The question hovering in everyone's mind was the same: Had Ryan learned some language?
If you had asked that until recently, he would have said no.
After all, his father liked the idea of pretending they were poor, a performance he gave his all to without sparing any effort. To the point that Ryan often had to ration food or even receive donations meant for charity.
Thanks to his father's faithful performance, Ryan had the upbringing of a family extremely scarce in resources, and generally families like that didn't have extra money to enroll their children in expensive language courses, at least as far as he knew.
Until he was sixteen, Ryan only knew his mother tongue, and if it were up to his father he'd speak like a country bumpkin.
But if you asked today, a few weeks after his birthday, whether he could speak some foreign language with the mastery of a native, the short answer was: Yes.
