Tutor (Ushijima Wakatoshi x Reader)

Chapter 02

It was around 4 am when you were shocked awake by the noise of your phone vibrating. You had almost drifted back to sleep when you had the thought that if someone was trying to contact you in the middle of the night, it could very well be an emergency.

Suddenly very awake, you sat up and grabbed your phone.

A sigh escaped your lips when, to your relief, you saw that it was not an emergency. Your relief was replaced with curiosity when you saw that it was in fact a notification that the guy looking for English lessons had replied to your message.

You tapped the notification to see what he had written.

'Yes.'

That was it? He woke you up at 4 am for 'yes'? Irritated, you crawled back under your blankets to try and get some more rest before you had to get up for college in the morning.

That evening, once you had returned from a tiring day, you crashed on your couch with your laptop. After checking your e-mails and social networks, you found yourself staring at the one-word message.

You clicked the reply button and started thinking of what to type, when the sound of the oven notified you that your pizza was done. You put your laptop aside and watched a movie while you ate.

After washing the dishes, you went to take a shower and put on your pajamas before grabbing a cup of hot chocolate. You crawled onto the couch with your warm mug and laptop, determined to actually reply to Ushijima's message this time.

'How shall we do lessons? Do you want to email each other? When do you have time? What timezone are you in?'

You asked some questions hoping to provoke a longer answer from him, you did not put a lot of effort into formatting or anything since he obviously didn't either. You were also not convinced yet that you were not dealing with a scam of some sort.

You did run your message through a free online Japanese translator however and pasted the result underneath the original English version of the message.

To your surprise, you already had a reply about ten minutes later.

'Line?'

Another one of those ridiculously short messages. 

You had to think a moment before you could figure out what he meant with it, but then remembered the messaging app you had installed on your laptop a few years ago. Line was an app that was used a lot in Japan and you had wanted to try it out, but none of your friends back then had wanted to give it a go. They preferred to stick to the apps they were used to and were not specifically drawn to the fact that it was an app used in Japan.

You replied to his message by giving him your Line username and not even a minute passed before you got a friend request from a name in kanji, Japanese characters. You immediately noticed that he used the same picture on Line as he did on the website where he had posted the original message.

For a moment you wondered if the picture really was of him after all, but shook away the thought as you accepted his request.

Only a few seconds later you already got a notification sound, announcing that he had sent you a message. This guy did not waste time.

'Hi.'

He did not waste time and his message was short as ever.

You were totally not prepared for this but decided to answer anyway. Since only a minute or so had passed since you had accepted his friend request, he knew you were most likely online right now and you did not want to start this off awkwardly by ignoring him.

'Hello, how are you?' You hoped he could understand that much at least, but just to be on the safe side you opened a tab in your browser and pulled up the online translator.

'Teach english please.'

You had to remind yourself that you were dealing with someone who obviously barely knew any English, but couldn't help but wonder if he really had no way of being a little less blunt about it. Trying to keep yourself from getting annoyed you started typing your next message.

'I need time to prepare first. Are you a complete beginner? When will you be traveling abroad?'

After pressing enter you followed up with the translated version. In the beginning, you had been a little worried about the quality of the translations, but after getting his short, blunt replies you found yourself not caring anymore.

'August.'

This guy! Did he only read the last parts of your messages?

So, you needed time to come up with some kind of plan, maybe you could try and find someone who could give you a little bit of advice. You had until August, so that gave you almost a year to teach him basic, tourist English. That at least sounded more than doable, you just had to figure out how this was going to work.

For now, you started by introducing yourself in a few sentences. You used your nickname instead of your actual name, but other than that you gave him actual information. You told him you were a college student, your age, your hobbies, and then asked him to give you the same information.

Apparently, he was also in college and the same age as you, but just when you were starting to think he was just repeating everything you had told him, he said that his only hobby was volleyball.

You continued to give some more examples, like favorite this and that. It seemed like he was okay with that level of English at least and you decided to call it quits not long after. You explained that you would be able to talk with him longer when you had had time to prepare.

'Tomorrow, same time.' You told him, mimicking his curt style.

You had not expected him to grace you with an answer, so you were extra surprised at the message that came in response.

'Ok, thank you.'

It seemed he might have an ounce of politeness in him after all.

Before you went to bed, you quickly prepared your bag to go to your part-time job tomorrow. You lay awake for a little while, thinking about what would be a good way to teach someone English through text-chat, and before you realized it, you were actually looking forward to tomorrow.