Rintaro comes to learn a bit more about Kaoruko this episode, and to his surprise, she’s actually comes from a regular household. She juggles studying while working a part-time job, which is why she can’t always go to the shop to eat whenever she wants to. She also needs to maintain her high grades as she only got into Kikyo because of the scholarship. This prompted Rintaro to want to do better himself, as he’s tired of constantly failing. But the poor guy, even after receiving help from Saku, who’s the only one in his group of friends who has better grades than the rest of them, he still can’t seem to make progress with his studies. So hopefully Kaoruko will help with that as she has agreed to help him study when she has time.
Today we also met childhood friend Subaru. She absolutely loathes boys, goes as far as grouping them all up to be ‘savages’. We can see she has taken up the mantle of ‘protecting Kaoruko’, even when she was never asked. Unfortunately things just got messy real fast because when the tension already high between the two schools, having not just Subaru present but Rintaro’s friends arriving at the scene made things go from zero to one-hundred real quick. Just like Subaru had assumed with Rintaro, now Shohei and the others thought Subaru and Kaoruko were needlessly stirring up problems with Rintaro.
Although I didn’t get very far in the manga because I wanted to go into this adaption blind, I do remember thinking when I read this scene: My god, why are they so freaking dramatic? And this isn’t because Subaru’s doing it, but it’s because we’ve seen everyone but Kaoruko at Kikyo reacts this towards the boys at Chidori where as others just don’t (like the girls who Rintaro generously gave up the table for at the library). So I feel like, if that wasn’t the case and it was just Subaru, the first and more reasonable reaction would be less so of ‘everyone being over-dramatic’ and more so ‘what kind of trauma did this girl face for her to react this way?’ Needless to say, the later most likely still applies here as Subaru clearly has her own set of issues that made her hate not just the boys at Chidori, but considers men to be trash. But that was also why she was so taken aback to see Rintaro between her, Kaoruko and Shohei. She wasn’t expecting him to actually that the initiative to protect them.
Unfortunately Subaru just couldn’t keep her mouth shut after that, and had to quip that was why she tells Kaoruko to stay away from Chidori’s students. Of course that royally blew up in her face, because Saku, (who is typically just stays quiet in these situations) was so freaking done with Kikyo girls needlessly slinging mud at them that he verbally ripped her a new one. And he did so by attacking her sore spot, her silver hair– something she clearly feels very self-conscious about. Truly, it’s crazy how one moment ago we saw Rintaro thinking to himself how cool she looks with it, and then we have Saku who saw it as a vulnerability to prey on. Goodness, he really went too far, and Rintaro knew it– that’s why he called him out on it for not typically saying crap like that.
Thanks to Rintaro’s intervention and effort to smooth things out, both Shohei and Kaoruko had also apologized to make peace. But of course it was Subaru and Saku who refused to apologize. Kaoruko however did chide Subaru afterwards for saying rude things, and when asked what kind of person Rintaro is, of course she has nothing but good things to say about him.
After all that said and done, later we did get the see Rintaro and Kaoruko talking on the phone and goodness they are so freaking cute. But poor Rintaro still thinks that Kaoruko doesn’t seem him as even a ‘friend’ just yet, all because she was still speaking politely to him since he’s the son of the shop she frequents. Poor guy was so disheartened over it, but credit where it’s due– he did muster up the courage to tell her it’s okay to speak casually with him. But while he’s dealing with his own embarrassments (of good communicating if I may add) dealing with self-doubts about what relationship they have right now, we have Kaoruko on the other-side of the line trying to contain herself, fearing he’d notice how giggly and happy she was to even be talking to him and given permission to speak casually! If he knew, goodness, he might just pass out from blushing so hard!
Next week the two will be studying together, and since I’m pretty sure I didn’t read this far so I’m looking forward to it!
