Sophia half expects Zai to laugh at her, or hold some victorious grin upon his face when she finally reconstitutes enough of herself to meet his gaze again. How this Prince, now that he knew she was this stupid, insular girl who had never learned a second language in her entire life, would be satisfied in finally signing off on the divorce papers he was probably filling out already.

  But Zai Tianci instead holds a small, neutral smile of understanding as he meets her eyes with his. “It’s alright, we can start simple then.”

  “Simple?”

  Zai takes an empty sheet of paper from his pile alongside a sharpened graphite pencil that he quickly taps against the corner of this thick gauge page.

  She watches in silence as he writes, his deft hands creating the long lines, short dots, and flush curves of… Ensolian?

  It was a word in the ensolian language; the characters and symbols coming together in a neat, readable, but almost soulless handwriting. Devoid of flare or any personalization that was normal for a native writer; this word from Zai’s handwriting efficient to an unnerving degree.

  The symbols for land and ruler, augmented by the base line beneath it representing the throne. A word finished in six strokes, simple and used nearly everywhere and in everything Sophia had come into contact with these past twenty one years (especially with Mother around).

  Emperor. Sophia’s mind tells her instantaneously, and she says it out loud next. “Emperor.”

  “Can you say that again?” Zai asks, his hands moving beneath this word to fill in a new line. “Slowly, and in syllables.”

  “Em --”

  A single letter in Tanci script, cold and brutal in a quick series of two straight lines.

  “--per--” Three letters this time, written quickly with slashes and a few lines that make a strange boxy shape if three were brought together as one.

  “--or.” Sophia finishes, watching as Zai finishes as well with two more letters.

  There’s a long silence as Sophia processes this, a strange feeling welling up inside her as she leans in closer to observe the neatness of this familiar word but written in a completely new language.

  She repeats it like a school child, visually following the split in syllables with each letter to create this word. “Em--per--or.”

  Zai takes the pencil, using it as a pointer as he scans over the ensolian world first. “Your language, Imperial Ensolian, is made of symbols; meanings.”

  He taps each part of the union as he explains to her her own language in a play of linguistic poetry. “A ruler who rules upon their land, on a throne.”

  There’s a short pause as he begins to emphasize his own native tongue. “But Tiancin is based on phonetics, it’s written literally how you speak it.”

  He hovers over the individual letters now, moving along as he pronounces the word in total. “Em-per-or.”

  Sophia follows along despite the headache, pronouncing the word correctly in her ensolian accent but also following along with the letters. “Em-per-or.”

  Zai takes a hesitant breath, adjusting his chair to reach over to the other side of the table. An awaiting diagram unfurled, brought to the center in front of the two who were now sitting side by side. A six by five grid, each cell filled with a different letter. “There are 30 letters in the alphabet, each one makes a unique sound. Basic vowels, consonants, and three wildcards that mostly cover the standard sounds a human can make.”

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  He points to the first one, a series of three slashes alongside a vertical line. He pronounces it, some strange half-tone to Sophia. “?”

  What the actual hell?

  The following one: “B??.”

  Goddess, this was harder than it first looked.

  Zai sees the panic on Sophia’s contorting face, and he quickly dials back in his explanation of the basics. “For you to learn how to read Tiancin; as someone who already knows quite well how to speak the stygian standard, it will be a process of learning how to associate specific letters with specific tones. From each tone you can make a word based on how it sounds, and from there you’ll be able to read.”

  He makes it sound so simple, but yet behind it was an insane path forward for this Fourth Princess.

  This pariah within a siblingship of monstrous sisters and brother, the idiot of the family who could do nothing but eat donuts and rot in bed with her romance novels would have to learn an entirely new tongue to read in this new life situation. She who could barely be bothered to socialize, to even learn anything beyond multivariable calculus; she who was so stupid as to humiliate herself in front of her own husband who had so generously donated his time to her studies of his language.

  And through this, she would humiliate herself even further in front of him.

  “Is it gonna be hard?” Sophia asks as she hastily grips the table, trying to keep her breathing level.

  Behind his look there’s gears turning, Zai takes a long moment to really think the question through. He honestly answers her. “I don’t know. But I know it should be easier for you to learn Tiancin than the other way around.”

  “W-what?”

  “Trying to learn ensolian is a game of memorization. It was very difficult for me to learn.” The Crown Prince of the Tianci Dominion admits with a soft scoff at himself. “Sophia, you may not realize this but you know thousands of words already. You’ve memorized enough that it comes naturally to you.”

  This was true, to read basic Ensolian it was said you needed to know at least a minimum of a thousand words; six thousand if you wanted to cover almost the entire language set.

  Zai takes a short second to think these next words through. “It will take you at most two months before you’re fully fluent.”

  “Two months?” The impatience of Sophia questions quietly.

  “Some people take a year, the entire ten months even.” He holds a difficult pain inside him as he makes the account of the time, returning to a gentle smile. “But you learn at your pace.”

  The Princess completely tosses all pride and self-confidence with her next question. “And you’ll help right?”

  He has such an apprehension to this answer, that emotion held deep within his eyes a realization of the gravity of this request from his wife. “I will, as best as I can. But it will take time.”

  And all we got is time. The internal monologue sighs.

  There’s whispering behind her, Sophia hearing the quiet tongue of the tiancin accent as two maids stand across the living room brushing dust from the floors.

  Rumors are spreading already, of a scandal of the greatest degree. The Fourth Princess barely holds it together, staring wide eyed at the stack of study books that seem so monumental in their volumes. Extra, Extra Read All About It: There is a wife incapable of reading here! A pathetic mess that requires her husband to tutor her like the idiotic simpleton she is!!!

  And the house listens to those two maids, through its varnished wood floors and its long sofas; its refined posts of plastic and brass electrical wires.

  The first one, standing short and young, tries to keep her voice down. “Oh gods, isn’t it so cute that he’s helping her learn how to read Tiancin? I wish I could pull a boyfriend that nice…”

  “I know…” The second one, older and taller, laments slightly. “Some girls just get lucky with pulling someone handsome, smart, and gentle. It’s like a rom-com sometimes…”

  They sneak a peek at the couple at the table, both shuddering in a guilty jealousy.

  Some people really do get everything.

  The first maid flexes her bicep towards her compatriot. “Soo-ah, if we work hard we can get a guy like that too!”

  The second maid nods excitedly. “Exactly! We got this!”

  not based on a true story about teaching someone how to read a language.