"Soothe Me", raw draft pt. 4

[wombat1138]

[At this point, I'm going to drop everything except Real Dialogue. All other text can be assumed to be rote protestations, moaning, or other sound effects.]

#13(46)#

Her:
= dameee... sonna-ni kakimawasanaidee()
= unacceptable... that-way don't-stir

[I've finally looked up the etymology of "dame"-- fascinatingly, it seems to have originated as a term from the game of go and literally means "useless eye"; the "eye" is a point on the board which is "useless" if it doesn't contribute to a player's territory. Meanwhile, the verb "kakimawasu" generally refers to either circular motion or throwing something into disarray.]

-- "You mustn't... don't stir me up like that" *gasp*

Him:
= koko? | ii no
-- "Here? | Is this okay?"

#14(47)#

Him:
= mo... itchai... | so...

["itchai" <-- "itte shimae"; gerund+shimau = to complete an action or reach the point of no return]

-- "Fairly soon now... you should start to come... | there..."

She does.

Him:
= sugoi... [Kaoru-dono] no [chitsu](naka) | yaa... [ugo]kasanaide...
[ugokasu: move (transitive); the relatively obscure kanji "chitsu" means "vagina" but has been given the furigana "naka" (inside), which is useful because I can't think of a romantic synonym for "vagina" at the moment]
-- "You're so wonderful inside... | no, please don't push me away..."

#15(48)#
As she revives, he removes her yukata.

#16(49)#

Her:
= [ha]zukashii yo *kaa* sonna-ni [mi]cha...
= embarrassed [emphatic opinion] *blush* that-way seeing [softened statement]
-- "It's so embarrassing | having you see me this way"

[micha <- mite wa]

#17(50)#

Him:
= kotcha muite | [Kaoru]...
[muite <- muku, turn toward or face someone]

-- "Please look at me | Kaoru"


#18(51)# [framebreaks again]

Him:
= [kirei] da yo
-- "You're so beautiful."

+++

Her:
= ma matte | [nani]? [atashi] mo... anata ni... shite agetai
-- "W-wait. | What can I--? I... I want to do something for you too."
[gerund+ageru = do a favor]

+++

Her:
= ...[oshi]ete... | doushit'ara ii no?
-- "Teach me what to do... | is that okay?"

Him:
= [Kaoru... dono]


#19(52)#

Him:
= [sawa]tte...
-- "Touch me..."
[gerund as informal command]

Her:
= ko... kou?
-- "Right here?"

Him:
= un
-- "Oh yeah, baby."
[a very informal way to say "yes"; confusingly, the near-synonym with a long vowel (uun) is a very informal way to say "no". Despite the formality of Kenshin's everyday syntax, his usual way to say "Yes" in canon dialogue is the semi-informal "aa" rather than the ultraprecise "hai".]

Her:
= [Kenshin] no... sugoku... [atsu]kute... [kata]ku natte'ru
-- "Your.. wow... it's getting hot... and hard
[natteru <- natte + iru; gerund from naru (become)]


#20#

Him:
= Ka-- o-- ru...

+++

Her:
= neE... [nu]rete'ru... no?
-- "Hey... it's starting to get wet... or something?"
[ne + no: softened question markers at both ends]

Him:
= [Kaoru... dono]

+++

Him:
= ne... | [kuchi] de... shite
-- "Please... | use your mouth"

+++

Her:
= un
-- "Okay"

She does.

#21(54)#

Him:
= motto... [oku] made kuwae... te
= more... depths until (see note)

["kuwaeru" has to do with the general action of forcefully holding something in one's mouth; the example given in my dictionary is "neko ga sakana wo kuwaete nigeta yo": the cat ran away with a fish between its teeth! (Ouch.) Although the most obvious translation in this context would be "suck", I just don't wanna use that.]

-- "Deeper... all the way in... more pressure"

Him: [using || for framebreak]
= sou... || ii... yo
-- "That's right... || that's so good..."

