I read the last 13 pages of 夜カフェ ch 3.
I read 17 pages of 明日をくれた君, leaving off on pg 174.
This section was a good one
……私は佐藤くんのことが好きなのだろうか。
I’m losing it. She didn’t even realize Satou-kun liked her, I did not expect her to realize she might have feelings for him too, not while still feeling jealousy toward Ritsu over Kaito.
そんな考えが浮かんで、必死に振り切った。
lol, yeah. She thinks there’s no way that that can be since she knows very little about him other than his surname. And, yeah, there’s no way it’s love, but a crush? Well, let’s see, she enjoys their exchanges and trying to figure out who he is, he’s become important to her, and she thinks a lot about him… It’s definitely feasible.
We also finally get that confrontation with Kaito like he’s been wanting since last chapter since Midzuki has been avoiding him, although now it’s not really about that: yesterday when Midzuki asked Sugiura for advice on the then-last letter she’d received from Satou-kun, he had taken her hand and said a line very similar to Satou-kun’s, flustering her, and then told her that Satou’s feelings were probably something like that. They’d been seen “going home together holding hands,” so now there are rumors of the two of them going out.
Building on when he said that liking cute things was unlike her despite being her childhood friend so you’d think he’d know her better than that, Kaito says that hanging around guys known as delinquents is “unlike you,” and Midzuki thinks, What is like me? He tells her that he’s worried about her—she’s his childhood friend, so she’s important to him. But Midzuki isn’t as happy to hear that as she thought she would be.
We also meet yet another Satou! A student from another school who always rides the same train as her on the way home from (and to?) school, Satou Yamato, talks to her since she seems down, though we don’t learn just how he knows her name since his stop comes up soon after. She finds it weird (like, discordant with how she views herself) that someone she’s never talked to could have taken any sort of interest in her when she’s not beautiful like Ritsu is.
tbh I was kinda thinking of maybe nominating it for the Intermediate Book Club after I finished it, but it says that at least somewhat popular books are preferred, and this definitely doesn’t seem to be. It doesn’t even have a full audiobook, just an abridged one.
Some vocab of note:
呆れ果てる (あきれはてる) [自一] to be flabbergasted; to be dumbfounded. You’ve reached the ends of amazement. Plus there’s a certain symmetry with the kanji looking similar. I like this one.
If I were reading 64 in Japanese, I might have 警察庁 vs 警視庁 (and maybe even 警察署 and 警察官) down by now. (Well, “by now” as in this far into the book, not after this long reading, because I’m sure I wouldn’t have gotten very far after only a few days.) Because the NPA gets mentioned fairly often, and every time 警察庁 or 警視庁 come up in my WK reviews, I’m like, “Uhhhhh, which one was that again?” I nearly always get it wrong, and neither of them have stuck. (Also 警察官 feels like it should be a building to me, not a person, and 警察署 the other way around, possibly because 署 looks like 著 which I associate most with 著者… Or for that matter, maybe just because of the 者.)