セーラー服と機関銃🏫🌺 (IBC) - Week 19

[Domjcw]

せーラー服と機関銃
Intermediate book club
Home thread

Week 19	22 June 2024
End page	309
End point (kindle)	3858
End phrase	第四章 end of section 3
Pages	17
Previous week	Week 18
Next week	Week 20
Home Thread	せーラー服と機関銃

Vocabulary

Google sheet:

セーラー服と機関銃 vocabulary sheet

Please read the guidelines on the first page before adding any words.

Discussion Guidelines

Everybody should feel free to post and ask questions–it’s what makes book clubs fun! But please do not post until you are familiar with Spoiler Courtesy!

Spoiler Courtesy

Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.

1. Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.

2. Any potential spoilers for external sources need to be covered by a spoiler tag and include a label (outside of the spoiler tag) of what might be spoiled. These include but are not limited to: other book club picks, other books, games, movies, anime, etc. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler (for example, I may still look at minor spoilers for something that I don’t intend to read soon).

3. Any information from later in the book than the current week’s reading (including trigger warnings that haven’t yet manifested) needs to be hidden by spoiler tags and labeled as coming from later sections.

Instructions for Spoiler Tags

Click the cog above the text box and use either the “Hide Details” or “Blur Spoiler” options. The text which says “This text will be hidden” should be replaced with what you are wishing to write. In the case of “Hide Details”, the section in the brackets that is labelled “Summary” can be replaced with whatever you like also (i.e, [details=”Chapter 1, Pg. 1”]).

Hide Details results in the dropdown box like below:

Example

This is an example of the “Hide Details” option.

The “Blur Spoiler” option will simply blur the text it surrounds.

This is an example of the “Blur Spoiler” option.

Proper Nouns

Name	Hiragana reading	Notes	Kindle location first mentioned
赤川次郎	あかがわじろう	the author	cover
尾田医師	おだいし	Doctor Oda	24
目高組	めだかぐみ	Medaka clan	86
Izumi’s family
星泉	ほしいずみ	main character, Izumi	170
酒井好子	さかいよしこ	aunt Yoshiko	172
星貴志	ほしたかし	main character’s father, Takashi	179
酒井呈一	さかいていいち	Uncle (Yoshiko’s husband)	201
知子	ともこ	Tomoko (?Izumi’s mother)	211
マユミ	-	mysterious woman in Izumi’s apartment	348
土田恒美	つちだつねみ	Tsunemi, real name of the woman pretending to be Mayumi	1,827
岡崎真由美	おかざきまゆみ	The real name of Mayumi, friend of Izumi’s father, photographer.	2,549
Classmates
奥沢哲夫	おくざわてつお	Classmate of Izumi, Tetsuo (son of an executive, smart dresser, family expect him home for dinner on time)	251
渡辺周平	わたなべしゅうへい	Classmate of Izumi, Shuhei (stocky, bowlegged, loves Judo)	251
竹内智生	たけうちともお	Classmate of Izumi, Tomo. (Smart, heading for Tokyo university, wears glasses)	261
和子	かずこ	classmate,	433
Schoolteachers
三浦久子	みうらひさこ	Miss Miura, teacher	357
保科校長	ほしなこうちょう	Headteacher Hoshina	368
Yakuza
健次	けんじ	Kenji, Medaka gang member, short, unbalanced (brought the doctor in the car in the prologue), chews gum	555
英樹	ひでき	Hideki, Medaka gang member, skinny and unhealthy looking, wears thick glasses	556
武	たけし	Takeshi, Medaka gang member, stocky and overweight	558
佐久間	さくま	Sakuma, Medaka second in command, unusually tall (‘beanpole’), in 50s	558
浜口	はまぐち	Hamaguchi, local Yakuza chief	1,034
関根	せきね	Sekine, head of the Matsunoki clan	2,141
元	げん	Gen, Yakuza henchman in the Matsunoki clan	2,306
剛	つよし	Tsuyoshi, yakuza henchman in the Matsunoki clan	2,306
萩原	はぎわら	Hagiwara, messenger from a ‘big fish’	3,211
Other characters
黒木	くろき	detective, head of the S section	870
浜口物産	はまぐちぶっさん	Hamaguchi trading company	936
野田代議士	のだだいぎし	Representative Noda, politician, waiting for Hamaguchi	1,064
岩田	いわた	Night watchman at Izumi’s apartment block	1665
関根正明	せきねまさあき	Son of Sekine, the head of the Matsunoki clan	2,073
円谷重治	つぶらやしげはる	Shigeharu, left name on business card at Izumi’s apartment	2,665
マクシム	-	Maxim’s [I presume this is a reference to the famous Parisian restaurant]	2,480
三大寺一	さんだいじはじめ	Hajime, ‘big boss’, kidnapper of Izumi, nicknamed ‘the fat man’, and ‘Doc’	3326
—	—	—	—

Participation

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[Sasabonsam]

week 19

Kuroki, I knew it! The way you never showed up with any other police people on page was too suspicious! Seems like Tomoo got one up on him over the lotion bottle’s contents, too. Speaking of, we aren’t going to find out what was actually in it until the last pages, are we…

The description of Izumi’s torture ordeal #2 was pretty grim. I guess that was her inner “負けず嫌いの性分” that was screaming at her as she was falling over in the freezer? I’m also hoping that the bit about her getting hit with an idea at the end of the chapter means she’ll be ready to make an escape attempt soon!

