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akemilena · 7 years

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Tsukino Park SS: Tsukino Demon Parade – Digression ①

Translation index || Digression ②

The moon is reflected on the sake cup, swaying.

“Delicious”

When Shiki quietly muttered that, Rikka, at his side, smiled broadly.

“Is that so? I’m glad”

Full moon, good sake, and by his side, a smile as beautiful as a flower. Quite the perfect plan.

(Rikka is a man, though.)

The only man in the snow women tribe. Even so, there’s apparently no end to the men being enticed by him. Well, nothing surprising.

“I’m relieved I got the seal of approval of the mighty Shuten-douji. Now, no matter where I take it, it seems it’ll be fine”

“Don’t take it somewhere else. Bring it all to me. It’s a waste to give it to people who have no taste”

Stirring it up, and then rolling it over his tongue. The taste is of course great, and the fact that it melts, literally, like snow, is very pleasant.

“Hey. I’m happy it suited your tastes, but don’t drink so much in one go”

Along with a bitter smile, he extended his hand and softly covered the sake bottle.

“Mm”

“You can’t drink everything. Leave it here today, and make up with Tsubasa?”

“Make up… It’s not like we-“

“You did have a fight, right. The other day”

Long white fingers lightly pressed against his lips.

“Tsubasa went out of his way to bring you sake, you drank it all alone, and got into a huge fight”

“Aah…”

I think something like that happened. It was definitely not me who went on a rampage, though. Rikka, who looked at me like he had seen through everything, shrugged his shoulders.

★★

Suddenly, he let out a huge sneeze.

“… Geez, who the hell is talking about me”

Tsubasa muttered to himself while sniffling. Even if he says so himself, he was famous around the mountains of this area, and always being talked about, so he knew many people who could have been it – but.

(The one who I want to worry the most has definitely forgotten about me.)

He remembered the face of the man who is probably drinking completely unconcerned by now, and his anger came back.

“Aaaah!! Goddammit!!”

He swung his fan in a fit of anger, and the leaves and branches in his surroundings flew, torn to pieces.

“Ah, that’s not good…”

The other day, at the time of that big fight, he got scolded… or rather, teased, by the two governors, the black and white Tenko.

The mighty White Tenko looked like he was having a lot of fun, however – he had just received it.

“Anyway, that is also his fault to begin with!”

“What are you doing, Tsubasa”

When he was stamping his feet in frustration, he heard a voice coming from a clump of bushes.

“Dai-chan…!”

“I told you to stop calling me that”

“It’s been a while! When did you come back?”

Acting as if he hadn’t heard his usual complaint, he ran up to him, and Dai let out a big sigh.

“Just a while ago”

“Meaning that you came to see me first of all?”

“Well, yeah. What the hell, stop that gross smile”

“Ehehe. It’s nooothing, really”

The fact that Dai, who is usually so indifferent, somehow worries about him, makes him feel a slight sense of superiority.

“Welcome home, Dai-chan”

“… I’m home”

★★

(This. It’s that “the crow that used to cry is now smiling”* thing, right)

Even though you were sulking and going on a rampage just now – Dai was about to say that, but swallowed it. If he said it, he surely would get twice the complaints back.

(Are you a kid? Well, he is supposed to be way older than me.)

Their meeting is something that happened long ago. He got picked up when he was wandering around the mountains.

ーーー To be continued in ②

Translation index || Digression ②

TL notes & Setting:

Tsukino Demon Parade (月野百鬼夜行) is an official youkai AU (?) that was made for a collaboration with Animate shops, and includes some drama tracks broadcasted in Animate shops and buses, and also a drama CD that released a while ago (this might not be exactly accurate so please take it with a grain of salt). The Tsukino Demon Parade stars all the members of the succeeding units (SolidS, QUELL, Growth and SOARA) and also Hajime and Shun from Tsukiuta.

