I think I've caught a really bad cold...
Holic ch.112 translation
p.1
Himawari(Hi): "I'll go home, then! See you!"
Wata: "Uh, yeah. Take care!"
p.2
Wata: "Gee, it's dark already!"
Wata: "But it's good to know today is the last time I have
to go and fetch water with you! Ah, what a relief!"
Wata: "What's it now? Is something on your mind again?"
Dou: "......"
Wata: "Anyway, let's get this done quickly. Standing around here forever
will only make us look even more suspicious. Especially you!"
p.3
---
p.4
Wata: "Done! Let's go b..."
Wata: "Ouch!"
Wata: "Wah!"
p.5
Wata: "The wrapping cloth has flown inside the house!"
Wata: "Oh no..."
Dou: "Is it valuable?"
Wata: "I have no idea, but it does belong to Yuuko-san after all [so it might be important]."
Wata: "And given the pots were wrapped in it right from the start...there might be a meaning to it."
Dou: "So we have...no choice....but to go and get it back?"
p.6
Wata: "The doorbell is not making a sound."
Wata: "Is nobody home...? ...but the woman on the second floor..."
Dou: "....I'll go."
p.7
Wata: "hm?"
Dou: "I'll go and get it. You wait here."
Wata: "It's my fault that it flew inside in the first place, so I'll go."
Dou: "You're waiting here. No talking."
Wata: "You think I'm scared?! I'm going in! You can stay here and cry until I come back!"
Wata: "...it's...open..."
p.8
Wata: "....it almost looks like this place was abandoned..."
p.9
Wata: "Excuse me! Is anyone home?"
Dou: "....."
Wata: "Doesn't seem like anyone's here."
Wata: "Then the woman on the second floor...."
Wata: "Ah!"
p.10
Dou: "Hey!"
p.11
Wata: "Excuse me."
Dou: "...."
p.12
Wata: "Just as I thought..."
Wata: "To be sitting here everyday, wearing the same clothes and without speaking a word..."
Wata: "This is a doll."
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Holic. ch. 113 translation
p.1
Doumeki(Dou): "It might be."
Watanuki(Wata): "...Doumeki?"
Dou: "But there's another possibility."
p.2
Wata: "...what do you mean?"
Dou: "Just like I thought, the way her skin and hair look..."
Wata: "Bu..but didn't you say you din't know the people who lived here..?"
Dou: "I'm not talking about her as a person."
Dou: "I've seen others 'like her' countless times."
p.3
Dou: "[They] won't move and won't speak."
Dou: "I've seen that so many times."
Dou: "This is"
p.4
Dou: "a corpse."
p.5
Wata: "....impossible! In this heat? If it were a corpse it would smell or at least look rotten!"
Dou: "Corpses these days don't rot."
Dou: "My grandfather told me that back in the day it used to be a lot of trouble to keep bodies kept at the temple [before their funeral] from rotting [too fast], especially in summer or during the rainy season."
((Note: During the rainy season it is very humid throughout Japan. On Okinawa we had 100% humidity. .......damnit....I wanted to go to Japan and not some subtropical tourist destination XP!!
Dou: "But lately people stay as they are even if they've been dead for a few days."
Wata: "...why?"
p.6
Dou: "People nowadays eat foods that contain artificial colourings and preservatives every day. These build up in people's bodies over the years and will eventually act as a preservant for the body itself."
p.7
Wata: "....this is....a corpse?"
Wata: "And then Doumeki called the police..."
p.8
Yuuko(Yuu): "And?"
Wata: "...it was...a corpse."
Yuu: "....not even dying, rotting and getting burried seems easy anymore for people nowadays."
Yuu: "You don't look too well."
Wata: "That...body...somehow..."
p.9
Yuu: "Were there any ayakashi or ghosts close to that body?"
Wata: "No, but...compared to seeing ayashi or ghosts....[seeing someone who's] staying the same... even though they're dead is so much more..."
Yuu: "Watanuki."
Wata: "Yes?"
Yuu: "You're feeling uncomfortable right now."
p.10
Wata: "Uncomfortable...? [I wouldn't say that...]"
Yuu: "One could say you are not feeling the least bit happy right now, are you?"
Wata: "Yes, I guess you could..."
Yuu: "Why did you go into the house with the well?"
Wata: "The cloth the pot was wrapped in flew into the house because of the wind."
Yuu: "Because of the wind?"
Wata: "Ah, now that I think of it, my pinky suddenly started hurting."
p.11
Yuu: "Did you do something with that finger?"
Wata: "No, I didn't do anything at all."
Yuu: "Really?"
Wata: "I made a promise with Himawari-chan and we linked pinkies."
Yuu: "Indeed."
p.12
Yuu: "The finger you linked with Himawari-chan when you made a promise
("yubikiri") with her suddenly started hurting. That is what made the cloth get blown away by the wind and made you go into the house."
-----------------
Comments and thoughts (on chapter 113):
I'm not surprised at all at how this story turned out. Actually I was expecting something along these lines to happen. Doumeki is the son(?) of a priest (it is to assume that his father is a priest, too) and we know that he has been helping around the temple. But since buddhism and a lot of buddhist rituals that are intergrated into Japanese culture, are not that familiar in the Western world, a lot of people might not realize what that "helping at the temple" actually is about. (Imagine living in a church that also acts as a funeral home, i.e. 'storing' bodies before the funeral etc.) Since Japanese people usually know more about the chores at a temple, Japanese fanfiction looks at Doumeki from a very different angle. I have read quite a few very good Doumeki-centered stories that focus on how living at a temple(becoming a priest one day?) and the constant presentof the dead/death and the mourning affects Doumeki thinking, his actions and his feelings towards Watanuki.
If I had to chose one over another, I would prefer those stories to the manga. I don't want to offend anyone and I'm not calling Clamp-sensei pretentious or anything of the sort, but I am sure that some of you will agree with me that with Clamp "it's always the same". That is also one of the reasons Clamp-sensei will NEVER win a big manga prize for one of their works: they would rather generalize everything and blame it on humans/society than deal with and depict how a single human being is
affected by things like pain or suffering. I am mildly surprised at this chapter for alluding to Doumeki's pain at all. In typical Clamp-manner the pain however is only depicted superficially, in a painful stare and knitted brows.
"Would Holic be a better story if someone else took the plot and characters and wrote/drew their own 'Holic'?" - I have no doubts it would. I am looking forward to the novel, but since the other is known for horror stories and not character study I'm not setting my hopes too high.
*sigh*
Sometimes I really agree with all the reasons why one should dislike Clamp. If you study their works and look at their history it is very obvious Clamp themselves are 'fangirls'. Yes, I mean fangfirls as in "fangirls like you and me". The one "pretentious" thing about Clamp is they would never say it in the open. You could say that this is "as good as it is bad" because it's the very thing that keeps fangirls screaming over Clamp couplings. I'm sure everyone who reads this knows the small gap between blatantness and total denial that makes up "that special blend of Clamp".
I've read somewhere that at the interview in the USA Clamp were being asked a coupling-related question(Kurogane and Fai, if I remember correctly). That's all I read, I don't know what the question was or what they answered, but I can imagine in. Does anyone know a link to a transcript of that question?
*sigh*
I'm 22. Way too old for Clamp. The day I grow out of Clamp manga is long overdue.