GABRIEL #4
Blue doesn’t react immediately. He glances at the tablet lying beside him, reads something on it, then slowly lifts his head back toward me.
"Interesting," he says finally, but he doesn’t sound interested at all. "Show me."
I’m almost sure he doesn’t believe me, or thinks I can only work with small numbers.
I lean back slightly, already feeling that familiar surge of excitement. My relatives used to throw tough challenges at me, tossing out huge numbers for me to calculate. It fascinated everyone, they always said my brain worked like a computer.
So with a grin, I say, "Give me something."
He nudges his tablet aside with one finger, then folds his hands.
"Twelve thousand, three hundred forty-seven times eighty-six."
Easy.
"One million, sixty-one thousand, eight hundred forty-two," I answer without hesitation.
A small nod. "Correct."
No praise, no surprise. Just ‘correct’? Show me a person who can give an answer in a -second span, it’s not that common, believe me, so I kinda expected a bit more, but oh well. I'm not done here.
I narrow my eyes a little. "Next."
"Four hundred ninety-seven thousand, eight hundred twelve times three hundred six."
Still easy.
I break it down in my head automatically, numbers sliding into place.
"One hundred fifty-two million, three hundred thirty thousand, four hundred seventy-two."
Blue watches me for a second longer this time, then inclines his head. "Yes."
His expression remains unreadable.
"Alright," he says. "Division. Eight million, four hundred seventy-two thousand, nine hundred sixteen divided by four thousand, three hundred seven."
A grin immediately tugs at my mouth.
Now that’s more like it.
I lean back slightly, already pulling the numbers apart in my head.
"Four thousand three hundred seven times two thousand is too high… nineteen hundred gets closer…"
I pause briefly, refining it.
Then the structure locks into place.
"One thousand, nine hundred sixty-six point three zero seven one seven," I say, only slowing slightly near the end as the decimals keep unfolding.
For the first time tonight, Blue’s expression shifts almost imperceptibly.
A small nod.
"Correct."
There’s a pause. I wait for at least a hint of admiration, but nothing comes.
"Okay," I say, with a more intense tone. "Let’s switch it up. Something harder."
His gaze changes, just slightly. Interest, maybe?
"Square roots," I insist. "Try me."
A faint pause, like he’s deciding how far to go.
"Approximate the square root of 7,389 to three decimal places."
I nod once, already moving numbers around in my mind as they fall into place. This is much harder, but still doable. "Eighty-five squared is seventy-two twenty-five. Eighty-six is seventy-three ninety-six… so it’s between," I mutter, pushing faster, but it’s not as clean anymore, not like before.
"Closer to eighty-six. Eighty-five point nine… maybe nine-five, umm—"
"Eighty-five point nine five eight one," Blue says.
I look up immediately. "Why did you interrupt me? I was narrowing it down!"
"Sorry."
I clench my jaw and just have to ask.
"You didn’t just calculate it?"
He says nothing.
"You have those electronic glasses; I’m sure you can project a calculator in them."
Blue just takes off his glasses and sets them aside. His face is bare now, but if I thought he’d look less stern without them, I was wrong. That statuesque, haughty aura is still there in every smooth line of his features.
I exhale through my nose. "You didn’t let me finish the calculation. Try me again."
Blue doesn’t hesitate this time.
"Natural logarithm of 2, to five decimal places."
I let out a short laugh. "Damn! That’s not even the same category!"
"No," he says calmly. "It isn’t. Are you up for a challenge?"
I frown, because I foresee problems, but try anyway. Of course, with something this complex, my brain’s starting to overheat. After a good minute of pushing through it, I mutter, "Zero point six nine three… something."
This time, Blue waits.
I’m practically frying my brain, and maybe I could work it out, but the stress and the need to impress him get me stuck in my own head. I let out a breath.
"Zero point six nine three one? Or two…"
Silence. "Final answer?"
I shrug. "I’d need more time to think."
"0.693147."
His answer is flat, immediate. And it’s even accurate to six decimal places, dammit!
I lean back, jaw tightening even more.
"Yeah! I was basically correct, just rounded it off a bit."
"Basically."
"Okay. You got me, genius. So you can do it too, mental math like that?"
There’s that subtle edge to him now, but not arrogance.
"I can."
I study him for a second, then I push the empty plate away from me, my expression probably a little sour.
"Alright," I say. "One more."
Blue watches me for a second, then tilts his head just slightly.
"Are you sure you want to continue?" he asks, tone almost casual. "Or should we stop here?"
