"What is your rank," Shiina asked.
Albert flinched.
Straight to the numbers. Of course. In this school, you don't ask 'How are you?', you ask 'What's your value?'
He hesitated. He could lie but the data was public. She could check it on her phone in ten seconds.
"2001," Albert said quietly.
Shiina paused and blinked once. Then, she let out a short, soft breath through her nose. It was not quite a laugh, but it was definitely dismissive.
"Two thousand and one," she repeated, as if tasting a bad lemon.
She gestured vaguely toward the stairwell with her pen.
"The Manga and Light Novel section is on the ground floor, Rank 2001," she said cold-bloodedly. "This is the Theoretical Physics wing. The books here don't have pictures. You're lost."
It was a brutal, efficient insult. She did not say he was stupid but she just categorized him as "misplaced inventory."
Albert felt a flash of irritation, but he crushed it instantly.
Great. She thinks I'm an idiot. That's the safest outcome, I guess. Let her think I wandered in here looking for 'Manga'. If I argue, I stand out. I just need to disappear.
"Right," Albert said, hunching his shoulders to look smaller. "Sorry to disturb you. I'll... go find the basement."
He turned around. He wanted to run to get as far away from this terrifying genius as possible.
But as he turned, his eyes swept over the open notebook on the table one last time.
*Equation: L = -1/4 F_μν F^μν + i (psi-bar) D (psi)...*
Albert stopped.
His brain slammed on the brakes.
Wait. The third line. That sign. It's positive. It should be negative. The partial derivative of the Lagrangian with respect to the field tensor... if she keeps it positive, the renormalization will diverge to infinity. The whole calculation will collapse.
Itched.
It burned.
Seeing a mathematical error was like seeing a picture hanging crookedly on a wall, or hearing a musical note played slightly sharp. It caused him physical discomfort.
He stood there, his back to her, fighting a war in his head.
Don't say it. Just walk away. If you correct her, you break cover. Remember Middle School? Remember the 'Robot' nickname? Remember the whispers? Do you want that again?
He gripped his backpack strap.
But it's *wrong*. She's going to spend the next two hours chasing a ghost because of one stupid plus sign. It's inefficient.
"Are you waiting for a tip?" Shiina's voice came from behind him. "I don't carry cash."
Albert took a deep breath.
Just go. Be normal.
"No," Albert said as he started walking away.
He took three steps.
The equation flashed in his mind. Positive sign. Divergence. Error.
He could not help it because he was weak in this kind of situation. He didn't turn around and he didn't stop walking but he mumbled it, low and quiet, hoping she would not hear, or would think he was just crazy.
"The third line..." Albert whispered to the air, unable to stop the words. "It looked... weird."
He kept walking, heading for the corner of the aisle, hoping to escape before she processed it.
"Stop."
The command was sharp.
Albert froze near the bookshelf. He cursed internally because he had broken the First Rule of the Mob Character: "The Don't engage Rule."
"You," Shiina's voice was closer now. She had stood up. "Rank 2001."
Albert turned around slowly, keeping his posture hunched and non-threatening. "Yeah?"
Shina was standing by the table, her hand hovering over her notebook. She looked from the page to him, her eyes narrowing.
"You said it looked 'weird'," she said, her tone clinical. "That is a renormalization calculation for non-abelian gauge fields. To a Rank 2001, this should look like scribbles. How does a student with that rank know that a specific derivative is 'weird'?"
Albert's heart beat fast. He desperately needed an excuse. A dumb one. One that required zero intelligence.
He pointed a shaking finger at the thick textbook still lying open on the table—the one he had just saved from falling.
"The... the book," Albert stammered. "It's open. Right there."
Shiina looked down at the volume of Advanced Quantum Chromodynamics. It was open to page 412.
"Yeah?" she asked, unimpressed.
"I just..." Albert scratched his cheek, looking away. "I was looking at the book while you were... sleeping. There's a diagram on that page. Figure 4.2. The equation under the picture has a minus sign. You wrote a plus sign. That's all."
He shrugged, acting as casual as possible.
"I don't know what the math means. I just saw that your picture didn't match the book's picture. It looked like a typo."
Shiina froze.
She looked at her notebook. Plus sign.
Then, she looked at the textbook page she had been referencing before she fell asleep. Minus sign.
It was not a derivation error and it was a transcription error either. She had simply copied it wrong because she was drowsy.
The tension in her shoulders dropped instantly. The "Genius Hunter" look vanished, replaced by the irritation of a perfectionist who made a careless mistake.
"Oh," she said, her voice flat. "A copy error."
She picked up her pen and slashed a line through the plus sign, correcting it.
She did not look at Albert with awe. She looked at him with the mild indifference one gives to a spell-checker.
"You have good eyes, Rank 2001," she muttered while sitting back down. "Go find your manga."
"Right. Sorry," Albert exhaled.
He turned and walked away. Not running. He walked at a generic, average pace.
He rounded the corner and vanished into the stacks.
Back at the table, Tsukishiro Shiina did not stare after him. Not dwelling on the mystery.
She had already solved it: He saw the book and compared the symbols. He pointed it out. It was a low-level cognitive task. Even a child could play "Spot the Difference."
