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“Hey, you guys wanna know something I got reminded of lately?” Rodya says, turning around in her seat to face the rest of the bus. Dante leans against the railing in front of them, waiting to see if they have to change the topic on yet another one of her attempts to start a conversation. “Star signs! You know, like if you were born at this time, you have this personality, that kind of stuff!”
“Is that a real thing?” Dante asks incredulously.
Faust sighs. “No, Dante, the time at which you were born has no effect on your personality. You’d have a better chance finding a link among the personality changes in amnesiacs than proving the reality of such a trivial thing.”
“Hey…”
“Come on, Fau, it’s just a little bit of fun!” Rodya waves her hand dismissively. “How about… ooh, Heathcliff, you seem like the romantic sort!”
“Me?” Heathcliff scoffs. “Are you daft? How’s an orphan meant to know his own birthday?”
“I thought it was the 6th of April…” Dante says. “That’s what we have it down as, anyways.”
“Yeah, it is.” He scratches the back of his head. “I dunno where that came from.”
“Ah,” Yi Sang looks up. “6th of April is the mark of the new financial year in T-Corp. If a child knows not their birthday, it is standard to give them that date for tax purposes.”
“Ohh, is that it?” Heathcliff leans against the seat in front of him, much to Ishmael’s annoyance. “Real birthdays are for rich sods anyways. Same goes for last names.”
“Weren’t you raised in a mansion, though?” Ishmael shoves him away. “Surely you got one, even if it was just to make your life easier.”
“Yeah, legally it’s Earnshaw. It’s not really mine, though, and uh. Someone really didn’t want me havin’ it.”
“Heathcliff Earnshaw?” Hong Lu muses aloud. Heathcliff’s cheeks turns slightly red. “What’s with that face, dear Heathcliff? Has your last name changed, or do you have a marriage you’ve not let us know about, perhaps?”
Heathcliff whips his head towards Hong Lu. “How-”
“H-hey, uh, you know…” Dante butts in, desperately trying to come up with something to say to divert the conversation. “I was thinking about this too. Everyone just calls me Dante, but sometimes my head’s addressed as Durante instead. And my coat is different too. I never really figured out if that’s my actual name or just a nickname, or if they’re two different things entirely.” They look towards Faust. “Which is it?”
Distracted by uncovering the mysteries of their manager, everyone leans expectantly towards Faust, who looks up from the floor. She thinks for a second, before…
“Confidential,” she says flatly. Everyone groans.
“Aw, Fau, you’re no fun!” Rodya whines, patting a very disappointed Dante on their sagging shoulders. “Hey, how about you, Lu?”
“Jia,” he chimes in. “Jiǎ,” he corrects himself. “Names are very important — without my last name I have no status nor power, and life without those things is very difficult.” He smiles, and Heathcliff tightens his grip around his bat. “Same with nicknames; you see, it shows a sense of familiarity. It was rare for me to have one, so thank you for giving me one, Rodya!”
Rodya smiles back at him and tucks her hair behind her ear, cheeks flushing red. “Ahaha, no problem!”
“Although, it’s not a very good one.” Her face falls. Hong Lu seems to be having that effect on people lately. “Ah- you see, it’s very uncommon for people to have single-syllable names. In that case, like my brother, you’re addressed by your full name, or if you were to give a nickname, you’d simply repeat the character.”
“Like Lu-lu? Or hong-hong?”
“Hóng,” he corrects her, “With a long o. That’s what my siblings called me, at times!”
“Oh, that’s actually adorable! What’s it mean?”
“Hóng means red — they called me as such because I would bleed very easily, and every time I did so, my blood would be a very vibrant crimson colour.” He beams, as if that were not a mortifying name to give someone. Ryoshu smiles from behind him. “And having that colour of blood means I’m healthy, so it’s a compliment, really!”
“H-Hoong?”
“Closer!”
Faust opens her eyes. “A triviality in pronunciation, especially as you cannot pronounce her name properly either.”
Hong Lu turns to her. “Oh? I never was good with names. How do you say it properly, then?”
