A Much-Needed Reassurance

This is a one-shot I realized I totally forgot to post! Enjoy some lovely father-daughter fluff! Note that is is based directly off of an experience of mine, so certain things that might be accurate to the American school system may not be accurate to the Korean school system.

...

Ga-yeong felt a vibration from her pocket.

Digging her hand into it, she pulled out her phone and clicked it open to see the notification that had popped up. Just as she was about to unlock it, she felt a finger tap her shoulder.

"Ga-yeong, could you help me with the quadratics homework?"

She looked up to see Cheol standing above her. Everyone was sitting in the cafeteria, eating lunch. Many students used this time to work on any assignments they needed to finish, and Cheol wasn't any different. He often asked Ga-yeong for help, for she always did well in her classes and was very meticulous about her work. She was especially good at math. Therefore, many kids envied her when it came to tests and quizzes because she always scored highly on them.

"Of course!" Ga-yeong accepted with a wide smile. Patting the space next to her, she said, "Sit."

Grinning, Cheol set his backpack and lunch tray down on the table. He quickly pulled out his folder, flipping through the many worksheets he had yet to do, and found the one they had been assigned earlier during their algebra class.

"So, what are you confused by?"

"I'm just not sure how to factor the numbers so that I can find the x-intercepts. Could you remind me?"

"Sure. Let me see your worksheet."

Pulling out her notebook, Ga-yeong took Cheol's paper and examined the problem he was looking at. It was relatively simple, with the values being positive two-x-squared, negative four-x, and negative sixteen.

"Well first, you have to factor out the two. See how you can divide all the coefficients by two?"

Cheol nodded.

"So after you factor out the two, you see that we're left with x-squared and negative eight as our a and c."

"Mhm."

"And then we multiply the coefficient of x-squared, which is one, by negative eight, which is simply negative eight."

"That's what I don't understand. How do you do the factoring to get the zeros? I don't remember."

"Oh! That's easy!" Taking her pencil, Ga-yeong scribbled down all the factors of eight. "What factors of negative eight add up to positive two?"

Right then, a lightbulb switched on in Cheol's head.

"Four and negative two!"

"Exactly! See? You're so smart, Cheol!" Ga-yeong praised.

Cheol giggled as his cheeks turned slightly red.

"And since our leading coefficient is one," Ga-yeong continued gaily, "you've found our zeros!"

"Oh, thanks so much! It all makes sense now!"

"And if the leading coefficient is anything other than one, just remember to divide the factors by that number."

"Got it."

As Cheol began eating his lunch—a meal of rice and chicken with a side of kimchi—Ga-yeong unlocked her phone to see what notification had popped up. A flurry of excitement instantly overtook her as she saw her biology grade had been updated. Swiping the notification, she opened her school's gradebook app and scrolled down to her biology course, clicking on it. Her stomach instantly plummeted, however, when she saw the number displayed on her screen.