What are you talking about? The continent was stretching in the last few pages
Sorry, I'm a slow person, we require step-by-step instructional manuals for stretching. This metaphorical island stretching nonsense is simply on too large a scale for us to grasp :(
I don't think it's her mother's death she wished for in particular.
I'm kind of thinking it is. Originally I felt like her "moment" was wishing for someone else to have a miscarriage. Which would make sense, but there was little imagery or anything else to suggest exactly what she was thinking. Except maybe - maybe - the line directly preceding her smile, "Seems like it was Touhoku." Why does that matter? We could wave it off as a small recent history reference, but given its placement in the story I'm willing to bet it's one of the chapter's more important lines.
Think about Ran for a second - at the end she says "Were you that scared?" in a way that seems (to me) to suggest amusement, like "it's just an earthquake!" But what's her reaction like later on in life, when she hears the earthquake siren in chapter 6? If one were to assume the "Touhoku" line means something, I don't think it would be a stretch to imagine that Touhoku is their home region. Which would mean that while Keiko is wishing great harm on her single parent, Ran is about to lose one of her two. The more I typed, the more this theory started to sound a bit too played, so I'll stop here.
It would, however, make a great deal of sense for Keiko's "wishing suffering on someone else" to coincide with Ran losing her father. Queue more guilt and self-loathing for Keiko, who hardly seems to have enough of either.
last edited at Jun 20, 2014 3:54PM