“Rodión Románovich Raskól'nikov,” Rodya rattles off. “Now you try!”
“Rodion Rask- Raskolnikof…”
“Ahaha, that’s why I go by Rodya! It’s a mouthful, even for me…” She turns around in her seat to the person directly behind her. “Hey, Outis-“
“I am Outis. There is nothing else you need to know.”
“Okay… what about you two? Ish, Meur?”
Ishmael looks up. “Hm? My last name? Melville.”
Rodya thinks for a second — “Don’t U-Corp people usually have another name too? Like a patronymic but… less important?”
“Ohh.” Ishmael runs her fingers through her hair, a contemplative look on her face as she recalls the several pamphlets they’d been given. “Middle names? Yeah, U-Corp, T-Corp, I think usually N-Corp has them as well. I have one, but I really don’t think I should say it. It’s a bit awkward.”
“Come on, what is it?! You guys are so secretive — I’m sure it’s not that bad!”
“H-Herman… My middle name is Herman.”
The bus goes silent.
“With one ‘n’, not two,” Ishmael corrects in a meagre attempt to salvage the situation. She gives up rather quickly, though, sinking into her seat with a groan. “Ugh, what’d I say? I told you it’d be bad.”
Gregor finally speaks up — the tension notably dissipates when he does so. “Well, it’s one of the most common names in the south-side of the City, so it’s not too crazy of a coincidence. It’s rarer for it to come from the north where I’m from.”
Sinclair raises his hand slightly and looks towards Ishmael with a sympathetic smile. “I had the name Hermann too. Didn’t want to bring it up either.”
“Woah, that’s a lot of… um, shared names! Emil Hermann Sinclair?” Rodya lets the syllables bounce off her tongue. “Hey, I always thought it was funny that you go by Sinclair and not Emil. Any reason for that?”
“Um, not in particular. Oh, Sinclair isn’t my last name — I have two first names, Emil and Sinclair, but Sinclair is what I go by.”
“Two first names?” Ishmael asks. “Isn’t that just your middle name?”
“Not really, uh… It’s- it’s a bit like Rodya, for example. The proper way to address her is Rodion Romanovich, and the proper way to address me is Emil Sinclair, but more casually she’s just Rodion — or Rodya — and I’m just Sinclair. But nobody would call you Ishmael Herman, if that makes sense… and my last name was my mothers’ maiden name, so Emil Sinclair Hermann. Some people I knew went by their last name, especially people from wealthier families, but um, I didn’t really like that, especially after…” He trails off. “Uhh, nevermind.”
“It’s so weird hearing my full name out of your mouth, Sinclair, you’re so cold with it! Just call me Rodya forever, please~!” Sinclair gives her a half-smile. “Oh, wait, so- if Hermann was your last name, what is it now?”
“Th-that’s not something you need to know…” Sinclair mutters. Outis hits Rodya on the back of the head, but before she can chastise her, Sinclair smiles nervously and speaks up again. “Ah, weren’t we trying to ask Meursault? Sorry for butting in like that.”
“Right, right! Meursault, sweetie, how about you? What’s your last name?”
“Meursault,” states Meursault.
She stares blankly at him for a moment. “Huh?”
“As Sinclair stated, some people prefer to be referred solely by their last name. I am one of those people.”
“A-and your first name is…?”
He looks straight at Rodya. “I don’t see why that information would be useful to you. You have been calling me Meursault, or, increasingly, ‘Meur’, and there is no reason for you to stop doing so.”
“Man, that’s so boring though,” she sighs. “You don’t have a tragic story attached to your name, right? Your name isn’t Hermann too?”
“Non. Meursault is also simply my mother’s maiden name.”
“That’s nice! Does she go by Mrs. Meursault or something..?”
“She’s dead.”
“Okay!” Rodya decides that he’s a lost cause, and instead turns to Gregor. “A-and… Greg, darling?”
