"If this is all they want, why do the books talk for ten pages?"
"Because the books are written by people who like hearing themselves. The exam is written by people who want a short answer."
Her knee bumped his under the table and stayed there.
Neither of them moved it.
After a while he closed the theory notebook and opened a thinner one. Numbers. Lots of them crossed out.
"Maths."
Kuri immediately looked like she wanted to leave the room.
"Don't."
"It's addition and subtraction. Two digits. The hard ones are multiplication. That's the ceiling for Class D."
He wrote 27 + 14 on a clean page.
"What is it?"
She stared at it.
"3...No. 4...1?"
"Count it on the page. Not in your head."
She added the ones first, then the tens, the way a child would. She got 41 again and looked at him like he was mocking her.
"I can add."
