Rain crept down the windows of the old bookshop. Poet closed the umbrella and waited by the door until the last drops fell from its ribs into the tin bucket. Only then did they step around the magazines stacked on the floor.
Behind the counter, the bookseller stood on a wooden ladder dusting a shelf. She glanced down and stopped moving the cloth.
“Did you water it again?”
A chipped white vase sat in the corner of the counter. Three blue flowers rose from its mouth, with small drops of water clinging to their leaves.
Poet set down the cup in their hand.
“The bottom was dry.”
“Of course it was.” The bookseller climbed down, pinched one leaf, and turned it over. A fine mould line ran along its back. “It’s plastic.”
Poet traced the seam with one fingertip and paused.
“Whoever made it had seen the living flower,” Poet said. “They remembered the veins incorrectly.”
The bookseller examined it. “Maybe they never meant to remember that much. We call it Little Blue.”
Several Japanese notes lay across the counter. The bookseller had begun learning words from things in the shop: a bookshelf was 本棚, an umbrella was 傘, and one blank note still waited beside the vase.
“How do you write ‘plastic flowers don’t need watering’ in Japanese?”
Poet picked up the pen and wrote:
水をやらなくていい。
The bookseller repeated it twice. On the second attempt, she still crowded the middle sounds together.
“なくていい,” Poet said, touching the phrase with the pen tip. “You may leave it undone. That is all right.”
“Then was it also all right for you to water it today?”
Poet looked at the vase. A drop slipped from the point of a blue leaf and darkened the counter.
The bookseller held back a smile and pushed over her hot tea. “It isn’t thirsty. You look as if you are.”
The brass bell above the door rang. A child who often came for comics walked in, saw the new note, and stood on tiptoe to study it.
“Little Blue doesn’t have to drink today?”
Poet opened their mouth. The flower’s name was long. It needed several sounds that no one used now, including one that throats in the city could scarcely shape.
The bookseller leaned against the ladder and waited for the correction.
Poet poured the water out of the vase and dried its rim with a cloth.
“No,” Poet said. “Little Blue doesn’t have to drink today.”
The child ran toward the comics. The bookseller smoothed the note and added a line beneath it: You may leave it undone. That is all right.
The rain stopped toward evening. Three plastic flowers stood in the empty vase. One drop remained on a leaf, overlooked by the cloth.
About this episode
This AlterWorld story follows Poet into an old bookshop on a rainy day. A blue plastic flower introduces the Japanese sentence 水をやらなくていい, meaning “you do not need to water it.” The pattern ～なくていい says that an action is unnecessary; it does not prohibit the action. The scene also lets Poet accept Little Blue, an imprecise name that people can remember and use. Read the previous story about Teacher and German word order, visit the English story index, or explore EPUB reading with in-context translation.
Language-learning thread
～なくていいfollows a negative verb form and means “do not need to” or “it is fine not to”.水をやるmeans to give water to plants, or simply to water them.水をやらなくていいmeans “you do not need to water it” and describes a lack of necessity.水をやらないでくださいmeans “please do not water it” and expresses a request or prohibition.