可愛いだけじゃない式守さん・ Shikimori’s Not Just a Cutie ❤️‍🩹 Week 11 Discussion Thread (Absolute Beginners Book Club)

Japanese Language Book Clubs
1

Welcome to Week 11 of the Shikimori’s Not Just a Cutie book club!

We are reading as part of the Absolute Beginner Book Club!

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Week 11 February 24 2024
Pages 115-130
Chapter 15-16
Previous Week Week 10
Next week Week 12
Home Thread 可愛いだけじゃない式守さん・ Shikimori’s Not Just a Cutie

Vocabulary

可愛いだけじゃない式守さ Volume 1 Vocabulary List - Google Sheets

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

Please note that this was auto-generated and might need some additional editing, but it should serve as a solid starting point. If you have any questions/doubts, please post them in this thread!

Discussion Guidelines

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”]).

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

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Membership

Will you be reading with us this week?
  • I’m reading along
  • I’ve finished this part
  • I’m planning to catch up later
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0 voters

For our newer readers

How are you doing so far?
  • It’s going really well
  • It’s going well
  • I’m struggling, but I manage
  • I’m struggling so much I’m thinking of dropping the book
  • I’m no longer reading the book
  • I have read harder manga/books than tlhis one but I still need to click a poll option
0 voters

Handwritten Text

p124

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変な言い回しに
なっちゃった

p125

kép
ぼくすごく
パニクっちゃった

p126

kép
トキメキで
泣くよ

p128

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中学のアルバムとか
赤ちゃんの写真とか

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I really enjoyed the read this week! Felt like the perfect difficulty for me in terms of immersion reading, where I could follow along with the story quite well without too much puzzling or lookups. Story spoilers for chapter 16:

Very cute to see Shikimori and Izumi interacting with his parents. The joke on p.125 was pretty funny, even if I could see it coming. I was thinking the his mother probably went to cut the cake on her own, so his father would still be there. :slight_smile:
Additionally, it seems like we’ve gotten just a glimpse of Shikimori’s backstory. Might be interesting to read more of the series and see where this goes.

Question on p.120

I’m probably misunderstanding two of the sentences here slightly, because it felt like Izumi’s mom and Shikimori gave each other really backhanded compliments. Am I reading too much into this?

まさかこんな可愛いコだとはぶっくりだわぁ - I’m amazed that you’re such a cute girl (I hadn’t expected that at all (?!)
お母様こそとてもお綺麗でびっくりしました - I was really surprised that you’re so pretty.

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p120

Slight typo btw, ぶっくり instead of びっくり

More like
“I didn’t expect you to be such a cute girl”, which is probably actually a stab at Izumi. She didn’t quite expect get together with a girl like her.
As a reply, Shikimori also says “I didn’t expect you to be this pretty at all”, no backhandedness here, just

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This chapter is trying to kill me with cuteness!

Ch. 16

I didn’t quite understand Izumi’s mom and Shikimori’s conversation on the last page, but it felt like it was important.

私から一つお願い事していもいいかしら。

It sounds like mom has a request? I think?

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Ch. 16

I think it’s actually Shikimori asking, whether she might ask a request. The speech bubble is on her side, and in the last panel on this page with just Izumi’s mom, she asks for clarification. “A request?”

This also follows from the mother’s offer on the previous page, whether Shikimori has some questions, or maybe would like to see some photo albums. She has no interest in that, but takes the opportunity to ask about her request. We don’t learn what it is, because the chapter ends there. On a cliffhanger for book 2?

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Ch. 16

Really? I read it as the opposite. Neither of the speech bubbles on that page actually have a tail, so it’s not obvious who’s saying what. But Shikimori turns to look at Izumi’s mom after the speech bubble, which made me think she’s the one being spoken to, especially because Shikimori looks a bit surprised to me. Because usually, if you’re asking for something and are a bit shy about it, you may not look at them while asking, but if someone asks you something and you need clarification, you turn to look at their face to get some context from their expression. And because while the last speech bubble is next to Shikimori’s mom but doesn’t have a tail attributing it to her, that usually means it’s addressed to that character and meant to show us their reaction (in this case, for a cliffhanger).

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Ch 16

I had also read this as the Mother requesting something. This quote follows Shikimori saying:
ええっ
Followed by from the Mother：
…ないなら
(Both on the previous page) To me this situation read as “No I don’t have anything I want to ask” from Shikimori and then “Well if that’s the case I have something to ask of you” from the mother, which follows with the “A request?” from Shikimori. I think it could make sense either way but I also read it as a request from the Mother, not the other way.

That said I am also relatively new so corrections are always welcome.

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p129

@AvengedRuler’s interpretation is correct here.

First the mom asks “Is there something, you want to ask for?” And then in handwritten text she asks “like a middle school album or a photo of when he was a child?”

Then Shikimori replies something along the lines of “No” (though she seems like she’d want to, just holds herself back)

Then the mother replies
“Well, if you don’t… I have one request to ask you”
Remember, なら is a conditional, “if not…”

And then Shikimori asks her “A request?”

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Catching up after a few busy weeks personally.

Page 122

血筋を感じます…

Looking up the words, I’d guess this was something like “I feel the blood relationship / linege”. That said, the situation seems to be seems to about how she almost hurt Izumi in front of his parents.

So while I get idea “oh no, I almost hurt him in front of his parents”, I’m a little confused how this line should be interpreted?

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page 122

Shikimori didn’t almost hurt him, it was his mother that dropped the… uhh… I don’t know the english name for it :sweat_smile: (google gives me kitchen tongs?)
I think Shikimori is seeing the blood relation between Izumi and his mother, since both are clumsy/unlucky.

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Page 122

Ah you’re right! My fault for reading it too quickly it seems but it makes complete sense now. Thank you so much for that!

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I caught up with this week ! :tada:

p. 126

好きな人の家に来たんだからするに決まってる
Is it something like : “As I’ve come to the house of the one I like, I decided I would be great” ?

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I think I totally missed it as I don’t see anything funny p. 125 ? What did I miss ?

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Just checked back. The ‘punchline’ happens on p.126 rather than 125.

Not so much a joke, but a funny situation. Mom goes to cut the cake, and dad goes to the toilet. We then get several shots of Izumi and Shikimori together, talking about how the evening is going. They’re pretty cute together. We’re getting them in closeup, like we (and they) are forgetting all about the environment. And then we suddenly come back to Izumi’s father, who has apparently come back without the two of them realising. And he makes a corny comment that seeing the two of them flirting in front of him makes him quite emotional.

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126

に決まっている is an expression meaning “it’s natural that…”, “certain to…”. As for the する, since it’s a response to Izumi’s last line 全然緊張してないね, and the する is a direct echo of the して, we can tell it’s meant to mean 緊張する. Thus するに決まってる = “it’s natural that I’m nervous”.

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Thank you !

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Cute!

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I finished this week and I was like hooray, I caught up just in time for the final chapter… [turns page] oh that was the final chapter

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Look at the time (or rather, the calendar). It’s the last week of the book club. We’ve come far, eh? let’s jump into it!

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Just catching up after the book club ended :sob:

p. 116

名前 探そっか - I know the verb here is 探す, but what is the そっか conjugation short for? Is this short for 探そう + か?

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Precisely.

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