ic inbox ( ruby city )

[mylegacy]

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

[text|voice|video]

Comments

[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.

[mylegacy]

What don't you like about Noriaki?

[lapidarius]

[I'm a coward. I'm a walking disaster putting myself somewhere I don't belong, and a complete failure on top of all that. I didn't change at all, I just faked it well enough to get by.]

I don't really know. I guess I should work on figuring that out.

[mylegacy]

Maybe. I think . . . there's something to the idea of changing your name to suit how you feel, rather than changing yourself to fit who you think you should be.

I don't know if that makes sense.

[lapidarius]

I think it makes sense, sort of.

I don't think I'd know how to change myself--I've always had a reasonable grasp of what kind of person I am, more or less. It's hard not to know who you are when you grow up with 'who you are' literally standing right next to you.

That's probably my turn not to make sense, actually.

[mylegacy]

I understand. But I'm not talking about changing to find yourself. I'm talking about changing to accomplish something.

[lapidarius]

Accomplish something, like what?

[mylegacy]

Solving a problem, or killing someone who needs to be killed, or protecting people who need to be protected . . . anything.

[lapidarius]

That kind of thing--I get it, I think.

I've been wondering what kind of person I would really need to be in order to protect what I need to protect, and I might be starting to understand that.

Whenever we end up working together again, do you think I could ask you to help me with something?

[mylegacy]

[Another pause, shorter this time.]

You don't have to ask that kind of question. If I can help you I will. So next time you can say, "Whenever we end up working together again, I need your help with something, Caesar". And you can add a please if you want, but I don't really give a shit.

[lapidarius]

Okay. Let me try again.

Whenever we end up working together again, I need your help with something, Caesar.

The only thing I know through intuition rather than thought is Hierophant. You're better at Hamon than Joseph, and I'm better than anyone at using my Stand. But there are some things he and I can't do--if our worst case scenario should ever happen, right now Jotaro is the only one that can fight it.

...I can't let that happen again. I won't let him fight on his own against a living nightmare, not if I can help it.

So I need you to help me figure out how to channel Hamon through Hierophant directly. If I can just do that, then the Dio of 1988 won't be able to defeat me again. I'll be able to kill him first.