The days drag on.

I keep going for my intensive language classes. But they're tiring. They're starting to wear me out.

I've stopped doing the homework. Looking at question after question, on sheet upon sheet, gives me a raging migraine. The words run into each other and don't make any sense. What's the point? I will never get the hang of this language. I always get the answers wrong anyway.

I'm hopeless at this language. Elina thinks so too. She always looks at me with this expression when she asks me a question in class – an expression that is a mixture of worry and uncertainty. She stops in the middle of the class sometimes, to ask if I understand. And the rest of the class looks at me knowingly.

She must think I'm stupid.

And the longer I learn this language, the more I'm starting to think I'm stupid, too.

I don't know what Aksel thinks about how I'm coping with the class. He knows that I'm having trouble with the language, but I don't tell him the extent of it. He asks every day, but all I tell him is that it is still hard, that I still don't know anyone in the class properly. And all he says in return is what he always says – that it takes time.

A week after the pop quiz, I get home late and he asks, "Class ended late today?"

"No." I don't want to explain that I'm late only because I locked myself in a toilet stall for half an hour after class had ended. And I had taken the long way home, because I needed more time for the puffiness of my eyes to fade before I have to face Aksel.

He studies my face for a long moment. Then he says, his voice gentle, "Did something happen, Emilie?"

Wondering briefly if he can see any remaining redness around my eyes, I shrug.

He closes his eyes briefly – perhaps partly in exasperation, partly to formulate his words. "I can't help you if you don't tell me what's going on."

"You can't help me anyway," I mutter.

He ignores my surliness. "I can help with your Finnish homework. Or anything else you're not sure of."

I'm about to rebuff him, then end up shrugging again. "Okay, fine. If you want."

I head for the bedroom, not turning to see if he follows. I root around in my bag and pull out my textbook. There are two pages in the book that have been assigned for homework that night.

Aksel comes in close behind me, looking over my head as I flip through the pages.

"They're all empty," he says, stating the obvious. I can't hear any trace of censure in his tone, but I feel a habitual defensiveness rising up in me.

"Yeah, well," I say, jerking so hard at a particular page that I almost tear it. "It's too hard for me. Even if I sit down and try to do it, I end up not writing anything."

"I keep telling you, you can always ask me." Now there's the censure I was waiting for.

"I can't be asking you everything every single time." I slap the book flat onto the table.

"Is that your homework for today?" Aksel is already scanning the page.

"Mhm." I stand to the side, giving him space to read. I don't know why he's insisting on doing this. I'm already tired; I want to go to bed, not work on some tedious homework that will just pile back on the next day. It's a never-ending process.

Aksel pulls out the only chair at the desk and gestures to it. "Sit."

"Must I?" I sigh, but I plant myself down onto the chair. I pick up my pen, hovering over the first blank.

Aksel leans over me, reading the question out loud. "Minulla on koira..."

"Minulla," I repeat, frowning as I try to remember what that ending means. It has something to do with minä, I know it.

"It's the adessive form of minä," Aksel prompts.

I have no idea what the word 'adessive' even means, but I don't tell him that. "Me?" I hedge a guess. "Does it mean 'me'?" But even as I say it, I know I'm wrong. It wouldn't be at the beginning of the sentence.

"That's minulle."

I almost throw the book across the room. This is why I have trouble with Finnish. Change one letter at the end, and it means something else completely. How am I supposed to remember it all?

"En tiedä," I say. It's the only Finnish phrase that I'm sure of – I spend a lot of time saying it, even in class. I don't know. That's what it means.

Aksel well-meaningly corrects my pronunciation, even though I can't hear any difference in the way he pronounces it. But I just nod. I'm not in the mood to argue with him.

"Minulla on comes together," Aksel finally takes pity on me. "It means 'I have'."

"Okay," I say wearily. Just two words, and it's taken us a quarter of an hour. I'll never finish this tonight. "And koira...?"

"A dog," Aksel translates.

"I thought that was koirat."

"Koirat means 'dogs'. It's the plural form."

"Oh." I sit staring at the textbook, making no move to write anything down. All I can think about is getting out of this chair and doing something else with my time.

"So," Aksel rests a finger on the paper. "The blank here..."

I don't know how I make it through, but eventually, we finish up. My head is swimming with all the words I just learnt. I'm pretty sure I'll forget all of them by tomorrow's class.

