Fuki looked at me out the side of her eye as if trying to figure out whether I was just joking or not.
"Don't tease Fuki, Big Sister," she said with her hands on her hips. "Of course Fuki understands what Suzuki Sensei says. Big Sister is so much bigger than Fuki. How can Big Sister not understand what Suzuki Sensei was saying? Big Sister is just trying to make Fuki feel better because Big Sister can finish the worksheet in three seconds flat, but wants to do it slowly so that Fuki finishes first, right?"
Sweat prickled and beaded all over my head. I did my best to keep my emotions shielded but I knew I was leaking, causing an even greater misunderstanding. Fuki seemed to think she was right and I was nervous because she had worked out I was not doing well on purpose.
The teacher had explained simple logistics and the associated maths to us, so that we would be able to assist in ways other than just our abilities. At present, we were doing something to do with order of operations. I was sure I had learnt this stuff before but couldn't for the life of me remember how it worked or what numbers went where. I had gotten stuck at the point where I realised that the amount of fruit mentioned in the math problem was insufficient for the number of people they were meant to be for. I was amazed that a little person Fuki's age could handle this level of worded questions at all. If she wasn't a genius, I didn't know what she was.
"Big Sister," Fuki leaned over to look at my worksheet and gave me a glance of ridicule, "there are no fruit in the equation. Why are you writing about fruit? Don't mess around in class."
"There-there are no fruit?" I stammered and some of the other students of various ages - all younger than me, laughed at me. "Aren't there boxes of fruit here? There's not enough fruit for everyone to have one. As the logistics support, it's our job to ensure everyone gets the same amount, otherwise it's not fair. We should make sure everyone gets the same amount and add that into the supplies budget. I'm not messing around."
Fuki stared at me for a long moment and I felt her empath ability scrutinise me.
"Big Sister," she said in a softer voice, leaning over, "this question is only asking about how many people we can provide for with this budget. There are no fruit. The fruit are in this question," she pointed with her pencil.
I rubbed my face.
"Aren't all the questions about the same supply budget?" I asked.
Fuki shook her head at me while I continued to sweat.
"These are all pretend questions about different pretend situations. They aren't the same supply budget," Fuki told me.
"But that doesn't make sense then," I argued, while the nearby students who could hear us laughed. Fuki was the youngest but she still seemed to have a better grasp on what was going on than me. "Are there different groups going to different places for different missions? If so we have to…"
"Big Sister," Fuki sighed and put her head in her hands, shaking her head like an adult, "these are all pretend. It's not real. We're not really doing the supply budget. We're practising."
"W-we are? Ahahaha," I gave a weak laugh. "Of course. I knew that. I was just joking…"
A ruler rapped the top of my head and I looked up into Suzuki Sensei's stern face. His glance around the room made people turn their attentions back to their worksheets. For those who should have advanced understanding, they had extra sheets to work through. I had them too, but I hadn't even gotten past the third question on my sheet. I had been meticulously compiling all the information I had into a table on the back of one of the sheets.
I gave a weak smile which faded when the teacher looked over my shoulder at my work with a confused expression. He looked between me and my worksheet and then at Fuki who was diligently doing her order of operation questions. I was meant to have done the questions too but the answers to most of my questions were blank. Instead, I had various notes scribbled all over the place. Suzuki Sensei flipped through all my sheets and then pointed to my table.
"Explain."
I wanted to avoid all the fuss but Suzuki Sensei watched me so closely that I knew there was no escaping the inevitable. Silently, I prepared my heart to be laughed at and rejected by my mostly younger classmates. I had made it through the Academy and City Agent training. I was a professional. I could handle this.
"Kubo-Shigure Nodoka-san," said Suzuki Sensei in a warning tone that brooked no argument.
I released a heavy sigh and tried not to let my shoulders slump too much.
