Glad to be back. Happy New Year, everyone!
I read the whole thing a week ago, as if we didn’t have a break, and then had to resist reading ahead - I didn’t want whatever I read next to influence this week’s discussions. I wrote down my comments right when I finished reading, when everything was still fresh (although it still is).
My thoughts on this week's reading
So I suppose I got my answer on what would happen if she told on Igasaki - I was surprised that Natsuki decided to confide to her mother (good for you Natsuki for trusting your instincts and not being fooled into thinking that that was normal teacher behaviour), and was really shocked by the mother’s reaction. Even if you place no trust on your child, even if you think the worst of them, how can you not even entertain the idea that they may actually be in danger? The mother’s reaction was the worst possible one. Not only did she make sure that Natsuki would never confide in her again, but she also made Natsuki doubt herself, thinking that she might be the one being dirty instead of the teacher, thus making her more vulnerable to further approaches. Just disgusting.
The はい、わかりました。ごめんなさい。repetition was so powerful and heartbreaking.
And of course the inevitable happened (not the best thing to be reading on Christmas). I had been expecting it more or less, but it was still dreadful, and very hard to read. The way he engineered her coming to his house showed him as a master manipulator. Natsuki believes herself to be strong (and she really is, and I hope she continues to be through all this, but she’s also a child and basically on her own), so naturally she’d step up to protect her friend. She could have run to the toilets to check on her friend of course, or alert someone else before going at least, but judging from the fact that she had been waiting for her friend alone I’m guessing she’s not really close to anyone else, and I’m sure the creep would have found a way to make sure she wouldn’t anyway.
And then, somehow even more shocking than that scene, was the family scene. What’s Japan’s stance on corporal punishment? It can’t be acceptable to keep kicking your child in the back even if she had done something worse than object to a change of holiday plans. I can see now that Kise is just copying the mother, at least as far as Natsuki is concerned. The two are too much alike. And my suspicions that the father is just a bystander in all this seem to be confirmed. He seems to get no say in anything, and to have accepted that role. Who knows, he may be leading an exciting double life that keeps him fulfilled. But in this family he seems to be nobody. Natsuki would probably get the same treatment if she just went along with the elder women of the clan, but since she occasionally makes her opinion known, she is bullied into submission. I’m sure there must be a story there to explain the horrible parenting, but I’m more interested in how Natsuki copes with all this. Will she really not get to see Yuu (who happily seems to be still doing okay despite my fears)? Will she stay around and keep being exposed to Igasaki’s advances? She really needs all the magic help she can get.
I wonder why she was prepared to hang up the phone when she called Yuu if his mother answered. Are the two families on bad terms? Why wouldn’t it be okay to be calling her cousin? There’s much we don’t know I feel.
I may be wrong/misremembering, but my impression was that Natsuki was scared of what he might do if she resisted him, rather than afraid of hurting his feelings. She did trust her alarm bells (most of the time, her mother had done enough damage by inserting some doubt in there), but her alarm bells were also telling her that not complying might be worse for her.