love triangles are not bad per se, but a writer needs good skills to use them right. It's like dutch angle or breaking the 4th wall. And love triangle with the best friend was the last thing I wanted to read in this manga... really, it destroyed the whole volume for me, which had felt so good and refreshing.

Everyone figured out that she's moving away when she said she's moving away. What's not certain is why she's moving, nor when the decision to move was made. Maybe you missed all the messages going "WTF!? Why is she moving away? Why didn't we get any more indication than the bit about sorting clothes?" The fact that she's moving for work is still just speculation, three chapters later, and no idea if it's temporary or permanent since "coming back" could easily mean "coming back for a visit".

Why did we confirm Keiko's pregnancy and miscarriage only in chapter 22? Some people like it spelled, some prefer reading into nuances and subtext. Stretch is perfect for the latter. And to achieve that Shou's been communicating everything perfectly in small quanta, one thing by another, bit by bit.

the cover page got me invested... and the picked up story really disappointed, be it with art, plot, or genre... hope other works will be translated too. Is Yu-ribbon a regular magazine btw? Or is it just a one-time collection from Comic Birz?

not into incest yuri that much, With some exceptions of a few mangas I read and a few doujinshis too. But twin incest is just TOOOO weird I can't get into it, i'm sorry llmao

I'm so with you on this one...

http://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/stretch_ch42#5
Yet another thought how this TV show is about Keiko and Ran as opposed to Keiko and her Ex. Wow Shou, you really nailed it on the double meaning. Guess you can call it a well-hidden foreshadowing.

What sacrifice? The little boob grabber? I am talking about this

Still though, she's shown watching the horizon and nothing else, and again it was about a thing that happened in the past and it was still about her family, not Keiko.

oh come on, not everything in Stretch is subtext. Here is a collection of Ran's feelings presented in a pretty straightforward fashion:
http://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/stretch_ch27#2
http://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/stretch_ch29#7
http://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/stretch_ch32_5#7
and her dream of course, from which it's absolutely clear what kind of fantasies she has about Keiko
http://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/stretch_ch41#2

Or let's call Ran's words in the last chapter subtext too - it's not like she said, "I love you", after all, right?

One thing I want to share with you from this morning.
What if Keiko decided to move out not because of work but because she broke up with her ex now? Implying she was sticking to the room where they started living together and even though she herself rage-quit the relationship after the miscarriage and after being told off by her mother, she still hasn't released her ex deep down in her heart. So now that she did break up, she decided to take a step back from everything, her ex, her apartment, her work, and kinda start from scratch. I mean, even though I stroke this through in my earlier post, but she actually did reply to Saki, "What I really need to do now is to do my best at work and take a step back". This "step back" could refer to having issues at work, e.g. a career change etc. But what I thought it really meant was Keiko's decision to really rewrite her own life kinda.

And it's interesting that in response to that Saki says, "Well, if the two of you are bound by fate, then no doubt you'll meet again, this way or another". It's interesting how she speaks about Keiko and her ex here, but how it actually projects to Keiko and Ran who met in Tokyo under such crazy circumstances. So I think this pretty much settles the ending for me. There's drama now, drama I've been waiting for months already, and drama which I totally love for the emotions it brings, but I certainly still believe in the happy ending.

nah.. sorry.. forget what I wrote above... I confused two lines... better go to sleep now...

Page 4 pretty heavily implies she's moving because of work, but he really should have made that a lot more clear.

unless this is a wishful thinking of the translator. The Japanese version is really cryptic here - literally she says "because I need to stay strong/fight hard/persevere (ganbaru) and step back or aside/quit/resign (doku)"
And this can mean so many things depending on the context... could be job-related, could be relationship-related, could be whatever else. And of course there's some kind of default context that a proper translator (unlike me) is aware of. But given how heavily Shou relies on subtext, he could easily put multiple meanings behind the phrase... Guess it's time for me to watch Lost in Translation again.

On a separate note, can someone confirm that it's a "him" in "So you broke up with him for good this time, huh?" It might be my inner denial, but did I miss a time skip where Keiko got back with her ex?

yes, she literally says that in Japanese

last edited at Sep 30, 2015 7:34PM

reads the chapter... ffffuuuu.... poor poor Ran... Keiko, you baka...

hugs everyone... T___T T___T T___T

shou delivered the drama when my IRL one is at its peak... more reasons to cry rivers tonight... at least Keiko properly broke up with her ex, or did I mistranslate that too?

