Well, it’s a very bad place to stop. So I kept reading a bit… and I regret nothing.
Except now I’m at a risk of blurting out spoilers left and right again.
In other news, though, with less than 30 pages left, I don’t see how this will end in a satisfactory fashion…
I really like the author’s style of telling a story through cut-backs (and now even through cut-backs inside cut-backs). Also, the narrative is written in such a calm, unexcited tone, it is really a pleasure to read.
I was really sad when Hoshikawa went to die… I had somehow expected him to be the murderer of the boy who was found in the river, and that he would eventually do bad things to Ren, but for once we met a truly good guy, it seems.
Also, I was quite worried that our protagonist would act stupidly and would release his friend or something. Luckily, so far nothing happened. The description of the corpse was quite vivid, though… I wonder what happens if they truly revive him in that condition. His parents might not be too happy about him returning like that…
I also have a question:
In the second-to-last paragraph of chapter 6:
ホシカワの手帳はよれていた。この先ずっと使い続けるわけにはいかない。
Am I right to assume that this is 縒れて - to get twisted? Does this mean in the context that the notebook was quite old and ruffled and that’s why he did not want to make use of it in the future because it might fall apart?
A quick question of my own, to make sure I’m on the right track: at the end of the section, when Ren’s listening to the story of the Rain Temple, about the young lady who has the bones of a lover and wants to revive him. She was only half successful in reviving the bones, correct? Because she messed up somehow, the revived guy still partly belongs to the 古道, correct?
Hm, more like (EDIT: there be next week spoilers, ye been warned) even if you revive someone, their body remains in the same condition, so you can’t really revive a body that is too messed up, and bones, well, that’s beyond what can be done. Instead, the person in charge of the temple made her some medicine using the bones so that she got pregnant. But then the baby would get bound to the 古道 (sounds familiar? )
Yes, I’m afraid Naphthalene went a bit overboard here with his recount of the conversation
Mental note: Make sure to never add a week’s break right in the middle of a conversation
But the first half of what he said actually matches this week’s reading, so (loosely) a person that is being revived can only come back to life in the same condition that the corpse had been in at the time of revival, and that can have strange effects, like e.g. loss of memory, or being only half-alive, or turning into a ghost at night. But this part of the conversation was a general one, like “this can happen if you…”, not what actually happened in that particular case.
Ah, thank you. I’ll see if I can re-read that small section again, make sure I’ve got everything down. And no worries, @Naphthalene; I’ll be getting to the next bit soon enough, haha.
There is no easy solution, I guess… Knowing the author’s style, now (in hindsight) I think the many vertical bars at the beginnings of that bunch of paragraphs might have been an indication, but I would probably not have cared about them if I had done the breakdown because I had not encountered this style of quoting frequently enough before reading this book.
I also found it quite tough to stop there, so I must confess I also read the conversation until the end
I don’t know why but I barely had a single moment to read this week. Just finished this week’s section in a single whirlwind session and wanted to show my face in the thread (even if it’s very late).
)
(Kino, Haruhi, and now this)
I’ll see if I can re-read that small section again, make sure I’ve got everything down. And no worries, 
