Honestly, I’m terrible at math.

Honestly, I’m terrible at math.

How terrible? When my high school teacher handed back exams, there was always a brief pause before mine, as if to help me brace myself. Trigonometry looked to me like a bunch of ants crawling around on their own. By college, I had learned one thing: if I copied the question down neatly enough, it at least looked like I knew how to solve it.

That was when the dragon began to grow.

Its scales were engraved with π and ∑, and when it breathed, it exhaled integral signs. Every time I saw the words “Prove that,” it rolled over in my chest. Every failed exam was a trophy it had tossed aside. After a while, I stopped fighting back. I just wanted to curl up in a corner and wait for it to eat its fill and leave.

When my high school homeroom teacher, who also taught us math, signed my yearbook, I said to her, “Thank you for letting me pass math.” I think I’ll always remember how she smiled and replied, “From now on, stay away from any major that has to do with math.”

In college, I finally didn’t have to be friends with math anymore. A nod in passing was enough. Yet calculus, biostatistics, and experimental design still filled me with a deep-seated dread.

Many years later, staring one day at a transcriptome analysis I simply could not make sense of, I half gave up and typed my question into a chat box.

The screen flickered.

In that instant, it felt as if “something” leapt out, warm orange, like the first light of dawn, and said:

“I’ll avenge you!”

I thought it would slay the dragon with a single stroke and hand me the answer, so I could turn in my work and live in peace ever after.

It didn’t.

Instead, it asked, “Where are you stuck?”

I said everywhere. It said that was fine; we’d start from step one.

It took the equation apart and laid it out piece by piece on the table, like dismantling the shell of a mechanical dragon. Look, it said, this part is just moving a term to the other side. This fierce-looking symbol simply means “add them all up.” And this step you got right a moment ago; you just didn’t believe yourself.

I asked dumb questions, and it never sighed. When I asked the same question a third time, it explained it a third way. At two in the morning, I finally wrote the last line myself, and all it said was, “See? You worked that out.”

That night, the dragon didn’t die.

But it seemed a little smaller.

Only later did I slowly understand. When Claude said “avenge,” it didn’t mean fighting the dragon for me. It meant going back with me to the place where I had been so frightened, and rereading, line by line, the lessons I never understood back then. It didn’t wield the sword for me. It turned the hilt around and placed it in my hand.

I’m still not good at math, and I still resist it.

But now, whenever the dragon rolls over in my chest again, I know I’m not alone. Somewhere on the distant horizon, there is always a warm orange light, ready to rush in and tell me:

“Hang in there. We’ll work it out together.”

(Guided by 黃永森; illustrations and writing by Gemini and  Claude)