/me cries in a corner forever instead

joins the corner, "let's cry together!" T___T

last edited at Sep 30, 2015 4:19PM

This manga cries for a main-kun x matsuoka ending lol

http://pastebin.com/PvsLt7CA

Ssamba will be on break next week

halmoni, romantic_reader, you guys are awesome!

it's a little sad there will be no chapter this week, but Ssamba's health is a lot more important. I hope she takes it easy, relax, and get better! I can imagine this weekly chapter marathon can be very tiring... By the way, is it she or he? I don't remember if it has ever been clarified. And looking at the numerous self-portraits in this special chapter I kinda recalled the question.

last edited at Sep 28, 2015 7:31PM

haha, I sure got a little hot-headed with the exam and the pile of work last week. Though I still disagree with you. I do not believe that Seol-a can trust Ji-hwan the way she can trust her brothers, family, No-rae, or her true friends. I believe Ji-hwan may betray her if he or his family benefits from it. I'm however not going to expand on it any further. I know I have good reasons to believe his character is the way I see him. And I think it'd be a loss for the manga to get Ji-hwan out as an antagonist either. But that's my personal opinion and I don't mind if all of you disagree with me. And of course I know what sarcasm is.

hahaha, I lost it at "Bears are all about guts". Good parody. The last pages though... And truth be told, I secretly hoped for an Utena x Yurikuma crossover instead, based on the title... oh well...

this looks cool together with the Scatman videos in the background

last edited at Sep 26, 2015 9:23AM

Takachi, i really like your analysis throughout the discussion. However I gotta say I quite disagreed on your negative analysis of Jihwan's personality. Yes, you could say he's an antagonist since he's playing an "obstacle" role between Seola and Norae. But to say his personality negatively affected Seola was too off. Seola and Jihwan are quite similar in their playful personality due to the fact they had very similar profiles (attractive, smart, coming from wealthy families, being the center of attention since younger). Jihwan's teasing Seola is no difference from Seola's bitching her brother. In the end they know their words are just for the heat on the surface at the moment, and in no way would badly taken by the other party. I gotta admit sarcasm is always fun between close friends, where no ill intentions were assumed.

ieeheh, of course I may be wrong with reading Ji-hwan's personality, and that's totally fine. That was in the end the reason why I asked if I was the only one who sees him in the negative light as much as I do. I guess I am, but that's OK. I do see a big personality gap between Ji-hwan and Seol-a despite the similarities you mentioned. Just like I see a huge difference in the relationships between Seol-a and her siblings and Seol-a and Ji-hwan. But I think I've written enough to explain my point. The time and Ssamba will tell, of course.

He likes to tease Seo-la so... I tease people all the time too in very similar way, especially if I've known them for a while. Does not mean I have bad intentions and these two have known each other for years and been close friends. Not once Seo-la seemed actually hurt by his words and if she was, she would've stopped talking to him years ago.

There's a difference between teasing and mocking. The boundary may be quite blurred and subjective, I agree, but it still exists. And what Ji-hwan was doing in chapter was pure mocking, at least in my books. He knew it hurt. And he knew Seol-a had already learned her lesson. And he knew that she rather needed mental support at the moment. But he's the type of guy who believes that people learn through hardships only. So even though he had good intentions in teaching Seol-a a lesson, he intentionally hurt her in a situation where it really was unnecessary. And she can't just stop talking to him even if she wanted to because there's also family business and relationship involved.
Teasing is what Seol-a's brothers are doing to her. That's teasing.

Just cause two people are in love with one person, does not mean one of them is an ass-hole. And just cause he got rejected does not mean he will automaticly stop liking her. Feelings will linger for quiet a while and it's not like he over stepped any lines since rejection.

Well, I haven't actually said anything that would contradict these statements of yours. Ji-hwan is NOT an ass-hole because he creates a love triangle. Ji-hwan is an ass-hole because of his mocking personality - read above. And precisely because he will not automatically stop liking No-rae, I still consider him a potential threat in the future. It's not 100%, it's less. But it's still a threat.

I can't really call that a promise, I have 100s of promises like that. They never ever pop up again.

You can't, I can. So what? We have different experiences with meeting different people IRL. An important trigger for me in chapter 7 was Ji-hwan's mentioning that he learned Seol-a's weakness. This exposes a plot device for a possible manipulation. This characterizes Ji-hwan as a sneaky, manipulative character, which reduces my trust in him.

And from personal preference I would much rather avoid another "bad" male character. It's way too cliche and unnatural. There are 3 things that always ruined yuri manga/shows for me.
1) Everyone is gay
2) Just sex and fanservice
3) All men are evil

So far Fluttering Feelings avoided first 2, no need to include the 3rd one either.

It's up to the author actually how to continue with that. I'd very much prefer to avoid all three points myself. That said, nobody stops Ssamba from introducing more male characters that do not fit the above-mentioned pattern if the brothers (Seol-a's and No-rae's) are still not enough.

