English Me!

1: I Did Not Know Then, but This Was the Beginning

A year has passed since I started working. I worked at a company that develops mobile app games. I'm lucky to be working still in my hometown and in a decent sized company. It's actually a city but it isn't as big as other cities. It's cozy in this city on top of the mountains.

I said my company does game apps, but they never did profit much on those. What actually made the small startup grow to a legit company was 'English Me'. It was a platform for students learning English to converse with English teachers.

I'm one of the hired programmers after the app became a hit. I got really excited when they said they'll hire me. A real programming job and I was just out of university and in my hometown to boot. The pay was what I expected and being the only girl in the development team was like a novelty.

But that's what I was, a novelty. I believe my work was good and better than average but for some reason my day to day tasks changed. It was too late when I realized I'm not actually doing any programming work anymore. At first they made me do testing work for the reason that the QA team was busy. I was still doing development work, but I gradually started talking more and more to the QA team than my own department.

After that I was asked to fill in for an English teacher. The English Me app have users as English teachers but we also have company trained ones. That's the thing, you have to be a trained personnel. I'm not. So I told my concern but I was reassured that it's fine. I wanted to ask more about their plans for my career in the company but they gave the same excuse that they do with all my questions. "It's just a busy time for the company as English Me is taking off, please understand."

=

I prepared my cereal with milk and put it on my study desk. The clock said it was 6:57 pm and I was waiting for my second ever student to login. When I was assigned my first student, I was teaching through a video call and that was a norm for English Me teaching. This student however specifically requested that we do the lessons through chat. According to the Sales team, this one was paying for the full package but insisted that chat is enough.

The notification sound went off.

Hello?

Hi, I'm Melissa and I'm your conversation partner :)

Ah.. I shouldn't have added that smiley.

I'm Yoongi. Nice to meet you :)

Nice to meet you too. Let me tell you about myself first.

Thank goodness he smiley-ed back. I introduced myself as a person who liked computers and loves to eat out. Yoongi, as I assumed, was Korean and he said he likes music. We talked about things he wanted to achieve with our course and I personally thought he only need practice and more exposure for him to achieve what he wanted.

The session finished after an hour. I sighed as I realized I was again persuaded to take another work I'm not suppose to be doing.

=

"How did it go? They're good right? A family friend recommended English Me."

"They're very professional, manager. My teacher, Melissa, seems to be a good person."

"That's good. I was worried it will be a waste of time if they knew who you really are. But the sales person was quick to suggest and understand the situation."

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Author's Notes:

Hello again everyone! What do you think of the first actual chapter? I made sure Suga is there to greet you guys *smiles* I want to apologize that my English grammar is not perfect but I am learning so feel free to point them out. Maybe I should get lessons with Melissa *giggles* Also as I don't know Korean, I have put conversations meant to be in Korean with underlines.

Love pastelpinkhair *hugs*