Every evening, after dinner, it has beco a daily routine for Amal and
to sit on the bed and talk.
However, Amal hardly ever talks about herself; it’s mostly a one-sided conversation where I do most of the talking. About Japan. Its culture. Academia. Amal wants to hear anything related to .
During these conversations, we touched upon the topic of the Japanese language. As it’s hard to explain verbally, I decided to show her instead, pulling out a wax tablet from the desk.
“So, my na is originally written like this.”
I inscribed my na, Andou Ryu, onto the thin wooden wax tablet with a stylus. Amal watched intently.
“This is my na.”
“It looks like a pattern.”
Amal stared at the wax tablet as if burning the image into her mory.
“Yeah. The language originally developed from pictures. They’re called Kanji. They’re ideograms, and each of these characters has its own independent aning.”
“What does your na an, Andy-sama?”
“It’s nothing special, but well, it ans to prosper, to rise above the downward forces, sothing like that.”
“…It’s a very nice na.”
“Thanks. By the way, what does the na ‘Amal’ an?”
It was a casual question. Amal jerked her shoulders and looked down, struggling to find the words.
“I, well, my…”
Seeing Amal hesitate unusually made
wonder if her na was sothing embarrassing, like a ‘yandere’ nickna.
Co to think of it, she didn’t seem very fond of being called by her full na, ‘Amalthea’…
Could it be because of the aning associated with the na ‘Amalthea’?
Regardless, I couldn’t stand to see her so downcast, so I pulled her into a comforting embrace, murmuring to her like a child.
“Hey, the nickna I call you, ‘Amal’, in the language of where I used to live, I think it was Arabic, it ans ‘hope.’ I think it suits you perfectly, but is that aning not okay?”
“Ah, Andy-sama!”
As if she couldn’t help herself, Amal leaped into my arms.
While she hugged
tightly, I laughed and thought that she’s been jumping at
a lot lately.
＊＊＊
Once Amal had regained her composure, she began to write on the wax tablet again. She rested her head on my arm and followed the characters I wrote on the tablet with her eyes.
“In my country, we have three types of written characters, and we use them depending on the situation. What I wrote earlier was Kanji. Then there’s Hiragana. And lastly, Katakana. Katakana is mainly used for foreign words, so Amal’s na would be written in Katakana… there, this is Amal’s na.”
“This is… my na.”
Amal leaned in with interest.
“That’s right. Also, in my country, we read the family na first. For Amal, it would be… ah, um, Andou Amal.”
“Andou Amal…!!”
Amal repeated the na excitedly, her voice bubbling with joy.
Seeing her like that, I was taken aback.
I had realized midway that Amal didn’t have a surna, and I had spontaneously used my own surna for her, but upon reflection, wasn’t that a problem?
I stopped that train of thought.
“Andy-sama! How do you write ‘Ando’ in Katakana?”
“It’s not ‘Ando’, it’s ‘Andou.’ Like this…”
As Amal pressed for an answer, I reluctantly wrote it on the wax tablet. She stared at it as if it were a dream. She traced the na written on the tablet with her hand, over and over, as if morizing it.
“Andy-sama, may I borrow this wax tablet…?”
“Ah, sure, that’s fine.”
“Thank you so much!”
Amal held the wax tablet to her chest like a treasured possession, her face beaming with joy.
Seeing her face made
feel incredibly happy, too.
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