Preparing for a fight in Osaka (dialectal んやったなぁ) Subject: ironic story; place: Osaka; time: pre-mordern; situation: a boy is threatened with a sword-fight. More threatened than really called for a duel, so he has time. The hero of the story says to himself: > And starts to search through his belongings for something to use as a weapon. * * * The situation is clear and the meaning is easy to deduce or at least I can imagine what I would say in such a situation... ...except for the latter . Either it leads to the next scene (searching the belongings): > 1 Gee, things turned bad... I wonder do I have anything for a weapon... or is just a statement of resignation: > 2 Now that things turned that way, I should have brought some weapon with me... that can be said before running away (as well as before searching for a weapon). How shall I interpret here (as 1 or 2 or maybe something else)?

> ~

means "should have", and is just a colloquial dialectal form of that. So pretty much your number 2.