I haven’t started on this final part yet myself, but I can see that 4 of you have finished this part (and thus the book) and there are no comments, I wonder if that means anything
Hahaha, on my part it mainly means that I was too busy to comment in the last few days
For the book itself, I was pretty spot-on with most of my predictions
I liked the ending a lot. Rui gets to grips with why she wanted a split tongue in the first place, and reconsiders. Maybe Shiba killed Ama, but it doesn’t really matter in the end - after Rui gets over her grief (for what exactly?) she finds a way to settle this all for herself, and she gets back into life by starting to eat small amounts. Shiba is surprisingly caring (given his personality) and seems to be very much in love with her - so much that he killed for her?
I’m sure many of you will disagree with me, but I really liked that book and found it to be full of hope and thought that it was actually a somewhat sweet story.
I was mostly waiting for more people to finish so we can comment together (and also I got distracted)
I really liked the book, but I found it nihilistic rather than heartwarming (and that’s totally fine by me, I don’t really like heartwarming most of the time).
Same here. I was also waiting for other people to post
I really liked the book too. But like @omk3 さん, I can’t say I found it heartwarming. I understood Rui’s change in behavior more as an acceptance of the new “world order”. She was under Ama’s spell at first, deciding to get a split tongue because he had one, and presumably, in order to get him like her more (it’s true he didn’t ask her to do it), then little by little fell under Shiba’s spell (it’s debatable that sex between them is really consensual), and was afraid of him, and in the end, because she recognized how dangerous he could be, she decided to go with the flow.
From start to finish, Rui is used by both men, and let herself be used. She is the true victim in the story
Wasn’t expecting that Ama would be the one to lose his life, wow. Also, pretty terrible way to go, no wonder Rui couldn’t sleep that night.
When she realizes that it could be Shiba who killed him, and she is sleeping over at his place and goes for a hammer when Shiba falls asleep, I thought she had a totally different idea in mind.
I also found interesting the contrast of how much Shiba was sweet and caring despite his sexual preferences, while vanilla-sex Ama was very violent.
And I think Rui’s thinking shows well how a 19 year old can think, and how far “going with the flow” can carry you.
Can you even turn teeth into powder like that? I’d imagine they’d be hard to break. But then you can break a tooth by just chewing, so maybe.
So what do you guys think, did Shiba do it? All the “evidence” is circumstantial at best, but the murder happened after the police came looking for someone like Ama, and right after (or just before?) Shiba proposed.
Well, that was fun! I really enjoyed the book, haha. I loved all of these people and all of their craziness, and their faults. The camaraderie between Shiba and Ama was beautiful, and a bit tragic that they both liked the same girl.
They were all so nonchalant about things, it was kind of refreshing. Rui made herself really dependent on both of them, but it seems that’s what she wants to be, so that’s fine really.
To be honest, I was kind of expecting some kind of triangle relationship at the end, but then someone ending up dead fits really too well.
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