If I had to describe this episode, it was a combination of cringe, lots of second-hand embarrassment, but also ow, the heart.
Since Sui knows about Sae’s feelings, she’s very enthusiastic about trying to help her…. except, just a tad too much. Mio had to repeatedly advise and even plead her to calm down and just let Sae be, but she’s barely containing herself. There’s good intentions involved, but I think she’s getting too caught up having fun supporting someone’s love and having girl talk. She even tried to set up the cliche ‘girl falls into guy’ when she wanted to shove Sae into Koki. Shoehorning like that hardly ends well, if anything just makes things super awkward. Thankfully Sae wasn’t someone she could easy knock over, so that plan thankfully didn’t pan out as intended. Needless to say, it’s because of Sui’s determination to help Sae or at least get a read on Koki’s feelings that we did encounter a lot of cringe.
But I’d say most of the cringe really came from Sae this week. Look I get she likes him, but holy shit she’s seriously in the deep end of nostalgia about their elementary days. I get it’s because they really had no relationship during middle school, but I do find it just a tad much that she’s obsessing about how he was back then. Sure, a lot of it has to do with identifying how he and their relationship has changed or hasn’t changed since then, but I’d much rather see her focusing on who Koki is now.
Apart from my gripe with her fixation, I do appreciate that Sae is really just super nice girl to her core. She doesn’t think twice to take care of others, it’s just part of who she is. But we really saw this come out when she (to her credit) mustered up the courage to asked Koki about whether it’s true or not he has feelings for someone. When he said yes, she decided to just bottle up her feelings offer him her earnest support. It’s not an easy thing to do, especially with how much she likes him. She barely managed to hold it together. Of course we’d all prefer if she’d just lay out her feelings and confess to him for her own sake, but Sae’s just not the type to do that. But seriously, ow, that was actually painful to watch. The way she kept internally confessing that she loved him while rooting for him, made my heart ache for her.
As for Koki, well this is where things get interesting. Koki confirmed that he indeed has feelings for someone, but claims it’s unrequited. So we have a tangled situation here if (and I still stand-by the strong presumption) that the one Koki likes is Sae. I mean, it’s really hard not to think so with how protective he is of her. For god’s sake, I think the cringiest part of the episode was when Koki raised a huge fuss about Sae having a scratch on her face. Goodness, the second-hand embarrassment on her behalf was real. I get he didn’t want it to scar, but holy shit “CALL A DOCTOR” he said– dude, calm down. It wasn’t the kind of wound that was bleeding profoundly!
I am honestly curious how long this will drag out for, under the pretense that they do like each other, yet are somehow helplessly oblivious to the point they both fink their crush is unrequited. At at some point, it really may come down to needing their friends to intervene after-all just to knock these two into the same orbit!
And last thing, well mostly just a gripe on my part: I said it last week and I’ll say it again, but Yuushin is probably the most insufferable character in the cast so far. He’s so freaking rude and annoying! Even Koki and Sui were absolutely done with him. Considering his attitude though, I’m amazed that Koki’s even willing to hang out with this dude. As it stands right now, he has done little to leave any favourable impressions. More than anything, he’s just a nuisance to watch. We’ll have to see if the writer does anything to change my opinion of him, but frankly I’m not holding my breath for it.