Chapter 124
Some Japanese social events have changed with the times, while others have remained unchanged.
For example, Golden Week disappeared when the national holidays were changed.
Valentine's Day has become an event where people give one another three-colored dango.
And New Year's is still celebrated just as it was before, without any changes.
The fact that the New Year's holiday event remains means the otoshidama culture remains as well.
The New Year's sales rush is still going strong, too.
From Christmas through the beginning of the new year is prime earning season for many businesses, and the New Year's newspapers were stuffed with advertisements of that sort.
I decided to give Hiyori an engagement ring because, before I left on my business trip, I had to spend the whole night listening to her mope and sob, but I can't say the influence of all those appetite-stimulating advertisements was nonexistent, either.
Looking at department-store advertisements billed as being for families or lovers made me wonder if I ought to give her something like that. The people who wield advertising are very good at making you want things.
I fell for the merchants' tricks as far as ordering a ring catalog, but after looking through it, I reconsidered, thinking, "It would be higher-quality, more to my taste, faster, and cheaper if I made it myself," and decided not to buy one. Thank goodness I'm the World Champion of Dexterity.
I interpret the significance of an engagement ring as "tangible proof of security."
Horrifyingly, the horror phenomenon known as cheating actually exists in this world.
Given that premise, cheating while wearing an engagement ring, or cheating on someone who is wearing one, is a little difficult. In an emergency, someone could temporarily remove the ring and get on with cheating, but that would be taking "an emergency" far too far. The hurdle for cheating definitely goes up.
On top of that, inviting or hitting on someone wearing an engagement ring is also more difficult.
In other words, an engagement ring has a cheating-deterrent effect.
Also, I can feel reassured simply by looking at an engagement ring. Probably.
The ring itself is worth only as much as its price, but the fact that someone prepared and gave you a rather expensive ring specifically for you is reassuring in the first place.
Love isn't money, but there is no doubt that money is one of the barometers by which love can be measured.
When Kappa came to my place to meet the Professor, I launched into my theory of engagement rings. He nodded with a rather dubious look on his face.
"Your ideas are always unique, Oori-san."
"Is something wrong with it?"
"No. I do think you're rather prone to reasoning everything out, but I don't think the way of thinking itself is strange.
"If anything, asking me for advice about an engagement ring may be the problem."
"......?"
Mamono-kun offered that criticism, but I didn't quite understand it.
Among my friends, the only knowledgeable people who had experienced an engagement were Okojo and Kappa.
Of those two, questions about romance or marriage were forbidden when it came to Okojo.
So naturally, Mamono-kun was the one I had to ask for advice.
A perfect theory.
As I tilted my head, unable to understand what the problem was, Mamono-kun gave a wry smile.
"I am a person whose engagement was broken off. In other words, I am someone who failed. Even if you ask me for advice, all I can tell you about is failure."
"You'd still be more qualified than someone who's never even failed. The words of someone who has tried something have tremendous value, regardless of whether they succeeded. I want to hear what you have to say, Mamono-kun."
"......I think I understand a little better now how the witch ladies feel when they find comfort in your words, Oori-san. Still, this isn't a particularly pleasant subject. No, perhaps I should hear you out so that you don't suffer the same fate I did?"
Mamono-kun partly talked to himself, thought for a while, and nodded.
"If you don't mind having me, I'll do what I can. What would you like to ask?"
"I'd like to ask what I should ask. I don't know a thing."
"Uh, first, I think you should think it over yourself, at least a little."
Oh. He was saying the same sort of thing as the Professor and the Spider Witch?
That alone sent my confidence in Mamono-kun on this subject soaring. This is Mamono-kun-san.
"For the time being, I'm thinking platinum for the ring's material. Pure platinum is too soft, so I'll mix in fifteen percent palladium or something to ensure sufficient hardness."
"You're going with an old-fashioned style. Hollow Silver is the mainstream choice, so is there some reason to deliberately use the old style? It isn't the price, is it?"
"I don't want it to have any magical functions. Not because it would be convenient or magically powerful, but because I want her to wear it simply because it's an engagement ring. I don't want to equip Hiyori with a ring and make her stronger. I just want her to know that I love her, always."
Until now, most of the gifts I'd given Hiyori had been practical equipment. Even though I had put a lot of thought into the designs, I had decked her out in powerful, gorgeous magical equipment as an advertising model for my products. Hiyori surely understood that intention. That was how our relationship had started, after all.
