So, onto the fourth volume. This volume has the trip to Karuizawa, one of my favorite parts.
Volume 4 begins with a chapter about Aiko’s difficulty finding friends. She asks her teacher about the Wars of the Roses, as Jin had given her a rose earlier as a protective charm. Protection is a large theme in this chapter, though I could also say that it looms large over the entire manga. This isn’t the last protective charm we will see before the end, either.
Mitsuya asks Jin why Aiko doesn’t attend school, and is confused when Jin refuses Aiko’s request to go play at a temple. Jin is concerned about the other children there, as Aiko has been insulted by potential playmates in the past. He also recalls his own difficulties from his childhood when he sees Aiko treated badly.
Sure enough, when they arrive at the temple, the other children do not want to play with Aiko, and talk behind her back. Mitsuya is determined to help Aiko, which he does by scolding the children who were rude to her, carrying her on his shoulders, and joining in their sword-fighting game. Of course, the children do not get his modern reference to Lupin III.
As Jin watches Mitsuya carry Aiko on his shoulders, he wishes, somewhat enviously, that Mitsuya might protect him in the same way.
During the sword-fight, Jin (literally) leaps into the fray, defeating Mitsuya and ending the game.
In the next chapter, Yuriko’s love interest Hayato Kunimi is properly introduced. He was shown briefly in Chapters 9 and 10, but he is back from his foreign travels. Despite their earlier troubles, his love for Yuriko has not faded. He promises to give her a bird that won’t die, but Kunimi’s interpretation of this is, of course, different from a normal person’s interpretation.
Mitsuya pores through some old photo albums to try to find evidence of Yoshimitsu’s whereabouts, but stumbles upon a portrait of Yuriko that Kunimi drew many years earlier. Yuriko recalls the death of her parents, and how Kunimi and Yoshimitsu tried to cheer her up.
Kunimi arrives soon after, to a not-so-warm welcome from Yuriko. She’s still upset about the time he cheated on her (or at least, she thought he was cheating on her). As Kunimi leaves, Jin offers him some love advice. Kunimi gives Mitsuya some unsettling parting words: his father told him that he saw Yoshimitsu in Karuizawa, a popular resort not far from Tokyo. It has beautiful lakes and mountains. I really want to go there now, not just because it’s a setting in Golden Days.
So beautiful! (Source: http://www.homedsgn.com/2013/09/13/hoshinoya-karuizawa/)
The next morning Mitsuya sneaks out of the house before Jin wakes up. He rushes to tell Kei what he has learned, and that he will be going to Karuizawa himself. He just wants to meet his grandfather as a young man. They discuss changing history, which Mitsuya is trying to do and Kei is trying to avoid doing. When they see Setsu reject a love letter from a man who approaches her, Kei ponders if he is taking something from Setsu if he accepts her love.
In his attempt to sneak back into the house undetected, Mitsuya steps on a flower Aiko received from Matsuri, her governess’s son and the boy she likes. Jin wanders out of the house in his pajamas to help, and Mitsuya sees a parallel with his attempts to help. Just by stepping on a flower he hurt Aiko without intending to. What if his attempt to save Jin just makes everything worse?
He offers to move the flower himself, and offers Jin a handshake as an apology. Jin kisses Mitsuya’s hand instead, and doesn’t ask the question his eyes are asking—why was Mitsuya coming back come so early?
Later on, in a sitting room, Jin explains Mitsuya’s desire to go the Karuizawa, and Aiko and Yuriko (with a little prodding from Kunimi) agree to come as well. Kunimi is headed there as well.
On the train to Karuizawa, Jin has his “Mitsu Harem” dream. It’s an interesting picture of Jin’s mental state. As he walks alongside Mitsuya, Jin glances behind him to see Yoshimitsu in the distance. He glances between their faces, with Mitsuya looking confused and Yoshimitsu’s expression unreadable. But Yoshimitsu’s face has a hint of pity, doesn’t it?
