I got stuck on the みろ on page 13:
おまえら、あたしが今夜ぽっくりいっちまってみろ、あと味が悪いぞー。
Here’s what I make of it:
あまえら- the horde of slug/frog CZ/crab familiars
あたしが今夜 tonight, I…
ぼっくり to die suddenly
いちまって I think: いってしまって
This just seems to add more finality to ぽっくり, I think.
I interpreted the て form as being part of a てみるconstruction- “do and see” or “try to do”.
みろ command form of みる.
Here’s where I get stuck. The subject is clearly あたし, but the command form seems to be directed at the horde. So who is dying? Is she telling them to watch her die suddenly?Can てみる also have a “watch the action” meaning?
I’m pretty sure あまえら refers to her family (mother, father, sister).
Two ways I can look at it: てみる is used for seeing the result of an action - “do and see how it goes”. I’m guessing that the emphasis may be more on seeing the result than on doing the action as such, so in this case it would be the result of her dropping dead .
Another way to see it is that て is just connecting two independent sentences, and isn’t connected specifically to みろ. あたしが今夜ぽっくりいっちまって is one sentence, みろ another. I wonder if in that case ほら would be used instead, though. みろ feels to me like a challenge, a “try and”, even if they’re not trying anything as such. Maybe there’s an implied “you cause me to”?
In any case, the みろ is an imperative to あまえら, and あたしが今夜ぽっくりいっちまって is one unit. And in both cases, the result would be, roughly translated, “See me drop dead tonight, you’re not gonna like it”
I had no idea what this sentence was about, something about telling her family to watch something and not cry. I just assumed it was about some black magic bullying she was doing.
But then I was on Good Reads, reading some reviews about the book and one person was talking about how Tugumi throws her illness at her family, saying things like “You jerks sure are going to feel like crap if I die tonight!” And I was like , ohhh that’s what she’s saying!
Oh. I was taking the あと、味が悪い part literally, as something she was saying to the critters (who might be tempted to eat her dead body, I reasoned), but I suppose it could be figurative, like–“you’ll feel sad.” I guess that makes more sense.
What do you mean by “black magic bullying”?
I figured the black magic was just her excuse to collect slugs and whatnot as familiars.
At first I thought it was her talking about making something that would taste bad, and so I thought it was related to her interest in black magic (and collecting critters). Like maybe she was making some disgusting potion for her sisters to drink.
Oh, so it’s 後味 - Jisho.org! Did not realize that, what with the comma…
So it’s like leaving a bad aftertaste, which seems to be a common expression in all sorts of languages (I know of English, German, French, and Japanese so far)
, ohhh that’s what she’s saying!
The whole thing is a fixed expression:
it does use the kana+kanji form あと味 though, which could make you think it’s two words.