Shiki Novel Translations 2.7.3

[sinnesspiel]

3

"Huh, it's another move." Natsuno stopped.

"Hn?" Said Tohru who came out to buy his usual cigarettes, stopping. "Ah, really."

Just coming out of the Mutous house was a harvested field and across that field could be seen a truck easing in around a row of houses. Natsuno checked his wrist watch immediately. 

In coming home from school, he came back together off of the bus with Tamotsu. Since then he'd stayed close with Tamotsu going back to the Mutou's house, being fed dinner by them before going back to his own house. Just when he was thinking of leaving, Tohru's father had returned. It seemed lately the hospital was busy, with Mutou returning so late. Not just late, it seemed he was bringing work home too. He'd even caught sight of their mother Shizuko helping with it. He worked this late, he thought looking at his wrist watch and it was already ten o'clock. Just as he thought, the hand on his watch was passing eleven. No matter how you thought about it it was a late hour to be moving. 

"Takasago movers again." Natsuno said to himself, making Tohru tilt his head.

"Again?"

"Just last time there was a move at a weird hour wasn't there? That was Takasago movers too."

"Did something like that happen?"

"Are you already going senile, you old fart?" Sighing deliberately to be heard, Tohru's fist came flying out at him. Laughing at that, he dodged, separating from Tohru. While heading on the night road to his house, he'd thought that something was off. 

The summer of continuing deaths. When that about ended, now it was movings being sighted. No, maybe nothing had ended. Mutou's returning home so late the sun had set was proof of that. Anyway, it's busy, Mutou grumbled. Bust meant that there were just that many patients, that the number of people who were sick was increasing. Actually, he'd also seen a lot of funerals. He didn't know who all they were for but it was indeed proof people were dying. 

This was what happened when the village was exposed to depopulation. A lot of moves. ---But, he couldn't make sense of the fact that those moves were all separately at night. And then there was the fact that they were all with the same moving company, what was that?

He returned home feeling unsatisfied. As he came in to the entryway and took off his shoes, his mother poked her face in bitterly, looking as if she were fresh from the bath. 

"Welcome back. The Mutous' again?"

"Yeah."

"Again and again, being treated to dinner over there. They're in the neighborhood so can't you at least come back for dinner?"

Yeah, he gave as a half hearted answer.

"Or at least if you came home once then went back out? Honestly, which family do you live with!"

Which family nothing, Natsuno murmured in his heart. This wasn't a "family." They were the ones who refused to take on the form of a married couple, refusing to be a family in the first place, weren't they, he thought. This was nothing more than a place where two adults, a man and a woman, gathered together with a child. He didn't plan to criticize his parents way of life but he was disconcerted by the way they declined the obvious while at the same time being indifferent to the way they themselves demanded the obvious. 

Without looking at his mother giving idle complaints, once he tried to return to his room she called out to stop him.

"Hey, a post card came for you." His mother pointed above the shoe rack. 

"For me?" Natsuno took the post card in hand. "---What is this?"

It was a late summer greeting. Passing his eyes over the writing, once he knew it was Megumi, his brows furrowed. 

"Sending a late summer greeting now, that's weird, isn't it? Who is she, this Shimizu-san girl."

"Don't read other people's postcards."

"Oh my, but since it's a post card it can't be helped can it?" 

He stared at his mother coolly then lowered his eyes to the postcard. 

---Shimizu Megumi. 

"Isn't it from Shimizu-san's daughter? That."

"....Probably."

"That's not good. Why is a post card coming now? It's creepy."

"Probably somebody's prank," he said heading directly to his room. He turned on the light in his room and looked again at the postcard. 

Without a doubt, this is that "Shimizu Megumi," he thought. But, Megumi died in the middle of August. There was no reason for the dead to send him a post card, and no matter how he thought about it, it was too late for a late summer greeting card. Megumi might have written it before she died. And some kind of accident happened that least it it being delivered now, then? 


