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Even though I link it every time, I keep forgetting to go back and update my home post lmao
I don’t think my reading speed has improved at all, but it definitely takes a lot less energy to read now! Six months ago I don’t think I’d have been able to finish a single manga volume in a day, much less two, yet here I am today! I also generally have to make fewer lookups, but I don’t think that’s the only thing making it take less energy. Probably more a combination of me getting used to it plus me being able to understand more with less effort. It definitely feels nice. I think currently about two’s my limit on days without work (or anything else) and one on days with, though I don’t know yet if that’s more from energy constraints or time constraints.
I read その恋、自販機で買えますか?②. Yamashita wears his earrings more in this one. In the first vol, he only wore them in ch 3, despite that not being the only time we see him outside of work/coming home from work. And he wore studs in that one, but in vol 2 he wears… well, idk if they’re still called hoops when they’re not much bigger than the diameter needed to fit around your earlobe, but yeah he wears that kind. It’s nice. And there’s a new character introduced, 西新, so that breaks the “rocks” theme. Although it could still be “geography”… Ahhh but this one was cute, too. And even though Nishiarai knows they’re dating, when Yamashita’s back in charge of his usual area (for a time he’d had to fill in for someone else, leaving newbie Nishiarai to handle this one on his own and meaning that Koiwai couldn’t see him at work anymore) and he and Koiwai get to talking, he’s in the background like, “What about me? I’m here too! Ah, I guess I’ll start gathering up the trash…” lol. And sensei wrote in the あとがき that they want to write a cohabitation part sometime, so I hope we will be getting a vol 3!
I really did not expect 嘘 to be one of the words getting furigana, especially considering how little there is in this series, but okay.
Next I read 恋の仕方がわからない, which is about Aimi who’s never fallen in love before and who’ll basically go out with anyone who confesses to him, as long as they agree to his terms (no asking him who he’s with or where he is or what he’s doing or anything like that—and he won’t ask them that, either) and understand that chances of him coming to love them are pretty much nil, and he’ll dump them as soon as they become troublesome. It starts out with the gal he’s currently seeing asking how he feels about her and him dumping her for it in the university cafeteria, and the guy sitting behind him, Kaede, takes that as his chance to confess. He’s the first guy who’s confessed to Aimi, and Aimi agrees, and he ends up falling in love with him after a while, though he doesn’t realize it at first lol when he sees Kaede talking with a couple female friends, he gets jealous and assumes it’s the feeling of when a pet acts friendly with other people. He actually pulls him aside and asks if he actually likes him, totally surprising Kaede. Later when he’s thinking about it, he flashes back to that woman from the opening scene asking how he feels about her and then to him asking Kaede if he actually likes him, and he’s like, “…No, but that’s different.” (へー そうなんスか). This one has full furigana, but the text is kinda tiny, which made it pretty easy to ignore unless I needed it.
And then even though it was 7:30 so I wouldn’t have time to read a full volume anyway so why don’t I read some of something I’ve already started if I still wanted to read, my brain’s still like, “No. I need new things,” so I started SとN, reading ch 1. Unlike the last Furuya Nagisa manga I read, this one’s a HS love story, following first-year Setoguchi who fell in love at first sight and third-year Natori who wants nothing to do with it. He finds Setoguchi exhausting lol. And Setoguchi’s bi! (Well, gender doesn’t matter to him.) Sensei had a bi character in 星だけ too, so I’m not really surprised, but it’s always nice.
Some vocab of note:
浮かれる (うかれる) [一, intransitive] to make merry; to be festive
師走 (しわす) [noun] 12th month (esp. of the lunar calendar); December
酢豚 (すぶた) [noun] sweet-and-sour pork
つい [adverb] unintentionally; subconsciously; by mistake; against one’s better judgement
迂闊 (うかつ) [な-adjective] careless; stupid; thoughtless; heedless; unobservant; inadvertent; incautious
ヤキモチ [noun] jealousy. Yes, the kanji is 焼き餅. I have no idea how “roasted rice cake” also came to mean “jealousy.”
調子が狂う (ちょうしがくるう) [expression, ア五] to be knocked off stride; to lose one’s bearings; to lose one’s presence of mind; to lose one’s balance
よりによって今日 (よりによってきょう) [expression] today of all days
根掘り葉掘り (ねほりはほり) [expression, adverb] inquisitively; pryingly; nosily; thoroughly; persistently; through and through
Speaking of Manga Republic, I ended up getting a couple manga that I couldn’t find available on the other sites I know. Luckily, they’re ones that are on the cheaper side. (Honestly, the prices can be pretty ridiculous. $40 for a single volume, some of these! And they’re not limited edition or with a bonus included or anything! Even with free shipping, that’s way too much. And they sell series sets, which you’d expect to be discounted, but they’re not. You’re way better off checking eBay for those.)