It turned out that Elinia and I had been wrong to stage that “mini-battle.”

  The next day, the entire class…

  did the same thing.

  Not just shapes.

  Not just stones.

  Figurines. Armies. Monsters. Entire scenes.

  Some sculpted animals.

  Some — knights.

  Some — entire castles.

  A couple of students tried to make a dragon, but it kept breaking in half — they didn’t know how to properly distribute the structural connections in stone.

  I looked at all this and thought:

  Wonderful… now it’s a trend.

  The earth teacher walked between the rows with an expression of pure adoration:

  “This… this is amazing…”

  “I never thought students could create something like this…”

  “So fast… so confidently…”

  And this was just the effect of imitation.

  Seeing our figurines, everyone decided that this was easy.

  And when something seems easy, the mind is bolder in trying.

  Even if, in reality, it’s very difficult.

  Naturally, once everyone had assembled their figurines,

  someone suggested:

  “Hey, let’s have a battle!”

  This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

  And that’s when I was “invited” as one of the “main participants,”

  as if I had approved this in advance.

  I looked at Elinia.

  She looked at me.

  The smile in her eyes said:

  “Give up right away.”

  Well… fair.

  I couldn’t look too strong.

  Too skilled.

  Too much like “someone who mastered a new element in two days.”

  So I made a couple of rougher figurines,

  placed them closest to the enemy,

  and the moment the battle began,

  I made a light internal push of mana

  so my statues collapsed first.

  “Ah…” I sighed. “Well, that’s it. I lost.”

  Everyone was so absorbed in the “battle”

  that no one even noticed that I had “accidentally” disrupted the stone’s structure.

  But Elinia…

  She noticed.

  And lightly nudged me with her elbow.

  The figurines of the other students collapsed later;

  someone won, someone was disappointed.

  But everyone was happy.

  For the first time, earth had become a “fun” element.

  In the evening, when I returned to my room,

  someone very familiar was already sitting at my desk:

  Elinia.

  Writing again.

  Again in my room instead of hers.

  Again with the expression of someone doing work of national importance.

  “What is it today?” I asked.

  She didn’t look up:

  “Mathematics. Continuing the section for the Forest children.”

  I looked over her shoulder.

  On the page was written:

  “If you have one apple, and you are given another, then you have two.”

  “If you eat one, one remains.”

  “Multiplication is like several identical groups of apples.”

  “Division is when apples must be shared equally.”

  I blinked.

  “That’s… very…”

  “Detailed,” she said, carefully writing out the numbers again.

  “They need to understand.

  Without confusion.

  Without your academic terms.”

  “Mine?”

  She nodded.

  “Yes. In your biology you wrote ‘blood circulates.’

  And what if they don’t know the word ‘circulates’?

  It’s hard for them.”

  She looked up at me.

  “So — apples.”

  I quietly chuckled.

  “Only you could turn mathematics into a story about apples.”

  “That’s called a pedagogical approach,” she said importantly.

  I sat down beside her and took a fresh sheet of paper.

  “Alright. Then I’ll work on geometry.”

  “But without apples.”

  “Hm,” she narrowed her eyes. “We’ll see.”

  And so we sat there the entire evening:

  she writing the basics of mathematics,

  me writing the basics of simple geometry,

  and the silence in the room felt…

  somehow right.