I know yearning for the poly route is a yuri trope at this point, but come on. That's really the ideal endgame for this series, isn't it?

only poly? she should just get all the girls!

...That is poly

I'm reasonably sure that was a joke (assuming "poly" is a name instead of a type of relationship)

ohhhh elsa takes on the curse doesnt she

Well ... future-Elsa seemed to have some kind of time limit she was restricted to outside of time travel, so, maybe that was the effects of the curse.
Gonna go back to see exactly what kind of things she said to herself.

When they decided to go for a walk rather than ... other things when they couldn't sleep, I was like, aww.
But then they had such a beautiful moment in the park. This is the talk that I wanted. Some forward momentum. Onwards!

My imagination of the Runa scene was a much more realistic and bloody image. In the manga she's strangely... okay looking? Like clearly fucked up but it's not like her cheeks were torn, she's not covered in a ton of blood. It's like she was "modified" in some way rather than "injured". Very different to the brutality with which Uruma treated her mother. It's unsettling in a completely different way from straightforward violence.

I had always imagined her face was brutalised too, but as soon as I saw her face in this chapter, I was like, oh right, she's become more of a Fourth Kind, that Satsuki did more of an otherside melt on her face than she did physical harm.

I feel like the book definitely indicated a brutalization, rather than a transformation. She had stitches and scars afterwards from the doctors' attempts to repair the damage.

Counterpoint (um, is this a spoiler, oh well) You can have scars from surgery that was trying to fix something, not just repair damage.
I'd need to go back and read the story section to get it straight in my head, but I had always imagined it was a bloody scene of actually pulling the face apart. Even if it's not the same as the LN, though, I like the disturbing image of her becoming fourth-kind-ier.

Edit because I actually went to the LN to look. Here's the quote:

When I saw her face, I gulped. Her mouth was open wider than I had ever seen. Her lower jaw had fallen, and her tongue lolled out of it. That face, drooling, with her eyes rolled back into her head, had lost all sanity.

Sounds very much like what was on display in this chapter, though I hadn't originally read it that way myself.

last edited at Nov 26, 2023 5:56AM

My imagination of the Runa scene was a much more realistic and bloody image. In the manga she's strangely... okay looking? Like clearly fucked up but it's not like her cheeks were torn, she's not covered in a ton of blood. It's like she was "modified" in some way rather than "injured". Very different to the brutality with which Uruma treated her mother. It's unsettling in a completely different way from straightforward violence.

I had always imagined her face was brutalised too, but as soon as I saw her face in this chapter, I was like, oh right, she's become more of a Fourth Kind, that Satsuki did more of an otherside melt on her face than she did physical harm.

it's certainly a preferable pace to the anime, which roughly covers the first two light novel volumes by butchering them.

Bahahaha, I'm with you there. I can't think of one thing I actually liked about the anime, despite trying not to judge it harshly as an adaptation. But its tone was all over the place. Overall, just meh.

Ahhh, the words we've all been longing to hear!

For novel readers:
Too bad that Sorawo is too emotionally stunted to accept them or do anything about it for ages from now.

The half of the conversation she had with Satsuki at the end there was so creepy and ominous. Can't wait until the next arc in the manga form.

Imo
Sorawo isn't stunted or anything, she has PTSD and strongly flinches away from any strong emotion before she even really consciously feels it, a common symptom called "dissociation" that for whatever reason is almost never portrayed in fiction. A word novel Sorawo uses to describe Toriko's looks a few times is "stunning" and I eventually realized she's not using that as a metaphor or anything. Toriko is actually literally overwhelming for Sorawo, because she's still shutting down when she feels something strong.
The way Sorawo eventually has her breakthrough to get past this was one of the funniest long running punchlines I've ever seen lmao.

Seems you didn't understand at all what I meant by "emotionally stunted". It is a catch-all phrase for many psychological problems (i.e. it is not a medical diagnosis) that just means they are not in tune with, or cannot act upon, their emotions. That explains Sorawo's reaction to the confession perfectly. Especially the amount of patience and perseverence that Toriko needs to have to deal with her.

BUT, I only meant to make a comment on the direction the novel is going, I didn't mean to have an in-depth discussion of the future, because that's not much related to the manga as it is right now.

Ahhh, the words we've all been longing to hear!

For novel readers:
Too bad that Sorawo is too emotionally stunted to accept them or do anything about it for ages from now.

The half of the conversation she had with Satsuki at the end there was so creepy and ominous. Can't wait until the next arc in the manga form.

Arrrghhhh, what has Michi forgotten about all these people? It's killing me, I want to knoooooooooowwwwww

Oh no he is hot

If evil, why hot huhu

Kidding aside, I thought it was already mentioned or hinted in earlier chaps that Hinata would be the head. Maybe I'm remembering that wrong or my memory got mixed with meta manga logic

Yeah. This doesn't feel like a new revelation.

