Leo sighed. “Let me guess. The answers are in the reflection?”
Leo froze. The room smelled suddenly of old paper and something metallic—like a calculator left in the rain. He looked down. The problem numbers were rearranging themselves. Problem 147 had become Problem 148. Problem 148 had become a mirror image of Problem 42 from three weeks ago.
He erased his last attempt and started over. Domain: x^2+3x-4 > 0 and 2x+6 > 0. Solve the equality: x^2+3x-4 = 2x+6 → x^2 + x -10 = 0 → x = [-1 ± √(1+40)]/2 = (-1 ± √41)/2. Then check signs. One solution failed the domain. Only one remained.
Leo nodded. “The answers were always inside the rules. I just had to read between the lines.”
He wrote the final x. The page glowed faintly, then settled.
Under his desk lamp, the shadow of his pencil stub formed a strange shape: an L, then a horizontal line, then another L. Like a tiny, cryptic equation. He blinked. The shadow shifted—no, it moved .