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Here was the thing I felt guilty about in terms of mathematics. Only half the population realistically got to play the game for most of history. Boys only club. That sort of thing. What brilliant insights had we missed out on because women were excluded from the game of chess with god?
I didn't much like to think about that.
But it was true.
Only half the population really got a shot at playing the game and that was some hard bullshit to wrestle with. Majority of the famous mathematicians throughout history were men as a result of sexist practices. I once heard a story about a young greek woman who invented Euler-Newton calculus in the BC then had her skin peeled off by seashells by an angry mob. That was fucking bullshit and if that really happened I was sorry.
The person who discovered the magic wand theorem was a girl. M. Mirzakhani. She won three million dollars for it and the breakthrough prize in mathematics. She also had a Fields Medal. She died young, however. I couldn't recall how. But she died in 2017.
A new expanse was opening up. One in which people of every gender got to play the game. And that was how things were supposed to be. It wasn't supposed to be a boys only club. It wasn't supposed to be limited to half the population. And I felt bad and sorry that it had been that way for most of history. I mean there were some others. Ada Lovelace. Sophie Germain. Emmy Noether. But for the most part it was all dudes. It was a sausage fest in my head while I listened to the old masters.
I mean… it wasn't my fault it was like that. Still was like that to some degree. But it was like that. And it was important to recognize those things as facts. And it wasn't like I was going to not be a mathematician just because of that. I was. I certainly was. But it was still something I felt slightly guilty about.
Physics too.
Physics was a guys only affair for the most part.
So I had little choice in being surrounded by male peers when I studied. Monday was sneaking up on me as I sipped on some coffee. Iced and cold. Like the universe. Positively freezing. One day the universe would have no more free usable energy. We called that the heat death of the universe and it was the most likely way the universe would die. I suppose there were some alternative cosmologies besides big freeze. There was the big rip, where dark energy kept growing stronger and stronger until the expanding space became so fast it ripped atoms apart. There was also big crunch which was sorta the opposite of the big bang where the universe would collapse in on itself again. Dark energy would stop growing stronger and like a ball tossed into the air, gravity would cause it all to collapse in on itself.
They were both possibilities. But big freeze looked like the winner at the moment. Eventually all the other galaxies would either merge into one super galaxy or fall over the cosmological even horizon due to dark energy.
And we called it dark energy because for now it was just a place holder until we knew more. We didn't truly understand dark energy. Or dark matter for that matter. And the two had almost nothing to do with one another. We just called them dark because we literally couldn't see them. Eventually the heat of the big bang, the cosmic microwave background radiation would be so scattered and red shifted that nobody could detect it any more. Future civilizations in Milkdromeda (the union of the Milkyway and Andromeda galaxies) would have no way of learning about the big bang.
Sorta scary to think about. Like what things had we missed because we were born too late to observe them. But they happened nonetheless. It was just impossible fo rus to learn about it because we were too late to the show. Made me wonder if the big bang ever really happened at all or if it was just an illusion caused by something else. Scary thought. The big bang was pretty solid even if it was mysterious. We probably didn't live in a steady state universe. Too many paradoxes. Too much time for stars to be around. Too much space for their waste heat to cook us in. Plus the universe really was flying apart from some common point of origin. Like a balloon getting blown up and two points on the surface being stretched further and further apart.
So the big bang looked pretty solid. At least to me. It could be all wrong though. That we had to confess was a possibility. I sipped on my coffee and browsed Arxiv. Maybe there was some little project I could work on. Maybe I'd been thinking too big with Riemann Zeta Hypothesis and the universe being a fractal to explain gravity. Maybe I needed to start smaller and work my way up to those big problems.
There. What's this? The sofa couch problem? I hadn't heard of that before. I googled it.
Put it simply the problem asked what was the largest sofa couch one could move around a one by one corridor. All two dimensional so that was easy enough. Of course just because a problem sounded easy didn't mean that it was. Lots of people had tried to solve the sofa couch problem and they had all failed. Gerber being the most notable with his sofa couch. Still I thought I might try my hand at it. It was a simply phrased problem. Not like the Riemann Zeta Hypothesis or any of the big six remaining problems or even the problem with gravity.
It seemed well within my reach but how to start. Well… maybe some sort of first derivative test to maximize the shape of the couch and the angle of rotation and the path the center of the couch followed as it went around the corner. Should be doable. But if it were that simple… if it were that simple then somebody else would have solved it by now. I needed to be creative. I needed that Ramanujan intuition. That little extra special spark which could show me the way to solve the abstract.
