had no choice but to take it slow.
“Are you the only one in Class A who got a failing grade?”
“Ah, come to think of it, Ravi got one too. I think it was 19 points.”
An unexpected name popped up. She didn’t really seem like the type to fail an exam.
Perhaps reading the puzzlement on my face, Amber immediately added an explanation.
“Apparently… she wrote her answers shifted over by one space.”
“For a magical girl, she makes some outrageous mistakes.”
I wish she’d pick one—sharp or scatterbrained. Maybe that was what made her feel human.
It seemed the supplemental lessons would be attended by those two.
‘Ravi aside, I wonder how Sophia did.’
I looked over the math workbook Sophia had handed over to me a little while ago after I’d asked her.
As expected of an honor student, she must have written her solutions in a separate notebook, because the workbook was clean overall.
‘I used to just solve things wherever my hand went, so I was always running out of paper.’
Thanks to that, it was a daily occurrence for me to lose track of where I’d been solving and have to start the problem over from the beginning.
Perhaps the only advantage was that I could use my past self as an example of what not to do.
“Ugh… my head hurts…”
“Still, it’s a relief, isn’t it? You don’t have to think about the Silver Corps.”
“Well… that’s true.”
When she told Lapis about this, Lapis had sighed and excused her from Silver Corps duties.
As expected, when her little sister had received a failing grade, it didn’t seem like the time to talk about officers or anything else.
“I got scolded even more because she found out I’d asked Senior Citrine to help me study. She told me not to bother the other officers for no reason.”
“…You learned from that person?”
That was a fearsome score for someone who had a genius as her teacher.
She should be far better at math than I was, so what on earth did Citrine do to make Amber get 28 points…
“But her explanations were too difficult, so I couldn’t understand them. She suddenly sped through everything, and I couldn’t even find the timing to ask questions.”
“Ah, so you’re too stupid to understand a genius’s explanations.”
“Yes! That! Though being called stupid kind of pisses me off!”
Simply being smart and being good at explaining were completely different things.
The latter required putting things at another person’s level, giving suitable examples, and breaking them down so they were easy to understand.
‘She definitely doesn’t have the image of someone who explains things well.’
If I had to describe her, she felt more like a solitary genius. In any case, it meant Citrine had no talent as a teacher.
“For now, let’s make sure you’ve got propositions and conditions down. Then you’ll at least get half the points.”
Fortunately, propositions had some room for recovery even without much of a foundation.
As for functions… well, she’d have to relearn them from the middle school level, but since she didn’t need to get 100 points, I decided to teach her a little more gently.
In the end, Amber’s studying continued late into the night.
***
The next day, around noon, during lunchtime.
For some reason, there wasn’t a single customer, so I was in the middle of making math problems for Amber when it happened.
Jingle—
Four female students who looked somewhat old-fashioned entered and sat at a nearby table.
They were faces I was certain had come to the café several times before.
“Welcome.”
I hurriedly prepared water and wet towels, set them down in front of them, and took their orders.
Up to that point, it was no different from the usual everyday scene, but the problem occurred immediately after.
“Haa… Summer vacation is finally here.”
“Now that finals are over too, I can finally breathe.”
“Finals… Speaking of which, I heard Amber from Class A got a failing grade this time?”
“I heard as well. Honestly, she truly has no interest in studying.”
“That’s what happens when you do nothing but play around every day.”
At first I wondered if it was just a friend’s teasing, but their tone was rather harsh.
The atmosphere was as though they were deliberately putting Amber down.
‘Is this the backbiting among girls I’ve only ever heard about?’
I had heard somewhere before that in the ecosystem of girls, movements to ostracize a common enemy were quite common.
I never imagined my junior would become the target, but in any case, it needlessly brought back PTSD from my school days.
I was about to ignore it and make the coffee they’d ordered, but—
“Honestly, she just has connections everywhere. I simply cannot understand the way she behaves.”
“The sight of her clinging to Lady Dia and fawning over her without even knowing her place is just…”
Sensing something strange, I listened closely to their conversation.
At first, it had only been criticism about her grades, but now the scope was gradually widening.
Starting with her sociability, then even to completely irrelevant things like her appearance.
So this was what women’s conversations were like. Truly, a murderous atmosphere.
‘What am I supposed to feel while listening to this…?’
This situation, brewing coffee while listening to my junior being slandered, really didn’t fit together at all.
“She spends her time on such pointless things, so of course her grades are always scraping the bottom.”
“Truly. She doesn’t suit the venerable Jewelry Academia at all, and if she’s even received a failing grade on top of that, then she should take this opportunity to understand her place and withdraw on her own—”
“…Sorry for the wait.”
Before the atmosphere could overheat any further, I brought them a tray holding four cups of coffee.
If I followed my feelings, I wanted to flip over the table they were sitting at right then and there, but that would be going too far no matter what.
“Ah, thank you~”
The sight of one of the girls, who had been spitting venom until just now, suddenly mixing in strange flirtatious charm the moment I arrived came into view.
“……”
Had Amber done something to earn their grudge? For that to be the case, most of what they were saying seemed like baseless attacks.
‘Are they doing this simply because they dislike her?’
If so, that was practically elementary-school-level thinking. Blaming someone else for things they themselves didn’t have.
In the end, the four girls chatted to their hearts’ content after that and left the café, while I sighed and cleared away the cups they had used.
‘Amber seems popular, so I guess in a way it’s only natural that people like that would latch onto her.’
There were groups that badmouthed popular people everywhere. Shamefully, I had done the same in my heart a few times too.
But tormenting Amber based on nothing but suspicions when she hadn’t done anything wrong was something I couldn’t just stand by and watch.
I immediately tattled about this to her when she arrived at the shop, but…
“Eh, I already knew that much ages ago. It’s not like it’s only been a day or two.”
“You noticed?”
She turned her gaze away with a self-deprecating smile, as if she had already grown used to it.
“More importantly, hurry up and teach me! We don’t have much time!”
“Right. Let’s see, today we’ll start from here—”
It was a bit persistent of me, but the moment I took out the workbook, I thought back to what had just happened.
It wasn’t something worth getting angry over every single time. Backbiting probably wasn’t uncommon in conversations among girls, either.
But I could not tolerate them spreading baseless rumors about my precious junior.
‘How dare they pull something like this.’
I’m sorry to those girls who were badmouthing her, but I know very well what kind of person Amber is.
She possesses greater courage than anyone I know, and she is a kind girl who genuinely thinks of others.
Even if she’s a little bad with her head, I can confidently say she is an irreplaceable friend of mine.
Of course, I had not the slightest intention of childishly getting back at them, but leaving this alone didn’t seem quite right either.
In that case, perhaps I should make use of her connections.
***
After Amber returned home, I took out my smartphone and called a certain person.
“Um, hello—”
[Jade? This is the first time you’ve contacted me!]
Before I could even finish speaking, a bold voice struck my ears.
“Actually, there’s something I’d like to ask of you. You know that Amber got a failing grade, right?”
The girls who had been badmouthing Amber seemed displeased that she was on friendly terms with Dia.
If so, I would gladly strike where they least expected it.
By making the two of them even closer.