Later, she bought the physical books—legitimate, new, with the official red seal. She kept them on her shelf as a promise. But she never deleted that PDF.

“I can’t go out in this,” she muttered, watching rain hammer her Shinjuku apartment window. Her phone buzzed. It was her senpai, Kenji.

“田中さんは どのくらい 日本語を 勉強しましたか。”

Covers Lessons 26 through 50. It is written entirely in Japanese to encourage immersion.

Her shelf held the two blue bricks of Minna no Nihongo —Chukyu I, the N4 book. But the books were at the office. And tonight, a typhoon was lashing Tokyo.

Her heart jumped. Kenji had scanned the entire textbook and the translation notes—all 250 pages—during his lunch break last month. He’d named the file with the exact search phrase she’d used a hundred times.