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Post by Linyü on Jun 20, 2020 19:34:19 GMT -6
He had been following on the rooftops, which was a little riskier in broad daylight, but San was experienced enough that he was hardly concerned for his own odds of being discovered. “Where’s Nana?”
“Observing,” said Nana. It was a testament to her skills that San couldn’t point out exactly where she was, but the voice tipped him off that she had chosen a similarly high vantage point from which to carry out her task. Hachi joined them a moment later, smiling broadly.
“Well well well,” he said. “We have a graduate on our hands, do we?” He grinned at Rei, but she didn’t meet his gaze. Nonplussed, he addressed San instead. “We did say this was just an extension of practice, but I’d say this passes well enough as her final exam.”
"It's not good for all of us to be moving around the city like this during the day," Nana said testily.
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Post by Linyü on Jun 20, 2020 19:37:15 GMT -6
She wouldn't have liked having to come out here at all, San thought; not for the sake of training a new agent. It wasn't, strictly speaking, any of their jobs to do it. They had probably planned things this way from the start. San wasn't informed, but he wasn't surprised either. “It's settled. She'll start just as soon as we wrap up any final preparations. Nothing big at first, of course,” Hachi said. “No sense in delaying the inevitable.” That last comment had been aimed at him, but San let nothing show on his face. He could only nod. So the time had come… It had been a strange journey, this process of training Rei to join their team. But if San felt anything for the occasion, he suppressed it now. She was an agent, and after this, that was the only thing that mattered. He would not fail a second time.
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Post by Linyü on Aug 5, 2020 20:52:35 GMT -6
“Teach me,” said Rei, one day. San was sitting on the floor of the storeroom, cleaning his tools. At her words, he glanced up, a wordless query. Rei’s hands were twisting together in her lap. She didn’t look at him. But she did find the words, after a time. “Teach me to speak Xin.” San sighed. He should have known this request was coming. It was only a wonder that it hadn’t happened earlier; but then she hadn’t spoken at all until recently. In truth, he doubted she wanted to speak the language herself so much as she wanted to understand it, but he could hardly begrudge her that. She was bereft of so many things as it was. But the awkwardness that had grown between them since that first mission hadn’t abated, and this was something that would necessitate time together, one on one.
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Post by Linyü on Aug 5, 2020 20:53:44 GMT -6
“Are you sure you want to learn?” he said. From me, he didn’t say--- but then, who else could she have asked? He was the one with whom she was most familiar. That was still true, even if she did look at him as though...
San forced himself to stop that train of thought, and concentrated on the tools in his hands.
She nodded.
“Let’s begin then,” he said, returning his attention to his weapon. Talking was a thing that could be done anywhere, while he was occupied with other things; even if it was a time investment, at least it was a flexible one. He tried to think back to his lessons with Robin, which was the only frame of reference he had for learning another language. He had to suppress a reactionary grimace at the thought of Robin, but he forced himself to focus on the process.
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Post by Linyü on Aug 5, 2020 20:53:59 GMT -6
Robin had begun with introductions, but he doubted that was what Rei was interested in. “We’ll start with colors,” he said. That was universal, at least. “My clothes.”
“Black,” she said.
“-Black,-” he returned in Xin.
“-Black,-” she said. Her accent was atrocious, but he supposed she was learning it later in life. He considered correcting her, but no; the tones were a lesson for another time. Right now it was better to get her used to saying the words themselves.
“Your hair,” he said next.
“White.”
“-White,-” San replied. She repeated the word, stumbling over it slightly, so he spoke it for her again. Her pronunciation was a little better, the second time.
“Your dress,” San said next.
Here she hesitated. “There’s more than one,” she said.
“Then say them all.”
“Black… and green, and purple.”
“-Black, green, purple,-” he said. She repeated them for him. “Good. What color is the moon?”
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Post by Linyü on Aug 5, 2020 20:54:12 GMT -6
Again, Rei paused. “-White,-” she tried. The word sounded more awkward in her mouth without him to model it for her beforehand. But she had remembered it. “Or yellow, some people say.”
“-Yellow,-” San said. “What color do you think it is?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It changes.”
“-I don’t know,-” San translated.
A pause. “We’re the same, then,” she said.
A joke. The corners of San’s mouth twitched upward despite himself, and for a moment the space that had grown between them didn’t seem quite so impassable. He thought about her response as he ran his blades over the whetstone. She didn’t know many words, but he imagined she knew a few--- the ones she heard often. ‘I’ was probably one of them, and based on what they were talking about, she must have put together the rest. “Say it with me,” he said.
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Post by Linyü on Aug 5, 2020 20:54:25 GMT -6
“-I don’t know,-” Rei repeated.
It was slow, awkward; he spoke it to her a second time, then broke it down. “-Don’t- is the negative,” he said. “-Know- is ‘to know’. In Xin there are no…” He had to reach for the Common word for this from his sessions with Robin; it had been so long since he had heard it used. “In Xin, the verbs have no conjugations. Today, tomorrow, yesterday; one person or many. It’s always the same.”
Perhaps it was too much information. She had probably not learned Common so formally. But she spoke it with a fluency that suggested intelligence, and she seemed to be thinking about what he was saying, so he left it at that.
“What are the other colors?” she said, after a time.
He went through them with her, and she repeated them with him, but San was already thinking that they would need something else.