Him: [bottom frame]
= kao.. ru() | mou... [da]sou | mo... ii kara... [hana]re--
-- "Kao... ru *gasp* | you'll... make me come like this | so you'd better... pull ba--"

[A brief digression on the myriad verbs for orgasm; while the modern English idiom is "coming", Japanese seems to prefer "iku" (go), although "kuru" (come) is also sometimes used. Two male-only variants are "dasu" (emit/release), as above, and the related "deru" (leave/escape). Alas, Kenshin did not get to complete the full verb "hanareru" (withdraw, separate).]


#22(53)#

She gets a mouthful, and is discreetly appalled.

Him:
= hora... | [muri] shinakute ii kara...
= [rhetorical explanation] | unreasonable not-doing good because

-- "Listen... | you don't have to do that, it's okay..."

Reassured, she lets it dribble out.


#23(54)#
While kissing her, he peels back his own yukata but leaves the belt tied, making the garment trail back behind him.

#24#
The kissing progresses lower down as he tips her backward. She protests.

Him:
= mada
-- "Not yet" (?)

Her:
= soko... [kan]jite'ru no... | {Kenshin
-- "That place... the feelings there... | Yo, studpuppy!"
[I'm semi-randomly declaring "kanjite iru no" to be the noun for "the present condition of feeling something." Yah.]


#25(58)#

Her:
= ii()
-- "That's so good!"

[sound-effect showcase in third panel: *nuru nuru*, "slather squish"]

Her:
= nee... | ken... shin

+++

Her:
= [ki]te | [Kenshin] no ga [ho]shii no...

[combined from both panels:]
-- "Oh... Ken... shin | please, I really want you to come closer..."


#26(59)#
He sits up, scooping her back onto his lap.

Him:
= [Kaoru-dono] ga [ki]te...
-- "*You* come closer..."

+++

Her:
= iya datte (sono) | hora | demoO (yoku wakannei shi)
[most of these are vague excuses]
-- "No, the thing is (that's) | look, I-- | but (I don't really know how, and)"

+++

Him:
= (washi mo [tetsuda]u]) [sessha] mo (dame?) | [tetsuda]u kara
-- (help me too) "Me neither" (no?) | "Could you lend a hand?"

[very weird lines; "washi" is another old-fashioned first-person pronoun, though not as self-abasing as "sessha". "Tetsudau" is just the verb for assisting someone with a task.]

+++

Her:
= (de- se te agu [ama]eru) "...un"
[There's that pesky "de- se" construction again, and I'm not sure I'm reading the following hiragana correctly either. Nevertheless, I'm going to hazard a guess based on the context and Kaoru's facial expression.]

-- (Now *you're* the one playing dumb) "...okay"

+++

Her:
= koko?
-- "Here?"


#27(60)#

Him:
= yukkuri de ii kara...
-- "Keep going slowly, you're fine..."

["yukkuri" is an adverb in its own right, or at least it's not derived from an adjective; "de" is the gerund of the copula, and therefore would translate a bit more literally as "being". "ii kara" is an idiomatic reassurance along the lines of "it's okay", "you're doing fine", etc.]

[A somewhat late note on speech attributions-- annoyingly often, there are no obvious visual cues to identify the speaker, at least in terms of the speech balloon pointing toward anyone or even being closer to one character than the other. However, since emotional agitation causes speech balloons to have wiggly borders and Kenshin tends to be annoyingly calm most of the time (especially compared to Kaoru, and especially in doujinshi), I tend to conclude that wiggly balloons belong to Kaoru and non-wiggly balloons belong to Kenshin.]

+++ [several frames of Kaoru settling her weight down; Kenshin looks worried about her]

Him:
= [hai]ru
-- "I'm in"

[lit. the verb for "enter"]

+++

Her:
= nee... [hai]tte... 'ru
-- "Gosh... you're... inside me"

["haitte iru": idiomatic for "be inside"; there's probably a temporary connotation considering the previously-mentioned gerund+iru construction that means "do something and then leave"]

Him: [amused]
= [hai]tte 'ru yo
-- "Why yes, I am"

[not literal at all, but hey]

Her:
= [atashi]-no naka 'tte... donna [kan]... ji
= my inside [emotional topic]... what-kind? feel...ings
-- "Wh-- what... how does it feel for you in there? "

[again, not literal, for the sake of avoiding even more repetition]

+++

Him:
= [Kaoru-dono] no naka wa... [yawaraka]kute | attakakute
-- "Inside you... you're soft | and warm..."

