Shiki Novel Translations 3.6.5

[sinnesspiel]

5

 

Pitch black darkness fell over the mountains. There was no moonlight to shine over the wood of the firs, nor did even the light of the stars reach the village. Tohru ran there as if to take refuge within that darkness. Following after him was a small figure. 

"Did you not control him again? Why not!"

Tohru hurried up the slope keeping his silence. The child who followed after him snapped at him in a childishly high pitched voice from behind.

"I'm telling on you. Tatsumi-san's totally going to be mad at you! Then he's gonna have your place's Mom and Dad and your brother and sister brought to Yamairi!"

"......Natsuno won't say anything."

"How can you be sure enough to say that? You did it last night too. Even though I told you what to do that time too!"

Those who weren't used to hunting went together with one already used to it for a while. The one to put Tohru with Shizuka was Tatsumi. Shizuka was eleven, and from now on she would always be eleven. She looked young but she'd already had several times more victims than Tohru. She didn't seem particularly opposed to it. Rather, aware that despite being a child she was a hunter on par with the adults, she seemed to take a certain pride in it.

"I'm going through all the trouble to teach you like this. You've got to give them instructions or else, I said! You tell them to forget everything. Tell them it's a dream. If you don't, they'll do bad things to you and spread it around."

It was because Shizuka conducted herself completely like a child, Tohru thought. Right was whatever the adults said was right. She was praised for attacking prey, and if she attacked prey well she'd be praised by the adults. That was a twisted part of Shizuka---but all the same, it created a set of solidified values with no room for hesitation. Shizuka did not hesitate to attack people. Rather she seemed to enjoy it as some kind of game.

"To put it another way, start telling them to do it or else! Tatsum-san's going to be mad about it. Even I got scolded! I was told to take care of you right or it was bad!"

Last night Tohru attacked Natsuno. In the attack lead he forgot to give instructions to the victim. Driven the sheer desire to leave, he put Natsuno back into his house and left the scene. Until meeting at the rendezvous point with Shizuka and asked if he did it right, he didn't realize how grave of a mistake he'd made.

"Right now I'm sure he's making a big mess! They'll get together and talk about taking you out. They totally are!"

"Natsuno won't talk. If he was going to tell, he'd have started yesterday. ... In the first place, when he does tell, nobody'll believe him."

"Can you say that for sure? It's you're fault we're in danger like this. Tomorrow it's gonna spread around. Everyone's gonna know. Knowing we're coming, they'll be waiting there with stakes. That's why I told you you have to do it right!" 

Tohru kept silent. His feet moved faster. Shizuka trotted along with him, picking at him.

He understood the danger. During the attack last night it wasn't the case but tonight he intentionally didn't do it. He was against erasing someone's will and making them into human puppets. If he did that, he wasn't Natsuno anymore. Natsuno probably wouldn't say anything.

"I'm telling Tatsumi-san. I'm gonna have him bring the people from your home to Yamairi."

Tohru couldn't do anything but remain silent. ---That prison. 

The holding cell for sacrifices. Taken from their houses, sacrifices gathered up just to be killed. That was something nobody wanted to put their families through. 

"It's already done. I'll explain it to Tatsumi-san." Tohru kept his eyes cast down as he climbed the mountain, coming to the narrow mountain road. The car came from the south of the western mountain and picked up Tohru and Shizuka. 

At some point they came to where the northern and western mountains met. There were groups of three to five people gathered from the village. 

Nobody brought a light but they came following the narrow road without seeming to watch their footing too closely through the underbrush. There were some moving quietly on their own but there were also those moving together. Those were the ones exchanging words in cheerful tones. When going down the mountain nobody spoke. Within the village they only left the sound of the grass parting, like the fall of a secret wave. And yet when returning everyone was in high spirits as if released from a binding. But Tohru didn't feel that way in the slightest.

Tohru quickened his pace as if to escape people's gaze---as if to escape Shizuka's rebuking. 

Comments

[airlynx]

I'm afraid I've been neglecting doing analyses on these for a while, sorry! You know that I've had kind of a lot on my plate.

