“Arghh…” Kaito groans while yanking his hair. “I do not understand any shit you are talking about, Hasegawa! Momentum, quantum, fucking universe, and what? nuclear? Whom the lunatic bastard taught nuclear to a high schooler???”

Kicking away the book that is scattered on the veranda, Kaito attempts to run away, but Ren quickly grabs him by his collar. “Calm down your dramatic ass and eat this first” 

“What is this?” Kaito looks at the bundle of tissue Ren shoved into his palm. 

“My leftover breakfast.” Ren shrugs indifferently. When Kaito finds an Onigiri inside, he doesn’t think too much and eats it. 

“Wah suh I duh nou?”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, disgusting.” Ren saves his books from getting dirtied by Kaito’s spit. “Anyway, we just haven't even started yet. This is all just a study plan from one subject; there are still chemistry, biology, literature, English, history, and maths.”

Choking, Kaito coughs while pounding his chest. “As expected, this is all just hopeless. There’s no way I can catch up. I never had a knack for studying, to begin with, I shouldn’t aim too high. Let’s just forget this.” Kaito ducks his head low and sighs despondently. “Don’t worry, I’ll still teach you music, if it’s you, you could learn it fast”

Ren doesn’t answer Kaito’s depressing give-up declaration right away. Instead, he yanks on Kaito’s collar shirt for the second time, but this way is from the front. “Damare! Don’t joke with me!” He pulls Kaito in to level their eyes. Struck him with a scorching glare. “Do you think life is so easy that you can simply give up on something you are not good at? Surrender even before fighting, can you be more pathetic?”

“Ha?” Kaito glowers indignantly.

Sighing, Kaito releases his grip on Kaito’s shirt. “I don’t care about your ambition or whether you are still going to college or not. But, your failure will be my failure as well since I’m the one in charge of your studying. Teachers entrusted you to me, which means they believe I can handle you well. So you better not ruin it.”

Ren’s cold reasons don't surprise Kaito anymore, “But do you think this even makes sense? Because I honestly don't see the point why I should be good in every subject. Why can’t I just focus on one thing I am truly passionate about?”

“I wish I can give you an answer, Sato.” Ren smiles bitterly. “Do you think I’m not frustrated? I got all perfect but they still demand to fix my single flaw otherwise I would be unqualified. Does that sound make sense to you? So get your spine straight!” Ren smacks Kaito’s slouches back with his palm. “We are in this together. Besides, I have my own method that will pique your interest.”

“Really? How???” Kaito perks up, searching for hope in Ren’s turn of phrase.

“You said you don’t see why you should learn all these subjects, right?” Ren intertwined his fingers, looking serious.

“So?”

“Do you know that Mozart turns out good in maths?” Ren grins at Kaito’s puzzled face. “I’ve been doing some research and it’s quite known that there is mathematical symmetry to Mozart's music. Mozart even had a musical composition dice game which had performers roll the dice to decide which bar would be played. The Magic Flute is said to have the number three included in many ways such as the three-note rhythm sequence. The same case is also found in Beethoven's music. So if you want to pursue music in university you’ll need maths since music and maths are correlated; time signatures beats per minute and formulaic progressions and so on.”

The world feels momentarily paused, Ren just uncovered a whole new perspective that Kaito never thought of.  “Okay, if you connect it that way, I kinda understand. But the problem is I never learn music in an orthodox way. Heck, I never even remember when I started, when I started to realise not everyone could play instruments I was like ‘oh shit, how did I learn this?’. If I’m being honest, playing piano or guitar is much easier than learning martial arts, that’s why I wanted to do music as my career rather than continue being a pro athlete”

Ren listens to him attentively. This is perhaps the first time Kaito tells about himself - about his reason for suddenly changing the wheel from being an athlete to being a scholar in music. As a class president, Ren has many acquaintances from different classes and the girls flocking around him also become his source of information about what’s happening in school, one of them is about their school’s musician.  

The one who accompanied the choir team in every championship and event. Playing the guitar at last year's school festival. And even sometimes hired by teachers and their relatives to serenade their wedding blessing and ceremony. For a small town in a rural area like this, not everyone has the luxury to learn to play fancy instruments like the piano and electric guitar, so Kaito’s talent is quite well-known.

“You don’t remember when you learned it perhaps because you learned it at a very young age,” Ren concludes. “Just like you don’t remember learning to walk or talk. It could happen very naturally as I assumed your parents might be the ones who taught you.” Kaito doesn’t answer which Ren assumes he’s true. “Anyway, don’t worry. Maths might sound complicated but once you actually learn it, you may feel familiar with it, after all, Notes and rhythms, as well as music theory, are based on maths. Reading music and counting rhythms require maths skills - you could already be an expert without you realising.”

“Let’s say what you said is true.” Kaito tries to digest everything and moves to another problem. “Maths might be doable. But how about other subjects?”

“Social, literature, English; all possible to learn by skimming and memorising. As long as you are diligent in reading the substance over and over again, you could at least pass the exam with sufficient scores. The problem is with Chemistry, Biology and Physics” Ren stands up, fixing his tie. He said ‘problem’ but Kaito doesn’t sense any distress in Ren’s gesture. He leisurely walks around the training space and curiously checks the training equipment. “Those subjects are better to learn by understanding the concept rather than memorising it. Fortunately, we are allowed to use the lab. So I’ll give you this.” Ren hands Kaito a few notebooks with different colour covers. “Those contain summaries of the material that I learned at cram school. Read the theory before our session and then I'll explain the concept.”

Kaito can already feel his head pounding, but he also knows that complaining wouldn’t help either. This must be hard for Ren too, coming up with an effective method to teach is way harder than Kaito who has everything fed into his mouth. In the end, everything depends on his effort in his study. He opens the book and discovers Ren’s neat hand-written.

“You lend me this?” Kaito asks, no matter how he looks at the books it seems takes forever to compile them.

“Yeah, I photocopied them, so you can use them until the entrance exam.” Ren picks up Kaito’s cane and tries to hit the wooden karate dummy sloppily. “Anyway, since today I explained about the physics study plan, how about we start with physics today?”

“Okay…Though, I Can't guarantee you I will understand an ounce of what you are talking about.” Kaito says with zero confidence in his tone. His usual cocksure expression especially whenever he taught his juniors now diverts into unsure and self-conscious gestures. 

 Ren doesn’t reply and continues picking and rearranging random stuff into random positions; Bucket, tire, broom, flower pot. And other trivial things. He also seems to wander around the training ground, searching for something.

“Hasegawa, What are you doing?” Kaito has been confused since then. He thought Ren was just curious about the Kyokushin club training space, but Ren keeps doing something weird. “The kids had tidied this place up. Don’t make a mess. I thought we were going to study physics.”

“Indeed, we are.” Brushing his palms, Ren stood in the middle of the training ground. Loosen his tie and unbutton his cuffs.”Now, get your ass up and come at me”

“What the hell???” Kaito makes a ridiculous face.

/Come at him??? What does he mean???/

Kaito stammers, panicking. “So-sorry but ain’t we progressing too fast? I mean we just know each other and-”

“What no sense are you sprouting about?” Ren cuts him before Kaito gets more weird thoughts. “I mean, come and fight me!”