This week’s Clueless Transfer Student was mostly a string of short vignettes, but it was all ramping up to something.  These sorts of anime always seem to put the feels chapter last, which makes perfect sense – if you opened with it the lightweight stuff coming after would feel a little strange.  There was also an awful lot of teasing this time around, more than we’ve seen in quite a while.  Kasahara-san has finally outgrown it, but her two lieutenants are still fully committed (and Kasahara hasn’t yet moved to put a stop to it).

First, a four leaf clover which Akane picks as a charm against further injury for Taiyou.  Heck, she even turned it into a display piece, awfully kind of her.  This starts off the first batch of reaper jokes, though they remain as ineffectual against Taiyou’s blazing light as ever.  Talk then turns to Akane’s eyes, or “Mystic Eyes” as Taiyou now dubs them.  It’s about at this point that Kasahara weighs in about how lame her flunkies are, but she says it under her breath (for now).

What about dreams?  Well, Akane turning up in them is certainly good luck in Taiyou’s book.  And if he and Akane both turn up in Daichi’s dreams, that’s even better (the implications are obvious).  An eyepatch would indeed be an obvious draw for a boy into chuuni like Taiyou, though Akane wouldn’t have it in her to pull something like that.  When she stops by the Takada household to return some manga only to find Taiyou at cram school, Yukiko can’t resist the urge to go into full troll mode – which sets up a fierce protective response in Taiyou when he does arrive back.

What this is all building up to is the episode’s titular chapter, which finds Adachi-san inviting herself over to Akane’s house to meet Kuro and Taiyou and Hino horning in on the action.  This is a big deal for Akane – it’s her first time inviting anyone over – and she goes into an  adorable frenzy of obsessive overpreparing.  Her doting dad can only play along, as he’s obviously thrilled to see his little girl finally blossoming as a social animal.  Akane plans every last deal down to the cake (what did she decide to buy for Hino?), but fate intervenes and decides that’s a little too much happiness for her.

It’s nice that the trio decides to come over anyway – and Hino delivers free fried rice coupons for the family ramen joint.  But the obvious headline here is Akane landing a rare critical hit on Taiyou.  That was an Akane-caliber blush that “Don’t go!” got out of him, and he was so flustered when she asked him about it on Monday that he didn’t even know how to respond.  “Let’s pretend it never happened even though we both know it did” is all well and good, but that was a pretty game-changing moment any way you slice it.