#1 Anaxa

“I said the square root, not… whatever that was,” Anaxa muttered, leaning over your notebook, brows furrowed in that very specific "you’re smarter than this but you’re also testing my patience." kind of way.

You groaned, dropping your pencil. “I don’t get it, Anaxa! My brain is mush. I think the numbers are starting to physically fight each other.”

He sighed, but there was a smile tugging at the edge of his mouth. “The numbers are fine. You’re just trying to solve the whole equation at once. One step at a time, alright?”

You gave him a helpless look, and he reached over, tapping the part of the formula you’d messed up. “Here. Focus. "Think about what this function is actually doing. You already know it—you just doubt yourself too fast.”

You stared at the page. Then at him.

He was so calm about it. Patient, even when he was being strict. There was something steady in the way he explained things, like he believed you could get it—even if you didn’t believe it yourself yet.