#️⃣ 6️⃣ Chapter 2 | NO. 6 〔ナンバーシックス〕volume 1️⃣

Japanese Reading Book Clubs
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Welcome to week 2 of NO. 6 〔ナンバーシックス〕vol 1 book club!

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Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 (here) | Chapter 3

Week Date Chapter Page count End Line
2 March 9 2 ~32 pages End of chapter

Discussion Guidelines

  • Spoilers should always be hidden using spoiler blur.

  • When discussing a specific section, please mention where you are in the book, ideally by chapter so people reading different versions have a clear point of reference.

  • Feel free to read ahead if it’s exciting, but please refrain from spoiling ahead of the appropriate week.

  • If you have a question about grammar, vocab, cultural things, etc - ask! That’s a welcome part of the discussion too, and other readers will be happy to help.

Are you reading along with us?

  • Yes! :smile:
  • I’m reading at my own pace :smiling_face:
  • I’m just here for the discussion :popcorn:
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:hash: :six: Home Thread for NO. 6 〔ナンバーシックス〕 volume :one: - Formal book club
:hash: :six: Chapter 1 | NO. 6 〔ナンバーシックス〕volume :one:
:hash: :six: Chapter 3 | NO. 6 〔ナンバーシックス〕volume :one:
:hash: :six: Home Thread for NO. 6 〔ナンバーシックス〕 volume :one: - Formal book club
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I started with a bit of a head start, so I’m adding all my thoughts below.

(regarding the audiobook) Is the narrator doing all the voices? If yes, that’s amazing, I wouldn’t have thought that they are all the same person. I do like the little lisp (is anyone else hearing this?) she has with some of the characters and the general narrator voice.

Somebody confirm the plot for me

Not sure if I understood everything correctly, I was a little bit confused because there of the timeline and that the paragraph ends are barely visible/audible.

So it starts with a neutral assessment of a deceased person, 30ish years.
Then it directly jumps to the description of the lettuce man who is depressed because his artifical lettuce doesn’t sell and he hears the announcement that his daughter didn’t score any extraordinary points in her assessment. Then the cleaning roboter approaches him, and trashes the lettuce (my cabbages!). Something weird happens and presumably this is where he dies and we realize he’s the dead person that’s mentioned in the beginning?

Did I understand right that the man mysteriously aged?

There’s something very neurodivergent going on…

with both Shion and his friend. We already got an inkling from the last chapter, like sure, there’s nothing more exciting than getting the opportunity to inject someone with an anasthetic and sew them up I guess.

But also Saph… did she ask him in THAT way because she thought that’s the only way to get to Shion’s silly little brain to work, or did she genuinely think THIS is the way to breach this topic.
I kinda hope she’s not just a plot device character to never be seen again, and that she’ll have some role as the smart and helpful friend later on.


Love it for Shion’s mom that she’s living her best life. At least Shion doesn’t have to worry too much about her - even though he still does.
So either Shion is having a mental breakdown or something really really weird is happening in this world (regarding the mouse). I want to read ahead so badly…

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Hi~

Could you please cover the text with “Hide details” or “Blur spoiler” - whichever you prefer (personally I think hide details is easier)

I’ll read it today or tomorrow and then we can compare notes :slight_smile:

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I’m so excited! The book club is the only reason I’ll stop here and grab something else to read. Ugh. I need moreeee.

Also is it just me or vocab this chapter was harder?

Chapter 2

Okayyy, the thoughts about lettuce seemed to reflect Shion’s thoughts about people a bit. Something about everyone being the same in their elite area. It was nice to see that the father wasn’t disappointed with his daughter’s “grade”, but wow what a scary way to die.

“Shion’s co-worker is 20, 4 years older than Shion” - that’s how you know we just skipped 4 years. Damn.

From watching the anime a decade ago I remembered Safu and Shion talks feeling very academic. Reading it now, it still feels like that. Now that I’m out of school, it even feels unnaturally academic. But I guess that’s exactly what a fancy school in a very engineered society would do to human communication.

So TLDR Shion’s life crumbled like coockies but Nezumi was Such An Experience, Shion’s not worried. Cool. Looking forward to seeing what his mom feels about it.

Safu’s first take at her ehhh confession (??) is horrible all around, but I’m dying from how Nezumi swooped in right after Shion proclaimed he’ll ask her to have sex in 2 years.

Ok, Karan actually seems to be doing great! It’s true that people feel more accomplished when they obtain things by themselves, but he should’ve gotten a scolding of the century.

