un: kyouken // Don't nobody understand the words that are coming outta your mouth

[justbeingknife]

Hey. There any language teachers around here?

[ Look, he resisted as long as he could, ok ]

Comments

[justbeingknife]

Yeah, that might work. What happens if they get pulled out by accident, though?

[ In Majima's day, walkmans had simply gone right on playing when you pulled out the audio jack, which would obviously be disastrous. ]

[clussy]

I guess theres risks for all of us for noise. He could tape them to the device?

[justbeingknife]

Yeah. Duct tape. Don't happen to have any extra headphones lyin' around, do ya?

[clussy]

I'm sure there's some around somewhere.

I don't have extras but he can have the ones I got with my ipod. I dont mind

[justbeingknife]

Alright then, I'll ask him.

Still gonna try and learn, though. I mean, ain't like anyone around here's gonna start learning Japanese.

[clussy]

who is he?

why not??

[justbeingknife]

Said his name was Matt. He's in House Six. Dunno much else about him, though.

[ As for why... ]

I dunno. 'Cause there're more Americans and English-speakers around. Heard Japanese ain't exactly easy for you guys to learn.

Although you could turn that right around. English is tough to pick up. It's all... backwards.

[clussy]

i mean i dont know anything but english and i dont really know many people who do. but.

is it? I guess i wouldnt really know since Ive been speaking it for forever. what do you mean by backwards?

[justbeingknife]

Well, I borrowed a book on it from the library.

[ """"borrowed"""" ]

You gotta have subjects, verbs, and other shit in a specific order, right? Japanese ain't like that. It's...

'I went home.'

In Japanese, it's more like 'home to returned'. But you put markers next to words, so you can pretty much put things in whatever order ya want, and people're still gonna understand you.

[clussy]

Im pretty sure you can only borrow books from libraries. thats usually how it works.

(He is missing the point.)

oh so
like

you could say, in theory, 'went home i' 'home went i' or whatever and it'd still be the same thing???

[justbeingknife]

Yeah. There's other differences, too, so it's hard to wrap my brain around.

But we got a lot of loan words from English, and they like to shove English phrases into songs. So I guess that's somethin'.

[ Thank you, loan words! ]

I flipped ahead and looked at your spellings, though. Looks like a bitch and a half to learn.

[clussy]

Why do they do that??

(Eddie only understood maybe half of what was being said here. He definitely didn't really understand what 'loan words' meant. But he doesn't want to ask too much least he sound dumb.)

you're telling me. i'm still trying to learn stuff.

you know my - well shes basically my mom but shes a woman named clara and she used to be a teacher. i'll bet she'd be willing to teach you. she helps me with my spelling and stuff all the time.

[justbeingknife]

Oh yeah, I met her! You guys work at the greenhouse together, right? She seemed like a nice lady. Mentioned ya and everything.

[ Well... Majima had been the first to bring Eddie up but the point was, they'd totally talked about Eddie behind his back, oh no ]

Said you were from the future, though.

[clussy]

Yeah shes the best.

(Eddie actively loved Clara with all his kiddo heart. Oh boy. That isn't even surprising.)

What, me? No. I'm from 1958. She's from the future though. We met on the station back from before I came here. It's kind of weird.

[justbeingknife]

No, I mean

[ fuck time travel it was confusing ]

She said you were tight, but in her future.

[clussy]

im sorry


what do you mean? like that i am in her literal future from where she comes from??

(Yeah it really was. Doesn't help that miscommunication had already happened here.)

[justbeingknife]

[ oh my god this was the worst. uh. ]

Alright. So, you're from the 1950s. But she's originally from a later year, right? And sometime in your past, before ya came here, you met her at the station and I guess she became your mom.

But then the version of Clara that's here right now, she ain't at that point yet? Like she ain't remember being your mom, but you remember a bunch about her.

[clussy]

(Yeah it really was. That's four separate timelines worth talking about. Jeeezums.)

yes that sounds right. Yeah. She doesn't remember me. Though she still seems every bit the Clara I know & love so it's fine. She'll remember one day I think. I hope. And if not that's okay

Time is really fucking weird.

