A/N: I promise, people, this will be the most detailed Hikaru's language lessons get since they don't really advance the plot; next chapter is working back into Go. As you'll see at the end. *evil grin*
One more reminder: I'm going to switch to posting a new chapter every other week for a while now while I get through the end of this semester and try to write a few chapters ahead so I have a buffer again if I decide to go back and change anything (and for when I feel lazy and don't write ;D).
Also, from here on out there's going to be a bigger mix of English and Japanese being spoken, since Hikaru will start understanding a little, so any suggestions on how to keep which language is which as clear and readable as possible would be greatly appreciated. I'm not sure if I want to put Japanese in italics or anything, but I don't want it to get confusing. I think one person's mentioned it's a little confusing already. :P At the least, once I do start posting those chapters, I'd be hugely appreciative if my more educated reviewers would let me know if Hikaru's beginner's grasp is unrealistic or if I make any stupid mistakes on anything due to my lack of knowledge and experience. :) Enjoy!
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Stepping Stones
~14~ In which much time passes in small steps ~
"Now talking won't sound like you're used to since pronunciation is flat, no accents on any syllables like in English."
"Yeah, I know," Hikaru said. He had picked up a very few things about the native tongue in the American school.
His tutor grinned. "Sorry if I'm rehashing the basics; I just don't know what you know until I know. You'll just have to bear with me for a while."
"Sure," Hikaru agreed.
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"Okay." Hikaru cleared his throat, held up the already dog-eared and increasingly worn book in front of him as if it were a script, and laboriously announced, "Boku dai-su-ki--uh, -sen--chotto mat-te... kaimono." Proudly, he looked up, only to see the ghost squeezing its lips and eyelids together as if trying to hold in something difficult, probably out of politeness.
"All right, what part was wrong, hotshot?" he demanded, scowling. "'I really don't like a little'--" He checked the book again, having briefly forgotten the meaning of the last word he chose, "--'shopping'! I don't like shopping! What, you got something for shopping? Been wishing you could go out and find a nice new dress to go with that hat or something?"
The ghost just nodded and smiled, definitely not comprehending, looking more than ever like it was swallowing both comments and chuckles.
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"Much improved," Danielle decreed, studying his latest example of a Yu Yu Hakusho transcript. "You're pretty fast with this, kiddo. You want more of the same or a new homework assignment?"
"What kinda new?" Hikaru asked.
"How good are you with numbers?"
"Er... in Japanese?"
She raised one eyebrow and put one hand on her hip.
"Sorta okay," he hedged. "They're in my book."
"All righty then. Go over them a few times--not memorizing, just 'oh yeah that's that' familiarity if you can--and then go out and order something to eat from one of the shops around here. You should be able to handle it, it's such a short and preset interaction--you can even use the book-a-word approach if you want to. And you can be adventurous and try something new, too."
Hikaru suppressed the urge to make a face at that suggestion, since there had been a couple weird things he'd tried before when out with Waya and Isumi that had actually tasted okay. "How'll you check that homework?" he asked just out of curiosity.
She grinned. "You tell me what you had, I'll count your change and tell you how badly you got cheated."
"And then take a percentage as a fee for extra services, I bet."
"Hey, us poor college students gotta earn money somehow."
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Book in pocket, where it was ready to be pulled out but would hopefully remain safely out of sight, Hikaru stepped up to the counter, marshalled his confidence, and ordered, "Takisoba." As an afterthought, to be polite, he added the Japanese word for 'please,' one of the few he was totally sure of and had actually had memorized for quite a while: "Onegaishimasu."
The woman who was supposed to take his order, rather than doing so, looked at him for a moment before saying something way too fast and likely too complicated for him to understand. Then she just kept looking at him.
"Takisoba?" Hikaru repeated, trying not to sound helpless or whiny.
"Sosu yakisoba?" the Japanese woman returned.
"Oh." Hikaru deflated slightly. Crap. "Uh, yeah, sure, thanks--hai."
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"So, what next?" Hikaru asked, Danielle unusually having not started speaking immediately after checking his ongoing transcribing efforts.
