かがみの孤城 🪞 Week 17

Intermediate Book Club: Intermediate Japanese Book Club // Now Reading: TUGUMI・Next: おばちゃんたちのいるところ
かがみの孤城 Home Thread: かがみの孤城 (Kagami no Kojou) Book Club

Week 17

Start date: March 19th, 2022

Welcome to the second bunko volume! This week we are reading the first half of the 一月 chapter.
End page (bunko): 34 (at the :fleur_de_lis:)
End page (tanko): 315
End phrase: 一瞬で真っ暗くなり、気絶した

Previous week: かがみの孤城 🪞 Week 16
Next week: かがみの孤城 🪞 Week 18

Discussion Rules

  • Please use spoiler tags for major events in the current chapter and any content in future chapters.
  • When asking for help, please mention the page number. If you are reading the ebook version mention the percentage.
  • Don’t be afraid of asking questions, even if they seem embarrassing at first. All of us are here to learn.
  • To you lurkers out there: Join the conversation, it’s fun! :durtle:

Read Aloud

We will be reading on Sundays at 10:00PM Japan time (reading the previous week’s content). Here is the time in your local time zone:

2022-03-27T13:00:00Z

Participants

Mark your participation status by voting in this poll.

  • I’m reading along (up to this week’s end page)
  • I’m already reading ahead (beyond this week’s end page)
  • I’ve read this book already and I’m here for discussion
  • I’m still reading the book but I haven’t yet reached this week’s starting page
  • I’m no longer reading the book

0 voters

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@wiersm Can you make the read aloud 30 minutes later? Now that daylight savings time has arrived we’re going to shift it a bit. (Also since Japan doesn’t observe daylight savings time it would be 10pm there, 30 minutes earlier, not later. So if you want to keep that part of the text you’ll have to change that too.) I’ll update the time in the home thread.

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Yes, done!

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In the 単行本 version, this week ends on page 315.

About the content:

At this point, I was 99.99% certain of my guess (now 99.999%), so I was screaming inside the whole time. I had to put down the book a few times because my hands were shaking, especially every time こころ mentioned how safe she would feel to meet everyone (or even just one of them) at school. I kept thinking that it’s going to be bad and that she will misunderstand and feel betrayed. I’m really glad she realized that it’s not possible to meet the others outside the castle instead. I hope 嬉野 didn’t go to school, since he is the only one who has no way of checking.
I guess the reason they would forget the castle if their wish is granted is because it would break the time loop? Also, one of my guess for the lack of reaction of the other two girls to the name of 喜多島 is that it’s actually wolf girl. Which is why she can’t take out the mask at all. (There’s also the more boring option that they would get married and pick their husband’s name)

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Are you planning to read with the schedule now or just going to keep reading to the end?

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I was planning to rent the 文庫 version after this one so that I can follow for a month or so, but at this point… Can’t stop, won’t stop. Also, I’m extremely invested in finding out if I guessed correctly.

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Very hard to not read ahead of the club but I will stop myself because if I’m too ahead then it breaks the fun of talking with the group.

This week spoiler

The nurse not knowing who they are could be because they never attended school or they gave Kokoro false names. Masamune giving another day then the ceremony one is also weird and WHY HAVEN’T THEY EXCHANGE CONTACT INFO ALREADY! My wacky theory is alternate timelines in which each of them lives in a different dimension and the nice teacher who talked to Kokoro at the end is the masked wolf girl. I wonder what she does at school.
Kokoro’s family was so nice to help her feel better to go to school. Her dad cleaning the bike seat and her mom going to work later was wholesome.

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Indeed, it makes it very hard to discuss my own wacky theory, since I know too much now. I wonder what you think of it, though. (I posted it initially in the November thread, but posted it again in last week’s thread)

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I don’t know how far you read ahead but the last part sounded like a spoiler so I stop reading your comment. Your theory would make sense but it seems pretty far-fetched. If it’s true then I wonder where the author is going with it

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I hadn’t read ahead at all by the time I posted.
Feel free to read (and potentially disagree)

Not as far fetched as a random castle in the mirror, so I think everything is possible.

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I guess we all expected that they wouldn’t really be able to meet up at school, so that wasn’t really a big surprise. :smile:

Language-wise I quite liked the 緊張の糸が切れた expression near the end this week. And overall this part contained some pretty nice writing.

Yes, I was also glad about that, but like Kokoro I hope that Masamune doesn’t take it too badly either.

Yes, quite :smiley:

I wonder how long it will take before this becomes 100% :joy:

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I took notes with respect to the different weeks, so you’ll get to know when my opinion got fixed (either as 0 or 100%) :slight_smile:

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Spoilers

It was so wholesome when they decided to be brave and gather at school that reading this while being pretty sure it wasn’t gonna happen was painful. I could really feel the pure anxiety from こころ going back to that place and then actually being all alone and thinking that the others must be going through something similar.
On a side note, I wasn’t expecting that letter and it sure was like… what the hell is she thinking about? That guy isn’t even relevant to anything.

It was tempting to keep reading, not gonna lie. We’ll see…

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Oh, also, I just found out that I missed the discussion in the “November” thread since I was in such a hurry to post my own thoughts :sweat_smile: I see that pretty much everyone reached the same conclusion.

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