[unavoidable snark: so he doesn't consider this an emotional topic, does he? and what's with resuming the formal mode of address at this moment? Men.]


#28(61)#

Him:
= sugoku [kimochi] shii
-- "... and it's a wonderful sensation"

[He pulls her all the way down into full penetration, then helpfully moves his hands around her hips. She protests for several panels before finding something new to say.]

Her:
= [oku] made... [hai]chauu
-- "You're going all the way... inside me nowww"

[haichau <- haitte+shimau]

Him:
= [oku] made?
-- "All the way in?"

+++

Him: [carefully tipping her backward as he sits up on his knees]
= motto | [sagu] 'ku
-- "Let's go exploring a bit further"

[Didn't put a balloonbreak into the translation since it wouldn't map properly anyway. The second balloon contains the root kanji for [sagu]ru (search) or [saga]su (look for something) but neither of the usual suffixes that would pinpoint either one of them; however, this particular structure suggests saguru if I've identified the structure correctly-- the verb's "polite stem" (the polite form with -masu chopped back off the end) plus "ni iku" expresses a purposeful intention to go do something. The polite forms of the two candidates would be saguimasu and sagashimasu, which would lead to "sagui ni iku" or "sagashi ni iku"; it seems easier to believe that the simple vowel -i would disappear in hasty pronunciation than the consonant+vowel "shi".]



#29(62)#

[For those of you who actually have access to the visuals, I must sadly point out a moment of Bad Art in the upper panel of this page. Kenshin has the correct head-to-torso ratio down to his yukata belt, and that torso measurement is also correct in comparison to his lower legs. But when you compare those ratios to his upper legs, it becomes obvious that the yukata overhang is concealing an entire extra half-torso of height, as if his butt is double-jointed. And his docking angle with Kaoru is still completely wrong anyway. Oh well.]

Him:
= hora
= [rhetorical pointer]
-- "Let's see now..."

Kenshin stands up and completely flips Kaoru onto her back, causing Bad Art and many loud protests (from Kaoru, not just would-be art critics)



#30(63)#

Him: (to his credit, he looks genuinely concerned)
= doushite? | [ho]shikunai de-gozaru ka?
= why/how? | unwanted [formal copula] [?]?
-- "What's wrong? | Do you really not want me to do this?"

["hoshii" is difficult to translate, since it's grammatically an adjective (even if it's a verblike one) which maps onto an English verb-- "That's the doujinshi I want" would be "doujinshi ga hoshii da"]

+++

Her:
= datte sugoi-no | [kan]ji sugichau yoOOO...
= 'coz wonderful-thing | sensation [see note] !!!!

[sugichau <- "sugite shimau" (sugiru = elapse, pass by/through); this particular context makes it even more awkward to tell whether this ought to mean "has finished elapsing" or "elapsing has become inevitable", so I'll provide both alternate versions. "datte" = informal variant of "demo" (because), often used to start an explanation. Again, skipping balloonbreaks in translations; unhappily, neither of them seems like a natural English utterance at this sort of moment.]

-- "It's just-- these great sensations are happening to me again!!!" (i.e., why she was protesting before); or,
-- "It's just-- these great sensations are going away!!!" (i.e., a slightly different protest about him stopping right now to check on her)

+++

Him: (with incredibly cute look of fond exasperation)
= cha
-- "(tsk)"

= motto [kan]jite!!
= more sensing

[I *think* this line is Kenshin's, as an informal command/request; theoretically it could also be Kaoru demanding more, but I can't reconstruct a proper grammatical pathway without adding more words that aren't there.]