Don't you know that if you're a male character in a yuri series you'll automatically be labeled as the "antagonist"? Regardless of your actual character traits or role. /s

Hey, halmoni, I really appreciate and cherish your work as a translator, but you're playing dirty here. Since I'm the one who labelled Ji-hwan as the "antagonist" in this thread, you make everyone believe with that statement of yours that I'm the one who did so because Ji-hwan's a male. And this is a false accusation, because the reality is, I couldn't care less if Ji-hwan's a male, a female, a wild animal, a robot, or an alien in a form of a human interface created by the data overmind. Really. I enjoy reading good het romance just as much as I do so with yuri or yaoi or whatever other kind of romance. As long as it's good romance.
But the reason why Ji-hwan behaves antagonistic to Seol-a is because
a) he mocks her thus creating mental challenges and obstacles for her
b) he's regardless of his gender a love threat to the main couple
That fact that the couple is unconscious about it does not matter at all because an antagonist is a plot device to create drama for us, readers. And in fact I recommend you to refresh your memory and reread the chapters ~10-15 or so to recall how Seol-a caught herself disturbed by Ji-hwan x No-rae close friendship. Yes the uncertainty came from Seol-a's past experience with girlfriends but at the end of the day, in present, everything directly or indirectly pointed to Ji-hwan as the source of her irritation.

Ji-hwan and Kyung-woo were set up to serve as foils for Seol-a and No-rae respectively. They both interact with the girls and attempt to become involved romantically, but in the end they both fail because they're lacking something (i.e. Kyung-woo lacked No-rae's honest, sincere, and pure attitude; Ji-hwan lacked Seol-a's patience as well as an understanding of No-rae's definition of "love" and thus he tells Seol-a that she needs to change her views on dating wooow best antagonist ever).

And that is precisely what made Ji-hwan and Kyung-woo antagonists. Villains? No. Archenemies. No. Antagonists? Yes.

Basically the only reasons why people kept kicking Ji-hwan in the balls throughout the whole series were because 1) he's male and 2) het threat. Yu-ji fit the definition of antagonist way more than Ji-hwan (i.e. she obstructs Seol-a's goals of having a nice, peaceful school life by being a bitch, whether it was intentional or not). But people were too blinded by their yuri goggles cause hurr durr ohmigosh Yu-ji must have been Seol-a's first love blah blah blah and that one "I've felt/done this before" line by Seol-a was totes referring to Yu-ji, not that scene where she sleeps over at No-rae's place even though it's already been clarified, like, a billion times by the translator.

Exactly! That is exactly why Yu-ji is an antagonist too. You're absolutely right here.

If Ji-hwan were a girl, I'm 5000% positive that we would've seen comments like, "I feel so bad for Ji-hwan-senpai-chan omggg she didn't deserve to be rejected like that she's loved No-rae for YEARS Ji-hwan x No-rae 4lyfe".

Well, you already are 5000% positive to false accuse people in something they've never said and never meant. I understand I may be in the minority with such an opinion, but I don't care if Ji-hwan is male or not. His antagonism in my opinion comes from his manipulative personality and him being the "obstacles" origin for Seol-a when it comes to No-rae.

Did I miss something but since when was he an antagonist. I can't remember a single scene with him doing something bad to any of the girls.

Since pretty much his first proper appearance, i.e. since chapter 7. And of course he's been a love threat to the main couple for 25 chapters, till No-rae rejected him. And even now his next steps regarding his feelings are not absolutely clear. He appears to have been resolved since chapter 45, but will his feelings stay like this forever or will they change again? Just like it's not clear if and how he will use Seol-a's promise from chapter 7.
What I mean is that one doesn't necessarily has to act Dr.Evil to be the antagonist.

last edited at Sep 21, 2015 3:49PM

Thank you very much everyone for the insta-awesome translations!

just a thought... do you guys think Hye-kyung set up the whole amusement park thing? just so that norae and seola will be alone? (she "suddenly had a call") --- just saying cause we all know how percetive hye-kyung is.

that, or the one who actually set everything up was No-rae herself, i.e. Hye-kyung has never ever been invited lol

After reading this chapter I started to ship Hye-kyung with Seol-a's brother!

last edited at Sep 20, 2015 9:00PM

No-rae's so cute on this pic!

she's just asking to be hugged!

last edited at Sep 20, 2015 12:12PM

btw, is there like any symbolic meaning behind wearing a ring on an index finger?
I know the black nail polish means:

This dark and stormy colour reflects a daring, “don’t mess with me” femme fatale who is a trendsetter and doesn’t care what anyone else is doing. And no, wearing black nail polish doesn’t mean you are depressed or going goth: rather, it’s a way of rebelling against the norm and showing some of the darkness in your personality.