[Domjcw]

No spoilers, but there are some answers coming next week!

As for

week 19

I was wrong about the デカさん. I thought he was going to come and rescue Izumi, but I think she is going to have to do some of that by herself.
The hypothermia scene was grim, but overall I thought that Doc’s torture was surprisingly restrained (compared to drops of acid on eyes).

[Jiell]

I… managed to catch up!

story comments

Well, Kuroki being a bad guy is no surprise at all. We probably all saw that one coming - I am surprised he got away with it for so long

@Sasabonsam

I’m also hoping that the bit about her getting hit with an idea at the end of the chapter means she’ll be ready to make an escape attempt soon!

But even if she manages to run away, where would she go? They probably know where she lives as well as Sakuma and the others. I am sure she got the MC plot armor of heaven, but I don’t see how she could run away and be safe afterwards

question

Did I get that right, Izumis father just happend to be around when Kuroki needed to “hide” the package? And her father knew nothing of it? … But if that is true, why would he have dissolved the content and hidden it in a lotion bottle?
Also, am I not getting something from the timeline? That all happend at the airport… The same one he would have the accident later on? On the same day?? That doesn’t make sense to me.

I also think if it actually just was an accident, that would make it a lot less interesting, but we will see. Maybe Kuroki just doesn’t know everything.

[pm215]

@Jiell

Also, am I not getting something from the timeline? That all happend at the airport… The same one he would have the accident later on? On the same day?? That doesn’t make sense to me.

Yep, same day. Kuroki’s plan was a spur of the moment one to hide the package in a random passerby’s bag when he realised he was going to be questioned and searched, and then grab it back just a few minutes later, as soon as he’d managed to get out of his conversation with the airport drugs squad. But by the time Kuroki was able to start looking around for where Izumi’s father was, he’d already had the accident with the truck, and it was impossible for Kuroki to get anywhere near the accident scene.

But, yeah, I suspect you might be right that Kuroki doesn’t have the full picture.

[Boodil]

Oof, this took me forever, probably because so many of Izumi’s parts were so text-dense.

Week 19

Kuroki, you bad boy! Not because you’re up to no good (we knew that), but what’s with the lengthy villain infodump? Don’t give people interviews about your crimes while threatening them with a gun!

@Jiell

But if that is true, why would he have dissolved the content and hidden it in a lotion bottle?

In addition to what @pm215 said, if I understood correctly, Kuroki went through the belongings of Izumi’s father at the police station, after his colleagues were done processing the accident, and didn’t find the 包み. That implies that someone else stole it after Kuroki put it in her father’s luggage. For lack of better ideas, my prime suspect is the first Mayumi, because she was an experienced thief and since she came to live with Izumi soon after, it would kind of make sense that she hid the valuable mystery thing she couldn’t immediately find a buyer for in her apartment. There was also the theory that Mayumi stole the letter that introduced her, so there’s more than one reason to believe she got her hand in his luggage.

The whole airport incident timeline seems like something of series of wild coincidences ducktaped together by logic one shouldn’t look at too closely, but since 殺人犯 also had a somewhat underwhelming conclusion, I was trying not to go into this with high expectations from the start.

@Domjcw

The hypothermia scene was grim, but overall I thought that Doc’s torture was surprisingly restrained (compared to drops of acid on eyes).

Definitely. Even Izumi was baffled when they suddenly gave her a break an a luxury meal. Is her theory that one of the doc’s underlings has their own agenda?

[Jiell]

week 19

@Boodil

That implies that someone else stole it after Kuroki put it in her father’s luggage.

I really wonder what Kuroki thinks happened. Maybe he is panicking and not thinking clearly, but he took the lotion bottle believing that that is the “package”. But who does he think did that? From his point of view, Izumis father shouldn’t have been able to.

@Boodil

For lack of better ideas, my prime suspect is the first Mayumi, because she was an experienced thief and since she came to live with Izumi soon after

I actually thought maybe she was the real Mayumi. We only think she is a thief because Kuroki said so, right? (unless I am forgetting something)
But you are right, the first Mayumi probably had the best chances to hide the package.

[Boodil]

Week 19

@Jiell

I really wonder what Kuroki thinks happened.

Kuroki seems to think that Izumi’s father handed that part of his luggage over to someone:
奴が誰かに渡したのに違いねえ
I’m not sure from the choice of words if Kuroki thinks it might have been stolen or if he’s sure it was handed over intentionally, but I’m also not sure it matters much.
From his point of view, I think it makes the most sense to assume that he suspected either Izumi and/or Mayumi, and the trail led him to Izumi’s apartment either way. He was also probably assuming that the one who transported the 包み might have told the other and they might have hidden it together.

@Jiell

I actually thought maybe she was the real Mayumi. We only think she is a thief because Kuroki said so, right? (unless I am forgetting something)

That’s true, the possibility that she was the real Mayumi all along is certainly still on the table, and actually got likelier now that Kuroki is a confirmed liar.