Chapter 193.


    <strong>Chapter 193. An Unexpected Rtionship. (4/7)</strong>


    <span style="font-weight:400">My mother eventually got married in this country, but unfortunately, she’d met a piece of shit who divorced her soon after I was born. He’d not only tried to divorce her, he also simultaneously worked to have her forcefully deported back to her home country all while she was still pregnant with me. It was a shame thewyer and doctor didn’t consent to my mother signing anything as she wasn’t in a state where she could make sound judgment in the hospital while pregnant with me at that point in time.


    <span style="font-weight:400">He was aware of my mother’s family circumstances long before they got married though. If anything, he probably thought he could use the past precedent as the perfect reason to have her deported to her home country. This was spection on my part though. I admit, I could be wrong, but it was rather convincing.


    <span style="font-weight:400">He’d done the paperwork to try and have her deported while there was an ongoingwsuit against him for some other stupid shit he’d done to my mother at the time while she was still pregnant with me. All sorts of awful things like this happened during my mother’s pregnancy.


    <span style="font-weight:400">She’d even effectively been cheated on by my father. I don’t know the specifics, all I know is at some point when she was still pregnant with me, he’d gone to her home country for some other woman. It was some other messy rtionship that sprung up that he got entangled with because of some friend of his while my mother was pregnant with me. I couldn’t be bothered to care for it. As far as I was concerned, he’d cheated the moment he ran off to her home country to meet another woman while he had a wife pregnant with his own child.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Anyway, after my mother was inevitably deported back home as a result of <i><span style="font-weight:400">that man’s</i><span style="font-weight:400"> efforts, her mother effectively locked her own daughter up with me. That was where my first memories in my life began, when I first truly became aware of the world around me, it was inside that dark room below where everyone else lived. It could hardly even be called a basement by this country’s standards. I still didn’t have the proper term for that ce. A cage was the best way to describe it.


    <span style="font-weight:400">A cage for the family’s unloved daughter and her outcast son.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Haaaah, all of this was in the past though. I really went and remembered a bunch of unpleasant stuff all at once.


    <span style="font-weight:400">My hand abruptly stopped moving. I’d been writing up Wisteria’s contract for what would hopefully be thest time.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“You’re done?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah. It’s done. You just need to sign it now with the name I’ve given you. As long as you ept that name as being yours and identify with it… it should… work out. It’s a name I put a good deal of thought into.” A lot more thought than other character names I’vee up with in the past even if it didn’t take me that long to decide on. Honestly, I just lucked out that I happened across that particr flower and its appearance and name caught my eye.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Wisteria… I don’t dislike the name. As you said, it does suit me.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">She received the contract I held out to her and put her pen down to the paper. She suddenly looked a bit nervous.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“What’s wrong? Are you suddenly having second thoughts?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Uh… how do you spell it?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Oh, haha. It slipped my mind. It can technically be spelled differently. Such as with a y instead of an i. Anyway, it’s W-i-s-t-e-r-i-a,st name S-o-z-e-n. Did you get tha-?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">My heart throbbed, cutting my words off. The familiar burning sensation and sourness at the back of my throat appeared.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Did something happen? Did I mess up somehow?” Wisteria asked me worriedly when she noticed me stop mid-sentence.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Hah… hah… no, sorry. It was sessful this time.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Sessful? But I didn’t feel anything strange happen.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“You didn’t, but I did. I can assure you the contract has been sessful.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Phew.” She let out a relieved sigh with her right hand over her chest.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I suppose we should begin immediately since you’ll be heading back to the academy soon. When will you be leaving?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Uh… probably Sunday. I’ve already submitted my notice to the school.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I see. Then it looks like I''ll need to sacrifice my weekend to grill the basics into you.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Basics? Of what exactly?” She tilted her head to the side a bit confused.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I promised you a future Wisteria. I will teach you the skills required to be a proofreader/editor.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Proofreader/editor? For what?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Well, the thing is…”


    <span style="font-weight:400">Do I tell her I’m an author and it’s my work she’ll be working on? Or do I avoid revealing that? I haven’t even told any of the girls I’m involved with. Is it fine to only reveal it to Wisteria when we only just met yesterday?


    <span style="font-weight:400">Haaaah. I don’t think I can reveal it just yet. It’s also still… embarrassing.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I’m actually a proofreader and editor for an author’s work. They pay me with all the royalties they’re currently receiving from their sales. It isn’t much, only about $50-$100 a month right now as they’re a small no-name author. I intend to allow you to have those funds. It obviously isn’t enough to survive off of so you will naturally need to keep working as an assassin for the time being. But the n is to develop your skill set in this area further. Wisteria, you said all you are good for is sex and killing, right? But you lied to me.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I didn’t lie to you at all. That’s really all I’m good for.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Again, that is another major lie. I will not tolerate such lies, Wisteria.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“But I’m not-”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Are you not speaking to me fluently in mynguage right now?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yes, so what?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Meaning you were at least taught mynguage to a degree you are fluent in, no?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yes… I was taught thisnguage to a degree I was fluent to ensure I’d be able to arouse people with my words. But what if it? So what if I’m fluent in anguage?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“What of it? Words have power. The fact that you canmunicate with others is a very powerful skill at your disposal yet you are squandering it by not using it to its full potential. You have this skill, so don’t waste it.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Just by knowing thenguage, I can make a living?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Well, it can at least allow you to be a proofreader/editor. You can learn to find careless mistakes in a piece of writing and fix them. Authors pay good money for such people. The only problem is you need to build up experience and work samples. I can provide you the opportunity. All you need to do is learn from me and practice. We don’t even need to be face to face for me to teach you. Even if we’re separated by hundreds of miles, we can still remain connected through words, written stories.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“We can?” She didn’t look fully convinced.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Of course. It’s quite simple, I will show you the basics and allow you to edit and proofread the work. Once you do so, I can go through a pass of it myself and give you pointers on anything I feel you may have missed out on or improved on. Because the author’s stories will be posted to Amazon, you will be able to build up work samples like this and potentially reach other authors looking for someone to do so for them.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“There are countless authors out there, but there aren’t enough experienced proofreaders and editors to meet the demand. The keyword here, being <i><span style="font-weight:400">experience</i><span style="font-weight:400">. This is the most significant thing I’m bestowing you with. The opportunity to gain <i><span style="font-weight:400">experience</i><span style="font-weight:400"> in a field foreign to you and earn money out of it. Without proof of your skills, nobody would want to hire you, just the same as an inexperienced assassin straight out of the academy.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“You really think I can really be good at it?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“You’re talking to me right now, are you not good at that? If you’re good at that, you can be good at this too. Simply reading the words out loud as they are written on paper and hearing how it sounds is already a powerful weapon for a proofreader and editor. If you feel winded by the time you’re at the end of a sentence, you better cut it down and trim the fluff filler words out. If it sounds choppy when spoken aloud, you better merge some sentences together and expand on those thoughts.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Whenever you have free time from your assassin work, I want you to practice proofreading or editing the stuff I send over to you. If there isn’t anything avable from me or you finish what I send you, take the time to read other stories online and familiarize yourself with both the spotless works and the bad ones littered with erroneous errors. While you read the ones riddled with errors, think of how you could fix those errors. By doing simple little things like this, you will be better and improve all on your own without the need for me at all.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I just need to read and I’ll get better, that’s it? It’s that simple?” She muttered to herself quietly.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yes. That is all. It’s nothing difficult. It should be something as autonomous as breathing to you once you get the hang of it.”