Her room was a place where all the chaos of school vanished. Replaced by rows of numbers that made sense.
On her desk, the tip of Nazma's pen danced with a dominant, light scratching sound, creating a strange harmony with the low hum of the fan in the corner.
Here, among these white sheets of paper, the world felt much calmer and more honest.
She began to write an equation.
Nazma's handwriting looked so distinctive; the letters were upright and slender, with a consistently heavy ink pressure—signifying that every stroke was made with utter confidence. There were no hesitant marks. The lines of her x-variables curved symmetrically.
With precision, Nazma multiplied the numbers outside the parentheses one by one. Three times two x became six x, three times negative five became negative fifteen. She murmured very softly, as if chanting a mantra.
Her fingers moved nimbly, combining like terms. 6x plus 4x became 10x. The final result, 10x - 15, she underlined with two firm strokes that made a short scritch-scritch sound, a small sign of victory that was satisfying to her ears.
Occasionally, Nazma pressed the bridge of her glasses, which had slid down from her long, focused stoop. The thick lenses helped her see every detail of the coefficients and constants scattered across the next problems. She was just about to start on the algebraic fraction simplification when suddenly, the sound of Bright's laughter from earlier in class echoed in her mind. Breaking the silence of her room.
Nazma closed her eyes for a moment, dispelling the image of that annoying boy's face that had momentarily ruined her concentration. Focus, Naz.Algebra needs precision, why are you even thinking about that person, she thought sternly, trying to bring the serious aura back into her private space.
She looked down again, this time facing a word problem about the price of books and pencils.
She had to transform those long sentences into a concise mathematical model, a simulation she had prepared thoroughly before going into battle at school tomorrow.
For Nazma, mastering algebra in the middle of the night like this was her way of proving she deserved to be at the forefront—calm, ambitious, and always one step ahead in preparation, even while the world outside was fast asleep.
After the last word problem was finished, Nazma didn't immediately close her book. She took her steel ruler and cross-checked every step of her work against the theory in the textbook.
Her eyes scanned every line, looking for any possible errors in positive or negative signs that often served as fatal traps in algebra.
Only after she was sure everything was precise did Nazma let out a long sigh. She tidied her stationery, arranging them at parallel angles on the edge of the desk. The room returned to total silence.
With one calm motion, she switched off the desk lamp, letting the darkness shroud the ambition she had just sharpened for tomorrow morning.
***
Class 7A was at its quietest, until a tall shadow stood in the doorway.
Talitha, who was busy sharpening a pencil, stopped abruptly. Her eyes bulged and her mouth hung open until her sharpener clattered to the floor. She rubbed her eyes repeatedly, making sure the boy standing there wasn't a wandering ghost.
"No way!" Talitha shrieked, her voice reaching a high pitch. "Bright?! What are you doing here?"
The previously peaceful classroom suddenly felt heated and noisy.
Bright himself just grinned widely, as if he didn't have a care in the world. Without a hint of guilt, he strolled toward his old desk and tossed his bag onto it with a heavy thud.
"I moved back here," he answered nonchalantly, while sitting in a sideways position that was incredibly impolite.
"Wait, how? It's only been a week!" Talitha pressed him again. She truly couldn't fathom what was going through this guy's head.
Bright only grinned widely, tossing his bag onto an empty chair with a relaxed air as if he had just returned from a short vacation. "I moved back here," he answered nonchalantly.
Bright shrugged, then sat down in an impolite, sideways position. "Didn't like it," he answered shortly.
Behind the front desk, Nazma secretly listened, absorbing every word of the conversation between Bright and Talitha.
That boy's behavior was truly beyond logic; how could someone move in and out of the sacred special class just because they "didn't like it"?.
"This guy is so strange," Nazma thought while stifling a laugh that tickled her chest.
Unconsciously, a thin smirk appeared on Nazma's face.