We are following the below schedule (page counts may vary based on your medium):
Week
Up to
Approximate Pages
Percent
End page
Week 2 - Feb 5
Read through end of chapter 1
33
25%
71
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 黒い森の記憶?
Yes, I’m planning to read along/am reading along this week
Surely the old man didn’t drag a corpse out from under his house and across a meadow into a forest just to avoid having the police buzzing around his house? Also if the police don’t figure this out that seems a bit incompetent… At any rate it seems to rule out the “old man is the serial killer” theory.
I find it interesting that we still don’t get even a glimpse into the old man’s thinking and instead only hear what he says out loud. Surely an innocent bystander, upon finding a dead girl under his porch, would instantly call the police in panic? Instead he goes back in, reads a letter, washes and dries a bin, has a nap, and waits for darkness so he can dump the corpse in the woods. I respect his need for privacy, but surely that’s a bit extreme?
And he seems to have some sympathy for the man the police was (incompetently) chasing? The police is often spectacularly incompetent in mystery novels, but surely the dogs could have traced the body to his porch and bin?
Despite apparent evidence to the contrary, I’m not yet ruling out that he may be the serial killer, or at least know who it is. His first thought when he saw the body seemed to be “why here?” instead of “oh no, poor girl!”. Not an entirely natural reaction. But then it’s also unnatural that he’s decorated all the weird items he’s been getting in the mail instead of throwing them away or at least hiding them in the boxes they came in.
What was that about his brother in the letter? I wonder what happened. Maybe his brother is the serial killer? Nah, no one would want a doctor with a criminal for a brother to work in their hospital. Was he unable to save him? There must be some story there. And then we also have the fake police officer to think about. So many unconnected variables.
This week’s portion felt more like 赤川 by the way. Lots of empty space on the pages
Hahaha I was just like whyyyyy… Just call the police and get it over and done with… But no, he needs to clean stuff up himself, destroying evidence and such. I suspect that eventually he will be found out, thought to be the murderer, and a lot of trouble arises. Also how did the trash can not mark a big trail across the meadow if he had to drag it along like that??
Sigh. I think I mistook this for a serious book for a minute. Here we go
Last week I didn’t notice as much, but this week the sentence 本を読みながら、そのまま寝入ってしまったらしい。caught my eye, so we are really outside observers coming to this scene and interpolating what happened here before, instead of being in his head. Very interesting point of view!
I strongly suspect there must be more to this, something lurking in his past. Him breaking off with everybody and not wanting to be bothered is beyond unusual.
Maybe it’s more along the lines of “why does this corpse bother me here unexpectedly?” than “I knew it was coming, but why here and not somewhere else?”
My guess is that the “police officer” is the serial killer, and he wanted to scout the house in order to hide the corpse there. But why he did so, is absolutely unclear to me. It might be related to some weird background story relating to his brother…
Absolutely! He said it himself that him dragging the bin with the corpse through the woods was a pretty ridiculous scene to begin with. Sigh… there goes my hope of a “serious” 殺人事件
Right? The beginning was so atmospheric, and this part was black slapstick comedy more or less.
Also, we spend so much time on the old man doing mundane stuff like eating, washing up, vacuuming, looking for his slippers, hunting down stray bin lids in the wind, failing to nail stuff properly and looking for lost nails, failing to load bodies into bins properly and having to retry.
It’s very good for practical, everyday vocabulary so far.
Finished with this weeks section. It went smoother than the first week. Still took me multiple hours though.
That the old man is not fuzzed by a corpse seems plausible if he is an experienced surgeon.
This made me LoL
Yeah, not calling the police here and touching/carrying the body (!!!) is asking for trouble, not avoiding it.
Now I am thinking he has his own skeleton in the closet which an investigation would dig up.
I already deleted this part from memory.
It really made me wonder what the author was smoking.
One thing that stood out to me is that the protagonist is only ever reacting.
He does not drive the plot, rather things happen to him.
Also caught up to this week! And added the few new names to the wiki, although I kind of doubt they’ll reoccur.
The scene with the corpse in the bin had me cackling. What an absurd change of tone. Also loved his reaction of ‘why here’ - but it does make me think he knows more than is being let on. Also very curious about ‘松田/寺田’ and what’s going on between the two doctors. I wonder if the other doctor will force the plot forward somehow… So many clues and so little real info!
4:
I did expect the old guy to not survive this chapter. When they gave us a reason to dislike him (because of how he treats his daughter) I thought “oh, it’s so that we are less sad, when he dies.” I can really picture the eerie woods at nighttime. I’ve always found dark woods very creepy and am always happy when I can get out of them quickly on solo hikes.
5:
sus. very sus.
on to week 3.
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Law and Order 
