Math Is Magic Chapter 1: CHAPTER 1: I Hate Math

Read chapter 1 of Math Is Magic by iminchoo on NovelPedia.

" I HATE MATH!!! I hate it! I hate it! I hate it! With all my heart! I HATE IT!" The elderly Vector, rolled up in his reddish blankets to shield himself from the cold, muttered these words with fury. “Damn cold!” The sound of cars speeding by prevented him from getting any sleep. “Damn cars!” It had been three days since the snow had stopped falling from the cloudy sky, completely coating the city and its streets in a deep white. “Damn snow!” Lying on the sidewalk of one of these noisy streets was Vector. Despite taking refuge under a bridge with his blankets, he couldn't stop shivering from the cold. His face was pale, his lips purple, framed by a long and disheveled white beard, while his nose and ears stood out in red. As if that weren’t enough, he was hungry, and his stomach growled in protest. “Damn hunger!” The prolonged fasting for days had pushed his old and frail body to the brink. “Enough! I can’t take it anymore!” cursed the old Vector. “I can’t take it anymore: I absolutely must eat something!” However, apart from a small bottle of water, he had nothing to satisfy his hunger. Consequently, he decided to stretch out his right hand toward the cardboard cup sitting on the ground next to him and check the results of his usual week spent begging on the streets. “Let’s see how many coins I have: 1… 2… 3… Hmm, what comes next? Tsz, damn it! Fuck math!” Furious and with a trembling hand, the old Vector simply took all the coins from the cup and stuffed them into his right pocket, the one that wasn’t torn. Then, slowly, he withdrew his arm and returned entirely under his reddish wool blankets, shielded from the cold and the snow blown under the bridge by the icy wind. “Tsz, it doesn’t matter. With this money, I should still be able to buy something tomorrow. Bread, perhaps? Maybe, if I’m lucky, I’ll even find some expired jam among the trash of some bar!” At the thought of being able to eat, especially something sweet, an unconscious smile spread across his wrinkled face. But at that moment, while he was daydreaming about the next day’s breakfast, the old Vector began to feel increasingly tired, and little by little his eyelids started to droop against his will. However, these symptoms were not due to sleep at all! After a while, the old Vector began to gasp due to sudden difficulty breathing. His eyes, fixed on the now deserted street, could see nothing. His vision was slowly becoming hazy, until he almost completely lost sight. “Shit! Am I… dying?!” grumbled the old Vector, his voice deep and intense. “Well, it’s better this way. After all, I couldn’t wait to end this shitty life!’ A few minutes later, the gentle snowfall turned into a full-blown blizzard. Ice crystals reached under the bridge, violently carried by the fierce wind. In no time, Vector found himself buried beneath a thick layer of snow. Although these extreme circumstances were testing him, the old Vector remained under his blankets. Unfortunately, he didn’t even have the strength to get up and look for a better place to take shelter. Not that there was actually one at that late hour of the night. So, curling further into his two blankets, which vainly tried to protect him from the cold, the old Vector had now given up on that idea. “I think... my time has come...” As to be expected at the point of death, a flurry of memories flooded the mind of the old Vector. “So it’s true that your whole life flashes before your eyes, huh?” With his gaze fixed on an invisible horizon, Vector admired the distant memories of his youth, spent with his parents. Or at least, until their presence. ‘Mom…’ Suddenly, when Vector was only 5 years old, she completely disappeared without a trace. The police quickly speculated that she had been kidnapped, accusing a criminal organization that, at that time, was abducting people to dismember them and sell their organs on the black market. The badly mutilated bodies of the victims were numerous, and, as in other cases where the bodies