She spun her pen.
"Careless," she scolded herself. "Sleeping in the library is affecting my accuracy."
---
Endnote of Chapter 29
Analysis Corner
Subject: Albert and Shiina's Collission
Query: Did the Narrator pushed Albert and Shiina to meet by using Plot Armor?
Verdict: NEGATIVE.
To outside observer, this encounter appears to be a classic "RomCom" trope: The generic background character (Mob) stumbles upon the School Idol (Heroine) in a secluded location due to a convenient narrative anomaly.
In fiction, this is often dismissed as "Fate" or "Plot Armor"—a smoothing of reality to force an interaction that social logic would otherwise forbid.
However, in the context of Atherton Albert and Tsukishiro Shiina, this meeting was not an anomaly. It was a statistical certainty.
The math proves it.
Element 1: The Leo Constant. Sterling Leo has been a track athlete since middle school. His enrollment in the Zenith Academy Track Team was a fixed variable. The practice schedule (18:00 to 19:30) creates a rigid 1.5-hour window of downtime for his dependents, Albert and Maya [Source: Chapter 27].
Element 2: The Maya Variable. Albert cannot go home (violates the "Trio" social contract). He cannot stay with Maya (generates "Guilt" and "Third Wheel" friction). He must remove himself from the equation to preserve the group dynamic [Sources: Chapter 6 & Chapter 7].
Element 3: The Albert Constant. Albert requires a location that satisfies two conditions:
*Zero Social Friction: No crowds, no conversation [Sources: Chapters 1 & Chapter 6].
*Intellectual Stimulus: Access to high-level material to occupy his processing power. The only location on campus that satisfies both is the STEM Library, Subsection 530 (Physics).
Element 4: The Shiina Constant. Tsukishiro Shiina views the classroom as a low-efficiency environment. Her primary habitat since middle school has been the library. Like Albert, she seeks the "Local Minima" of noise—the quietest possible coordinate. The "Advanced/University Level" alcove is the deepest point of silence in the facility.
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Scientific Proof of Environmental Selection (The Genius Isolation Trait):
This behavior is firmly grounded in cognitive science. According to literature detailed in textbooks such as Cognitive Psychology by Robert J. Sternberg, as well as foundational research on "Decreased Latent Inhibition" (e.g., Peterson & Carson, 2003), there is a direct biological correlation between high intelligence/creativity and a preference for low-stimulus environments. "Latent inhibition" is the brain's unconscious capacity to filter out irrelevant background noise. Average brains filter this noise automatically. However, highly intelligent individuals often possess "leaky" sensory filters, meaning their brains absorb and process vastly more environmental data simultaneously. While this enables genius-level pattern recognition and complex thought, it makes them highly susceptible to sensory overload. Therefore, for individuals like Shiina and Albert, seeking absolute silence is not an antisocial quirk; it is a strict physiological requirement to allocate their massive cognitive bandwidth toward theoretical calculation rather than environmental filtering.
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Conclusion: In a standard social model, a Rank 2001 and a Rank 1 occupy different orbital shells and should never collide. However, when filtered through the specific variables of "Time" (18:00-19:30) and "Function" (Quest for Silence/Science), their trajectories become identical.
They were two objects with the same mass and velocity falling into the same gravity well.
For Albert not to meet Shina during this time block would have been the true mathematical improbability.
The anime trope of the "Accidental Meeting" is incorrect. This was Determinism. They did not meet because of a plot device; they met because they are the only two people in a school of about 12,000 students who speak the same language.
Albert's "escape" from suspicion was also statistically probable. Tsukishiro Shiina is a rationalist. When presented with a simple solution (He saw the book) versus a complex one (He is a secret genius pretending to be mediocre), Occam's Razor dictates she accepts the simple one.
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Multi-Variable Constriction
1. Temporal Constraint (The "When"):
Leo's Track Practice: 18:00 – 19:30.
Result: Albert is exiled from the "Trio" dynamic for 90 minutes.
2. Psychological Constraint (The "Why"):
Shiina: Obsessive academic curiosity. She is currently researching Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD).
Albert: Social evasion. He requires a location where his friends (Maya/Leo) will not search for him.
3. Physical Constraint (The "Where"):
The "Red Label" Policy: The text Advanced QCD Vol. 4 is a "Reference Only" asset (Cost: ¥45,000). Library bylaws prohibit removing this asset from the 3rd Floor West Wing.
Result (Shiina): Shiina is physically tethered to the West Wing reading tables. She cannot move.
4. Social Dynamics Constraint (The Collision):
The Repulsion Effect: Albert knows that "Red Label" zones repel average students due to the lack of borrowable media and strict silence enforcement.
Result (Albert): To hide from the "Average" demographic (Maya), Albert must enter the "Elite/Academic" zone.
Conclusion: Shiina was locked in place by the Book's Policy. Albert was pushed into that specific place by the Social Evasion Strategy.
If Shiina was reading a normal paperback, she would have been in the cafeteria.
If Albert was just "killing time," he would have been in the lounge.
But because Shina needed a Reference Book and Albert needed Average-Student Repellent, the 3rd Floor West Wing was the only coordinate where both 'Active Particles' (persons) could exist simultaneously.