Psidai standalone: The Evils of Math
Mar. 8th, 2005 01:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tanithryudoTitle: The Evils of Math
Series: Psidai AU
Fandom: Prince of Tennis
Rating: G
Pairings: Mizuki/Yuuta if you squinted really, really hard
Summary: Mizuki is fed up with his classes and his major.
Timeline: Takes place during Mizuki's sophomore year and Yuuta's freshman year at Psidai. Heck, let's call it March 8th, near the end of the Japanese school year, just for synchronicity's sake. :p
The Evils of Math
Mizuki stared at the chalkboard, feeling as though his eyes were being burned out of his head. The professor was saying something, but his brain refuse to register the words as comprehensible speech.
"...and now we take the Bernoulli expansion... to transform it into a uniform standard distribution... and the two n-squares will cancel out so... the variance will converge thus to rho squared and..."
The tiny white squiggles on the board were mocking him. He could feel it. Mizuki dropped his head into his hands and tried to block out the headache building up in his temples. His fingers twitched as they tangled in his messy hair, but Mizuki was too far gone to care that the classmates sitting next to him were warily scooting their chairs away.
What had possessed him to take a probability course?! Oh yes, he had been tired of listening to Inui and Yanagi gibber on in their incomprehensible conversations consisting of nothing but percentages whenever he talked to them, or eavesdropped on them, or occassionally stole their notebooks to spy on them...
At first he'd thought it would be easy. After all, probability was all about permutations and combinations, right? Nothing that a good calculator couldn't handle... But the professor hadn't even mentioned combinations since the first chapter. From then on it was all about random variable distributions and convoluted number expansions with unpronouncable gaijin names.
And the worst thing was that he couldn't even drop the class, since he was already at the minimum units limit for the semester, having dropped another class - "Mathematical Methods in Classical and Quantum Mechanics" - by the second week of class. Come to think of it, taking that class had been Inui's and Yanagi's fault too.
"Mizuki-san? Mizuki-san, are you okay?"
A sudden hand on his shoulder almost made Mizuki jump out of his seat. His head snapped up and he suddenly noticed that the class was fast emptying, and that a familiar figure stood next to his seat.
"Yuuta?" Mizuki blinked, his normal eloquence absent since his still-foggy brain hadn't caught up to his mouth yet. "What are you doing here?"
"I have the next class in this room," Yuuta replied. "I got here early before aniki could try to set up lunch with me."
At the mention of the elder Fuji, Mizuki automatically looked around for the tensai. It was amazing the survival instints that formed when one spent an entire year in danger of poisoning and defenestration and being pricked to death by cacti.
"Probability and Random Processes?" Yuuta read aloud as he looked down at the sheet of note paper on Mizuki's desk. The same sheet of note paper that was entirely blank aside from the course title and the day's date.
"Tch." In a fit of pique, Mizuki crumpled the paper up and tossed it away. It looked like he'll be stuck trying to decipher the day's topic from the textbook, again.
"It looks pretty hard," Yuuta assured him placatingly. Well, it wasn't a lie, since the younger man couldn't make heads or tails out of the white squiggles on the chalkboard.
Mizuki was in no mood to confidently boast and exaggerate his performance in the class. He still hadn't recovered from the shock of lecture yet. So he changed the subject.
"Hm, and how are you doing in your math classes, Yuuta-kun?" The other was majoring in math too, after all.
Yuuta shrugged. "I'm doing alright. The classes are harder here in university, but as a freshman, I'm still on the easy stuff like calculus and linear algebra."
"Ah." There was something vaguely unfair about the fact that his erstwhile pawn (protege?) was finding it easier to make his way in the Mathematics major than Mizuki, who'd been doing stat-based strategies and tennis for years. "Well, I guess this is the kind of classes you'll have to look forward to next year," he said airly.
"Erk," Yuuta looked uncomfortable as he skimmed over the jumble on the board again. "Ah, maybe not. I'm thinking about doing the Applied Math major, or maybe even Financial Math. I'll leave the statistics to data-tennis players like you and Inui-san." Then he muttered low under his breath, "though why anyone would want to keep up with Inui-san and Yanagi-san is beyond me."