-- "Well, you're going to have more of them!!"


+++

(?):
= [ki] ga [hen] ni natchae yo

[Oh dear, we have several layers of idioms here. To start with, the second kanji has a different reading than the one I picked at first; instead of [ki]ga[ka]waru (change one's mind), which would be more clearly spaced as "[ki] ga [ka]waru" anyway, the central idiom is "[ki] ga [hen] na". The "[ki] ga" part identifies the spirit/mind/soul (ki) as the subject; the [ka]/[hen] kanji has a general concept of "difference", but the [hen] reading is more adjectival-- "strange" or "weird" instead of "change". (Among other things, it's part of "hentai".) As a nounlike adjective, it needs the postposition "na" to modify a real noun; the postposition "ni" indicates the so-called adverbial form for modifying verbs-- in this case, "natchae" unpacks into "natte shimae"; the former is the gerund of "naru" (become).]

[The complete phrase "ki ga hen ni naru", literally "ki becomes strange", is an idiom along the lines of "go crazy", "lose one's mind", etc. The addition of "shimae" converts the entire phrase to a command with the same ambiguity as earlier on this page: embark on something to the point of no return, or completely finish doing it. To complicate things even further, an additional connotation I haven't mentioned before is to express regret about a past action, but I don't think that's involved right now.]

[So in conclusion, this seems to be Kenshin speaking again, with (at least) two possible translations:]

-- "Stop acting crazy!" or "You're about to lose your mind!"

[Gah, this one line has gotten me all tired out for the day.]

+++

[...while recovering from that for several days, I found another Very Useful Site at http://homepage3.nifty.com/jgrammar/grammar/bldverb/index.htm which helped with this last panel. Dangit. This would be so much easier if characters would retain proper grammar during sex :b ]

[Kaoru has been protesting again in a lot of jagged speech-balloons. In the midst of all this, Kenshin has a surprisingly calm, almost understated comment:]

Him:
= iki... so

["iki" is derived from "iku" by way of the polite form "ikimasu"; I hadn't previously seen examples of using the "polite stem" by itself, but hey. This phrase-- chopped down from "iki sou da" (X is likely to come)? -- usually seems to be spoken about oneself, but Kenshin is being mind-bendingly altruistic, as usual.]

-- C'mon now...

Her:
= [Kenshin] Kenshin()
[Since she repeats his name in hiragana and ends with a gasp, presumably that part should be translated with ellipses and such to make it look more drawn-out.]


#30#

Him:
= iki sou?
-- "Will this make you come soon?"

Her:
= n()... itchai... so

[This could either mean "No, I just finished coming", or "Yes, I'm just about to come". I really need to figure out how to pick one of the two interpretations from the context.]

+++

Her:
= [Kenshin] mo... issho-ni itte...
[issho-ni = together]
-- "Kenshin, let's... both come together..."

[See what I mean?]


Him:
= Kaoru
[in kana]

Her:
= a() motto | motto [ki]te() | [ki]tee
-- "Oh-- more | I'm coming again | I'm comingggg" (? see note)

[A note on moaning: according to something-or-other I vaguely remember from somewhere, the conventional female moan in Japanese manga/doujinshi is with the vowel A, except when an exotic gaijin woman is shown moaning in the key of O instead. And hey, look-- instead of the idiomatic iku (which in other contests means "go"), Kaoru is using a form of kuru, which means "come" in nonsexual situations and is one of the two main irregular verbs. This could mean that instead of commenting about herself, she's really encouraging Kenshin. However, there are some things which even the best reference books/websites may refuse to tell you.]

+++

Him:
= Kaoru() | iku yo | IKU

[He does. Big giant sound effect across the 1.5-page spread: *DOKUN* (exaggerated heatbeat sound, KA-THOOMP]

[And finally we're done with the squishy part! Happy dancing! (Working on the squishy part tends to be awkward in terms of having to frequently, er, consult with the wombat-consort. That would be the verb. Yes. Consulting. *nuru* ) ]