No problem!
Most of us are on the Discord now. @EiriMatsu were you also going to join? Just hop on when you can!
Thank you, guys, it was fun!
Sorry again that I had to leave early; as expected, it was a bit hard on the logistical side for me.
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No problem, thanks for joining when you could! I hope we can have more meetups in the future 
We made it all the way from chapter 1 through the end of chapter 5 in the call, and I managed to read up through the end of chapter 8 tonight. It was a huge help in getting me caught up! Just to confirm, is the schedule in the first post of this thread up to date - i.e., we’re starting chapter 9 today?
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@Nath It’s all good. Your input helped keep the pace along! 
@Snowflying, @TamanegiNoKame, @Iwasneverhere, @Nath Today was great to put voices to screennames! I know this was said during our meeting, but I appreciate everyone taking turns reading aloud because it made understanding the story so much easier. It has encouraged me to practice reading aloud more often.
I’m up to chapter 9 and probably will read through chapter 11 by the end of tomorrow after I finish work and stuff.
To answer your discussion questions
Yes, it was a little bit weird. She did spend a lot of time at 祖母’s house, which makes it difficult for people to find her. This kind of reminds me of the Elizabeth Smart case where she was nearby and went out but no one knew.
The mom did mention that she though 祖母 molested Rio which is why they probably didn’t make a big deal about this.
Well despite what the people around her said about her, she still probably had an attachment to her. It’s really difficult to drop how a person makes a strong impression on you. More concerning is how is it that she forgotten that she was kidnapped during the time with 祖母.
It wasn’t a mole it was a barnacle . She learned from the school acquaintance that others could see her powers and by the time she cast that spell , it made it so that Mizuna could see the problem herself too.
I’m sure that others have answered these questions for you, but I wanted to put my own spin on it.
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Yeah, it looks like @Iwasneverhere edited the wiki with the updated dates. Hopefully I will be finished with the book before the end of next week!
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Read chapters 9 and 10 tonight!
Google images was great for helping me picture this part. Here’s a pic for reference. Fair warning tho, click at your own risk - even though I feel like there’s nothing inherently creepy about it, looking at it kinda makes my skin crawl x.x
Reference Pic
Also, a bit of reference material for chapter 9: Here’s the wikipedia article for the concept of qualia [Link]. I wasn’t really familiar with it so I found it helpful.
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Yeah, I had heard of it, but didn’t remember anything.
It felt kinda weird that they try to explain the science behind the magic, too. Especially since it has no impact on the story that I can think of. If the author absolutely needed to come up with something to explain the way it works, I feel that a rewording of “well, it’s magic, duh” would have been enough…
I’m still happy to learn new things, though.
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So just finished and was that ending depressing/extremely dark or what???
Also, @Iwasneverhere
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Coming from the future, chapter 1 becomes even more depressing. It is weird how much perspective can change an experience. When I read it, it just felt weird, but in the context of the story as a whole, it becomes a dark, sad beginning signaling the direction of the story as a whole.
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It was super weird that she just suddenly leaked back into her normal life so easily. I think there must have been some magic going on somehow. Maybe here parents lived farther away then the story makes clear. That would make sense as to why the police could still realize that she was a missing child when they found her, without anyone noticing prior to this event because it was far from the epicentre. I don’t think Mizuna knew, but I could be wrong.
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Even without magic involved, I would actually kind of expect that kind of confusion from a young kid. When kids are young, they are way more willing to accept new norms. If Rio had gotten used to living with her kidnapper, then it would be fairly normal in my mind for her to be slightly ambivalent to being home at first. So that did not come across as too weird to me.
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Yeah, I think she still loved her aunt. She also loved her parents, but I think she experienced her aunt as being a nice loving figure as well, so she still loved her. The kidnapping seemed to affect her family much more than it affected her.
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Probably shock and fear. They were not close friends, and that was enough to get her to end the friendship altogether. If you live in a world where magical powers are seen as a hoax, seeing a real one that involved skeletons would probably be enough to scare off even some close friends, I think.
6.Yeah, Mizuna could see them I think or at least sense/feel them. I think it was a mixture of her power getting stronger and being able to touch her that allowed this illusion to last. That is how I took it.
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Mizuna could both see and feel it, but only her and Rio could.
Rio has to touch people to share illusions. Including her pet despair/hell monster. Illusions last as long as she remembers/focuses on them. The book does not explain how she does that while sleeping (in Mizuna’s case). Also, it doesn’t seem like there’s a range limit once the illusion was cast (at least I don’t remember any mention of it).
I just finished the other two stories, and the third one was definitely the darkest…
They do get darker and darker as one goes through the book, don’t they?
