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.
Man, short chapter this week. I had to re-read some sections of it a couple of times; not sure if my brain’s just not in the game or what.
So as far as I’ve been able to put together (and I hope I’m not accidentally adding any spoilers to the mix; there’s some knowledge and thoughts floating around my brain that I’m not sure if they came from the manga or this book or what): 羅漢, for whatever reason, decided to ruin a prostitute’s career at some point in the past; I don’t remember if he specified anything about the incident, but it seems like he was the one who gave the woman 猫猫 is treating this chapter syphilis. (Does this mean 羅漢 has syphilis? I doubt it; I figured he hired someone else who did to do the deed.) And from implications from 猫猫, it sounds like the woman is her mother. Not only that, but it seems like 羅漢 might be looking for her in some capacity; perhaps he knew the woman had a daughter, and wants to meet her for some reason?
My initial gut reaction is to say that he’s looking for her because he believes she’s his daughter, which doesn’t quite work out if he wasn’t the one who gave the woman syphilis (through the usual means). I suppose he could have passed the disease along via some contaminated vessel, thus removing the need for him to have the disease? Not sure how easy that is to do with 梅毒, granted.
I will re-read the chapter so that I can provide more info without spoiler, but it’s not 羅漢’s fault that she got syphilis. She got it from having to become a prostitute to survive and not being in a position where she can choose her clients.
Hmmm, dang. I was thinking of the part where he said he wanted to pay her back for being so holier -than-thou or some such, but I must’ve misunderstood.
Wait, what? I don’t know what you are referring to. Chapter 8 is 梅毒, right?
(Other than that, I had things a little mixed up in my memory, so I just did a minor edit to my previous message; not very relevant anyway)
Wait, I think I figured it out. You refer to the part where he said she was too expensive, so he used a dirty trick to make her cheaper? It never came to me that giving her syphilis would in fact make her much cheaper indeed.
Now that you present it that way, I can’t figure out if what I said in my previous message was a spoiler Even assuming that he is evil, though, it seems way too risky to me…
