Every time I tried to change the topic of conversation, Zach just brought it right back to Hiro. He was obsessed, in his weird, fan boy kind of way. It probably started when he saw Hiro reading Spiderman, although I had no idea whether he was glad to have found another comic book fan or whether he was completely shocked he could speak English.
That's when he stood up, and told me to hold my thought (I was trying to turn the conversation towards something interesting). Carefully, he jumped down from where we were sitting and moved towards Hiro, who was staring, enamored, by a painting Isaac had made.
"Hey," Zach said, causing the man to turn around and smile. "Do you speak English? Because… if you don't, I know karate, kung fu, and forty-seven dangerous Japanese words."
I just laughed because even I knew kung fu was Chinese.
Hiro's face lit up and he clapped his hands together. "You… speak Japanese?" he asked Zach in his broken English, clearly he didn't understand what Zach had said—although, it was a very lame attempt at a joke.
Zach gave a lopsided grin and shook his head. "No…" he said briefly. "No, I don't."
Hiro's face fell slowly towards the floor. "Oh," he said and nodded his head briskly. "Because… Charlie spoke Japanese."