Chapter Six Excerpt: Rage against Most Everybody
When we last left Pokey, he was super pissed. Ness, Paula, and Jeff were having a lovely time in the desert while he was cooped up in his office, spying and plotting. How does any self-respecting adolescent male deal with this kind of angst? Angry, atonal music. How does a Japanese lady write angry, atonal music? Like this!
Pokey instinctively blinked his tiny, cold blue eyes for a moment.
The wallpaper was pastel and striped. The carpet had an elegant flower pattern and a distinctly expensive-looking flair. Large, two-doored windows were covered by two-tone color blinds, and recessed ceiling lights with antireflective lighting. The oak business desk was nearly seven feet across.
Lying next to that was an enormous, salmon-pink leather sofa. And right in front of that, a table with an inch-thick piece of glass across it and marble legs. It was a fabulously rich-looking office, one that would come right out of a page of an Italian magazine—modern and casual, yet cutting-edge.
The room itself was big enough for five people to comfortably dance the waltz, but he was plopped down completely alone in the middle of it. The room was so quiet that it sounded to Pokey as though his ears were ringing, but after he dug his finger around in his ear for a while, it turned out that it was just the hum of the air conditioner. The air was dry and cold, with a vague scent of plants.
Pokey clicked at his tongue and got up, scratching loudly at the red sweaty marks on his chubby thighs from where his skin had been pressed against the leather. He went and opened the cabinets next to the wall and turned on the audio equipment inside. Vivaldi, or somebody, was playing—it felt wonderful, as if you were actually in the orchestra hall. He quickly flicked to another radio station. Country western—rap—a Bali gamelan—a choir of clear, high-voiced children—a stand-up comic… and hard rock with a totally slammin’ beat.
GO TO HELL
GO TO HELL
I WANNA YA TO
GO TO HELL
DA-DA-DA-DA-DAHHH DA-DAHH-DA-DAHH
DA-DA-DA-DA-DAHHH DA-DAHH-DA-DAHH
MOTHER 2 Novel Translation blog, are you ready to rock!? I said, are you ready to rock!?
Pokey is ready to rock, no doubt, but Kumi turns the music off after this lovely picture of his having rocked.
Pokey shook his head and his wrinkled, sagging cheeks—the spitting image of a pink bulldog’s face—shook in the air with a twisted smile on his face. The fat on his arms pulled at the sleeves of his t-shirt, which was being swallowed up by his body and ready to tear at any moment. His shorts were also on the verge of snapping in half. It seemed that Pokey had grown even fatter than before.
Does Saori Kumi miss an opportunity to call Pokey fat? I daresay she does not.
Chapter Seven is on the way—Chewy has been swallowed up at work like so much t-shirt, but she’s still committed to defeating the Wall of Untranslated Japanese headed her way. In the meantime, I WANNA YA / TO GO TO HELL.
Pokey likes metal, huh? Also, a series of disturbing mental images have ensued from the excerpt.
…But my brain is still grinning over Pokey headbanging. Wait, isn’t Ness supposed to like rock? Probably not that kind of rock, though.
The translator’s valiant headlong strides into the huge wall of Japanese text, despite being busy, awe this little reading addict who is workably conversational in a total of one language.
New stalker of this project here! I giggled quite a bit at that song. Good luck to Miss Chewy on all her work, I’ve really enjoyed these excerpts!
I just had an idea: what if the narrater was from the third game?!? Porky destroyed Salsa’s, Lucas’s and many others’ lives, so there is much prime for narraters who’d constantly insult Porky. Lucas’d probably have a slightly more girly internal narrative, and there’s always Salsa’s girlfriend.