To write for a future readership

When Natsumi divulged that a student in her class had copied an article from the internet for a group project, and was very likely to lose all the points and get a warning from the department director, she couldn't fight the impulse to ask, "Was he Chinese?" "Yes..." admitted Natsumi. That was so unsurprising. She knew that every semester the Japanese teaching group had to device strategies to discourage the Chinese students from cheating. It was humiliating, and she wanted to write to someone "in charge" of the Chinese population on campus about this and make every Chinese aware of this dishonorable situation.

For the last two years the Chinese language program had been losing students. True that there was an overall drop in enrollment in all the humanities programs, but she felt that Chinese itself was losing ground. In contrast, enrollment in Japanese increased. This year their program recruited a dozen new graduate students, including seven or eight TAs. That was like adding at least ten sections to their language courses, even after deducting the old TAs who had graduated. About eighty percent of the undergrads who registered for their language classes were Chinese. What could one do with it? The Chinese population at this college was growing exponentially, and most of those with language credit requirement preferred to learn Japanese, a language close to their own and attracting them through animations, food, and what not. In Natsumi's words, they, the Japanese TAs, depended on the Chinese students for their salaries.

After October break people came back to their offices with great reluctance. Aya was in a cold and seemed to have difficulty breathing. "How was your break?" "Oh it was the worst," said Aya, "I broke up with my boyfriend." "Oh--" she began, but then switched to Japanese, "Are you okay?" "Yes, it's just the cold." She went over to hug Aya. "You'll be fine. We need to find you a new boyfriend." "Yes please!" Aya cried, "Do you know someone?" She was unprepared for this question. "You mean--uh--ya," switched back to English, "of course I do. Let me think. I have a bunch of friends from church, whom I think are available." "Are they Americans?" "Are you looking for Americans?" "That would be the best." "Yes, there're several." "Graduates?" "...perhaps not." She thought a little. "Oh yes, there is one!" She thought of Chris. Chris was an American, same age as she, and used to be a Japanese interpreter. She told Aya about this, and seeing Aya was interested, began to pull up Chris' page on Facebook. She found it, and there was nothing on the page indicating that he was in a relationship. "So he may be available," she said, "you want to know him?" All the while she wasn't clear why she was doing this. She was never interested in being a matchmaker. Bringing people together made her feel old. Only old people were enthusiastic about arranging relationships. But she couldn't help thinking that this might be a good match. One was looking for an American, and the other speaking Japanese like native. She even showed Aya the group page of her bible study fellowship, with photos of its recent fun events, giving it a good advertisement.

So it was decided that Aya would come to a church meeting to know that guy.

Breakup

I vomit up my soul and set her free.

Office after 7 pm

She was resting, her feet on her desk. The door lock clicked, and she hurriedly put her feet down, when her officemate, Aya, came in. She said something in Japanese to her, but she didn't understand. She only caught the ending sound, "ka", and knew it was a question. So she said, "uh huh," not caring to understand what was asked. It was some phatic phrase anyway. Aya was with her boyfriend, an American graduate student in mechanical engineering. She had caught some glimpses of him before, but had very little idea what he looked like, for he never came in. She only knew that he was almost twice as tall as Aya. She heard that from someone else. That, however, didn't seem extraordinary to her. Rather, she would often wonder how people met and became lovers. Mechanical engineering and Japanese linguistics. They must have met at some party, or student club. For graduate students and teaching assistants, parties are clubs were luxuries.