Welcome to the “Flesh&Blood” Pirate Series Reading Club
This thread is about the bonus material that was released after Volume 9.
The following extra stories were published after volume 9 and before volume 10:
楽園 and 接吻: These stories are included in the Flesh&Blood extra doujinshi, published August 13, 2006.
決意 and 誘惑: These stories are included in the Flesh&Blood extra2 doujinshi, published December 30, 2006.
約束: This one’s a bit of an outlier; this was published in a special booklet in conjunction with the Special Talk CDs, companion to the F&B drama CD series.
Which of the bonus materials have you read?
約束
楽園
接吻
決意
誘惑
None so far
0voters
When discussing the short story(s) for each volume, let’s figure out:
When in the books’ timeline this short story takes place, and
When a new reader should read the short story for best “timeline flow” (i.e., after which volume and/or chapter.)
I’m not sure if 約束 is somehow drama CD-specific; I can’t imagine it being so, so I’ve included it here for now. If we somehow run into the bizarre case of these not really applying to the main book series (though I can’t imagine how that would happen, unless there’s unique events in the drama CDs referenced here), our regulars can discuss whether we want to keep including these booklets in the reading materials.
I’ve got scans and pictures for the second doujin and drama CD booklet. Just gotta clean them up a bit.
Edit: all files uploaded! The extra2 doujin is…rough in some places. Instead, feast your eyes on the beauty of 約束, which was scanned with an actual scanner instead of my crappy phone camera!
Oh I am so impressed by 松岡先生! On p. 5 she refers to a psalm from the bible, called “Miserere”. She says it’s Psalm 50, but Wikipedia lists it as Psalm 51, so I was tempted to call this out as an inaccuracy. But the numbering in Wikipedia was introduced by the King James version of the Bible which did not exist yet at the time the book is set! So instead she uses the numbering of the (much earlier) Greek Septuagint and Latin Vulgate translations of the Bible, which label this psalm as Psalm 50.
In case you want to know what the quote in the story entails, it is the third verse of the psalm in the Vulgate and it goes like this (transcribed into modern Latin):
Miserere mei, Deus, secundum misericordiam tuam;
et secundum multitudinem miserationum tuarum dele iniquitatem meam
The King James Bible moves it to the first verse (as the first and second verse only referred to some prophets who were probably considered irrelevant to the translator or the English audience) and states it as:
Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness:
according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.
Just to add some more trivia, the Vulgate translation was mostly done by Jerome who is the role model for the Order of the Hieronymites that gets mentioned on page 2.
Dang, now that’s truly impressive detective work, on both her part and yours! Good thing you didn’t stop at seeing the “inaccuracy”; that’s some super cool stuff you found out!
I had already written up half a paragraph about it when I suddenly wondered how old that King James Bible would be
Was quite surprised myself that this actually led to such an interesting background story.
I believe the titular King James is actually Elizabeth’s successor, right? Which makes me even more impressed 松岡 didn’t take the easy route and just wave her hands and go, eh, close enough.
This story’s from Vicente’s POV, a little bit after they settle in El Escorial but before (vol 9, chapter 9 spoilers) Kaito’s accused of heresy. So… looking at our chapter summations in volume 9, it looks like this takes place between chapters 8 and 9 of that book?
Vicente is woken up one morning by Kaito crying in his sleep; the walls are quite thin, apparently. He wants to go calm Kaito down, but he holds himself back since he doesn’t want to invade that safe space of Kaito’s room; he wants Kaito to have some place he knows no one else will just barge in. It’s a very sweet thought, made more pronounced after having just finished reading 誓い and watching Vicente contemplate destroying Nigel’s other eye.
Vicente decides to go for a walk so he won’t be tormented by Kaito’s sobs, and he reflects a bit on his childhood. The verse @NicoleIsEnough is enough mentioned was a favorite of Vicente’s hometown priest, who, having served in the military, advised Vicente to really take in God’s blessings and pray to Him during times of peace. Leo’s also up, and he joins up with Vicente, who takes him to see one of the fountains at El Escorial.
I’m hoping we get an extra story about Leo and Vicente meeting; I’m wondering what kind of desperate poverty the kid grew up in to look at a priest’s bed and say it’s too comfortable. And the more I see of him, the more I like him. He and Vicente just hanging out was a very peaceful scene. This whole story so far gives off that vibe for sure: a peaceful, healing place. Very appropriate for the title 楽園. This is also when Vicente mentions getting a new suit of clothes made for Leo and Kaito, which was a nice touch.