I sketched some sofa couches and built my one by one infinitely long corridor using some absolute value functions. Now to calculate the optimal path the center of the couch would follow. I imagined it would be a straight line or two. But it was hard to say for certain. And the angle of rotation the couch followed would have to depend on the shape of the couch. Which would depend on the rate of rotation. Now I saw why this was a hard problem. One could easily calculate one or the other but both simultaneously was another story.
My phone buzzed.
I picked it up.
Sooo what do you talk about with Yui-san?
It was a message from my little sister.
Oh. That airhead. I replied.
Yeah, like how do your conversations go? I got back.
OIur conversations huh…. But you know, she's always focusing on Yukinoshita. I just listen in on them most of the time.
Those two sure get along.
Mmm. But I think she's a good person.
Ohh?
She's nice to everyone. On the other hand, that's one thing I can't believe in anymore.
And that was the truth. I didn';t have the time or energy to be paraded around by the nose. Sweet girls may be my type but nice girls who were nice to everyone weren't. They'd just break my heart. I recalled getting rejected. I recalled sending text messages only to get replies in the A.M. Nice girls were like that. They were a trap. The honeypot was baited.
...awww that suchs. You think girls can't be nice to everyone? You gotta believe in girls more! GIrls are only nice to people when there's profit, you know!
I snorted at my little sisters remarks. What profit was there to be had with me. None. Zilch. Yuigahama was being nice to me because she was nice to everyone and I couldn't trust in that.
That last line of yours is why I have zero belief in girls.
I set my phone down and returned to designing my sofa couch.
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Mondays were the worst. I felt like an orange cat in my regards to Mondays. Maybe I'd eat lasagna latter too. Who knows. It meant another week of school. Or work or whatever. It meant a fresh start to the slaughter of time. I didn't like that even as I sipped away on my coffee. I added a little more creamer.
Coffee should be sweet if life is going to be so bitter.
- Hachiman Hikigaya
Komachi came crawling out of her room to meet me and breakfast. I'd cooked. I'd made a bit of a mess as usual but I had time to clean it up. I started polishing off the dishes.
"Please tell me you weren't up all night again."
"Okay. I wasn't up all night again."
Komachi sighed. "You were though. Weren't you."
"I was yes."
"You need your sleep, big brother."
"I know that. I know that. I feel relatively fine though."
"Relatively fine off of two days of missed sleep?"
"That's right. Sleep is a little bit weird anyways isn't it?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean we really spend six to ten hours unconscious for no good reason. Nearly everything more advanced than an earth worm does it. Why? I don't understand."
"What's to understand? You need rest."
"Why though."
"Why do you need rest?"
"Why do we need rest so bad we have to go to sleep. We have to be unconscious and vulnerable. Have to. Why? I don't understand why evolution went down that route. It doesn't seem like it has to be this way. Would aliens have to sleep?"
"I have no idea. I know that you need to sleep."
"Why though. And not every animal that has to sleep has to sleep the same amount. And some animals like whales and dolphins do bi-hemispherical rest. Where half their brain goes to sleep and the other half stays awake and keeps them swimming and breathing. Santa Claus can deliver that one to us. Whoever is running this shit show for real wants us to be asleep. Whoever designed the universe has it set up so conscious beings have to sleep. Otherwise we wouldn't. And that scares me."
"How so? Whoever is running this shit show for real?"
I couldn't exactly tell her about Azathoth. The name I'd given the one at the bottom and the top. The one at the nucleus of creation whistling a mad tune. Like the wind was being tortured. I could hear it.
"Call it an alien or call it god. Whoever is running the simulation. Whoever is running the universe. The thing. Whatever you want to call it. This universe at least."
"As opposed to other universes?"
"Exactly. As opposed to outside the simulation."
"Are we in a simulation?"
"I think so. I think nothing in here is real. Except maybe the other people."
"Maybe?"
"Yeah. Maybe. You can't exactly prove that you're real to another person. They call that solipsism."
"We're getting off track. You're not sleeping because you think its what god wants you to do?"
"A little."
"Okay. Why aren't you doing what god wants you to do?"
"Because god is an asshole. It's indifferent to human suffering. Particularly mine. It set up the human condition with all the misery that comes with that. It could always have not done that. But it did. So that's the why. Because god is a prick. Everything that feels good has a downside. Eating. Drinking. Drugs. Everything. Except one thing. Sleep. I don't like that. I think it's suspicious.I think there is a hidden downside. A nefarious reason for us to be sleeping. Like maybe god is saving our state which would take time. And we get a little treat out of it. So yeah."
