Tutor (Ushijima Wakatoshi x Reader)

Chapter 01

In your first year of college, you soon noticed that your friends from high school gradually stopped inviting you to get-togethers. They stopped calling to see how you were and didn't message you first anymore.

Once you came to that realization, at first you thought badly of them. But if you took a deep look at yourself, you had to admit that it was actually you who was bad at keeping friendships going. Your friends always had to ask you to hang out, you rarely showed any initiative to contact them. Not even just to ask how they were doing, let alone ask them to hang out with you.

When you thought about why that was a bit more, you came to the conclusion that you had very little in common with your 'friends' and never really had fun being in their presence. Sure some of their stories were entertaining and made you laugh, but you had never felt that you could be yourself with them.

You felt that if somehow you became the topic of conversation, that none of them would be interested. Your lifestyle was different, your hobbies were different, your taste in music and entertainment,...

When one year of college had passed, you were basically alone. 

During that one year, you had also discovered another thing. You were not only bad at keeping friends, you were even worse at making new ones.

You started the second year on your own, and soon you started wishing you had someone to talk to. Someone you could have conversations with that went beyond 'Good morning.' or 'Do you know where our next class is?'. But you had trouble trying to get close to anyone.

You did not want to feel the guilt if you failed to keep the friendship going. But you also didn't want to feel obligated to converse with someone you had no interest in and who felt the same about you.

After thinking about it for a little while, you decided that it might be better if you went to look for someone online.

You signed up on a few 'looking for friends' websites and browsed profiles of men and women from around the globe. You didn't have a lot of requirements; gender, looks, ethnicity, and to a certain degree, age didn't matter to you. All you wanted was to find someone you could connect with.

Someone you could talk with for a few minutes and feel that special connection. Someone that you would be just as excited to message in the morning as you would be excited to see a message from.

But by looking for someone who was in a different time zone you gave yourself an easy way out. If you sensed that you didn't click with the person after all, you could just blame the time difference and not have to talk with them anymore.

After scrolling through sites and profiles for a while you came to the conclusion that most people who used these kinds of sites seemed to be either looking for love, too old or young for you to connect with, or scammers. You were about to call it quits for the day when your eye fell on something different.

'Looking for English teacher'

Telling yourself this was really the last link you would check out today, you clicked it to read more.

'Need teacher for English for travel.'

That barely gave you more information than the title had, so you clicked on his username, which looked Japanese at first glance, to take a look at the guy's profile. As expected the profile barely contained any information as well, and you had the feeling that he had plucked a picture from the internet to make himself look more appealing. With a sigh, you decided that this was most likely some sort of scam and closed your browser.

It had gotten time for dinner and you moved to the kitchen to check your fridge. There were just enough ingredients for you to whip up something that could classify as 'healthier than cup noodles'.

When you were done cooking, you settled down with your bowl on the old couch in front of the tv in your tiny studio.

When you had started college, you had wanted to rent a place instead of staying in a dorm and, lucky for you, your parents had agreed. They thought that it would be good practice for living on your own and told you that they would pay half of the rent, leaving you to take care of the rest. You got a part-time job on the weekend to pay for your half of the rent and your living expenses.

After a while, you had found out that the hardest part of living on your own was going to bed on time. At home, it had been easy to just follow along when the rest of your family went to sleep. But on your own, there was always something that kept you from going to bed. Watch just one more episode, read one more chapter, scroll just a little longer,...

You rarely made it to bed before midnight and that made getting up in time for your classes more and more of a challenge.

That night you managed to drag yourself to bed at 12.30 am, after binge-watching the new season of an anime that you had loved the first season of. Before drifting off to sleep, your mind wandered back to the guy who was looking for someone to teach him English.

The more you thought about it, the more it seemed like a good idea to contact him after all. If it was a scam, the block button was right there. However, if it wasn't a scam, teaching English might be a good way to get some conversation going. And if you felt like you weren't interested in having him as a friend, you could just tell him you didn't have time for teaching anymore.

You took your phone from the nightstand and looked for the guy's profile again.

"Ushijima Wakatoshi." That sounded to you like it could be an actual name, but it could just as well be a made-up nickname. It definitely sounded Japanese though, which piqued your interest even more.

His profile picture was also of a guy of Asian origin, but you were 100% sure that was not really him. Online, people used fake pictures all the time. You yourself had just uploaded a picture of one of your favorite anime characters.

If he was really as good-looking as the photo suggested then nevermind being friends with him, he'd be beyond boyfriend material.

After contemplating for a little while longer, you tapped the 'contact' button and typed a message to him. Since he was obviously not great at English, you made it a really short and simple one.

'If you are interested, I'll teach you English.' You signed the sentence with your nickname and tapped 'send'.

You put your phone back in its place before laying back down and soon dozed off to sleep.