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A prosecutor sees ghosts and is introduced to a mysterious law firm that opens at night ran by a lawyer who tries to bring justice to these lingering souls. The idea is that people who have been killed cannot find peace in the afterworld as long as their killer has not been prosecuted.
This adds a new layer to the case, because seeing a victim linger in our world when their case is solved, means it’s probably a wrongful conviction. I liked both the plot and the way supernatural elements were integrated into it.
At the same time, I don’t know what’s happening with Japanese novels, but since the beginning of the year, I’ve had a hard time feeling involved in the novels I’ve read in Japanese. I think the problem comes from me rather than the book, but I found that it lacked something to make it an exciting read. There’s no real investigation, and I felt disconnected from the case and the characters involved, it felt like someone was telling me the story, instead of me living the story through the novel?
Given the plot and the topics (I love legal thrillers, crime investigations and wrongful convictions is one of my favourite topics too), I should have loved this novel, but I didn’t… So I think it’s time for me to take a break in mystery novels in Japanese and try other genres.

When I read collections of short stories, I never expect to love every single story, but I did with this book! They were all very diverse in topic, but every time I felt immediately drawn into the story and involved in the character’s fate.
I’m amazed at how diverse the stories are, we have a character spying on phone communications in the military, a woman paying an actor to act as her father during a pre-marriage meeting with the other party, a zombie outbreak, an unscrupulous private detective, and even a legal battle to prove legitimate defence in a murder case.
As much as I loved each story, I did find that the end was often a bit underwhelming. The story often found a smooth resolution rather than having a more striking ending that would leave a strong impression or be more dramatic? Maybe that’s just my personal taste, I still think the collection is excellent and it belongs to my favourite books this month.

I loved the first volume of this series, FIX, so much, that I really didn’t think a second volume could be as good, but it was! The second volume is similar to the first one: we follow writers as they struggle with their writings, sometimes forcing a plot on their characters which had the consequence to turn an innocent into the culprit.
In the first volume, they were helped by a mysterious A-kui, but in this one, they are helped by someone else (often a friend). I personally found this even more interesting than A-kui’s contributions in the first volume, because it gave a whole new dimension to the stories. In the first volume, we were following the fiction written by the authors (which was always a good mystery in itself!), and how the author would fix their writing and find the right path (which sometimes involved finding the real culprit in their own work). But now, the relationship between the author and the other person helping them is also a topic in itself, and I really loved seeing how working on a fiction often made them closer.
The types of fiction present in the collection were also very diverse, from manga to video games, with each their own challenges.
I really wish both FIX and FIX2 were translated into English, they’re both unique collections!

I didn’t like this book as much as 403小組，警隊出動！or 七十號，你的鳥歪了, but I still enjoyed reading it a lot.
403小組，警隊出動！was depicting daily work at a busy police station with quotas to meet and a lot of pressure on low rank officers who had to work insane shifts. In 那年，東眼山，斜角派出所, it’s the complete reverse. We’re in a quiet place where nothing really happens in terms of crime, but social unrest is growing as anti-governmental protest is getting more and more virulent, especially among students.
那年，東眼山，斜角派出所 is a coming of age novel, it has a little bit of romance, and exposes police misconduct while also giving an engaging plot.
The only thing that I would maybe criticise a bit, is that the plot and the way the relation evolves between the two protagonists (a young policeman who just does his job and doesn’t understand politics all that much, and a student involved in the protest with a lot of political awareness and strong views on everything) is not really new and very foreseeable.
I still loved it, I really love Yen Yu’s writing style, and I like how the three police novels I read so far all have very different settings and plots.

Part of me wants to do Getian’s Anecdote in Chinese, and part of me just doesn’t have the courage. Because Getian is one of my favourite characters, I want to understand what I read, and his lore might be a bit difficult in Chinese too. I’ll probably stick to English.
One thing that I’m really happy about, is that I checked his anecdote weapon, and I can read the passive in Chinese without much struggle now! I’ve been studying character kits, and it pays off. I used to always check characters kits in English (even for Genshin), because it felt impossible to read abilities in Chinese, but I’m working on this now, and it’s not as daunting as I thought.

His weapon: 若记忆者灵感为【兽】，布设【术阵】时，为术阵附加额外效果：已方全体仪式威力提升10%，术阵结束后或被顶替后移除额外效果.
Which I understand as “If the (bearer?)’s afflatus is Beast, when they deploy an array, add an additional effect to the array: ceremonial might (I think it’s ultimate might, but I’ll have to check) increased by 10% for all team members, this additional effect stops when the array ends or is replaced.”
The only thing is 记忆者, which I assume refers to the person holding the weapon. I didn’t know they were called “the one who remembers”, but given that weapons are 心相, it makes sense.

I was afraid that Emilie Story Quest would be full of words related to perfume and flowers (not really the kind of vocabulary that I’m the most interested in), but the beginning has brought me surprisingly useful words that I didn’t know like 囤积居奇. I did add a lot of words just for the second dialogue, but I’ve seen most of them in my flashcards now, so I’ll continue the story as soon as I have time.