"Go to bed. Miss some school."
"No. Don't need to. I'll sleep tonight. Don't worry."
"I'm always worried about you big brother."
"Well don't. I'll muddle through."
"Thanks for breakfast."
"Anything for my adorable little sister."
"Flattery will get you nowhere. You're still in trouble for abusing your mind like that."
"Its not my fault. My mind abused me first."
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Plowing my way through all the din and chatter around me, I walked into the classroom, just in time for morning homeroom.
There are a number of colonies established inside the classroom. There's one camp made up of boy and girl riajuu and a second camp of riajuu girls who want to be friends with everyone. There are also the jocks who are in a club but don't actually play in any of the games, the otaku, the girls who think the world revolves around them, and the quiet girls who don't cause any fuss. Then there's the small pocket of loners. And among these loners there are a number of types, and… I'm getting carried away
Even though I'd just entered the classroom, everyone was caught up in their chatter and no one particularly noticed me. Actually, to say they didn't notice me is kind of the wrong way of putting it. It would be more correct to say they just didn't bother.
Weaving my way around the number of islands situated in the classroom, I made my way to my seat. Right next door was the riajuu camp ‐ and the otaku group. Whenever they were in a group, those guys would blow up at each at other, but whenever they came to class too early, they'd say, '"My comrades aren't here yet…' as they fiddle with their phones restlessly and flick the hair out of their eyes, all the while casting sideway glances at the door in a way that was kind of cute to watch.
Since their awareness of their own friendships was about what you'd expect of otaku, they didn't really talk to people outside their own circle. They would never mingle with another group out of their own accord. When you think about it, it's quite exclusionary and discriminatory.
Basically, you might not think it, but loners are major philanthropists. Not loving anything means you love everything equally. Crap, it's only a matter of time before they start calling me Mother Hikigaya.
The first thing I did after I sat down at my seat was zone out. Gazing vaguely at my hand, there was no escaping pointless thoughts like 'Oh yeah, my nails are getting longer' or 'Hey, I'm one step closer to dying' from piling up one after another. I had utter confidence in the fact I was wasting my time.
What a pointless skill…
Class ended at some point while I was mobilising my innumerable pointless skills, and now school was over for the day.
I wasted no time preparing to go home and stood up from my seat. As usual, I didn't speak a word to the girl sitting next to me. The reason the English language curriculum in Japan isn't so good has to be because they make you talk in pairs in class.
When I went to the Service Club, Yuigahama was already there, having exited the classroom before me. Having said that, it wasn't like she was inside or anything ‐ she was standing outside the door, breathing in and out heavily.
"…what are you doing here?" I asked.
"Yikes!" she started. "Oh, H‐Hikki. I was, um, y'know? Smelling the roses or something…" Yuigahama averted her eyes uncomfortably.
"…"
"…"
Silence reigned between us.
We ducked our heads, not meeting each other's eyes. Doing that made the slightly open clubroom door come into my line of sight.
When I peered inside, Yukinoshita was in her usual spot reading a book like she always did. Somehow or other, it seemed Yuigahama ended up hesitating about going inside.
And not without reason. She hadn't been there for a whole week.
Whether it was school or work, if you suddenly took a day off, you wouldn't know what expression to wear the next time you showed up. If I skipped work out of some bad impulse, I would feel so bad about it I wouldn't want to go again ‐ that's happened to me three whole times. Wait, if we're including the times I didn't go even once, it would be five times, I guess.
That was why I understood Yuigahama's feelings all too well.
"C'mon, let's go." So I half‐dragged her inside. The door slid open with a loud, deliberate creak, attracting attention. As if annoyed by the loud noise, Yukinoshita lifted her head sharply.
"Yuigahama‐san…"
"H‐hi there, Yukinon…" Yuigahama answered in an unnaturally cheery tone, raising her hand weakly.
In response, Yukinoshita's gaze went straight back to her book as if nothing was the matter at all. "Don't dawdle around forever ‐ hurry up inside. Club activities are starting."
The girl in question was looking down, probably in an attempt to hide her face. But even from a distance, you could tell her cheeks were blushing bright red. Also, from the way she spoke, I had to wonder if she was a mother scolding her kids after they'd run away from home or something…
"O‐okay…" Yuigahama replied as she pulled up her usual seat next to Yukinoshita's. But when she pulled out the seat, the distance between them grew, and there was now enough space to fit one more person between them. As for me, I took up my usual position at the board. I still recalled most of my notes on the sofa couch problem.
