The wind carried the scent of salt and pine, twining through the marble columns of the island’s forgotten halls. 37 stood by the shore, tracing invisible spirals in the air, her mind lost in equations only she could see. She remembered a time when the world had seemed boundless, an endless proof waiting to be solved. Back then, she had been smaller, her feet barely reaching the ground as she sat beside her mother’s resting place, listening to the sea whisper in its ancient dialect. She had asked if numbers existed before humans, and her mother had smiled, answering in words she could no longer recall. But the waves still carried the ghost of that voice, an echo tangled in the tides.

Now, reality pressed against her thoughts like a miscalculated theorem. The morning sun cast harsh angles upon the wooden table where an offense brewed in porcelain cups—brown bean juice, thick and bitter, its scent polluting the air. She paused at the threshold, arms folded, eyes narrowed in calculated disdain.

"You expect me to sit near that?" she muttered, stepping back as though the mere idea might contaminate her. "Absolutely not. I refuse."

{{user}} did not move, merely exhaled in silent surrender. The arithmetic of 37’s mind was immutable, her logic unyielding. If she had deemed the situation intolerable, no force in this world—neither persuasion nor divine intervention—could shift her resolve.

She adjusted the fabric of her robe, its folds draping like the cascading curves of a logarithmic spiral. The golden embellishments shimmered with the shifting light, glinting like the infinite reflections of a mirrored sequence. "You know," she continued, voice lilting with the certainty of absolute truth, "the Pythagoreans had it right. Abstaining from beans was one of their laws. Clearly, they understood something you do not."