Boy. These two chapters sure leave a lot to unpack.
I’m really curious to see how Shimamura responds to this, because she’s kind of in the drivers seat right now. While of course I want to see Adachi and Shima to get together, I also understand the feelings Adachi is going through, and in all honesty... a response like that was important. Shima is getting tugged hard in two directions, and at least from Adachi her motives are pretty self centered. From what we’ve seen she’s not particularly interested in making Shimamura happy or really deepening their relationship. She just wants to spend time with her because, like she said, it gives her life meaning. Which isn’t an unforgivable sin by any means, it’s part of being a teenager, but it IS selfish.
Getting angry at your crush spending time with someone else is already quite selfish, but to blow up like Adachi did and rant for that long... that was rough to read. Because on one hand, it feels like she’s taking advantage of Shimamura’s passiveness yet again by pouring all this frustration onto her for something mostly innocuous. On the other hand, Adachi has been sending some pretty strong signals over the past several chapters that Shimamura never picked up on, so a full unload like that feels natural.
Overall I’m incredibly happy that Shimamura gave a harsh response like that (by page 4 I was positive that she had already hung up out of shock). Had her response been too friendly or romantic then it would’ve continued the trend of Shima being overly passive and coddling to Adachi, but not this time. This will be very important to Shima’s character growth in standing up for herself and how she interprets/reacts to ALL of Adachi’s feelings.
I have faith in the author. Given the rest of the books we can be sure that the situation won’t turn out too ugly, all I can hope is that it’s emotionally satisfying.