“Urghhh, I hate online classes!”

I looked over from the stove and saw a river of black hair flowing down from my kitchen island. Two emerald crystals sparkled from the black river, revealing a little bit of the indignation of the young girl’s heart.

Ever since that day when I made Jjajangmyeon for her, Althea started eating over at my apartment. It was just much more convenient for the both of us, given that we were bound by a simple arrangement.

So, whenever Althea was over at my place, we would indulge in pointless conversations to pass the time. After all, no other visitors were allowed during this lockdown.

Althea would discuss stories about her student life while I would share anything I could about my programming life. Most of the time, we would just talk about our day’s events, and today was no different.

“What’s the matter?”

The beautiful young girl pouted as her brows stitched together. “Have you ever had an online class during your university days?”

“Not in particular,” I thought back to my previous life as a student and couldn’t recall any instances that Althea was talking about.

“If you’re talking about online assignments, I had a few of them.”

“No, not that!” Althea shook her head as she rose from the kitchen island. “Online assignments are fine, but what really ticks me off are the online classes!” The young girl hollered out with an adorable pout.

“Whenever we have lectures or tutorials, we have to be on the computer for hours on end.”

“Isn’t that normal?”

Even without the pandemic, university classes would generally take hours anyway.

“Yeah, but if your internet connection dips, you would basically miss an entire day worth of lessons!”

“Oh, is that what happened to you?” I asked while plating the spaghetti on the table.

Althea finally got to the crux of the issue. She frowned and complained: “That’s right! For some reason, my WiFi stopped working in the middle of class! I restarted my modem and router, but it didn’t work! So I had to call the service desk, and they guided me through the lengthy process of rerouting some switches and pressing some random buttons. When it was all done, I’d missed all of my classes!”

“Ah… That sucks...”

It was common to have internet issues. No matter how good your provider was, these kinds of things happen, and it’s often hard to pinpoint the problem.

“Yeah, and you know what the worst part is? The teacher couldn’t mark my attendance since my face wasn’t on screen for the lesson! If my internet keeps having issues, I won’t be able to reach the seventy-five per cent attendance quota!”

“Oh, does that quota hold even during the pandemic?”

“That’s right!” Althea snorted with a harrumph. “Doesn’t make sense, right?! Not everyone has the luxury of good internet.”

“R-Right...”

It has been three weeks since I’d saved Althea by bringing her to the emergency room. From that point on, the girl had been gradually opening up to me.

Gone were the days when she would flinch whenever she saw my face. There were even times where Althea would start to ramble on about her group projects or how tough her modules were. In fact, it seemed like she was more talkative than me.

You know… I kind of miss that old silent girl…

“Besides, why can’t they just do recorded lectures? We can’t even ask questions during the virtual ones, so what’s the point of making us sit through it?”

Althea’s range of expressions expanded once more as she angrily twirled her spaghetti. From my point of view, the young maiden seemed to have morphed into an angry little otter. She tried her best to look angry, but all I could see was an adorable little creature that was struggling with her Italian noodles.

“You know… If you’re having troubles with your internet, you could always connect to my WiFi.”

Althea’s eyes bulged at my suggestion. It seemed that the thought hadn’t crossed her mind.

“I-Is that okay?”

“Of course! My work requires quite a bit of bandwidth, so my broadband plan is on the upper end. Because of that, I rarely have any issues with my internet.”

“Wow… Is this the power of a working adult?”

Althea's eyes were gleaming with awe and respect as if I were a wealthy oil tycoon that could solve everything with money.

“Haha, that’s right! When you’re earning money, you can splurge on anything you want! I just happen to spend all my money on tech.”

“You’re right...” The young girl looked around my apartment and marvelled at all the gadgets I had.

“B-But… Would the WiFi connection reach my apartment?”

“Hmmm… I don’t have a booster, so it might be weaker there. Well, if you really need to, you could come over to my apartment whenever you need to attend classes.”

“... Is that a good idea? Won’t I disrupt your work?”

“Are you planning to make a ruckus?”

“Of course not! It’s just I would need to listen to lectures and talk to the professors during class… Sometimes I may even have group meetings...”

“Haha, if that’s the case, as long as you don’t make too much noise, it’ll be fine. Most of my work is just coding, so I can do it at my own pace. Ah, if I have any meetings, you’ll have to keep quiet, though. I can’t have my colleagues thinking that I kidnapped a university student.”

I joked with a playful wink.

“T-That won’t happen!”

Althea waved her hands in the air like a cartoon character. Seriously… why is her behaviour so adorable?

“It’s settled then! Whenever you need my WiFi, you can just drop by.”

“I-I’ll take you up on that offer then...”