I really like where the story is going. It's definitely started a new part, with the Shiki being discovered; now it's not a mystery anymore, but still horror in a way I like a lot. Even though it's a lot more detailed in the anime, I like the way we're getting to know the Shiki more. In the anime, once they showed the Shiki at first, I felt really disgusted at what they do, and that's true in the novel as well. The way the author has them talk so casually about killing people off, and then their brutal hierarchical structure with the Kirishikis calling the shots, never giving the Shiki themselves any other way of living. If this continues (although I'm sure that the novel will later have more sympathetic Shiki parts, like Tohru and Nao), it really creates an emotional investment in the reader, and I feel like it's a technique that makes the readers hate the Shiki now. It makes the reader feel uncomfortable (the thought of a corpse coming back to life is so wrong it's hard not to feel uneasy) and indignant (our democracy would frown on their way of government), kind of like how the villagers would feel. By the time that the whole village will know about the Shiki's existence, the reader would want the shiki gone, just like the villagers. This is just speculation as to how the rest of the book would go, but I love any book that ties you to the events as a reader and provides an emotional connection. I always say I'm on the human side no matter what, but the book isn't supposed to be about one side being right and the other being wrong; in fact, for first-time readers (again, I wish I were experiencing this for the first time =v= Even if I just started reading this without knowing the anime first, I would have probably gone and watched it by now...) the impact would be even better if they were on the humans' side the whole time, and then it starts to get clear that humans are also monsters. That way you can't say, "Oh, the villagers are all paranoid hicks, doomed by canon", you'll be like "shit, but I also wanted the shiki gone and would have tried to get rid of them too". If I was a villager, I know I would have, especially if I was one of the villagers that haven't had encounters with the Shiki (Seishin gets the unique chance to get to know the Shiki, while nobody else really does)...and that's bad, since I'd be killing people while thinking they're beasts too. Such is the instinct for survival, in Shiki and humans both.

In fact, it's also easy if you're a shiki sympathizer to say "the shiki are people too, how can the villagers be so brutal?" Yet they'd have to remember that most of the villagers have never seen the Shiki as real people and instead all they have known are monsters that come in at night and kill their friends and family. It's hard to be sympathetic. Can...can we just give Ono a round of applause? I don't think I've ever read/watched/experienced anything that made me question everything so much! Maybe it's because I have people to discuss it with, though. Usually when I start going off about books I passionately enjoy, my friends and family just kinda groan, lol.

And even Tohru has to follow the shiki's strict way of life. I thought it was interesting that despite the fact that Tohru was Natsuno's good friend, he still tries to do everything by the book and treat Natsuno like any other victim. He's a lot more ruthless here, isn't he? He doesn't need Tatsumi or Megumi's help that much to bite Natsuno, and I was also expecting Natsuno to ask him to run away with him somewhere in there, but does that happen in the book? Or maybe the anime just did that to enhance the boy's love appeal.

I found it interesting that Yamairi is a place for 'sacrifice'. I'm not sure what that means...if I understood the anime right, it's just a place where they put shiki while they wait for them to rise up. But it seems like here, they kidnap shiki's family members to keep them obedient? Or weaken them so they can use them for the newly risen, like Masao? That's certainly a dark twist, as if Shiki wasn't dark already.

Also, Shizuka's like the obnoxious version of Sunako. Which means, Sunako was just like Shizuka when she was newly risen?

6-3
- "even Toshio hesitate" -> hesitated
- "His father interacted zealously with other medical professionals" this depends on how you want to translate it, but I think you might change it to "his father HAD interacted zealously" because since the rest of the book is written in simple past tense, a reader might think that Ozaki's dad is still doing this, which would sound weird because he's dead.
- "If you don't convey the situation to them thoroughly, then." Then what? This sentence was a little confusing, I couldn't see what Takae is getting at.
- "Something they had to take measures even one step sooner to put any kind of stop to it that they could." This sentence is kind of confusing too :(

6-4
- "outhis" -> out his
- "He's snuck" -> he'd snuck
- "With their body leaned over, looking fixedly up at the window, it then stretched its arm out towards the window" if referring to the shape as an "it", maybe change "their" to "its"
- "keepig" -> keeping
- "How many times now hat Tohru knocked on the window" hat -> had
- didnt' -> didn't

6-5
- Tatsum-san -> Tatsumi-san
- "in the attack lead he forgot to give instructions to the victim." Why is the word "lead" there?
- "Driven the sheer desire to leave" -> driven BY the sheer desire
- It's you're fault -> your fault
- "If he did that, he wasn't Natsuno anymore." The way this is written, it sounds like Tohru's saying that TOHRU won't be Natsuno anymore, which kinda throws me off.