After seeing Yui Aso home, Ayumu Kurono realized it was still early. He could go back and study on his own for a while.
His main focus was still liberal arts subjects like geography and history. He really had no foundation in them at all. So his plan was to study a little every day, build things up over time, and turn quantitative change into qualitative change.
...
At 5:50 in the afternoon, Ayumu Kurono stood in front of Masami Miyamoto’s apartment building and froze.
He had suddenly remembered that this building’s entrance required a key card.
There was no way he had one. And he couldn’t exactly stand there waiting to run into some random resident with a card either. At least, time didn’t allow for that. Even if he got lucky and someone showed up within a few minutes, that person might not let him follow them inside.
So the only thing Ayumu Kurono could do right now was call Yui Aso.
That 4,000-yen daily wage was stuck in his throat like a fishbone. He had no time to think any further, and even less time to be shy. He immediately pulled out his phone and got ready to call Yui Aso.
But just as he was one step away from making the call, he suddenly stopped.
Then, expressionless, he silently walked over to the intercom panel and pressed a few buttons. Not long after, a long beep sounded.
The moment he heard it, Ayumu Kurono easily pushed open the apartment’s front door.
Thinking back to how stupid he had looked just now, he wanted nothing more than to dig a hole and crawl into it.
He had clearly thought of using the intercom by the entrance to ring someone up yesterday. Yet today, his brain had somehow failed to turn that corner.
A smart security system in a high-end apartment like this obviously took outside visitors into account. There was no way it would force residents on the upper floors to come all the way downstairs just to open the door.
Ayumu Kurono took a quick look at the system interface on the intercom and found the option to call by entering the apartment number. He could call Yui Aso from the entrance, get her permission, and then unlock the door from outside.
It had been a simple matter from the start, yet he had almost made it absurdly complicated.
...
“Mr. Kurono, would you like to check the results of my practice?”
The moment they stepped into the study, Masami Miyamoto took the initiative and asked to be tested.
No wonder she could live in a high-end apartment like this. Someone that disciplined was never going to do badly in life.
Ayumu Kurono had originally planned to just have her repeat the few sentences he taught yesterday. He also felt she should be able to write them out completely.
But Masami Miyamoto seemed to take that as him looking down on her, and a displeased look appeared on her face.
“Of course. If you can write them from memory, then go ahead and write them out for me too.”
Her dissatisfaction was far too obvious, so Ayumu Kurono gave her what she wanted.
Sure enough, after he said that, the brows she had been knitting together finally relaxed a little.
Masami Miyamoto’s nearly perfect recitation and dictation made Ayumu Kurono start questioning the meaning of his own existence.
He felt that with her learning ability and self-discipline, if you just gave her a book and some matching videos, she might actually be able to teach herself all the way through.
“Very good. There are just a few places where your pronunciation isn’t especially standard, but it doesn’t have much impact.”
“Mr. Kurono, where exactly is my pronunciation not standard? Please point it out for me.”
Ayumu Kurono had guessed she wouldn’t let even the smallest mistake slide.
So while Masami Miyamoto was writing from memory, he had been looking through her notes. Since Yui Aso’s pronunciation wasn’t standard, it definitely wasn’t because Ayumu Kurono had taught it wrong. And since Masami was reciting from her notes, it wasn’t likely she had memorized it wrong either. So the most likely explanation was that the notes had been written down incorrectly from the start.
“In your notes, this part is written down wrong...”
Ayumu Kurono gave her a round of pointers, and in the process, he also regained some confidence.
At the very least, when Masami Miyamoto made mistakes, he could correct them. That alone proved the 4,000 yen wasn’t money he was taking for nothing.
“Oh, right. I bought a Chinese study book. We can use it as this month’s textbook.”
The title of the book Ayumu Kurono bought was 300 Essential Phrases for Japanese Living in China. It fit Masami Miyamoto’s needs very well.
To begin with, she had never expected that one month of study would be enough to let her read company documents and the like. And for written communication at work, machine translation was already sufficient.
What Yui Aso needed from Ayumu Kurono was for him to teach her some everyday expressions, so that when she lived in China, she would at least be able to communicate with people on a basic level.
Ayumu Kurono had already skimmed through 300 Phrases, and its practicality really was strong.
The whole book was divided into four areas: clothing, food, housing, and transportation. It covered the kinds of conversations Japanese people might run into when communicating with others in China.
Of course, the book wasn’t just dialogue while ignoring the most basic characters and vocabulary. Its teaching method used commonly used daily sentences as the entry point, then taught the characters and vocabulary involved along the way.
Ayumu Kurono felt that the book’s “sentence-vocabulary-Chinese character” learning process was clearly more crash-course friendly than the traditional “Chinese character-vocabulary-sentence” order. That was a big part of why he had chosen this book.
Even though the title clearly said “300 phrases,” Ayumu Kurono could say with complete certainty that the number of sentences in it absolutely exceeded 300.
He felt the “300” here was probably just an approximate number, or a way of expressing degree, kind of like Three Hundred Tang Poems.
At first glance, that title made people think the collection only had 300 poems. But the actual number was 311.
And then there was Iron Man saying, “I love you three thousand.”
“Love” was an abstract noun, so it couldn’t really be measured with a numeral. Which meant the “three thousand” there was probably also expressing intensity.
While Ayumu Kurono was internally roasting the book’s title, Masami Miyamoto had already impatiently picked it up and started flipping through it in earnest.
Judging from her expression, he came to the conclusion that she was satisfied with the book too. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be reading it with such obvious relish.
“Ms. Miyamoto, let’s stop reading for now. We can start studying from the book today.”
Only after Ayumu Kurono reminded her did Masami Miyamoto’s gaze reluctantly leave the pages.
That look of overwhelming hunger for knowledge put enormous pressure on him.
Because the more Masami Miyamoto wanted to learn, the more work Ayumu Kurono would have to do. But the total amount of time wasn’t changing, which meant his work efficiency had to go up.
“Mr. Kurono, what page are we going to reach today?”
Before the lesson had even started, Masami Miyamoto threw out a question that gave Ayumu Kurono a headache.
And the reason she was asking it was obvious. She wanted to learn as much as possible as soon as possible. Ayumu Kurono even suspected she was planning to finish the entire book within a month.
“That depends on our pace.”
“Then let’s begin quickly, Mr. Kurono.”
Ayumu Kurono didn’t dare give a definite answer, and his vague response clearly left Masami Miyamoto rather dissatisfied.
As a powerful career woman with an overwhelming presence, Masami Miyamoto completely suppressed Ayumu Kurono in terms of sheer aura.
Ayumu Kurono suddenly felt that buying that book had backfired on him instead, making this part-time job a lot less easy.
Before, there had been no clear standard, and the teaching pace had been entirely under his control.
Now that there was a textbook, Masami Miyamoto definitely wouldn’t just hold herself to a strict standard. She wouldn’t let Ayumu Kurono off easy either.
For all he knew, she had already turned the tables in her mind and treated this month of Chinese study like part of her regular work. She might even have already drawn up a complete progress schedule, and all Ayumu Kurono had to do was follow the work plan she set and proceed step by step.
The more he thought about it, the scarier it got.
Ayumu Kurono had a strong premonition—
he was about to become a tool guy.