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Post by Linyü on Aug 5, 2020 20:55:04 GMT -6
Cards and picture books, maybe; the kind sold for very young children. With visual aids, so she could follow more easily. Briefly he thought of what the higher ups might think if he made such an acquisition. He couldn’t purchase it, but agents were not above stealing here and there to fulfill their own needs. It was overlooked so long as it wasn’t done too often, or for objects of high value. But neither would it go unnoticed, and there were no real ways to explain away such a choice except the truth. They hadn’t thought it fit to teach her to speak Xin, he thought. They had taught him Common instead. But then, perhaps they didn’t know it was possible, or how to begin. She had been barely responsive when they had first met. He would get the cards, and face what came after if he had to. ---
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Post by Linyü on Aug 5, 2020 20:55:38 GMT -6
He found the cards he'd wanted. They were very clearly for young children, with the characters for each word written beneath the image, but he doubted Rei would comment on that. And if she wished to learn to read the script, then they might see some use again.
The only trouble was where to keep them without their being detected. They weren’t something that he would be prohibited from having, but if anyone discovered them, San would have to explain. Not about what he was doing--- which would have been very obvious, as there was little else the cards could really be used for--- but his methods.
It wasn’t a permanent solution, but for the moment he had taken to keeping them on his person. They were light and easy enough to conceal, and it had the benefit of making them available whenever Rei happened to seek him out.
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Post by Linyü on Aug 5, 2020 20:56:13 GMT -6
Their formal training sessions had come to an end when she had accompanied them on her first job; that was the way of it with all agents, and he didn’t want to force his presence upon her after what she had seen of him that night. She had asked him for the favor of teaching her, but if she wished to learn, she could set the pace.
A few days later, she found him in the storage room. He glanced at her, and then away, and wordlessly produced the cards from his pocket. Laying the colored ones on the ground, he said, “What do you remember?”
She studied the cards intently, and San busied himself with maintaining his gear while he waited. But after some time, it became apparent that what she remembered was nothing at all. He sighed, set down his things, and turned to face the cards.
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Post by Linyü on Aug 5, 2020 20:56:28 GMT -6
Sitting cross-legged on the floor, he pointed to each in turn, and spoke their name in Xin. “-Red,-” he began. He had laid them out in the pattern of a rainbow, since this was an order that children often learned, though he had no idea whether her own upbringing had exposed her to it. “-Orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. Pink. Brown. Black, white, grey.-”
It was too much all at once, so he went back to the beginning and said it again. “-Red,-” he said.
“-Red,-” Rei repeated.
“-Orange.-” San pointed out the orange card.
“-Orange.-”
And so it went, down the list of all the colors, until she had repeated each of them once, then twice, then thrice. It was dull business, drumming a first few words into her mind. She had probably some rudimentary understanding of words that she heard often, but he didn’t know if colors counted among these; and she hadn’t been able to recall them when they started today.
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Post by Linyü on Aug 5, 2020 20:57:01 GMT -6
Once she had repeated them often enough that the words were beginning not to sound so foreign in her mouth, he pointed to the first card and waited.
There was a pause, but she understood what he wanted soon enough. “-Red,-” she said. “-Orange. Yellow. Green, blue, purple, pink, brown, black, white, grey.-” She named each color as he pointed them out to her. Her pronunciation was still not good, and the tones were still mostly absent, but she had managed to recall them.
Just to be sure, he went through them once more with her in order, and once more, she read them out for him. She didn’t complain that they were going too slowly, or that it was too repetitive. She just did as he asked, even without the gentle encouragement that he had given her before, when she had still been non-verbal, and hadn’t known him for what he was.
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Post by Linyü on Aug 5, 2020 20:57:28 GMT -6
Something about that was hard to stomach. San had to repress a sudden, sharp sense of revulsion, without bothering to examine at whom it was aimed. He glowered fixedly at the cards for a moment, grounding himself, then pointed at the brown one.
There was a pause. “-Brown,-” said Rei.
San nodded, and pointed at the purple card.
“-Purple.-”
San pointed to the green card.
“-... Blue,-” said Rei. Her ears lowered slightly, betraying her uncertainty.
Well, at least she had seemed unsure that time. “-Green,-” San corrected, and she repeated the word after him. He could see her mouthing it to herself several more times, staring at the card. He waited until she was finished before moving on.
In this fashion, San went through all the cards with her, correcting her if she got them wrong, and continuing so long as she spoke the correct color name back to him.
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Post by Linyü on Aug 5, 2020 20:58:21 GMT -6
It went on for a few rounds before he took those cards and put them away, then laid a new set of cards in front of her. On these were a variety of fruit.
“What color is this?” he asked, in Common, pointing at a card with a picture of an apple on it.
“Red,” Rei replied. After a pause, she said, “-Red.-”
San nodded, then pointed at a picture of a plum. “-What color is this?-” he asked, this time in Xin.
“-Purple,-” she replied.
Now San indicated a picture of green grapes. “-What color is this?-”
“-... Green,-” she said. She remembered this time. He saw a slight, determined furrow between her brows, and repressed the smile that tugged at the corner of his mouth. There was nothing amusing about this situation, and yet…
“-Good,-” he said.
She looked up at him then, almost as if she had been startled.
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Post by Linyü on Aug 5, 2020 20:58:56 GMT -6
He wondered for a moment whether it was merely because he had spoken a word that she did not recognize, but he thought from what he read in her face that she must have known the meaning after all.
If he felt anything about it, he quelled that too, and indicated another card.
“-What color is this?-”
“-Yellow.-”
And so it went. After fruits, he gave her animals, since there were not many white or black or grey fruits to be had. They went over the colors of the animals twice before she paused, seeming as though she wanted to ask something.
“-What,-” she said, pointing at a card with a rabbit on it.
She must have figured it out. He had been asking her ‘what’ questions this whole time, and she had been around people speaking in Xin for some time now, so maybe the word was even a little familiar to her.
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