[Ivan & Emma] Floor 5, Room 16 - Russian Lessons

Ivan and Emma were exploring the fifth floor, trying to find an empty classroom they could use. Ivan had promised her Russian lessons, and he was hoping to get laid in return; he needed somewhere they wouldn't be disturbed.

They were checking all the rooms, but they all seemed to have classes in. They eventually found one, a small, out of the way room right at the end of the corridor. It had a large whiteboard at the front of the room and a surprisingly large stock of pens with any ink - two - as well as a supply of notebook paper and pens. This was really all they would need anyway.

As the two of them looked for a room, Emma wondered what Ivan could want in return for this. People rarely do things for others they hardly knew without expecting anything in return. She'd heard he was rich, so it couldn't have been money he was looking for. She wasn't supplying anything 'illegal', so it couldn't have been that either. When they arrived at the small, out-of-the-way classroom, she concluded that there was only one thing the big Russian could want from her. She became just as interested in how this was going to turn out as she was of learning a little bit of Russian.

"Perfect~" Emma sang as she walked over to gather some of the paper and two pens that were in the room. She then went to one of the desks, set the supplies down and pushed two of the chairs together. "There!"

Ivan giggled. She was so cute. He went to sit down in one of the chairs she'd set up and beamed at her. "Where would you like to begin~?" He'd taught Russian to one of his family's servants before. He'd have to use a different method with Emma, of course. He didn't want to beat her.

Emma sat down next to him, smiling. "Hm...tough question~" She thought about it for a moment, twisting a few strands of hair between her fingers as she did. "How about just simple words, like 'hello', 'goodbye', 'thank you'. Things like that? Oh, and how to write them, of course~"

"Ah, you might find the Cyrillic alphabet a little hard," he said, and began writing it out on one of the sheets of paper. "If it's anywhere near as difficult as the Latin alphabet... I certainly struggled when I learnt English!"

"Is it really that..." Emma leaned in to see what he was writing. Her heart dropped a little when she saw the letters. There were a couple that looked familiar, the the A, but then it looked like there were two Bs and a 3, along with some other strange looking characters. "O-oh..."

He giggled at her reaction. "Don't worry, I'll help you get the hang of it~ There is nothing like having a native speaker teach you, da? I guess the first step of learning the alphabet would be to teach you what each character sounds like... But it would probably be best to learn the language using the Latin alphabet first, and then learn Cyrillic, and then match them up!"

She smiled (a little nervously) at him. He seemed to know what he was doing, which made her feel a little better about the scary looking alphabet. "Bedankt. And do whatever you think is best~ You are the native speaker after all~"

She grabbed a pad of paper and a pen, scribbling on one of the corners to make sure it was ready. Taking notes might be helpful, especially since Russian looked like nothing she already knew. She could, and probably would, forget what things look or are supposed to sound like.

He smiled at her and started to teach her a few basic words and phrases for greeting and departing a social occasion. He giggled when he noticed how earnestly she was taking notes. He found it really cute. He moved a bit closer to her.

Emma was having a hard time writing down the words. Her letters looked nothing like Ivan's! They were sloppy and childlike compared to his. She didn't really have trouble with the pronunciation of individual letters, but when it came to putting all the sounds together into a word...she would get a little tongue tied. She smiled a little timidly up at her teacher. "I hope I'm not doing too badly..."