Mama: you seem so excited~

Shion: I am not gay and I’m not in love and I’m just excited over a dead body I found at work today, nothing to see here mom

Safu is too cool for him anyway. Ladies and gentlemen, she called it first.

She is! So cool, right? I love Japanese audio materials so much.

Chapter 2 replies

Nice catch! Not sure when we’re supposed to notice this but yeah, it’s the age mentioned in the beginning, the existence of a 2 year old daughter (so can’t be as old) and flashy clothes.

I bet it’s their super-academic track making her… Be like that.

Something weird is totally happening but also :mouse_face:

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Certainly felt like that for me too, maybe because we have a lot more world building here.

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Speaking of Safu, having watched the anime way back, and rewatching a couple of episodes now to compare, it’s nice to see her get more development here. She’s still placed in a bit of a trope-y role (childhood friend who wants to be seen as a woman by “clueless” guy who just wants a best friend) but I feel like they really play it up in the opening episodes of the anime so that she can be ~The Girl~.

It’s kind of the same with Shion, too…he feels kind of watered down on a rewatch of the show. He’s still smart, sure, but you don’t really get to see his reasoning ability, and he’s shown as being more spacy than “weird”. For example, going back to ch. 1, rather than understanding that it was a gunshot wound just from observation, Nezumi just tells him, and there’s not as much of the “wow I always wanted to try out all this crazy first aid knowledge” vibe. In contrast to the show, it feels like his reasoning ability is more clearly driving a lot of the developments here, which is nice.

I suppose it is pretty academic, but at the same time, there are moments where you can really see that they’re still kids despite their ability to talk on that level, which is a nice juxtaposition. The confession is like this, too, in that to me she’s really just hiding behind the academic framing and has to get through all of That before she gets frustrated enough to be more direct. Honestly relatable.

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Finally finished this chapter today after procrastinating my entire week away playing Hollow Knight lol.

My thoughts on the chapter + language learning

Even though I really like the story I find it so hard to read because of my slow reading speed in Japanese. Like I normally wouldn’t have thought twice about the “boring” scenes in this chapter (like the lettuce man and Safu and Shion’s conversation at the fast food place) in English but they just feel so painful in Japanese. I know the only way to get better is to keep reading but man is it hard sometimes. Anyways I’m glad I have this bookclub to keep me accountable.

Also funny story, I don’t know if this is because I’m unfamiliar with Japanese names or if my Japanese reading comprehension is just too low (probably both tbh) but I actually though Safu was a guy until Shion explicitly referred to her as a girl :sweat_smile:

I really like Shion as the main character so far and hope we get to see him and Nezumi reunite in the next chapter. Looking forward to next week!

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Nothing major to add, but I had fun reading this second part!

Nice to start to see a sort of non-perfect world in contrast to the elites lives from chapter 1.

Also, I thought it quite sensible that Shion did get immediately found out (albeit after Nezumi escaped). Given we’re meant to assume the city is pretty omniscient, it would have been a bit silly for him to hide Nezumi with no consequences.

Assuming this is a last airbender reference, if so lol I thought of the same.

Yep that’s how I understood it too - I think it’s all meant to be a bit mysterious atm, so it was giving us breadcrumbs towards that at least.

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Just finished chapter 2… waku waku…
it takes all my self-restraint to not just continue reading… :rofl:

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Some interesting developments in chapter 2.

I didn’t really enjoy reading the murder scene — I felt quite sad for the man after he talked about his daughter, knowing what was coming.
I also found the conversation with Safu quite long, and the direction it took caught me off guard. The request for sex made me a bit uncomfortable (I tend to avoid stories with that kind of content).
That said, I do find the overall story interesting enough to keep going. I’m curious to see where things go from here now that the worldbuilding is more established.

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Just finished chapter 2 :raising_hands:

Thoughts

Wow, what a nice shift from the clean elite environment into the park, getting to know 4 years passed and watching this murder scene.
I lately was in a restaurant where robots served you the food and had to immediately think of this kind of robotic movement when it was about the lettuce. Also nice story about whether people want the whole synthetic one or the more natural salad.

Cool that Safu and Shion remained friends upon the social class switch. I’m thinking this might not have been usual or easy. Would be nice to get some more infos on that.

Aaaand :mouse:, glad that you are back :heart_eyes:

But interesting, that the death of the person was not in the news and that he met Nezumi at the same day. Hhhm. What is about to happen?

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