Cherry Chapstick

Chapter 2

As things turned out, she was very wrong. Although she had finished a commission from a special client, her sleep had suffered as a result. She had fallen asleep for thirty minutes, before being awoken by a very loud yell from Tikki. She had five minutes to get ready, and get out of the door. Marinette was lucky that she had packed the night before. She sprinted out of the apartment, leaving it unlocked.

Damian had an unusually peaceful morning. Todd was keeping his distance, he had scored a 105 on his most recent math paper. Life was good. Or rather, life was simple. He couldn't help but theorize that it would get a lot more complicated, on sight of a very tired ravenette entering the classroom door, or for lack of a

"Good morning." She said, sliding into the seat next to him and yawning.
Her eyes immediately shut, and then snapped open again.
He nodded in recognition and turned towards the instructor. Class had begun.

Class, as it turns out, was just doing a few sample problems. Damian shifted in his seat, accidentally on purpose, waking the short girl from her slumber.
"What?Oh-" Her eyes snapped open at the sight of her instructor approaching their table.
"Work on these problems in your group, then explain how to solve them to each other. We will check back in our class in a few minutes." She explained, passing out papers to each table.
"And no calculators." The teacher added, upon seeing a few hopeful students rummaging through their backpacks.

Damian steadily worked through all of the problems, only to see that she hadn't answered any.
She finally scrawled down an answer
"That's wrong." He said, not even bothering to look at her.
"Yeah, it probably is." She yawned and then went back to writing on her paper.
There was a heavy pause. Then-
"I checked it and got the same thing." She responded.
"Let me see."
She slid her paper over, watching his eyes dart back and forth on her paper.
"It cancels out."
"What?"
"On both sides. It cancels out." He explained, sliding the paper back to her.
"So the answer's 2?"
"No. Watch."

Marinette watched as he solved the problem and showed his steps.
"Do you understand?"
"If I say yes, are you going to make me explain why?"

He stared at her and didn't say anything.
"Alright, since I hear conversation over here. Mister Wayne and Miss Dupain-Cheng will be solving our problems on the board."

"Huh?" She said dazedly.
"Problems. On the board." He pointed at the workbook.
"...You're kidding."
"As you can clearly see, I am not." He gestured to the teacher impatiently waiting for them to make their way to the front.
Whispers danced around the room as they walked to the front.
"Did he actually talk to her?" A voice said.
"I think he did, and he wasn't even rude." Another chimed in.
"Maybe they know each other?" A third voice added.
"I feel bad for the girl. He might be in a good mood today, but imagine what's going to happen when he starts acting like a prick again." The first voice responded.

Damian grabbed a marker from one of the slots on the board, and immediately started solving. He heard his seatmate swear in French, before switching to Mandarin. She stared at him with uncertainty before her shaky hands picked up a marker from the whiteboard.

He scanned her work from the other side of the board. She hadn't written down anything. When she noticed him looking, she flushed and uncapped the marker, then looked away. It was apparent to both of them that the latter had no idea what she was doing.

It would've been very easy for him to spite her. He could've pointed out her lack of knowledge on the subjhect, left her there at the board, all with no clue what she was doing, solely out of what had happened earlier. But, contrary to popular belief, Damian was not a malicious person. He was not particularly known for his kindness either, (and his frequent statements that were deemed as "rude" didn't exactly help his reputation.) He wouldn't say anything.