殺人出産 🤰🔪 Book Club ・ Week 11

殺人出産 ・ Week 11

|Week 11|3 July 2021|
|–|–|–|
|End page |147|
|End loc (Kindle) |1323|
|End phrase |まくらにこすり付けた。|
|Last week|Click!|
|Next week|Click!|
|Home thread|Click!||

How is the reading going?
  • I am reading along
  • I am catching up
  • I am dropping this book

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Vocabulary

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

Discussion questions

  1. What sentence/passage gave you the most difficulty? Feel free to request some help, or if you figured it out on your own break it down for the rest of us!
  2. What was your favorite new vocab word from this week’s reading?
  3. Was there any passage that you found particularly intriguing? Did it resonate with you (either positively or negatively)? Was it surprising? Offer any insight or new perspective? Was it just beautifully written?
1 Like

爪の先を尿道へ押し込んだ。

This. This gave me so. much. difficulty.

9 Likes

I must confess I had a double-take on that one too :flushed:

Overall I must say, this kinda full-blown sex scene hit me somewhat unexpectedly… I could have been warned by the previous week’s conversation, but it did not cross my mind that she could go into such detail as she had not touched upon sex in her other stories. But of course, it was rather clear that she would pick a pretty unusual scene. For a moment I actually expected that something would go horribly wrong and that they’d accidentally choke the poor guy or something, but no, all went well. And it seems that it had a satisfying outcome for all involved parties. :sweat_smile:

What I don’t really understand: Why did they make such a fuss previously because she had her period, when it was clear from the start that it was not her turn and that she would even stay fully dressed? Her period wouldn’t have been an issue at all in that setting… :thinking:

10 Likes

Well… I thought I would pick a most ‘wtf’ sentence as I read, but every time I thought this was surely the weirdest sentence, I’d read on a bit and found that the next bit was even more messed up :joy: Of all the things to put up someone’s butt, a toe, really? And I hope this:

圭太みながら

was her other foot!

8 Likes

I just finished in one go. I didn’t really expect anything but this was still the least expected. Curious to see how this is going to be wrapped up next week.

7 Likes

Yeah, I thought the same :joy_cat:

6 Likes

Well, she herself says “下着を脱がなければいいじゃない”. But I guess it was mostly about possibility of her not feeling well? “身体に悪いだろ?一人の体調が悪い時は、しない。”
As a person with periods that usually swept me off my feet during my teen years, before I was legally able to go to the doctor without parents approval, I can certainly relate to that. Especially since it was 10 days of pain/month, not just a day or two.
Even if the girl here seems to not have similar problems, maybe the guy just was overly cautious just in case :sweat_smile:

Anyway. I had a serious moral dilemma should I include this week’s sex scene in warnings when I provided them :sweat_smile: But I figured out, there no trauma, everyone’s happy, and if anyone’s got this far in this book they should be fine with this description :stuck_out_tongue:
But yeah, I also have hygiene concerns :grin:

Also… continuing with my rant from last week’s…

So, I like the weirdness of this week’s scene, but again it’s so strict, there’s one ritual you can do when you’re triple, and nothing else. Even kissing has strict rules. :neutral_face: At least that was my impression.
And… hmm. I can’t stop wondering if マウス has anything to do with Murata’s book titled マウス . Maybe it’s just a coincidence…? :thinking:

7 Likes

Ooh, now that you mention it… I suppose we’ll find out sooner or later!

Somehow this scene really weirded me out as well. Somehow, more so than with 殺人出産. I wonder if it’s because we get to the core of things so much more quickly, rather than things insidiously sliding into place, information being fed slowly like in the main story? Maybe it’s because we do not have a main character who questions the system/trend, but rather one fully committed to it?

In any case, reading this was a rather jarring experience for me.

7 Likes

Despite all the vivid descriptions, I do think the weirdest part of the scene was the strict set of rules that they all seemed to be following. On top of that, in a practical sense the rules had almost nothing to do with the fact that they were a Triple. It seemed at the start of it that Keita was actually suffering just for the sake of adhering to the ritual. But it seemed like he had a happy end after all :smirk:.

7 Likes

To me it feels like Murata is establishing rules that are perfectly balanced between the three persons, i.e. there is no room for preferences and therefore no room for feelings of being left out or of jealousy (as in, two are kissing while the third is not; two are having sex while the third is not).
Really curious to read how she wraps this story up, and what “morale” (if any) she is aiming for.

6 Likes

So that was…interesting :no_mouth: At some point I was wondering if I even wanted to keep up looking words because it seemed like every new body part that was mentioned gave me some sort of mental whiplash :grimacing:

I’m not sure if I missed something but I got the sense that these rules regarding kissing and sex are the standard for triples, right? Or was the マウス concept just something those three came up with? If it was the norm triples are expected to follow I’d be slightly worried, especially since triples seem to be mainly a teenager/young adult thing in this story. Everything was consensual in this scene but I’m not so sure it would make for a healthy first sexual experience… :sweat_smile:

7 Likes

I had the impression it’s universal, but I’m not 100% sure, so I’m curious about others’ opinions.

6 Likes

My understanding was also that it was universal. Although “universal” in this case could mean “posted somewhere online and adopted by a lot of kids trying to be de rigueur”.

7 Likes

Oh good yes, ha. On the flip side what with this scene and the last one of the previous story, I feel like I’m getting good practice reading the kanji for various body parts…

I also almost feel that the vocab sheet itself, which I was filling out as I went, now needs a NSFW warning :rofl:

Anyone else feeling... a bit underwhelmed by this story?