Yuigahama, who would normally have been playing with her cell phone, took a seat somewhat hesitantly, both her hands balling into fists on top of her knees.
Yukinoshita attempted not to act conscious about Yuigahama's presence, but she went overboard and was instead so overly conscious that she made not the slightest move since Yuigahama sat down. It was not the comfortable, leisurely sort of silence, but a silence racked with tension.
The sound of it elicited such a horrible feeling it would make your skin crawl. Even a slight cough would reverberate around the room, and all the while the hands on the clock went on ticking away, etching out each second slowly and deliberately.
Nobody opened their mouths. But whenever there was some indication that someone was going to strike up a conversation, our ears strained to attention, unable to ignore the sign. Whenever somebody sighed, we'd immediately peer at them out of the corner of our eyes.
The silence is really dragging on, I thought… but when I looked at my wristwatch, three minutes hadn't even passed yet. What the hell? Was this the Hyperbolic Time Chamber? Even the gravity and air pressure seemed to have gotten heavier.
I gazed at the ticking hands on the clock, and just when I knew for certain that they had done a whole cycle, a feeble voice rang out. "Yuigahama‐san."
Yukinoshita closed the book she had been reading up until then with a snap and, once she had finished inhaling so deeply her shoulders shook, she exhaled slowly. When she turned around shyly to face Yuigahama, her mouth opened as if she had something to say. But no sound came out. Yuigahama had turned her whole body to face Yukinoshita, but she looked down at the floor, their eyes failing to meet.
"Er, uh… Y‐Yukinon, you had something to say about you… and Hikki, right?"
"Yes, I wanted to tell you about what we're doing after th‐"
Yuigahama cut in, interrupting what Yukinoshita had been saying. "N‐nah, if you're worried about me, don't be. I mean, sure, I was surprised and, well, kind of shocked and stuff… but you really don't have to fuss over me at all, you know? More like it's a good thing so I should be celebrating and wishing you all the best ‐ something like that…"
"Y‐you're very perceptive… I wanted to do a proper job of celebrating, you see. And also because, well, I'm grateful to you."
"N‐no waaaay… I haven't done anything worth being grateful over… nothing at all."
"How like you not to be aware of your own kindness. Even so, I am grateful… and besides, you don't hold celebrations for a person because of what they've done. I'm doing it simply because I want to."
"…O‐okay." Something told me they weren't talking about the same thing… They were only spouting choice phrases at each other and mentally filling in the blanks out of their own accord.
Yui was dodging the issue with her vague words and mannerisms, while Yukinoshita spoke in a manner that strongly suggested she was hiding her embarrassment. The lines of their conversation hardly matched at all, and it was only through context that they were piecing it together. Yukinoshita, who was now finally voicing the feelings of gratitude she was normally unable to express, seemed to blush out of awkwardness.
Meanwhile, every time Yuigahama looked at Yukinoshita's expression, her own face darkened more and more, and to hide that she occasionally formed a smile in vain. Her eyes had narrowed and were getting stormier by the second.
"Th‐that's why… that is‐" Yukinoshita fell somewhat silent after she had managed to say something.
A short span of time passed, during which we gazed at each other's faces mutely. A searching expression met anger met nervousness.
Ten seconds hadn't even passed if I counted the time, but it was more than long enough for a heavy silence to fall in before someone opened their mouth again. The three of us looked at three different places as a heavy atmosphere settled in.
"Um, you see…" Yuigahama trailed off. "When I saw the two of you together at the pet show I just thought you two were dating."
"Yuigahama there are some things that even I am angered by," Yukinoshita returned.
"I-I-I don't get it…"
"We just happened to meet up. I thought I told you that," I informed Yuigahama. "Yukinoshita was more interested in the cats than she has ever been in me."
Yuigahama looked between us and Yukinoshita slowly nodded at her to let her know I was right.
"Then you really aren't dating?"
"No more than you and I are," Yukinoshita agreed.
"I-I-I don't…"
"At any rate it's hardly relevant. Here Yuigahama I baked you a ca-"
Yukinoshita was cut off by a knock at the door and heavy breathing coming from outside. She murmured a loud 'come in,' but there was nothing from the door but more heavy breathing.
"Hikigaya-kun, won't you answer the door?"
I did. I wanted to make Yukinoshita do it but I couldn't let a girl face the source of that heavy breathing.
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-WG
