Chapter 1:

Six months before high school graduation

"Hello Daiki, my name is Annie. I'm glad to meet you." An unfamiliar face, with an unfamiliar voice, and unfamiliar accent greeted him through the glowing computer monitor. She was friendly, and bright, and wore a gentle smile as she gazed at him. And he stared back frozen like a baby dear.

"H-hello A-A-" He stuttered, cursing himself.

"Annie." She finished for him, speaking slowly, enunciating carefully.

"Annie." He parroted. She nodded. "N-nice to meet you." His tongue felt so heavy as the words fell from his lips. He wished he could rewind time so that he could go back to middle school and take his classes more seriously. Ever since he had decided that he wanted to take basketball even more seriously, and follow in Kagami's footsteps, he knew that he would have to start focusing on developing his English skills. He'd always thought it was a waste of time, it's not like he needed it to play basketball, but if he was going to move stateside, his basic tourist levels of the language weren't going to cut it. So, he'd done what anyone would do and searched far and wide on the web for a tutor, trying hard to find one that was a native speaker that was also from the US. He could've used anyone, even someone who spoke it fluently as a second language, but he wanted to sound as natural as possible. He didn't want to pick up on any weird vocab from someone that lived in England or Australia. Their idiosyncrasies were just too different, and he was having a hard enough time.

"Nice to meet you, too." She spoke clearly. "Can you tell me about your experience with English?" Aomine tried hard to keep a neutral face as he listened, but he really couldn't keep up.

"I'm sorry? Please again." He said hopelessly.

"Of course." She repeated the question. When he still couldn't reply and stared blankly at her, she effortlessly switched gears and asked in perfectly fluent Japanese, "Daiki, would it be easier for you if we maybe started off with me teaching you in Japanese? There's no problem either way. What is the extent of your English skills?" There was absolutely no judgement in her voice. A little shocked at her fluency, and complete lack of accent he couldn't respond right away, but eventually he found his voice.

Grumbling at his own incompetence he muttered, "Isn't it better to teach with complete immersion?"

She laughed. "That is true, but it can also be really difficult for the person learning. When I was learning Japanese, I was tossed into a classroom with almost no knowledge of the language at all. I would return to my host family every night nearly in tears because I couldn't understand! My classmates were kind, but I would still get made fun of a lot, and I'm old enough that I didn't have as many resources as language learners do today. I spent so much time cursing my exchange program for not having more options for those of us that were still learning. I went to language classes three nights a week, but it took me my entire three years living there to really feel like I could call myself fluent." Aomine made a face. She put her hands up, smiling. "Don't worry! Like I said, my resources were extremely limited and because of that, total immersion was basically the only way I could learn. You have the advantage of having access to the language 24/7. There are so many apps on your phone, and so may websites you can use for grammar help, and you can even get a tutor, like me, to teach you one-on-one!"

"I think it would be better for you to teach me in English." He muttered, face turning pink as he rubbed at the back of his head. "I'm pretty stupid so the more I'm exposed to it the better it will be, I think." Annie chuckled; her expression soft.

Switching back to English she replied, "You're not stupid, Daiki. English is hard. Language is hard. So let's try our best." She pumped her first and nodded her head once in encouragement. Aomine nodded back despite only catching about a fifth of what she had said. Damn this shit is going to suck.

Three months before high school graduation

"Annie, I got into the college." Aomine beamed, holding up the acceptance letter to the camera. Dear Daiki Aomine, we happy to inform you that you have been accepted to XXXX University and look forward to the coming years- Her eyes scanned the first few lines as the smile spread across her face. "Thanks to you I was able to get through the application process. Now I've got to get my student VISA."

She clapped her hands. "That's amazing, Daiki! I'm so proud of you!"

"Thanks." He grinned back, puffing out his chest with confidence.

"Now I wonder if you can show that same amount of determination on today's quiz." She grinned devilishly, a light glinting in her grey-blue eyes. Aomine swallowed hard, though he tried hard to hold onto the façade of confidence.

"Easy as pie." He said, hoping she didn't hear the quiver in his voice. A reply never came. Instead, his screen shifted and a quiz popped up. Unable to answer even the first question, the basketball star questioned what he had gotten himself into.

Needless to say, he never spoke about that quiz again.

One month until graduation

Aomine rarely got nervous, and even more so did he get visibly nervous. Today was an exception as he logged into the web browser for his lesson. Annie had sent him an online quiz that went over everything they had talked about in the last five months, but he hadn't been graded on the spot. She had told him that she wanted him to really take his time and not rush things, and to think through questions that were giving him trouble. She speculated that, if the quiz had given him his grade right away at the end, he'd have gotten nervous and rushed. Well now he was nervous for a completely different reason.

Right on time, as usual, Annie's face appeared in the right-hand corner of the screen and she could not hide her expression if she had tried. It was like she'd eaten the sun she was shining so bright, her eyes glittering like precious jewels in their sockets, a smile threatening to rip her face apart. "Daiki!" She exclaimed excitedly, slapping her hands against the desk and forgetting her composure. "Daiki, Daiki, Daiki!"

"W-what?" So startled he slipped and spoke in Japanese.

She thrust a stack of papers at the screen, so excited she could hardly hold them still enough for Aomine to see that it was his test answers. "Daiki, I think you might be some kind of genius!" She could hardly contain herself, her neutral teaching accent slipping so much that her far northern accent came out, making her difficult to understand.