It’s crazy to think that I’m reviewing more than 200 flashcards per day with my new flashcard system and it doesn’t feel like a chore at all. I would have been desperate if I had to review 200 cards in Anki. I’m pretty sure it comes from mainly two reasons:

• I have sentences containing the word AND cards for single character associated with each flashcard, and I can click on the sentence to bring me back to the original text, be it a story for Genshin, a character’s voiceline or song lyrics.
• It’s much easier to re-read and re-listen to the text I studied with my new setup, so I constantly see the words I’m learning. With Anki, I mostly saw the words in the flashcards and that was it, I never went back to the original story I first saw them in. Being able to easily re-read the content I studied makes the words stick, so going through flashcards is easier.

I haven’t read that much today, but I’m back into the story now!

I’ve been confused by some dialogues in dialect: 죽애블라고 turns out to be 죽여버리려고. Though the context made it obvious and I knew it probably meant something threatening, I was still confused by the word.

I finished chapter 2 of the current event. I like the story (always here for crime fiction!!), but it’s very foreseeable…

Stats page is live! Still needs some improvement, and I’ve only added the books of 2026, but it’s taking shape!

I pulled Linnea mostly for her exploration abilities, her love for animals and her special interactions. I do have Zibai, but I would have pulled for Linnea even if she had another kit. Though I must say, I don’t like Lumi, I don’t like her design, and for some reason, I really dislike her unique voiceline.

Back to the novel! It’s always hard to go back to a book after a long break (even a book I love)… I’m almost halfway through and I just read 사건은 이제 시작됐다. It feels as if going back to the novel now was the right time!

I’m adding all the books I had listed on Google Sheets to the new DB… Not the most exciting task, but I still want to keep track of all the books I read since I started the language competition thing (always be reading a book in each of my target languages). I’ll probably add them little by little and start building stats pages when I have enough to display data.

I don’t know why, but I started Emilie SQ. I’m going to study it too. I don’t have Emilie and I know nothing about her, but I love her CN voice. I only played through the beginning, but I added all the unknown words to my flashcards (there were a ton of them!). I also just did day 1 of the current event, so I’ll need to progress on that too. Still can’t study the event because the text is not in the wiki yet.

Alright, I chose a book in Chinese, I opted for the Readmoo challenge one. I’m already four books into the challenge, so this next one will give me my first badge! It’s called 錯置體, written by 藍霄.

I looked at the wuxia section on Readmoo, there are so many books… Really difficult to know where to start, and most of them are series too. (Not that I want to read a non Gu Long wuxia novel, but I was curious and browsed the titles).

I listened to the first short story: 可爱的猿猴日记 by 乙一, and it was very easy to follow. The first time I tried this audiobook, it felt very hard, so maybe I was just not focused enough. The tone of this one is so different from the first two short stories of Zoo 1 I’m currently reading!

I still haven’t picked my next book in Chinese… Normally, I’m supposed to pick a new one as soon as I finish the last one, but I’ve been so busy lately, I still haven’t taken the time to choose one. There are so many things I want to read too… Some of the things I could choose are:

• Another Gu Long novel (I kind of want to read another Wuxia novel, but they’re all so long, I’m not sure now is the right time to start one)
• Continuing the 暗黑者 series by Zhou Haohui, but same problem: the second volume is super long, not the best for now.
• Picking a book from the Readmoo challenge (might be the best choice)
• Read another book by Yen Yu because I do want to read all his police novels (but I just finished one, so maybe reading something else first would be better?)
• Trying out a book by Doctor Qin (法医秦明), I’m pretty sure I will love them, but it’s going to be full of medical terms and I don’t have the courage to tackle something difficult right now.
• Read something that’s not crime fiction at all (I actually have a novel in mind…)
  I will have to decide soon, I want to start the new book tomorrow!

Since I finished listening to 黎明之街 by Keigo Higashino in the Chinese translation, I haven’t found another audiobook that has a story that draws me in and is easy enough to understand so that I can follow the story even though, most of the time, I’m doing something else while listening to an audiobook.

I tried some full voiced romances because they seemed easy, but I often have a hard time feeling involved in the story. There’s one that I come back to from time to time because it’s easy to follow: 劣质关系 written by 柳妻 and voiced by 梵叶，澈柠，漠然烟若，萧熠然 as main cast.

Otherwise, I will maybe try another Keigo Higashino. I think that overall, Higashino is still one of my favourite Japanese authors, but I’m reading him less and less (last two books were kind of disappointments too…), so listening to books I still haven’t read in their Chinese translation and voiced by a full cast of great VAs, why not?

I think it’s been almost a week since I last opened a book TT. I hate it when it happens while I’m reading a book that I love and enjoy… I’m at 48%, almost half way through, but I’ll have to go back a few pages to remember what happened. Hopefully I’ll have more time next week to read the second half.