Was tutoring Mashiro really that hard? Well, it was not a question of whether it was hard or not. It was more like a very particular kind of mental exhaustion...
If Mashiro had been stupid, Masuzu Natsukawa would not have felt this way. But Mashiro was not stupid—she could even be called a genius. Masuzu still remembered when she had first started tutoring Mashiro. After listening to her explanations for only a little while, Mashiro had been able to complete the entire test paper flawlessly.
Back then, Masuzu had been quite pleased with herself. Hadn't Yukinoshita said tutoring Mashiro was difficult? Yet after just a little teaching from her, Mashiro could easily score full marks—the difference between them was obvious!
However, when she proudly handed Mashiro another test of roughly the same difficulty...
GAME OVER! It was not that Mashiro could not solve a single problem. It was just that if the questions changed even a little, she no longer knew how to answer them.
Masuzu gritted her teeth. "Didn't I explain this kind of problem before? You just need to substitute it into the difference of squares formula..."
"Substitute?"
"Don't tell me you don't even know how to substitute into a formula?"
"It's okay..." Facing Masuzu, who was on the verge of questioning her life, Mashiro still confidently gave a thumbs-up. "I just need to memorize it."
"Then memorize it already..."
"Mm, I've memorized it."
"Really? Then try doing this problem again..."
"I can't."
"Didn't you say you memorized it?"
"Mm..." Mashiro said, "I memorized it. x..." She recited the problem Masuzu had explained to her.
Masuzu: "???"
What kind of stupid-ass move was memorizing math problems? And besides:
"Mashiro, haven't you noticed that this problem is very similar to the one you memorized?"
At that, Mashiro looked up