[Content Warning: Talk of Suicide]
Now that the title should be a more generalized “we” or possibly How Did We Relationship?, Miwa and Saeko are moving on to new loves. Or… are they? Grab your mop and bucket because this is going to get very, very messy…
Even with some big dramatic swings, this volume nails the complex emotions of breaking up and trying to stay friends and also the revelation that people are not always going to do what’s in anybody’s best interest.
It all starts innocuously enough - Saeko’s potential new romance with her coworker gets derailed by somebody else and you can see that’s definitely going to be a thing, plus the most sexually free member of our cast gets a great chapter explaining her nature while also calling out the double standards of slut-shaming.
All the while, Saeko is making some comments that imply she might not have been nearly as ready to end things as it seemed and our two leads have a very nice friend moment. Plus, Saeko encourages Miwa to go after Shiho, her high school crush that broke the two of them up and suddenly there’s blood in the water.
Oh, it all seems fine. Good intentions, at least, but everybody knows where they go. Turns out that Shiho kind of knew about Miwa’s feelings and they spend a very pleasant vacation that has a hell of an aftermath. It’s one thing to be rejected because of who you are, but to instead be given the boot because of what you’d be together is a whole other kettle of fish. It’s mostly Shiho rejecting herself, but she doesn’t seem to realize how she’s rejecting Miwa as a person at the same time.
What this volume does incredibly well is pay off the previous four. There was always something kind of missing from the previous volumes, but now I feel like they were just getting the pieces in place for this, the real story. I bet if I re-read the whole series I would spot a lot more signs of what happens here.
In fact, it’s obvious in retrospect that Miwa’s self-esteem issues ran a lot deeper than even she might’ve realized and the blow from the Shiho situation, combined with her unfortunately timed desire for independence from home, has left her with very little by way of a social safety net.
At first her complete meltdown seems very overwrought, but looking back on the past, no, this makes perfect sense. Her utter despair is brutal to behold and the way Saeko comes through for her, yet Miwa then takes advantage of, is complicated.
It’s complicated because these two still have some interest in one another, but their intent becomes murky and dubious. Miwa wants to make herself feel better any way she can, which unfortunately for her is essentially codependence, while Saeko uses her act of kindness in a way that is oh-so-terrible, yet shockingly believable for her own personality.
This whole last section is fraught and complicated and difficult and as accurate portrayal of depression as I’ve seen lately. Miwa feels like she has absolutely nothing left and that turns the situation between the two completely on its head.
For her part, Saeko recognizes the damage she’s done after the fact, but she sure doesn’t realize the extent until the end of the book, which closes with a conversation that wouldn’t be out of place in a horror movie.
She’s also balancing this with her growing affection for her coworker; the two of them grow even closer towards the finish of the story, but even that is tainted by memories of Miwa, as Saeko is slowly recognizing the things that she did wrong when they were together.
It’s so, so messy, but it’s fascinating and has a car crash intensity that’s all the more impactful because we had a lot of time to get to know these two as people and a couple and now we have to see them moving forward through a real tangle. Where this is going, I think I know, but I could be wrong. I certainly have no idea how it’ll get there and that feeling after so many formulaic books (even some very good ones) is amazing.
5 stars - this series finally spread its wings in this volume and achieved a complexity that I had been waiting for and did it by going down one of the darkest paths it could. A good series has finally achieved a greatness I wasn’t sure it had in it and it was definitely worth the wait.