Week 9: サイレント・ウィッチ 🤫 🧙‍♀️

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Silent Witch :shushing_face: :woman_mage: Home Thread

Week 9

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Start Date: Mar 1
Previous Part: Week 8
Next Part: Week 10

Reading:

Week Chapter End page End % End on Page Count
9 五章 2/2 ~129 44% End of 五章 ~14

Discussion Rules

  • Please use spoiler tags for major events in the current chapter(s) and any content in future chapters.
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  • Don’t be afraid of asking questions, even if they seem embarrassing at first. All of us are here to learn.
  • To you lurkers out there: Join the conversation, it’s fun! :durtle_the_explorer:

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Proper nouns

Name Note
ケルベック伯爵領
ウォーガン山脈
リディル王国
アガサ 侍女
イザベル・ノートン ケルベック伯爵令嬢
アラン 馬丁、アガサの弟
シェフィールド 風の精霊王
モニカ・エヴァレット 沈黙の魔女
ネロ
アニー
ミネルヴァ school
ルイス・ミラー 結界の魔術師
リィンズベルフィード (リン) 風の上位精霊
ライオネル 第一王子, 27 yo
フェリクス 第二王子, 18 yo
アルバート 第三王子, 14 yo
セレンディア学園
クロックフォード公爵 第二王子の祖父
ダスティン・ギュンター 作家
ロザリー・ミラー ルイスの妻
アーロン・オブライエン 生徒会会計
エリオット・ハワード 生徒会書記
ブリジェット・グレイアム 生徒会書記
ニール・クレイ・メイウッド 生徒会庶務
シリル・アシュリー 生徒会副会長
(フェリクス・アーク・リディル) 第二王子、生徒会長
ヴィクター・ソーンリー 先生
ラナ・コレット 2年生
セルマ・カーシュ 保健委員

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Live-tweeting my chapter reactions

「あの、き、昨日は……その、ありがとう、ございましたっ！」
言えた、ちゃんとお礼を言えた。
今日のモニカの目標は、ラナやこの青年に昨日の礼を言うことだった。その目標を早々に達成できたことに、モニカは密かに喜びを嚙み締める。

She did it! :face_holding_back_tears:

「あのぅ……」
「うん、なんだい？」
「……なんで、王子様なのに、寮を夜中に抜け出してたん、ですか？」

You. Did. Not. Just. Ask. This. :joy:

Look, I just wanted to read a little today. I wanted to stop around here. Now I have to keep reading! I hope you are proud of yourself, Monica!!

君が見たその人物の特徴を教えてくれるかい？

:laughing:

Go on, Monica, tell him about the mathematical properties of his head.

反論された瞬間、モニカの中で火がついた。或いは「証明したい」という学者特有の思考と言っても良い。

Oh god. I love her.

The author could’ve just played the whole “shy” thing straight and stereotypical, but it’s stuff like this that make her feel like an actually interesting person.

エリオットはポカンと目と口を丸くして立ち尽くしていた。

That’s the most pleasant that he has been since we first met him!

一方フェリクスは「最後に採寸した時の数字は……」とのんびり呟きながら、なにやら計算している。
ややあって、フェリクスは納得顔で呟いた。
「あ、本当に一：一・六だ」

Okay, and I like him too.

数式や魔術式が絡むと、モニカは我を忘れることがしばしばある。

Monica would absolutely die to nerd sniping.

そのたびに同期のルイスに耳をつねられていたというのに……あぁ、まさかよりにもよって、護衛対象の前でそれをやってしまうなんて！

On the plus side, the chances that he will think that you are here to guard him are close to zero now!

数秒遅れて、フェリクスが佇んでいた辺りに何かが勢いよく落下してくる……それは入り口の上に吊るしていた看板だ。

I’m slightly disappointed that it wasn’t another flower pot. My theory that this world has a spell to curse someone to be hit by flower pots is falling apart quickly.

「だから俺達は、その共犯者を炙り出すために罠を張ってたんだ。昨日の昼休みにな」

Okay, I guess with that as context Eliott going immediately “You are the assassin!!” upon meeting our favourite squirrel makes a bit more sense.

This also could explain at least a tiny bit why they’re telling all of that to Monica… I guess. It still doesn’t seem like something they should tell or involve her in, so I’m hoping there is a better reason for it?

