夜市: Week 3 Discussion

Japanese Language Reading
#1

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Week 3

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Start Date: May 23rd
Previous week: Week 2
Next week: Week 4

Reading:

End Page End Percentage End Phrase Page Count
43 18% 弟なんだ。買い戻したいんだよ 17

Discussion Rules

  • Please use spoiler tags for major events in the current chapter(s) and any content in future chapters.
  • When asking for help, please mention the chapter and page number. Also mention what version of the book you are reading.
  • Don’t be afraid of asking questions, even if they seem embarrassing at first. All of us are here to learn.
  • To you lurkers out there: Join the conversation, it’s fun! :durtle:

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夜市: Week 4 Discussion
夜市 (Night Market)
#2

Wow, this week was pretty thrilling. Nice place to stop too (even though that’s completely random). Well, most of it was already spoiled by the description of the book, but the fact that the brother’s existence was simply erased feels properly terrifying to me. I’m really weak to that sort of things :sweat_smile:

6 Likes
#3

Also, I just had a weird thought re:Chekov’s gun (cc. @maskedkoala and @Myria I guess).

So, we have a guy with a sword that can cut anything. Obviously, he would be a formidable adversary, but he isn’t invincible, you just need to attack it from a distance. And we heard before of a perfectly round stone (sold for a ridiculous price, but whatever), and 裕司 is crazy good at baseball, so that the balls he was pitching couldn’t be hit by almost anyone back in the days (although some people were still better than him). So the old gentleman would not be able to hit the stone if it was thrown at him, probably…

No idea if this will really happen or not, but it kinda struck me suddenly.

3 Likes
#4

Is this where the horror comes in? :S

Not sure I’m on board with the conspiracy theories you guys have going there, haha. This story doesn’t strike me as the end boss type.

In any case it’s likely not gonna be as easy as finding the 人攫い and giving up 裕司’s life savings.

These randomly perfect cliffhangers leave me looking forward to the next week each time.

4 Likes
#5

Agreed, finding this a really interesting and strangely satisfying read.

As for conspiracy theories, I somehow can’t get it out of my head that he’s gonna sell Izumi and his life savings to buy back his brother. Or sell Izumi to buy back his brother and then use his life savings so his brother can buy something and they can leave together. Call me disturbed, but since the beginning of this week’s reading I keep thinking that’s what’s gonna happen :sweat_smile:

Level wise, this was a really nice read and didn’t feel like 17 pages at all. Felt much easier to get through for me than a lot of other book club reads have before.

8 Likes
#6

I didn’t think about his brother needing to buy something as well but that’s a good point. I’m pretty sure the original plan, despite what he said, was to sell her all along. For what other reason would he bring her along?

7 Likes
#7

I mean, he may not need to since he’s now technically ‘something to purchase’ rather than a guest, it entirely depends on which you see him as , but I don’t think they’ve really covered those details yet, so it depends how the market works I guess.
As for him selling her off , I’m glad I’m not the only one that sees that :sweat_smile:

5 Likes
#8

Read this part last night, and it felt quick again! It was a little anticlimactic to already know I was heading for that last sentence, but it’s not like I didn’t know that in general from the summary, so oh well~ I am enjoying いずみ’s emotional spectrum and how she expresses it. Current #1 priority: get いずみ through these shenanigans safely!! :grimacing:

4 Likes
#9

Is it going to be one of those “are you a sociopath?” tests? :joy:

3 Likes
#10

Just a heads up, this one was at 19% on my Kindle (and not 18%). I planned to read the section over the next three days, but I couldn’t put it down, so when I got to 19% I was worried that I had just plowed through end point! Definitely a great monologue.

I think you’re spot on that all those things are going to come together. It’s just a matter of how. And I like that there’s so much up in the air right now, as you all have mentioned. Is Yuuji going to sell Izumi, and was that his plan all along? Is the guy with the sword a good guy or a bad guy? Is there going to be a big twist? I kind of get the feeling that maybe Yuuji will end up sacrificing himself so that Izumi and the brother can escape, but really I have no idea.

Am I reading the main page correctly? There are two more weeks of Night Market? It’s going to be fun.

Also, small question on the Japanese. あるいは was used a lot. Is the は pronounced phonetically as ‘ha’, or is it pronounced like the particle as ‘wa’?