"There's not enough information," I said to the teacher's ruler, wondering whether I would be able to avoid being hit by it later. "There is a group of one hundred going on a mission here, but it doesn't tell me where for how long and what kind of conditions they will be met with. Will they have time to cook? Will they need to eat cold meals in order to not alert the enemy? Do they need a higher energy or calorie count? Will they have access to clean water? Will they be taking action at night time more than day time? Will they have access to a toilet? The packages of food here don't tell us how much is there or what their nutritional content is. It only gives me a weight. A team going on a mission needs logistics to help prepare more than food. What about the batteries and equipment? Accommodation, transport, entry and exit plans? The cost has to be adjusted depending on whether they are carrying the weight on their own backs or whether they need vehicles or will have vehicles. The weight of food is only sufficient for a day, but even for a one day op, we would have to supply a little extra in case of emergency and in case something goes wrong."
I did my best to speak in as clear language as possible so that I could be understood. Otherwise if I started with all the inefficiencies and insufficiencies and worked backwards from there, people would be confused again.
Fuki's eyes grew round and misty as she started to consider all the possibilites and got confused by all the variables. Some of my classmates stopped to stare with an open mouth and some of them held their heads as if they had just gotten a headache.
"Ah. I forgot, you were a full fledged professional," Suzuki Sensei rubbed his chin in contemplation, a sharp glint in his eye. "I noticed you have been paying very close attention in class though, so I was confused for a bit. You were trained as a field agent?"
"Yes, but a lot of what you've been teaching is new and maybe I've forgotten them, or maybe it's because things are so different between our countries. I have to listen carefully or I don't understand."
I didn't want to admit that I wasn't very smart and was a slow learner. I blamed it all on the language and culture differences. How I missed having Shigure by my side to slowly explain everything to me step by step.
"Look, this amount of weight and the cost for these boxes of fruit is unrealistic for this amount of people, not to mention that it wouldn't be enough to satiate them nor that most of them would miss out. Even if you cut the fruit up, nobody would be happy receiving only one or two slices of an apple - if the fruit are apples. It would be best not to buy this fruit at all if the cost is so high per kilogram, unless the cooks are planning to make something with the fruits, like a fruit purée to go with a dessert whereby they can be shared. I saw market prices cheaper than this. Why would we buy the fruit at this price?"
I continued to explain my logic and why I had put all the information into the table in this way, while Suzuki Sensei nodded to show he was following my train of logic.
"And your conclusion?" Suzuki Sensei asked me without much expression. I couldn't tell whether he was happy, angry or annoyed with me.
"Although the sum of the items looks like it would be cost effective on paper, in real life, the people we were supplying would suffer. They wouldn't be full or getting adequate amounts of the right kinds of nutrition. We haven't even gotten to equipment, maintenance, transport, accommodation, weapons or armour and so, in my opinion, these food supplies would cause the budget to run into the red."
Suzuki Sensei looked around the room to find only one other person - an ability user that had some sort of strong elemental type ability and who was an older teenager, had been able to kind of keep up with me.
"For the rest of you, this is an introductory class into these topics. It is important to learn the basics step by step. We will eventually learn about all the things that our Nodoka Sensei has mentioned though. Nodoka Sensei has given us a good example of the real world problems involved in how we should support a team going out into the field," Suzuki Sensei gave me an expressionless nod. "So don't worry too much for now. Continue doing the work I have given you."
The other students gave a sigh of relief.
"Continue," Suzuki Sensei waved a hand and the other students bent their heads over their work. He briefly rested a hand on my head. "Don't worry about the details for now. Just complete the questions."
And here I was thinking that I'd be able to avoid those 'simple' problems and show how little I actually knew. I wiped the sweat from my forehead, shakily bringing the pencil to the table. It was ok. Shigure and Mr Holt had taught me these before.
I wrote down the numbers I saw amongst the block of text and then looked for the key words that would tell me which operation to use in the equations. Then I double-checked the direction of relationships to make sure the numbers were the right way around in the equation.
Anybody could read and my ability could help me interpret and translate, but it didn't seem to ever work when it came to worded math questions for me. It might help other people, but never me. I wished that it worked for me too. It didn't seem fair that I could be a catalyst to help other people understand and comprehend things but I would always remain relatively clueless.
A finger landed on my page and indicated I swap the two numbers around. When I glanced up at the teacher, he was seemingly nonchalantly looking around the room to make sure everyone was managing. He didn't look at me. Perhaps he was being kind enough to not want to injure my confidence like some other teachers would.
