Serotonin {Senku x Reader}

Part 20 - Light

In front of them was a fully functioning water wheel. Senku laughed, grinning.

"A water-powered generator!"

"So you do know what it is, dammit!" Chrome exclaimed, but was happy all the same. Y/n pulled out her little notebook and wrote some more notes. By this point, after jotting down things day to day, she was on her last few pages of the notebook, even with her tiny, neat handwriting. Senku chuckled.

"Well, now that we have this... there's an opportunity for a lot more projects," he grinned. "Alright, Y/n! You're going to help me with the blueprints!"

"Wha— me?!"

Against Y/n's protests, Senku had her help him draw out blueprints for a new, exciting project. Y/n knew Senku had some basic knowledge of architecture, so she wasn't sure why she was necessary. Nevertheless, she helped him sketch out some blueprints, following his instructions. Y/n soon realized that they were going to put the water wheel to use immediately by making a power generator.

Once they were finished, he whisked the paper out of her hands and went to give them to Akaseko and Chrome. After another three days, the power generator was done, and the brothers' months of hard physical labor were over, much to their relief.

However, their relief was short lived, as winter was soon approaching, and everyone needed to prepare. Y/n found herself mostly helping the village, not having a huge role in the science team. Due to this, Senku and Y/n spent most of their days apart. The most time they had together was at night, when they'd both return to the storehouse to rest. 

After receiving some more paper and journals from Senku, however, Y/n decided she could do more to help the village. If they were going to rebuild civilization, people would need to know how to read. After getting approval from Senku, she went ahead and planned her first lesson.

So, starting with the children and elderly, she would have them gather around while winding up gold wire and started to teach them both Japanese and English. Her afternoons mostly consisted of these lessons, and sometimes the adults would listen in as well. 

"Alright! Welcome to Professor Y/n's first English class!" She announced, somewhat nervous. Immediately, several kids raised their hands. She picked on one with two big pigtails.

"Uh, what's In-gu-rish?"

"Ah, right! I should probably start with that. The words I'm speaking to you now are in a language called Japanese," she wrote the characters 日本語 on her journal, showing it for everyone to see. She then wrote the characters representing the English language, 英語. "Back in the old world, the most used language in the world was English. Once Senku revives all the stone statues, knowing English will be really useful to talk to foreigners!"

"Whoaaa!" Some of the kids explained. "Sorcery!"

"Ah... no. It's just a different way of speaking. I'll go ahead and teach you how to read and write in both English and Japanese!"

After a few hours of writing simple phrases in English and Japanese hiragana, she had them each write down both alphabets on their own pieces of paper she handed out, passing out some extra pencils for them to share. Eventually, one of the elderly raised their hand.

"But what about those symbols you wrote before? About English and Japanese?"

"Ah, right! In Japanese, some words are represented with symbols, rather than letters. This makes it shorter and easier to read Japanese once you learn most of them, even though it takes a ton of memorization. These symbols are called kanji, and they actually weren't created by the Japanese. Kanji was originated by another language we call Chinese, or Mandarin," Y/n then wrote down the characters for 'Chinese,' showing everyone as she wrote. "The Japanese then adopted them so that they could make reading Japanese easier. English, fortunately, doesn't have a system like that, but a lot of times pronouncing things can get really difficult."