"Couple questions for ya." She drummed her fingers on the laid-aside sheets of smudged notebook paper. "You seriously barely knew any Japanese before your parents hired me even though you were trying to learn it?"
"Yeah," Hikaru said, slightly puzzled.
"Okay then, second question: do you have a life beyond working on this day in and day out, kid?"
"Uh... no. Not until I get it down," Hikaru said, more puzzled and slightly concerned. Shouldn't a tutor be happy about getting a student who really worked at it?
"Hikaru." She set the papers further aside and left off drumming, instead leaning forward and giving him a very intent look. "I'll be the first to say your progress is incredible, but how long do you think it's going to last if you don't ever take some breaks from it to do something else you enjoy? What about all those other things you like--soccer, that board game? Your mom said you used to breathe playing it every day, it seemed like."
Hikaru shifted uncomfortably. "'S'not like I quit Go, I just--I can only really concentrate on one thing at a time," he protested. "I'm just taking a break from it. And I am still playing a little anyway." For a ghost, but that wasn't something he needed to mention. "Just gimme something new to study again."
She leaned back, folded her hands behind her head, and said, "How long do you figure it takes to master a second language?"
He thought about it, vaguely--'master' seemed like a potentially subjective term. Fluent, like his father with English? How long did his father always mutter that it had taken him after first moving to America? "I dunno, a couple years?"
"I'd say I only mastered Japanese within the last couple years, Hikaru, and I've been here since I was thirteen. You can't put the rest of your life on hold to just pick up a second language; you've got to integrate it into your life as is--like I thought I told you. You only need a relatively small working vocabulary to be able to interact with people on a day-to-day basis, and just doing that will increase that vocabulary, and so on. You don't have to be an expert at one thing before you move to another, bud."
Yes, but if you wanted to be an expert you had to, Hikaru thought, annoyed, even though he knew that was a basically pointless argument. He wouldn't have improved his Go even half as fast when he first moved if he hadn't spent most of practically every day in the backyard shed playing against Sai. And his father wouldn't accept anything less than the same level with Japanese, would he?
Danielle just sighed and shook her head. "You are one amazing over-achiever, kiddo. Why not get back in touch with those friends you've mentioned and practice with them instead of in here all the time, then?"
Hikaru blinked, surprised by the reminder of the friends he had actually forgotten about. Maybe that wasn't a bad idea, before he started possibly feeling guilty about having dropped them all without any warning like that...
Gee, he really did get wrapped up in one thing at a time sometimes like she'd said.
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"...Aaand... how 'bout a goodbye..." Hikaru checked the ubiquitous book, furrowing his brow over the tiny still-meaningless Japanese character, and finally pointed to one onscreen that looked similar to him and asked Sai, "Sayonara?"
"Ka," the ghost reminded absently, leaning closer over his shoulder and looking at both page and computer. The fan pointed to a virtual character that to Hikaru's eyes looked identical to the one he had guessed. "Sayonara."
"Right," Hikaru muttered, clicking it and watching it appear at the end of his message. Satisfied, he clicked Post, then logged off and stretched, completely oblivious to the fact that he had just spent nearly an hour laboriously composing a proper, readable Japanese text apologizing for his absence to his friends in America who would understand it even less than he could.
"Hey, you wanna try something new for a little while? Just for fun?" he asked the ghost, a whim striking. "Stay here, I'll be right back."
In a moment he returned with his long-neglected soccer ball, juggling it between hands to remind his body of its familiarity with it. "C'mon, we can play behind the shed to make sure Mom doesn't see," he decreed. "Can you leave? Ever tried? C'mere, over here."
Hikaru made his gestures more than plain even if he had for once left the book in the shed rather than sticking it in his pocket. The ghost looked understanding even though also hesitant, very tentatively taking steps away from the goban. It stopped halfway between the board and door, strained obviously forward, and then its shoulders slumped slightly and it retreated, looking frustrated and defeated.
"Ah geez." Hikaru jogged back inside, frowning in sympathy as he took in the mere few paces the ghost was evidently able to go. "How come you're not stark raving nuts stuck in here all the time? It's not because you can only play Go, right? Hang on."
