Claudia didn’t make it a habit to sit in the school’s library. It was not that the school library was uncomfortable and it was not that she didn’t enjoy the quiet and the closure of the walls of books and it was not that she felt she was above spending her time associating with other students or spending her free hours on campus. Claudia simply didn’t have free hours. With as much work as she did she was lucky that she had time for school at all. In fact, she scarcely had time for any form of social entertainment or life. It had been weeks since she had last seen Michael. The quiet evening sipping wine, looking at antique paintings and studying the pages of ancient books with him had been the last time she had allowed herself any sort of free time.

She was busy, she was always busy, but perhaps she kept herself even more busy recently was some small amount of guilt. She had kissed him, after having met him only twice. Ladies do not kiss complete strangers. It was a rule. At least, it was one of her rules. After that evening she had woken up and immediately forgotten about all of the chemistry they had had between them and turned on the self-battering. Shame on her for being so presumptuous. Shame on her for behaving like a teenager. Yet, she had still wanted to see him, to take just one more kiss. She had piled so much work up on herself in order to give herself no free time in which she might seek him out. As a result she had run out of work, of every shape and for, to do last night, including work, homework, and housework. She even now has a small window flower bed, which she had never been interested in before.

Now, without work and with too much free time on her hands, Claudia simply couldn’t sit at home. She couldn’t go to Petit Paris and sit at the bar because that was where she had met him. She retreated to the school’s library because she knew that Michael was not in school and thus would not be in the library.

Claudia was dressed in a fashion that was young enough for her but still appropriate to be worn in an office. The skirt was long enough that it hung just beneath her knees and flowed around her loosely in a crinkled, golden brown material. Her shoes were boots, a small heel on the back, that rode half way up her calf, they were soft leather and scrunched down, providing three inches of skin between the bottom of the skirt and the top of the boots. They were dark brown and her shirt matched. Her shirt was a long, soft shirt that come down around her hips, over the top of the skirt, and she wore an even darker brown suede jacket over it. The jackets triangular collar had an embroidered design around it. Claudia’s hair was pulled up into a hair clip and hung down over the clip in a straight black curtain. She was very pale, especially in the soft lights of the library.

Claudia was sitting at a table between the two isles of books, several books stacked around her and one open before her. The table light was switched on and pulled down over the book and a notebook was open with orgignized, neat handwritten notes scrawled across it. Her pen was poised and she was bent over the book.

In persuit of more things to keep her busy, Claudia had taken several extra classes: Humanities III, a law class that technically she shouldn’t in yet until she passes one of the classes she’s already in, and a language. Since she already knew Spanish from school and Italian and Greek from her mother’s lessons, and French just made her think about Michael, she signed up for Japanese. She may have bitten off more then she could chew this time since Japanese seems to not agree with her. It’s the first subject she’s ever struggled with and she’s becoming frustrated, this demonstrated by the tapping of her foot and the frown on her face.

It was almost time to meet with a student that seemed to be having trouble with Japanese. Gin took in a long draught of his cigar before letting it out slowly. Dropping it into one of the cigarette butt collectors he walked into the library calm and without much worry. The Japanese teacher was wearing a pair of navy blue khakis and a white polo shirt. His missing eye was covered by an eye patch as well as his white hair. A black backpack was hanging loosely from his right shoulder as he walked through the door and metal detectors of the library.

He'd only been there for a couple of weeks, but he was getting used to teaching at the University. A girl, Claudia, had called him and asked for help on the course. Of course he was willing to take some time out of his not so busy evening to help her out. Japanese was much tougher than most people expected, and he had experience in the field.

Good thing he had reserved one of the study rooms for them. He already found her picture on the university website so then he could find her pretty easily. Walking up to the girl, she was already 21, and he couldn't deny that she was a model. "Miss Paris I presume?" He asked offering his hand to her. "I'm Gin Kamijyo."

“Claudia,” she corrected him as she got to her feet, pushing the chair back with the back of her knees, and took his hand. Her hands were small, delicate almost, with a warm grasp that was friendly but firm. I’m kind, it said, but I’m not weak. It was a handshake that said she’s worked with too many men who think of her only as the girl not the co-worker. “Mr. Kamijyo, thank you so much for taking the time to come here and help me.” She’s so formal, so proper.

When she released his hand she bent and picked up a soft brown bag and a brown purse from the floor. She set the purse on the desk and began to pack the books into the bag, after all, they couldn’t work together with a cubicle dividing the table. “I appreciate this so much. It’s not been a week and I’m already falling behind.” She leaned over and turned the lamp off.

