The day started like any other day: Arthur woke up, joined the others for breakfast, took his usual bitter medicine and then helped Lien washing the dishes.

Something was different though. Duy Anh was always around, often passing by or glancing at him. Arthur thought that maybe it was because today was his day off and he didn’t know what to do. Little did he know that Duy Anh just didn’t know how to drag him away for a special language lesson.

Arthur knew better than to try offering his help to cook (as he didn’t know how to do anything else than pasta or cook rice) so he went back to his room to review the notes he had left on his sketchbook. Soon, it’ll be a week since he got stuck in the past. He wondered how long he had to stay and if the time he spent here actually had any impact on his original timeline. Did time pass while he was away too, so he would be missing? Or does this work like in fiction movies where a day here is the equivalent of an hour in his world? Will he come back at the exact time he slipped into the well? Could he even come back?

As much as he knew he had to be worried, he didn’t feel uneasy—he even felt comfortable and peaceful. He was lucky he didn’t get sent back during a time of war or was caught by bad people. He was surrounded by patient and kind people, he had food and a place to sleep.

Arthur didn’t want to think that way but he did feel like it was a second, or a lengthened vacation. He was about to leave the country soon and resume his studies but now he was offered more time to enjoy it fully (kind of). In a way, he was quite happy to run away from his responsibilities.

While he was reflecting on it, he dozed off lying down on his bed until a soft knock came at his door. “Anh Long?” The person behind the door was a slightly shy Duy Anh. “Yes, ah, is there anything?” asked Arthur clumsily, while wanting to know if something wrong happened or if there was anything urgent as Duy Anh rarely came to his room himself.

“Oh, no...I mean, yes, there is something I’d like to inquire you about. Do you perhaps have some time?”

Realizing that he was still sitting on bed while the poor young man was trying to stay polite by speaking outside as he hadn’t gotten any permission to enter, Arthur quickly stood up and opened the door abruptly. Duy Anh was waiting for an answer but not of that kind! The surprise made him audibly gasp and drop the book he was holding in his arms as he took a step backwards.

“Uh, hm...I guess I can take that as a yes”, Duy Anh said. Arthur was a bit embarrassed and felt bad for startling his friend (he does consider him a friend now!) but there wasn’t much he could do to comfort the man but continue the—until now, quite one-sided—conversation.

“Anyway, I—I had noticed that you, naturally and obviously, struggled with our language. Of course, we can still communicate well without having to use words which is great but I thought that perhaps, you would also want to be able to talk freely with others as well. That is why I...today, I wanted to ask you if you wanted me to properly teach you about the Vietnamese language?”

Duy Anh’s proposition was not something that Arthur could have ever imagined nor thought about. Sure, he had issues communicating and not passing as an idiot but he didn’t think he could ever actually get better, even less have the opportunity, capacity nor time to.

It wasn’t a bad idea, actually. He didn’t have anything to do and often felt like a burden to others (he still was, since Duy Anh felt the need to give him private lessons) so it wasn’t a bad suggestion, at all. He liked that! Not only could he learn and improve himself but he could also spend more time with Duy Anh, which he missed—despite not knowing him that well to begin with.

“Yes, can! Great!”, Arthur excitedly exclaimed—much to Duy Anh’s relief and joy.

They both stayed in Arthur’s room as they found it to be the most practical and comfortable place for the lesson.

Duy Anh was pleasantly surprised by Arthur’s abilities; he wasn’t completely clueless. Of course, he had always responded to Duy Anh’s questions and inquiries but his occasional confused and panicked looks made him think that maybe Arthur was just really great at guessing the right thing.

Obviously, Arthur knew how to speak a little bit of Vietnamese. He could quickly react and use basic words—nothing beyond a simple (and sometimes grammatically wrong) sentence though. That however indicated that he did, in fact, understand the language to some extent.

This made the lesson advance fairly smoothly; Duy Anh wasn’t starting from scratch so everything was much easier. Arthur was even attentive to everything he said and asked questions whenever he was confused, like a good student! The only thing Arthur struggled badly with was reading and writing. It was pretty obvious that the poor young man had never been asked to read nor write (1). It wasn’t anything rare by any means but that could be fairly troublesome if he didn’t even know the most simple and used characters—which he did not.

Although Arthur was a fast learner and a quite intelligent one, Duy Anh quickly gave up on teaching him to read, thinking it was probably better to focus on his speech first. The characters Arthur wrote were really pretty and clean but most often than not, he wouldn’t remember its meaning while he could easily apply any lesson Duy Anh taught him when it came to forming sentences or expressing basic feelings.

If he had to be honest, Duy Anh would say that he was pretty proud of himself and Arthur for the fast improvement he had made that afternoon.

1. Latin Vietnamese alphabet/script or chữ Quốc ngữ only started to be popularly used in the early 1900s. Before that, chữ Nôm (writing system using Chinese characters) was used