Chapter Text
Right. Time to start this.
Phone in hand, his lip quirks upwards in... what could be taken as a sly smile, if any expression at all, and sends the first message.
...hello...?
He'd timed it to near-perfection: She shouldn't be busy, not at this time, there should be nothing that should possibly prevent her receiving the message.
...But then, if that was the case, why wasn't she replying?
Somewhere, a phone's display screen lights up and vibrates cheerily.
From user "Unknown": ...hello...?
Redirecting to number XXX XXXX XXXX...
Imagine, now: a strong hunter-gatherer in her own right, once asleep, now the sentinel of the lonely cave from where she had first heard that suddenly loud buzzing of - not a swarm of bees, off about on their daily blessed task of pollination, but louder, more artificial - like a vibrating smartphone on bare rock! That's it, of course, and, speak of the devil, there it was right now, the electronic that was so familiar, yet not at all. No longer would it need to call in vain, for here she comes, the illustrious miss Tosaka Hiyoko, to the rescue!
And... right there, the first unread message, a string of completely unintelligible, recognisably... probably Korean characters.
The girl's eyebrows furrow in mild confusion, because how does a Korean phone find itself in Japan, here of all places?
...Even this keyboard is unfamiliar - Oh! Oh, whoops.
?
Practically the instant she'd sent the message, before she could perhaps find an online translator to express how she had no idea whatsoever the person behind the screen was saying, that that was an accident, she had found this smartphone at her cave, this is not the person you're looking for, another string of characters pops up after her text, causing the hunter-gatherer to bite her lip, and begin cautiously picking her way through the rest of this phone's apps into seeing if a remarkably fine reception was the only thing this phone had.
Games, a music player, a collection of apps and... Well, at least the previous owner of this phone had decided to include a basic translating app here.
She barely had think as she immediately set about translating, and proceeding to send back to this unknown sender:
Sorry, I don't speak Korean!
And somewhere not so far away, a mere silhouette outlined in the too-bright lights of the screen display in front of them stared in disbelief - perhaps even in righteous anger, as, throwing their device at the nearest wall in the vicinity, they let out a wordless scream of frustration.
Language barriers. God-for-sa-ken language barriers. Why hadn't they thought of it first? All that work spent, to avoid getting clockblocked, but now, because of one idiotic oversight, like the legendary crumbling of a skyscraper into the rubble from which it had been birthed out of, everything was going to be lost in translation.
They snappishly stalk over to where their device had landed, the victim of that characteristic burst of irritation, and picked it up, scowling at it still, before heading back to their dimly-lit desk to heave a breath, to take a seat, to purposefully open a new tab and begin typing once again.
This was... going to take a lot of work, they know that already. A lot of work, and a lot of patience.
God help us all