Claudia had attended three of Professor Kamijyo’s classes before she had realized that Japanese was not for her and that she would need help. She had first turned to one of her classmates, a younger man who seemed to have a grasp for the subject. He had agreed to tutor her but then had called an hour past their appointed time and excused himself. He and his girlfriend were at dinner. She had told him to forget it and gone to the professor himself two days later at their next class.

She turned to follow him to where ever he would be most comfortable.

Gin smiled warmly as Claudia shook his hand. Her hand was small, but it definitely had that grasp that meant not to take her lightly. He didn't think that at all. She might've been a model for a while, but he never judged someone until he met them in person. "You can call me Gin." He said correcting her as well. He was more comfortable in a social setting with no real restrictions. It allowed him to get to know people better that way. "Don't worry about it, I'm always willing to help out." Gin waited as Claudia packed her books and stood up. "At least you got to me now instead of weeks later. Most of the students don't feel comfortable with a guy like me, and usually wait until they're neck deep in trouble." He turned and slowly walked to the study room he reserved.

Soon they found it and Gin opened the door for Claudia, and walked in after her closing the door so they could talk freely without disturbing other people. "So what're you having trouble with?" He asked sitting down in one of the chairs and pulling out the book he assigned the class along with some other ones including Japanese folktales which he put back realizing it wasn't the one he was looking for. Gin had ordered only two books for the class, and they weren't that bad, especially for introductory Japanese, just Hiragana. "I'll do my best to help you."

Claudia returned his smile graciously. She didn’t make it a habit to tell others that she had once been a model, even if that had been during the vain teenage years when looks were all. She didn’t make it a habit to enter the occupation into her resume, job applications, or college applications either. Modeling wasn’t exactly a job, back then, or in her opinion, even now. It had been a fun past time that happened to have earned her spending money. That the company still used her photographs on their websites and in their magazines would not surprise her. She had signed a contract.

“Gin, are you sure?” she asked. She didn’t want him to offer her his casual name only because she had. He was a teacher, a professor, he had earned his title and her respect. She was a student. Suffice to say Claudia was more comfortable in a professional setting, probably because all she did was work and interact with her bosses.

She walked into the room and began to unpack her bag once more, removing the two books he had assigned, the notebook she had been using, and another notebook that, when opened, had notes from his lessons in it. She sat while he closed the door.

“I’m having trouble,” Claudia talks with her hands, or so the expression goes. She uses gestures when she can’t find a word. In this case her hands came up and her fingers hooked, she made a motion as if shifting things around in the air. Her hands dropped to her lap. “I can grasp the words well enough but when it comes to,” she pressed her lips together and her hands moved again, “forming sentences I get lost. I want to translate word for word but I know the result of that is just a jumble of words and very little conversation.”

Gin only happened to find a similar picture of Claudia on a modelling website that he accidentally mistook for a Japanese fashion site. That was why he knew Claudia used to be a model. He was pretty amazed, but he definitely didn't thought she'd be a model sooner or later. Now she was working as a secretary at a law firm. There was a major change of fields there, and Gin understood. Modelling couldn't get you through life for long, and after you've become too old or whatever you'd find yourself without a job. Better to get a steady job even if men treat you like eye candy only.

"Don't worry, I'm not into the whole formal thing. I'm still an adjunct, not a full fledged professor yet." He said with a sigh as he skimmed through his books. It seemed they were kind of polar opposites. Might be a little problem, but whatever. Gin listened to Claudia and looked up just in time to see her talking with her hands. He didn't understand until she started thinking it through and explaining what her problem was. "Yeah, you can't go to translating word for word, especially in a conversation." Gin looked through the workbook for a second and put it to the side. "Sentences are pretty difficult in Japanese, especially when you first learn them."

Then Gin came up with an idea. "How about we try to work it out by having a little conversation?" He asked leaning on the back legs of his chair. The best way to learn was to have her learn first hand. "Hajimemashite. Watashi wa Gin desu. Dozo yoroshiku." He said the proper greeting that they learned during the first day of class. Gin knew that it would be pretty easy at the beginning, but he was gonna slowly step it up a bit. "Anata wa Claudia-san desu ka?" He asked smiling. Yup better to start with the basics and work their way up.

Very true. But she hadn’t left modeling because she’d realized that one day she would no longer be a young, pretty girl. She had left the agency because she’d hit a certain age at which she decided that prancing around in shoes that hurt her feet and all of that camera attention was just a little bit silly.

“Alright,” she said. “Gin it is then, outside of the classroom, of course.” Within the classroom he was still Professor.

