Black Lagoon 85

Black Lagoon 85

*Reserved for use by Taka2552

p1: =======================================
Panel 1:
They fucked you
and threw you away?

Panel 2:
It’s not a hard development to understand.
Just like you might throw away a balance sheet with errors on it,

Panel 4:
you were thrown into the garbage by your company and your superiors.

Panel 5:
However,
/ you survived.
And you’re still here.
/ You haven’t thought of going home?

p2: =======================================
Panel 1:
When I learned my own value, I figured one more thing out, too.
/ The value I had given to the place where I was—
was just an illusion I had deluded myself into believing.

Panel 2:
The value I had given it…
/ was nothing more than the value I wanted it to have.
Once I figured that out,
/ I couldn’t go back anymore.

Panel 3:
You’re not using the right words.
/ There must’ve been a way back, right?

Panel 4:
Allow me to correct myself.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t head back,
/ it was that I didn’t want to.

p3: =======================================
Panel 1:
You took all of the myriad things from your homeland…
/ and threw them in the trash as an effigy.
Was your homeland cold to you, or were you cold to your homeland?
/ There’s no way I could know.

Panel 2:
But all I’m saying is that,
if you chose to do so,
/ you could have gone from there to the place where you began.

Panel 3:
-----……..

Panel 4:
There’s a lot you and I have in common.
Until the curtain opened on our trash lives,
/ we were so similar I could laugh.

p4: =======================================
Panel 1:
Was that when you were tricked?

Panel 2:
It was even earlier.
/ Your homeland’s Japan, right—Tokyo?

Panel 3:
Yeah.
Well, I’m from China’s sticks.
/ We were horribly deep in the mountains, the kind of place where people claim they see yetis.

Panel 4:
Seen any yourself?

Panel 5:
Of course not, stupid. Well…
even in the mountains, we had a good-for-nothing system of authority.

Panel 6:
Thanks to my grandfather serving in the Eighth Route during the Civil War,
/ we were the kings of that tiny bit of power.
I had three older brothers; the eldest was the second secretary of the residential committee.
/ It was almost too high a position for someone in the mountains.

p5: =======================================
Panel 1:
Were any expectations----
/ placed on you?

Panel 2:
What do you think?

Panel 3:
No.
/ If there were, you would have walked the path you wanted.

Panel 4:
Exactly.
/ My parents understood it well,
but not nearly as well as I did.
/ Though I think they wanted me to marry some rich man from Chongqing.

Panel 5:
That’s why I wound up getting shipped off like a troublemaker to the Liberation Army’s electrical college.
/ And then…
I wandered, unable to see my path,
/ and started suffering these stupid troubles here, at the end of the earth.

p6: =======================================
Panel 1:
Hey,
/ if you…

Panel 2:
If you know you’d wind up here,
/ would you have chosen a different path?

Panel 3:
Or…

p7: =======================================
Panel 2:
------….What a shock.
/ I just figured it out.

Panel 3:
Yes.
Regardless, I probably—
/ would still have come here.

p8: =======================================
Panel 1:
----Even if you knew
/ this would happen to you?

Panel 2:
---Let me turn that question around.
SFX: Gulp Gulp

Panel 3:
What am I, here and now?
Who the hell am I?

Panel 4:
A Chinese woman?
/ Bùshì.
What of a job?
/ Bùshì.
What of the life and relationships I’ve accumulated until now?
/ Bùshì.
My past, my homeland, my country, my rights—
/ they’ve all been cleanly stolen from me, just as they were from you.

p9: =======================================
Panel 1:
However…

Panel 2:
only the me who is alive right now is definitely here.

Panel 3:
Will I be murdered,

Panel 4:
or die a dog’s death?

Panel 5:
How I die, and thus how I live,
are choices only I can make.

p10-11: =======================================
Panel 1:
Only I can decide.
Isn’t it the greatest?

Panel 2:
Doesn’t it make you
/ damn excited?

p12: =======================================
Panel 1:
<no text>

p13: =======================================
Panel 1:
Yeah.
/ I guess it does.

Panel 3:
By the way,
/ sorry to change the subject.
Hm?

Panel 4:
Hasn’t it been long?
Her shower, I mean.

p14: =======================================
Panel 2:
She got dizzy and fainted!
/ Give me something for her to wear!
Whaaaaaaaat?!

Panel 3:
So that damn Zamid Dhiyab
/ kicked the bucket?

Sidebar: Ronnie from the Italian Mafia returns! Are things developing towards a greater bloodbath?