Yesterday's words with Emera still lingered in his mind. "Shal can't be explained. Until you can read it, you're not in a state to receive it." That quiet voice still moved in the depths of his ears. Rasuko remained seated at his desk and opened yesterday's vocabulary survey notebook. Beyond the window, the morning of Meila An was still pale. The sky was a whitish gray, and the harbor's masts became faint silhouettes. The notebook bore many marks of correction. Beside "Naal," he had once erased "sea" and rewritten it as "sea region containing tidal currents." The translation for "Dova" had shifted from "assembly square" to "public place," then been crossed out and returned to "assembly square." Three weeks of investigation accumulated on paper, leaving layers of erasures like geological strata. As he turned the pages, the very last page appeared. "Shal"—only there did the translation column remain blank. A small note added yesterday accompanied it: "Translation undetermined. Requires further consideration." Rasuko stared at that spot for a while. It wasn't working. The same had been true for the concept of "sand patterns left after the waves recede." Yesterday's investigation had yielded an Aile word for it, but the moment he tried to convert it to Imperial language, something seemed to spill away. He'd written "tidal-form." Wrong. Then "sand ripples after ebb tide." Even more wrong. The frame of the words couldn't reach the texture of the sand patterns. It should be a technical problem, Rasuko tried to convince himself. Like the issue of pronunciation precision, it should be solvable by gathering more vocabulary. But looking at the corrections in the notebook, it didn't feel like that alone. Rasuko took his jacket and quietly checked the inner pocket. The corner of the wave-patterned paper touched his fingertips. He only now realized this action had become a habit. He hadn't been conscious of it. Yet every morning he touched this spot. It was strange, Rasuko thought. Carrying around paper he couldn't read, checking it every morning. A translator, no less, being dragged along by something unreadable. (Well, fine.) He put on his jacket and tucked his notebook under his arm. Emera would come again today. In today's date in his notebook, he'd written in small letters: "Emera—Dova Square." He noticed, without realizing it, that his handwriting had become slightly more careful. Rasuko climbed the stone steps toward Dova Square, counting one hundred twenty steps. 　　◇ When he arrived at the square, Emera was already standing beside the tidal pillar. Beneath the cloudy sky, her deep sea-blue hair swayed slightly. Her wavy hair, damp from the morning air, had puffed out a little. Her golden eyes turned toward Rasuko. A calm color that seemed to quietly absorb light. She wore a thin white jacket and held a small notebook to her chest. Though her posture was the same as yesterday, somehow today her outline seemed clearer. Last night, Rasuko had practiced Aile greetings. He'd repeated the pitch patterns thirty times in front of a lamp. "Good morning"—he should have nearly perfected the voice tone pattern for this phrase in his body. "Good morning, Emera," Rasuko said. Imperial language came out. The moment he saw Emera's face, the practiced tone pattern flew away somewhere. Emera paused for a moment before speaking. "You're not practicing?" Emera asked. Her voice was calm, but her eyebrows rose just slightly. An expression somewhere between amused and exasperated. Rasuko couldn't speak for a moment. "...I practiced thirty times," Rasuko said. "In Imperial language," Emera said. "In Aile," Rasuko said. "If you get the tone wrong, it's meaningless. Please try using it if you have the chance," Emera said. With just that, Emera walked toward the stone steps. It seemed to mean: come. Rasuko quietly abandoned last night's thirty repetitions and followed behind her. The road toward the old city had different air from the Imperial administrative district. The color of the stone pavement was different. The corners were rounded. White limestone walls pressed in on both sides of the narrow alley, cutting the sky into a thin line. The smell of salt and seaweed drifted from the morning fish market, and firewood smoke rose from some house's chimney. A child's voice echoed from somewhere distant. "My father was a fisherman, so I've walked around here since I was small," Emera said, still facing forward. "I learned the sea routes while walking these alleys. Like a lullaby," Emera continued. "A lullaby?" Rasuko asked. "There are fishing songs. The melody's pitch changes correspond to shifts in tidal currents. When you learn by singing, the sea routes naturally enter your body. It's like creating a map with your voice instead of letters," Emera said. Rasuko listened as they walked. A map made of voice. Routes made of song. The Imperial navigation manuals had routes written in numbers and symbols. This was completely different. "If we were to translate that into Imperial language—" Rasuko began. Then he stopped. Emera had turned around. She hadn't interrupted him. She was simply looking at him. Her golden eyes turned quietly toward Rasuko, waiting for him to continue, yet seeming to already know what he would say. Rasuko swallowed the words he'd started to speak. "...Never mind," Rasuko said. "Does translating it change something?" Emera asked. It wasn't a question. It was a voice that already knew the answer and was confirming it. Rasuko didn't answer. Emera didn't press. The two walked side by side through the alley. 　　