But an engagement ring was different. I wanted it to be a bond stripped of every unnecessary function, something that would let us confirm our feelings for each other and feel reassured.
If she had the ring, Hiyori would surely feel secure.
She would probably cry and mope less on the night before I left on my solo assignment.
Even if I wasn't there at my business destination, she could look at the engagement ring and remember me and how I felt about her.
Magical functions would be impurities in that. You can't just make everything multifunctional and call it good.
When I finished explaining my theory, Mamono-kun wore an enlightened expression.
"Ah, I'm graduating. There's nothing I can lecture someone on when they can say those words with a straight face. If anything, I'd like you to teach me."
"Too fast, too fast. You're graduating way too soon. Let me keep you back another year or two."
For some reason, our roles as teacher and student were about to reverse, so I begged him to let me continue the consultation. At least he had objectively assured me that my ideas weren't strange, but there was still plenty more I wanted to ask.
"I also want advice on the ring's design. I'm confident in my design sense, but this time it isn't a work of art; it's the ultimate romantic gift. My strongest field and my weakest field have been mashed together, and now my head's all tangled up."
"I see?"
Mamono-kun was a monster scholar, but he was also a craftsman who had taught himself to make an absolutely magnificent kappa mask. I could trust his artistic sense, and his romance Skill proficiency was far above mine. I was sure I would get good advice.
When I showed Mamono-kun the ring design, he pointed out something about the names of the two of us that I planned to engrave on the inside.
"The design is good. But why are the letters in English? Neither of you is from an English-speaking region, are you?"
"It's not English, exactly. It's romaji. I thought about engraving them in kanji, but the characters would be too fine and hard to read. Hiragana or katakana would look childish, so I figured romaji was standard."
"Um... Are you saying romaji used to be standard?"
"Yes."
When I nodded, Mamono-kun shook his head.
"It's not fashionable these days. The Blue Witch-sama is used to modern notation as well. I don't recommend it."
"Oh? So it's not the idea of engraving our names that's bad, but rather the question of which language to use?"
"In situations like this, Magic Language is the standard."
Come to think of it, Hiyori had said something about Magic Language becoming the international language.
Apparently, Magic Language was often used in official settings and official documents, that sort of thing.
I suppose an engagement could be considered official, too.
"However, Earth Language has been becoming more common lately. That may be because my field is monsters, but I recommend engraving it in Earth Language rather than Magic Language."
"Earth... Language...?"
A seriously incredible term had just popped out of nowhere.
What? The world had some fascinating, amazing, exciting language like that these days?
This old man is from another era, so I don't know about things like that. I know Magic Language, but Earth Language is new to me.
I had thought this sort of linguistic subject was Professor Okojo's specialty, but Mamono-kun was also well informed about Earth Language.
Earth Language was an artificial language created from the cries of monsters. It was Mamono-kun's favorite language.
According to him, it had originated with the flaws of Magic Language as an international official language.
The advantage of using Magic Language as the international official language was, first of all, that anyone could learn it on equal footing. If Japanese were forced on America, or English were forced on Japan, resentment would arise, but Magic Language had no such problem. Everyone would be learning it from an equal position, so there would be no friction of that sort.
The fact that Magic Language was a language of magic was also significant. It had not only historical and cultural value, but practical value as well: chanting it allowed you to use magic. Simply learning it gave you an enormous advantage.
On the other hand, its disadvantages were considerable.
People from Earth learn Magic Language using magical incantations as their textbooks. They work backward from the incantations to derive grammar and extract vocabulary.
That inevitably leads to the problem of insufficient vocabulary.
For example, the word "blue" has not yet been discovered in Magic Language.
That is why Hiyori's certificate proving her Transcendent status says "Blue Witch" in Magic Language. They make up for undiscovered vocabulary by forcibly applying English pronunciations to it.
In Japanese terms, it would be like wanting to write "Blue Witch" but being unable to, so writing "Blue no Witch" instead, with only "Blue" in English. It's horribly distorted and difficult to understand.
The pronunciation problem is also fatal. Magic Language can be made to work as a written language, but as long as it contains unpronounceable sounds, conversation is impossible. The only ones who can converse in it are Transcendents and a few demons descended from Transcendents.
It's far too inconvenient. How can this call itself an international official language?
Magic Language has major advantages, but its disadvantages are even greater.
That is why, even though decades have passed since Magic Language was established as the international official language, it is still used only in official documents and other formal settings. No country has designated it as its primary language for everyday life.
