Day 27

告白 ~ 2% to 5%
ゲゲゲの鬼太郎 27 pages
I’m feeling 告白 is harder than, for example, 三毛猫ホームズの推理 I just read, although Natively suggests otherwise (31 for the former, 33 for the latter). The difficulty is not so much in the language. It’s in the continuous wall of text, but more importantly, in that the text seems to be a continuous stream of consciousness, jumping from one thing to another, from milk and its effect on growing bodies to how the narrator came to be a teacher, to her decision to quit, to a famous teacher at another school and his life before that, to the sacredness of a teacher’s job, to malicious pranks played by some students, etc etc. This constant change of subject means I have to be constantly alert because she may be referring to something else than I what I thought she was, and the fact that I haven’t still figured out whether she is speaking to someone in particular (to her students maybe?) or just thinking in her head doesn’t help either. Sentences in quotes are interjected here and there, as if someone is answering or asking her something in relation to what she’s saying, but this may still be in her head, or it may not. It’s not clear to me yet.
All that said, I’m liking how there’s already a slightly uncomfortable feeling as this stream of consciousness progresses. It starts innocently enough, then you are gradually starting to get the sense that there’s more to this story than just a teacher thinking aloud on the joys and grievances of the job.
Also read 27 pages of ゲゲゲの鬼太郎. This is easy enough that I can casually read before bed when I’m already tired, but because of that, I tend to get sleepy before I can finish a chapter. This one started with a market seller selling a cactus to someone who subsequently disappears. Of course, youkai are involved, and 鬼太郎 with his eyeball-for-a-father are called by a bug to investigate. Fun, and @MissDagger might be relieved to know that the gore is virtually non-existent in this chapter (at least if you ignore the -honestly rather cute- ever present eyeball/father figure).
Cute eyeball shenanigans

The innocent cactus seller

the most disturbing panel for me (not that bad at all, really)
(I just hope it’s not a cockroach. It is, isn’t it?)

Edit: Forgot to add interesting vocab from 告白:
呼び捨てにする - to address someone without using a title suffix (like -san)
ため口 - casual speech, peer language, informal language
性同一性障害 - gender dysphoria
情緒不安定 - emotional instability
Spoilered because it may be sensitive: おかま - male homosexual (among other meanings) - I don’t know how sensitive/derogatory this word may be, from (minimal) context it’s probably derogatory but not too bad?
Edit 2: I keep forgetting stuff… I’m not sure what I’m looking at here. Any ideas? For context, 鬼太郎 enters a house, sees this, and comments there’s no one there.
panel in question