Claudia shifted in her chair uncomfortably when he suggested they start by having a conversation. As previously mentioned, this is the first time Claudia has ever truly struggled to grasp what was being taught to her. He spoke and she strained to translate the words in her head without putting it on paper. (And since I know nothing about the language at all, neither does she.)

Claudia finally settled for not answering. She would not make a fool of herself, she has already admitted to not understanding, the last embarrassment she needs is to accidentally tell the professor that she’s hot and horny for cows on bread or some such nonsense. She shook her head slowly to indicate she didn’t even get it.

Gin nodded as Claudia agreed to calling him Gin outside the classroom instead. At least that was a start. The professors here were too strict for his liking. Though it was good money that paid for his apartment. His heart wasn't set on Demaitre just yet, sooner or later he'd travel to the U.S., but he was comfortable where he was.

Then waiting for a second Gin smiled and jotted down some notes, and passed it to her. The notes he jotted down were how he put them together and what they meant when translated loosely to English. "Well that was a formal introduction. Hajimemashite basically translates to How are you? or How do you do?" He'd break it down for her and have her try it. "I told you my name in the next sentence I'm Gin is the basic translation of it, and then said Nice to meet you." Japanese wasn't the easiest subject in the world, and Gin knew that it was hard learning a new language. It took him a while and tutoring from his father to get better at it. "Then here I asked if you're Claudia." A simple sentence, but nothing was that easy in Japanese. "Sorry if that was a little much." Leaning back in the chair Gin grabbed the workbook and looked at the questions for the first chapter. She'd be able to handle it.

“So then Hajimemashite is a whole phrase, not just one word in a phrase. That is what I’m having trouble with. I get individual words but when the words come together or a sentence is expressed by just one word I can’t,” she splayed her fingers out in the universal sign for aggravation, “get it.”

She pulled the notebook close and her green eyes dropped to it, remaining there for a long time before taking her own pen from her purse and underlining the words, a way to remind herself that this word was a sentence, that these words were sentences but certain words only represented one word where others represented plural words.

She sighed. “You aren’t going too fast,” she replied when he apologized, “it just isn’t coming easily to me. Language isn’t my strong point. I scraped by with Spanish.” And that was supposed to be easy.

Gin nodded and thought of ways to teach her. "That's always the hard part with Japanese, that's why I was trying to go slow for you guys. It's a lot harder than it looks. Though it doesn't have that many one word phrases." He watched her scribble down notes and underline things. "You'll see a lot more multiple word sentences, and some of them are pretty easy to understand."

Gin took out a leather bound notebook from his backpack and opened it up reading quickly through it. Then turning back to Claudia. She was quite entertaining with the hand speech and he could tell she was getting frustrated. Then she said he wasn't going too fast. "Think of the words as being a backwards loose translation in English." He stood up and looked at her notebook before jotting down an advanced sentence with direct word translations. "If you translate it word for word you get this, but..." He wrote down what he meant in English and it was so much cleaner, though it did have arrows pointing to where each word came in. "You need to look at it from a different angle, the same goes for translating into Japanese."

He wrote down I'm going to get drunk as a skunk on the paper and slowly wrote down the sentence in Japanese. "You can go word for word, but realize that you'll be doing a lot more work than you need to." Looking back at the younger woman he smiled. His hair fell away from his eye revealing the small eye patch that was hidden underneath.

“They aren’t easy to understand yet,” she told him and smiled. “Sorry, I’m just not used to being…out of the loop. It is a lot harder then it looks, which is saying a lot since it looks very very hard.” She smiled. The text looked damn near intimidating to her.

She leaned forward and watched him write the sentence out on lined paper and was appreciative that he drew out the arrows for each word. “Backwards,” she said in a tone that was full of contemplation. She looked at the words backwards for a moment and while it still seemed a slight off, like the words were out of order, it made more sense. The frown faded slowly from her face as she began to understand a little more about how a sentence might come together. Of course, she was still going to have the worst time with those one words that translate into three separate words.

Her lips curved into a slow smile as he wrote out the next sentence. “Oh are you?” she said with a lilt of laughter in her voice. She looked up and his hair fell away from his face, for which she was thankful. Ever since attending his class she had wanted to pull it away from his face. It drove her crazy, this new style kids, and now apparently teachers, were following. She didn’t like all of that hair in their faces. Then she realized why he wore his hair in that style. The black eye patch drew attention like a bulls eye against his skin and his white hair. She didn’t stare but she didn’t look away in that fast oh-god-he-saw-me-staring way. She casually continued to look at him for three breaths before picking up the pen and trying to translate the words.