Jin wakes up when Mitsuya opens the window in a tunnel. He has forgotten that electric trains don’t exist in this era. Later, in the train station, Mitsuya seems distracted. When he tells Jin he might go somewhere far away, Jin wonders if Mitsuya might be wanting to run away. He said something similar to Yoshimitsu many years before, when he was a child being tormented by his grandmother. He had wanted to run away, because he was so different, but Yoshimitsu comforted him by pointing out that they had a similar mole. Jin wonders if Yoshimitsu is running away from him (presumably by becoming Mitsuya). That must have been a thought that troubled him much more in the original timeline, when Mitsuya wasn’t there for him.
The four of them meet Kunimi’s father, who recounts the story of the time he saw Yoshimitsu in Karuizawa a month earlier when Mitsuya asks him about it. Jin is surprised that Mitsuya would ask the question, since it hadn’t concerned Jin at all. When they are alone together again, Jin confronts Mitsuya about bringing up a topic Jin had thought settled long ago.
Jin insists that Mitsuya is just another personality or aspect of Yoshimitsu. Despite much evidence to the contrary, Jin has convinced himself that Mitsuya is some hidden part of Yoshimitsu—perhaps one who is capable of returning his love. And, if Mitsuya is a completely separate person, it means that Yoshimitsu is out there somewhere, having actually abandoned Jin.
Mitsuya almost reminds Jin that he told him the truth on the day they met, but stops himself by holding a hand over his mouth until Aiko and Yuriko interrupt them. The reason for their interruption, and the group’s move to staying at the hotel, was the break in that occurred at a nearby villa. Aiko’s so precious as she tries to follow them into the men’s bath. As he and Jin enter the bath at the hotel, Mitsuya sighs in relief that there is no one else there to see him changing—I wonder if he also did this in his own time—until he remembers that he’s with a guy who often tells him that he’s attracted to him.
Mitsuya considers Yoshimitsu’s motives for sending him there—he believes that his grandfather wanted to help Jin himself. Mitsuya has convinced himself that it would be “meaningless” if Jin doesn’t believe that it was Yoshimitsu who saved him.
Knowing the end of this manga, Mitsuya is clearly wrong here, but he doesn’t know that at this point. Mitsuya tries to tell Jin not to worry about he and Yoshimitsu being different people. However, when they are undressing for the bath at their hotel , Jin notices that Mitsuya doesn’t have a mole on his belly button, as he believes that Yoshimitsu does. He takes this as unequivocal proof that Mitsuya is really the imposter he has long claimed to be, and rides out distraught on one of the hotel horses.
Aiko tries to stop him, but Jin tells her to go back inside. She can tell that an argument with Mitsuya is the source of his distress. She asks him if he has been lonely now that Mitsuya has replaced Yoshimitsu, but Jin brushes her aside instead of answering.
Mitsuya, still pulling on his jacket, arrives too late to catch Jin before he rides away. Jin remembers Yoshimitsu, who he now realizes for certain has actually left him behind, as it begins to rain.
Mitsuya attempts to pursue him, ineffectively, on foot. However, he soon becomes lost, and the rain forces him to seek shelter at what he soon learns is the Souma villa. When he realizes that someone is there, he calls out Jin’s name, but Jin’s uncle, Tsuneyasu, responds. He is visiting the villa to check it after the reports of robbery. He notes that a few items of little monetary value have gone missing. Of course, the villa hasn’t been broken into yet. Yoshimitsu stayed there during his visit to Karuizawa (the villa technically belongs to him, so it wasn’t exactly a break-in), and the missing items were due to Yoshimitsu’s investigation.
Tsuneyasu decides to go and meet with the police, and leave Mitsuya to watch the villa while he is away. Knowing that he will try to get “Yoshimitsu” out of his way later, his leaving Mitsuya here alone just before actual robbers come seems like an odd coincidence. But I can’t really say there’s any evidence it’s not a coincidence. I feel like he knows that Yoshimitsu was looking there, but can’t figure out how he managed it, since Yoshimitsu was supposedly at home during the time.
