Let me lead with, I also thought it was a bit weird. I basically resolved it in my head as being less, “try it and see if it works as an underline,” and more “try it and see if I like how it looks.” She obviously knows it will work to underline and make it stand out, but there is always the possibility that maybe the masking tape won’t look appealing to her? I’m not positive, but that was how I decided to look at it so I could just put the handicrafts section behind me.
This was what I took away from it; she definitely heard “Tina-chan,” so now she knows for sure that Tina-chan was troubled at the shoe lockers by the entrance, and the reason for it.
Yep, you got it.
Your intuition about it being similar to ことができる is correct. 借り is a noun in this form. So it’s kinda like, “借り is possible/doable”.
Literally:
“Debt to someone being possible/doable, for me, is unpleasant.”
Natural English phrasing:
“I don’t want to it be possible for me to owe something to someone.”
Ha, there’s no way I would’ve made the jump to that translation. In English it sounds really weird to add “it to be possible” to the already complete “I don’t want to owe something to someone.”. I guess that’s something that I just need to see more often in Japanese before it feels right…
Also, the last batch of questions for this chapter!
ebook page 94:
あらためて、 そう思う。
“Once again, that’s what I’m thinking”?
いざ手伝いがはじまると、ティナちゃんはきびきび動いた。
What does the いざ contribute to the sentence? I checked out some translated example sentences for it, and I can’t see what it adds to any of them either…
ebook page 98:
その顔の、なんとかがやいていること……。
Is that の after 顔 “(at sentence-end) indicates emotional emphasis”? Or does it replace some noun?
あたしまで、うれしくなってくる。
Is that “(Looking at Tina being so happy,) it even made me happy”?
Yeah, it definitely does sound weird. I think it’s emphatic, in a way. Like, she is so opposed to it that she doesn’t even want the possibility to exist that she could be indebted to someone .
I agree with your translation.
My understanding is that it just makes it more enthusiastic/emphasizes the action a bit more. The sentence works fine without it, but the いざ makes it seem like Tina-chan is more enthusiastic.
It feels to me like it’s the の that stands in for が in a subordinate clause, but usually, a subordinate clause would also include a verb and その顔 does not…so I could be totally wrong on that. Just seems like if you put a が there, it would have the same meaning. I would be curious to know how others interpret it, because I could also see it being the emotional emphasis, but it’s not really being used at sentence end, so it’s a bit odd.
It’s been a while since I’ve had the chance to catch up with reading and have the time to write my thoughts on a chapter.
So happy for my girl Hanabi for not only finding something that she enjoys doing but also dismissing Yayako’s advances leaving her and her followers to make a very uncool exit. Love it because there was no fighting or stooping to her level, just Hanabi standing up for herself instead of running away from her problems like she used to do. That’s character development right there.
Also nice to see that the misunderstanding with Tina-chan was resolved though the transition felt a little off to me for some reason. But less than that scene, what really stuck with me was Tina-chan’s backstory - dealing with her parents divorce and skipping school most days because of the bullying.
She’s like Hanabi in a sense that she runs away in her own way, but unlike Hanabi who breaks down over her difficulties, Tina-chan just sort of checks out of the reality so she doesn’t have to feel anything. It feels a little more real to me, and it makes me wonder how the story would have been if told from Tina-chan’s perspective.
