Returning to No Applause, Only More of the Same

The next day, after a quick stop at a nearby hardware store, Kreig had set up his small shrine. It really wasn’t much to look at. A wooden chalice standing beside one of the bottles of blood of oath. A metal pendant Sam had seen fit to gift him (“I found it on the ground, you can have it if you want!”), and a small silver spoon George found in a cupboard (“We never use it.”) and gave him. All because Kreig had told them small pieces of precious metal were fit for the shrine.

Apparently, to Sam, a “precious metal” was just a piece of metal that was precious to her. The pendant seemed to fill that purpose. Scavenged off the ground or not, the little gleam on it told Kreig that it truly was a precious metal.

He didn’t mind. Back in the other world, iron was about as precious as silver was here. It made little difference to him.

The shrine was set up in his room, right on top of his desk. Erica noticed it pretty much that very Monday the very moment she entered the room. Being the kind of woman who didn’t mind blurting out her inner thoughts, she wasted no time asking about it.

Kreig was… hesitant, at best. Speaking openly of his religion was just not something he did, but after the most general description he could give, she, astonishingly, didn’t question it any further. Kreig might have assumed she wasn’t thinking about the shrine any longer if it wasn’t for her fleeting, almost longing glances at his bottle of blood of oath.

Now, it wasn’t as though normal humans couldn’t drink pure blood of oath. It was about as intoxicating as wine, and it didn’t do much else than that. It could in rare cases give the drinker some energy, or, even rarer, make them hallucinate. But it was mostly harmless.

That didn’t mean Kreig was about to let Erica drink a drop.

This day was bad as it was. Not because of Erica, of course not, but rather what she brought. Namely, math.

After a week of avoiding it, he was finally smacked in the face by necessity.

“If you don’t do well in math, you can’t graduate! Which is bad!” she had insisted, but even then, Kreig felt no real need to so much as try. The later he dealt with this, the later he had to accept that there was no saving him. As his previous tutor had so kindly informed him, “he couldn’t put two and two together with a three-week period of preparation.” The scars that man had carved into Kreig were not easily healed, and Kreig didn’t even want to try.

But where Kreig was childish in his dismissal, Erica acted like a toddler.

That day, Erica reluctantly let Kreig do his favourite two subjects, namely history and social science.

And then, the next day, she only brought the math textbook.

Only. That was all she brought. She put it on his desk, slapped open the first page, and took a seat. No matter how many pleading looks Kreig sent her, she did nothing else. The only other things on his desk, apart from the shrine, was a bundle of papers and a pencil. And a little device whose use Kreig could not understand.

He poked it a few times. Erica didn’t stop him.

If it meant solace from staring at the first page of the math book, he would accept it. After pressing each button in turn, he found that the one that said “on” turned it on. How novel! There were a bunch of numbers, ranging from 0 to 9, alongside a number of buttons with signs he didn’t know. But if he pressed the button for “two,” and then the little cross, and then the button for “2” again, suddenly the screen blinked to show 4. It put it together automatically.

Kreig glanced at Erica to ascertain whether such a fantastic tool was actually allowed or not; if she would smack it out of his hands without notice. But she didn’t seem to mind.

So Kreig continued to fiddle with it. Two and two became four. Two and three became five.

Despite his own perceived value, Kreig was not a complete inept when it came to math. Adding platoons, counting victories, subtracting the dead… It was all things he had done before, and now he had a funky little device that seemed to do it all for him. One times two is two, nine times 8 is 72. He was just making sure it worked. That it did what it promised.

And after a while, he finally turned to look at the book. He turned the page and found a list of little questions.

And they were… Easy? They almost seemed to be. 10 + 5 / 5. That would be 3, no?

“No,” Erica said, suddenly looming over his broad back, peeking over his shoulder. Kreig almost crushed the calculator in his hand but showed no other indication of surprise. “Multiplications and divisions before you do addition. See, you divide the five by five, which is?”

“...One,” Kreig almost whispered, hoping his obviously wrong answer wouldn’t grant him a smack on the wrist.

But no such blow came. Instead, he looked up to find her smiling, a perfectly serene, flower-like blossom on her full lips. The kind that said everything was alright. “Exactly! And then, one plus ten?”

For a moment, Kreig couldn’t tear his eyes from her face. She was very close to him.

He peeked down at the textbook, seeing the little numbers, and if he looked at them and not at her, he might be able to think straight. “It… Eleven. It ought to be eleven.” His face felt flushed and hot. What if he got it wrong now? That would almost be even worse, having to watch her radiant smile turned strained, devolving into a disappointed frown. Just the thought made his skin crawl, fresh black shame trickling down his eyes.

But her smile widened. “Right! So, then,” she leaned down, right by his side, and he could see her dainty neck right there, and with a little pen, she wrote ‘11’ on the page. “The answer is eleven! Good work. Now, how about the next one?”

The next one was a similar problem. So was the next one. When divisions started being factored in, all he had to do was ask her, and she helped. Not a single word of humiliation. Only a pure, calm joy in showing him how it all worked. They worked quickly and carefully, and it was only a few pages in, when Kreig was solving a somewhat complex equation on his own, that he realized what was happening.

He could understand it.

The numbers, the signs, the functions and ideas… They made sense.

He glanced over at where Erica sat. Since he had been able to work on his own for a while, she hadn’t had to add any explanation for a while. She gave a small smile and tilted her head. For just a moment, Kreig wasn’t sure what to say. “Thank you,” he finally choked out. “For helping me. With this.”

Her smile deepened. “Anything to avoid the minimum wage.”

Kreig had no idea what that meant, so he just nodded and got back to work. She seemed to really mean it.

In reality, she only partially meant it. Sure, she was working hard to pay off her debts and remain alive, but that was no longer her main aspiration. Well, completing her second degree was clearly what she wanted to do - teaching was a horrible job - but there were always things to do outside education, right? Right now, could she really say she hated teaching?

She only had to deal with one (adult) student, she was being paid quite a lot above minimum wage, and - well, in all honesty, Kreig was a good student. He listened, he did his work, and although he was very hesitant to ask questions, he never did anything she could consider uncouth. She’d had many students before, intelligent and noisy and mischievous and deviant. None of which Kreig was. But he was diligent and careful, and a very pleasant man to be around.

If every student she had was more like him, she wouldn’t mind returning to teaching.

Though, of course, that would never happen. She’d been burnt on that already.

But, maybe, someday…

That was for the future to decide.