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Jay Rubin’s Making Sense of Japanese (previously Gone Fishin’) arrived today, and it’s smaller than I thought. I thought it would be your usual textbook size, but it’s a Japanese-style “hardcover” book, just printed left to right rather than right to left, so it’s the same size as a regular manga, whatever page size that is. You could not tell that from the product image on Amazon at all. Anyways, I’m looking forward to starting that one.
I read a whole 58 pages of 明日をくれた君 today, finishing ch 4 and starting on ch 5, and leaving off on page 233. I’m gonna cry. I want to keep reading, I only have 34 pages left, but I have work tomorrow morning and also I’m tired, so I don’t wanna stay up 'til who knows when.
Oh man.
It’s ironic that Midzuki wants to be close to someone who doesn’t see her for who she is (Kaito), but then the two people who do, she either wants nothing to do with (Sugiura) or ends up driving away (Ritsu). Well, there’s Satou-kun, but he’s not physically in her life.
Midzuki might possibly be developing a crush on Sugiura-kun. They’d be cute tbh
Satou Yamato shows up at the school gates one day after school. Midzuki and Sugiura see him from the library window. Sugiura’s justifiably wary, but Midzuki doesn’t care and goes to see what he wants—if he is indeed there for her—but by the time he gets out there, he’s gone. Sure, his reasons for being there coulda been innocent, but… Especially with the suspiciousness before with him knowing her full name somehow despite them never having interacted and going to different schools… hm.
Satou-kun has her number somehow. He calls her cell phone at night a week later from a public phone. That’s not creepy at all, though of course she doesn’t think so. When she asks him how he knows her number, she just gets dial tone; either he hung up or his time was up, but either way she doesn’t find out. Yeah my estimation of him has gone down. Anyway, he said he would leave her one last letter.
……私は、佐藤くんが、好き。きっと、ずっと前から好きだった。
You like the wrong person.
Oh, yeah, that Satou Yamato is a creep. We run into him again when Midzuki’s waiting at the park by the station for Ritsu after club activities Sunday evening. He’s approached Ritsu and grabbed her arm when she tried to get away (“何で俺のこと拒むんだ? 俺はこんなに優しくしてるのに.” はい??), claiming to be her friend just because he talked to Midzuki once. Okay, and how does he know Ritsu too? ストーカーか? Seems like my and Sugiura-kun’s bad feeling about him when he showed up at the school gates was absolutely right.
Hm… Ritsu remembers him now, vaguely. Like with Midzuki, he approached her once on the train when she was unwell to ask if she was all right. Still, for him to hound her and grab her when he sees her out and about—alone—and act all familiar just because he talked to and “was nice to her” once… that’s creepy. That’s alarm bells, right there. That’s the difference between a “nice guy” and a nice person.
Annnd, he knows Ritsu has a boyfriend. And we still don’t know how he knows either of their names. He said he won’t appear in front of them again, but I don’t trust like that.
We get the first letter that’s not between Midzuki and Satou-kun: an apology letter (wherein she also confesses that she likes sweets-making and embroidery and the like) which she gives to Ritsu after Satou Yamato leaves. She said and did some things that she regretted recently, and she wanted to write a letter since she wasn’t sure she could apologize properly face-to-face. Ritsu has some things she wants to apologize for too, and she forgives her easily and they make up.
美月って意外に隠すの下手だよね? 美月が可愛いものが好きなんて、最初に話しかけてくれたときからわかってたよ?
♡
We saw that before, too, when Ritsu, knowing Midzuki’s decorative strap (which she has too in a different color to match) broke recently, invites her out shopping for a new one. One of the things Midzuki regrets saying is accusing her of just choosing something she herself likes, but Ritsu chose the straps knowing they’re the kind of thing Midzuki likes. Her childhood friend may think cute things don’t suit her, but her best friend has known from the beginning that she likes cute things and has never once thought it odd. ♡
Ritsu describes Satou-kun as Midzuki’s savior when she tells her about him, and I’m inclined to believe that Midzuki’s "好き"という気持ち toward him are just those toward a savior. Of course, I don’t know how much of that is just me wanting Midzuki/Sugiura to happen. I went into this ready for Midzuki to slowly develop feelings for Satou-kun over the course of their exchanges and then they’d meet and it’d continue from there. But then Sugiura showed up. And the chances that Satou-kun is him under an alias are nil.
Oh my god
「早く昼寝して教室戻りなよ」
「……じゃあ、寝かせろよ」
「え?」
床にお尻をつけて座っていた杉浦くんが動いたと思ったら、突然私の左肩にもたれかかってきた。あまりの近距離に、心臓がはち切れそうなほど膨らみ、顔はゆでだこのように沸騰する。
If Kozakura-sensei ends this pretending like these two aren’t love interests, I’m gonna be so mad.
He has long eyelashes and she notices this—is captivated by them, in fact. I am losing my entire goddamn mind.
Ohhhh… noooo… no, I’m gonna cry. Ch 5 hits you with the feels right off the bat, with our longest letter yet. They saved each other, at least as much as they could be saved. And now we know why Sugiura was involved when he didn’t seem related from a story standpoint. And just how Satou-kun contacted her. 早く読み終わりたい!
I figured out what I needed to do in 逆転裁判 today—talk to Itonokogiri-keiji about Mayoi’s phone. I played through the end of the second day before deciding I needed a break. Dang, this case is long. Also, I did not realize DL6 came up so early. Is that one gonna be the next one? Reiji… Anyway, Reiji/Miles is my favorite character (yes, I do have a type), so I can’t wait 'til we get some character development for him. Even if it does involve a heartbreaking backstory…
Some vocab of note:
素っ気ない (そっけない) [い-adj.] cold; short; curt; blunt
癪に障る (しゃくにさわる) [expression, ラ五] to irritate; to grate on one’s nerves; to aggravate; to be galling
引き立て役 (ひきたてやく) [noun] person who makes someone else appear better; foil
健気 (けなげ) [noun, な-adj.] brave; courageous; heroic; noble; admirable; commendable; praiseworthy; laudable
踵を返す (きびすをかえす) [expression, サ五] to turn on one’s heel; to turn back; to return
釘付け (くぎづけ) [expression, noun, する verb] being stationary; being rooted to the spot; halting; freezing. From the literal meaning of “nailing down.”
間髪容れず (かんはついれず) [expression] immediately; instantly; with nary a pause; without a moment’s delay. Shirabe says that the first part is usually read かんはつ with かんぱつ being irregular, though when it’s a word on its own, the latter is the usual reading, although it also says that 間髪 by itself is an abbreviation of this expression. Goo supports this by listing the reading as かんはつ and saying that かんぱつ is an error (though it doesn’t have an entry for 間髪 on its own). Yet I had to type かんぱつ to get it because the IME wouldn’t accept かんはつ at all. So what do I believe?
噤む (つぐむ) [他マ五] to shut one’s mouth; to hold one’s tongue; to keep silent. I like that you can tell exactly what it means just by looking at it: 口を禁
動かぬ証拠 (うごかぬしょうこ) [expression, noun] irrefutable evidence; smoking gun; solid evidence; incontestable proof; dead giveaway
口走る (くちばしる) [他ラ五] to blurt out; to let slip; to say inadvertently; to come out with (e.g. nonsense). Not quite the same as running one’s mouth in English.
ホの字 [expression, noun] the L-word; being in love. From 惚れる (ほれる), “to fall in love.”
人聞きが悪い (ひとぎきがわるい) [expression, い-adj.] disreputable; scandalous; disgraceful