It's not that she's smug, but it annoys me that she gets to look "cool" in the chapter, given that she's far from blameless regarding Shizuka's inability to move on from her. So it's not really the character itself that annoys me, but the way the chapter makes her look "cooler" than Shizuka, because I don't think she has earned it.
...I don't think you can fairly blame Kaoru for Shizuka taking her... rather extreme and (in multiple senses) decidedly unhealthy reaction to their middle-school break-up and their subsequent weird, long-running lowkey cat-and-mouse game and making those an alarmingly central prop of her own self-image. ("Even though you can't live without me" as the lady herself puts it.)
What she's essentially if somewhat circuitously telling Shizuka is that she can no longer continue their old song and dance, her heart isn't in it anymore; and Shizuka too has to let go of it and build something new with someone who can give her that kind of affection (she actually has one anyway... or used to until now, ouch, but then neither of the older girls is aware Mio saw the whole episode).
I'd say Shizuka's getting the message loud and clear too, she's just having major trouble accepting it - just look at the way she gets increasingly frantic and desperate during the conversation and her utterly devastated expression afterwards. It's probably fairly telling that Kaoru seems to have a sadly sympathetic air about her for much of the exchange, ie. just about the entire latter half thereof - she ought to know (and be able to read) Shizuka well enough to have a pretty good idea what the latter is thinking from the get go.
And yeah, I'd probably not get hung up on it so much if it didn't stick out like a sore thumb from the volume, and if the subplot didn't move at a snail's pace due to being told in small chunks that are scattered over the series at large.
They all do, though. The whole Kaoru-Shizuka mess is just the sole storyline with genuine drama and stakes which duly makes it rather stand out from the altogether fluffier and more optimistic others. Personally I just find the contrast refreshing; "warts and all" as it were.
Speaking of the others, though, one overarching story thread I particularly like is Onoda's ongoing gradual loosening up and coming to accept her peers as they come without sweating the small stuff or their little quirks. It's one of the older ones in the book too.
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...come think of it, thematically that one has more than few parallels with the Honoka-Elisha arc (which is also adorbs).
last edited at Sep 4, 2019 5:29PM
