Before dawn in Graovant, only the flame of the lamp was moving. He hadn't slept last night either. The deadline Hernan Valdo had given him——thirty days——kept echoing in Rasco's mind. He'd realized yesterday that less than twenty days remained. He'd counted on his fingers, but the answer didn't change. Rasco sat before his desk with his notebook open. "Shal——currently under investigation" Beneath those characters were three weeks' worth of correction marks. "Translation undetermined. Requires review." "Listen more about the voice's life." "Cannot erase it." Every morning he opened this page, every morning he added something, every morning he closed it. That repetition was finally drawing to an end today. The lamp flame flickered. Outside the window, Meira Bay was still dark. The old city of white limestone floated vaguely in the gray before dawn. An imperial supply ship rocked gently in the lighthouse beam. (I must write something in the report soon.) Hernan's voice echoed in his ears. "There is no word that cannot be translated. Language gains universality only through translation." Rasco couldn't break that certainty. He still couldn't. If he did, it would mean breaking everything he'd learned over four years at the Imperial Institute of Linguistics. He picked up his pen. Slowly, he wrote characters in the blank space beside "Shal" in his notebook. ——The absence of servitude. The moment he wrote it, he knew it was wrong. He also knew he'd written it anyway. The Ailan word "Shal"——a layered single word meaning "my heart is my own," "I do what I have chosen," "I am myself"——he'd confined it to four characters: "the absence of servitude." He'd forced it into the frame of imperial language. He'd transformed a word that exists in voice into a symbol. The sensation Emera had described as "a word born from the very existence of voice itself" wasn't present even a millimeter in these four characters. Yet he didn't erase it. Unable to distinguish between whether he couldn't erase it or wouldn't erase it, he set down his pen. He closed the notebook and confirmed the Tunglart badge——proof of his status as a translator——in his jacket's inner pocket. The cold touch of metal. Then his other fingertip touched the corner of a paper with wave characters. The familiar gesture felt strangely heavy this morning. Rasco stood. He tucked the bundle of reports under his arm and headed toward Dova Square. Today he had promised to work on vocabulary with Emera. 　　◇ Counting one hundred twenty steps up the stone stairs, the square was still bathed in the pale light of morning. Dova Square——located in the harbor district of Meira-An, in the center of the old city, once the marketplace and oral assembly place of Ailan——drew old fishermen in scattered groups as morning came. The central tidal column——a limestone pillar about four meters high, once used as a marker for reading the tides——glowed white in the slanting morning sun. Emera wasn't there yet. He'd arrived a bit early. Rasco started to open his notebook at the edge of the square, but his hand stopped. He didn't want to see that page. To distract himself, he looked at a nearby stall. An old woman with a white cloth wrapped around her head was arranging goods——fruit and dried fish on a small stall. (Let me try speaking Ailan. It will be good practice.) Rasco took a deep breath. "It's rather cold today"——this tone required dropping from the third register to the first. He'd practiced it yesterday. "……Sel Dova Naal, Tarti Peshe" The old woman's hands stopped. She looked up at Rasco slowly. Her eyes narrowed. It was a measuring gaze. And with those narrowed eyes, she clutched her goods tightly to her chest. In silence. Without a word. Rasco had no idea what had happened. The old woman, still holding her goods, began pulling the stall's sheet with one hand. The sheet was half-covered. Despite the early hour, she was closing up. The proprietor of the neighboring stall saw this, looked puzzled, and then for some reason began covering his own stall with a sheet. As if drawn along, the spice merchant next to him began gathering his goods. A wave of silence and tidying gradually spread across one corner of the square. (……What did I do?) Rasco stood frozen. He mentally reviewed the tone. He was supposed to drop from the third register to the first——but what if he'd done it backwards? If reversed, it would mean "Today is inauspicious." The merchants had put away their goods after being told it was an unlucky day. An odd space of silence had formed on the stone pavement. The old woman watched Rasco from behind the sheet with a suspicious gaze. Then a voice came. "Your greeting today seems to have predicted quite a significant calamity." It was Emera. She was standing by the tidal column——when had she arrived? Her deep sea-blue long hair swayed slightly in the morning breeze. Her wavy hair was soft and fluffy in the humid air. Her golden eyes looked at Rasco, and there was something like suppressed laughter at the corners of her mouth——something unusually soft mixed into her usual calm demeanor. "They're closing up because they think it's inauspicious……?" "In Ailan custom, if fishermen hear inauspicious words before setting out, they put away their goods and start over. It's an old tradition. You've ruined their fishing for now." Emera said this matter-of-factly and walked toward the stone bench. "……I should apologize——" "If you apologize for the tone mistake, it will just become imperial language, making things more complicated. It's better to leave it alone." It was a gentle response, but utterly without mercy. Rasco at least bowed toward the old woman. The old woman watched from behind the sheet. 　　