I am not keeping up at all unfortunately 
I’ll probably keep reading this on my own since I like it so far but I won’t be a part of the discussion 
Everybody have fun!!!
I’m with you “in spirit” 
7 Likes
You can still be part of the discussion whenever you get to read it! The thread will still be here, and I’m sure there will be people happy to read your comments and reply. 
5 Likes
Is that a threat? 
But jokes aside, whenever you feel like you want to say something, the thread is open to all. 
6 Likes
Finished week 2 (i.e. chapter 1).
It’s getting more and more interesting. There have been two other cases, and our journalist guy 浅川 talked to a journalist friend who had been at the scene and written a short article about it. But 浅川 is not yet ready to share his part of the information with the friend. Curious to see where their synergy will lead in the future.
Also, 浅川 visits his niece’s house, roams her stuff and finds a membership card for a resort that belongs to a different person. The question is, who is that person and why was the card there? Make sure to tune in again next week to learn about these mysteries 
Horror-wise this book has been extremely tame so far. This week we only had the baby’s panic attack which was somewhat spooky, but other than that, no horror was involved in my opinion. Is this the level we are going to end up at? Or will there be more?
By the way @fillanzea would it be possible for you to mark this spoiler as being a spoiler for the whole book? I read it after week 1 (assuming that it was for week 1 only) but now after week 2 we haven’t yet learned about the part I cut out above, and knowing that in advance somewhat decreases the joy of speculating
4 Likes
Sorry, I figured that it wasn’t a spoiler if it was just me speculating based on only having read the first three chapters!
1 Like
Well, you mentioned the video, which did not get mentioned in the book so far. That’s what I was referring to… Everything else is of course fine, if you speculate based on the information contained in the book up to that week’s worth of reading.
Now I’m probably the only person in the world who was not aware / who has forgotten that this video is supposed to be the trigger of the deaths so there’s that
2 Likes
To be honest I’m also guilty of mentioning it in the first post, and it’s also in the book’s very short blurb.
It’s possible to go into the book completely blind, I’m sure - I thought it was general knowledge by this point (hard to escape hearing about the movie when it came out), but then that was a long time ago. Should I remove it from the first post too, do you think?
4 Likes
You could just to be safe — then it’s really spoiler free, despite being somewhat common knowledge? Make sure to change the emoji in the title if you do too! 
4 Likes
It’s everywhere! 
2 Likes
Yes, it was probably something I read some time ago in the abstract or something, but it totally slipped my mind
It probably is. 
I am not very interested in movies in general, and especially not in horror movies. I do remember hearing about a movie called “The Ring”, hmmm, around 20 years ago, would that match? But I thought it was a horror movie where a child falls into a well and is stuck there for a week or something - which I do hope is not how this book will turn out 
Anyways, thank you for making this thread even more spoiler-free 
2 Likes
Now I am afraid to click on the spoilers.
3 Likes
Just gotta be me and not be reading the book. I can click on aaaaallll the spoilers!
3 Likes
The Ring movie is from about 20 years ago, yes. I was not at all into horror movies back then, but there was no escaping it - it was all everyone seemed to talk about for a while. Anyway, I don’t remember anything like what you described, but then everything I know about it is second-hand at best, so don’t take my word for anything. 
I don’t think you need to be. The only thing “revealed” is something that is already in the book’s blurb.
But everyone, please remember to label all your spoilers, making it clear to what part of the book they’re referring to. Even speculation is best hidden behind spoiler tags and labelled as such - people may not want to be exposed to speculation, in case it turns out to be correct.
4 Likes
I think I know what part Nicole’s talking about. Been a while since I last saw the movie, but it was scary enough to burn parts into my memory.
3 Likes
Looks like we ended up with more accidental spoilers than what we started with
Oops.
3 Likes
I… have decided to keep my mouth shut this time
5 Likes
Finished the first chapter! (all spoilers are referring to what I’ve read so far)
This feels very much like a detective story so far, with the difference that our reporter is very open to the likelihood that something supernatural happened. I’d be looking at why someone would want to kill them and how they did it, personally. The fact that it looks unexplainable doesn’t mean it is. But then, this isn’t this sort of book and we know it 
I was so stressed when he was searching his niece’s room. What if they found him in there? There was no way he could explain himself. I get that he wouldn’t want to stir up even more emotions by openly casting doubt on her cause of death, but surely the fact that a classmate of hers died at the same time in the same way can’t have gone unnoticed? Surely the parents would know? I would probably explain that I wanted to look into it more in a gentle way, and ask for access to her things instead of snooping around like this.