◇ As they ventured deeper into the old city, the alley grew narrower. The white stone walls on both sides seemed close enough to touch if one reached out. Emera stopped in front of a small eatery. "Let's have lunch here. Try ordering in Aile," Emera said. "Now?" Rasuko asked. "It's tone practice. It's fine if you fail. The owner is used to it," Emera said. "The fact that he's 'used to it' is somewhat concerning," Rasuko said. "It's fine," Emera said. It was a definitive voice. Rasuko took one deep breath. The eatery was small. Four tables and the smell of a stone oven. A wooden shelf on the wall held dried fish hanging from it. The owner was a man in his fifties with fish fat stains on his white apron. When Rasuko and Emera entered, he looked up and said something in Aile. Emera answered briefly and gave the owner a meaningful look. A face that said: I'm leaving this to you. She looked at Rasuko. Rasuko confirmed the words he'd practiced last night in his mind. "Grilled fish." The tone goes from low to high, the final syllable stays level. He thought now that he should have practiced this thirty times instead, and opened his mouth. "One grilled fish, please," Rasuko said. In Aile, he said it completely. The final syllable rose slightly. The owner tilted his head. At about a forty-five-degree angle, he stared at Rasuko. (I said it! The tone was perfect!) The owner pointed toward the back of the kitchen. Rasuko didn't understand what he was pointing at, but thinking it was a signal to start cooking, he nodded vigorously. "Thank you very much!" Rasuko said. Only one of the owner's eyebrows rose. "...Rasuko," Emera said. Emera nudged him gently with her elbow. "You ordered two roasted stones," Emera said. Rasuko froze. "Stones?" Rasuko asked. "When you raise the final syllable, it becomes stones instead of fish. The owner went to check the kitchen, I think, to see if there were actually any stones," Emera said. "...Why two?" Rasuko asked. "Because you nodded so clearly, he interpreted it as two," Emera said. Rasuko put his hand on the table. Emera spoke rapidly to the owner in Aile. The owner's eyebrows furrowed, then his mouth relaxed. A low laugh escaped. "It's rare for an Imperial translator to make a mistake with words," the eatery owner said. Rasuko could understand it too. It was spoken slowly, and there was no mockery in it. Rather, it was a warm sort of exasperation, almost amused. Soon two grilled fish on a large plate were placed on the table. Fish instead of stones, two of them. Whole fish with heads and tails, skin crisped from grilling. The smell of salt and some herb wafted up. Rasuko looked at the plate. Emera looked at the plate too. "...It worked out perfectly for two people," Emera said. "The worst kind of success," Rasuko said. As he picked at the fish with his chopsticks, Rasuko murmured almost to himself. "I thought that if the tone was just accurate enough, intention was unnecessary," Rasuko said. Emera looked up. "It's the opposite," Emera said. Just two words. But something was packed into that brevity. Rasuko rolled those two syllables on his tongue while eating the fish. The opposite. Something reaches before the tone. The owner brought the grilled fish not because the tone was accurate. Because something about the translator trying to do his best reached him—was that it? The fish was delicious. Salty, the flesh flaking apart easily. Completely different from the food at Imperial eateries. 　　◇ They left the eatery and ventured further into the alley. Emera stopped at a corner. "This is it," Emera said. She looked at the wall. Wave-like curves were carved into white limestone. Many of them, overlapping. The thickness of the lines wasn't uniform. Deeply carved sections mixed with faint ones. It was old. Very old-feeling. Rasuko stood before it and looked for a while. Dova-Rin—the Aile writing system. Curved lines modeled after waves formed the script. The same system as the paper Rasuko carried in his inner pocket. But this one on the wall was far freer, larger, and seemed to breathe somehow. Rasuko slowly reached out his right hand. He traced the outline of the lines with his fingertips. The stone was slightly cold and rough. Long time seemed to have accumulated in the grooves of the curves. Someone had carved these lines. With what hands, with what feelings? He remembered the paper in his inner pocket. The sensation of his fingertips touching the wave characters on the paper overlapped with this sensation. They were the same. The same type, the same shape of characters—he'd understood that intellectually, but now for the first time, his body realized it. The undulation of that paper and the undulation of this wall came from the same river. "What does it say?" Rasuko asked. "It's a record of sea routes. A fisherman who once lived here carved what he caught in which sea regions. It was hundreds of years ago," Emera said. "Hundreds of years," Rasuko said. "It remained because it was carved in stone. Voice doesn't remain. But there are things that are conveyed because it's voice—I think the people of Aile have always wavered in that space," Emera said. The moment Rasuko's hand left the wall, his gaze turned upward. Just above the stone wall, a metal sign was affixed. "Seventh District, Third Alley" Imperial language in neat characters. Screws were driven into all four corners, with some rust beginning to show. It had been installed recently. Emera's expression changed. Just for an instant. She didn't put it into words. Her face quickly returned to its usual calm. But Rasuko saw that instant. Rasuko took out his notebook. He was about to write something. He held his pen ready. He didn't know what to write. He closed the notebook. 　　◇ When they reached the top of the old city's hill, Meila Bay spread out before them. Beneath the cloudy sky, the sea's color was a deep gray. Distant sailing ship silhouettes were visible. In the harbor, two Imperial supply ships lay at anchor leisurely. Human figures on the wharf appeared ant-sized. "The moment you put something precious into letters, the life of the voice drains away," Emera said. She spoke into the wind. Her hair swayed. "In Aile, we've thought that way. So we didn't write precious things. We pass the