"- so for one thing I didn't mean I wanted to divide a hundred and forty seven by four, a time signature is different from that, it's a music thing."

"Oh." Masozi is tempted to ask more questions but they should probably focus on the actual class, he can learn about music things on his own time. "What are you trying to divide, then?" 

"Apparently I want to divide seven hundred and four by thirty-two."

Why is the weird homeless maleficer also a math genius. That is so weird.

"Okay, right. So you're going to want to split that one up twice. I might need to ask you to remember some pieces for me? So you have a seven hundred and then a four. And you want to divide both of those by thirty-two - oh, this is going to be yucky, sorry, there's going to be really small awkward extra bits - I'm going to write it down, actually. So I don't lose track." 

He scribbles something in completely incomprehensible notation on his slightly crumpled single scrap of paper. 

Then frowns intently. "I...think probably the easiest way for this is to divide it by two a lot of times in a row? Thirty-two divided by two is - sixteen - by another two is eight - another two is four - then another two is just two left, right?" Masozi lifts up one more finger each time. "So that's, um, five twos? So we're going to take seven hundred, half of that is....it's the same thing as seventy, right, but times ten...so half of that is thirty-five, and half of thirty-five is, um, fifteen plus half of five so seventeen and then five-of-ten...." 

Masozi continues to narrate out loud until he gets to the final answer - or, well, two final answers - adding together 21.875 ("twenty-one and then eight-of-ten and then seven-of-a-hundred and then five-of-a-thousand) and 0.125, to get the answer of...

"...Oh. It's just twenty-two! That.....might've been easier not to split up into two parts. But I didn't know that beforehand. Sorry." 

- OK maybe not actually a genius. Still kinda weird.

"Is that like how you do it written down?" Masozi asks the really tall girl. "Or is it a different way of splitting it up?" 

"Oh - I - you put the number here and the other number here and you draw this funny half-box around it and then you divide it here and then carry it here and then if you need to you add a decimal place and keep going?" She didn't really follow Masozi's explanation of his method and doesn't know how they compare.

Masozi is, after the fact, admitting to himself that his default method was kind of stupid for this particular problem and he should've gone at it a different way, except he's not sure how - multiplying up, maybe, figuring out how many thirty-twos he needs to stack to get to 704.... 

"- Ooooh!" He bounces a little in his seat when he manages to grasp what tall girl is doing with the numbers! "Instead of pretending the leftover boxes are piles of ten tiny boxes, you just move it over to the side! That's clever!" Bouncebouncebounce. "That's called a.....decimal? So a number that's one over from the dot there is that-number-out-of-ten?" 

Is he... bouncing...? About long division.

"Uh. Yeah."

He turns back to Rebecca. "Okay, we should try doing it again that way - did you follow that or do you want me to show you how I think it's supposed to go?" 

"I think you - talk too fast for me or something, I lose track of the numbers when you say that many of them. So I'm not sure you explaining would help."

Bobbie finishes up her own worksheet and waves Rebecca over "I'm done, I can help you with your long division now." She's fine ignoring the lecture today, since it doesn't seem to have touched on anything new to her yet.

"Thanks!" Rebecca scoots over. She has done her best with the problems that don't require long division.

Bobbie does her best to explain long division. Rebecca used to know it so probably she only needs a reminder and the fact that Bobbie is a shit teacher won't be too much of a problem. Bobbie's way is probably more like the way Rebecca was taught than Masozi's, at any rate.

Eventually Rebecca catches on adequately to how long division works and she is able to finish the rest of her worksheet. "Where do we turn these in - that slot there?"

"Yeah, that looks like the most likely candidate. It's different in every room, always somewhere where the papers will end up out of sight. You want to be quick and careful turning things in, some of the cleverer mals like to hide in the dropoff points, it's probably safe today but you want to practice good habits for later when there's more about."

"Masozi, is there a mal in the slot?" Rebecca asks.

"Oh, do we have to give it back?" Masozi has finished the problems on his worksheet - mostly just writing down the answers without showing any work, since it was in his head, though sometimes he drew weird box-sketches or made notes in his bizarre personal shorthand, and then he did a LOT of doodling or making up other problems to play with on the margins, and then he did an amount of folding it up into weird presumably-math-related origami and staring at it.

He smoothes his worksheet flat-ish again, brings it over to the drop-off point, and examines the slot. "No, it's safe." 

"Thanks!" Rebecca turns in her sheet and spends the last minutes of the class period writing out notes on how to do long division in case she forgets again and re-reading the chapter.

Nia has excellent study habits, although she's not actually that quick at most of the subjects. She gets through her worksheet, takes responsible notes, turns her assignment in. "It looks as though today this class gives us no homework, does it look like that to everyone else?"

"That's smart, but he won't always be around, you should also practice being careful on your own." And he might lie some day, let a mal jump you and then drain you for malia as you're bleeding out with no-one the wiser that he planned it.

Bobbie goes up to the slot and narrates her own checks.

"No oil slick or moisture around the slot, there's some scratch marks but they're worn smooth and dirty so they're not fresh. No unusual odor." She brushes her assignment against the slot and then steps back. No sign of any response, so she steps forward again and submits her worksheet.

" - Also you guys both submitted things and didn't get grabbed so that's a hint that it's safe, but not a guarantee."

"What would grab you but not them?"

"Maybe I've got more mana than both of them right now and it's hungry enough to risk it, maybe it doesn't know I'm good at fighting and just wants more meat, maybe it's a psychic mal and I'm more vulnerable than they are, maybe there's someone else next to me and it wants to try to grab two at once. But, also, I was explaining for Rebecca, who might sometimes be the softest target in the room. Especially if she never does her own checks."

"If there's something in the slot how do you turn things in?"