“So how exactly do I get Zeze to stop giving me long winded speeches in a language I don’t understand?” Leehom asked when Gackt slid into the seat opposite him and handed their beers around to the other two singers.  Hyde didn’t answer the question, but instead took a swig from the bottle in front of him.

 

“Wakatta,” Gackt replied, his tone light.

 

“And what’s that mean?”

 

“I understand.”

 

“I understand, huh?  Can you say it again?”  Leehom leaned over the table a bit in an effort to block out the bar’s background noise, his hand clasped around his bottle’s base.

 

“Wakatta.  Wa-ka-tta,” Gackt said again, sounding the word out for the other man.  In the corner of his eye, he saw Hyde smile a bit.

 

“Wakatta,” the other man repeated.  He sat back and repeated the word under his breath, committing it to memory.

 

“Yes, so…when Zeze starts going on a speech, and your eyes start to…” Hyde waved his hand, fingers spread, in front of his eyes, “…Wakatta.”

 

Leehom laughed and drank some of his beer.  Gackt watched the two of them for a moment before piping up.  “How do you say it in Chinese?”

 

“I understand?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“There are a couple different ways.  You could say…” he paused and took another drink.  “You could say ‘wo ming bai.’  That’s just ‘I understand’ in general.”

 

“Wo ming bai.”

 

“Not exactly,” Leehom corrected.  “‘Wo’ is third tone.  It goes down and back up again.  ‘Ming’ is second, so it goes up.  And ‘bai’ is neutral, so it doesn’t really do anything special.  Wo ming bai.”

 

“Wo ming bai,” Gackt tried again and Leehom nodded.

 

“Good.  Now, if you’re reading something and you understand, it’s ‘kan de dong,’ with ‘kan’ as first tone which goes straight across, ‘de’ neutral, and ‘dong’ is third tone as well.”

 

“So it is, ‘kan de dong,’ right?”

 

“Yep.  There’s a few more, but the only other one I’ve used a lot is ‘ting de dong.’”  Leehom paused to take another drink before continuing, “Which is to understand something you heard.”

 

“And the tones on that one?”

 

“First, neutral, and then third again.”

 

“Ting de dong.”

 

Leehom smiled.  “There you go, you got it.”

 

“You Chinese and your tones…” Hyde drank some more of his beer and shook his head.  “That’s why I will never be able to learn that language.”

 

“Some people say that so long as you’re not tone deaf, you can learn Chinese,” Leehom argued back, grinning.

 

“How do you say you don’t understand?” Gackt interrupted.

 

“You insert ‘bu’ where ‘de’ is.”

 

“So…kan bu dong, ting bu dong.”

 

“Right.  I’m surprised you didn’t know this before now, considering your studies.”

 

“I’m surprised you did not know any Japanese before now,” Gackt smiled.  “I have heard ‘ting bu dong’ said to me by people on the street.  That’s not fun.”

 

Leehom laughed.  “Well now you know what they’re saying…or at least some of it.”

 

Gackt glanced at Hyde, who had busied himself with people-watching.  “Ta changchang ting bu dong, souyi yaoshi women yao dang ta de mian tanlun, women keneng yong zhongwen, hao ma?” [1]

 

The other man laughed so hard, it brought Hyde’s attention back to the other two talking.  He looked at Gackt and then at Leehom and then back to Gackt and huffed, “Nani – Nani itteimashita ka?” [2]

 

“Ming bai, ma?” Gackt teased the older man, suppressing his laughter with a drink from his beer.

 

“Gackt’s being mean,” Leehom said.

 

“In only the nicest of ways,” the other added.

 

“You assholes…”  Hyde rolled his eyes and finished off his beer.

 

 

 

 

[1] He often doesn’t understand, so if we want to talk about him to his face, we can use Chinese, okay?

[2] What did you just say?