Valve has the right idea.
“You may call yourself a squire,” she told him, “but I’ve seen pages half your age who could have beat you bloody. If you stay with me, you’ll go to sleep with blisters on your hands and bruises on your arms most every night, and you’ll be so stiff and sore you’ll hardly sleep. You don’t want that.”
“I do,” the boy insisted. “I want that. The bruises and the blisters. I mean, I don’t, but I do. Ser. My lady.”
“Don’t look so freaked out,” Shogo said. “I’m a city kid from Kobe. I’m not a bumpkin like you guys from Kagawa. I know something about rock.”
Shuya broke into a slight grin. His guardedness lifted. Then he told Shogo, “My favorite’s Springsteen. I like Van Morrison too, though.”
“ ‘Born to Run’ is great. I like Van Morrison’s ‘Whenever God Shines His Light.’”
Shuya gawked and then broke into a grin. “You know a lot!”
Shogo grinned back. “I told you. I’m a city kid.”
Shuya noticed how Noriko stayed silent. He was worried she might feel excluded.
“Noriko, did you say you’ve never listened to rock?”
Noriko gave him a smile and shook her head. “I’ve never really heard it. What’s it like?”
Shuya smiled. “The lyrics are really something. I don’t know how to describe it well, but it’s music that really expresses people’s problems. Of course, songs can be about love, but at times they can be about politics or society, or the way we live our lives, and life itself. Along with the words, the melody and beat help get the message across. Like Springsteen singing, ‘Born to Run’….” Shuya recited the end of the song, “Together Wendy we can live with the sadness/I’ll love you with all the madness in my soul/Someday girl I don’t know when we’re gonna get to that place where we really want to go/And we’ll walk in the sun…”
He continued by singing the last line softly, “…but tramps like us, baby we were born to run.”
He said to Noriko, “We’ll definitely listen to it some time.”
Noriko opened her eyes and nodded. Under normal circumstances her face might have lit up, but she only responded with a weak smile. Shuya was too tired to notice though.
He told Shogo, “If everyone listened more to rock then this country would come crumbling down.”
That’s right… just like Noriko said, “It’s because no one knows about this…” Shuya thought rock music revealed everything that was essential. That was why it was banned by the government.
Shogo rubbed his stubby Wild Seven cigarette into the ground. He lit another. Then he said, “Shuya.”
”What?”
”Do you really think rock has that kind of power?”
”Shuya nodded enthusiastically. “Of course it does.”
Excerpt from Battle Royale (pgs. 245-7) by Koushun Takami, as translated by Yuji Oniki.
dance with dragons by GRR MARTIN by *MarcSimonetti
AN: Brazilian edition cover art of “Dance with dragons” by GRR Martin, copyrights Leya Brazil