NOOOOOOOOOOO-Rae-less chapter.... A lot of family interaction though... preparing the ground for the coming out? Was that Seol-a's dad with the teddy bear? Looks like he missed a chance to meet his daughter. So looking forward to the translation. Could it be that she preferred a date with No-rae over a family meeting? They must really start to believe their daughter got a bf. Ji-hwan might spill the beans here before Seol-a tells everything herself. Unless I imagined too much without the translation LOL

Oh, and Seol-a's brother looked at his sister's photos. All girls. LOL. So may be they themselves will start to suspect the meaning behind the scissor symbol on one of the photos haha. Who's that short-haired girl by the way?

last edited at Sep 20, 2015 10:37AM

I wonder if I'm the only one who doesn't trust Ji-hwan. He gave up on No-rae too easily and didn't even question the probable homosexual relationship between her and Seol-a. Why's that? The whole time he was positioned as an antagonist character, wasn't he? Then how come did he turn out to become such a nice chap all of a sudden? Does he really plan to get those two together and get no benefits out of it for himself? Or do I really draw him as being too much of a monster in my mind?

@khyria
hello and a warm welcome ^__^

last edited at Sep 20, 2015 7:30AM

I think Tan Jiu pretty much escaped in the side characters' bromance because he (or she?) doesn't know how to develop the MCs' relationship further without going directly to confession.

oopsie.. sorry, Nez, forgot to add the spoiler tags...

last edited at Sep 17, 2015 6:45PM

I am glad that I read the chapter later - was able to profit from the analyses ^^ butterflies are beautiful

eat'em live and have them flutter in your stomach, hehe

gugu09:

Why is fluttering feelings still ranked the 3rd in comico, when it's the one with the biggest likes on the website???

It's likely not calculated based on the total number of likes and/or views, but rather the number of likes and/or views "recently", i.e., in the past X number of weeks.

Just a guess, who knows how their system works.

If anything, it's definitely longer than a month... A quarter? or 10 weeks perhaps... then perhaps in a month or two from now on FF will come back to the top

Yes, I think the sequence of events is:
1. The three of them are sharing a hotpot
2. They decide to drink and Seol-a remembers there should've been the ginseng wine in the menu
3. They couldn't find it in the menu, but when it's already delivered Ji-hwan tells Seol-a about the butterfly - not shown if No-rae is there at the table or elsewhere, e.g. in the toilet
4. Seol-a leaves (to the toilet?), No-rae and Ji-hwan are waiting for her outside, and the hug scene takes place
5. NSFW hand holding moments between Seol-a and No-rae

My interpretation of Ji-hwan words is similar to what's already been mentioned above.

Ji-hwan: Love...isn't something that you request from someone.
Box: I once saw a butterfly at some small museum when I was young.
Box: It was preserved.
Box: The butterfly's wings were very pretty
Box: But that's because it was already dead.
Box: It seemed somewhat pointless and sad.
Ji-hwan: It can be such a tragedy how people know themselves so well.
Box: I've already let go of you several times
Box: And I know that was my fault.
Box: It would've been nice if I could have been a man that made you happy.

Here Ji-hwan reflects upon his feelings for No-rae and compares them to affection with a butterfly. On one hand, a butterfly has very beautiful wings, but once you catch and kill it, there's something sad and pointless about that beauty, because the butterfly loses its freedom and one can't enjoy its frivolous flight anymore. He kept himself indecisive about his feelings for No-rae. Should've he approached her with a risk of killing her butterfly nature or should've he kept observing her from afar. Very often he was close to her but never made the final step. He realized his indecisiveness and where it brought him too late in the game - the butterfly has by now become attracted to a flower. This is further expressed in his words to Seol-a:

Ji-hwan: Baek Seol-a.
Ji-hwan: If there's something that you really want
clench
Ji-hwan: You have be very careful when you're getting a feel for it.
Ji-hwan: Listen to your feelings honestly.
Ji-hwan: In order to see what you really want.
Ji-hwan: And if you're still hesitant, just give up nicely. For everything's sake.
Seol-a: Why are you...saying this to me?
Ji-hwan: ...There's a butterfly perched on a flower.

Ssamba uses the wall picture of a flower and Ji-hwan's "Baek Seol-a" speech bubble over it to give us a direct metaphor hint. And essentially what Ji-hwan tells Seol-a to do is to give her feelings an honest evaluation, does she want to catch the butterfly or not? Because if she doesn't, she risks falling for the same trap that he did, waiting too long and eventually hurting both her own and No-rae's feelings. And if she does, she better act on her feelings asap before the butterfly flies to another flower.

What I find really beautiful about the whole metaphorical language of the chapter is that at the end Seol-a makes a decision and literally clenches No-rae's hand in hers even though from Seol-a's POV her decision is rather driven by jealousy than by Ji-hwan's words. And it actually makes me believe that the confession's really close now!

last edited at Sep 14, 2015 9:47PM