"I know that, but excuse me?" He couldn't help the jab.

She laughed, snorting. "You're so confident in everything except your English." She drew the papers back to reveal her face once more. "Do you know what you got on this quiz?"

"Of course not. You wouldn't let me see it." He huffed, scowling.

She jittered in her seat, shaking. "Guess."

"No."

"Guess." She pressed.

"No." He hated stupid games like guessing more than anything. They were a waste of time and energy.

"Ugh, you are such the spoil sport!" She grumped. "You got an eighty-seven percent. Eighty-seven. Do you even know how good that is?"

He gawked at her. Eighty-seven was a horrible score. Sure, it was passing, but that meant that he could barely hold a conversation in English. Where had he screwed up the most? He wracked his brain, trying to pull test questions from memory, but couldn't come up with anything. There were sections that were extremely difficult but nothing that stuck out more than anything else. "Sensei, have you lost it?" He slipped in Japanese again in his disbelief.

She was grinning, wildly, at him. "Do you want to know a secret, Daiki?" He frowned, nodding. "The quiz I gave you was two levels higher than I would normally give students at what should be your level." His eyes about fell out of his head. "We haven't even been working together for half a year and you started off at essentially zero. You've grown so much in that amount of time. If I had given you the correct test, you'd have thought it was so easy that you would accuse me of looking down on you." He flapped his mouth a few times. "Don't try to deny it. Your attitude when you're speaking in Japanese is like reading an open book. Your confidence is out of this world."

He was flabbergasted. His eyes hurt from holding them open, but he was so shocked he couldn't get them to close. His mouth gaped as he reached for words but found himself speechless. All of his struggle, all his time and effort, was coming to fruition. His hard work was paying off in big ways.

Annie spoke again, her gentle demeanor back in place. "Daiki, the test that I gave you would be something I'd give someone who had typically been studying with me for two years or more. There's grammar on that test that I can guarantee you a majority of American students wouldn't have gotten right. Granted, grammar was by and far your worst area, the best being vocabulary, but you still scored almost sixty-five percent on that alone. That's why I think you might actually be a genius. Did you even realize that you can follow along in lessons perfectly fine now? I almost never have to explain things to you in Japanese anymore, even really difficult concepts." He shook his head. "Ugh, I'm just so proud of you!" She gushed. "You're going to be just fine over here, I know it. Until then, let's keep studying hard, okay?" He simply nodded. Something, a sense of pride maybe, swelled in his chest. Suddenly his move stateside seemed just a little less scary.

Graduation

Unsurprisingly, there were no tears. Not from him at least. Girls flocked around him as they pestered him for his Line information and email address, claiming that they wanted to keep in touch. He staved them off with bullshit excuses for awhile until he finally exploded at them, yelling that he was moving to California to pursue basketball and that he didn't want anything to do with any of them as soon as the ceremony was over. While a few of them backed off, a few of his hardcore fans clung on, claiming that his tsundere attitude wasn't enough to dissuade them. Finally, after God knows how long, Satsuki came to his rescue, dragging him far away from the hoards of onlookers. "Ugh, so annoying." He grumbled, raking a hand through his hair. "All of them thinking they're hot shit. None of them are even that sexy." His friend laughed, wrapping herself around his arm. "Oy, get your tits off of me."

"Nuh-uh." She pressed her chest harder against him. "I know that you're a boob guy."

He retched. "It's like having my sister's tits on me. I'm going to throw up." He pretended like he was going to, covering his mouth with a hand. She squeezed herself extra close one last time before letting go, her expression all smiles. "I'm going to tell Tetsuya that you cheated on him."

"As if he'll believe you." She stretched her arms out behind her back, leaning forward. "So. How long do I have you for?" He heard a few soft pops as her spine aligned itself.

"Until the end of July."

"Well then. I'll have to get my fill of you before then." Satsuki slapped him heavily on the shoulder before turning on her heel and heading back into the throng of students filing out of the gym, diplomas in hand.

Later that evening Annie congratulated him. "Good job, Daiki. You're officially an adult."

"I'm still only seventeen."

"Close enough. How as the ceremony?" He shrugged nonchalantly. "Did you cry?"

"Of course not." He glared at her, nostrils flaring in annoyance. She laughed, throwing her head back. "It wasn't that funny." He huffed.

"You're right. But seriously, congrats. It's so strange that you guys graduate in March. I guess it just means that you're going to have plenty of time to study. Are you going to work in the mean time?"

"Yeah, probably."

"What are you planning to do?" He shrugged. He'd thought about getting a part time job for awhile but he'd never bothered to look. Now that he had the time, he didn't have a clue what he wanted to do. "You should look for something where your English will be really helpful. Something in a tourist-y area would be great."

"You think I have the composure to work with people?" He eyed her, dubiously. She laughed again.

"Yeah, I guess you're right. Think about jobs where you can use it without having to talk to people, then. I'm sure there's something. Maybe a basic translating job. I can give you a recommendation if you need it."

"I'll think about it." All he knew for sure was that the next few months were going to be long, and difficult, but deep inside his gut he felt an overwhelming sense of excitement. A new chapter was about to begin.

"Well then. Let's get started." Annie's chirper voice cut through the inner monologue and their lessons began.