A/N :
last day of 2023! it's been, well, not a very good year for me, but hopefully 2024 can be kinder because i suffer too much sickness from the end of 2022 to 2023.😭
so i'm currently having a fever right now and also suffering from a stomach ache and dizziness.
i'm actually unsure if i should update tonight or not, but oh well. i don't want you guys to wait too long, so here you go!
i'm 100% going to rewrite and edit this chapter again because i had a change of heart in the last second, but i didn't edit it because i was still unsure.
also : HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO OUR FAVORITE BOY , GAKUSHU ASANO !
please leave a vote to support the story & don't forget to go back to the last chapter check if you have accidentally missed it ⭐
'𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐀𝐓𝐇 𝐄𝐗𝐀𝐌'𝐒 𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐁𝐋𝐄𝐌.' 𝐍𝐀𝐆𝐈𝐒𝐀 𝐍𝐀𝐑𝐑𝐀𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐀𝐒 the students from class E and the main campus were stressed out.'half of our grade couldn't even make it this far.'
'the other half arrived in the nick of time, already so exhausted and lacking the energy needed to solve it.' nagisa explained. 'the only students still standing with any chance of earning full marks in the few minutes remaining....'
'...were these two' gakushu and karma, were shown facing off against the final problem. 'the last problem...'
'so, the final math problem, huh?' gakushu scrutinised the question. akabane's in class E used to come in second on midterms after him; he's gotten a lot less cocky.'honestly, it was like he was a completely different person from before.' he smirked 'it was no surprise for him to get serious after failing the first semester and getting in last place in the whole year.'
now that akabane was taking this seriously, gakushu wanted to crush him at his best and nothing less.
though gakushu has noticed akabane has been acting a little weird these past few days, he seems to be in pain, as in physically, but he still manages to keep a carefree smirk on his face. well, it was no surprise for a delinquent like him who constantly gets into fights, though. a victory over someone who is physically exhausted isn't something worth celebrating. is gakushu worried? no. in the last few weeks before today, gakushu could see that the fire had been ignited in him after their conversation.
now it's time to begin, and gakushu was so glad they were fighting at their best. he didn't think he had ever been this excited for an exam.
gakushu's smirk grew into something vicious. 'quite a showing for a class-E student, however...' gakushu was shown with multiple blades at all angles. 'i have no blind spots-not in math, not in any subject.'
there was a memory he sometimes thought about-something his father taught him when he was eight years old.
"now, gakushu, i want to line up the colours on this cube...all of them, and quickly." the principal was sitting in an armchair in the living room, fiddling with a rubix cube, "with a method anyone could use. how would you go about it?"
"practising using the cross-then-layer method?" the younger gakushu answered.
"that's one option," the principal replied. "but not the fastest method." his dad pulled out a screwdriver from his pocket. "the quickest and most efficient method is to break it apart." gakushu flinched when the cube was stabbed with the tool and broken apart. "and then simply reconstruct it. very logical."
gakushu frowned. "but, isn't that cheating....?"
"cheating?" his father repeated lightly.
gakushu tensed a little, realising his mistake, because the man was never supposed to be wrong. his father was always right, and to imply anything else was disrespectful.
"oh, son." his father suddenly looked amused, placing a hand on his head. "that's a naive line of thinking."
"huh?" he stared at the man warily.
the light above cast a shadow on the man's face."the lesson is to win through any means necessary." he regarded his son for a moment. "if you're going to be a strong man in this society, you need to do whatever it takes to get ahead. "there was a smile on his lips, but it looked rather unsettling. "everyone else is just another step towards your goal."
gakushu's brow furrowed a little as he stared at the small cube pieces scattered on the floor.
"...but sir, isn't the cube going to get ruined," gakushu asked quietly, frowning. "if you keep breaking it?"
gakuho stared at him for a moment, his expression hard to read. "i suppose." he picked up a small red piece of the cube that had fallen on his lap. "but you just have to make sure you're careful how many times you break it."
"hm." the scene shifted back to the present, where gakushu is now scrutinising the question. 'atoms, body-centred cubic units....i can't let these extraneous details throw me off. stay focused.'
'once i get down to the essentials, it's simple.' gakushu appeared in the box. 'solve the volume of your own domain, here in this box, surrounded by enemies.'
a small monster's head appeared in the corner of the box, spawning a gun from its mouth. gakushu turned around quickly and blasted the bolt before it could hit him.
'when both sides are evenly matched,' he keeps shooting at the corner. 'their attacks meet in the middle.'
he smirked. "of course."
