ic inbox ( ruby city )

[mylegacy]

"Leave a message, per favore; I'll be back before you know it."

[text|voice|video]

Comments

[lapidarius]

[...fuck you for making him laugh.]

Not quite what I had in mind, but a pretty good idea.

[mylegacy]

[yOU'RE WELCOME ASSHOLE]

Like hell. It's an excellent idea.

[lapidarius]

It makes a terrible mess, though.

[mylegacy]

Put newspaper down under it. Easy.

Or fight somewhere the ground's already dirty and it doesn't matter.

[lapidarius]

That's actually a good solution.

[YOU TWO]

Did you know that Japanese actually condenses 'I won't forgive you' into one word?

[...because if we're going to bond over being angry, we're gonna be nerds about it.]

[mylegacy]

[..................]

What is it?

[HE HAS 2 KNOW]

[lapidarius]

Yurusenai is 'I can't forgive you'. Yurusanai is 'I won't forgive you.' The first is written 許せない and the latter is 許さない.

One could also translate it as I can't/won't allow this', but the distinction isn't always a necessary one.

[mylegacy]

[a slight pause while he writes this down (i am not joking)]

That's very efficient.

[lapidarius]

[nerd.]

It can be a very efficient language, even if I hear it's not an easy one to pick up. A lot of written Japanese is complex, and the same characters can be read entirely different ways.

[mylegacy]

I never picked up languages very quickly. But then I didn't

[. . .]

You said you're still in school. Didn't you?

[lapidarius]

I'm a second year in high school, a year behind Jojo.

[mylegacy]

Right. I never got that far. I was working. And they didn't offer Japanese anyway. Still, I don't think I would have been very good at it.

[lapidarius]

That's okay. I'm not very good with Italian, either.

[mylegacy]

Really?

[lapidarius]

You think I'd just make that up? I can pick up languages in bits and pieces, but otherwise I'm not an expert.

[mylegacy]

I sort of thought you'd be good at everything.

[lapidarius]

I'm smart, not a genius. Don't give me too much credit.

[mylegacy]

Everything academic, then. Words especially. You seem good with them.

[lapidarius]

You think so? Thanks--that actually means a lot.

As long as we seem to both be hung up on the idea of keeping secrets, do you want to hear something else kind of interesting about written Japanese? It'll make sense, I promise.

[mylegacy]

All right. What is it?

[lapidarius]

My given name isn't Noriaki.

It's written as 花京, 'Tenmei'.

[mylegacy]

[There's no response to this for a little while, because he's writing it down but also because he's memorizing it, tracing the sloppy kanji with the tip of his finger and frowning slightly at how imperfect they look. Tenmei. It doesn't . . .]

[He picks up the watch again.]

It doesn't sound like you.

let's pretend i didn't copypaste the wrong kanji it's 1 am shh

[lapidarius]

[The longer the following silence went on, the more Kakyoin felt slightly uneasy; it wasn't really lying in a sense. It was true to say his name was Noriaki, it just wasn't the entire objective truth. Could anyone really fault him for that?]

[But then the response came, and he almost laughed at how Caesar just seemed to...understand. In as few words as possible.]

Yeah, I never liked it all that much either. Sounds a little awkward, right?

Those kanji can be read phonetically as 'Noriaki' without being rewritten or changed--典 is 'scripture' and 明 is 'bright'. So I write my full name the same as 花京院 典明, but I just read it differently.

i Literally would not have noticed

[mylegacy]

That's

[Lots of things. Creative, but that's not the word he's looking for.]

really clever.

[That's it. Kakyoin . . . he's really clever, isn't he. And Caesar doesn't have a right to it, knows he doesn't, but he's sort of proud anyway, because - in spite of everything, Kakyoin created himself. That's more than Caesar ever did.]

[Bright scripture.]

It's still strategy, isn't it? Just applied in a different way. To who you choose to be, instead of how you choose to fight.

I HAD TO CORRECT MYSELF OK

[lapidarius]

I don't know if I'd go so far as to call it particularly clever. But I suppose that one could look at it as a form of strategy. I didn't like 'Tenmei' so I approached myself from a different angle.

[...]

I'm not sure if I like 'Noriaki' all that much more, but it's a start.