JBC's NO.6 's Discussion Thread

Well, that was certainly the original plan. Seems like it might be too ambitious though and two weeks per chapter is the new pace? Not totally sure though…

Oh, I see. I sure hope so, since I’m only halfway through p. 57.

It was mentioned in the other thread right after the time when the poll for the second book rolled out.

On Shion’s Dad:

As far as I understand from talking to people who have read Beyond. Shion’s dad was just a drunk philanderer and Karan dumped him for it, he then left the city never to return

Edit: -panic- UMM AND YOU DO NOT MEET HIM IN THE MAIN BOOKS. DO NOT ASSUME EVERY DRUNK OR HERMIT WHO USED TO LOVE KARAN IS SHION’S DAD

Just to know. When Shion is healing nezumi he have anaesthetic, sewing material, syringe and"medical knowledge about sewing". For a 12 years old he is really good equiped. Maybe he was waiting for this moment all his life. :smile: Ilaugh so hard when He said he saw a video abotu sewing and nezumi answer “knowledge”.
That futur.

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Uh-oh…fix the spoiler tags!

Not only that, he’s downright thrilled at the chance to test it out on a real live victim human. Poor Lucky Nezumi.

I guess it’s meant to show the strength of Shion’s curiosity and thirst for knowledge. This also seems to be the moment Nezumi decides he’s in the hands of a madman – for instance,

on page 20:

「いくよって、ちょっと待ってくれ。ますいなんか打ってどうすんだ」
「縫う」
ずっと後になって聞いた話だけれど、ぼくは、この時、嬉しくてたまらないという顔でにっこり笑ったらしい。

“‘Here I go,’ you say – wait. What will you do after injecting the anasthetic?”
“Sew.”
I didn’t hear about it until much later, but at that time, I was grinning with irresistible delight.

And on page 24:

緊張しながらもぼくは、少し興奮していた。知識としてしか知らなかったことを実践している。快い興奮だった。

I was nervous, but I was also somewhat excited. I was putting into practice knowledge I had only known in theory. It was a pleasant excitement.

Not totally happy with the translations I came up with…as always, it’s freaking annoying trying to capture nuance while trying to preserve the tone or at least make it sound natural.

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not the worst example of testing something on a real live human that any of them have experienced…

I’m a little confused at the begining of page 25. I understood that it was 10 years ago when Shion was 2. He was talking about a high rank children with a special education system that Shion was in or something. If someone can someone help me lcear this up please ???

Thx a lot like always

It’s just a bit of background information on how he became what Nezumi calls an ‘elite’. At age two he - like all kids it seems - was tested by the city, scored in the top rank and so received a specialist education for talented kids.

Can anyone summarize how the names are read? Of course, 紫苑 is Shion; but what about others?

There’s a lesson on them in the Memrise course; you can use it to practice them too :sparkles:

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-sigh- … every time I open the book, I realise how woefully terrible my Japanese is… I’ve read a tiny bit; even when my mum was in England with me, she would laugh when I randomly translated a sentence or sentence fragment on the trains. but fragments are all I’ve got, unfortunately. I’ll keep the e-book obviously and read it when I’m better equipped with grammar and such, but I don’t think I can keep pace at all.

Can anyone tell me what 羅史 is, and how it’s pronounced? Is it the 治安局 agent guy’s name?

Yep!! Apparently it’s らし. He was first mentioned on page 59, and up to where I am on page 68 I don’t think he’s made an actual appearance yet. I think all he’s done so far is be in charge of investigating Shion right after the Nezumi incident, and haunt Shion’s nightmares (particularly with his creepy eyes I think?) in the years since.

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らし. It’s a name. However, Kindle translated it as “Romanian History”… which of course makes no sense.

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It’s crazy, 羅史 doesn’t even come up in my Japanese names dictionary. Why wouldn’t the first appearance have furigana?

That’s so weird :anguished: It had it in my copy but maybe yours was misprinted?

Found it! I totally forgot about the first mention. It even says 「羅史と名乗り」…

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performs CPR on thread

Hey, I know a lot of people have been saying they’re reading very slowly or having trouble keeping up, but I just wanted to pop in and leave a word of encouragement. Novels often contain difficult words and grammar in any language, and it’s normal to struggle with anything this high level in a foreign language, especially at first. The cool thing about this book club is that we’re all reading together, and can support each other and well as deepen each other’s understanding of the book :grin: So hang in there!! When you come across something you don’t understand, ask here! I can’t speak for every member of the book club but, I wouldn’t care even if you asked questions about every other sentence :+1:

My understanding of the book hasn’t been perfect either but, I did manage to read up to the end of chapter 2 and would like to offer help to anyone who has questions. I can mostly help with questions about general plot details (i.e. - “What did Shion just do in this paragraph?” “Where exactly are Shion and his mother living now?” “What is the man doing with that lettuce?!?!”) But, I’ll try my best with grammar/translation questions too :blush: I’m sure the folks who have read even farther than me are willing to be of service as well so, I’d like to encourage particularly the people who haven’t been posting much to feel free to participate in this discussion in whatever capacity they feel comfortable :sparkles:

In the spirit of getting discussion rolling again, a question about pg. 83:

Any idea about the meaning of Shion saying「あの元気で」here? Is it like 「元気でね」? I was pretty thrown off by the あの.

A follow-up question: How did you read the tone of this final conversation between Shion and Safu? At first it certainly seemed like she was upset at the possibility of Shion having someone else he liked, but was she angry by the end of the conversation? Sad? Or had they made up for the most part?

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