He pitched the soccer ball outside into the yard behind the shed, rubbed his hands against his pant legs as he approached the goban, then hauled it up and started carrying it outside, one step at a time, despite the ghost's astonished protests and gesturing. He got the goban all the way outside, ghost following, and plunked it down in the middle of the shed wall on the side opposite the house.
"Can't have Mom thinking I'm going crazy talking to myself," he informed Sai as he got his breath back from the short trip and retrieved the ball. "All right, what we're gonna play is called soccer. You're goalie. I'll just kick the ball toward you, and if I hit the wall without you touching the ball that's a point to me, right? And if you can reach it before it hits that's a point to you. Best of ten wins."
The ghost just stood by the goban, staring around at everything and at him looking bewildered and wondering and totally uncomprehending. Hikaru held up the ball, pointed to it just to be clear, and then kicked it deliberately softly toward the wall.
Sai yelped and jumped aside.
"No, no, you're supposed to try to block it, stupid!"
Hikaru ran forward, lecturing, to demonstrate what to do. The ghost pouted and said something back that sounded accusatory and complaining. Thirty minutes later the game had turned into onesided two-person dodgeball, with the ghost as the goal instead of goalkeeper and proving remarkably agile (and childish), and Hikaru was so involved in shouting and laughing that it never even occurred to him his tutor might have been right about taking a break every once in a while.
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"Another thing that makes it easier is to find specific goals," Danielle told him. "Bringing in short-term memorization now, but just short-term. You're not trying to learn the whole language right now, you're trying to learn the words you'd need to tell your mother about something funny on the Internet today. And she'll understand if some of those words are a little mixed up or still in English. You're trying to get the vocabulary down for joining your friends at karaoke--" she grinned when Hikaru shuddered dramatically, "--or understanding what they're asking and explaining you're not interested, why don't we go to the arcade instead? See? Small steps. Break it up into units, put those together, and you've learned the whole language without even trying. Not quite that easily, of course, but basically."
Hikaru nodded, preparing himself mentally for the step he had already been working on, and then took a deep breath and without using his book pronounced slowly and carefully in Japanese, "I want to burn my school to the ground."
At his tutor's reaction, he quickly straightened his face again, into as innocent and dutiful an expression as possible, and equally correctly recited, "Hi. I am American and just learning to speak this language."
Danielle applauded.
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"Hi Mom. Bye Mom," Hikaru said as he passed through the kitchen from his room, heading out the back door.
"Hi dear. Bye dear," his mother echoed absently.
Hikaru paused and craned his head to see what she reading, struck by the suspicion that it resembled a cookbook. The only cookbooks his mother owned that he knew of were the ones his father had given her back when they first moved to Japan. "Are we making another expedition into the land of exotic rice?"
"Brat." She raised her eyes from the page and smiled at him. "What do you think of trying sushi?"
"Er..." Bleah, his mind suggested rather than reminding him what it was. "...Fish, right?"
"Apparently it's rice and fish together, in a roll."
Eeuurgh, his mind volunteered instantly. He made a face.
She grinned. "I could cook the fish if that makes it sound more appealing."
"Raw?" Hikaru demanded, horrified. "Rice and raw fish? Couldn't we get salmonella or something? Come on, Mom!"
"You're learning, I'm learning," she murmured, returning her nose to the cookbook with a smile that looked far too amused at his expense.
Hikaru grimaced, then asked, hoping distraction might produce something more like cheeseburgers with fish on them that he could just pick off, "Hey Mom, if I can find a program that converts webpages and text and stuff between Japanese and English, can I get it?"
"Hm? For studying?"
"Yeah." And to make it easier to communicate with Sai. Coincidentally.
"That sounds nice. Let me know what you find."
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Hikaru took a deep breath, glanced around at the incomprehensible street signs wishing he needed to check the address, and then entered the building before he could entertain second thoughts and climbed the stairs to the proper floor. The receptionist lady looked up at him and smiled without recognition; Hikaru nodded back, then shook his head and smiled to indicate he wasn't there to play and kept going toward the back of the salon and the lone boy sitting there at a goban with his back to the entrance.
He stopped a few paces away, cleared his throat, and said, "Ah... ohayo, Akira."