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I ripped the last of the Re:collection CDs and copied down the lyrics. Y’know, I don’t think I noticed before the past couple days just how many J-Pop songs mention tears and/or crying. Or maybe it’s just these popular ones that got picked to be covered make it seem so… But a full 20/30 have at least one mention of tears/crying. I didn’t count, but close behind is (especially chance) meetings, and then looking up at the sky/sun/stars. Then I think protecting and/or getting stronger. (Either that, or the other way around.) Well, most of them are love songs.
I finally got around to picking up 竜のかわいい七つの子 again, and I read story 6, 子がかわいいと竜が鳴く (possibly unsurprisingly, considering the book’s title, the 描き下ろし), and story 7, 犬谷家の人々, finishing the volume! They were both good, though 6 was more my speed, setting-wise. And I keep misreading 鱗 as 隣 and having to backtrack lol. At least now when I realize my mistake, I recognize it as “scale” and can get to うろこ by thinking about the scale armour in DQ for a mo without having to look it up. I’m a bit saddened by the twist in the story, though not exactly disappointed, since it seems Yoh will be able to find happiness again, just not where I was expecting.
Spoiler
Prince Shun came to the village Yoh lives in looking for someone to guide him through the mountains to find a dragon scale to cure his father’s illness. Yoh lost her husband and son years ago, and Shun too lost his mother, and at the beginning of their journey, I’d thought they would come to love each other as mother and son. But, we learn that Yoh’s son was made an example of and killed for refusing a call to arms or something from the king, and since the prince arrived at the village, she’d been planning to assassinate him to exact her revenge on the king.
After they arrive at the mountainside where the dragon’s made her nest, Yoh watches Shun futilely try to shoot the dragon down to get a scale, wondering just when she should kill him, and follows him up into the cave the dragon uses as a nest. He plans to use the dragon’s egg as a shield and lure her close enough to get a scale, and Yoh tries to stop him because she can’t abide a child being put in danger, and in so doing, the egg gets accidentally knocked out of the nest and falls to the ground far below, and the dragon flies off, sticking around pointless now that she’s got nothing to protect.
Yoh decides to leave the prince there to die alone while thinking of how he’s disappointed his father. (The straggling guards she hadn’t killed on the journey catch up to him after she leaves, though, and one of them finds a shed scale in the nest, so the king will be saved after all.) Yoh approaches the cracked egg, intending to perform a memorial service for it, but it turns out the child survived, and they break free of the shell and imprint on her as if she were their mother. She decides to look after them for the time being, until she can find others of their kind for them to live with.
7 is a supernatural comedy, where each member of the Inutani family is an esper with a different psychic power, and they keep them hidden due to psychic abilities being rare in this world. Which is made more difficult when the father brings home a 大学生探偵 who’s stranded because of the storm! And just when I was thinking the detective kinda reminded me of Kindaichi, I actually get to his introduction and learn his name’s Doudaichi (銅田一 rather than 金田一 lol). Things, of course, go drastically wrong, and he thinks he’s landed himself in the middle of a serial murder case. Things continue to escalate, and they end up resolving it by knocking him out and the youngest daughter using her “useless” ability of instantaneously changing someone into their pajamas to make him think he’d just dreamed it all lmao
I got the 朗読ＣＤ for 明日をくれた君に、光のラブレターを when I got Re:collection, because while Amazon only has it on Audible because they’re d***s, other sites have it on CD! Anyway, it’s an abridged version, so I don’t quite know how that works yet, aside from that I won’t be able to read along while I listen (at least not to the whole thing), so I decided I’m gonna finish the book before listening to it, and I got some more read today, reading 8 pages and finishing ch 1, leaving off on pg 62!
Developments
So recently in her jealousy, Midzuki has come to somewhat start to dislike Ritsu, which she doesn’t really like because Ritsu’s her best friend and is very important to her. With encouragement from Satou-kun, she’s able to address a little bit of it, and she learns something that she hadn’t known about Ritsu: part of why she came to like Kaito is that Midzuki is friends with him—since she’s friends with him, he must be a good guy. With Sugiura (who started this recent uptick in jealousy), she only likes his face, and that’s it. Midzuki doesn’t think her complex or jealousy will really be going away any just yet, but she’s glad she asked Ritsu why she likes Kaito and learned that about her.
She also asked Satou, since he won’t tell her who he is, if she can try to find him herself, and she unexpectedly gets permission! He’s certain she won’t find him, though, which of course only makes her more determined lol
Well, I may end up changing my mind about waiting to listen to it. I do love Enojun’s voice, and lord knows I have a tendency to change plans like the wind lmao
Some vocab of note:
カッコつける [一] to affect a stylish air; to try to look good; to show off
攪乱 (かくらん or こうらん) [noun, する verb (他)] confusion; perturbation; disturbance; commotion; turbulence
気が立つ (きがたつ) [expression, タ五] to be wrought up; to be on edge; to get irritated; to get excited (about); to be unsettled
暁 (あかつき) [noun] event (e.g. “in the event of…”); occasion; occurrence. Usually as ～(の)暁に.
刺青 (いれずみ) [noun, する verb] tattoo (esp. a traditional Japanese one); tattooing. This is the 義訓, from 入れ墨.
見せしめ [noun] (making a) lesson (of); (setting an) example; warning
しょっちゅう [adv.] always; all the time; constantly; frequently; often
盆栽 (ぼんさい) My first time seeing “bonsai” in kanji!
関の山 (せきのやま) [expression, noun] the best one can expect; the most one can do
一か八か (いちかばちか) [expression, の-adj.] sink or swim; all or nothing; hit or miss; make or break
August 10
Good to hear that things are improving for you.
Aug 11th 
Big want! 
I’m getting close to the end now and I can definitely feel it, things are off the rails and my feelings are everywhere lmao, but it’s a great time! I did two whole main story sections though I think they were on the shorter side, but they sure weren’t lacking in content 
Which is wild already, but it’s all even more tragic than I could’ve imagined! So they knew each other as kids at the lab which I suspected, but アーロン was ルーク and ルーク went by ヒーロー which… yeah. But look how cute they were!!
Anyway they were friends, and then the explosion happened and ルーク/ヒーロー got badly injured but the country was still super messed up from war so no hospitals would take him, so アーロン/ルーク took him to the リカルド embassy to get help, ang here’s where it gets really ouchies. ハスマリ, the country the lab was in, was super war-torn and dangerous, but アーロン/ルーク and his dad were just there doing research and were going to go back to リカルド where they were from since things were getting bad. But アーロン/ルーク… he took ルーク/ヒーロー to the embassy and told them he was from リカルド, that he was ルーク, son of the scientist there doing research, and that they should take him back to リカルド, and in doing so left himself all alone in ハスマリ with no way of getting out, just forced to starve on the street, and that’s just a lot?? I have a lot of feelings about it and so does ルーク (man I don’t know how to refer to them anymore 