“Gregor Samsa. Nothing fancy. It used to be longer, but it’s been just that for…” he thinks for a second, “Ten years? After I moved to D-Corp, I got rid of all the stuff in the middle.” He takes one glance over at Rodya, who stares at him with pleading eyes — “Argh… don’t look at me like that. If you want something more interesting, I also have a Hebrew name, Hod ben Chetzron v’Avishay, but that’s not really important.”
“What a…” Don Quixote pauses. “Lengthy and distinguished title!”
“It’s not that long. It’s just three given names smashed together; Hod, my given name, Chetzron, my mother’s name, and Avishay, my father’s name.”
“Hod? That name sounds familiar.” Dante uncrosses their arms and stands up straight, before looking over at Faust, who’s been growing increasingly antsy ever since they first asked about themselves. She stares into the distance, and whether she’s ignoring them or simply didn’t hear is unclear.
Gregor doesn’t notice the strange mood from her and simply shrugs. “Dunno. It’s an uncommon name. Means glory or leader, something like that.”
Ishmael snaps her fingers. “The Walpurgisnacht lady. Back in the L-Corp branch, the uhh… Training Team Sephiroth.” Some people stare at her with blank expressions, others with a nod of understanding.
“The announcer,” Dante supplies half-helpfully. More blank stares. “…She shot Sinclair?”
Ishmael sinks back into her seat with a sigh as Gregor rediverts the conversation. “Ah, whatever. Now it’s just Gregor Samsa. That’s all.”
Yi Sang looks up. “Hm?”
Rodya gives a half laugh and sits back in her seat. “So Y-Corp doesn’t have the most convoluted naming conventions after all… two entirely different names? That’s too much.”
“Oh! I have a question,” Dante pipes up, “How come your name’s written in Hebrew most of the time? Usually languages are standardised for documents, but we also use it for the Abnormality levels too.”
Gregor shrugs. “Dunno. Some funky laws or something.”
“The Babel Project,” Yi Sang begins immediately — Rodya lets out a groan and closes her eyes, “was enacted by members of a past G-Corp to preserve the language of Hebrew roughly fifty years ago, by conservationists of the language and culture. As such, those from Jewish heritage are legally required to have a Hebrew name, and the language receives particular support from Wings for use in legal documents and use in language-neutral settings, such as mathematics. I and others in academia have also come to learn a part of it and its alphabet as a result.”
Outis raises her hand. “Hebrew was a dying language and Greek was the international standard before the shift occurred — some older documents that have not been destroyed still use Greek as the standard.” Her face darkens. “Some say a deal struck with Hana Association spurred on this change-“
“Indeed!” Don Quixote yells, and Outis lets out a sigh, “And their introduction of Korean as the international language hath overtaken English as standard!”
“Oh?” Yi Sang tilts his head. “I was not aware of that.”
“Ah, Sir Yi Sang,” she says, patting him on the shoulder — he coughs at the force in which she slams her hand into his back, “It may be easy for you now to learn a second language, but I assure you, when I was so young I found myself at hardships of learning new ways of speaking. To this day, I too at times find myself falling back into old habits.”
“A second… Don Quixote, you do know that Korean is my native tongue?”
“...’Tis?! But- but you have such an…” she struggles to figure out a way to say something that doesn’t make her sound like a hypocrite — “archaic way of speaking!”
Yi Sang turns pink. “Th-this is merely in which those of my hometown communicated…”
Gregor laughs. “Man, I didn’t even know all of that. How about you, smarty-pants? Got anything interesting to say about your name?”
“Yi Sang…” he muses. “A name I chose for myself, if that is of any fascination to you. Similarly, I had it altered upon seeking asylum from my hometown.”
Gregor leans forwards, not actually expecting such a mysterious answer from him. “Oh? Why’d you pick a new one?”
“I felt as though my life were changing; a rebirth, or perhaps a metamorphosis, if you will. My name had served me well until that point, until it had become a vestigial reminder of what was once ‘I’ but is no longer. As such, to be rid of it was the natural solution, and from henceforth I have been, and will most likely continue to be, Yi Sang.”
“Why’d you pick Yi Sang?” Gregor asks.
“It is malleable and adaptive, as I wished to be. Its simplicity allows it to be altered or entered into a multiplicity of linguistic situations.”