"Of course, Magic Language is a wonderful language. Without Magic Language, humanity as it exists today would not exist. Through Magic Language, we can understand the advanced magical civilization, and it may also provide an important clue to solving the mystery of the Gremlin disaster. There has never been a language this important in human history.
"However, it cannot be called suitable as an international language. If one language is to be used officially throughout the world, Earth Language is by far the superior choice."
Mamono-kun carefully defended the significance of Magic Language's existence, but then began passionately pushing his favorite, Earth Language.
Earth Language was an artificial language created based on the cries of monsters.
Monster magic was different from incantation magic. They did not chant. They cried. Their cries were the incantations.
They could use magic without making a sound—for example, Mokutan and dragons could breathe fire without chanting—but their effects were stronger when they cried. Mokutan and Sekitan both breathed fire while mewing.
These monster cries were primitive incantations, and they also formed the foundation of Magic Language.
For example, the Magic Language word "Freeze," Vaara, contains the sound written in phonetic notation as "ɑːr," pronounced "aar." It's the "aar" part of "Vaara."
The cries of monsters related to freezing, cold air, or falling temperatures contain this "ɑːr" pronunciation without exception.
"ɑːr" has a magical meaning related to the ice element. You could even call it the core that links magic and sound.
The word Vaara in Magic Language probably underwent the following evolution:
① The sound ɑːr is the key to ice magic.
② Let's incorporate ɑːr into the language as a pronunciation signifying freezing-related concepts. Let's make it the core.
③ The base Vaara and the sound aar fused to produce its final form, Vaara.
That is the process it likely underwent.
There are countless words that this theory cannot explain, but there are far too many words that it can explain.
It was definitely not a coincidence.
The important point here is that the true core of Magic Language lies in the cries of monsters.
Unpronounceable sounds are not what matters.
Unlike people from Earth, the people of the magical civilization can pronounce unpronounceable sounds, so they incorporated them into Magic Language. That is why Magic Language is not suited to people from Earth.
On the other hand, Magic Language contains none of the fricative sounds—or "safe sounds"—that people from Earth can pronounce, and the people of the magical civilization presumably cannot pronounce safe sounds. That is why the languages of Earth are not suited to them.
So, a group of knowledgeable people who had grown fed up with the flaws of Magic Language as an international common language gathered together and created the artificial language known as "Earth Language."
Like Magic Language, it used the cries of monsters as its core, while eliminating unpronounceable sounds. They established characters that were easy to write and highly legible. They also organized the grammar into a clear, easy-to-understand system.
In short, Earth Language was a completely new, original Magic Language built from the ground up to be familiar to people from Earth.
As a language, it was still extremely immature, but it would continue to be organized and developed from here on out.
Mamono-kun's passionate lecture showed no sign of stopping, and before long, his words were passing straight through my head from my right ear to my left.
No, it was interesting. It was extremely interesting, but when he talked about it all at once, my brain couldn't keep up.
I'm a wandmaker, not a magical linguist. No matter how carefully and clearly someone explains it, when a flood of unfamiliar specialist knowledge comes rushing at me, I end up drowning in the words.
Mamono-kun and the Professor probably got excited talking about this sort of thing all the time.
But when they talked to me the same way, I simply couldn't keep up.
I raised my hand, stopped the raging torrent of Mamono-kun's words, and forced him to summarize the whole thing roughly.
"Magic Language is a language that excavates the past.
Earth Language is a language that develops into the future.
Rather than use an old language that wasn't originally meant for Earth on the ring, it would be better to engrave a new language with a future ahead of it.
Is that what you're saying?"
"That's right. So――――"
"Well, hold on, Mamono-kun. I'd be happy to keep listening, but Okojo's been fidgeting at the entrance to the room for a while now. You were meeting her, weren't you?"
"Ah."
Mamono-kun noticed the dressed-up Okojo-chan peeking her face out from behind a pillar and made a face that said, "Oh no."
I watched Mamono-kun leave, apologizing profusely to me and the Professor in turn, then drew a line through the romaji written on the ring design and crossed it out. I wrote, "Earth Language!"
Magic Language was appealing, but Earth Language, being created in real time through the combined wisdom of Earth, was appealing too. Since Hiyori and I would be together for a long, long time from now on, it would be better to engrave a language with a future ahead of it.
It really was the right decision to ask Mamono-kun for advice about the engagement ring.