So… this scene was interesting. I agree with other people’s take on things being very rule-based, which seems a bit excessive. But hey, if it works for you then shrugs. There is also some clear messaging about how arbitrary rules around love in general can be - hence when the Triples make fun of the people who are in couples.

But overall, as a story, I’m not really feeling this one is doing it for me at the moment. A lot of world building, not a lot of plot and a bit too much telling instead of showing. And like, don’t get me wrong, world building is good! I also don’t need a hero’s journey style narrative arc. But I do feel like the story needs some underlying questions that need resolving. Will Keiko leave her job at the convenience store? Who is going to kill who as an umibito? But I don’t really have an underlying question here that is driving me to keep reading.

I think part of the issue for me is that alternate forms of relationships - like same-sex marriage or even polyamorous ones are not that shocking to me? Like same-sex marriage has been legal for 15+ years here, and no serious politician would dare try to challenge it (not to say that there are not the occasional back-benchers… but they tend to get shut down pretty quickly). Polyamorous relationship are obviously not as normalized, but I know of some people who are involved in ones, so not really shocking for me.

So maybe this story would work better if you were reading it as someone who was more conservative/had only really been exposed to traditional couple arrangements - and so part of the tension would come from the question of whether or not triples are “amoral” or not.

Maybe I’ll feel differently next week once the story is over! But yeah, if it wasn’t for the fact that there is only a week left, I’m not sure I’d feel particularly compelled to finish this story. Curious to hear what other people think! Maybe I’m missing something really obvious. Or maybe it’s just because the previous one was soooo good, that it is having difficulty living up to expectations.

Or maybe part of the problem is that I’m not a native speaker, so I can’t just read it in one go - it could be that this story works better if you can get through it quickly!

9 Likes
about the story

I’m still waiting for next week to form an opinion on that - currently the contrast between the love hotel scene and the otherwise rather uneventful high school romance is quite jarring, so I’m really curious to see what Murata is actually trying to say with that. The polyamory part isn’t surprising to me either, so I’m hoping it’s not just that.

7 Likes

Fair enough! As I said, it could be that part of the problem is just reading it too slowly. Sometimes reading slowly adds tension. Sometimes it means that you miss the forest for the trees. Just thought I’d share my thoughts:)

4 Likes

I started laughing so hard when I read this comment. :laughing: I can only imagine, @jhol613.

Thoughts on "that scene"

Now, THIS is more like the Murata we’ve come to know and love. She does seem to like crafting stories with different social systems. コンビニ人間 had a real-world one, and these two short stories involve more of her own invention. Besides being a little squeamish about what the three young people got up to (just…so much spit in so many places), there were moments that I found quite odd.

First of all, the idea that one of them becomes a mouth, and the other two try to plug up all the holes: I guess it’s like trying to kiss a giant mouth? Not sure what the significance of that is. What got to me was this idea that they were “ravaging” Keita. That’s a pretty violent way of looking at it, though I guess there are those who are into that sort of thing.

Second, words like 赤ん坊, 母親, and other related terms were brought up a lot while they were going to town. I REALLY don’t know how I feel about that. I can’t imagine seeing my sex partner naked, thinking, “wow, they look like a newborn baby,” and still wanting to do anything sex-related. I might have to think all of that over some more. Perplexing.

Finally, did anyone else take note of the fact that they were doing all this for 5 hours?! With such a long time dedicated to it, plus the final lines about how they’re trying to blur the line between their genitalia and the holes of their body (I believe Mayumi calls out the mouth and ears, specifically), it sounds like the goal is to “get off” by touching as few places as possible? Certainly sounds like they want to do it without needing to touch themselves down there. Taking the length of time it took Keita and those last few lines of the section, I wonder if their sex was more of a struggle for him to believe he was enjoying himself, rather that him actually enjoying himself. :woman_shrugging:

Considering @AmomentOfMusic's point about being underwhelmed

Obviously, everyone finished reading this story already, so my conjectures are mostly just for me. I’ll know soon enough how things turned out (fingers crossed by the end of this week). @NicoleIsEnough mentioned maintaining balance in her comments from this section. I was talking about the reading with my partner (because why wouldn’t you want to talk about this section with someone?) and brought that point up, and he wondered if maybe the issue of keeping things even within the Triple will be the “problem” in the story. Like in the previous week’s reading, Mayumi says three people could move in together: two go to work, and one stays with the baby. But how would they decide who goes and who stays in a fair way? And with her Triple, in particular, she’d be the one to get pregnant, but how would they decide who’s sperm to use?

I’m not sure if this will be what gets explored. There’s only 10 pages left, and that might be a lot to cram into that short a space. I’ll probably have more to say about this depending on how it all ends.

Also, re: the part when Mayumi is talking to her high school friend, and she mentions people in Triples always asking her questions: doesn’t this society still have movies (and porn)? Two people kissing vs. three shouldn’t be all that mysterious. I don’t know, that part bothered me a little.

9 Likes

Uhh… Tried to wrap my head around the words I was reading and couldn’t do it. Basically came here to see what even happened. My brain just kept translating “they’re doing sex stuff!” But didn’t care to really make a picture for me that made me understand what was happening outside of that. I have lizard brain when it comes to this stuff. Hopefully it’s not super required for the upcoming reading.