By the halfway mark, though, Aksel is the one answering most of the questions. It takes too long for me to figure anything out, and even though he tries to be patient through my long silences, I can tell it's wearing on him. He's, after all, not made to be a teacher.

"See?" Aksel looks pleased now – far more pleased than I personally feel. He's acting like I've single-handedly conquered the tallest mountain in Finland. "You did it. You can, if you sit down and try."

I swallow down the spark of irritation that flares up at this accidentally condescending comment. Instead, I lean up and kiss him lightly. "Yeah. Thanks for helping."

I don't bring up the fact that there's just going to be more homework tomorrow that I can't do on my own.

***

Once a week on Sunday, Aksel and I do the groceries together.

Aksel prefers to go to the S-market three tram stops away, which is a relief, because I no longer want to return to the Alepa near our apartment since the cucumber incident. Aksel is in agreement with me on that. That Alepa is too small, he says – it's a pain to even walk through the doorway.

But I also hate grocery-shopping at S-market.

It's so big, so confusing, and there are so many people on Sundays. In Germany, almost nothing is open on Sundays, unless it's a special day for shopping. Here, it feels like everyone is out on Sundays. The supermarkets are open; some other shops are, too.

It feels weird.

I never thought I'd miss the inconvenience of it all, but I do now. I miss the quiet, empty streets on Sundays in Germany. It's strange. Moving away makes you start to miss all the things you used to dislike, used to complain about. When you're living somewhere else, you find new things to dislike, to complain about.

In the S-market, I trail behind Aksel as he navigates the aisles with ease. He's been here so many times, he doesn't even have to glance up to look at the signs. I do, but even then, I still don't understand most of the words. I can never figure out which section is which.

Except for maito. I remember that one, at least.

"Fettfri mjölk," I try to pronounce the Swedish when we come to that particular section, watching as Aksel bends to pick up a carton of milk. I'm pretty sure I've pronounced it wrong – probably sounds more German than Swedish – but Aksel doesn't correct me on that. He doesn't really like it when I call things by their Swedish names. He was that way with the laxsoppa – no, lohikeitto, too.

"Maito," he says now, putting the carton into our shopping cart.

"I remember maito," I tell him, pushing the cart along as he strides on. "It's one of the first words I learnt, doing grocery shopping here." It's still one of the only words I can recognise now, when getting the groceries.

He looks back at me, and smiles. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. But I don't remember–" I look back down at the carton and read off it, "–ras-va-ton. Fettfri is so much easier to understand."

The smile has faded from Aksel's face. He turns and resumes walking. After a pause, he says, to the air in front of him, "I guess the Swedish is easier, if you know it."

"Swedish looks like German or English sometimes." Finnish doesn't. At least, not as much.

Aksel doesn't answer.

We are at the meat section by now. I leave the cart parked haphazardly beside Aksel and move forward to read the words on the packets of minced meat.

"Oh, nötkött," I scrunch up my face while pronouncing it. I'm surer of this one, because I've looked up the pronunciation after first encountering the word. "Beef. Let's get the beef."

"You speak Swedish now?" Aksel is standing with his hands in his pockets, looking on as I pick up one of the packets of minced meat.

"No. Not really. I just know some words. I remember them from when we last did the groceries."

I run my fingers over the Swedish translation on the packaging, printed in smaller font right below the Finnish on the label.

"Swedish is so much easier than Finnish." Even I can hear the mournful note in my voice. "It would've been so much easier to learn Swedish instead."

Aksel is silent for a while. "Yeah," he says finally. "It's a pity you didn't meet a Swede and end up living in Sweden."

"That's not what I meant," I mumble, frowning at the package in my hand. I am blinking hard, so that the damned tears won't overflow again.

"Then what did you mean?" Aksel takes the packet from me and throws it, a little too hard, into the shopping cart.

"Nothing!" I grab the shopping cart by the handle and shove at it recklessly, so that Aksel has to move quickly out of the way to avoid getting hit. He reaches out and grabs the metal part of the cart, stopping me in my tracks.

"Don't." I don't know what he's saying, until he adds, "You're going to hit someone."

I ignore him. "I just meant Swedish words are easier to remember," I say, suddenly defensive. "So of course I'm going to look at them, instead of some bloody gibberish I don't understand!"

There is an awful silence after that. I see Aksel take a deep breath. And I watch as he slowly lets it out.

"Fine," he says, then turns and walks away, leaving me to follow.

