Chapter 63 Framing Elise
Elise opened the take-out carrier bag to reveal the delicately-prepared dishes. Her stomach rumbled at the sight of the food and before long, the three girls sat on their stools and began to dig in.
“This is so good!” Samantha exclaimed in delight as she took a bite of one of the dishes.
Upon hearing this, Riley quickly sampled a mouthful of the food as well. “That’s incredible. I need to know the name of the restaurant so that I can drop by in the future.”
“I could bring the both of you along next time,” Elise offered heartily.
The two girls agreed earnestly, and as Riley ate her supper, she caught a glimpse of Samantha’s wrist watch. “Samantha, is that a new watch you’re wearing? It’s gorgeous!”
“Thanks. My daddy gave it to me for my birthday,” Samantha explained. “It’s a limited edition from Chanel; I couldn’t bear to take it out of the box until two days ago.”
“It’s beautiful. I should get my dad to buy me one, too,” Riley said. She glanced over at Elise and asked cheerily, “Do you have a watch that you like, Elise? I’ll get it for you as a gift one of these days.”
Elise, however, made her opinion known. “I’m not really into watches. I’ve always thought of them as impractical accessories.”
“Come on, you can tell a lot about a person from the watch they’re wearing and it’s scarily accurate,” Riley argued. “It’s like a symbol of your status or something.”
Samantha nodded in agreement. “My daddy and his business partners all have a staple piece in their watch collection. The watches represent who they are.”
Elise hummed in response, conceding to the argument. “Well, in that case, I should probably read up on this theory.”
They talked while they devoured the food amd after they had polished the take-out containers clean, they worked through a couple more questions before washing up for bed.
Elise woke earlier the next morning. She arrived at the classroom only to find that it was empty save for Zachary, who had his head down as he scribbled furiously onto a piece of paper.
It was only after she went closer to him that she noticed the crumpled papers being littered on the floor around his desk. She gingerly picked one of them up and opened it, trying to smoothen the edges.
“Your workings are wrong in the first place.” Elise’s voice rang out close to Zachary’s ear and he was so stunned that he stopped scribbling at once. He looked up and met her gaze before she saw that she was staring at the test paper he had discarded.
He had been trying to solve that question with all the workings he could come up with, all to no avail. He didn’t think she would show up just as he was reaching the peak of frustration.
“Do you know how to solve it?” he asked, gazing at her intently.
She did not answer him as she took the pencil on his desk and drew an auxiliary line on his diagram. “You should have drawn the auxiliary line here instead and used Pythogaras’ theorem to determine the remaining two angles. After that, you use the same formula for this side of the triangle, and finally use trigonometry to come up with the final answer.”
Elise spoke gently but firmly and steadily, her voice calming Zachary in an instant. She had lowered her head as she explained the workings to him, drawing his attention to the diagram on the draft as she did so. He could just detect the faint scent of her shampoo lingering on her hair and for a moment, he felt like someone was pulling at his heartstrings.
A somewhat embarrassed Zachary quickly looked away and responded, “I’ll give it a shot.”
With that, he picked up his pen and gave her method a shot. She watched as he scribbled his workings and when she was sure he could figure it out, she sauntered over to her own seat.
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