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I read 金なし白祿, the fifth story in 竜のかわいい七つの子. It’s about famous but impoverished painter Takagawa Byakuroku whose works are so lifelike that, if he completes them, they’ll walk right off the page, so he only fills in a single pupil of the humans and creatures that he paints. He finds a cheap forgery of one of his wall scrolls and brings the man inside to life, enlisting him and his horse to help him find his previous paintings so that he can bring the mythical creatures he’d painted to life and sell them (or in the case of the dragon, one of its scales). He doesn’t have enough supplies to paint new pictures, but he can do this. It’s really good.
And today I learn that I won’t be able to delete imiwa, as Shirabe Jisho doesn’t include Unicode, which I needed to get 祿, as it’s one outdated kanji that my laptop’s IME won’t let me type. I had to insert it into a Google Doc with the Insert Special Character and then copy and paste it. I know you’re supposed to be able to type with Unicode without having to jump through all the hoops, but I can’t figure it out.
I started 2.43 ch 2-1 SPLIT, reading 2 pages and leaving off on pg 146.
But first I went back over a scene in 1-6 that I didn't quite understand and was still in my head.
(Which also led to me starting an only tangentially related fic lmao)
There’s a part near the end where Ochi lowers his head into hands, and my first thought was that they were Subaru’s, but then I was like, no, no, it would make more sense if they were his own, right? Well.
When Subaru leads Ochi outside to talk to him, Ochi sinks to his knees on the ground while Subaru sits on the steps in front of him, arms resting on his thighs and hands clasped loosely between his knees. Kabei-sensei expressly mentions that, like this, Ochi’s eye line is level with Subaru’s knees. After they talk (about Subaru wanting Ochi to keep saying, “Make me a manager at HaruKou’s center court,” and Ochi not understanding why and his difficulty in saying it over and over), Ochi leans forward and rests his forehead on Subaru’s hands, and Subaru tells him softly to say it, and he does (plus more, like that cheering them on from the bench at center court is his dream), and he doesn’t lift his head until after that, and I am losing my mind. Not even because I ship them or anything (though, yeah, that too), but I love how soft and open and vulnerable they let themselves be with each other. I know it’s at least partly a cultural difference, that toxic masculinity is mostly a Western construction, yada yada, but it’s still nice!!
And now I’m remembering that I don’t think in the anime Subaru ever called Ochi a crybaby after that time before this when he did and then immediately backtracked and apologized, and then Ochi told him that he can sway whatever he wants about him, he doesn’t care. Maybe in ep 12, though? That’s the only time Ochi cries in the anime aside from that flashback to their meeting at the hospital during first year. But he cries here and Subaru teases him a bit about being a crybaby, and Ochi gets a bit sullenly defensive but only says “ち、ちゃうわ.” But yeah mostly he doesn’t acknowledge it and just lets him cry, doesn’t get annoyed at him or anything, continues the conversation since Ochi’s completely capable of continuing too. The biggest deal he makes of it (though it still can’t even be called that) is in ep 12 when Ochi tries to get him to cry after their loss but he still feels like he can’t. Ochi tells him that he won’t cry until he does, pretending that he himself isn’t already.
Anyway.
Since we open up with sort of a recap of the origin of the reading of Yuni’s name, I think this is the first time a name hasn’t gotten furigana on its first appearance in a chapter in this series. But anyway he’s daydreaming about volleyball (and how he may not be able to reach the universe like his name means, but he feels like he could reach the ceiling in the gym if he jumps with all his might) while hanging up a sign over the bulletin board in his classroom for the upcoming cultural festival, since he’s the tallest in his class. He’s using shiny gold thumbtacks, which made him think of stars, and thus the universe and the origin of his name’s reading, and also the lights in a gymnasium, and thus volleyball. This boy’s so ADHD. (Same tho.) And it seems Haijima, who usually goes to the club room as soon as class lets out, also got roped into hanging stuff over the bulletin board in his class due to being the tallest one lol
The next subchapter is called CHILDHOOD FRIEND, so I hope that means we’ll get more of Yuni and Chika as kiddos. I’ve still got a bit to go before I can find out, though.
Some vocab of note:
面相筆 (めんそうふで) [noun] fine-point brush
天涯孤独 (てんがいこどく) [四字熟語, noun] a person without a single relative
心を躍らせる (こころをおどらせる) [expression, 一] to get excited
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I’m caught up with the week’s reading though so yay 
I picked it up because Naphthalene enjoyed it, it was on sale and I like the cover page. I’ll refer to what Nafu wrote about it, even tho they decided not to pick up the second book:
. That was like months ago… ご冥福を祈りします…
ご注文はうさぎですか？ Complete Blend Volume 1 (49% ➨ 49%)
くノ一ツバキの胸の内 Volume 3 (0% ➨ 20%)
orange Volume 1 (29% ➨ 52%)
名探偵コナン Volume 10 (77% ➨ 80%)
