We were back in our airless tomb the next day. The room smelled of undisturbed air and old pencil shavings. I wished the windows opened, but it looked like they had been painted shut.

Jun watched silently while I wrote out all forty six hiragana characters as I remembered them. Although it looked like my memory was for shit. I’d studied up on my phone, and used the damn flashcards, but apparently that wasn’t enough to help me with the writing portion.

“I thought you were supposed to be smart.” Jun scoffed. Then he proceeded to draw red exes through ninety percent of my work. “We were going to start katakana today, but it’s clear you are nowhere near ready for that.”

I took out a second sheet of lined paper, studied the phonetic alphabet from my textbook, and tried again. Even when not working from memory, it was a struggle. I gritted my teeth while Jun laughed at each incorrect stroke.

“You’re not helping,” I growled at him. “And I am following the damn arrows.”

He kept up with his laughter and mocking commentary. “Hey, I didn’t ask for this job. But as long as I’m stuck here, it doesn’t hurt to have some fun,” he said. Then he leaned back and stretched his legs. I tried not to look at him too closely, because regardless of his personality, he was still devastatingly handsome.

While attempting to keep my eyes off Jun I’d almost forgotten that I had my own agenda. “Speaking of fun, here.” I pulled out a hand-written aptitude test and smoothed out the paper as I put it on his desk. I’d done a shit ton of research on how to teach math. Much of the advice was contradictory. But there was a great deal of consensus on what my dad had suggested—getting baseline information. How bad was he, really?

Maybe I could have waited for my dad to print out the assessment at work. I wasn’t sure if that was something he could do, though. Not every office lets its workers get away with using company supplies for personal reasons. And last night, finding out where Jun was mathematically had seemed like an emergency—one that couldn’t possibly wait another day.

Jun looked at the paper in silence for a moment before bursting into laughter. “Did you actually write this out? With your own two hands?”

I rolled my eyes. “I only need one hand to write.” I was tempted to make a joke about it freeing up my other hand for other activities. Liam and Maddie would have appreciated the joke.

Jun’s eyes had a glimmer that made me think maybe he got the joke anyway. His English was damn good. Flawless pronunciation with the hint of a Kiwi accent thanks to his time in New Zealand.

It took Jun twice as long to work through the problems as I expected, so I started going through my newly made flashcards. For memorization, I had moved on to katakana—I had no time to waste waiting until I had mastered one alphabet completely. I could reasonably identify most of the characters, but I still got ya, ma, and mu confused.

Jun looked up and noticed what I was doing. He poked at my stack of flashcards. “If you’re such a quick study gaijin, we can start kanji tomorrow.”

I grimaced. It was one thing to learn forty six characters in two different alphabets. At least they were pronounceable. Rumor had it that I needed to know two thousand Chinese characters—each with two or more ways to pronounce them—to be somewhat literate. Luckily first year students were not expected to know anywhere near that many.

Jun had finally finished his assessment.

“Hand it over.” I hadn’t bothered to make a key. I could tell at a glance where he had made errors. His handwriting was atrocious—some of the numbers nearly illegible. Most of his mistakes were in simple arithmetic. A lot of the answers didn’t make logical sense. If he’d thought about them at all…

“Well, gaijin, what’s your genius plan now that you’ve taken a measure of my skills?”

I handed him a stack of index cards. “Copy out the multiplication tables through twelve.”

“You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

“Not kidding, Jun.” He’d hated that nickname from me from day one and it continued to be a source of irritation. Childish, but effective. “I found your teaching method to be so successful I thought we should apply it to you as well.”

We both worked in blessed silence for some time. With Jun taking occasional breaks to mock my progress. And vice versa.

After what seemed like hours, Jun shoved his math notebook away from himself and sat back in his chair. “Okay, enough writing.”

I massaged some feeling back into my fingers. Why did writing in Japanese take such a toll on my poor hand?

“Put your pencil down. Let’s hear some speaking.”

Jun had me read the first few pages from the textbook. I kept tripping over my tongue. “Kore wa pen desu.” This is a pen. Quality stuff.

Jun opened his eyes wide in disbelief. “Can’t you hear the difference between what I’m saying and what you’re saying? Honestly it wouldn’t hurt to try even a little, gaijin.”

I flipped him off.

I still hadn’t found out why he’d been booted from his last school, but I bet it had something to do with the fact that his hobby was being an irritating prick. Regardless of how much I couldn’t stand being in his presence, Ohara said I was stuck with him until my Japanese improved. I wasn’t sure she knew what a motivating factor that really was. I was willing to do whatever it took to get away from this egotistical jackass.

Ohara certainly wasn’t helping with that so far. She hadn’t let me change seats, there was this whole tutoring mess, and then math club on top of everything.

To make matters worse, I was acutely aware of how attractive Jun was. In an irritatingly perfect way. No hair out of place. Flawless skin. And those lips...

He was getting on my last nerve.