We are following the below schedule (page counts may vary based on your medium):
Week
Up to
Approximate Pages
Percent
Paperback page
Week 1
* - last sentence ending 最後になった
31
8%
40
Week 2
* - last sentence ending 視ていたのだろう
26
14%
67
Week 3
* - last sentence ending 明かしてください
26
19%
94
Week 4
end of 第一話
24
24%
118
Week 5
* - last sentence ending じいぅと見つめていた
28
31%
155
Week 6
* - last sentence ending 席に立った
25
37%
181
Week 7
end of 第二話
29
43%
210
Week 8
* - last sentence ending 女の子です
29
49%
Week 9
* - last sentence ending 見つかったそうです
33
56%
Week 10
* - last sentence ending 愛しげに抱きしめた
33
64%
Week 11
* - last sentence ending はそう判断した
26
70%
Week 12
English sentence containing “Iced coffee”
29
76%
Week 13
English sentence containing “Grimoire”
29
81%
Week 14
* - last sentence ending その経緯を知りたいです
44
90%
Week 15
until 解説
29
96%
I will generally copy this information over thread to thread each week for ease of finding - you can always expect the schedule at the top of any weekly thread
Law and Order
Any reveals, for the current chapters must be behind spoilers or detail curtains. When we get further in you don’t need to hide details that were revealed in previous chapters.
Questions on vocab, grammar, nuance, and the like are both welcome and encouraged. If you’re not sure if it’s a spoiler, assume it is and use one of the above options to hide the text.
You are encouraged to speculate and guess wildly
Be kind about other peoples’ wild guesses
Even if you don’t read the chapter(s) in time, you are still encouraged to post in the thread for that reading once you have finished it. I advise not reading ahead in the threads as you may see spoilers.
To gauge participation - a poll!
Are you reading week 2 of Medium?
Yes, I’m planning to read along/am reading along this week
Finished some parts of this week’s reading (until the first * break)! For some reason it’s a way smoother experience for me than last week and the plot is interesting.
I give the main character permission to start noticing other things on women outside of their appearance Also, he sure took his time contemplating whether to help her when she was getting harassed?
Poor 結花. Even though we already knew about her fate from last week’s reading, I was still hoping for some better outcome.
Had to look up 泣き女. Very interesting, never heard of this tradition before.
I also didn’t know what 卒塔婆 is, but a quick google image search cleared that up quickly.
The mystery deepens lol! My totally unfounded suspicion is that it was the assistant after all, she provided the alibi for Hisui, and it was Hisui they looked out for in the CCTV footage, so the converse implies they didn’t look out for the assistant nor check with Hisui if the assistant went out for a bit that night. I love speculating with mysteries
When the book talks about Hisui’s 翠の双眸 (as it does at the very end of this week’s section, for example) should that be read すい or みどり?
On the subject of eye colour, back in the week one section when we first meet Hisui her eyes (双眸 again – the author seems to like that word) are described as 碧玉色 and presumably the Japanese reader would take that to mean “green”, which isn’t I think what I would infer from “jasper coloured” in English.
I had no idea what colour jasper is so I looked it up, and the first result was a kind of brown Looking further I saw it can unhelpfully be almost any colour…
But I guess that's the kind of green we're talking about:
I’m pretty sure I looked up 碧玉 in google image search, went ‘ah, jade’ and didn’t give it a second thought But apparently jasper is a type of quartz, so a totally different rock.
I’ve revised my feeling on this book’s “light novel-y-ness” and I can definitely see why some reviewers called it a light novel. 花束は毒 | L28 was similar in a way actually - the general plot felt very ‘standard mystery novel’ but the female detective and her relationship to the male narrator had light novel vibes.
I’m reminded of some article (or maybe youtube video?) I read/watched recently where someone was talking about how YA is getting so popular with adult readers that books with adult themes are being written in a YA style OT: and their overall point was that this was bad for young adults because it was pushing adult content on young readers who should have content catering to them and their experiences. This was in the English publishing world though, and the adult themes were more, er, adult
Not having read any light novels (that I’m aware of), I’m not sure what these vibes are, all I know is that this book hasn’t captured my interest in the way that I’d expect it to, given the plot. Is it that the female protagonist may have special powers/talents, but her main defining characteristic is that she’s beautiful yet vulnerable (and a potential love interest)?
She’s beautiful and so cool but she reveals herself to be weak and girly and so rescueable, but then she uses her ultra cool powers to not need saving anyways. Also the male main seems like a bland self insert so far.
I’ve read way more YA in English than in Japanese but what I’ve read in Japanese the themes tend to overlap quite a bit. It’s nice to have the tropes to relax back into when you want a more chill read, and also somewhat telling of the culture what the tropes are.
But yeah, this isn’t like screaming “light novel in disguise!” at me, but I can see why some reviewers said it was.
Interestingly, I feel like I may have read very old-fashioned (20s? 30s?) mystery stories with characters/relationships like that. I think what’s bothering me is exactly this, I still have no proper feel for any of the characters, not even the narrator. They could be anyone.
I feel like the dead woman we actually have an idea of personality for she goes to psychics but is leery about them, is usually quite fastidious in both keeping dates and her appearance, etc etc. We know more about her than the two of them!
True! And keeps a messy home, even though she’s organized in her daily schedule. I guess we had to get to know her real quick, before she died. We have time for the rest of them.
I dunno if I’d have thought “oh, this feels light-novel-y” if the topic hadn’t come up here, but I was thinking it had a bit of that to it. I think for me the vibes included the way the prologue sets the scenario up as “these characters are going to be solving multiple cases together, so if it’s popular it can extend into a book 2, 3, 4…” and the way there’s a focus on the interaction between the two lead characters.
Maybe I’m misremembering but wasn’t that justification for her having coffee and food out when she died? I suspect because they were were all “it smells like coffee” and made a point of it that it wasn’t simply that she’s messy and doesn’t clean up. To me it reads as it wasn’t a burgler that killed her
We know she was messy from the photos she showed of her room at first, which looked hastily and incompletely tidied up. And yes, they claim that would account for the coffee being left out from the previous day, but I’m not buying it. Surely she’d have drunk it? She was so looking forward to it after all. Untouched coffee and she looking like she just came back from work don’t form a coherent picture for me, messy or not. Surely the coffee is a clue.
Sudden inspiration (speculation): Doesn’t that put the assistant in the picture? She’s the one who started the whole coffee thing. What if she visited, ostensibly to learn more about coffee making or something?
Yeah, I feel like the details of how she made iced coffee are going to be a clue. As usual I am too lazy to actually go back and reread and look for clues and contradictions though
Ok I haven’t finished this week’s reading yet, but when Hisui asked Yuika about 水滴 or sth in her house (last week), was that actually a prophesy? I thought it was a guess about past like how she did with her job. But she can also see a part of future? Like visions?
I hope I haven’t made a mistake with their names
She had asked her if she had noticed strange droplets in her apartment recently, and the answer was yes. It wasn’t a prophecy, but something that had already happened/was happening, and apparently she deduced it from what she heard and saw. She might be able to see the future, I don’t know, but this part wasn’t a prophecy as far as I can tell.
My guess is (speculation) that the droplets are supposed to be the tears of the crying woman who watched her sleep.
Law and Order 
Also, he sure took his time contemplating whether to help her when she was getting harassed? 
after all, 
Looking further I saw it can unhelpfully be almost any colour…
But apparently jasper is a type of quartz, so a totally different rock.