"What was that?" Mizuki demanded, getting onto his feet and looming a bit forward.
Yuuta winced back from his senior and raised his bookbag as a shield between them. But since Mizuki had obviously heard him, he didn't back down.
"Well, it doesn't look like you like these classes. Since whatever your methods were in high school worked fine, I don't see why you'd let someone else make you change it just because they're insane."
It wasn't that Yuuta really cared on the issue, which really wasn't any of his business. But he thought he could empathize with Mizuki just a little bit, out of his experience of being the younger brother to a tensai whom everyone compared him with.
Mizuki stared at Yuuta for one long moment. Then he huffed, picked up his book bag, and slung it over one shoulder. "See you around, Yuuta," was all he said before he left the room. It was surprisingly difficult to stay resentful of his junior when Yuuta's words kind of made sense.
As he walked down the corridors, Mizuki remained deep in thought with Yuuta's words reverberating in his head. Now that he thought of it, he hadn't done well in any of his math classes, barely passing most of them. Maybe he should rethink this whole math double-major idea...
There was still Political Science, after all.
Mizuki absently chuckled under his breath as possibilities and calculations whirled around his mind. His hands were twitching again. But this time, it was for an entirely different reason.
~* Owari *~
Japanese terms:
gaijin = foreign, foreigner
aniki = older brother
Notes: Okay, this fic and idea is mostly just me stressing over my probability class this morning, feeling exactly like Mizuki did. Except I don't have a Yuuta to console me (I wanna Yuuta *pouts*) and I don't have Mizuki's option of dropping a major... Not that I'm majoring in math to begin with. And yes, the two course titles I used here are actually course titles found in the math department of UC Berkeley, and the one Mizuki is taking now is actually the same class that I'm taking. I commiserate with you, Mizuki-san...
...Actually, that's probably the only reason why Mizuki got a happy ending this time instead of getting tortured and tortured and more tortured (all done humorously, of course) like he usually does in my/our fic plans and ideas. I guess he can think of it as a rare break from the pain he will otherwise suffer throughout the Psidai series. ^^;
Disclaimer: Prince of Tennis and all associated characters belong to Konomi-sensei, not me.
Series: Psidai AU
Fandom: Prince of Tennis
Rating: G
Pairings: Mizuki/Yuuta if you squinted really, really hard
Summary: Mizuki is fed up with his classes and his major.
Timeline: Takes place during Mizuki's sophomore year and Yuuta's freshman year at Psidai. Heck, let's call it March 8th, near the end of the Japanese school year, just for synchronicity's sake. :p
Mizuki stared at the chalkboard, feeling as though his eyes were being burned out of his head. The professor was saying something, but his brain refuse to register the words as comprehensible speech.
"...and now we take the Bernoulli expansion... to transform it into a uniform standard distribution... and the two n-squares will cancel out so... the variance will converge thus to rho squared and..."
The tiny white squiggles on the board were mocking him. He could feel it. Mizuki dropped his head into his hands and tried to block out the headache building up in his temples. His fingers twitched as they tangled in his messy hair, but Mizuki was too far gone to care that the classmates sitting next to him were warily scooting their chairs away.
What had possessed him to take a probability course?! Oh yes, he had been tired of listening to Inui and Yanagi gibber on in their incomprehensible conversations consisting of nothing but percentages whenever he talked to them, or eavesdropped on them, or occassionally stole their notebooks to spy on them...
At first he'd thought it would be easy. After all, probability was all about permutations and combinations, right? Nothing that a good calculator couldn't handle... But the professor hadn't even mentioned combinations since the first chapter. From then on it was all about random variable distributions and convoluted number expansions with unpronouncable gaijin names.
And the worst thing was that he couldn't even drop the class, since he was already at the minimum units limit for the semester, having dropped another class - "Mathematical Methods in Classical and Quantum Mechanics" - by the second week of class. Come to think of it, taking that class had been Inui's and Yanagi's fault too.
"Mizuki-san? Mizuki-san, are you okay?"
A sudden hand on his shoulder almost made Mizuki jump out of his seat. His head snapped up and he suddenly noticed that the class was fast emptying, and that a familiar figure stood next to his seat.