I let out a short breath, rolling my shoulders once like that might somehow reset my brain, but it won’t.
"No… let’s keep going," I say, a little less confident than before. "Give me something."
There’s a brief pause, like he’s deciding how far to push.
"Natural logarithm of 7.3," he says slowly. "To four decimal places."
I blink once.
Okay. That’s… yeah. That’s not nice. I lean forward slightly, elbows on the table, staring at nothing now, trying to pull something usable out of my head.
"Alright… ln(7.3)… ln(7) plus… correction," I mutter under my breath. "ln(7) is… about 1.9459… no, wait, 1.9459 is ln(7), yeah…"
I pause, recalculating, adjusting. "7.3 is slightly higher… so derivative is 1/x… around 1/7… so about 0.14 per unit… times 0.3… so about 0.042… which puts it somewhere near 1.988," I mutter, "but I’m not fully trusting the last step."
Silence. I look up at him, already knowing I’m not one hundred percent right.
"1.9879… more precisely 1.9880," Blue says almost softly.
I exhale, a short, sharp breath. "Yeah. Knew I was circling it."
"You overcorrected slightly," he replies with a calm, relaxed expression. "Your linear approximation was acceptable, but you rounded too aggressively in the intermediate step."
I huff a quiet laugh, rubbing the back of my neck. "Yeah, I felt that. Stress can do that. It slipped at the end."
"You could also anchor to ln(7.389)," he adds. "Which is exactly 2. It simplifies the adjustment."
I glance at him, then shake my head with a small, fake smile.
"Right. Of course it does."
He doesn’t smile back, but there’s something faintly different in his expression now, more engaged.
A brief pause settles between us.
Well. While I was hoping to shine here, I ended up feeling almost like I made a fool of myself in front of him. It sours my mood; I sit there with my head down for a moment, then shake it off when I spot a chance to even the score. What if we switch roles?
"Alrighty," I say slowly. "Your turn."
His eyes narrow just slightly. "Go ahead."
I don’t ease into it this time. If I’m going down, I might as well not be alone.
"e to the power of 3.7," I say. "Four decimal places."
Yeah, so I gave him a real challenge. If he doesn’t actually have a calculator in his head, working that out will be borderline miraculous.
For a heartbeat, nothing changes.
Blue goes still. Not tense, not frozen, distant.
His eyes shift, unfocused, like he’s looking straight through me instead of at me, as if whatever he needs isn’t in the room anymore.
There’s no movement, no murmured steps, nothing I can follow or latch onto, just silence.
A second passes while his brain works. Maybe six seconds.
Then, just as simply:
"Forty point four four seven three."
That’s it. No hesitation, just the answer.
I blink, then immediately grab my phone, unlocking it fast, pulling up Calculator. My thumb moves quickly as I punch it in.
e^3.7
Enter.
40.4473
I stare at the screen. Then slowly lift my head back up to him.
My jaw drops. "Блять, не может быть! [5]You’ve got to be kidding me. That's superhuman!"
Blue doesn’t react. He just reaches for his green tea, like this was nothing worth commenting on.
To anyone who isn’t into math, it probably looks like just a number raised to a power, but it really isn’t.
Multiplication is something you can break apart and rebuild, and square roots come down to bracketing between known squares and refining the estimate, so there’s always some structure, something you can hold onto in your head.
This isn’t like that.
With e^3.7, there’s nothing obvious to break down and no intuitive range to anchor yourself to.
To get anywhere close, you need to know key values like e^2 or e^3 from memory, then split the exponent and recombine everything, or rely on methods people usually learn in higher-level math, not something you casually run through over lunch.
It’s not quick calculation anymore, it’s more like handling an entire system at once.
I shake my head slowly, still looking at him, trying to figure out what the hell I’m dealing with now.
"Yeah," I mutter. "That’s… that’s not normal."
"Believe me, that’s not even the hardest part. In science, the problems get far more complex."
Blue takes another sip of his green tea, like we’re discussing the weather.
What’s strange about it is that he says it completely without arrogance, as if he were stating raw facts that don’t require approval or admiration.
I let out a quiet scoff. "Oh, I’m sure."
His gaze shifts back to me.
"In my work, I don’t deal with single values," he continues. "I track entire systems. Simultaneously."
I raise an eyebrow. "Meaning?"
Blue sets the cup down with a smooth motion.
"Imagine holding a molecular structure in your head. Not as a diagram, but as a dynamic object. Bonds under tension, electron density shifting, conformations changing with temperature and pH."
I don’t interrupt. I genuinely want to know.