This chapter felt pretty easy in comparison to the first few(aside from the explanation about luminescence), or at least I finished it faster than most of the other chapters so far. Maybe I’ve just gotten better at this!.. or at least it’d be nice if that was the case.
It also seems to be the first chapter I have a question that hasn’t been answered already:
Can anyone tell me what the last word in the handwritten text in the bottom right of page 252 is?
早いもの
勝ちよ
First come, first served 
Some of these can be chalked up to early-instalment weirdness. And also I think I’m mistaken about the location of Aria’s desk. I got the impression in chapter 1 (page 39) that it’s on the ground floor (or, the sea-level floor?) because they walk inside and he’s right there, but I missed the panel on the previous page where they walk up the outside stairs. And also, in chapter 7, he’s shown sitting at his desk on page 225, then without any apparent scene change, they’re shown to be in the office (with the wide open counter window) on page 228, and without any scene change again, he’s back at his desk on page 229 - though, aside from the shot of the counter window, it’s otherwise perfectly consistent.
We may just have to watch things as they develop.
Dunno if that view is particularly rare - it’s on page 36 too. 
I appreciate your dedication! I’d basically just decided that there was no logic to the layout and that it would be healthier for me to ignore it and assume the building is a multidimensional beast. Nice to know it actually has a layout, even if there’s some artistic flexibility.
I think you’re getting better at this 
I bet if this had been the first chapter you would have found it as difficult as the actual first chapter.
I feel like discussion was slower than usual this weekend. How did everyone like the chapter? Did anyone’s head explode when reading the crystallization stuff (other than @Radish8’s )?
@Naphthalene Please tell me you looked up at least one word during the crystallization explanation! 
ルシフェリン?
ルシフェラーゼ?
酵素?
Nope, but that’s because I work with biologist myself. 酵素 is a very common word in that context.
I also know that lucifer in Latin means “light carrying”, and -ase is a common ending for enzymes.
Impressive! Of course I know the word enzyme in English (even though I couldn’t give a definition) but I didn’t even know the other two in English.
I found 魔除け to be interesting. I would have wanted it to be called 魔除き（まのぞき）, simply because I know 除く from wk and the meaning makes enough sense. Then I find that the よ-reading of 除 isn’t just random (I guess it’s logically possible that it still is just random). But! 除ける is a word and it turns out to be alt spelling of 避ける, which I do know from wk.
So now I get to 和らげる（やわらげる）, to soften. Don’t I already know a word that means soft and rhymes with やわらげる? How about 柔らかい? Can we play the same game here? Is 柔らげる alt spelling of 和らげる?
… drum roll …
No!
… I mean, I guess it logically still could be, but I have found no support for that. Furthermore, 魔除き doesn’t seem to be a word either. But that’s no surprise, of course, since it was just something I made up.
I struggled during the crystallisation section. The words weren’t too hard, it’s just that there were so many of them in a row If this is what a real novel is like then I’m toast.
Ok, my weekend overtook me and I’m catching up late…
I tried… but in the end just took what I could from it and moved on.
Looks just like the ones in Neo Venezia. That word is a good take away for this chapter.
Just finished the chapter. There were some tough parts. I might have to reread some bits later since there were couple of things I didn’t quite understand.
When they are buying the 夜光鈴, why is the vendor making that face? Is he just really intense or am I missing something?
And I didn’t quite get the explanation for the lights show either…Is she saying that those are the ones that weren’t bought during the festival? Like…they gave the remainder to random people for free for this event? Or is it just the opposite and she is saying that those are the ones that were bought? I’m confused.
I thought he was just supposed to be super intense; like he’s really into the subject and knows a lot about it, so as soon as you give him half a chance he tells you everything he knows. I think it indicates that he’s talking really fast too - like he’s trying to get it all out before somebody stops him!
My understanding was that a month after the market / fair, the lifespan of the luminescence is coming to an end. As a send-off, everybody gets together with their lanterns (the ones they purchased a month ago) and goes out onto the water. They drop the rocks back into the water. They don’t want to deplete the supply of these rocks as they’re unique to Aqua (or this town specifically? I don’t have my book on me so can’t check), so they want to return them, and it’s a nice finale to the tradition.
I could be totally wrong though 
I think he’s just sweating in the heat, and his face is partially shaded by his hat. He clearly likes to talk a lot, as evidenced by the ペラペラ sfx. Actually I see this is not on the vocab list so I’ll add it, but ペラペラ means incessantly (speaking); glibly; garrulously; volubly.
Having said that, he reminds me of one of the bad guys from Raiders of the Lost Ark, which is a tad unfortunate!
I took it this way as well. Also, at the end he’s talking about how the rare event when the glowing core remains behind (or whatever it was) is romantic. You can tell he really loves the stuff.
That makes a lot of sense, thank you.
This means I clearly need some help with the grammar in
夜光鈴市の３日間でしか売られないの
What is the ない doing exactly? I first interpreted as ‘the ones that couldn’t be bought during the 夜光鈴市’ but it seems to mean something more like ‘can only be bought during the 夜光鈴市’
Cannot unsee.
Sorry! 
しか meaning “only” is always used with the negative form eg ない
Some examples here: ～しか～ない(shika nai)【JLPT N5 Grammar】 | 日本語の例文
I see, now it makes perfect sense, thanks!
I really need to work on my grammar…
Just to add a personal thought that might (or might not!) help as well, I like to think of しか / ない as more like “except for”, to distinguish it from other words meaning ‘only’ and help me make sense of the negative.
So a ham-fisted interpretation of this sentence fragment, for example, would be “except for the three days of the market, they aren’t sold”.
The stones are taken from bottom of the sea, so it is poetic to return them to the sea. But I think there’s nothing left of them at the end (except for the rare crystal occasion). We know the stone gets smaller as the light gets dimmer (I hope I got this part right). Does it stop at some point? I don’t think so, but I’m not sure. The merchant explains (this is the left most speech bubble on 2nd panel from the top on page 257)
…大体一か月で消えてしまうのだ
What does the merchant says is daitai here. Is it daitai a month or daitai disappear. To me it makes more sense that the stones completely disappear in about a month. But I don’t know enough to say that with certainty. I wouldn’t be able to defend why it’s one or the other, or both. Maybe there’s a point where the stone stops shrinking because the light goes out first.
Oh, thank you so much! 
I wasn’t getting that the sentence meant “oni who hate the beautiful sound” at all - I was splitting the relative clause to be “oni who are hated”, which then rendered the rest of the sentence ungrammatical, I think (as well as being incorrect itself, of course). D’oh.
Ah, I see 
it’s true that they say the stones get smaller and smaller as well. I was also interpreting it as the light going out after a month, definitely (and it being poetic to return them), but I thought maybe they built up their luminescence over the course of the next year again or something. I don’t think it says that anywhere though, so that was just my assumption.
I’m, er… gonna research luminescent rocks
Edit: I should add that, given the luminescence is apparently from luciferase, I’m assuming it comes from something biological within / on the rock.