We saw a little bit of his previous life when Vicente reflected on how he met him for the first time, and that he was so dirty that he couldn’t even tell the colour of his hair or something? So yes, it must have been a really rough youth for him
Okay, finished chapter 2 of 楽園 last night, and therefore finished the story! I’ll still need to read 接吻 to finish off the book itself, but it should be pretty quick.
Anyway, we pick up with Kaito and Vicente going to another round of questions, courtesy of the king and Leiva. Kaito’s apparently going under cover as a distant cousin of Vicente’s (very distant, I presume, if anyone gets a peek under his hood). We get a small nice scene of Leiva being friendly, and then a famous Spanish composer, Tomás Luis de Victoria is brought in to do a performance! I’m not entirely sure what piece he’s conducting for the king and co, but I’m wondering if it’s Officium Defunctorum, given that he was performing a requiem (link goes to the opening lines mentioned in the chapter. The first line is pretty much what 松岡先生 wrote, though the second was translated differently) and that piece is apparently one of his more famous ones.
Anyhow, Kaito’s apparently heard the piece before (how far did your history mania go, child? this is starting to sound like a lot of nights spent closed up in the library or something), impressing basically everyone in the room. Victoria wants to bring Kaito with him to the Convent of Las Descalzas Reales in order to give him an education in composing, since Kaito comes off as some kind of musical genius, but Kaito’s way against the idea.
Some more teasing from Leiva, and Vicente, who’s been worrying the whole story about Kaito’s feelings for him, gets a little bit of validation when Kaito implies that Vicente seems more reliable than Leiva.
Overall a very cute story; honestly Vicente is one of my favorites of Kaito’s suitors, so I’m always happy to read a piece from his POV. My previous thoughts on timeline haven’t changed; this story is definitely set between chapters 8 and 9 of volume 9. Thinking about minimum reading recommendations, it’s easier to just recommend a person finish volume 9 at minimum before reading this, so I’ll probably just note that down.
Here are some links for other random stuff mentioned in this chapter. Leo mentions a bunch of ship types in chapter 1 that I didn’t look up at the time; if you grab them before I do @NicoleIsEnough let me know.
I finished 接吻! Short and sweet, as expected. :3 It’s a series of three short stories, all centered around the title. :3 松岡先生 in the afterword mentioned that these take place between volumes 3 and 4 (so after Vicente attacks the Gloria and fights Nigel and before the crew arrives back at England).
Chapter 1 < G x K >
After taking a Portuguese ship, Geoffrey, Nigel, and Kaito find a strange plant in the captain’s room! It’s a cacao plant, prompting a discussion between Geoffrey and Kaito on comparing sweet things.
Chapter 2 <K x B + G>
KaitoxBlackie fluff, plus a confused Geoffrey.
Chapter 3 < G x N >
A small moment between Geoffrey and Nigel. Interestingly, we knew before based on volume, uh, eight, I think? that Goeffrey has always had a crush on Nigel, and this small story expands on that a bit that Geoffrey was up to his usual hijinks back then, being as forward as he normally is, until Nigel presumably put his foot down.
Ah, @NicoleIsEnough, I had to wipe and re-create the table in the OP; it was set to only allow a max of one selection from the choices. I’m going to go through the other polls and double-check them now.
Finished chapter 1 of 決意 on Saturday. It’s looking very promising so far; it’s from Nigel’s POV, and started with a bit of a history info dump, which it’s been a while. I’m thinking it fits into the timeline here: vol 4, between chapters 5 and 12 somewhere. After Kaito’s arrived in London and been recruited by the Queen, but before he’s thrown into jail. I’ll have to wait and see if there are any other clues that might point towards this being set elsewhere in the timeline, but so far I’m thinking that since Nigel’s in London and seemingly not panicking about freeing Kaito.
Anyhow, Nigel’s out and about, shopping for books, trying not to think about Kaito (…I’m sensing a theme with all his POV stories. : P), when he meets up with Kit! I’m pretty excited to read about them interacting, with no other parties, from Nigel’s POV. Nigel and Kit both mentioned some interesting historical details: merchants and severed heads on London Bridge, Nigel shopping for books at a cathedral, Kit mentioning out-of-work people hanging around the cathedral, etc. Definitely stuff I’d like to look into more.
I also made a list of the ships Leo mentioned in chapter 1 of 楽園:
Interestingly, for that last one, Leo spoke as if the ナオ / カラック were two different ships, but ナオ / nao is just the Spanish name for a carrack, according to my research.