The setting for SolidS and the other characters who appear in this story is the following (click on the character names for the illustrations):

Shiki: Shuten-douji (酒呑童子), a mythical oni leader and a heavy drinker

Tsubasa: Karasu tengu (烏天狗), a crow-billed goblin

Rikka: Yuki-onna (雪女), a snow woman (man, in this case)

Dai: Gasha-dokuro (がしゃどくろ), a giant skeleton

Haijme and Shun: Black and white Tenko (天狐), a high-ranking fox spirit and the leaders of the Tsukino shrine

This time we got a Blessing in the form of a short story written by Seki Ryouko (the script writer for SolidS & QUELL drama CDs) in the Tsukino Park app.

Now for the actual TL note: “the crow that used to cry is now smiling” is an expression that means, well, that someone who was crying suddenly cheers up and laughs. Especially meant for children, because their emotions change really quickly. A very fitting expression because Tsubasa is, actually, a crow.

I’ll try to translate the rest as soon as they are up! Thanks for reading!!

#solids #tsukino production #tsukipro #solids translations #i can't do justice to seki-san's wonderful writing but #i tried #apparently this side story is related to the drama CD #which i will probably translate when it arrives #i love tsukipro youkai AU more than i love my life

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nemo-kxx · 6 years

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Love

We are always looking for connections, building out a shell to shelter us from the rest of the world full of judgement and bias. We want to be the only one, the precious one, the irreplaceable one for another soul; we want to be accepted unconditionally, any time, any place by that special soul.

Beautiful vows echo again and again in the wedding ceremonies: against the flow of the time, against all the uncertainties of the world, against all the possible self-growth and changes, I grant you a life long and exclusive rein on me until the day I die.

Yet, the divorce rate is over 53% in the US. Out of those survived marriages, over 60% of those are clinically dead ones, i.e. people are staying under the same roof for their children, for financial reasons, for religious reasons...not for love. So marriage, as one of those must-do items on one’s life checklist, has a failure rate of over 80%. If a car model has a failure rate of 0.008%, the manufacturer would recall every single car of that model. In contrast, people are rushing to sign up for marriages every single minute.

I am a 30+ year old single lady. My friends are all married. Literally every single one of them. Some friends complain about their marriages and partners to me, saying that their marriage life is like walking on egg shells, but their kids are the reason to keep it from completely falling apart. I am speechless, not sure how to reduce my friends’ stress.

The days alone could be lonely. My friends are all entrepreneurs, busy with work during the weekdays and busy with family life over the weekend. I love travelling and wish that I could travel the world with someone close. I want to hold hands with someone close to pick out favorite books in bookstores over the weekend. I want to say to someone I love good morning and good night every day. I want a warm hug and a calm voice telling me that everything is going to be OK.

While I am longing for love, I am also scared: loving someone is to hand over your heart and a knife to someone, grant them access to break your heart. With the fast spinning world, people change minds and feelings quickly; people grow and their needs change over time. How do I know that I am one of the super lucky 10% that will win the marriage lottery ticket? If I am sweet, nice, joyful, curious, adventurous and stay challenging enough for someone to pay attention, does that guarantee that someone will love me unconditionally against the flow of time and events in this life? Each person is so complex that their childhood and early life experience shapes their perception of attraction to someone. Everyone is looking for the shadows of familiarity in others. Everyone has unique desires from again stemming from their early life. Even if a girl is perfect in the general sense with a good career, a good personality, a great education - a good wife material as seniors say, that may not be the right person that make the other person to have accelerated heart beats. How do I really know someone and know someone so well that I am sure that I can be the soul mate for someone for the rest of life? Or are the vows just impulsive white lies to get a couple together creating babies so the human genes can continue to flourish? Is each individual including myself a small piece in the non-stopping human gene generation machine, in the name of love?

Since I am in charge of our company’s business development, I could not help thinking from a customer service perceptive: the moving vows people say at wedding ceremony can be translated into “dear customer, we offer life long personalized service. No matter how much you change and grow in your entire life, we promise that our service / products will upgrade timely and always meet your needs, physically, mentally and financially, free of any charges. Your satisfaction is what we are after all the time.” Has any company dare to make such promises before? Not I am aware of at least.

