Even though the oncoming bullet train headed straight for Billy Mumphrey was obvious to everyone involved but him, I still felt sorry for the guy. Urino-kun is someone who should never have gotten involved with people like this – he’s in way over his head. Cruel and sadistic as it was, Osanai’s assessment of him hit pretty close to the mark. He’s not stupid by any means, and Urino has a good amount of tenacity, initiative, and guts. But he’s not a cunning boy by any stretch. He’s way too straightforward to hang with people as twisted as a Bavarian pretzel.

One of the reasons this season of Shoushimin Series has been markedly more engaging than the first is that the series has leaned into the fact that Osanai and Kobato are pretty horrible people. The thing is, not only are they not “ordinary”, they find ordinary people beneath contempt. It’s funny that a few viewers theorized early in S1 that they were aliens trying to blend in as humans, because watching them now that’s exactly the vibe they give off. Incapable of feeling or understanding real human emotion, they cosplay as regular people. They “date”, they have “friends”, they do trivial things. But it’s all an experiment, to see if they can understand why actual people do them.

The other vibe I got these past few weeks with Yuki and Takahiko was “cat playing with her food”. No question about it, she was “helping” Urino from the sidelines because she wanted to build him up enough that destroying him would really hurt. As to the whole dating thing, well obviously she was no more serious about it than Jogourou was with Tokiko. I suppose the difference there is that Jougorou had no real reason to go through the motions at all – he was doing it out of idle curiosity, to see if he could understand the concept. With Osanai it was pure fun, an active long game to take Urino apart and watch him twist in her claws before she devoured him. Jougorou is cold and unfeeling – Yuki is straight up vicious.

I think that’s the premise here, in the end. This whole “become ordinary” thing as a game to these two, a challenge to relieve the boredom and give a few jollies. That’s almost admirable in its coldness, I have to admit. As to the whole arson thing, I never bought for a moment that Osanai could be “Fireman”. Nothing could be less her style – she’d never engage in such crude recreation. It’s beneath her. But she did see it as an opportunity for the sort of gratification she does enjoy (aside from sweets) and took full advantage of it. Billy was just the unfortunate chump in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I did seriously think, though, that Yuki was taking a real risk by grinding the knife so hard. Because teenage boys have snapped over less than that, and if he was the sort (luckily for her he’s apparently not) Takahiko could certainly have gotten violent with her. Of course she knew Kobato was watching (which turned her on even more, no doubt) but he’s not exactly a bruiser himself. I suppose the question going forward is, where does leave the two of them? Maybe Kobato distanced himself from Ossanai to try and seize one last chance to see if he could become a human being, but the results on that front are pretty clear-cut.