I’m trying to understand this resort thing. This is some kind of resort for the rich where your membership includes a cabin and use of various facilities or something? And some guy lent one of the four his membership card so he could take girls there? Sounds shady.
Are we to assume that whatever killed the niece is still in the house, and his baby daughter sensed it? Or that she’s just generally sensitive to the supernatural?
3 Likes
All spoilers for chapter 1, plus some minor speculations.
Is he, though? I thought he was more focusing on a virus from outer space
But yeah, I guess he just has nothing concrete to work with, so his imagination just goes off.
OMG me too! I hate such scenes
I thought it’s like a club where you buy a membership and then you get a special discount or something. I think you can get the cabin for a very cheap price if you’re a member (didn’t they mention 5000 yen?). And yes, seems that this other guy is a member (through his parents, presumably) and borrowed the card to one of the four so that they could spend a weekend there. Do you think that’s shady? I think it’s quite normal at their age 
I thought this was what we were supposed to think initially (that it’s still present), but then it turned out that she just got scared by the oni mask hanging on the wall? I thought she stopped crying the moment he removed the mask (but I’m not 100% sure).
I took this to be this standard horror trope where you start to hear those noises in a really tense scene, and then the cat appears, and everybody breaks into this nervous relieved laughter. (And then the zombie jumps through the window.)
4 Likes
Chapter 1 spoilers
I thought he was more focusing on a virus from outer space
My read on this is that he knows that he’s fixating on the virus from outer space as a way to avoid thinking about the supernatural explanation. The supernatural is there, it’s obvious, it’s tempting, but… he isn’t ready to REALLY face it, he’s not ready to REALLY deal with it, so he’s saying to himself, “okay, I’m going to make up a semi-plausible non-supernatural explanation, and I’m going to work with that for now, and not have to deal with the supernatural.”
I took this to be this standard horror trope where you start to hear those noises in a really tense scene, and then the cat appears, and everybody breaks into this nervous relieved laughter. (And then the zombie jumps through the window.)
Asakawa seems to be really concerned about why Youko finds the oni mask so terrifying - that’s why he’s asking Shizuka whether she showed Youko an oni in a book, or told her a story about an oni. He seems to be hypothesizing that Youko is reacting from some kind of inborn, instinctive fear. (I think that of course a baby is going to be scared of a mask that looks like an angry face, because babies learn to read emotions on faces at a very young age, but I don’t think Asakawa agrees.) I suspect that’s foreshadowing for something later on, but I don’t know for sure.
4 Likes
(chapter 1 spoilers)
He said himself that a new virus might have leaked from a lab, it wouldn’t necessarily have come from outer space. But that’s just him trying to find a rational explanation. Something (his own preconceptions? the victims’ faces distorted in fear?) has made him feel this is supernatural from the start, but he’s trying his best to stay grounded. I think maybe whatever it was he wrote those years ago that caused him trouble in his career was probably an overenthusiastic acceptance of the supernatural when a rational explanation existed.
You’re probably right. It’s normal at that age to lend friends some space if you have it, it’s the whole resort/club thing that I can’t quite wrap my head around. Why would someone presumably in their twenties have a membership to something like that? Anyway, we’ll probably find out.
That’s exactly what happened, but like @fillanzea says, Asakawa is very concerned about why she found the mask scary, when she found a scary Godzilla statue cute and exciting. Of course the obvious explanation is that babies can read faces (that’s their one survival skill when so young after all) and an angry face is concerning. But he seems to feel that she can instinctively sense something scary that the adults have trained themselves out of sensing, and I too believe that this may be foreshadowing rather than just a jump scare. Maybe she’ll (speculation)act as a warning alarm for a supernatural presence later on?
By the way, is it normal to have such a mask as decoration? I personally like it, but since it’s supposed to represent a woman who became a demon out of jealousy, I wouldn’t expect it to be a standard ornament in a home. Is it to ward off evil or something?
3 Likes
