The persistent complications that cloud Yoshida's summer days inveigh upon the protagonist a portent of inevitability two or three times over. Little of substance has changed, for Yoshida, and yet, for the women around him, the world continues to shift in difficult and unpredictable ways. HIGEHIRO v3 pivots the narrative toward an inflection point with few alternatives: Sayu's family is looking for her, and her reprieve from reality will soon come to an end.
Soon, but not yet.
Before the end arrives: Yoshida encounters an old flame; Mishima's emotional center further unravels; and many of the novel series' characters contemplate the gravity of truth tugging and pulling their relationships either together or apart. The current volume teases the thesis that each of its characters is slowly coming to grips with the myriad, private insecurities that fog their once dynamic futures. For some, the truth is too bitter to swallow.
Does Ao Kanda, Yoshida's first love, who transfers to his office by happenstance, truly care about the moralistic indifference of her high-school kouhai? Yoshida is both impressed and concerned with how this beautiful woman is more in tune with her narcissism than with the consequences thereof (Yoshida: "Though she often made a show out of acting impulsively, I sometimes wondered if Kanda was actually kind of manipulative. It was hard to tell," page 110).
Will Mishima, who refuses to confess her feelings for Yoshida, ever realize that being left out in the cold is her own dang fault? The woman watches more and more people monopolize Yoshida's time, patience, energy, and loyalty, whether it be Sayu, Ms. Gotou, or Ms. Kanda. Mishima cannot feel happy for anyone but herself (Mishima: "All I wanted was to shape this passion raging in my heart into something anyone could see and show it to the world," page 139). And yet, while the woman's selfishness is never weaponized, it does illuminate her numerous misfortunes strikingly well.
HIGEHIRO v3 is a short book, and readers will likely burn through the whole volume in a single sitting. Yoshida's filial sentiment toward Sayu, and Sayu's cheerful reliance on Yoshida, soon come into focus as the possible beginnings of something more fervent. Mishima is the first to see it, and as one might imagine, once Mishima spies something amiss, the rest of the cast is sure to follow. Altogether, the novel has toed the line of an inappropriate relationship that isn't quite beyond reproach, for three whole books. But in the current volume, the locus of concern officially shifts.
The book, nevertheless, is a decent entry in an otherwise simply-written novel series. The author's repeated head-hopping narrative style is atrocious, and threatens to subsume many of the book's better moments. Gotou, for example, emerges as a more intuitive and better rounded character. Readers glean much from the woman's confusion, her ego, and her placidity, in various turns. However, readers need more than sidelong glances or random conversations in the cafeteria to make more of this mysterious beauty.
I read the reviews and I thought that this volume would be boring but isn’t it, in this book you know what are the feelings of Yoshida and Sayu, it’s a very good book.