Sunfeeder [BNHA]

ch. 17

Chapter Seventeen;;- Exams

As the midterm finals started coming up, it wasn't hard to tell that stress began to pile on. Both [name] and Tamaki, since they were involved in things outside school, had difficulty balancing their full plates. [name] took fewer shifts at Fantasia and Fatgum was understanding enough to give more time off to Tamaki so that he could study.

With their busy schedules, it was hard to get a moment of silence to themselves. But they always had each other. Quiet train rides, quiet walks, the quiet that they needed to give themselves a breather and collect their thoughts. It was pleasant and calming to have at least one person to go to when things got hectic.

And that was how they ended up next to each other at the library, their textbooks spread in front of them like they were making a tablecloth of words and numbers.

The silence was loud in the library, not a soothing one like the one born under [name] and Tamaki. It was oppressive, shoving any words directly back down your throat. The stritch-scratch of pencils and pens on paper was probably the loudest sound-- amplified by the sheer number of cramming students hunched over their books like zombies.

Determined to keep her spirits up despite the depressing atmosphere, [name] tried to retain a positive mindset, but with each page she turned, each practice problem she filled out, it was getting exponentially harder. She failed to catch a sigh before it slipped between her lips, bringing Tamaki's attention to her rapidly decreasing confidence.

He glanced at the textbook she was looking at. Calculus AB[1]. Tamaki no longer questioned why she was getting so gloomy. On her scratch paper, she had written out problems from the book, currently working on what looked like limits. "What're you working on?" Tamaki asked in a whisper. He wasn't too bad at math, he liked to think, so if it fell on his shoulders to help raise her spirits, he wouldn't mind lending a hand.

[name] glanced up, meeting his eyes for a moment before sending them back to the paper in embarrassment. "Limits." Oh, so he was right. "They're not hard, but we learned it so early on in the year." She ran a frustrated hand through her hair. "I can't remember..."

Tamaki nodded, understanding how it felt to completely forget a topic that you learned too early on in the school year. He turned the paper so that they could both read the problems. "The limit of f(x) as x approached negative three..." He searched around the messy table, finally picking up the graphing calculator when he found it. He typed in the equation and pulled up the table. "I think it's just... eight."

She takes the calculator in her own hands, studying the table carefully as she bit her lip. "That's... That's it?" [name] looked back at the book, reading through the block of text and sighing again. A grin grows on her face and soon, laughter comes flooding out of her lips. Maybe it was the combination of stress and sleep deprivation and stuffing too much knowledge in her head in a short amount of time, but [name] found it ridiculously funny that it had been that simple from the very beginning. She had been working on this topic for almost an hour before Tamaki had spoken up.

At first, it shocked Tamaki to hear her loud laughs come after an incident that probably would've had him very embarrassed. But he was reminded that she was not him, and he liked that about her. It didn't take long for a smile of his own seizing his lips. Even the ever-quiet Tamaki found himself unable to hold back some short chuckles.

Without caring about the other people in the room for once, they shared a moment of joy together, transforming the previously gloomy mood into a much warmer one. It didn't last long, because a mean glare from the elderly librarian was enough to silence the loudest of their laughter.

They met eyes after the silence resumed, and [name] had to slap a palm over her mouth to keep herself from bursting into giggles again. It took a little bit to stop the urge, but once she had, she grinned at him. "Thanks, Tamaki! You're a life saver!" She gave him a thumbs up.

Maybe exams wouldn't be too bad this year.

[1]- Calculus AB was what I took last year (AKA the american equivalent of japan's third year of high school). Idk if that's accurate, but my experience is the only one I know.

a/n: this is short and technically earlier than i wanted it to come out, but with the timeline i'm operating on, i can't insert it in the next couple chapters like i was supposed to. also it is kind of out of chronological order because kiri is already at fatgum, so this would technically be before that whoops. and its midterms because they're obviously not graduating yet.

hope you all get through your exams well and you don't get too stressed! here's something i had a professor say once that has helped me be less stressed about tests: think of it as a chance to prove yourself. whether that's to your parents, your teachers, your family, or even just yourself, you're proving that you have that knowledge. if you stress yourself out, you're likelier to forget things, so relax.

{this chapter was originally published ~may/june time frame, because it was actual time for people to take finals. lol}