Leave it to Noctis to confuse encouragement with 'sucking up'. Zoro let him go, anyway.
"Does it look like you're living just the same now as you have been for ten years?" Zoro huffed. "You need to know how to read because people will take advantage of you if you can't. Because it gives you more options for how to communicate with people." He gave Noctis a dry look. "Or you could start learning because I just told you that's what's going to happen, and one way or another, you should know by now I'll make good on that."