Associate Professor Akira Takatsuki's Conjecture (Light Novel), Vol. 6 by Mikage Sawamura: review

5/5 stars on Goodreads

Associate Professor Akira Takatsuki's Conjecture vol 6 by Mikage Sawamura

Previous book marked a turn in the story: Naoya and the professor visited the festival of the dead where Naoya had been to as a child and which had led to him starting to hear lies. This book, subtitled Dark Reflections, starts a week after those events. Back at the university, Naoya tries to come to terms with their visit to the underworld, and wonders if it was worth it. He can still hear the lies, so nothing’s changed.

But Professor Takatsuki is so upset he falls ill. The entity inside him made him forget the entire journey, because he’d learned what happened when he was abducted, and he can’t accept it. Naoya tries to cheer him up and ends up promising he’ll be Takatsuki’s memory from now on.

In an effort to cheer up the professor, Naoya makes him take a case of a haunted house in an amusement park, where people have started to see an actual ghost. He thinks Takatsuki’s reluctance is caused by his upset, but turns out it’s because the professor has already figured out what’s going on and it’s not supernatural. But Naoya gets a fun day at an amusement park with Takatsuki, Kenji, and Ruiko.

In the second story, Takatsuki’s cousin Yuuko contacts him for the first time in twenty years. (Takatsuki isn’t allowed to contact his family except his uncle who raised him.) His fiancé insists she needs supernatural help for a growth on her shoulder and wants him to call Takatsuki. Turns out, she had attended as a child the tea parties Takatsuki’s mother held where she showed him around as a tengu, and had become obsessed with him. This story took an unexpected turn, but it wasn’t supernatural either.

But it did give Naoya a deeper understanding of Takatsuki’s family situation. He even gets to meet his mother briefly and learns she’s still in denial about Takatsuki and insists her son didn’t return, after Takatsuki didn’t let her show him around as a tengu anymore. The whole situation is upsetting for Takatsuki too, but at least he got to connect with his cousin again.

In the third story, a girl contacts them about a mirror that disappeared her mother. Her father insists she left with her lover, but when Takatsuki and Naoya investigate, the truth turns out to be something supernatural—for the first time. It triggers the entity inside Takatsuki to intervene even. Naoya has a chance to communicate with it, but it leaves him with more questions than answers. But he’s now sure the entity is causing Takatsuki’s memory losses.

This was an excellent volume in many ways. The narrative felt more mature, Naoya’s inner monologue was deeper and we get better insights into him and Takatsuki both; their friendship changes quite a lot (no romance), and there was an actual supernatural case. The theme of the book was mirror and it offered some good insights into Japanese folklore and human psyche. I’m a bit annoyed that the aftermath of Kenji seeing a real ghost was skipped, but perhaps we get a bonus story about that later. There was no cliffhanger ending or extra stories. There are three more books to come and I can’t wait to read them. Though I’ll probably gobble them down in one sitting like this one too.