"so from there inward is my domain!" he blasted the monster.'nice try.'
he looked around the box. 'but i'm afraid you won't be encroaching on my turf any time soon. eight enemies in total surround the inside of this cube's perimeter. if i determine the volume of the eight areas i've effectively sealed off and subtract it from the volume of the cub, i'm left with...'
'...A[0]...my specific domain!' the monsters started firing from every corner.
gakushu dodged in the air and started shooting them.'once i lock down this space, i'll have the correct answer!' he took out two more corners.
he smirked and turned to destroy the next monster. 'ruling my own domain. nice overall theme for my goal in life!'
'a different kind of ruler...' he narrowed his eyes. '...not like my father.' some flashbacks showed the principal in his demented phases. 'right now, he's obsessed. that man only cares about proving his own "rational approach to education" is the correct way to superior others. his method may break a person's spirit, but it won't educate them.'
gakushu grimaced. 'it's time for me to set the record straight and give him a piece of my mind! i have to take control....that...' "....is my responsibility as your son !"
'there it is !' his face brightened when he took out the last corner and found the answer he needed. 'the volume of one of the sealed-off areas is an aggregate of one hexagonal and three triangular pyramids !' he started writing quickly as he and the rest of the school raced against the clock.
'crushing class-E will be easy. no matter what my father thinks he has to stump me with, he won't.' gakushu has been pushing himself past his limits to prepare for this exam, and he will not lose. perfection is the key. he just needs to keep his head level and calm, and he'll be just fine.
'once i put akabane karma in the damn ground, i will prove to you, father, that i can surpass you too!'
the scene shifted to the redhead, who looked fixedly at the test paper in front of him as the narrator in karma's head took over. '....man, was it a fucking ride getting to this point.'
karma stared at the final question. 'what was it that nagisa-kun always used to say ?'
a flashback showed a year ago when nagisa, who had a low ponytail, and karma were looking at their results by a classroom window.
"you're so talented, karma-kun." nagisa sighed, looking down. "how is there such a gap between the both of us? i guess some people are just geniuses, huh."
'easy for you to say....' karma's thoughts darkened as flashbacks of nagisa's talent were shown.'if you ask me, i'm not sure which of us is the real genius here.' a smidge of bitterness seeped into his thoughts.
'talent is usually an invisible trait.' a flashback showed that karma stayed up late in his room studying. 'more often than not, it's the result of work that other people don't see.'
sugino was shown talking to Itona and nagisa.'take sugino as an example. he can fit in easily with anyone, anywhere.'
'or okuda-san,' okuda was shown trying to poison koro-sensei and talking with her friends. 'who can totally lose herself in something she's passionate about.'
'even terasaka, who dives right in without giving it a single thought.' flashbacks with terasaka and kayano were shown. 'from where i'm standing, those are all talents. everybody has some hidden special ability they take for granted, so in that sense,' karma closed his eyes and pondered this. 'we're all geniuses, still.'
he narrowed his eyes at the question. 'the issue at hand.... is whether or not i can filter the answer to this problem through the lens of my own talent.'
'ah....' karma looked nervous. 'maybe getting ready for the final exam with this condition wasn't really the best idea.'
underneath his uniform revealed a few white bandages covering the top half of his body and a few cuts behind his back as the scene cut to flash back to a few days before the finals, showing karma drove his fist into an high schooler's jaw repeatedly while the boy was on the ground.
to be honest, it felt great-like all his problems were gone and the only thing that mattered was what was directly in front of him. tatsumi was spitting blood as karma cracked his knuckles against the boy's lopsided nose. his fists hurt, but that didn't matter. he was teaching these guys a lesson: when you do bad things that you know will intentionally hurt others, there will be consequences, and karma was just doing his job by educating them with his fists!
after karma was finished, tatsumi dropped his baseball bat weapon and fell, joining his so called pathetic "gangs" who were now seen laying on the ground, defeated.
it serves them right to act like they are more superior than the others just because they're "older," when all they do is just straight up be an asshole and pick on someone who they thought was younger and weaker than them. well, it seems like they truly fucked with the wrong person.
'though speaking of nagisa-kun and his vibe that comes off, which reminds me of this one particular incident...'
[ A/N : definitely gonna edit , delete and rewrite this few scene of the chapter cause I was unsure back then 😅👇 ]
the screen showed a flashback : before the finals, karma was walking away after winning a fist fight with some troubled dudes in the street. he made his way home like any other ordinary day, but as he was walking on the sidewalk, a group of guys could be seen walking down from another direction.
