I am going to start this off with touching on the matter with Gotou because good grief… This woman is an expert of digging her own hole. I can excuse her for her rejection in the first episode because of the way Yoshida went about it. At that time, Yoshida failed to properly confess to her because he only asked if she wanted to go to his place after dinner. Unless it’s said properly, of course she’s not going to be sure whether it’s lust driven or if he is reciprocating her feelings. And since Gotou is a virgin, her intuition at that moment told her she just wasn’t ready for it, so she threw out the lie that she was already dating someone.
But then in episode 2, when they went out for dinner again and that is when she effectively screwed herself over. The moment Yoshida actually confessed he has been in love with her for the past five years was her opportunity to come clean with her lie and explain herself just as she did today. Had she done that then, I wouldn’t be rolling my eyes right now thinking, “Are you freaking kidding me?” It is because at the time, she had chose to make up an excuse in the face of an earnest confession. GIRL IF YOU LIKE SO MUCH HIM, CLEAR UP THE MISUNDERSTANDING! WHY DIG DEEPER? Frankly she has nobody else to blame but herself for getting into this mess.
So it’s understandable why Yoshida was shocked, frustrated and even didn’t believe her when she finally came clean about her feelings. He thought his five year love was an unrequited one, and the way she strung him along made it feel like she was unfairly teasing him. I commend Yoshida for telling her he won’t be asking her out again, and that if she really wants to date him, it will be on her to ask him out this time. This is only fair after she blew her chances. She should consider herself lucky that he is even still willing to wait for her. However while the ball is in her court not, she shouldn’t take that for granted. If he ends up falling out of love, then that’s on her for being too slow.
This week Sayu has gotten herself a part-time job at a convenience store where we were introduced to Asami, a co-worker her age. Asami is the friendly type, so she was quick to get to know her, but she is also quite sharp-minded. Although Yoshida and Sayu tried to come up with the story of why they are living together, Asami saw through their lies and called him out on it when they had a chance to talk alone. She seems to be the type of character who has a good read on people, especially since she has already noticed that Sayu has a variety of smiles that don’t reflect her true feelings. That’s why she acknowledged Yoshida to be a good guy and gives him a piece of advice, warning him that Sayu is good at using different smiles to conceal her true feelings, so he needs to be careful of that. I don’t think she means it is malicious in any sense, but rather to be vigalant of kind of emotions are being concealed behind the mask. Fortunately Yoshida is already onto that, as he has noticed just being she is smiling and says she is okay, doesn’t mean that she actually is. So it becomes yet another thing we see him deeply reflect on how to address it. Heck even during his supper with Gotou, he couldn’t take his eye off his phone at first because he was worried about what Asami had said.
Although one could say she was being nosy for someone who had just met Sayu, I think it was still nice of her to want to check up on who Sayu is living with after she heard she is living with someone who isn’t family. It was also quite nice to see she and Yoshida getting along quite well since it will make it more comfortable for Sayu to bring her over in the future when they want to hang out together.
But my favourite part of the episode was when Asami said this: “You can choose who you can get involved with, but you can’t choose who you meet.” This is such a powerful statement because it’s very true. Sayu meeting Yoshida is nothing short of a blessing because up until this point, the people surrounding her hasn’t been good. If you don’t have any good options to choose from, then you are either stuck on your own or forced to pick your poison.
Speaking of which, we also got a glimpse of the traumas Sayu hides behind her smile, and eek, it’s nothing good. She has a lot of pain and secrets bottled up inside and it’s difficult for her bear to the point she vomited when she recalled certain memories. The sex with the stranger we saw last week (though based on the new memory, I’m starting to wonder whether it was really consensual at this point… it doesn’t change the fact it was gross to begin with…), the phone in the trash indicated it had been disposed either by her or someone else, but out of all of them, it appears the one that really triggered her the memory of the crying girl who called her name since Sayu ended up vomiting because the memory was so traumatic. Based on the looks of things, the voice that called out to her appears to belonged to a friend who committed suicide (though it’s not out of the question that Sayu may have tried and failed to do it too.) However the most clue was what followed: Sayu mused how if Yoshida had came home, she wouldn’t have thought about it. After saying that she points out her habit of blaming it on someone else yet again. So whatever happened, Sayu is having a difficult time accepting and owning up to it.
We also saw just how fragile her state of mind is. Even though Yoshida has assured her she doesn’t need to go anywhere, the moment she heard he was bringing Gotou home, she thought that meant the end of things. In all fairness, that is probably one of the many patterns she has experienced that led to her being kicked out. Fortunately Yoshida was able to quickly clarify to her (before she got any ideas of running away again) that it was because Gotou wanted to meet her.
At this point, it’s no longer a secret that Sayu is staying at his place, at least within Yoshida’s circle. Everyone knows about it, mostly no thanks to Mishima being loud about it to the point Gotou picked up that she was being left out on something. We didn’t get to see Gotou’s reaction to Yoshida’s reveal after he had promised to answer her question if she gave him answer first to why she rejected him, so I wonder how this is going to go…