I could not help asking: is love an illusion? People say that love is there to complete us and make us whole. People say that love will make us a better person. People say love will make us happy and not lonely. But does it? What we love maybe is a complex mix of familiar shadows shaped from the past and our ideals for the future. When we find someone that we can cast such image onto, we fall in love. Over time, maybe the reason why so many marriages fall apart is that people slowly but surely discover the differences between the image and the real person by their side every day. Complaints, frictions, suffering follow. We do not find problems with ourselves checking on the images we projected initially as that is already deeply rooted in our subconscious mind; instead, we find faults in the partner, the chosen one, the perfect one we vowed to spend the rest of our life. When the marriage is falling apart, people are off to find the next chosen one and the game re-loads itself.

If love itself is illusion, then what is the meaning of marriage? People say marrying someone means loving someone deeply. But does it? Some friends joke that an easy way to tell whether one is married or not is to see how much one takes care of one’s appearance. Married men/women are often too busy to exercise, and not in good physical shape. Many married men/women are miserable and lonely despite that they live with someone under the roof every day. A comedian said: “I am married with a wife and a screaming baby, I am not afraid to die now.” Studies show that over half of the marriages with children are merely partnership without love.

If marriage is not the best vehicle for love and love itself is an illusion, how do I explain my longing for love? The days are short, as time really flies. The life seems like a long road, too long for one to walk alone. In the end, maybe what we really want is meaningful connection to be understood, to be heard, to be cherished. It is not about sex, love or marriage. The physical connections such as hugging is one of the confirmations that we are not alone and we have a shell to shelter us from the storms in life.

Then does it mean that we can have a happy and satisfying life with a good support system backed by people who trust and support us? I think it is possible and yet hard to achieve in modern life. A friend said that people cherish their time more and more as they grow old. Sharing time with someone indicates the importance of someone in our life. As people age, people often struggle to juggle career and family alone, not to mention having little, if any, time for friends who they meet through work. Maybe that is why people rush into marriages and why people jump into the crazy online dating scenes, only trying to find someone who is willing to spend enough time and pay enough attention. That seems like the only viable connection in this busy world.

Looking out of my window, it is a picture perfect scenery with green trees, beautiful flowers, birds, cute squirrels on a summer day in the heart of Silicon Valley. This is a crazy dream factory where people are often judged by the numbers and brands behind them, where people can be rude and arrogant as long as they have the numbers/brands backing them up, where feelings and love carry no weight. Guys here can be grouped into 3 categories: in relationship, only interested in short-term pleasure, and only interested in career and dreams.

What is the chance of finding meaningful connection / love in Silicon Valley? I see that the invisible screen in my mind shows a big number 0, and there is zero chance of winning the marriage lottery as there are no tickets sold in this crazy land. I could only hope that if there were multiple universes at the same time, the other versions of “me” have better luck than me, to be able to find someone who cherish them and find joy to be with them.

This life may be destined to be lonely... But I have to keep moving forward, to provide a secure shelter for my parents, to provide a creative place for my team to continue to innovate, to realize the dream of enabling everyone to have access to and afford the healthcare they need when they need it.

Ancient wisdom from the East said that life is merely a dream. Thinking like that makes the lonely existence just a little bit less painful. One day when the time for one to wake up from the dream, the world will keep moving on no matter whether the person is “larger than life”. Yet, what people do in this dream may just move the world in one direction a bit. Whether it is forward or backwards, good or bad is left for the rest of the world to judge.

If I had a genie to make a wish, I would not have the courage to wish for love, as it is a rare treasure which a few lucky ones ever find. While I am fearless in running my own ventures and chasing dreams, in the private life, I am quite shy and introverted. It would be a miracle that someone looks into my eyes and is 100% sure that I am the chosen one. The dancing party never stops and people join the party and leave quickly in pairs. I already come late to the party and I do not know how to dance... Life is a box of chocolate, and it is already empty.

Asians tend to say “fighting!” to encourage others during tough times. I guess I would be my own cheerleader, fighting to make something out of this dream, fighting to protect the ones important to me, fighting to create a more gentle and forgiving world that one has longing for staying, fighting to be resilient through all pains and hardships, fighting to complete the dream with the best version of me.

Life is a bit painful, but the pains also remind us that we are alive.

Keep dreaming. Keep fighting.

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