Let me start by getting a couple of things off my chest. Like I said last week, having a cavalry competition with 17-18 year-old young men facing 15 year-old boys is kind of nuts, it seems to me. But whatever – apparently that’s a thing. But if one of those boys gets knocked out in that competition – like, literally unconscious – it never occurs to you that they might have a concussion? That they might you know, need medical treatment? I know it’s fiction but that’s a pretty big credibility dump right there, at least for me.

Setting all that aside, the upshot of all this was fairly predictable. Syu is basically cannon fodder in plot terms – in the end everyone except Ito and Gen is. That doesn’t sting so much because he and Ito getting together is so obviously a bad idea. But still, under the circumstances I guess I was hoping he’d confess and be formally rejected so at least he never had to wonder “what if”. His reasoning for not doing so is perfectly sound – he had no chance and knew it, and didn’t want to dump one more karmic bombshell on Ito. But still, sucks for him.

This conflict between brothers – setting aside the siscon thing – is actually pretty realistic. Older brothers often resent younger brothers for always having to be responsible for them, and younger brothers resent being taken care of by older brothers. I would imagine this is even more pronounced in households with flighty absentee parents. Maybe Syu at least gets something out of this by technically winning the battle, even if it was under flukey circumstances. But good luck trying to get Gen to give him room to grow, given his personal history and Gen’s nature.

Syu choosing to use his “prize” to force Gen to confess was sadly predictable. And it’s also sad that it was the only way to get Gen to be honest with Ito. But boys will be boys, and a lot of boys run that way. I remain of the mind that this whole thing is a terrible idea but it’s the premise of the entire series, so it is what it is. Gen does indeed fulfill his pledge to Syu and come clean – sort of. For him that was pretty unambiguous actually. Enough so that Ito had to reality check to make sure she heard what she thought she heard.

So here we are, the first day of the rest of our series. Ito asking “what do I do now?” is pretty on-point. This is what she wanted, she’s the one who instigated it. As such there’s no way forward except to indeed go forward, come Hell or high water – this is what she wanted. Can a brother and sister – even unrelated by blood and strangers until a year earlier – live as siblings and as lovers (or at least partners) under the same roof? I know how I feel about that but I guess we’re about to find out how the mangaka does…