Kanzen Muteki Chapter 3

Hello ( ´ ▽ ` )/

Last month, sub-par, the person who translated the first 7 chapters of this novel informed us that they were going to delete their blog and use it for other projects. They said we can host their translated chapters if we wanted to so we’re doing just that. We’ve only made minor changes to make things consistent with our translations(which kinda makes some of the tl notes kinda useless but whatever) and fix some grammatical errors but it’s pretty much the same as the original.

Sorry for disappointing you if you thought these were new chapters… <(_ _)>

A lot of crying

Note: This chapter is a bit serious, or perhaps “gloomy” would be more accurate.

It was a sudden accident caused by my inattention. A heavy wooden box fell towards the floor amidst a huge racket that filled the room, as I reached up with a single hand, and then I caught that box. The box that was large enough to hide me inside. Easily, and with just one hand.

“O-ojousama…”

Unable to process what happened, my thoughts were at a standstill as I held the box until Tytte’s voice made me come to my senses.

“Ah, you see, this is-“

In my confusion I flung aside the wooden box I had been holding and without a beat turned to look at Tytte, but then, I was rendered speechless.

The moment I turned to face her, she took a step backwards. Fear filled her expression…

Fear. The rejection of another.

In my previous world, there were numerous times when the people around me had expressions of sympathy, pity, or sadness. But never did the people who met with me reject me. People who would have probably had no reason to come to my hospital room in the first place. In my current world it had been the same. Until now the people I’ve been in contact with were all family members or employees who cherished me.

And that’s why that stiff expression Tytte was showing me, something I’ve never witnessed before, made my chest tighten, nearly crushing my heart.

“Um, well…”

(I have to say something, make some excuse. But, it never even crossed my mind that I would be able to lift something that heavy.)

My thoughts turned into a mush and I couldn’t think straight.

Bustling towards the noise they heard, the servants entered the shed and, after realizing the situation, checked that I’m uninjured and decided to take me back to my room.

I was surrounded by adults and made no move to resist, so very soon I’ve been taken back to my room. I’ve abandoned all thought.

⁂

A few hours afterwards, late at night when everyone’s fallen asleep. I was inside my room by myself, sitting and staring at nothing. I’ve stayed in my room, not taking a single step outside since then.

I didn’t want to see anyone. Especially Tytte…

The dread of seeing that expression on her again has filled me with cowardice.

(She must think I’m a monster, and she hates me for sure… I never thought being rejected was this scary.)

I was staring at the ceiling with a self-loathing smile on my face. Then, at that moment, there was a knock on the door.

(Excuse me… Ojousama…)

I could hear Tytte’s voice from behind the door, and the feeling in my heart became crushingly painful.

“D-don’t come in! Leave me alone, please!”

I rushed off the bed and locked the door.

The childish me understood what I was doing but couldn’t stop or think about anything else.

“…Ojousama…I can understand…your anger…”

(Huh? Anger?)

Tytte’s unexpected words make me push my ear against the door.

“At that time, when ojousama was in danger, I was supposed to protect you but couldn’t… I was, so scared, I couldn’t move a step.”

(What’s she talking about? If Tytte had protected me, wouldn’t she have ended up seriously injured?)

At that time, I had still not grown out of my ways of thinking as an ordinary person, and did not recognize the absolute difference between me, a noble, and her, a commoner and an employee at that.

“I w-!”

Tytte suddenly raised her voice.

“…I was… When ojousama was born and master told me that my duty would be to take care of that child, I felt, for the first time in my life, that I could see a meaning in my existence. Since then, for three years, I’ve been studying all kinds of things in order to be of use to ojousama…”

Her voice gradually grew quieter.

“Despite that…When push came to shove, my legs froze…No, I was too afraid to take even a single step…”

For a moment, there was but silence between us.

“Ojousama…It may be presumptuous of me to say this, but please, somehow, give me one more chance. Please…Let me be by your side, ojousama… I beg you…”

By the end of her speech she was mumbling, maybe even holding back tears.

(I’m an idiot. I could only think about myself. Even in my former world, I only tried to stay alive with all my might, never thinking about anyone else.)

She too had been anxious.

It must’ve been from the regret of having been unable to do anything, and the fear that I’d be disillusioned and would take away her duty from her.

“Ojousama…Please…by your side…”

Maybe because of the jumbled fear and emotions tearing her apart, Tytte’s voice was choking with tears.

Three years. For three whole years, she’s been training herself just for my sake.

(Thinking about it now, was she really scared of me? If so, why did she come here to my room then? So she didn’t reject me after all! I’m scared of rejection, but she didn’t reject me.)

Realizing that, regret from my actions until now started to flood in. What an unkindly heart I’ve got. Unwittingly, tears began to well up in my eyes.

“I’m sorry, Tytte…I’m sorry…I’m sorry for scaring you…”

Before I knew it, I had opened the door and was apologizing in tears in front of the girl behind it. The girl who had been looking down desperately trying to hold it in sees my hopelessly miserable state and becomes bewildered.

That night, my repeated apologies and my wailing crying in front of my room echoed through the mansion and troubled the adults.

⁂

This is a bit of a digression, but on the topic of me screwing up and catching that box…

“Oh, you mean that. I heard an anecdote about how master lifted a rock larger than himself when he was five years old, so I was indeed a little surprised that his daughter’s indeed the same, what about it?”

Tytte said while smiling. That’s incredible, daddy.

(Hm, so could it be hereditary? I do wonder but. …I mean, I haven’t done any training at all, you know?)

It seems that confirming just what this strength of mine is will be a thing for later.

TL notes:

The author wrote 可愛くて (kawaikute) instead of 怖いくて (kowaikute) by accident so technically Tytte says she was too cute to take a single step, which is true.

——————————-

Today’s note at the beginning of this chapter is from the author and not me.

Daddy: At the end Marie says “my father“ in English written in kana, which she usually doesn’t do.

—-

I want to talk about tenses for a bit. They’re a piece of shit invention from hell. That’s all.

…More precisely, in Japanese tenses work a bit differently. Sometimes past tense is used to talk about things that aren’t happening in the past. English does the same occasionally, but that’s not the hard part anyway. Tense switching is the hard part. English does tense switching too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_present sometimes when a work is written in past tense parts of it are written in present tense to give it a sense of urgency, importance, or whatever. Important parts are written in present tense whenever the author feels like it.

Japanese also does tense switching, but very unfortunately it’s the other way around: “A part of a past event (often a state rather than an action) can be described using the nonpast tense, if the writer perceives it to be relatively unimportant circumstantial information that has no direct bearing upon the major story line.” (Makino S., Tsutui M., 1995, pg 37) So we’re left with sometimes the inconsequential bits being in present tense while the important parts are in past tense. Keeping them as-is when translating to English then flips the focus on the unimportant parts and generally the Japanese-style tense switching sounds extremely abrupt and unnatural in English.

In MCM I dealt with tenses like a big idiot by basically having all of the narration be in simple past (it was mostly written in non-past), and then switching to pluperfect past whenever Jin described events that had already happened. In retrospect, not the best decision, but since he lacked a distinct personality so much a neutral-sounding past tense wasn’t a big deal.

This time I’m trying to… I don’t know what I’m trying, to be honest. I’m just making decisions on the fly based on a strange compromise of whatever feels most technically correct, most true to the tone and focus of the sentence, and most importantly most fun to write. It’s very important for me to have a big dumb smirk on my face as I translate so that maybe the reader will also have a big dumb smirk on their face. Or a smart smirk, if you’re so inclined. What was I talking about? Anyway, my point is that language is hard and rules are fake.