◇ They sat side by side on the stone bench and opened the translation notebook. Today's task was organizing Ailan seasonal vocabulary. They compared the vocabulary list Emera had written by hand with Rasco's notebook, matching corresponding imperial language terms. The work itself was methodical. Emera read the vocabulary aloud, Rasco wrote it down, and they considered translations together. When Rasco opened his notebook, he deliberately turned the problematic page away from Emera. He could use the front sections. The page with "the absence of servitude" was toward the back. The work progressed smoothly. They assigned the imperial term "still-water period" to "Naal-Leen"——the season when the sea grows calm. "Fatty season" to "Peshu-Tarto"——the time when winter fish gain fat. Words filled in one by one, a sensation Rasco normally enjoyed. Today that sensation felt distant. "May I add a note beside this vocabulary?" Emera spoke. She naturally drew Rasco's notebook toward herself to verify another term. Rasco handed it over without thinking——and immediately regretted it. Too late. Emera's hand turned the pages. One page, two pages. As Rasco watched and counted, her hand movement stopped abruptly. Silence came. One beat. Two beats. "The absence of servitude"——those four characters were before Emera's eyes. Emera slowly set the notebook back on the table. That movement carried slightly more force than usual. Careful, but definite. Just as Rasco was about to say something, an old man napping on the neighboring bench——a regular who dozed by the tidal column every morning——dropped his hat with a loud snore. A hollow *clink* echoed on the stone pavement. Rasco's words were completely cut off before they could begin. The old man continued sleeping as if nothing had happened, his hat still fallen. No one laughed. It was the kind of air where you could laugh but no one did. Only the old man continued his innocent snoring. That snoring sounded unusually loud. Rasco tried to speak again. Emera spoke first. "Why did you write this?" Her voice was gentle, but lower than usual. An unwavering voice. 　　◇ Rasco paused for a moment. He started to make excuses, then stopped. He needed explanation, not excuses. He needed to honestly explain what he'd been thinking when he wrote those four characters. "Less than twenty days remain." He spoke slowly. "Deputy Director Hernan Valdo has demanded completion within thirty days. As imperial language control policy, all languages of conquered territories must have corresponding translations into imperial language. As a translator, I have the responsibility to fulfill that duty. I cannot leave Shal as a blank space——" Even as he spoke, he felt his words were thin. He wasn't saying anything false. It was all true. But something——the core——was missing. Emera didn't argue. She didn't respond with logic. After looking at the sky for a moment, she opened her mouth quietly. "My father was a fisherman." Rasco took on a listening posture. He knew that when Emera began this way, she was about to say something important. "When I was small, I was sometimes allowed on his fishing boat. Every morning before departure, my father would sing a fishing song. The way to read the tidal currents was woven into the melody, and by singing, you naturally understood how to move that day. One morning, while singing, my father said, 'Shal is in this song.'" Emera's voice continued, low and calm. "I didn't understand at first. When I asked my father, he answered while singing. The song was the answer. Shal is the sensation of doing what you have chosen. But it's not just that. Not because someone told you to, not because you had no choice——but because you are yourself, you are on this sea. That sensation. For Ailan people, fishing wasn't just for survival. Because Shal was there, they went to sea. That was what fishing meant to my father." As Rasco listened, he felt something sway quietly within his chest. "My father lost his ship three years ago——in the Tsaran Sea Battle——" She paused. The Tsaran Sea Battle——three years ago, when the empire destroyed the Ailan fleet. When Ailan surrendered. "Now my father doesn't go to sea. There are imperial checkpoints. The sea is the same sea as before, but it's no longer my father's sea. My father doesn't talk much these days. He no longer sings the fishing song." Emera's voice wavered slightly there. She wasn't crying. She was choosing each word precisely to prevent tears from overflowing. Rasco understood——it was a voice holding back emotion through linguistic precision. Emera continued. "When Shal is translated into imperial language——at that moment, Ailan people lose their place within their own words. The sensation my father felt on the sea will have no name anymore. The four characters you wrote are wrong. But there is no correct translation. That is the true shape of the problem." There, Emera fell silent. She wasn't angry. She wasn't pleading. She was simply confirming facts, quietly and carefully. Rasco had no counterargument. Hernan's logic was unshakeable. But Emera's words pierced Rasco's center with equal precision. Both "there is no word that cannot be translated" from the Imperial Institute of Linguistics and "Shal is a word born from the very existence of voice" from Emera carried equal weight. He couldn't dismiss either. Silence continued for a while. The old man rolled over and dropped his hat again. No one noticed this time. "We'll stop here for today." Emera closed the notebook. Quietly, but definitely. It wasn't the voice of work stopping. It was something else entirely. The declaration of a distance born between them for the first time in this moment——it carried that weight. Rasco tried to say something. He searched for words to stop her. But before he found them, Emera stood from the bench and walked toward the edge of the square. Her deep sea-blue hair receded in the morning light. Rasco watched her back, aware that his gaze continued to follow her. He didn't try to stop it. The sensation he'd felt before——"I want to talk to this person"——was now a pain in his chest. He couldn't put into wor