Saint's Prison - Chapter 12

Blessings Upon That Name

Every evening, after dinner, it has become a daily routine for Amal and me to sit on the bed and talk.

However, Amal hardly ever talks about herself; it’s mostly a one-sided conversation where I do most of the talking. About Japan. Its culture. Academia. Amal wants to hear anything related to me.

During these conversations, we touched upon the topic of the Japanese language. As it’s hard to explain verbally, I decided to show her instead, pulling out a wax tablet from the desk.

“So, my name is originally written like this.”

I inscribed my name, Andou Ryu, onto the thin wooden wax tablet with a stylus. Amal watched intently.

“This is my name.”

“It looks like a pattern.”

Amal stared at the wax tablet as if burning the image into her memory.

“Yeah. The language originally developed from pictures. They’re called Kanji. They’re ideograms, and each of these characters has its own independent meaning.”

“What does your name mean, Andy-sama?”

“It’s nothing special, but well, it means to prosper, to rise above the downward forces, something like that.”

“…It’s a very nice name.”

“Thanks. By the way, what does the name ‘Amal’ mean?”

It was a casual question. Amal jerked her shoulders and looked down, struggling to find the words.

“I, well, my…”

Seeing Amal hesitate unusually made me wonder if her name was something embarrassing, like a ‘yandere’ nickname.

Come to think of it, she didn’t seem very fond of being called by her full name, ‘Amalthea’…

Could it be because of the meaning associated with the name ‘Amalthea’?

Regardless, I couldn’t stand to see her so downcast, so I pulled her into a comforting embrace, murmuring to her like a child.

“Hey, the nickname I call you, ‘Amal’, in the language of where I used to live, I think it was Arabic, it means ‘hope.’ I think it suits you perfectly, but is that meaning not okay?”

“Ah, Andy-sama!”

As if she couldn’t help herself, Amal leaped into my arms.

While she hugged me tightly, I laughed and thought that she’s been jumping at me a lot lately.

＊＊＊

Once Amal had regained her composure, she began to write on the wax tablet again. She rested her head on my arm and followed the characters I wrote on the tablet with her eyes.

“In my country, we have three types of written characters, and we use them depending on the situation. What I wrote earlier was Kanji. Then there’s Hiragana. And lastly, Katakana. Katakana is mainly used for foreign words, so Amal’s name would be written in Katakana… there, this is Amal’s name.”

“This is… my name.”

Amal leaned in with interest.

“That’s right. Also, in my country, we read the family name first. For Amal, it would be… ah, um, Andou Amal.”

“Andou Amal…!!”

Amal repeated the name excitedly, her voice bubbling with joy.

Seeing her like that, I was taken aback.

I had realized midway that Amal didn’t have a surname, and I had spontaneously used my own surname for her, but upon reflection, wasn’t that a problem?

I stopped that train of thought.

“Andy-sama! How do you write ‘Ando’ in Katakana?”

“It’s not ‘Ando’, it’s ‘Andou.’ Like this…”

As Amal pressed for an answer, I reluctantly wrote it on the wax tablet. She stared at it as if it were a dream. She traced the name written on the tablet with her hand, over and over, as if memorizing it.

“Andy-sama, may I borrow this wax tablet…?”

“Ah, sure, that’s fine.”

“Thank you so much!”

Amal held the wax tablet to her chest like a treasured possession, her face beaming with joy.

Seeing her face made me feel incredibly happy, too.