4 Likes
#11

It’s pronounced as “wa”. It’s the junction of “あるい” (或い - some, or, possibly… ) + は particle.

3 Likes
#12

That’s also 19% on my phone, but 18% on my computer :thinking: I really don’t know why that kind of discrepancy exists, but, anyway, that’s why we have the “last sentence”.

There are three more weeks :sweat_smile: But in any case, yes, the “main” story is quite short. It’s actually quite strange to me that the other story is actually longer…

My craziest hypothesis so far:

What if the old gentleman is in fact the younger brother that was bought and brought to a different dimension where times goes faster? And he is here to get revenge.

10 Likes
#13

I think this might be my favorite so far. :+1:

As for whether he’s going to sell Izumi - she also suspects that, so it’s not strange for any of us to think it. But I don’t quite think that’s all there is to it…

Buuut, maybe not all that much more. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

4 Likes
#14

Whew, I read this part quick! It’s getting really exciting (and nerve wracking)!

As far as conspiracy theories, I was thinking maybe the girl that Yuuji liked in school and who he was trying to impress with the baseball skills was Izumi (since she said they didn’t start talking until after school), but his resentment over losing his brother/her not paying attention to him until much later made him concoct the plan to take her to the market and exchange her for his brother.

I’m also glad the sword guy returned! But I can’t get a read on him. Whether he’s good or bad, the fact that even he seemed a bit wary of Yuuji asking about the shopkeeper he sold his brother to doesn’t bode well.

4 Likes
#15

Just finished the chapter. The final phrase sounded very emotional, even made me shiver a little. When Yuji mentioned his little brother I had a hunch that that was the reason he went to the market. Nevertheless, I don’t know what to expect next and I’m enjoying some of the theories here! If someone guesses it right, maybe we could try to give him a なんでも斬れる剣 as a reward :grin:

I’m getting more used with the writing style, so I had a better understanding of this chapter than the last. Some points of doubt though:

  1. いずみの知る数少ない高校時代の裕司。

“Izumi’s few known high school days of Yuji” ? The の裕司 at the end somehow seemed odd at first

  1. いずみは裕司を素早く見る。あなたが嫌なら私だけでも。

“Izumi quickly looked at Yuji. (she thought) if you are reluctant (to say), then (it’s up to) me alone” The “it’s up to” is just a contextual translation :sweat_smile:

EDIT: sentence 1 is at the end of 16% and sentence 2 at the beginning of 19% mark

2 Likes
#16

Kinda, but the parsing goes the other way around.
高校時代の裕司 -> the high school days yuuji (i.e. the yuuji of the high school days)
数少ない -> few
いずみの知る -> that Izumi knows (I guess knew is more natural in English).

So more like “Izumi’s few known high school days Yuuji” (that’s not proper English, but it’s understandable I guess)

  1. That だけ is “as much as”, I think. +で (connective だ?) + も. In English, I think you would say “If you hate it, what about me?” As in, she has even more reason to hate it.
2 Likes
#17

Percentages or page numbers help the people answering your questions look at the context of the sentence. :slight_smile:

Anyway, @Naphthalene answered question number 1 sort of. I get what they mean I think, and it makes sense with how I understood it. It’s that she didn’t really know the 裕司 from her high school days well, right?

Number 2, I disagree with their take. I think it’s just the plain ‘only’ meaning - this is where the 老紳士 asks if they want to return home without buying anything. Izumi’s thinking(or saying with her look :man_shrugging:), if you don’t want to, I’ll even return home alone.

4 Likes
#18

Ah, for number 2 I didn’t check the context. If it was about returning home, then your take makes sense.
I thought it was in a spot where 裕司 says he isn’t happy about their current state of affair.

2 Likes
#19

I figured that’s what happened - either that or lack of :coffee:. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

I liked that part, so it was still pretty strong in my memory. ^^

4 Likes
#20

Well, it’s fun to try to make sense of grammar without context. It makes me realize how much I’m fuzzy on things and rely on context. Thinking about it, the meaning of だけ I talked about is only possible with things expressing quantities (explicitly or implicitly like できるだけ), but 私 doesn’t feel very quantifiable.
I just feel bad that others have to endure my experiments :sweat_smile:

4 Likes