人気のない裏庭にフェリクスが一人でいれば、犯人は再び事件を起こす可能性が高い。

As a side note, not sure this whole trap was a good idea to begin with. The first attack happened when the prince was not alone, so it’s not like the would-be assassin was waiting for that in the first place. And him suddenly being alone after the attack basically screams “trap”, doesn’t it?

「そうだ。じゃあこうしようぜ。子リス、君が看板と植木鉢を落とした犯人を見つけてこいよ。そうしたら君は無実だって信じてやっていい」

Ah, yes, the “guilty until you become a detective and find the actual guilty person” legal system.

But in the name of advancing the plot… I’ll allow it! :judge:

「それで、やるのか？ 犯人探し」

Look, Monica is already busy with her “forced to go undercover as a guard” role, she cannot take on an additional “forced to go undercover as a detective” job :laughing:

Honestly though, it seems like a detective role would kind of suit her if she had a partner to take care of all the people stuff it involves!

Yeah, I had a lot I needed to react to this time. This was a ton of fun to read :laughing:

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So, now the chapter title finally makes sense :joy:.

Week 9

Clearly Felix is Monica’s ideal man if his face and body fit the golden ratio so neatly. And he even realized he was being paid a very stylish compliment.

My thoughts exactly. Worst undercover operative ever.

Something about the whole thing seems off to me. For one thing, isn’t throwing stuff at your target from above an assassination method with a very high risk of failure? And a flower pot - even if it had hit Felix, if might have just left him injured. Surely in a world with magic there are projectile weapons and other methods certain to actually get the job done. And then, like you said, there’s the fact that the perpetrator seems to strike only in front of an audience. During the flower pot attack, they even waited until Monica and Elliott were in view. It’s like they don’t really want to kill Felix, they just want it to look like someone wants to, and in front of as many people as possible.

We’ve also reached the part of the mystery where I have to start taking notes about things that might be clues, like: After the board attack, Cyril stayed with Felix, while Elliot and Thornley went after the attacker and failed to catch him. Felix himself is a good liar with an unshakable poker face, and he looks very nonchalant about the assassination attempt.

Since it got mentioned how much work it was for the student council people to look through Aron’s falsified records, I honestly expected them to hire Monica as an accountant instead of a detective after she proved her math skills.

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Replies

To be fair, there might not be many chances to strike without an audience - Felix probably has people around him at almost all times. But yeah, either way, they are certainly not averse to attacking before an audience.

Also, the whole flower pot thing is strange from every angle.

  • Was it supposed to kill? Like you said, it seems (and turned out) unreliable. If it were any other location, an advantage might be that it could look an accident, but in this case it seems that there was no building overhead from which it might fall, making it just seem even more noteworthy.
  • Was it supposed to make it look like someone wants to kill him? Why in such a remote location then, in front of a measily audience of one person who has already seen an attempt on the prince anyway, and one person who came along by sheer coincidence? It’s not like there were any hopes for a bigger audience to gather.

The theme of the book clearly isn’t “give Monica jobs that she’d actually want to do” :stuck_out_tongue:

(But yeah, I also thought that would happen. It was such a good fit for a conveniently freed up position too!)

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Shush

This is my favourite moment :joy:

There is one thing that surprises me. From the point of view Felix and Co, Monica is a fragile girl, who faints when stressed. They don’t know about her magic abilities, only about her crazy built-in measuring system.
Why on earth they think it is OK to let her go searching for the culprit who wants to assassinate the prince of all people? They already saw what this person did to Aron. He won’t bother and hurt other people. Is it ok to involve an innocent feeble girl without any known hiding/fighting related skill?

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Reply

Not just that - they also have absolutely no idea whether they can trust her. Even if she isn’t part of the criminal group targeting the prince, she’s just some random girl they met. Telling her about this whole thing in the first place is pretty wild.

I wonder if they are still suspecting her to be part of the criminals, and keeping her close to find out.

Unrelatedly: Yet another extremely serious theory about what is actually going on

And while we’re at theorizing about things…

If the whole flower pot thing wasn’t meant to kill (unreliable) nor to enforce the belief in the public that someone is making attempts on the prince (meagre audience in a remote place)… what did it actually result in? It got the prince and Monica closer together.