***

By the time we're back at the apartment and have finished unloading the groceries, he still hasn't spoken.

I don't particularly want to speak either, especially when he's obviously unhappy with me, but it was my fault. I need to apologise. I hover by the kitchen entrance for a long time before gathering up the courage to break the silence.

"I didn't mean it," I say in a small voice. He takes his time before responding, bending a little to put the last item into the fridge. Then he stands back and closes the door before turning to me.

"There are a lot of things you say lately that you apparently don't mean."

I open my mouth to say something else, but the words fail me. Aksel's phone vibrates then, distracting him and letting me off the hook.

He reads what appears to be a text, then looks back at me. "That was Janne. The gang is meeting at his place in a bit."

"Oh." I hesitate, wondering if I'm invited. But then I think back to that night a week or so ago – sitting with the group of them, listening to all that Finnish swirling in the air around me, feeling completely out of place. "You're going, then? Have fun."

I know, a split second later, that it was the wrong thing to say. Aksel stares at me, mouth slightly open, as if caught off guard by my flippant reply. He swallows, then frowns, "So you don't want to go?"

"I just... I have a headache." I put a feeble hand to my forehead. Involuntarily, my gaze drifts downwards, because I can't look at him when I'm lying to him. "I think I'll take a nap or something. But you should go. Hang out with the others. Don't let me ruin your Sunday."

In the long silence that ensues, I finally drag my gaze back up to his.

Aksel's lips are parted again, but he isn't saying anything. The moment my eyes meet his, he looks away.

"All right." His voice is clipped. He turns away to text on his phone, probably to tell Janne that he's coming.

"I'll just..." Gesturing vaguely in the direction of the bedroom, I trail off when I realise he's not listening. He is still focusing very hard on his phone, back turned rigidly towards me.

I leave him to it.

Back in the bedroom, I lean against the door for a moment, letting my eyes slide shut and my head fall back against the cool wooden surface.

Shit.

I keep fucking things up today. But it's not just today. Maybe I've been fucking things up since the day I arrived in Helsinki.

I hear the front door close outside.

Wait. Has he...?

I press my ear against the door, then realise how stupid it is. Opening the bedroom door a crack, I poke my head out. There's no one at the dining space, nor in the kitchen. I could walk out to check the living room, but I'm already sure of what I will – or won't – find.

Aksel is gone. He's left without even saying goodbye to me.

I swallow, pulling my lips into my mouth to bite on them.

Fine. Whatever.

I head back to the bedroom, leaving the door ajar this time, and sit down hard on the bed. I can feel my eyes getting hot.

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I bury my face in my hands – only for a minute, before I spring up again. I stalk over to my desk, with all the damned Finnish textbooks piled on it. Then, with a violent swing of my arm, I sweep all the books off the tabletop, watching them land on the floor with a thud.

I collapse onto the chair, still scrabbling wildly around the desk, throwing everything I touch onto the floor. More books. My notepad. Worksheets – blank worksheets that I haven't gotten around to, worksheets with red marks scribbled all over, because I am shit at this language.

Eventually, there is nothing left on the table, save a piece of crumpled blank paper. Everything the desk used to hold is pooled at my feet. If Aksel were to walk in now, I find myself thinking wildly, he's going to think I'm crazy.

And maybe I am crazy. Maybe Finland has made me crazy.

I crush a corner of the paper in my hand, squeezing so hard that my fingernails dig into the flesh of my palm. I'm about to fling it onto the ground, too, but I change my mind and grab a stray pen lying by the leg of the chair instead.

Perkele, I find myself writing. Then I write it again, harder this time – so hard that the nib of my pen bites deeply through the paper, into the wood of the desk below. Even though the Finnish swear word means nothing to me, I feel a fierce sense of satisfaction in writing it down. So I write it again. And again.

Perkele.

Devil be with you.

Fuck you. Fuck this language. Fuck this country.

I don't realise I'm crying – loud, heaving sobs – until the first tear drips off the length of my nose and falls onto the paper. Then another. And another.

I drop the pen with a clatter. It rolls off the edge of the table onto the ground, but I pay it no mind. I'm looking at the blurry white shape on the table in front of me.

It's filled with dark scribbles. I have filled the entire sheet of paper with Finnish curse words and phrases.

Then I put my head into my hands and laugh out loud through my tears. Because, while I still can't adequately speak this language, I can almost fluently curse in it.

That's something, at least.