Somehow it still felt like something was going unaccounted for but he didn't think he needed to force himself to feel creeped out. Natsuno moved to throw it into the trash----for some reason, though, he stopped. 

He didn't plan to hold onto it and treasure it dearly. But, there was no reason he had to throw it away or whatever today, he thought. 


Tohru bent down to the vending machine and took out his pack of cigarettes. Pocketing the change, he turned around. While walking along the night road, something felt off, he thought. 

There were a lot of funerals, a lot of moves. ---Definitely a lot, he thought. There had never been this many before. He didn't want to jump to the conclusion that something that had never happened before happening was weird but he couldn't come to a satisfactory conclusion. Lately, something was strange in the village, he couldn't help but feeling. Like something was out of tune, like the wheels were turning without getting anywhere, like things had deviated terribly from where they should have been.

Unthinkingly tossing his cigarette pack in the air, he caught it as it came back down. It then jumped from the palm of his hand onto the road surface, rebounding and tumbling. It tumbled before a young man. The man picked it up.

"Ah, sorry."

"No. Here."

He didn't recognize the face of the man handing it over. He was probably a few years older than Tohru. It wasn't as if he knew all of the villagers by any means but he did indeed know those of his own generation. If it wasn't somebody he recognized, he could only think he was someone from Kanemasa.

"By chance are you from Kanemasa?"

That's right, the other smiled. "This's the first time I've met someone the same age as me. I am called Tatsumi. Good to meet you."

"Hello, good to meet you too. I'm Mutou."

"I had thought there wasn't anybody around my age in the village."

"That isn't the case. There aren't many, so the odds of encountering them are low, I'd think, though."

While answering, he thought, this is him. He was probably the rumored "young one from Kanemasa." The one who appeared at Masao's place.

"---Are you out for a walk?"

"I'm not out for a walk persay, more like loitering. It's boring inside the house but there's no place to go. I wonder what the young people in the village do to pass the time every day..." Tatsumi said, Tohru smiling.

"In the village, there's not much to do besides watch TV and sleep. Eating's about it. If you want to do anything more substantial while hanging out, there's nothing to do but go out of the village."

Tatsumi blinked. "Then, there is no choice but to go to Mizobe as expected. By car?"

"Yup."

"But, if you go out by car, you cannot go drinking, can you?"

"Well, that's what it'd be at face value."

Tatsumi sighed. "I think that it is a nice place, but as expected with no place to go, there's too much time on your hands." Saying this, Tatsumi laughed. "That said, if I walk out in the daytime, I get the feeling I've become a rare beast!"

Tohru laughed. "If you don't have someone to hang out with, there's nothing at all, in this village. That said, even if you take the trouble of going all the way out to Mizobe, I don't think there's any place you could pass the time having that much for yourself, but. Especially at night, yeah? If you go out to Mizobe, the night still ends early there too. Well, unlike the city, that's just how it is here."

"That's how it is."

"There's no major place to hang out but, even so if you like, next time, I could show you around."

"Really?"

"If you like, give me a yell on the weekend. I live in Naka-Sotoba. If you ask for the house of Mutou who works in the hospital office, they'll know right away."

"Ah---you work at the Ozaki Clinic."

"My old man does. I'm just a simple office worker, myself. It's a loud and busy house where it's hard to unwind but, if you want, come on by sometime."

Thank you, Tatsumi smiled. He looked at Tohru as if with some implication. 

"I'm glad you offered. ---I will definitely visit you. Until then, best regards."

Comments

[airlynx]

I always get kind of a 'whoa' moment when I'm reminded that Tohru smokes cigarettes. He's such a pureball in the anime that I just can't see him doing it.

And it's *that* scene! What is it, like episode 3? Right at the beginning of the anime but so far into the book. I could picture one of Tatsumi's eyes going red and everything. I'm kind of put down that a back scratcher wasn't involved...

Couldn't they just go drinking at Ohkawa's sake place? No need to go into Mizobe.

