Chapter Text
“Of all the foolish things…” Franziska muttered under her breath. She had held Ms. Fey in high regard at one point, and yet, in a stroke of poor judgement, she just had to pair her with that foolish fool! She was quite aware of that girl’s status as her teacher’s sister and Franziska ought to report this as some sort of abuse of power really. But, she was given a task, and a Von Karma will perfect any task they are given, so that is what she will do.
*
Franziska pushed open the door to the library, the familiar smell of old books, most certainly not treated right by any of the foolish staff nor student body. She turned the corner and saw her. The fool wasn’t even sitting in her chair, her legs in some position only a contortionist could achieve through years of practice, somehow with her legs folded and twisted so oddly that Franziska was worried if she was getting any circulation at all. She looked almost too pitiful. Her head was tilted down with ribbons of black hair, obscuring her face. Franziska straightened before clearing her throat.
“I believe your sister tasked me with assisting you in learning German?” The girl looked up then dark eyes widening slightly before relaxing into a bit of a sheepish smile.
“Think you could fix this?” She held her last German test up with a bit of shame, hiding her face behind the paper before lifting it to show Franziska.
That… was the most abhorrent test score Franziska ever had the displeasure of seeing in her whole life. Never, never in her eleven years of education had she ever seen a score that low. On the paper, with bright red pen, was 6% written with a frowny face on the side, and a See me after class written in neat print below it. Franziska refrained from showing her abject horror and simply stared for a moment before clearing her throat once more.
“Ah, I see..” She took a seat across from the dark haired girl as the gears in her mind turned. She had known this girl would be difficult, her behavior in class was simply dreadful as was. She was brash, loud, and it made Franziska feel like a migraine would start every time she walked into class. Ms. Fey must think she can work a miracle it seems. Yet, Franziska let out a deep sigh before looking up again. She opened out her hand gesturing for the girl to hand her the test. The girl looked up almost pained to have to give it to her but relinquished it after a beat. Franziska scanned through the paper for a moment seeing the bubbly print of Maya Fey scrawled on the top left corner.
“We’ll start here.” Question 1. Translate all vocabulary words from German to English. Franziska quickly checks over Maya’s answers. Since when did Klavier mean trumpet? They’re not even remotely close. Question 2. Fill in the blank. Wenn ich Zeit hätte, ______ ich schwimmen gehen. Seeing the multiple choice answers, Maya had a 25% chance of getting the correct answer. She circled C, wurde. Really? The one without the accent marking?
Franziska decided she’d skip over the multiple choice answers, seeing as Maya seemed set on avoiding the correct answer with everything that she had. Open Response. Write a journal entry as a flight attendant documenting various passengers throughout the flight. Reading the response was a Herculean task in itself. The various grammar and conjugation mistakes, the constant spelling errors, the lack of accent markings… Some of these sentences ended up completely unrelated to airports in the end. Any notion of even planes itself were abandoned as Maya had butchered the spelling so horribly she had turned plane, Flugzeug… into Flaschenmilch. The word for bottled milk, of all things. She has subsequently received 1 point out of 30 possible for the response.
“You’re grimacing really hard. Like unbelievably hard. Is it that bad?” She slowly slid the paper from Franziska’s hand, to stop her from analyzing all her mistakes to hell in back. “Look, German is hard. It’s like it goes in one ear and out of the other! I sit down, look at the paper, and it’s like the words blend together into a jumbled mess of letters.
Franziska pinched between her brows before holding up a hand.
“Stop, stop, please. Just… why in God’s name did you take the class if you..” Franziska paused, biting back the words hopeless, horrible even . Though it was true it would be rather impolite.
“It’s because they don’t offer Japanese! I would have taken it for the easy A. Unfortunately, this is America, and they only offer French, Spanish, and German. Come on! I would have even taken Mandarin. I can just try and read the characters, translate it into what Kanji I know and try my darndest.” Maya curled her fingers into fists in exasperation.
Franziska paused for a moment the gears in her mind that had been close to cementing her hatred for this girl came to a halt. Franziska could almost sympathize with Maya Fey. She, after all, had also been in a similar position not three years ago except she had been lucky enough for German to be offered as an elective. She looked at Maya Fey and decided then and there. She supposed, it wouldn’t be so awful to help this fool. Franziska nodded before getting up, giving Maya a firm look.
“I’ll do my best to help you, Maya Fey.” with a curt nod she turned grabbing her satchel from the floor walking towards the exit.
“Hey, wait! I didn’t catch your name!” Maya nearly screamed before she realized she was in a library, the students around them letting out a chorus of Shhh! To which Maya clamped a hand over her mouth. Franziska paused, turning to face Maya again.
“It is Franziska. Franziska Von Karma.” She was on her way back, her spirits not as low as she had expected after such an encounter. Perhaps she had misjudged Maya Fey after all. Perhaps her unruly behaviour did not represent her character. Maybe–
“All right! See ya next time, Fran!”
Maybe she did hate this foolish, foolish girl.