[masaegu]

Originally Posted by languagehacker

Could it be that the 真っ赤な嘘 refers to something that the boyfriend said? Like when he said "可愛いひとなら捨てる程いる?"

Do you mean 「赤いもの」 instead of 「真っ赤な嘘」？ It could be.

In the line 「可愛い人なら捨てる程居るなんて云うくせにどうして 未だに君の横には誰一人居ないのかな」, the liar is clearly the guy. If your interpretation of 「短い嘘を繋げ赤いものに替えて阻害されゆく本音を伏 せた」 is correct, then it is the girl that is the liar in it, right? That means they both lied a lot, which seems to be a possibility. I am seriously geting confused. I feel as if I were reading a new story everytime I read the lyrics.

Also, someone else said
How does that explanation sound to you?

Interesting and reassuring because this was what I thought 赤いもの meant on my first reading. On my second and third, however, I formed my "rage" thoery. I think I was trying to read too deep into it and kind of lost my animal instincts as a Japanese-speaker in the process. Now, I am leaning back toward my first impression.

So is the subject the boyfriend and the object both of them? Could both of them be the subject as well?

Since the subject and object can be left out of Japanese sentences, I find that I have to consider up to nine possibilities when interpreting a line in this song:
1. Subject: Shiina Object: Shiina
2. Subject: Shiina Object: Boyfriend
3. Subject: Shiina Object: both of them
4. Subject: Boyfriend Object: Shiina
5. Subject: Boyfriend Object: Boyfriend
6. Subject: Boyfriend Object: both of them
7. Subject: both Object: Shiina
8. Subject: both Object: Boyfriend
9. Subject: both Object: both of them

Someone else thought that it meant, "Both of us preferred closeness in distance to words that often fail, and I thought we understood each other."

There are not 9 possibilities. Believe it or not, there are only two or three, max. We only need to look for the subjects for the 3 verbs　（好む・理解する・思う）. The objects are either already present or unnecessary.

好み is in the connective form, which is the same　as 好んで. What this means is that the subject for both 好む and 理解する is the same person --- "you". "I" or "we". The subject for 思う is clearly "I". It cannot be anyone else unless Shiina is trying to destroy the entire Japanese grammar.

So, that someone appears to know what he is talking about.

I asked him how he knew the subject was both of them. This is what he said:

What do you make of this?

Excellent knowledge, I must admit. I disagree on a point, though.

I myself still cannot give up on the idea that the subject would be "you" for the verbs 好む and 理解する. Fact is she left. How much comfort could she have felt in the fact that the two lived in the same town?