"Yuuta?" Mizuki blinked, his normal eloquence absent since his still-foggy brain hadn't caught up to his mouth yet. "What are you doing here?"
"I have the next class in this room," Yuuta replied. "I got here early before aniki could try to set up lunch with me."
At the mention of the elder Fuji, Mizuki automatically looked around for the tensai. It was amazing the survival instints that formed when one spent an entire year in danger of poisoning and defenestration and being pricked to death by cacti.
"Probability and Random Processes?" Yuuta read aloud as he looked down at the sheet of note paper on Mizuki's desk. The same sheet of note paper that was entirely blank aside from the course title and the day's date.
"Tch." In a fit of pique, Mizuki crumpled the paper up and tossed it away. It looked like he'll be stuck trying to decipher the day's topic from the textbook, again.
"It looks pretty hard," Yuuta assured him placatingly. Well, it wasn't a lie, since the younger man couldn't make heads or tails out of the white squiggles on the chalkboard.
Mizuki was in no mood to confidently boast and exaggerate his performance in the class. He still hadn't recovered from the shock of lecture yet. So he changed the subject.
"Hm, and how are you doing in your math classes, Yuuta-kun?" The other was majoring in math too, after all.
Yuuta shrugged. "I'm doing alright. The classes are harder here in university, but as a freshman, I'm still on the easy stuff like calculus and linear algebra."
"Ah." There was something vaguely unfair about the fact that his erstwhile pawn (protege?) was finding it easier to make his way in the Mathematics major than Mizuki, who'd been doing stat-based strategies and tennis for years. "Well, I guess this is the kind of classes you'll have to look forward to next year," he said airly.
"Erk," Yuuta looked uncomfortable as he skimmed over the jumble on the board again. "Ah, maybe not. I'm thinking about doing the Applied Math major, or maybe even Financial Math. I'll leave the statistics to data-tennis players like you and Inui-san." Then he muttered low under his breath, "though why anyone would want to keep up with Inui-san and Yanagi-san is beyond me."
"What was that?" Mizuki demanded, getting onto his feet and looming a bit forward.
Yuuta winced back from his senior and raised his bookbag as a shield between them. But since Mizuki had obviously heard him, he didn't back down.
"Well, it doesn't look like you like these classes. Since whatever your methods were in high school worked fine, I don't see why you'd let someone else make you change it just because they're insane."
It wasn't that Yuuta really cared on the issue, which really wasn't any of his business. But he thought he could empathize with Mizuki just a little bit, out of his experience of being the younger brother to a tensai whom everyone compared him with.
Mizuki stared at Yuuta for one long moment. Then he huffed, picked up his book bag, and slung it over one shoulder. "See you around, Yuuta," was all he said before he left the room. It was surprisingly difficult to stay resentful of his junior when Yuuta's words kind of made sense.
As he walked down the corridors, Mizuki remained deep in thought with Yuuta's words reverberating in his head. Now that he thought of it, he hadn't done well in any of his math classes, barely passing most of them. Maybe he should rethink this whole math double-major idea...
There was still Political Science, after all.
Mizuki absently chuckled under his breath as possibilities and calculations whirled around his mind. His hands were twitching again. But this time, it was for an entirely different reason.
Japanese terms:
gaijin = foreign, foreigner
aniki = older brother
Notes: Okay, this fic and idea is mostly just me stressing over my probability class this morning, feeling exactly like Mizuki did. Except I don't have a Yuuta to console me (I wanna Yuuta *pouts*) and I don't have Mizuki's option of dropping a major... Not that I'm majoring in math to begin with. And yes, the two course titles I used here are actually course titles found in the math department of UC Berkeley, and the one Mizuki is taking now is actually the same class that I'm taking. I commiserate with you, Mizuki-san...
...Actually, that's probably the only reason why Mizuki got a happy ending this time instead of getting tortured and tortured and more tortured (all done humorously, of course) like he usually does in my/our fic plans and ideas. I guess he can think of it as a rare break from the pain he will otherwise suffer throughout the Psidai series. ^^;
Disclaimer: Prince of Tennis and all associated characters belong to Konomi-sensei, not me.
