The Line I Keep Changing Back

There's one line in the VN I'm translating right now that I've rewritten nine times.

In the original it's four Japanese words. Four words, and the character says them so quietly you'd miss them if you weren't already holding your breath. My first draft was clean. Correct. It meant exactly what the words meant. And it meant nothing.

So I keep changing it back, the way you keep turning a stone over in the rain, looking for a face in it.

Rain outside, October, the kind that doesn't decide. Tea gone cold. The cursor blinking like it's patient in a way I am not.

A line you translate nine times isn't a failure. It's you refusing to let a feeling leave through the easy door.

Some feelings don't cross the language border on the first bridge. You just keep building, one quiet attempt at a time, until the thing you mean on one side is the thing that lands on the other. That's the whole job. That's the whole point.