How We Met Again

Chapter 2: Third Time's The Charm

"Yep, that's right! Quints!"

I stared back at Yotsuba in a daze. Then, I shook my head slightly.

"Alright. You're quintuplets. Can you do something for me, quickly?"

"Hmm?"

"Furrow your brows like you're really angry."

"Like this?"

Yotsuba furrowed her eyebrows and turned the corners of her lips downwards. With her expression like that, her resemblance to a certain ill-tempered volleyball demon was unmistakeable. They had the exact same face, even if their hair was of differing lengths.

"Wow, it's actually true. You're seriously sisters."

"Of course it's true, Uesugi-san! Did you think I was lying to you?!"

"No, no. I just wanted to make sure." I turned and put my hand on the door to the classroom. "Well, I should get back to class."

I then paused for a moment, remembering something.

"Thanks, by the way. For walking me back."

That'll keep her from stalking me for the rest of the day.

Yotsuba beamed at me.

"You're welcome!"

I slid the door open, the other hand still holding the ice pack to my head. As I stepped into the back of the classroom, my classmates turned to look at me. In particular, I saw Nakano Itsuki turn to look at me from her spot in the back row -- and then past me, to where Yotsuba was still standing in the hall. Her eyes narrowed, and I saw her mouth something. I wasn't sure, but I thought it was the word "Why?".

Ignoring her, I walked to my spot two rows in front and one to the right of her, facing from the front of the room. The teacher nodded to me. "I'm glad to see you've recovered enough to rejoin us, Uesugi-kun. I was just talking about the use of the Pythagorean theorem in the derivation of the main trigonometric identity..."

As the teacher kept talking, I found it hard to concentrate. Despite the ice pack, my head was throbbing quite a bit. Luckily, I'd already reviewed everything in this module, so I knew what the teacher was talking about -- but a model student must always be paying attention. Every opportunity for reinforcement was vital.

Before I knew it the period was over, and I lowered my head against the desk, letting my eyes rest a bit. I needed to be able to focus. I needed to be able to focus. I--

"Uesugi."

I looked up to find Nakano Itsuki standing next to my desk.

"It's my fault that you had to miss the start of the class. I'll share my notes with you this one time."

I perked up a bit. "Huh, really? That's nice of you, thank you!"

She handed me her open notebook, and I pulled out a pencil to copy it over... and then looked up at her with a blank stare on my face.

"Nakano-san... this... is literally all wrong."

Her eyes widened and her face immediately turned a bright red.

"W-What?! You jerk! My notes are fine! There's absolutely nothing wrong with them at all!"

"No, look here. You've got sine and cosine reversed on this graph -- cosine is the x-axis, and sine is the y-axis. Also, while you used Pythagoras's theorem, you input one, cosine, and sine into the wrong parts of the equation, and so the equation you got out isn't valid... which is a bit impressive, actually, since the equation would have still been right if you had just continued on correctly after the first mistake."