...Show her what?

She hadn’t even said her name yet. The only reason Kreig knew that this girl (who also happened to be the nice girl who guided him home) was his tutor was that she showed up at the right time, and, well, said so. She was real polite about it, too. And then she even went and said-, said that his paintings were…

Well, she complimented him. On something that wasn’t combat prowess. Didn’t compliment him because he successfully dispatched an entire enemy battalion on his own. But because he painted good.

It felt good. With that in mind, he really couldn’t figure out why she wanted him to… To do a sketch? Or something?

He picked up the blank sheet of paper and a plain lead pencil. Draw something… Something simple and quick. She was probably only asking as a formality, so he obviously wouldn’t put much effort into it. An easy sketch of the first thing he could see. His eyes instinctually fell on his new tutor. Right. There she was.

He put his pencil to the paper and got to it.

Artistry (IV)

The tip of it flowed easily, outlining her face in simple detail. The way her nose shyly dipped upwards. The thin little layer of makeup and how it flaked at the edges. Her bright eyes and short, almost curly hair. Thin lips, faint smile. A simple portrait, lacking colour but making up for it with little details and sophisticated shading. As done as per his skill. Really, he had barely done anything himself. It was all just the skill doing everything.

With the picture drawn, he handed it over to her, hoping it wouldn’t be graded. She looked at it for a few seconds, looked up at him with a look of utter disbelief, glanced back at it, and put it on the table.

“I’ll give you an A in art so don’t you worry about that,” she said, sliding it to the side. It was graded. Now if Kreig could only figure out what ‘A’ meant in terms of grades…

Last he’d been graded, that noble tutor had given him an I in all subjects except for combat, where he gave him a reluctant X. A fine man. Kreig should have ripped out his heart while he had the chance. Damn his Lord for stopping him. Well, with this person, he might not have to do something as rash and immature as threaten violence. He’d do this for a week at most, and then he’d ask to have the tutoring stopped. That was the plan.

The tutor leaned down beside the desk and grabbed something from within her purse. It was a heap of five or six thick books, each in colourful prints with large fonts spelling out their purpose.

Math 5b. History 2. That kind of stuff. Each of them had these pictures on them that seemed to have very little to do with the subject at hand.

“-Okay!” she said, “let’s get right to it! See, I have no idea where you left off, so we’ll just check through these to get a sense of where you’re at in terms of knowledge. Let’s begin with going through some of what you know to get a sense of at what point in these books you need to continue.” One of the books, in a pastel red colour labelled ‘Math’ was in front of them, and she had no fear to open it pretty much midway, revealing a language much closer to Mandarin than English. Strange texts and strange words. “Do you understand this?”

Kreig slowly shook his head. That was a language beyond him.

She turned back a few chapters. “What about this?” Nothing. Another few chapters. “...This?” Not in the least. Another chapter. “Tell me you know this.” He didn’t. She turned the final chapter back, revealing the very first page of the very first chapter. “...So it has come to this, huh?” Kreig gave a hasty nod. He dreaded the whole book, but he wouldn’t dare tell her.

She grabbed another book and repeated the very same thing. He didn’t understand a thing. Nothing made any sense and at one point Kreig started to wonder if he maybe just couldn’t read at all.

That couldn’t be the case though, so he reluctantly disregarded it.

“This? No… This? No… Thi-,”

“I recognize that,” Kreig said for the first time the entire lesson. His finger was pressed squarely into the History textbook, making a little imprint in the chapter labelled ‘Renaissance’. Sure, he couldn’t recognize all of it, but a lot of it felt somewhat familiar. The architecture, the clothing… It was similar. Not quite, but much closer than the current year.

Kreig appreciated her undue enthusiasm, but just by looking outside the window, he could tell that the sun had risen to stand fully above them. It was almost noon.

He slipped the list from his pocket. Lunch at 12. It was time.

Kreig rose from his seat. The tutor flinched harshly, dropping the textbook on math from her hands as her head whipped around to face Kreig. “Uh, um. Everything cool, dude? We don’t have to do math if you don’t want to. Lots of people don’t like math. Really, uh, if you don’t wanna do math, we can do tons of other work! Heck, it’s our first day! We can just, I dunno, take it easy? The important thing is that you have fun. No, wait, the important thing is that you learn! Yeah, yeah, learning is important! And also fun. No need to look at me like that!”

Kreig had no idea why her voice had risen in pitch. Very strange.

He turned around. “Lunch.”

“-Huh?” the tutor glanced at a clock hanging in the room, “-oh! Oh, haha, of course! That’s-, that’s what you were on about. Right. Lunch…” She slowly stood up, rising out of her seat.

Kreig led her back to the kitchen, not even glimpsing back at her to make sure she was there. He knew it because she had the faintest smell of dandelions about her. Not from a perfume, nothing obnoxious like that, just a pure scent of dandelions. As if she was the kind of woman to frolic in the flower most often considered to be a weed. Right off the bat, maybe because of this, maybe because of generally friendly nature, Kreig liked her.

Erica, on the other hand, had the very opposite feelings towards him.

Though it would soon mellow.