Week 13
| Start date | 15 Aug |
| Chapter | 殺人現場へ向こう足音 |
| End phrase | end of chapter |
| Pages | 219-240 |
| Page count | 21 |
How is the reading going?
- I am reading along
- I am catching up
- I am dropping this book
0
voters
So I got a few weeks behind… 
What’s the best strategy to catch up? Power through in the original order, or start reading along with this week’s chapter and try to catch up on the older ones as I go? How self-contained have the last few chapters been?
Not much admittedly, for a couple of weeks the chapters have had more ties with each other!
Ok, power through it is 
Thanks!
Week 13
Interesting chapter! We basically have two opposites explanation for the same murder of last chapter… of course I expect the truth to be something absolutely batshit crazy that somehow combines both weird explanations…
Some wild theories:
- Maybe 笠原’s dad was having an affair with 松江’s mom (he was described as being a lady’s men, or something like that…?). He would sneak into the 和室 by the window and use the 糸電話 to create the illusion he was always in his own house.
- 松江’s dad discovers the affair and a fight ensues that leads to the fire getting started? From 弘樹’s description it sounds a bit strange, his parents had such a cold marriage, they were basically married in name only…
- … Unless religion comes in. Lots of emphasis on 松江’s dad being a very devout christian, I feel like that has to be part of the reason. Maybe 松江’s mom was getting dragged into the cult by 笠原’s dad. Or maybe she’s always been part of the cult with the refusal of having 弘樹 baptised and 松江 snapped when he discovered it because he was afraid of her influencing his son.
Also learned 種明かし. Fun expression!
Week 13
I had this thought, but then if the son could easily hear the footsteps and their direction from downstairs, he would surely hear a fight too, right?
Maybe her and 笠原’s dad were in the 和室 doing cult activities and then she eventually self-immolated from the shame of having a half-Christian son. But I guess that doesn’t explain why 松江’s dad seemed to know about the fire before it started.
I thought it was strange that it took him 10 minutes to call the fire department. What phone call takes that long? 
Also, it only takes about 3 minutes for a house to burn down, so all of the times we were given seemed too long.
Reply
I also thought so, but I think he mentions only being able to hear footsteps on that particular corridor because it’s right over the living room… because he mentions saying he has no idea what his dad was doing in the right part of the house in that span of time before he came down or if actually even entered the 和室, so maybe with the TV on in the living room we are supposed to think he wasn’t able to hear anything else?
It definitely stretches credibility a bit that whatever happened upstairs he didn’t hear anything.
Are 和室 soundproof by any chance? 
I think I remember reading that he had to walk a bit until he found the public phone, probably until the end of the road or something?
The times didn’t seem that off to me, 3 minutes seems awfully fast for a fire to spread and collapse an entire two story house… Especially if it started “small” like in a closet.
Week 13
Hiroki’s theory is that the father didn’t start the fire until after he’d sent him away, which makes the questions of how long exactly it took the house to catch fire and how much you can hear from the living room less relevant imo.
So, speculative timeline:
- 松江’s father knocks out his wife, then sends his son off towards a conveniently far away payphone
- He goes back into the house, stuffs his wife into the closet and sets her on fire.
- 笠原’s father climbs in the window (probably with the intention to sleep with and/or do cult stuff with 松江’s mom - I agree that the religious divide is probably important, and might be the murder motive)
- He finds the 和室 on fire and 松江 Sr. about to flee. A brief struggle ensues, but he can’t do much, because he has to keep up his string phone conversation with his daughter. Both men flee in different directions.
- His intervention is enough to delay 松江 Sr. who gets dizzy from smoke inhalation and collapses on the stairs.
Week 14
This chapter was sadly devoid of actual weird houses and blueprints.
But at least we now got the Holy Mother’s backstory (minus the missing mystery…thing…hinted at at the end). It feels like the story is coming together quite rapidly and there are hardly any substantial mysteries left to solve. I was quite surprised when I checked the page count and found out we’re only a little over the midway point. I wonder what else is coming.
Week 14
Yeah this chapter was interesting but not much to say about it, I think the mystery thing hinted at at the end is that the author hasn’t realised that Yaeko san is the Holy Mother… Unless there’s something else I also completely missed?
Regarding the page count, the last chapter seems to cover a great portion of the book… Which makes me a bit afraid that’s it’s a massive infodump that resolves everything like in the last book, which I wasn’t much of a fan of, but we’ll see…
I’ve still enjoyed this format of smaller stories and spotting the connections between them more than the first book.
