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Aaaaaughhhh I keep looking at different novels I want, but it takes me at least two months to get through a single one! Well, I could almost certainly finish 夜カフェ today but I’ve been holding back since I feel like I should keep pace with the club, but the ones that are more like N3 level or whatever, which is mostly what I’m interested in, take that long. I’ve only finished 2 novels so far and I’ve still got a bunch left, why am I looking at more, augh! Manga are fine since I can generally finish those in a week or less, but novels! I gotta increase my reading/comprehension speed first! This is torture! Not being able to read is torture! Augh, 活字中毒, indeed… 泣くなるぞ!
I read ch 6 and the 描き下ろし of 星だけが知ってる, finishing the manga! It’s so good, I love it.
This ch made me emotional (but then it doesn't really take much lol)
It starts out with a flashback to Kengo’s childhood. Ah, or rather, a dream. I thought this chapter would be from Kengo’s POV, then, like some stories do, but it seems it’ll switch off.
We meet one of Sora’s professors and learn that he’s red-green colorblind, and Sora says that someone he knows might be the same. I wonder if it’s Kengo. 1) It would make more sense plot-wise than if it’s one of his college friends or something, especially as this is the last chapter, and 2) you can’t become an astronaut if you have a vision impairment of any sort, can you? It would explain why he started acting weird when the announcement of a new Japanese astronaut joining the ISS crew was made: it’s not him but he wishes it was, but it’s impossible. (How would Sora know though? It’s not like there was any indication, unless I just missed it.)
Ahhh yeah the professor is talking about occupations you can’t have if you’re colorblind: aviation-related, driver, Japan Self-Defense Force, etc… Aaaaa and that night, Sora’s channel-surfing and happens upon part of an interview on the news with Astronaut Toono and thinks back to his conversation with the professor and some of the things Kengo has told him (about how when he sees kids trying their best he can’t help but root for them) and looks up the application requirements for being an astronaut, and you have to have normal color vision. Ah, my heart hurts.
So I finally looked up what 色検 is despite this not being the first chapter it’s shown up since Sora wants to take or get it, and as I thought, it’s an abbreviation. It’s short for 色彩検定. I tried looking it up but I still don’t understand what it is. But it’s apparently the reason why, when we switch back to Kengo’s POV, Shiori asks whether Sora knows about his colorblindness or not. Kengo isn’t particularly hiding it or anything, but he also hasn’t told him.
One night—it’s February now—Sora searches for the place where he first met Kengo, wanting to meet him, and he does. Even though there’s no meteor shower or anything today, they both felt like they wanted to come here. Apparently when Sora was little, he wanted to become an airplane. Not a pilot, but a plane lol. He sounds like he was a cute kid.
omg, they’re paralleling their first meeting. When they first met, Kengo asked why Sora was here, and he said that even if he asks, it’s not interesting, but then told him anyway. Here, Sora asks Kengo what he’d wanted to be when he was a kid, and Kengo says that, even if he asks, it’s not interesting, but he tells him anyway. For as long as he can remember, he’s always loved outer space. He was more interested in picture books about space than other toys, and he spent so much time out on the balcony with a telescope in winter that he’d catch cold (and then just stay inside and read his space books lol). When he was 8, a Japanese astronaut went up into space on a space shuttle, and ever since then, he’s wanted to be an astronaut himself, and he started checking out more books at the library and working hard learning math and science and English, all so that he could become an astronaut too when he was older. But then, when he was 10, he learned that he had congenital red-green colorblindness, and his dreams came crashing down. After he finishes his story, Sora leans in and kisses him, “because the 10-year-old Kengo-san was crying.” And it was his first time telling anyone about his childhood dream, too. Aaaaa my heart ♡♡♡
Not entirely sure what happens after that, something about asking if Sora kissing him means it’s all right if he doesn’t hold back from now on and admitting he’s probably liked him from the beginning. Then he says that he’s always at the shop, so Sora’s free to come or not come. Sora thinks that Kengo is really unfair, always leaving him an escape route. Even so… He goes back to the café (the next day, I’m assuming?) and sits at the counter again and confesses that he likes Kengo’s coffee the best. Kengo’s like, “Thank you. By the way, is it just my coffee? What about me?” / “Eh—” “…I don’t dislike you.” / “I like you, Sora-kun.” / “Eh— Wai— Kengo-san?!” lol they’re cute
There was zero smut in this one, not even in the 描き下ろし like there sometimes is (heck, they don’t even properly start dating until the 描き下ろし), and no gross tropes either, so there was zero mistake in my hasty purchase of this one! Anyway I’ll definitely be getting Furuya-sensei’s other books; the English version of ふたりのライオン had been on my wish list for years, and searching for the original on Amazon JP is how I found 星だけ, so I think I’ll get that one next time. It’s so hard to prioritize though lol, there are so many I wanna get, but I can’t get them all at once. (My problem with figuring out which one I wanna read next, too…)
Also, I’m putting off reading the rest of 極主夫道 because I only kept 2 & 3 out of the box (which of course is on the bottom of a stack of four…) because I hadn’t expected redoing my shelves to take so long. A lot of the binders on the bottom shelf have bits of old story ideas and planning, some of which never made it into my Google Docs, and going through that takes a different kind of energy than laying around reading or doing Duolingo lessons or playing solitaire on my phone or whatever, so I’ve barely made any progress and the book club’s started vol 4 already. I still have クールドジ男子 and バッテリー out, which is 12 vol total, so I’ve still got stuff to read outside of 2.43 and Satori Reader even with me holding back on buying new books for now. (Which isn’t exactly working, clearly, but especially with the urge being stronger now that I’m making more money, I’m still considering it a success. I coulda bought like 20 books by now but I’ve only gotten 10 recently!)
I read ch 4 of 夜カフェ, which was about 9.5 pages.
Short but under a cut since it's this week's reading:
God, I can just imagine how pleased Hanabi’s father looks after her mother tells her that she can quit her job if Hanabi doesn’t like it. That bastard, I wanna throttle him. I’m glad Hanabi told them straight off that that wasn’t why she was upset, and I’m glad they’re letting her stay with Aiko-san for the time being.
Some vocab of note:
肝に銘じる (きもにめいじる) [expression, 一] to be deeply impressed; to take to heart; to keep in mind
雑用 (ざつよう) [noun] chores; odd jobs; miscellaneous affairs
色覚異常 (しきかくいじょう) [noun] colorblindness; color-vision deficiency
本腰を入れる (ほんごしをいれる) [expression, 一] to set about in earnest; to put one’s back into something. This one’s marked as “sensitive,” for some reason.
波風を立てる (なみかぜをたてる) [expression, 一] to make trouble; to make waves; to cause discord