Well, true, in the sense that the depiction of events gets more and more brutal. (After all, we don’t know what Northwind Earl does to its victims. But at the same time, the second story has a good ending, as far as I am concerned.
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That’s true, but were they really 北風伯爵’s victims? or were they being liberated by it? We don’t really know. I do think the protagonist of that story welcomes that change, though. The second story, however, the protagonist determines it’s best to return to the house and makes arrangements to live in the house, only to have it destroyed by the murderer in the end. Dashing any hope to live an easier life. If it were me, I’d be gutted.
I’ll save the rest of my post-book commentary until after the last book official reaches the end.
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Apologies for missing out on last Saturday/Sunday’s Discord chat. I got coaxed into going drinking with some coworkers and ended up sleeping until far into the afternoon. 
I’ll hope to attend another if it’s done again. 
On the bright side, I finished the third story last night. I never got a chance to read the second story, but that was definitely much darker than the first. The first story was more of a calm thriller then anything spooky in my opinion. The ambiguous ending that almost gave me an Angel Beats! kind of vibe prevents me from really thinking of the 北風伯爵 as an actually antagonist.
The third story was just plain dark from the start, but the strange depiction of events made it fairly unclear until more of the story was revealed. Especially when you consider that, in the first story, assuming those taken by the 北風伯爵 are simply returned to the normal flow of time,
everything that happened during the loop was no more than a dream in the course of reality.
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Made it to the end! A few questions I’ve been thinking about:
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What do you make of our main character? Is she a victim? If so, who do you feel she’s been victimized by?
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Did you sympathize with the main character at any point in the story? How about at the end of the story?
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What do you think is next for the narrator?
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As for #3, I feel like she may stay at her prison - make it her own witch’s hut, and become the next creepy granny living up the hill. I’d like to think she won’t train a succesor, though - things always seemed to work best for her when she quote on quote “used her power for herself”. If this happens I’d hope she’ll find some happiness in being free, though if anyone comes up to her shack or tries to chase her out I imagine it’ll just end in another gory tragedy.
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1. Well, I would say she is a victim, considering what happens during her captivity (as mentioned in the first chapter). And she would be victimized by Eyebrow Uncle (I forgot his actual name).
2. Just the part where she is living with “grandma”. She seems happy during those four months. At the end, not at all, though. She pretty much became a monster herself. (She has reasons to, but that doesn’t mean I have to sympathize)
3. Hm, I thought she would just go on a rampage, killing randomly at first, then using her power to track back all the people related to the cult in some way and focus on them instead. Then probably kill herself or something. I like your version better, though.
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Rio certainly struck me as a person who was always misunderstood and because of that never really had any self-worth. Looking at the textbook definition, I would say yes she was a victim. She was put through things that no one could even begin to imagine. I think she that since she’s never had any healthy relationships with anybody in her life, it made it easy for those with bad intentions victimize her. I’d say the main culprits are the witch grandmother (for kidnapping), Shimojo and Mizuna (who acted in cahoots with Shimojo’s brother to destroy the house), the boyfriend (who changed after finding out Rio had powers), and the older man (who Rio had initially liked, but was involved in the murders and the imprisonment of Rio).
For the first time in this book I finally sympathize with one of the main characters! I believe that seeing a child go through so much is very hard not to feel sympathy and due to the bad foundation she had, it set up the resulting condition she was experiencing at the end of the story.
To be honest, I don’t have high hopes for her. I could see her staying in captivity, torturing those who come to “visit”, or just going Count of Monty Cristo on everyone.
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I found myself sympathizing with her as well. Rio experiences kidnapping, bullying, abandonment, and ultimately being mentally and physically abused by the religious group. No matter how horrible she becomes at the end, I feel like it’s an understandable result considering her life experiences. It’s feels odd to sympathize with the kind of person she becomes at the end, but I can’t think of anything she deserves to be blamed for.
As for #1: As the founder of the cult, I feel like “Granny” is the most to blame. She’s the one who kidnaps Rio and teaches her how to make illusions, which end up being the root cause of all the bad things that happen to her afterward. She supposedly broke ties with the cult and told Momose to stay away from Rio, but she’s still responsible for kidnapping Rio and maintaining contact with Momose in the first place.
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Huh, I don’t remember that I guess I didn’t understand what I was reading at that time.
I think she’s a victim for reasons already mentioned.
I honestly sympathize with everyone, I always try to imagine myself in other people’s shoes and situation to understand their actions and feelings more. I’m always kind of shocked when people say they don’t feel bad for someone who’s in a bad situation. Like I can think that some charters/people got what they deserved but still feel bad for them.
I’m guessing she becomes a witch/evil spirit thing.
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