マスカレード・イブ 🎭 Part 2: ルーキー登場

Japanese Language Book Clubs
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マスカレード・イブ :performing_arts: Part 2: ルーキー登場

masquerade hotel
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This is the second story of the マスカレード・イブ book, which is part of the マスカレード Series.
We are reading this book as a club, but unscheduled.

Find the Home Thread of マスカレード・イブ here.
Find the マスカレード Series Book Club here

Part 2 ルーキー登場
Start Page 63
End Page 122
Total Pages 59
Previous part Part 1: それぞれの仮面
Next part Part 3: 仮面と覆面

Vocabulary

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.

Posting Advice

  • When asking for help, please mention the page number, and check before posting that your question hasn’t already been asked. As the threads get longer, it becomes more convenient to use the Search function, which is located in the upper right corner of the forum. It is the magnifying glass which is near your profile picture! The best way to search is usually to type part of the sentence you are confused about, and select “in this topic”. This will show you all posts within the current thread which has that string of text.

  • Be sure to join the conversation! It’s fun, and it’s what keeps these book clubs lively! There’s no such thing as a stupid question! We are all learning here, and if the question has crossed your mind, there’s a very good chance it has crossed somebody else’s also! Asking and answering questions is a great learning opportunity for everyone involved, so never hesitate to do so!

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Finished this story. :slight_smile:

Comments (spoilers)

The twist that 横森 didn’t just act on his own was good, but when the “killer” is caught smoothly and even confesses only mid-story, you kind of expect that there is more :sweat_smile:
I found 新田’s deduction of the cigarettes + the bike a bit far fetched (as in, I’m sure a lot of different circumstances could have explained things), but I liked how the information about the crime happening on White Day evening + the victim being a family guy, were hints in disguise that could be used in the end to guess the true motive / perpetrator.
I was also wondering if there would ever be more with the fancy furniture but not really.
Also did I get it right that 新田 suspects that the wife manipulated 横森 to kill her husband but since he can’t prove it she walks away? I was surprised, I thought until the end, that he would manage to prove it or make her confess.

I feel like this story was a bit harder for me to read than the first one. Probably because of a lot of criminal / investigation terms that I didn’t know / had forgotten. I can see how it could become very easy to read this kind of book, if you keep reading this kind of book x)

Now looking forward to seeing what the next two stories are about. One more 尚美 and one more 新田? Or do they meet / find themselves in the same setting at some point?

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I’m also done! :slight_smile:

Yay, there was my Nitta story! Overall I quite liked it. Nitta is a bit of a conceited asshole, but that’s also how he was introduced in Masquerade Hotel so only to be expected. Very full of himself and confident in his brains. His family backstory was interesting! I can see that with his character, for all that that’s stereotyping.

I hadn’t checked how long I still had to go, so I wasn’t sure until things started to go in that direction in the story.

That’s how I understood it as well.

I was surprised the wife sort of confessed at the end. I mean, yeah, Nitta did pull the ‘fool her at the relief moment during leaving’ trick, but still. What with how scheming she was shown as (fooling her husband for the better part of 3 years!) I would have thought she’d follow through until the end.

I wonder if recording that encounter would be viable evidence for something? Does Japan have laws how evidence can be obtained? Didn’t seem like that was a thing.

Hmm. :thinking: One more each seems likely since we have 2 more stories. I don’t think we can see them in one setting though if it’s all set before, since they meet in Masquerade Hotel for the first time. Although it’s possible that they could be both involved in the same thing without ever meeting. Like Naomi is interviewed by a different officer, or doesn’t know there’s undercover police around or something.

If we do get a joint story, I’ve a feeling it’ll be the longer title story.

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Yeah I was thinking something like that. Or they cross paths in a corridor without knowing each other, but he just thinks something like “oh this lady has a nice smell” xD

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:joy: I don’t know if I’d want that, haha. Would be super funny though, especially now that you ‘predicted’ it.

(Was that spoiler tag worthy? I don’t know, but better safe than sorry. xD)

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Before reading the book, I had no idea if we would be seeing either 尚美 or 新田 or both, so I figure might as well use spoiler tags :slight_smile: there are a lot of lurkers on the forums :slight_smile:
also when they will see all those spoiler comments they will want to read the book even more for sure, to find out what it’s all about :joy:

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Oh yes, that’s so evil. I mean true. :smiling_face_with_sunglasses:

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After you saying that I’d bet good money that something exactly like that happens now!

the whole cigarette thing was a bit weird, like when 新田 was going through the chain of logic with 本宮, I was thinking “you’re really following this logically about him stealing cigarettes from a burger place smoking area?”, not so sure about that bit.
Also I feel like due to the short story style, 東野 ends up just putting in like 4 twists in the last 15 pages, one after another, they’re a bit too close. Like first both 横森 and 美千代 being involved, then domestic violence, then not domestic violence and manipulation, then cheating and different manipulation… A bit too much

overall nice, but I think I like the hotel setting more, hoping it goes back there! Waiting patiently for 新田 and 尚美 to do some すれ違って嗅ぐ…

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:see_no_evil_monkey: Oh no, haha. Is this a thing now?

I agree. These short stories are all roughly 60 pages, and the longer one pretty much twice that. Maybe he forced it to meet that page count here.

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Agreed that the rhythm was a bit off. Too slow paced at the start and suddenly too fast paced. But at least I was reading it faster in the end!

Me too. Actually since the first book was called “Mascarade Hotel” and the other books are just called “Mascarade XXX” and not “XXX Hotel”, I thought that we wouldn’t be seeing the hotel anymore, but I’m glad we did. Secretly hoping that it’s going to be part of the plot too for the other books!

:rofl:

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