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"Tutoring," I mutter under my breath, making a sour face towards the word as if it tastes bad just to say it. Even if it doesn't taste bad, per say, it sure of a h*ll doesn't make you feel good.

This is what I think about as the students flow into the halls like a swarm of bees. Now that the last class is over this means I have to deal with tutoring for an hour.

On the bright side, tutoring is supposed to bring my grade up. And hey, at least she's easy on the eyes.

Anyway, so she's standing on her porch waiting for me when I approach my apartment. Her arms are crossed, hidden under a dark blue jacket and skinny jeans with combat boots. I realize that this, indeed, is her only outfit she wears to school. As usual, her dark brown hair is tied into a messy bun on the top of her head.

"Hey Princess," I greet her with another signature smirk.

"Don't even start," she mumbles. I dig for my keys in my backpack before finally finding them. I unlock the door, opening it.

I close the door behind us after we both enter and she clears her throat. "I'll sit at that coffee table and get my math textbook out of my backpack. I'm going to be strict with you, so put up with it. Give me a list of things you know that we don't need to review."

"I'll manage just fine, Princess. Anyway, here's what I've got." I take out a blank piece of lined paper, pretending to write with it using a dull wooden pencil. I take the seat to her right and she observes the paper after I hand it to her, giving me a flat look.

"Really? Nothing? That's the best you can do?"

I nod with a half-hearted shrug.

"You've got to give me something to work with. Try."

"Alright, alright."

"Well we have to go back and study the stuff we did in one of the first units anyway. Do you know the name for what we were even learning?"

"Uh... No. Too vague."

"Early transcendentals," she answers, "but we had to learn about integrals first. Forget the names though, because I can see that that's really intimidating you... Okay, so what that is is finding the area of a shape under a graph."

I sigh. "This doesn't make any sense."

"Let's just focus on the very first thing and start from scratch. Integrals and derivatives are linked. They're kind of opposites. Either way, it's to find the slope of a line. It controls whether it's linear or exponential."

"So what do I actually have to do, change a function? Is the first one real?"

"Yes."

"Just as real as anything else?"

"Mhm..." She nods slowly.

"Nothing's real."

"Anyways," she works through her frustration, "they're both correct. They just are different graphs. They're separate because of their different slopes. The only reason it's linked is because you can convert its form either way. Well, you can with the slope. The constant, when x is at zero... You don't know what that is when you change it from a derivative to an integral. That's why they always just put 'plus c' at the end."

While telling me all of this, she's scribbling equations on the paper.

"Can you... make it understandable?" I grimace.

She sighs, rolling her eyes. "Fine. How did you do this first semester if this is just review? Whatever, anyway... We'll just try to understand this today." She flips the page to restart, then writes:

Integral = Linear (HAS c)

Derivative = Exponential (KNOWS c)

x^2 = Exponential = Derivative

"Does that make any more sense?"

"Uh... Not at all. In fact, we've been working so hard that we should take a break," I decide out loud.

"We've been working on this for like... not even two minutes."

"Do you know how long that is?" I groan.

"Not long at all...?"

"Time isn't even real, didn't you ever learn that? How is a whole hour of this sh*t going to help me?"

"Extra credit, and you learn. Well, you would learn, if you actually tried."

"I've tried so hard that my brain is going to explode. And once my brain explodes, I die. Would you really want to be responsible for the death of the hottest—"

"Shut up, Pierce. I don't want to hear it, alright? Do yourself a favor and don't get on my bad side. I'm tutoring you because I'm being a good person, so the least you could do would be to cooperate with me and... Oh, I don't know, just try to get us both through the rest of this year... Alright?"

"Alright, Princess."

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Asymptotic