123: The following is an anonymous message posted on behalf of a VIP : 2009/06/14(日) 23:45:50.57 ID:d64VugDc0
I’m at my parents’ house for the first time in a while and I’m reminded of my departed mother
Mom loved sciences even though it was rare for a girl in her day. Now that I’m thinking about it, she even memorized the whole periodic table…
Mom developed dementia
The image of her unaware of her surroundings, always bothering my dad is still lingering in my mind
Going into my late mom’s study, for the first time I felt uncomfortable
I can’t find the calendar I gave my mom as a present
I was rummaging through her desk for nothing in particular when I found pieces of the calendar, cut apart with scissors, organized neatly on the table
No matter how bad her mental state was, she always treasured my presents… this was a shock
It made me emotional so I looked through the carefully organized dates:
1/18 4/9 2/8 4/1 3/16 6/16 5/17 7/15 6/8 2/7 6/12 7/15
Just one date, 6/8, was flipped over for some reason, and as I was turning it over to match the others my dad called me from downstairs.
Today, for the first time in 5 years, I get to eat my dad’s home cooking. I push sentimentality to the back of my mind and leave mom’s study.
123 名前：以下、名無しにかわりましてVIPがお送りします 投稿日：2009/06/14(日) 23:45:50.57 ID:d64VugDc0
久しぶりに実家に帰ると、亡くなった母を思い出す
女性には珍しく科学が好きだった母
そういえば元素記号表を丸暗記していたっけ・・・
母は認知症だった
身の回りの世話をつきっきりでしていた父を困らせてばかりいた姿が目に浮かぶ
そして今は亡き母の書斎に入った時、私は初めて違和感を覚えた
母にプレゼントしたカレンダーが見つからない
何の気無しにテーブルを漁ると、ハサミでバラバラにされた幾つかのカレンダーの切れ端が順序良く並んでいる事に気が付いた
母はどんなに呆けていても、私のプレゼントは大切にしてくれていたのにと…私はショックを受けた
私は感傷とともに並べられた日付を整理した
4/4 4/4 4/10 6/11 3/1 6/12 5/6 7/2 6/7 6/17 4/10 4/14 5/16
私は一枚だけ向きが逆になっている6/17に気づき、他の日付と同じ向きに変えていると、一階の父が私を呼んだ。
今日から五年振りの父の手料理が食べられる。
感傷を胸に押し込み、私は母の書斎を後にした
This twist hinges on a puzzle, effectively a cipher that can be decoded through context clues, some of which are more apparent than others. The first and most important clue is that the narrator’s mother loved sciences enough to learn the periodic table by heart. The second is that it was unusual for her to treat a gift with disrespect, and yet she had completely ruined the narrator’s gift by cutting it. The dates arranged on the desk are not incidental, but vital to decoding the story. With these hints, you may want to take an additional moment to see if you can decipher the story.
The twist is a message hidden within the cut-up dates arranged on the table. Matching each date to an element on the periodic table gives each date a corresponding syllable, which then form a message left by the mother for her son.
In Japanese, the dates-as-elements read:
Ti Ti Ni Au Na Hg Mo Ra Re tA Ni Ge Te
The message translates roughly to ”Don’t meet with your dad, he has been giving me Hg (mercury), run away.” The mother’s dementia, then, wasn’t dementia at all, but the slowly building symptoms of mercury poisoning, which as now killed her. The mother has left behind a message for the son to let him know, fearing that the father may now begin poisoning the son.
In English, the message here reads: He Co O K S Po I sO N Hg Ru N.
If you found this story a bit too involved to figure out without the explanation, you’re not alone. This story is still brought up in 2channel threads as being way too complicated and involved for an Imikowa story, since it requires some detective work to ”solve.”
This story was an interesting one to translate, since the Japanese sequence of syllables wouldn’t make any sense in English, nor could it be directly translated using syllables from the periodic table. In addition, the set-up requires the message to only use elements that could correspond to dates, which cuts out most of the periodic table. Even so, I found it important to construct some kind of coherent English message to preserve the puzzle style of the story and allow English-language readers a chance to decipher the message without relying on the Japanese for the scare factor.
Project Kowai 
Jätä kommentti