[justbeingknife]

You can say that again. Always thought it went in one direction: forwards.

Then once I get here, someone tells me they used to time travel at will or some shit. Like it's not complicated enough with space aliens or whatever.

So this station of yours, what was it like?

[clussy]

You and me both. i dont know yet if i like knowing better.

I try and ignore all that it gets to be Too Much if I dont

it was pretty awesome im not gonna lie. there were a lot of good people there. some bad stuff happened sometimes but not too much. i wouldnt even know how to describe it. it was big and metal everywhere but there was this observation deck where you could see all the stars in existence it felt like. i really liked that. after we saw our futures i laid out by that for a long time.

then there was this kinda park they had that was nice too. i wont lie though. i really missed like. weather. thats my favorite part about being here. all the weather.

back on the station, it'd open up sometimes to other worlds but we'd have to wait a month. and there were all kinds of people from all over like it is here.

[justbeingknife]

Sounds a lot better'n here. Like some crazy sci-fi show.

I dunno how I'd feel about living in space with all that metal, but at least we'd be able to make some noise.

I miss the city I used to live in. Cities, I guess. It was loud and obnoxious and bright as hell, and there were always drunks wandering around bumpin' into people and yelling, but they had other stuff, too.

Like bowlin', and batting cages, and betting. You could go and pick up whatever ya wanted to eat from a restaurant or order pizza or go fishing when it wasn't raining. And karaoke.

I guess the one good thing about here is you can see the stars.

[clussy]

Yeah it was in some ways, not in other ways. I think it was beginning to fall apart when we left. It was flooding and there wsa all this mold in the air.

i do miss noise. believe it or not i can be really loud.

I never been to a city before but they always seem really fancy and awesome. Like anythings possible.

oh god. BOWLING. I miss bowling. (Majima's descriptions were causing a fierce ache to grow in Eddie. He missed just living normally. Not that he really knew normalcy too well, but even Derry at its worst was still...

It was still a home enough of a place. There were the festivals and the ice cream and dicking off to the movie theater with some couch change to catch a double feature. He really did miss all of that.)

I miss pizza too. Christ I miss a lot of that stuff. I wouldn't go back home but maybe if we left, it'd be cool to go to New York City or something.

Yeah. And the people are pretty decent. Some of them anyway.

[justbeingknife]

I know what ya mean. I'm pretty loud myself, at times.

[ He sighed silently. Man, at long last, someone who understood why he missed going out to the bowling alley and knocking around a few. And for once, he wasn't talking about dudes. ]

Right? A fella needs to relax and unwind once in a while, or ya get all wound up!

What else did ya used to do? Back home, I mean. Go to the movies? Baseball?

[ Why was Majima asking, no reason really...... ]

[clussy]

besides. it's just nice being able to BE loud.

jeeesus almighty yeah. i think im wound up so tight that if someone poked me the right way i'd snap like a rubberband.

yeah i liked the movies a lot. or i just played games with my friends when i could hang out with them. we didnt do anything too special. we built a dam this past summer which was pretty cool. i was building this race car thing

not that my mom would ever let me use it but. it was a pain getting out of the house so i couldnt always do stuff. i never was allowed to play sports too much no. so no baseball.

(Really are you sure Majima....)

i always liked doing stuff like that when i could get away with it though. even if it's kinda scary.

[justbeingknife]

[ Majima made a face. ]

That's practically a crime.

You mean like a model race car? Or one of them things you can get in and drive?

When I was a kid, I used to go out to the cages and hit a few. Got pretty good at it, too. Don't think we could actually play a game out here, but if you ever want to, bet we could set up a net in the gym and nail some.

[ God he missed the batting cages. This would clearly never come into play in Majima's future at all. ]

Or even find some pins and a ball. I just remember gettin' bored a lot. Although the way Kamala tells it, kids in the future spend all their time on the Internet anyways.

[ Maybe this was how he ended up in the yakuza.... not enough extracurricular activities. ]