I’m not saying that’s something that Louis seems to want, but… :face_with_monocle:

So, new theory: The whole “for an unknown reason the king wants me to find a guard for the second prince that I’m not even supporting” is completely made up. Louis actually wants to get Monica to come out of her shell, realized that Felix is Monica’s ideal man (golden ratio!!) and hatched a plan to ship them.

Everything that happened (the first attempt on Felix’ life, the conveniently free position in the council, the flower pot attack that conveniently only happened when they were close together to evoke the Suspension Bridge Effect) - it’s all perpetrated by Louis for that one goal.

He’s not even masking it particularly well. He told her early on that the whole plan is based on a romance novel where the prince falls in love with the bullied girl, which is the role that he tried to put her in!

Checkmate, mystery fans. This is actually a romance novel.

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week 9

“This girl might be trying to murder you my prince! Quick, let’s tell her everything that we know and our strategy to catch the culprit because she claims to have identified some random trait of your anatomy that’s meaningless to anybody but herself! Anyway let’s recruit her to find the actual murderer for some reason, she looks like she’s about to faint all the time so she’s clearly qualified.”

I still struggle to find my footing with this book, and I think at this point I never will… I feel like I should be invested in the attempted murder mystery but I can’t really take it seriously because everybody acts like a complete lunatic all the time so I have little hope that I can guess whatever solution the author is cooking for us.

Maybe it’s the dragon dropping flower pots to have his revenge on Monica.

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week 9

I was also surprised when Monica was given the role of an undercover detective, as she has just arrived in this school 2 days ago and does not know many people here. But I suppose that this a task where Nero will be helping as he can sneak around without being suspected of listening.

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Ha, just finished Week 9’s reading. Almost caught up with the group :blush:

Indeed, as everyone says, there are a lot of interesting happenings going on here.

Thank you to everyone who shared their observations and theories (and XKCD comics). It’s a nice “reward” to come here and read all the comments after finishing a section.

Also a big thank you to Boodil for mentioning Thornley’s name. I am nearly half way through this book and thought the teacher’s name was ソーソリー which I figured was Sorcery. I thought it was a strange name, but since he was the magic teacher …well I just went with that. Turns out I don’t read カタカナ so well :grimacing:

ok here are my thoughts!

Elliott and Thornley are the co-conspirators to Aaron’s embezzlement and the fake attempted assassinations are carried out by Elliott and Thornley as a deflection away from them. Here’s why I think this:

  • Thornley was praised by the headmaster as being one of the best magic teachers, graduated from Minerva. The mind-magic-amnesia Aaron suffered from is difficult magic, so Thornely could be the one who did it.
  • Thornley also an advisor to the Student Council.
  • Elliott is also on the Student Council and constantly by Felix’s side.
  • Elliott is unusually and dramatically invested in finding the attempted assassin suspect.
  • both assassination attempts happen when others are around, as opposed to when Felix was alone
  • For both assassination attempts in the garden & in the assembly hall, Elliott was there.
  • But when Felix decided to entrap the assassin on his own (the night Monica observed his perfect golden ratio body in the dorm garden), he didn’t tell Elliott or anyone what he was doing. So no assassin came because the whole thing is made up by Elliott and Thornley.
  • When the billboard fell, Thornley instructed Cyril to stay behind with Felix, while Elliott and Thornley went to look for the suspect. Not so surprisingly, the two did not catch the suspect.
  • Also when the billboard fell, it was Elliott and Thornley who warned Felix…kind of convenient…?
  • Elliott is keen on timid Monica taking on the task of finding the assassin because he believes there is no way she will succeed, the deflection will be preserved and no one will find out who Aaron’s co-conspirators really were.

The only issue with this theory is there was a shadow seen in the window shortly after the billboard fell, but perhaps Thornley used some magic to create a shadow…? Also, I feel like Aaron may have been an innocent fall guy in the embezzlement. We haven’t been told much of Elliott’s and Thornley’s background except Elliott comes from Darsby (?) Earldom (?) and Thornley is good at magic.

Also a good point: asking why the King wanted Felix to be guarded without him knowing he was guarded. Possibly because the King knows it’s an inside job? Or maybe some plot directed by the … First Prince??? That’s wild speculation.

Also wild speculation is a dragon is somehow involved. But I only hope that because I had to learn the obscure vocabulary for flying dragons and added it to my ANKI deck.

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This is my absolute favorite theory. :joy:

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