The Girl Who Speaks With Algebra

16: No Help

"So you just throw the fish into the frying pan with oil? That's not hard."

"It really isn't," I assured Seiko. "The biggest pain of this recipe will be that we can't have three burners going at once, for the fish, the topping, and the rice. But on the bright side, that gives us time to talk."

"About math?" Seiko said, in what I took to be a hopeful tone.

"About Marc," I countered. "Maybe start with telling me Calvin's story, assuming you think he'd be okay with that, so that I have context."

Seiko poked at the salmon in the frying pan with her tongs. "I have a midterm tomorrow morning. We should talk about math."

"You sure you can concentrate on math the way this Marc thing is hanging over you?"

She was silent for another few seconds. "First year is rough," she said at last. "That's what Calvin told me that day he found me in the lounge. He then asked me if I'd like to know why he tells everyone in the faculty to call him 'Calvin' and not 'Cal'. So I said sure."

If nothing else, this sounded like it would be a good story.

"Calvin didn't know anyone coming here for his first year," Seiko began. "And in theory that was fine, he didn't mind not having any friends around, he was here to make a difference academically. Trouble was, he was helpful, and two other guys were able to take advantage of his good nature."

"By getting him to drink."

"No, by getting him to do all the work for their assignments."

"So that they could go off and drink?"

Seiko gave me a look. "Fixating much?"

"Sorry. Continue."

"Thank you. So they would copy Calvin's assignments in their handwriting and submit it as their own. He knew it was wrong, but these freeloading dips got him gifts, introduced him to a couple nice girls, whatever it took to perpetuate things. I mean, to be fair, it's because they felt overwhelmed, but they should have dealt with it some other way."

"Turn the fish."

"I'm sorry?"

I pointed at the frying pan. "Turn the fish."

"Shoot..." Seiko spent a moment turning the salmon over, during which I ran the water into a pot for the rice. "Do I add more cooking oil?"

I glanced. "You probably don't need to. Keep going with the story."

"Right, err... so yeah, dips taking advantage of Calvin. Then came midterms. And they wanted to copy his answers for those too."

"Copy open response questions?"

Seiko shrugged. "They had some sort of a system in mind. They weren't complete idiots either, figuring on purposefully putting in a few errors. That said, Calvin kind of drew the line there." She shook her head. "So they told him that if he didn't help, they'd reveal what he'd been doing to that point. But that they'd claim he copied from them."

"Aha! Blackmail, a classic. So did he cave?"

"No." Seiko met my gaze. "Calvin went to the professor himself and admitted his guilt."

I whistled. "Balls. How is he still in the faculty?"

"Mitigating circumstances. He lost that credit for the term, but got the benefit of the doubt and ultimately he re-registered his name in the school system as 'Calvin'. Having formerly been listed as 'Cal'."