Outis stares daggers into him. “...You chose that name because you can make puns out of it?”
"Yes, that is a simpler way to put it.”
“So what was your old name?” Hong Lu asks, leaning closer.
Yi Sang closes his eyes in contemplative thought — moments later, his brows furrow slightly. “I… forgot.”
“Really?” Dante asks. “You forgot your own name?”
“Mm. In that white square with those who I believed were my compatriots, many of my memories had faded from misuse. Others, altered beyond repair. As strong as the mind is, often it yields to others’ influence, and as such, my old name, and with it, the old ‘I’, are merely few of the many things in my life that have evanesced.”
Sinclair reaches over and pats him on the shoulder. “That’s terrible…”
“It may be, at times, for I am sometimes filled with sorrow for something I cannot recognise, and yet blessed enough to not be ailed with such a history. I am lucky enough to have a name of my own, and new compatriots to which I can share the experiences I have gained under this new denomination; thus, in spite of all I have been through, I am, as I am now, ideal.”
Gregor sighs. “That’s a good way to think about it.” He turns around, and- “Woah, Dante, are you…”
“I’m not crying,” they say rather quickly, leaning so far over their seat to listen to Yi Sang’s speech they’ve shoved their arms between the bars between their seat and Gregor’s. “It was just really nice.” They toy with their gloves for a moment before tilting their head towards the front of the bus. “Hey, someone ask Vergilius.”
The bus falls silent again. Rodya lets out a small laugh. “Now, Dante, you can’t expect us to-”
“Guide. Your name,” Ryoshu says with surprising clarity and certainty.
“Don’t rope me into your antics.” Vergilius sighs. “Although I see the manager is shaking in expectancy for an answer from me. The Red Gaze. Is that not a full enough moniker as is?”
“O-o-o-of course it is, illustrious, splendid Gaze! Gaze of the Color Red! Perhaps my second favourite-” He looks over at Don Quixote. “NAY! My favourite f-fixer of such a shade!”
Ishmael leans forwards onto Outis’ seat. “The Red title’s been passed around a lot more than most other ones, right? Usually Colors hold their title for a few decades-”
“FORSOOTH! You see, we have met two Colors with such a title of Red — once one retires, the title is free to be redistributed! Before the Red Gaze — The Red Claus, a monstrous yet powerful Color who strayed from the noble ways of a Fixer, struck down by Hana Association not soon after they began the most treacherous rampage! And before them, The Red Mist — a true mystery! A powerful hero defending the defenceless and needy, who had simply disappeared one day and never returned despite her noble and humble reputation! And before her-“
Ishmael interrupts before she can go any further down the line of Red Fixers. “I always wondered what would happen if two really powerful Fixers just happened to share the same colour scheme. Like, if Don Quixote and Sinclair both suddenly became Colors overnight, would Sinclair just have to wear green for the rest of his life or something?”
Sinclair nods seriously. “I look much better in yellow.”
“Happened recently.” Vergilius gives a half-hearted smirk, tilting his head towards the woman practically vibrating in her seat. “You know who I’m talking about, Don Quixote?”
“Hohoho! The Red Gaze knows of my immense knowledge!" She still hesitates under his titular gaze. "Th-the Vermillion Cross?”
“Spot on. Miss Don Quixote won’t admit it, but ‘Color’ doesn’t mean anything. Just means you’re better than Grade 1. More specific the colour, the worse the fixer.”
“H-have you worked with any other Colors before, Vergilius?” Sinclair asks.
“Usually you’d be shaking in your boots before saying a word to me.” Sinclair shrinks into his seat. “Worked with? No.” And he leaves it at that cryptic remark.
“Ah…” Rodya dares to ask a question. “And how about the bus girlie?”
“That’s none of your-”
“Aeneas,” Charon says. “My name, that is.”
Vergilius looks up. “Hm. I suppose it is. Now, forgive me if my memory fails me but… Ms Ryoshu.”
“T.M.”
Sinclair opens his mouth to translate that’s me but closes it in fear.
