Hello again, friends. This week, Kazuya doesn’t seem to quite know what to make of what Chizuru’s done, Mami’s still in shambles, and the whole history of Kazuya and Chizuru was dealt with economically but in a way that leaves quite a few questions, but first, let’s talk about Chizuru’s massive turnaround this week.
A girl with a plan, Fran
I'd say, "Rise and shine, Kazuya!" but I think you already have the first part figured out.
For weeks, we’ve talked about how Chizuru seemed to be dithering. When Nagomi demanded an explanation from her in 223, Chizuru couldn’t find the words, but aside from when she’s been overwhelmed, which does happen from time to time, Chizuru usually pursues her course of action with single-minded determination. Now, she’s applied that to taking her place as Kazuya’s supposed girlfriend.
Chizuru’s single-mindedness has a long history:
- When Ruka accused them of being a rental couple in ch. 23, Chizuru practically took it as a challenge and went ahead with her hare-brained scheme to fake kiss Kazuya.
- When discussing the impact making a movie under her own name could have for her identity at school, Chizuru insists she doesn’t care about that (105).
- Hearing how much Kazuya has done to secure a director, Chizuru brims with resolve to follow through on the project (117).
- When she decides on the unlikely dream of becoming an actress, Chizuru is shown to take it very seriously (100), determined to reward her grandparents’ faith in her.
What happens this week? All of Chizuru’s reticence disappears. Having kissed Kazuya, she has made up her mind, made her decision to go ahead, just like when she decided she would become an actress. There is no longer any doubt in her mind: she will make herself Kazuya’s girlfriend.
And so, the paralyzed Chizuru who couldn’t say a word just a few minutes ago is now taking care of the whole thing: she’s the one nudging Kazuya to keep the act going, and she’s the one who explains it all to Nagomi privately. Chizuru can’t act when there’s something really weighing on her mind, but when the weight is lifted, the actress comes back out again.
That’s not to say that her wanting to be Kazuya’s girlfriend is an act. Far from it: Chizuru acts to get something she wants. Kazuya is what she wants now, and her sudden turnaround couldn’t make that any clearer.
But somebody might want to clue Kazuya in about this, stat
"That kiss was hot, but it couldn't be... I mean, is it some kind of custom in Canada?"
Unfortunately, Kazuya and Chizuru don’t get much-needed time alone to get on the same page, and we don’t know precisely what Kauzya thinks about this situation. Chizuru has kissed him (twice now at at that!). That’s been enough to convince everyone else it’s for real. Kazuya, on the other hand, is generally more pessimistic. After Chizuru gave increasingly clear signals that they had a personal relationship, Kazuya had only just begun to think he had a chance (188). While he’d have to be a fool to think those kisses meant nothing, and we saw how blissful he was last week, there’s still a lot of room for anxiety. Kazuya simply isn’t the type of guy to believe that it’s for real until it’s set in stone. Chizuru has to tell him she loves him… and probably somewhere there’s no one else around to perform for.
The quick summation over Kazuya and Chizuru’s rental history was good, except…
I for one was pleased to see Kazuya and Chizuru’s coming clean montage glossed over heavily. There was little value in a point-by-point reaction here. The fact that they’re neighbors (which I didn’t expect to come out) is just a funny curiosity in-universe. Nagomi conducts her investigation and is satisfied. There is just one big lie remaining, one that they stick to in order to shield each other from unfair judgment.
However, while we get a lot of details about what they tell Nagomi, there are a couple crucial points that we don’t hear anything about:
- Does Nagomi know Ruka’s whole deal now–that she is a rental girlfriend, that Kuri hired her (unlikely they would throw him under the bus), that she was dating Kazuya provisionally? This would require another supporting lie, something like they broke up when Kazuya started seeing Chizuru for real.
- Or about Mami being Kazuya’s ex? There’s no urgency on Nagomi’s part to deal with Mami, so this also seems unlikely.
These dangling threads leave the possibility for more lie-based drama even though Kazuya and Chizuru seem well on their way to starting a relationship at last. And you know Mami isn’t going to take this lying down because, well…
Mami’s cope train brakes for no one
So this is how it feels when your carefully laid plans get blown up at the last moment.
Mami, unsurprisingly, continued to push the issue this week, cementing her position of denial. From the moment Mami dropped the phone, betraying the agreement she had with Chizuru, Mami has been desperately trying to salvage her plans. Remember, dropping the phone was not her plan A, and it’s gone sideways in an entirely predictable way: Chizuru declared she was truly Kazuya’s after all, something Mami herself suspected was what was actually in Chizuru’s heart all along. Mami couldn’t get Chizuru to turn on him, so she settled for sowing chaos. Instead, chaos has burned her.
Everything about Mami’s facial expressions tells us she is on the edge of losing it completely. She’s been annoyed or irritable (10), and she’s schemed about it, and she’s even seemed lost over it (60), but these last few chapters are the first time she’s really seemed shaken. Mami wasn’t done when she agreed to back off before; she’s far from done now, and I predict she will do something even more desperate and destructive here.
If Chizuru and Kazuya come out of this seemingly in a happy relationship, even stronger than before, that is a direct challenge to Mami’s worldview. She can’t stand that. She is cornered. To accept they can be happy is to accept that she was unjustly denied happiness.
And the cornered cat is the one whose claws sink deepest.
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