Watashi sannyuu eru hebereke tsurete sukanku

She turned the notebook so that he could see it and chewed her lower lip.

The textbook was definitely intimidating, but Gin chose it because it allowed for the best layout for the semester. It was a very tough subject, but he had faith in Claudia. He smiled as the younger woman noticed and paid attention as he wrote down the sentence, and explained it to her. "It'll definitely be tougher, but I'm sure you can handle it."

Then she asked if he really was going to. "What can I say? It's a beautiful night for moon viewing sake." He read her sentence and laughed. It wasn't bad for mostly romaji. They were yet to learn more of the hiragana system. It'd take a while before they could write sentences in it. "You're more than welcome to join me, brought enough sake to get pleasantly plastered two times over just in case." He noticed her look but didn't say a word ignoring it. He was used to it from being the way he was. He flipped through the pages of the textbook and sighed brushing his hair so that it covered most of the eye patch. "Take a look at page 20. It'll give you some more examples, and how they were translated."

Gin rummaged through his backpack and pulled out a pack of gum he had thrown in there just in case. "Want a piece?" He asked offering it to Claudia. "It's Winterfresh."

Gum chewing in public was like chewing a cod in Ladyship 1o1. Her mother had brought her up and managed to raise her both loving, free, and still strictly a lady. Claudia always smiled when she was presented a situation in which she must decide how unladylike something could really be. Would it really hurt her to chew gum in public? No. But because she has always declined, on account of her upbringing, she did so now as well. "No, thank you."

"I've never actually had sake before," she told him, stalling for a moments time before answering him. Claudia wasn't entirly sure if he was joking about actually drinking sake this evening or not so she simply chose not to answer at all. Besides, if he were speaking seriously instead of only joking she would be faced with the decission of whether she should go outside of a formal teacher-student meeting with a teacher. She would also be faced with the thoughts of future hassles that could be involved in being seen on a social level with a teacher. She could get him in trouble or it could cause her problems. The woes of a woman who thinks of ethics too often.

"What?" she said, unable to stop a smile when he laughed at what she had written.

Gin shrugged and put the pack of gum back into his pocket. He made sure to chew it as noiselessly as possible, and thought about the sake he had in his car. After the meeting he was going to get a beach chair, a bottle of sake, and enjoy viewing the moon with his sake. It wasn't a full moon yet, but it was getting close to one.

"It's much better than beer. It has a good aroma plus it is pretty strong with a smooth taste." Sake was good, it was his choice of drink. Not as strong as rum and definitely better than beer. Gin was the kind of guy to joke pretty often, but he was serious about having a little to drink.

Then he turned his attention back to Claudia as she spoke most likely asking about the laugh. "That's not bad." He said pointing to the sentence. "It's a great start, and that's hardest part of Japanese. Soon you'll be able to write it in hiragana." He said with a smile. Gin was definitely one to be laid back, and not worry about restrictions like a teacher-student relationship. He strived to give them a friend, not just a teacher.

Claudia smiled, pleased with herself that she'd done it 'not bad' quality as opposed to 'what they heck did you call me?' quality.

"That wasn't so bad then," she said at last. "You wouldn't believe how hard I was struggling before. I sat at my table for three hours doing last weeks take home assignment," she confessed. Then he told her that it wouldn't be long before she was going to be able to write in hiragana. She held up her hands as if to surrender. "Don't even start," she smiled. "Look," she said in a serious tone, though her eyes smiled as she spoke. "Don't feel as if you failed at anything when I start doodling stick figures in place of words."

Gin nodded listening to Claudia. It seemed she was getting the hang of the romaji. Romaji wasn't that difficult, but when they got into the hiragana...that would be a totally different story. Hiragana isn't that difficult, it just has a lot of symbols to remember. Gin had a hard time when he first started, and knew full well that the students would have a hard time. That was why he was a teacher, to help those that didn't understand.

"I'm not surprised. By the way you said it, I was pretty sure you spent somewhere around that or six hours doing the assignment." Smiling Gin turned to a page in the textbook. "While we're here I'd might as well teach you some of the very basic hiragana symbols." He said rummaging through his backpack once more and pulling out a ditto with a few symbols and pictures to orient with. Gin handed it to her and leaned his elbow on the table. "Those are the simple ones; a, i, u, e, and o. It shouldn't be that hard, plust you'll have a little bit of a headstart on the class."

He already helped her with sentence structure, he'd might as well start on the very basic of the basic systems of writing.