Week 14 / Chapter 10
The swapping kids idea was interesting, don’t think I ever heard that one before. (not that I know a lot of things about holding hostages or stuff)
I am super excited for what is coming that will be from week 17! If you don’t know what it is from looking at the schedule, then I won’t spoil it here.
I’m thinking this was so obvious that it must be something else, but let’s see.
Reply
I’ve seen the schedule, and the chapter title is making me apprehensive. I got the same fear as @Sisthra , i.e. will Kurihara come in and infodump nonsensical, speculative theories on us for a hundred pages like in the last book?
Isn’t that a good thing?
Just finished 部屋を繋ぐ糸電話…
Now catching up slowly with everyone
Better late than never:
week14
Heavy chapter to one-shot on a Sunday morning…
The layout of the room feels strange to me. A tiny bedroom for a prostitution den? Where did she sleep with her son? She doesn’t mention how the main room was furnished.
I always find the 押し入れ strangely conspicuous in many of these book’s plans, they’re often located in “convenient” locations. Here we see that there’s a blind spot from the surveillance window to the 押し入れ (at least for the left room, although the angle is also awkward in the other direction).
As for the elevated price, I presume that it wasn’t just about prostitution? She mentions いかがわしいオモチャ, I’m not sure I want to know what that entails.
Caught up with the other two chapters before this week 
Summary
I don’t have words for this what I read there… however things start coming together.
Nope. No, wait, let me think…no, definitely not, thanks for asking .
Week 15
I should have known better than to read this before Friday, of course this half chapter ends on a cliffhanger again. This half seemed pretty straightforward, the only think I could find to speculate about was the contents of the mystery box. My vote goes to “creepy wooden doll”.
Ahh. Finally finished Week 13, trying to catch up with the club before we enter the 栗原 analysis phase of this book… As always, I enjoy all the posts with all the theories, the wilder the better as far as I am concerned!
I updated the proper nouns list and the Floorplan summaries although I realize it’s late for both… maybe it will be helpful to someone who decides to follow the schedule later on their own (sometime down the road)…
Week 13: Ch. 9 殺人現場へ向こう足音
OK, so we have Kasahara’s father (who is definitely in the cult because he later has an outburst at the Rebirth Gathering about the death of Naruki) who possibly killed the Matsue Wife. Or, we have Matsue’s Christian father who kills his wife. Either way, it seems the motive for both men was to protect the son Matsue Hiroki from his mother… protect him from having his arms & legs cut off?
I like this idea that both fathers were in on it together: Matsue’s father, because he super Christian & opposed to the Sleep & Shop cult (I love this name @Cathm2 !) , and Kasahara’s father is in on it because he knows the Matsue wife is about to do something horrible to her son, since he’s also part of the cult.
So in the span of 30 minutes, the two conspire to
- knock wife out with sleeping drugs,
- then one or both carry her to the 和室 together (Kasahara talks on his paper-cup telephone with his daughter to have an alibi – she recalls she heard a rustling sound & a meaningless exchange repeated twice, I think).
- They put wife in the closet
- Matsue husband runs down the stairs to escort his son out the house
- Unexpectedly Kasahara lights the wife on fire earlier than planned & crawls out the window
- Matsue comes back into the house intending to light the wife on fire, but it’s already been done so he has less time to escape & collapses on the stairs
In this chapter, I didn’t think the floorplan was super weird. Except that the son’s room was way larger than either room of the parents. So, he wasn’t in a closet – BUT! Was he supposed to end up in that 和室 closet like Naruki or that 16 yo kid in the 津原家 house from Chapter 2? ?
One thing I found strange was Matsue’s comment that Kasahara had been suspicious of the Writer, so she alerted Matsue ahead of time. Why was she suspicious? Wasn’t she the one who wanted to meet with Writer and tell him her 変な家story? These two children both seem kind of creepy…
I love this expression too! It’s the second time I encountered it, the first being in the IBC book 怪人二十面相 (the Fiend with Twenty Faces)
The other expression I enjoyed learning was 脂が乗っている (literally to put on fat?). It means someone who is in the prime or peak of their business/career/abilities etc. The expression was used on page 218 describing 松江・ひろき : 「その姿は、脂の乗った壮年のビジネスマンそのものだった」
According to this website, it originates from the fishing industry, where the saury fish (さんま) accumulates fat in the fall and winter so toward the end of the season, 秋さんま is tastier and higher quality. What’s funny is that it is supposed to be a compliment, recognizing one’s accomplishments, but I found a yahoo commenter who was unhappy that their boss or senpai used it on them, and they felt insulted.
Nowadays being called fat is not a compliment I guess… but could we consider this expression the business version of being called “phat” ? 