みんな蛍を殺したかった

黒歴史シリーズ

by Chiren Kina, 木爾チレン

――みんな誰かを殺したいほど羨ましい。

美しい少女・蛍が線路に身を投じる。
儚く散った彼女の死は後悔と悲劇を生み出していく――


「女による女のためのR-18文学賞」優秀賞受賞者である著者が、原点に立ち返り、少女たちのこころの中に巣くう澱みを鮮烈な感性で抉り出す。

京都の底辺高校と呼ばれる女子校に通うオタク女子三人、校内でもスクールカースト底辺の扱いを受けてきた。
そんなある日、東京から息を呑むほど美しい少女・蛍が転校してきた。
生物部とは名ばかりのオタク部に三人は集まり、それぞれの趣味に没頭していると、蛍が入部希望と現れ「私もね、オタクなの」と告白する。
次第に友人として絆を深める四人だったが、ある日、蛍が線路に飛び込んで死んでしまう。
真相がわからぬまま、やがて年月が経ち、蛍がのこした悲劇の歪みに絡めとられていく――

少女の心を繊細に描く名手による初のミステリ作品

280 pages, Tankobon Hardcover

First published June 21, 2021

About the author

木爾チレン

Reviews

[Earwen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Story follows an ethereally beautiful transfer student, whose death the story starts with, inserting herself into the lives of 3 social outcast otaku girls. It is presented like a mystery, though it isn't really. You can figure out what is going on earlier as there are some hints but fundamentally it's just a huge string of coincidences.

I think the real strength of the book is not the mystery but the depiction of the girls struggles. The otaku girls are flawed characters, who you can look at making awful choices but you also understand where they're coming from. Unfortunately the weakest character of the bunch is probably the character who is most important, besides Hotaru. She is not given much time in the book, probably so the twist is not immediately obvious. So you end up with one character in a sea of flawed ones who basically is just endlessly nice and never did anything wrong in her life.

Hotaru is also very interesting when viewed from the other girls pov, she is both kind but at the same time rather scary. In the end when we learn more about her, I thought she was kind of a ridiculous character, and I found it hard to take her attitude seriously.

The story in the last third requires a lot of suspension of disbelief. For the first 2/3 I would say it's genuinely good and the last third kind of turns it into "not good but entertaining".

Language level wise, I found it easy and a breeze to go through. Despite the topic, there isn't much specialized vocabulary, at least not stuff I wasn't already familiar with as a lot of things are also used by english otaku (fujoshi, yumejoshi, moe etc)

[Riri · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5⭐

最初から最後までルッキズム全開。
みんな色々と狂ってるなーと思いながら楽しく読みました。
最後は無理やり綺麗に終わらせようとしている感があって、それだけが残念でした。