“Quite an invasive question for someone who refuses to share,” Vergilius sighs.
“I.D.C.”
The bus is filled with silence as the two, highly intimidating red-eyed combatants refuse to carry the conversation further. Once again, it falls to Rodya to prevent the bus from falling into awkward silence once more. “Don Quixote?”
“¡SOY QUIXOTE! ¡DON QUIXOTE!” She rises from her seat, hand outreached, and props her foot against Outis’ seat as she poses dramatically with her fist in the air.
“Get your filthy shoes AWAY from me.”
“Ah, I’ve always meant to ask…” Rodya pipes up as Don Quixote plants both feet firmly on the floor. “Is Don Quixote your first name, or your full name?”
“Don Quixote is the name, unless you wish to address me as JUSTICE! Now, you may ask, what’s in a name? Well-”
“Quixote is the first name,” Faust supplements more usefully. Don is-“
“A signifier of my nobility!” Don Quixote declares — she picks up her lance and raises it in the air, almost knocking out Sinclair in the process.
“No weapons to be brandished in the bus,” Vergilius says coldly, and she slowly lowers it from its precarious position high above her head.
Dante watches as she sets it down with a loud CLANG. “So when Vergilius says ‘Miss Don Quixote’, he’s sort of calling her two titles? Like Mister Sir Quixote.” Sinclair chuckles at the prospect, and Vergilius avidly goes back to ignoring them. “I’ve been wondering that too, though,” Dante continues. “I’ve just been putting your last name as La Mancha on legal documents and nobody’s said anything…”
“You would be correct as always,” Outis says. “Don Quixote is her full name, but is also her first name — the location acts as her surname. In the same way Rodion and Gregor take their surnames from their parents, some take their names from their hometown, or in some cases, their occupation. I thought that was relatively obvious.”
Rodya leans back in her seat. “How about you? Outis of…”
“I- That’s none of your business!”
“Aw, please Outiee~”
“I am Outis and you will refer to me as such!”
“Hey, um-” Dante says just as Outis stands from her seat, weapon in hand. “Rodya, maybe don’t press her too hard if she doesn’t want to share?”
Outis sits down immediately and folds her hands in her lap. “Thank you, Executive Manager. I apologise for my outburst.”
Dante nods, before leaning against Rodya’s seat and giving Outis a sideways glance. “Besides, even I don’t know anything about her…”
“And it’ll stay that way.” She replies sternly. After a split second, her expression softens slightly and she relaxes into her seat. “Not of any fault of your own, manager. I assure you it has naught to do with your excellent performance.”
“Thanks…”
Rodya hums. “Ah, anyone we haven’t asked yet..?”
“Yeah, Frau Faust,” Gregor turns to face the white haired woman, with a small grin on his face. “Anyone we haven’t asked yet?”
She opens her eyes. “Faust is the name, as you are already well aware.”
“Can’t you give us a little more? Last name, meaning…”
“Faust… is an important name. That belongs to me. It is the name I use, and the name that people refer to me with.”
“It means lucky,” Sinclair says quietly. “The name, Faust. Or fortunate.”
“Right, right!” Rodya finally grins, “Pretty fitting for a gal like you, right?”
Faust frowns. “Faust believes that implying my fortunes as… lucky is a detriment to her intelligence.”
“Fortunate enough to meet someone like me, that is!” Rodya deflects. “Isn’t it funny that we’re all from different places in the City, though? So many different naming conventions, and we happened to end up on a bus together?”
“…Faust will not comment on the happenstance nature that you are implying regarding such a phenomenon happening.”
“All things considered,” Heathcliff mutters, and the bus goes silent. He sighs and rubs the back of his neck as the attention turns to him. “Well, even though most of us are sorta people Faust’s picked up off the bottom o’ the barrel, considering the loons out there, it’s pretty lucky that we all ended up together, right?”
“I suppose you could say the situation we have found ourselves in is quite Faustian,” Yi Sang comments. He gives a small smile at the woman in question, and she closes her eyes before mirroring his expression.
“I would rather say that it is quite ideal.”