[sinnesspiel]

Yeah, novel Tohru's an adult with a job who, if he's like most Japanese businessmen, goes out drinking at least semi-regularly. Anime!Tohru is one of the more popular choice for Shiki roleplayers; I somehow doubt novel Tohru will be as big a hit, even if the novel does get known by more than like all four people reading the translation now.

[airlynx]

Does Tohru even have a very prominent role in the novel? I'm kinda thinking that if the anime decided to make Tohru into a smoker as well as including the Natsuno/Tohru bromance, they would make Natsuno always disapprove of Tohru's smoking and then play it for laughs. I really liked Tohru's portrayal in the anime, I think it's hard for someone who saw the anime first to not picture him as he is in the anime when reading the novel.

[sinnesspiel]

His role is about the same, just with a few additional scenes and making him take Tamotsu's place a bit to make him closer to Natsuno, and a prior interest in Ritsuko. He doesn't have romantic interest in Ritsuko, but he's still moved by her in the novel because she does what he couldn't (resist the hunger).

I picture him like in the anime too, just looking a little more like his dad for age. I don't think it's a huge change as far as personality goes, but they wanted to make it a "teen" story for the Jump demographic... and yaoi and romance appeal to teens, so gaying it up at Natsuno and hetting him out to Ritsuko are obvious moves, while they're already aging him down so we have more mains in the desired age demographic.

[airlynx]

I really liked the addition that they made Tohru interested in Ritsuko; it made his death all the more jarring, especially after he asked Natsuno to help him ask her out for a drive. I thought it was the same in the novel, so I think a few chapters back it was, when someone teased Ritsuko about meeting someone in Mizobe or something, I just assumed it was Tohru.. So until now I actually just thought that they were already in a relationship in the novel. Myth, busted!

Shiki is so far out of any demographic that it's hard to pidgeonhole it into one. Imagine trying to age down Ohkawa or something into a shounen hero. That could create an all new storyline altogether because if he still has Atsushi they could make him into a teen dad.

[sinnesspiel]

Yeah! Tohru's situation seemed a lot more vested with an interest in Ritsuko; he was torn but ultimately still killed Natsuno. His guilt drives him to let Yasuyo go, which is a solid plot arc. But rather than Ritsuko being a girl who really drives the guilt home by resisting where he couldn't, by not succumbing to what he did, she's all that and someone he admired and liked even before everything went to hell. Imagine how validated he'd have been if even she drank blood and how much harder it hits that she didn't. I thought that was a great change!

Ritsuko has some flashbacks to her boyfriend wanting her to ditch the village; the stuff he said would be pretty out of character for Tohru. There's a brief flash of said boyfriend dissing the village, though he might be a past-tense boyfriend she'd already dumped. If he is still her current boyfriend, it'd be interesting to explore in the anime/manga whether she's aware of Tohru's attraction to her, and whether she's entertaining that because he's a villager and won't push her to leave town like her current one. That's clearly important to her in any canon.

[airlynx]

I remember the first time I watched it and after Tohru got Shikified, I was surprised that he didn't angst about or stalk Ritsuko because didn't he have a big crush on her? Wouldn't he feel depressed if all his possibilities got taken away from him? I kind of let it go when they get reunited in Yamairi, but it turns out that he didn't have angst about Ritsuko because they didn't have a relationship prior to his death in in the novel!
And I don't know if this is in the novel or not, but I loved that scene where Ozaki sees Natsuno looking down at the bodies of Tohru and Ritsuko. I could practically see the flashback he must be having of Tohru asking him to help him ask her out.
Also it's sweet that Ritsuko doesn't look down on Tohru for giving in to the temptation; that also shows that she's a really good character!

I don't know if Ritsuko would be the kind of person that leads other people on while in a committed relationship, even if she does so slightly. But then again I can also see her having lots of platonic friendships. This kind of ties in to what I was saying about her being accepting and not looking down on people, because although she has no problem with herself staying in the village, she can still understand why other people would be disgusted by village life (she was very understanding of Natsuno too).