Also, the whole "caged and forced to do stuff by humanity" line seems a bit off? I mean, they seem pretty rich and money is going to carry a lot more power in the modern world than any amount of physical strength. Like, even at the most basic level, is there a reason they can't just hire a bartender or personal assistant to serve them whatever alcohol they want? As far as I can tell, the main issue is that it causes them to sprout horns, but if it's in front of someone who's on their payroll, it shouldn't be that much of an issue.

Hmm. I've had to keep up a suspension of disbelief as the question sometimes rears itself in my head, why can't they just pay someone to serve them alcohol? Why did Hinata need to just hope someone would buy it for her earlier? Maybe there's a restriction that they can't coerce a human into doing it, they have to do it willingly? But there's been some other forms of coercion here, why not pay someone to be willing?

And the problem of sprouting horns even if they did hire a personal attendant to serve them alcohol. That's easy. They don't need to drink it with the bartender in the room, they can just wait until they leave.

Love this story, just have to willingly cover the worldbuilding holes in my brain ;)

Not an unexpected turn of events when you steal your employer's youngest daughter.
I don't really know how I want this to turn out. She needed that job, right? But getting into a fight with your boss isn't going to make for a pleasant working environment.
Can they fire her for this, though? I don't know about Japan's labour laws (real or fictional)

Not-so-bold prediction:

The "Villainess System" is the curse made manifest in a very annoying (for Yvonne) form.

It certainly works for it to be a curse considering it apparently corrupts people. (Mostly demons, but they did talk about darkness in people in general).

I guess... it's an asexual marriage? No kiss (except the one that came with a slap), separate bedrooms forever.
Sure, that's cool. Not satisfying from a story perspective, but if the author really wanted it that way, okay.

People constantly talking about how the title "doesn't work" have been way too used to incredibly literal LN and manga titles.
Titles of stories don't have to be a literal description of what happens, ya'll know that, right?
Back in my day we used to have a vague title and be grateful for it ;)

This is the slowest of slow burns. The two leads are actively trying to avoid one another, or at least not acknowledge one another.

And looks like real dad chose money so bye, he doesn't need to come back. I can empathize with his choice to an extent but he also has no parental value.

Could be they're making it seem that way, it's possible he thought she'd be better off in a wealthy family?

That might be an argument if he literally didn't kidnap her from a wealthy family to tell her stories of how he was her dad.

How is it even possible that Elsa never learns her name? Someone has to menton Evies name eventually.

At this point, we just have to suspend our disbelief for it. The author is committed to the bit, so we'll just have to accept that as the story progressed, it ended up that they spent some extended time together in the past, and whoops, that didn't go with Elsa not knowing Yvonne's name. Gotta write around that, but what can you do, it's just a problem of episodic writing.

Honestly I like it a lot, there's just something quietly hilarious about Elsa not knowing Yvonne's name. At the start it could still be assumed that they only met briefly but the longer they're together the more and more of a Rube Goldberg machine of "oh yeah I gues despite having lived in her house and gotten to know her family and noble standing I never managed to catch the required information to actually be able to infer who exactly she is" this becomes.

It certainly makes it look like Elsa never thinks too hard about anything that's happening around her.

It's also hilarious to think of everyone suddenly no longer being able to use anyone's name. Imagine her mum and dad and all of their friends, family and tutors being like, how long do we have to play this game?

How is it even possible that Elsa never learns her name? Someone has to menton Evies name eventually.

At this point, we just have to suspend our disbelief for it. The author is committed to the bit, so we'll just have to accept that as the story progressed, it ended up that they spent some extended time together in the past, and whoops, that didn't go with Elsa not knowing Yvonne's name. Gotta write around that, but what can you do, it's just a problem of episodic writing.

Oooh. That possessiveness. Sweet, but in a creepy and confining way. Hope they can get through this phase unharmed.

Poor LL doujins don't get a lot of comments.
I suppose because there's nothing new to say, really.
Cute, thanks for translating for us :)

I find it funny that people read chapters like this and complain "it's too short, this isn't a gag manga."
It ... basically is.
People seem to want the manga to spell everything out to them, but that's not the vibe of this story, it's more of a feeling and some kind of (emotional or funny) punchline.

That's maybe where people are getting so hung up on the romance of it all, too. This is not some linear progression of a relationship, it's basically a series of snapshots of their lives.

All I can think after this chapter is how many people in the comments equated making drinks to something sexual between Hinata and Naori, lol.

I was wondering how this would be approached, because this manga isn't graphic. I think it had the perfect amount of cringe-worthy almost-gore.

I love how misunderstandings are overcome with just straightforward scumminess.

I really hate this school of child soldiers and broken dreams.
But heck, it's such a good story for making me hate the people who force them all into this.