'they looked like some typical group of street deliquents or some sort, but then...' as they continued talking, slowly everything else blacked out. the scene focused on the sound of wooden beads rustling together, which caught the redhead's attention.
karma paused and turned his head as he watched the group that had walked past him. the sound was coming from one of their wrists, clicking together.
his eyes landed on one particular guy in the front row in the middle who had his back turned towards him as the others around him turned into a grey silhouette in karma's vision.
'whether or not this might be new, but i could sense a weird type of aura around him that was slightly different than any other ordinary guy.'
karma's gaze shifted back to the test, trying to stay focused. he still had a final problem to solve. it referenced breaking down a domain.
he gave a nervous smile. 'come on, man, snap out of it; who cares about a random person you never met? you clearly don't have time for this.'
the redhead was still staring at the test, growing nervous as he read through the question again which is when he saw a sentence in the question description read, 'multiple cubes having sides 1 arranged periodically.'
"periodically," karma mouthed, frowning more as the gears in his head started to click.
'hang on....' his eyes widened in realization. 'this problem doesn't even call for any tough math at all.'
karma was in the box. 'the whole thing's divided out into this one itty bitty little cube, but if this is supposedly an atomic crystal, then there'll be more of the same structure outside this cube, too. which means...' outside of the box, there were multiple atoms.'the world doesn't end here!'
'and from where i'm standing. everyone has their own talent and their own specific domain. we are all in the same boat. i just couldn't see it before. all i could see was inside this box. fragments of a bigger picture.'
he stared at his classmates different strengths that were at each corner. 'just as i claim my own domain, everyone else will claim theirs. that's how this works, and that's how it's always worked. we're all the same size and the same distance apart. and if we're all cut from the same box, those eight contiguous boxes can be broken up into the same proportion, so each person's fragment accounts for one-eighth. the box holds a whole me and eight fragments from eight people.' karma watched as the broken cube in his hand reconstructed itself in the correct position.
karma smiled as the answer manifested as a bright light and turned into a bright-coloured silhouette version of himself. 'and if it's one to one inside the box. the volume of the area i can call my own is up to one-half of the cube. voila. that's my specific domain.'
"well, geez... it turns out to be a piece of cake." the redhead grinned as he wrote down his answer: a3/2. "this is literally primary-school stuff."
the box shattered and disappeared.
the redhead grinned as he felt a rush of relief when he put his pencil down and closed his test paper. 'there is no need for drawn-out calculations or big, complex diagrams. you just have to adjust to the fact that there's a world outside yourself.'
heh, karma is going to prove asano wrong. right here, right now. these damn asanos are going to regret ever having provoked him. they're going to acknowledge class-e as an equal whether they fucking like it or not.
this is the beginning of the end. the asano's are going down, and karma, along with the class-e, is coming out on top. and once everything is over, karma is going to humiliate the hell out of gakushu by being the best he's ever been ; that's his main goal.
'look out, asano-kun; it seems like you're going down first.'
A/N :
i just watched season 3 of 'demon slayer' i wish i can use bigger vocabulary to describe it but i sucks at those so the only thing can come up with is their art style and animation is FUCKING SMOOTH and hella BEAUTIFUL-and the storylines is just ugh omg- 😩👌❤️💕
[ edited ]
i will rewrite some parts of THIS chapter again because i realized i still wasn't fully prepared for what i was going to do with the plot. i just went with the flow until my full body slammed against the wall of block writers, as i realised the fact that the majority of the plot i came up with in my drafts still hadn't made enough sense yet, and that's when i asked myself,
"so... where and how in the fresh pie is this gonna go ?"
anyway, i'll try my very best to figure it out. i know some of you guys like this book (at least i hope so, but it's okay if you don't), and i am so terribly sorry for making you guys keep waiting.
again, i don't want my book or character to feel like it doesn't make any sense because, again, it will only confuse everyone, including me, and i don't want to write a plot that doesn't go anywhere AT ALL (like how i previously did), so it's going to take me a lot of time to write this book again since it took me almost half a year to only write 15 chapters ( cuz you know....the not fun moment where i had to deal with intense hives and have sleep sideways for 6 months and get more sleep deprived than i already was).
Q/A : who's your favorite character in demon slayer ?
and for those who haven't watched demon slayer 🔽
Q/A : who's your comfort or favorite character in your favorite anime show ?
( it can be none anime show too )
this chapter will definitely be rewritten again but only a small part.
don't forget to leave a vote to support the story ! 🌟