While waiting, Mitsuya falls asleep, only to be woken up three hours later by Jin entering the villa. Jin is dripping wet, and when Mitsuya rushes to assist him he knocks Mitsuya down onto the ground. Delirious with fever, he asks Mitsuya why he has replaced Yoshimitsu, and why he looks and talks like him. He also asks Mitsuya to give Yoshimitsu back to him, and blames him (somewhat) for Yoshimitsu’s disappearance.
Mitsuya remembers Aiko’s earlier question to Jin, when she asked him if he was lonely, and apologizes. (Later, he says he only apologized because of Jin’s sad expression.) Mitsuya carries an increasingly incoherent Jin to a bench and covers him with various makeshift blankets.
Deciding that Jin needs a doctor (for some reason), Mitsuya comes up with the idea to try to take the horse Jin borrowed and call on the doctor in person. Wearing only an under-kimono and his oxford shoes, he goes outside and tries to ride the horse. Though he has no experience, he gets on the horse anyway, hoping that it will know the way back to the hotel. Clearly, not one of Mitsuya’s better ideas. Mitsuya’s reaction is almost an overreaction. Perhaps this is how his mother has always reacted when he got a fever, and he thinks it is normal. Not only that, but aspirin existed during this time period. It would be a modern person’s first instinct to use it to reduce fever. Mitsuya should have at least looked for some in the villa.
Fortunately, on the way to the doctor he runs into Yuriko, who helps him get off the horse and goes for a doctor herself (presumably). But while Mitsuya was gone, robbers actually came to the villa, and decide to kill Jin after he spots them. Jin is too ill to effectively fight them off, and takes comfort only in the fact that Mitsuya has not been caught by the robbers. I find it interesting that the robbers think that Jin has “arrogant eyes.” Maybe they are able to sense his aristocratic bearing, but it’s a pretty good description of Jin at times.
Mitsuya, however, has sneaked into a position where he can surprise the robbers, and kicks the one who is about to stab Jin onto the ground. When Jin springs up to help him, they are able to subdue the robbers and tie them up. After he sees the bruise on Jin’s face, Mitsuya insists that Jin punch the one who punched him in retaliation. I guess he can’t bear to see Jin’s pretty face marred.
After fighting the robbers together, Jin and Mitsuya seem to have cleared up their differences. Jin realized that he could be worried about Mitsuya for Mitsuya’s sake, not because he is worried about Yoshimitsu. He is able to accept him as a different person that he also cares about. Although he doesn’t say it out loud here like Mitsuya does, but his expression and his action of throwing the blanket around Mitsuya shows it.
Jin apologizes to Mitsuya for blaming him for his problems, and Mitsuya wonders what Jin might be thinking about Mitsuya’s actions during his time in the past. Mitsuya assures Jin that he, as Mitsuya, is Jin’s friend, and recalls the promise he made at the end of Volume 3.
I think the flowers in this image might be magnolias, but I’m not sure. I’m unsure of their meaning in this scene as well, but one is probably intended. I wasn’t able to find much information on what magnolias mean in Japan, at least nothing that would be relevant here.
Jin reaches up to embrace Mitsuya, and Mitsuya doesn’t push him away. Jin asks why he might feel dizzy so close to Mitsuya, but Mitsuya insists it’s caused by Jin’s fever. They both know that isn’t true, though. On the very last page, Jin recalls Yoshimitsu, and compares him to Mitsuya. He’s realized that he has spent so much time looking for Yoshimitsu within Mitsuya, that he hasn’t paid much attention to what makes Mitsuya different. He’s starting to like these differences.
I think part of Jin is giving up on the idea of being in love with Yoshimitsu, and his dependence on him. Jin has to learn to let go.
Scans by Ivyscan
Futago Translations 