Fuki was managing, so why couldn't I?
I carefully added and subtracted the numbers according to the equation and triple checked my answer by solving the question in three different ways. When I was confident that was the correct answer, I double underlined it and I wrote the number down in the answer box.
Glancing up at Suzuki Sensei who was still standing beside me and watching me sweat over the one question, he gave me a small smile and nodded. I released the breath I hadn't realised I was holding. He pushed a tissue into my hand and then continued down the aisle to pause by someone else and help them.
I dabbed at my face and neck, soaking the tissue. Half rising from my seat, I lobbed it over somebody's head to throw the tissue in the bin and scored. Fuki looked at me with her mouth open wide in amazement and gave me a thumbs up and a big grin. The person by the bin looked around and spotted me. She frowned and then went back to work.
I focussed on the next question and felt a headache coming on. Why did this have to be so difficult?
After sweating heavily over the fourth question and deriving the answer, I moved onto the next one, completely zoning out anything and everyone around me. At some stage, a tissue box had appeared on my table and the rubbish bin beside my desk.
Every now and then, a finger would point out something I had gotten wrong or mixed up. I had to praise and be immensely grateful to the owner of the finger's patience. Sometimes, I had to pause and recount my timetables under my breath to make sure I had gotten the numbers right. Even then, I had to revert to adding numbers at times because I had forgotten some of my timetables.
When the last question was done and I raised my head, it was completely dark outside the window. Pushing the offending math sheet aside, I put my arms and head down on the desk to have a break. My head throbbed with a disco dancing headache that suggested dehydration. The last time I had needed to concentrate so hard had been when Shigure had been training me to be better than a barrel scraper. Those math problems had been so much more complex and I had managed them under the time constraints of the yearly assessment. It was also such a long time ago that it was practically another era.
Someone nudged my shoulder and a cool bottle of water was pushed into one of my hands. I felt exhausted and worn out. Maybe I could blame everything on my multiple previous brain injuries. I doubted Suzuki Sensei had been the one to stay with me all day. If he had, he deserved a medal for his patience. It could be someone else in the classroom with me. I had met enough other teachers and embarrassed myself with my attempts to teach or guide other people.
I guessed that all the other students had long since gone to their other classes or back to their rooms to rest for the night. I hadn't even noticed when they had left. Although I was meant to be better, I didn't have the energy to even lift my head.
"Shigure-Kobe Nodoka-san," said Suzuki Sensei's voice, making me lift an eyebrow. He really was still in the room with me. "You've had a long day and haven't moved since this morning. You should drink and eat something. Perhaps go to the toilet. Go back to your room to rest and eat. We can have a chat tomorrow."
I wiped my eyes on my arm, not wanting to tell this uber patient man that I was going to need more of his patience because I was too tired to move.
"Shigure-Kobe-san, are you alright? Are you perhaps feeling unwell?" he asked again after a very long moment of silence.
I nodded into my arms.
"Do you need some help getting up?"
I shook my head. I was just too tired.
"Then can you tell me what I can do to help you?"
"I'm just tired," I mumbled. "I'm sorry. Please give me a moment."
"Then when you feel able, try and have a drink. I'll go out and find something for you to eat. Ok?"
I nodded.
I heard the rustle of cloth and the sound of someone walking away. The door clicked shut and I sighed into my arms, missing my Shigure very much. He was busy on his mission and I didn't want to disturb him, and so I didn't share anything with him. If he knew what I was going through, I wondered if he would comfort or scold me for having forgotten so much. Returning to studies was a bit like a nightmare coming to life. I was not pleased, but I hadn't been able to do any of the anticipated work the Nihon government had hoped I would be able to help them with.
I didn't really want to go back out into the field. I probably wouldn't be much good at that either. I had only just started getting out of the rookie agent phase into the junior field agent phase after a year of Shigure's training. And then I had been seriously injured, the war had happened and then there was no time to worry about work anymore. Making sure I survived was a bigger priority. I doubted I'd be any good out in the field.