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The dorms were certainly a godsend, but even with that major bulk of financial burden gone, Ochako couldn’t allow herself to grow complacent. The more she kept on top of her budget, the more money she would have once she graduated! With a proper financial buffer, she’d be off to a wonderful start!
There was only one issue with that… The numbers did not want to cooperate with her.
It was one thing to keep herself going when there was the threat of homelessness if she failed; But now, when she lived in the dorms with food provided, the urgency just… wasn’t there.
And with the lack of urgency somehow all her hard-earned budgeting skills have disappeared off into the aether.
Ochako groaned when her sums offered a yet another result — three times she had calculated it, and this was the third unique number she’s gotten! — collapsing on the kitchen table.
She turned her head so that her cheek rested on the cold wood, idly playing with her pen. It was getting late. Usually, when the numbers were this uncooperative, she’d drink coffee to force her brain into gear, but if she did that now, she wouldn’t be able to go to sleep until far too late into the night.
The best idea would probably be to just leave it for tomorrow, but she had really wanted to get it done tonight…
“Hey, Uraraka,” Kaminari said as he walked into the kitchen, beelining for the table the moment he noticed her. “Whatcha doing?”
“I’m trying to balance my budget.” Ochako straightened out and stretched, her spine cracking ominously. “But the numbers just won’t cooperate with me!”
“Oooo.” Kaminari seemed to chew on that for a moment. “Do you mind if I give it a try?”
Ochako squinted her eyes doubtfully. It was well known that Kaminari was dead last in their class when it came to maths, but… Well. He couldn’t do any worse than she did, could he?
“Knock yourself out,” she said with a gesture towards the papers, getting up to make herself a sandwich. Maths were a very calorie-demanding activity, and she’s been at it for hours, she deserved a nice snack! A nice, fully free snack…
By the time she finished fixing herself a plate — she asked Kaminari if he wanted one, too, but he had just absently hummed in refusal — and tidied up the counters back to their pre-usage state, barely any time had passed.
And back at the table, Kaminari seemed to be hard at work, having borrowed one of Ochako’s glittery pens and scribbling away on an empty sheet of paper.
She went to sit back at the table, eating her lovely sandwich. Barely halfway through, Kaminari straightened out with a satisfied noise, pushing the paper towards Ochako.
“I think I’m done,” he said.
Ochako looked at the paper and choked on the sandwich. Kaminari thumped her on the back a couple times before she managed to catch her breath, and she discarded the sandwich in favour of the paper.
Opening the calculator app on her phone, she tried running the numbers… And it all seemed to fit. That was a perfectly balanced budget, with the most savings Ochako had ever been able to wrangle out of it!
“...how?” She asked, eyes still roving over the lines. “How are you doing this?”
Kaminari shrugged. “It’s just matching the numbers. Like a game!”
Her eyes wide, she turned to look at Kaminari. “Then how are you failing maths??”
At that, Kaminari pouted. “Because math class uses evil numbers and I hate them very much.”