The result of waking up on Valentine's Day, realizing I didn't finish a VD fanfiction this year, and recalling that I was given a Miraculous Ladybug request that I am currently writing at light speed-!

"SMART PEOPLE ROMANCE."

"I wrote you a love letter for you last night," Sabrina sang, brandishing a pink and heart-shaped piece of paper. "Solve for 'i'!"

It would have been weirder if her homeroom class hadn't started getting used to weird and confusing things these last few days – she and Max had been dating for two days, fifteen hours, and thirty-two minutes, to be precise.

And to everyone else, her so-called "love letter" was just a mathematical equation – a linear inequality, to anyone who deigned to look, and an easy one at that. Two seats away and sitting alone, Chloé rolled her eyes.

Then again, the only 'i' that she knew how to solve for was herself.

"I heart you too!" Max exclaimed a moment later. His pen had not touched the paper once, causing a few of his classmates to lean forward in confusion.

"I heart you more!"

"I find that hard to believe, considering my love for you is akin to the decimals of pi itself!"

"Does two to the tenth power equal ten thousand twenty-four?"

"Only as long as we're not writing a computer program with a zero-based numbering system!"

"Aw, I knew you would say that!"

Sabrina and Max both laughed, blissfully unaware as their entire homeroom class stared in confusion. When the only two people who could multiply exponents in their head at a moment's notice had started dating, it became painstakingly obvious that the rest of the class was still stuck trying to calculate what nerd times another nerd meant.

"Do you understand what they're saying?" Alya asked, eyebrows raised.

She was clutching her phone as usual, but, for once, it seemed like she'd forgotten how to turn it on. Or maybe she was just trying to figure out how to report the latest "big scoop" in a way that normal people could understand.

"Well, uh... no," Marinette admitted, "Not usually. But don't you think they're very..."

Marinette caught herself before she said "cute". Puppies were cute. Kittens were cute. The resulting headache and the extra math and science lessons she sometimes got from listening to Sabrina and Max flirting made it hard to describe them as "cute" also.

"While I admit it's not as good as a linear equation, I made you a chain of heart-shaped mobius strip for Valentine's Day."

For a second, Sabrina's usual shy girl demeanor seemed to return as she covered her face. "I can't believe what a sweetie pi you are!"

It was as if they were subconsciously trying to prove Marinette's point.

"...I get what you mean," Alya said.

"Yeah," Marinette agreed. "They're probably going to live in a nice house with a white picket fence and have two-point-five Nobel Peace Prizes together some day... Don't you agree, Chloe?"

Marinette watched the back of her platinum blonde ponytail bob as the other girl scoffed. "Pft, as if," she grumbled. "No friend of mine is going to own something as tacky as a picket fence..."

Made the mistake of not writing the original ending down in advance. Chloe was "cuter" in it, but, again, probably not in the same way puppies and kittens are cute...

9x-7i3(3x-7u)

(Solve for 'i'.)