Alright, finally done with chapter 2! This first week took me pretty much exactly 4 hours in total, at ~3700 characters/h. Seems pretty substainable if it doesn’t get harder 
Here are my thoughts now that I’ve read everything for this week:
Chapter 1 & 2 thoughts
By the end of chapter 2 it doesn’t seem to have much of a point yet. I think pretty much everything afterwards could’ve happened still: She goes to Tokyo in hopes of making money to pay for her sister’s surgery, and gets rejected everywhere because she doesn’t have particular skills, is young and not dressed well.
But while I’m not quite sold on that particular part of the story, the writing and the visuals were enjoyable, so - decent start, overall. And I’m curious how it’ll continue. After all, this was more or less just the prologue, and now the main characters are finally together in the location that’ll probably be our main site for the remainder of the game.
Haha, yeah. On one side: “My sister will die if I don’t get enough money, and I wanted out of the town where I was almost forced into prostitution and somebody died because of me.”. On the other side: “I’ve been kinda drifting through life after failing to be admitted to the unversity. It’s kinda meh, so I thought going to a foreign country without speaking the language would be a good way to earn ¥¥¥.”
But now that he’s in Japan, Jing’s stakes went up a lot. I don’t know how much money he has, but I assume it’s not much considering he left because he wasn’t paid particularly well - and now he’s in a big city in a foreign country, without any decent contacts and without being able to speak the local language.
Yeah, it’s a bit weird. Especially… pre-demolition, if I remember correctly? So it can’t be about protecting the building or something similar. And so far she hasn’t been required to do anything. She hasn’t been asked for any specific skillset either, and apparently it’s something that even somebody who can’t even speak the local language can do. So… I guess it really is just living there, for whatever reason.
I had two sections where I had a bit of trouble with understanding/grammar. Maybe somebody has an idea?
Grammar questions
I’m not quite sure what to do with the だけ in that sentence in combination with the ても.
If the だけ wasn’t there, I would read it as: “Tokyo is amazing. Even though I was living in such a small town, I heard this rumor often.” As in “In such a small town I wouldn’t expect to often hear about Tokyo, but despite that I still often heard that Tokyo is amazing.”
If I would read その噂だけはよく聞いていた on its own, it sounds to me like “This was the only rumor about Tokyo I heard often”, but I don’t see how that fits with “Even though I was living in such a small town”.
The Kireicake dictionary suggests that だけは can mean “at least”. With that, I guess the meaning could be something like “Tokyo is amazing. Even though I was living in such a small town (where you wouldn’t expect rumors about Tokyo at all), at least this rumor was something I often heard.” Is it that? (But I can’t find any grammar sources that treat だけは as “at least”.)
I’m struggling with both parts of the 先ほどまでは、ここで終わりだっただけに食い下がる。 sentence.
- 先ほどまでは - Up to this point?
- ここで終わりだった - It was over there
- だけに - precisely because
- 食い下がる - (I) persisted.
Maybe something like “Precisely because in the previous job interviews it was over at this point, I persisted”?
(Visual Novel Reading Club)
Really curious what the employer’s goal is with that one
I keep forgetting, and since I guess there’s no way to move back, I’m saving my place frequently.
For someone to do something like that, nevermind someone she knew and trusted, is so horrible. And then she gets hurt trying to escape the situation… Let’s hope her luck changes soon! 
