Before entering the office, Toru Shimizu pulled the collar of his suit before pushing open the door to the Japanese dictionary class.

There were already two people sitting there.

Behind the desk facing the door, the reflection of glasses poked out of the newspaper, and it was Irie Hei, who was the section leader, who looked at it.

"It's Shimizu-kun, do you have time this afternoon?" He paused, as if noticing, "Huh? Here comes in a suit. ”

Sitting in his temporary seat, Toru Shimizu nodded, "Everyone else in the office building wears formal clothes, and it's not good for me to walk around alone in civilian clothes." ”

This reason is just one of them, mainly because he has found that there have been a lot more occasions when he needs a suit recently. Although asking Hasegawa to borrow is a solution, the invisible sense of indebtedness accumulates after many times. So I simply thought that it could be useful in the future, and went to the Aoyama dress store near Nakano Station.

Even though he was mentally prepared, when he took out the last four 10,000 yuan bills in his wallet in front of the cashier, he couldn't help but sigh: dignity is really an expensive thing.

"Yes, very energetic."

Before it was time to go to work in the afternoon, Irie Ping gave a slight compliment, and then put his eyes back on the newspaper with the baseball score printed on it.

Toru Shimizu turned to another person in the office.

"Ishino-san, good afternoon."

"Oh, it's Shimizu-san." The man had a neat three-seven haircut, and his skin was pale under his round-rimmed glasses, apparently due to the prolonged lack of sunlight.

He was holding a book in his hand, looking a little dazed, looking like he had just woken up from his immersion.

"Good afternoon. If I don't mind, I..."

He pointed to the page.

"I'm bothering."

Having lost the last person to talk to, Toru Shimizu could only look around the office.

There was no change from before, a circle of cabinets against the wall surrounded five or six desks, and the overall appearance was rather cramped, but it was a little empty because there were only three people in the department.

Skimming over what was already familiar, Toru Shimizu explored the corners that he hadn't noticed before. Unexpectedly, I just turned my eyes casually, and found a small door behind the side of the table in the river.

The door was the same color as the wall, and most of it was blocked by a cabinet, so it looked so inconspicuous.

Before I could see anything, a long sigh came from my ears.

"Alright".

Turning his head, Irie Heiichi had already thrown down the newspaper, put away his slightly frustrated expression because he supported the team's defeat, clapped his hands, and said, "It's almost time." I'll arrange for work... Well? Why hasn't that guy come from Kanzaki yet? ”

Satoshi Kanzaki, another regular employee of the Japanese dictionary class, is well-known throughout the dictionary bureau because of his casual style.

Ishino didn't answer. Toru Shimizu was also silent. Although he had only been here for a short time, he was already familiar with this scene.

"Forget it," Irie sighed in a slightly different tone than just now, "Let's start first." Errata needs to be done recently, these are the letters received about errors and suggestions. ”

He patted the boxes next to him.

"Let's see if there's really a mistake. If it exists, it is recorded and corrected and collected to me to form an errata. It will be published online and revised the next time a new dictionary is printed. ”

As he spoke, he began to distribute.

"Ishino, you're in charge of those. Shimizu-kun, this is your share, you can ask Ishino more if you have any questions. ”

"Okay", looking at the various letters in his hand, Qing Shui Toru suddenly remembered a question, "Irijiang-san, there is something I want to ask you." ”

"You're welcome, just say it."

"What does it take to write a new dictionary?"

"New dictionary, I want to think about it," Irie leaned back in his chair, took off his glasses and put them on the table, and pinched the bridge of his nose with his right hand, "Generally speaking, the first thing to do is to determine the scope of writing. ”

"Scope of writing?"

"There are also different types of dictionaries, such as dictionaries specializing in ancient texts, entry-level dictionaries for elementary school students, and recently railway dictionaries for railway fans."

Quickly spread out the notebook to write these down, Qing Shui Toru continued to ask, "Then what's next?" ”

"The next step is to choose the words and decide which words to include according to the scope of writing. A medium-sized dictionary like "Da Cilin" contains about 200,000 words. ”

"Please ask again," Qing Shui Toru pinched the tip of his pen, "Where did all the words in the collection come from?" ”

"Most of it is sifted through existing vocabulary. By the way, Shimizu-kun, you haven't seen the treasure trove of our class, have you? ”

Without waiting for him to ask what the so-called "treasure house" was, Irie bent down and groped in the drawer of his desk for a while, and when he got up, he stood in front of the small hidden door with a delicate little key in his hand, and turned back and said, "Shimizu-kun, come and have a look." ”

Toru Shimizu followed him.

Behind the small door is an enclosed room. The switch on the wall was pressed, and the overhead light instantly filled the room. What attracts more attention than the lights are the tightly packed rows of bookshelves and the boxes full of cards that are neatly arranged like a military formation.

Irie picked up a card casually, and his words were full of pride: "This is the treasure trove of our class, more than a million vocabulary cards accumulated by our predecessors. ”

Listening to this number, and then looking at the array of cards that filled the entire field of vision, Qing Shui Toru was in a trance for a while.

"At that time, there was no electronic system, and vocabulary could only be recorded by cards. Want to take a look? ”

Irie handed over the card in his hand. Qing Shui Toru rubbed his fingers on his clothes before taking it carefully.

On the yellowed cardboard, the pronunciation in the upper right corner is marked with kana, followed by the corresponding Chinese characters, and the specific meaning of the words is marked in the middle.

Feeling the rough feel of the paper, Toru Shimizu raised his head and asked, "Then when you write a dictionary, you organize and summarize the contents on the cards?" ”

"It's not that simple," Irie pulled out another card and looked at it, "Language can change, for example, the word 'brother gui' used to be just a respectful title for 'big brother', but now it has some other meanings." These should be taken into account when writing the dictionary. ”

He breathed a sigh of relief and continued: "There are also many new words, such as 'call', 'handshake ticket' and the like, which should also be collected before writing the dictionary. ”

Without reminding him that he had accidentally revealed his preferences, Toru Shimizu waited for him to continue.

"After sorting out the words to be included and verifying the meaning of each word, the layout design and proofreading are carried out. In general, sorting out vocabulary and verifying meaning is the core and time-consuming task of writing a dictionary. ”

"Time-consuming?"

"Let's put it this way, the first edition of the "Great Dictionary of the Japanese Language" compiled by my predecessors took seven years, and the "Great Dictionary Forest" of Sanshodo took twenty-eight years to compile."

"So long!"

"Yes, as a dictionary editor, you have to have the consciousness of compiling only one dictionary for the rest of your life", Irie raised his head and smiled, then lowered his eyes and sighed, "But I don't have much chance." ”

Toru Shimizu nodded, looked around at the room made of words, and couldn't help but make a request.

"Irijiang-sang, can I come here again in the future?"

"For the sake of the material, right? OK. I keep the key in a drawer, so I can get it myself if I want to see it. If necessary, take a few back with you. ”

"Can you take it back?"

"It's okay, the data has been entered into the computer. These on the shelves are half backup and half commemorating. After all, times have changed. ”

Qing Shui Toru glanced at the thin ash on the bookshelf and did not answer.