Hamsters are too powerful.
For some reason I was under the impression that Yuto lived with his father. I guess I thought that when we saw Yuto in the first episode doing his homework while he waited for his dad to finish work so they could go home. I sure am glad that we got to see little Yuto again because this also gave us a look into Kondo’s home life. Yuto is such a sweetie! He’s a well-mannered boy, who excitedly went to Garden to show his dad his pet hamster, Tsubu. Except that the workers told him it was his day off. Akira accompanied him to his dad’s home so as not to leave him alone and this experience was really exciting for Akira. Probably in her head she was playing mother to Yuto, but she’s more like a caring older sister. But Yuto really stole my heart this time because the hamster isn’t really for himself but a pet for his father. He wants his father to take the hamster so he could use that as an excuse to visit him more, and he said it with tears in his eyes. That moment probably would have been a lot stronger and sweeter if Akira wasn’t suffocating in the closet. Anyway, he’s a great kid and he has a pretty good relationship with Kondo (bro fist!). So it makes me wonder whether his mother won’t let him see Kondo much, or that he lives farther away.
I liked taking a look into Kondo’s apartment, and since Akira is here, that means she’ll search everywhere. We learned a lot about him, such as his lack of confidence as a boss as seen with the books in his bookshelf. There was also a magic book, which brought back the memory of their first meeting. Another interesting thing we saw was a peek into his office, which was riddled with books and papers. Turns out that Kondo loves to read, and it looks like he loves to write too. And maybe there’s something there that might be looked into deeper, like maybe he wanted to be a writer but it didn’t work out for him, but he still writes. His apartment was a little dusty though, his fridge was almost empty, and he seems to eat the same convenience store lunch, so that could be a little telling to his emotional state of mind.
Akira is getting a little more pushy as well. I thought it was pretty mean that she killed Kondo’s fun at the end. Yes, I understand that everyone needed to go back to work, but they were having a ball talking about hamsters. I mean I get it, I’d do the same because hamsters are cute as hell. But Kondo’s finally made a breakthrough with his workers and is bonding with them for once, and he’s noticed how much he cares about that. And then Akira got really jealous and kind of killed it. It seems the stuff that Kase told her last time don’t affect her now because now she wants to get even closer to Kondo and know more about him. Kondo had thought their little “romance” ended after the date and was surprised when she was very direct with him. Now she really is acting like a girlfriend, and in the end he accepted to go to her for hamster questions, so he didnt’ mind? There wasn’t too much plot that happened in this episode and yet there was a bit of progress in Kondo’s character and his relationship with Akira moving forward a little bit. Surprised though that we didn’t get more from Kase this time. I wonder if he’ll interfere again in the future.
